Wickett's Remedy (34 page)
Authors: Myla Goldberg
Sure.
That’s smart, Joe. Saves brain waves. I oughta do that myself.
Go on, Barber, I’m sure there’s a million dames out there who wanna read what you write to yer crusty old ma.
Can it, Tommo. At least I know how to use a pencil.
I’ll play checkers with you, Barber.
Thank you, Frankie.
How’re
you
feeling, Frankie?
Harry, if you and Soapy’re so worried, go take each other’s temperatures and leave me and Tony to play checkers in peace.
We were chumps to sign up for this.
What’re you talking about, Soapy? Do you know how many gobs back at the Island would kill to be here right now?
I only had a few months to go.
Sure, but then you’d be out with a yellow ticket. Who’s gonna give you a job with a yellow ticket? You wanna be a grayback for life? A chance like this, Soapy, you did the right thing to jump on it. What’ll you do when you get out?
I dunno.
That’s what you oughta be thinking on. Making plans. Your life’s just been handed back to you on a big fat greasy platter. You know how old I would’ve been before I saw another woman if I hadn’t volunteered for this hayride? Sixty.
A sixty-year-old virgin.
That’s Soapy for you, always talking about his father.
Yeah, yeah. Very funny.
King me.
Aw Frankie, that was a lucky move.
Nothing lucky to it, Tony. Checkers ain’t Twenty-One.
NEW SERUM BARS PNEUMONIA
Federal Doctors Declare It as Efficacious as Other Vaccines
Congress Grants Million for Fight
Vaccination with a recently discovered serum, which has been found to be an almost positive preventative of contraction of pneumonia, will be used to combat the current epidemic of Spanish influenza.
Use of the vaccine will be widely extended, Congress today having appropriated a million dollars to be used by the public health service in fighting Spanish influenza. The serum is designed primarily to prevent pneumonia, which often follows attacks of influenza, and which is the cause of practically all the deaths attributed to influenza.
One treatment with the vaccine only is needed. Though medical authorities connected with the public health service declined to venture a prediction as to its effectiveness, they said confidently that it will prove as valuable as the vaccines being used against other diseases.
October 10, 1924
Dear Mr. Driscoll,
I thought I would have received word from you by now, but there has been nothing. Mr. Driscoll, do not worry, I do not expect you to honor our contract as it was. Maybe you wanted to buy the recipe from me years ago but you could not find me. I am not a money-grubber, I only want what is fair.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Henry Wickett (former)
FAX
DATE
: 8/17/93
TO
: Mr. Thomas M. Menino
FROM
: Ralph Finnister
SUBJECT
: Ambassador Flynn/QP Soda Jubilee
Mr. Menino:
For several months I corresponded with The Honorable Mayor Flynn regarding next week’s QD Soda 75th Jubilee Celebration—in specific to the Jubilee’s street-renaming ceremony, over which he has been invited to preside. Until recently I had reason to believe he would be attending. However, with the Jubilee just days away I have yet to receive confirmation.
To be blunt, I fear that the events surrounding The Honorable Mayor Flynn’s Ambassadorship confirmation may have precluded provisions being
made for the QD Soda Jubilee. If that is not the case, then please accept my gratitude and kindly disregard this correspondence.
Mr. Menino: the inventor and founder of QD Soda, Quentin Driscoll, is an aged man. As of late, his golden years have not rested lightly on his shoulders. He has become troubled by the false notion that his professional life was not the exemplary model the rest of us know it to be. It is a tragedy that such a man, who devoted himself so fully and selflessly to the soda that bears his name, should be troubled in his twilight years by such thoughts. I cannot overstate the potential good—at the ceremony designed to honor his lifetime of service—of the presence of a man soon to be in the presence of the Pontiff. If there remains any chance that you could—in your capacity as sitting mayor—prevail upon Ambassador Flynn to attend the Jubilee street renaming, I would consider it a personal favor that would not go unrewarded in the fall when, as I understand, you will be seeking to win a less temporary appointment to the mayor’s office. If you are unable to effect the Ambassador’s attendance, I hope it will not prevent you from attending the street-renaming ceremony in his stead and reading a statement on his behalf.
Enjoy the accompanying case of QD Soda with my compliments.
Sincerely,
Ralph Finnister
President and CEO
QD Soda
T
he following morning she awoke to find she was inhabited by two women. One used the time before breakfast to study a nursing manual; the other was haunted by visions of Dr. Peterson looming over each volunteer, his dropper releasing not a clear liquid but something with the ominous viscosity of mustard gas. The former had mobilized for a mission contingent upon volunteers falling ill; the latter dreaded complaints of chills and aches that would precede more profound debilitation, the men’s wan smiles foreshadowing the creatures she feared they would become—enervated forms too weak to raise their heads, muddy-chested creatures who struggled for breath. As she approached quarantine with her cart—its medical accoutrements replaced by ten breakfast trays—Lydia’s racing heart beat for both these women, her pulse an uncomfortable amalgam of emprise and unease.
Clear morning light poured through the quarantine ward’s wide windows, spilling across the wood-planked floor and onto the beds. The room was stuffy despite its size, but she refrained from opening the windows, uncertain whether outside air was permitted under the strictures of quarantine. The men were evenly divided
between late sleepers and early risers. George Denson was the most impressive of the former: he lay splayed on his back, his arms dangling off either side of his bed as if he had been tossed there by a receding tide.
“He snores,” complained John Kipling at her arrival. “Kept me up pract’ally all night.”
“You ain’t no sleeping beauty yourself,” Billy Gray countered. “You was sawing plenty of your own wood.”
In the corner by the far window, Frank Bentley was engaged in calisthenics.
Billy noticed that Frankie saved his exercising for after the quarantine door was opened.
“Good morning!” he called out. “Is that breakfast?”
“It’s breakfast,” she confirmed. “There’s coffee as well. If any of you weren’t warm enough last night I can bring extra blankets.”
At the sound of Lydia’s voice the remainder of the men began to stir. She watched for signs of listlessness among the late risers, for any indication that the seeds sown the day before had taken root. Instead the men stretched and yawned like this was any other morning. Their sleep-tousled hair reminded her of her brothers, who at that moment would be seated before bowls of oatmeal and mugs of tea, kicking at each other beneath the kitchen table.
“This is the life, eh fellas?” bellowed George, his voice breaking her reverie. “The boys on the Island would blow their lids if they knew how good we was getting it here, pretty ladies bringing us our grub.”
“How are you feeling this morning?” she asked.
The men grew quiet. They scanned one another’s faces, their eyes wary.
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Frank ventured, “but I feel just fine.”
“So do I,” George confirmed.
“Me too,” added Teddy Evert who, at twenty-one, was the youngest of the ten. The rest of the men broke into relieved grins.
“You see,” George explained, “Teddy here’s the smallest so we figure if anyone’s going to catch it he’s the one. He’s our canary in the coal mine.”
“It’s been less than twenty-four hours since the inoculation,” came a voice at the door. Lydia had not heard Nurse Foley enter and now she felt as if she had been caught out in something. The nurse had arrived holding a vial of thermometers for the day’s first temperature readings. Their tips glinted silver in the morning light like a strange, sterile bouquet.
“If you boys were already unwell I would worry the test had been compromised.” Foley smiled. “The inoculation needs time to take effect. It’s unlikely you’ll feel anything before tomorrow.”
The men nodded, though whether in agreement or resignation was uncertain. Lydia trailed behind the nurse as she had always done, recording thermometer readings. True to Foley’s prediction, there was no hint of fever among the men.
Tony Cataldo would have agreed with anything Nurse Foley said. She had the nicest bubbies he had ever seen.
With a brief nod, Nurse Foley collected the medical log and exited the room, leaving Lydia—with her cart of breakfast trays—feeling like a maid whom the lady of the house, in passing, had deigned to greet.
Joe Cohen liked blondes as much as the next guy, but that Nurse Foley was a prig, with a skimpy ass besides.
“Whatcha got for us?” Billy asked once the nurse’s footsteps could no longer be heard.
“Whaddya think, Kewpie? It’s eggs,” George retorted. “Ever since we got here it’s always been eggs.”
“Y’never know, Georgie,” Billy replied. “It could be something different now we’re quarantines.”
George Denson shook his head. “Kewpie here thinks he’s still on the Island. The eats was always extra in sick bay.”
“I don’t, neither,” Billy protested. “I know exactly where we is. All I’m saying is maybe it’s something else. There’s no law saying otherwise, ain’t that right, Nursie Lydia?”
“It’s eggs,” she confirmed.
“Good,” Billy nodded. “I like eggs.”
Her progress around the room was uneventful until she offered Joe Cohen his tray.
“Do me a favor and take that off for me,” he said, pointing to a slice of meat. “It’s ham, ain’t it?”
“I think so,” she concurred.
“Bring that over here,” Harry Able advised. “Joe don’t eat ham but I like it fine.”
“Pork is Yid poison,” Joe explained.
“Oh dear!” she exclaimed, almost dropping the rashers on the floor in her rush to remove them from Joe’s plate.
“Don’t worry over it none,” Joe assured her, accepting his tray with a grin. “Being a Mick there’s no way you could know. You don’t eat meat Fridays, Yids don’t eat pig Fridays or any other day neither.”
“Never?” she asked, shuddering at the thought.
“Never,” Joe confirmed.
She nodded, making a mental note to request in the future a plate with extra eggs instead of ham. As she headed toward the door with her empty cart, the sight of ten men with healthy appetites stilled her apprehension enough to allow her to realize she had skipped her own breakfast.
At the study’s outset Lydia was careful not to linger in the ward, but Nurse Foley was so often in the laboratory wing—assisting with a report or in conference with Dr. Gold—that Lydia soon became adept at multiplying the number of quarantine visits her duties required, until bringing fresh towels or linens, distributing trays, and delivering and collecting mail required as many as seven separate forays. She discovered she enjoyed supplying meals and mail, blankets and news. In the east ward she did not feel scrutinized or judged. Among the quarantines her feelings of homesickness and loneliness diminished. Afternoons with the men reminded her of rainy Sundays on D Street taken up with cards and checkers.