The World Below (21 page)

How had he come to be so sure of himself at seventeen?

Maybe, she thought sometimes, it was the way he had been raised, with a houseful of women adoring him, his mother and his older sisters. He was the one they had all had hopes for, the one
who would go into the world for all of them and do something glorious and astonishing, the one who would make up to the family for their father’s death. And perhaps, somewhere in there, they even thought that eventually their positions would change, that he would be the one, increasingly over the years, to take care of them, to allow them, one day, to rest and watch his dazzling progress: Seward, the guarantor of their comfort into old age.

Or it might just have been his illness, she thought, which seemed to have had the opposite effect on him from what it had done to her. She was in awe of his quick anger, his defiance, while at the same time she felt a maternal superiority to it—to him, really—which was part of her love and her tenderness for him.

Now he was speaking of his impatience with his sisters. Georgia listened and watched the light through the dusty windows of the shed. He was irritated with their reluctance to concede that Colorado was a good idea, with their slowness in pulling together the money it would take—“It’s nothing, really!” he said to Georgia—to send him there and get him settled. Though they had been working on it: writing letters, trying to find what they thought of as an appropriate situation for him.

He began to talk of how it would be if Georgia came with him, of how that would reassure his sisters, ease their minds about his situation. If he could tell them about her, it would probably free up the money more easily too.

Georgia felt her familiar response to this: a kind of lazy pleasure at the fantasy, a wish to linger in it, but also the anxiety that came with the knowledge that while for her it was no more than idle dreaming, for him it was something like the hope of salvation.

“So, shall I?” he asked.

“Shall you what?”

“
Tell
them,” he said impatiently. “Tell them you’ll come with me.”
Thump
went his heart, under the rattle of his chest.

She turned and lay on her back, staring at the cobwebs above her. “I don’t see how I can, Seward.”

He sat up abruptly and swung his legs down. His back was to Georgia. After a moment, he said, “Then what, I wonder, are we talking about?”

She touched his back. “Seward,” she said. He didn’t answer or move. “We’re talking about what
may
be. What
might
be.”

“No. That’s not so, Georgia. I’m talking about us. About what ought to be.” He coughed. He stood up and went to the low, dusty window. He rested his hands on its sill and coughed again, his legs braced. After a few moments he fell silent. And then he said, “I will go. I’ll go, whether you go with me or not.”

“I know you will.”

He turned around. His eyes blazed. “And you don’t care. You won’t come.”

She was sitting up now. “Seward, how can I come? I have to stay. I have to stay until I’m well. Until my father marries. And probably for a while after that. For Ada’s sake, and Freddie’s.”

He shook his head violently. “You’re wrong. You’re dead wrong, Georgia. You are well, first of all. You’re well. And your father will marry no matter what you do, and Ada and Freddie will like that just fine. It won’t make the slightest difference to anyone whether you’re there or not.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t look at him. She was waiting, waiting until she could leave.

“You’re frightened, aren’t you?” he asked softly.

For a moment she couldn’t respond. She wasn’t frightened, not at all. But, she realized abruptly, that was because she didn’t truly imagine doing it—going with Seward to Colorado. She’d never imagined doing it. It wasn’t real enough to frighten her. Finally she said, “I suppose I may be, yes.”

“But Georgia, what could be more frightening than staying back? Staying here through another cold, damp winter? Not trying, not grabbing at this chance.” His fists clutched as he said this. “You’ve seen the stories.” Stories he’d shown her, worn newspaper articles he’d saved and folded and refolded: miraculous recoveries,
lives begun anew. “It’s a new world, Georgia, and we could be part of it.”

She shook her head slowly. “I need to settle things here first, Seward.”

“Can’t you think of me? Can’t you put me ahead of all that for once?”

The bell calling them in began to ring rhythmically, and it occurred to Georgia that she didn’t believe in any of it, that she never had—not the new world he spoke of, not her going there. Most of all, she realized, she didn’t believe Seward was going to live. He was dying. He was dying and he didn’t know it, and that was part of why she loved him: his brave, insistent ignorance, his refusal to see what was there. It was part of who he was.

But she
did
see it. This was part of who she was—her hard-hearted
seeing
. She felt this and felt, too, a kind of self-disgust at her own practicality, her clearheadedness.

She stood up and smoothed her hair. “We have to go back now,” she said. “It’s time.” The bell clanged a few times more and then fell silent.

He didn’t answer.

“Seward,” she said. “I love you. I do love you.” She moved close to him. “You are so very dear to me,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes and coughed. Once. She could feel him straining to stay in control of himself. “But you won’t come with me,” he said finally.

“I can’t. I can’t come. Not now. Not right away.”

“Ah! Not
right away.”
He was mocking her, a bitter smile on his face.

She went to the door and opened it. “I should go.”

“Go then.”

“Seward.”

“I’ll stay. You go.” He laughed. “We’ll try it this way.”

“Seward,” she said.

“Go!” he barked.

She stepped outside and closed the door. As she started out of the little clearing around the shed, she could hear the coughing begin again, long and wrenching, as though it would never end.

Dr. Holbrooke came the next week to visit, his second trip to the san since he’d sent her there. It was late in the afternoon. He was alone in the library when she came down, sitting in front of the west-facing windows with the sun at his back, so she couldn’t see his face as she stepped quickly across the room toward him, as he stood to meet her.

“Oh! I’m so glad it’s you!” she said, extending her hands.

“Are you now?” he said. “I wonder why.” He took her hands, half shaking one, but holding on to the other too. Up this close his face was clearer; she could see him. He looked absurdly happy, and younger than she’d seen him look before.

“Because I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” she answered. “Let’s go outside, though. It’s so dim and dreary in here, don’t you think?” She opened one of the long French doors to the terrace. “Here”—she gestured to the chairs set out in rows, as though the terrace were the deck on a mighty ship and the rolling meadow below a deep green sea—“come, cure with me,” she said.

He laughed and sat down. There were four or five other pairs of people clustered here and there on the cure chairs, idly talking. It was the long free period before dinner, after rest. Seward was in the infirmary again, as he’d been once before this summer.

As Holbrooke swung his legs up onto the chair, he said, “Ahh, I feel better already.”

Georgia sat down sideways on the leg rest of the chair next to him. She leaned forward toward him, resting her elbows on her knees.

“Now,” he said. “What is it you wanted to talk about with your doctor? He’s listening.”

Georgia looked at him a long moment. For some reason she thought abruptly of Seward’s bluish flesh, the bones seeming to jab at him from within.

“Colorado,” she said, freighting the word with the dreams they’d spun about it.

“Colorado?” He frowned. “What about it?”

“Just: what do you think of it? For TB, I mean. As a solution. A cure.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Well, I’m wondering. I’ve read such extraordinary things about people recovering there. Beginning all over.”

“And you’re thinking of it for yourself.”

“Well, yes. I am. Wondering about it, anyway.”

He shook his head. “Speaking as a physician, I can’t see there’d be any benefit for a patient like you.”

“But how about …? Well. I’ve a friend. A friend here who’s quite sick. Much sicker than I am.”

“I see. All right.” He put his hands together, fingers touching, at his chin. “I think at this point that what we can say is that it’s little more than a romantic notion.”

“But what about the cures you read of?”

He shook his head. “No doubt some patients have gotten better. But that would have happened elsewhere too, in all likelihood. And some have died. And that too would have happened elsewhere.” He turned his hands and held them up to her, flat, equal.

“But the sans there, they must be as good, anyway, as those here.”

“Oh, I imagine so.”

“And so, being there would increase a person’s chances of getting well.”

“Not over being here, no.”

Georgia frowned. “But these do increase our chances, don’t they? Being here? Isn’t that why I am here, after all? At your suggestion.”

“They do. Indeed they do. But not for all. You see, what we know how to do with TB is to temporize with the bug. We give the body its own chance to fight it off, to encapsulate it. Eventually there will be a cure, I’ve no doubt of that. But in the meantime, we can only keep those alive whose bodies want to help them to stay alive. And some bodies are less cooperative than others. Some bodies fight less well, even when they’re given all the help a place like this can give. And for those bodies in particular, I wouldn’t suggest the rigors of a long trip out west and then all the effort of setting oneself up out there.”

“But why has it such a reputation then? Why do people go?”

“I don’t think they do as they once did. Oh, before we understood the disease as we do now, it seemed to make sense. Fifteen or twenty years ago, I would no doubt have answered you quite differently, and that’s when most patients were making that pilgrimage.”

“And some, curing.”

“To be sure. But some not. And even then I imagine the trip itself killed some.” He shook his head again. “No, I wouldn’t recommend it. And if I were you, I’d advise your friend that she should stay right here.”

“He,” Georgia said. Her eyes were steady on Holbrooke now.

He looked startled. “He?”

“That
he
should stay right here. My friend is a gentleman. A patient here.”

“Ah!” he said. “I see.” He looked away. “Well, it’s very good of you to be so concerned for him.”

Georgia could feel herself blushing. “He’s very ill.”

Holbrooke stared at the distant line of dark spruces for a while. Then he swung his own legs down and sat up. He was facing Georgia now—their knees almost touching—but still he didn’t look directly at her. After a long moment, he said, more or less to the terrace, “You seem quite well, yourself.”

“No different than I’ve been for a while.”

Now he did look at her. “Perhaps you should be beginning to think of going home.” He said this questioningly but brightly, as
though he expected her to seize on it, as though it were a gift he had to offer her.

“Oh, surely not yet!” she cried. Her eyes met his, and he was startled to see that she looked frightened, even appalled, as though this were the thing she wanted least in the world.

In the end, the two things happened within several days of each other, Seward’s departure for Colorado and Georgia’s return home.

The sisters, it turned out, had saved the money for Seward long since but first wanted to try a surgical procedure, artificial pneumothorax, the deflating of the lung in order to rest it. If it worked, and it had worked for some, there would be no need for Colorado, perhaps no more need for Bryce. Since Dr. Rollins didn’t perform this surgery—or any others, for that matter—they had been putting Seward off while it was arranged for a doctor from Boston to come and work on him. Once Dr. Rollins had set this up and it was announced, several other patients signed up for the procedure too, to take advantage of the doctor’s visit.

There was a hum and buzz in the sanatorium as the great day approached; some stories passed around about miraculous recoveries, others about fatal perforations. There were those who were skeptical of the whole thing, those who were jealous, those who were greedy and impatient.

Seward’s surgery was unsuccessful. He described it to Georgia afterward, the doctor loud and jolly at the start, a fat man, Seward said, with a wide, carefully groomed mustache and strangely small and delicate hands. After the first attempt he’d fallen silent, except to murmur, “Difficult, difficult.” Twice more he tried. It was a wide needle, Seward said. “It’s like having a nail ever so tenderly inserted in your side.” The doctor could find no soft tissue, no unscarred area. “He’s the first medicine man who’s ever said ‘I’m sorry’ to me,” Seward said. “I was so struck by that I actually thanked him for it.”

They were sitting in almost the same spot Georgia had sat in a few weeks earlier with Holbrooke. Seward had been released from the infirmary, but he was weak still, tired. He hadn’t suggested a walk, their euphemism for finding a place to lie together—the shed or the soft bed of needles in the woods. Once or twice as they were speaking he had drowsed and waked, without seeming to notice his own absence, and this frightened Georgia. She was holding his hand, she didn’t care who saw.

She hadn’t told him anything of Holbrooke’s visit, of what he’d said about Colorado or the risks of the trip out; or of her last examination with Dr. Rollins, when he’d pronounced her as well as she could be; and the subsequent telegram from the san to her father to ask him to come to fetch her. She had heard from him two days earlier: he would come for her a week hence. None of this had she mentioned to Seward.

She’d stayed silent because she thought Seward should go to Colorado. She thought so in spite of the risk. Because he wanted it so badly, because it gave him hope, and she saw, with Seward, that it was hope—and rage and defiance—that kept him alive. What else could be, with lungs so destroyed by lesions that there was no room for a needle to slide in?