The Stars Are Fire

by Anita Shreve

  “So we’re moving,” continues Gladys, “but now, suppose I want to make a right turn? I roll down my window, stick my arm out, bend it at the elbow, and have the hand pointing straight up, like this. That tells any driver behind me that I’m going to slow down for the right turn. So now we down-clutch, from fourth to third—watch the shift—to second and possibly to first, though that’s seldom necessary. You want to give it a try?”

  —

  The night of Thanksgiving, Claire tries to climb onto her mother’s lap. Grace lifts her up and senses the fever in the child’s limbs even before she touches her forehead.

  “Mother, come feel Claire.”

  Her mother, dish towel over her wrist, puts the back of her hand to the child’s forehead. Grace notes her mother’s widening eyes. “She’s spiking a fever,” Marjorie says. “Let’s get her to bed.”

  “On the sofa for now,” Grace insists. “I want to be able to watch her.”

  Gladys appears with a roll of ice chips wrapped in a dish towel. “Put this on her forehead.”

  “Mother, do you have any aspirin?”

  “Yes, I might. Upstairs in my handbag.”

  “She’s shivering.”

  “Cover her with blankets so she can sweat it out.”

  Grace thinks the instructions wrong, that her daughter’s temperature should be brought down, but her mother has had so much more experience than she with sick children that she does as her mother suggests. Evelyn agrees. Quilts are found to cover Claire.

  Grace sits beside her daughter holding ice chips to her forehead. What infection has Claire picked up and where? She tries to recall all the places she has recently been with her. To the police station to deliver a photograph of Gene her mother had in an album. To Shaw’s for tins of pumpkin pie filling, and then to bring a pie to Matt and Joan.

  Claire begins to shake, and Grace instinctively tries to hold her still. She watches with a mother’s horror as her daughter stiffens and goes limp with a froth of white on her lips. “Ohmylordwhatwasthat?”

  “She’s had a seizure,” Gladys says. “This is serious.”

  With one swift movement, Grace scoops up Claire, praying that the child won’t have another seizure en route. “We’ve got to get her to a doctor.”

  —

  With the overhead light on and Claire in a fetal position in the front seat, Grace reads the address of Dr. Franklin’s clinic and her mother’s hastily scrawled instructions as to how to get there. She drives through familiar wasteland and makes the turn onto Route 1. After several minutes, she sees a car coming to an intersection, downshifts, and presses on the brakes. Grace’s car slides into a slow skid. Helpless, Grace puts a hand on Claire, pushing her into the seat, and steers as best she can with her left hand, which is no help at all because the steering doesn’t seem to be working. Black ice. Grace spins across the highway, the other vehicle missing her by inches and honking, either in recognition of Grace’s harrowing near miss, or in anger at the almost accident.

  She straightens the car and continues on, never letting the speedometer rise over 15. Because the dark is impenetrable, she has to stop and face the signposts with her headlights. After half an hour, she spots the road she’s looking for and follows that for a mile. She reaches the end and parks close to a Quonset hut, with only one other car in the parking lot. She gathers Claire and runs with her to the front door. After several loud bangs, a tall man in a white coat opens it.

  “My daughter’s had a seizure.”

  “I’m Dr. Lighthart.” He takes Claire in his arms and feels her forehead. Without a word, he walks with her to a room beyond the receptionist’s empty desk. Grace has to run to keep up with him. He lays Claire on a gurney, strips away the blankets, raises her pajama shirt, examines her, then listens to her heart. He checks her back, looks at her tongue, and sticks a thermometer in her mouth. “Try to hold this here,” he says.

  “Where’s Dr. Franklin?” she asks.

  “He retired after the fire. I’ve taken over.”

  A clean sheet is put on the gurney. Claire’s body is limp.

  “We need to get the temperature down fast,” he says, removing the thermometer from Claire’s mouth and glancing at it. “Have you given her anything?”

  “One aspirin.”

  “We’ll cover her with cold towels. Then, if necessary, we’ll put her in an ice bath. She won’t like any of it, so be prepared. You’d best get her clothes off.”

  For the first time, he glances up at Grace.

  “You,” he says, puzzled.

  “You!” she says, astonished.

  —

  Grace holds a bared wrist under the water until the temperature is as low as it will go. She remembers her legs buried in the muck of low tide, the way the doctor and Matthew thought she might be dead. She raised her head then, but couldn’t move her arms, and the men had to slip the children out from under her grip.

  “When we found you,” Dr. Lighthart says, “the high tide of the night before had taken most of the belongings of the families that had come to the water’s edge, but here and there, the items were sloshing back in with the new tide. We’d been collecting people who’d been told to evacuate. I remember that I was watching the gas gauge on the dashboard of the truck. It was below empty according to the dial. We talked about how you would have to be our last rescue until we found a gas station that hadn’t burned down. Later, after we had you in the truck, I was worried we wouldn’t make it to the hospital.”

  “But you did, and thank you.”

  Grace wonders if the belongings sloshing in the ocean on the new tide had returned to be reunited with their kin.

  —

  Claire looks as though she has been wrapped in a shroud. Death. Grace’s knees weaken.

  “She needs the ice bath now,” the doctor insists. “I’ll get the ice. As soon as the towels feel warm, unwrap her.”

  “What do you think she has?” Grace asks, frantic.

  “Scarlet fever most likely, though it could be meningitis or polio. She’ll need an antibiotic.”

  Polio.

  —

  When the doctor returns to the room, he sets a blue rubber tub layered with ice under the tap, filling it half full. “This is going to wake her up. What’s her name?”

  “Claire. Claire Holland.”

  “Age?”

  “Two and a bit.”

  “And what’s your name? I don’t think I ever knew.”

  “Grace.”

  He picks up the child and slowly lowers her into the ice bath. Claire wakes with a shudder. At first she whimpers, and then she screams.

  “Hold her there,” he says. “I’m going to prepare an injection.”

  “Of what?”

  “Penicillin. In case there’s a bacterial infection. We won’t know until morning when symptoms begin to present themselves.”

  “Isn’t a seizure a symptom?”

  “It’s a result of high fever. Not the disease itself. Is your daughter allergic to penicillin?”

  “I don’t know. She’s never had it.”

  Grace fights to keep the slippery Claire in the tub. The fight goes against every instinct in her body.

  After Dr. Lighthart has prepared the injection, he says, “Let’s do this over here.”

  Grace lifts her daughter up and dries her with a towel, thinking, This must be torture for Claire. The child is silent, relieved to be out of the bath.

  “Put her on her side facing you. Keep talking to her.”

  Grace holds Claire’s face and croons soothing words, but she doesn’t miss the flash of the needle as it goes in. After a split second, Claire shrieks.

  “That’s good,” the doctor says. “Listlessness isn’t.”

  Grace wraps Claire in a dry towel and holds her close. The feeling of momentary relief is intense.

  —

  Grace follows the doctor into a small room in which there are two cribs. He lowers the slats on the side of one of the
m. “I’m going to cover her with only a light sheet. I’ll be across the hall in my office. If there’s a problem, just yell and I’ll hear you. If you think she’s too hot, if you spot a rash, if she seizes, if she vomits, if she starts to bark like a dog, anything you don’t like, you come and get me.”

  Grace nods. She understands that he won’t tell her that everything will be all right, because both he and she know that might not be the truth.

  —

  Claire feels warm. What’s the precise point at which warm becomes hot? Grace is reluctant to use the thermometer because Claire is asleep, and Grace knows the child needs rest. She lays her head against the slats of the crib. It’s too much, she nearly says aloud. The fire, the loss of the baby, Gene, and now Claire. If something should happen to Claire, Grace knows that she will break apart into pieces that will never be put back together again.

  —

  Warm becomes hot, and a line is crossed. Grace stands, unsure. Should she go to Dr. Lighthart or should she try to take Claire’s temperature herself? She lays the back of her hand against her child’s forehead. She doesn’t need a thermometer.

  At the threshold to the doctor’s office, she pauses. He’s fallen asleep on his desk, pushing a manual so close to the edge that Grace is amazed it hasn’t fallen.

  “Dr. Lighthart?” she calls.

  The man rubs his face, and the manual falls to the floor. He checks his watch. Twelve-fifteen, Grace knows from the big clock in the room where Claire is sleeping.

  He stands, his white coat wrinkled, and follows Grace. “She’s hot,” she says.

  He feels the skin under Claire’s arm. “She certainly is,” he agrees. “When was the last time she had aspirin?”

  “Maybe seven-thirty?”

  He fetches a brown glass bottle in a cabinet. “Wake her and see if you can get her sitting upright.”

  The doctor crushes the aspirin in a spoon, then fills it with water. “Do you want to do this?” he asks.

  “Yes,” she says.

  Grace lowers the slats and takes the spoon from the doctor while he props Claire up. She gently rubs the back of her finger against Claire’s cheek. The child opens her mouth—the trick never fails—and Grace gets as much of the medicine into her as she can.

  “Give her a second to digest that, and then we’ll start the whole routine again.”

  “The ice bath?”

  “I know of a father who ran out the door of his house and plunged into the snow with his eight-month-old son. Saved the kid’s life.”

  —

  “A fellow who’s the husband of one of my patients brought me a plate of turkey,” Dr. Lighthart says, “and stuffing and potato. He apologized for the lack of cranberry sauce, explaining that the bogs had boiled. Needless to say, I was grateful. To make up for the sparse dinner, the guy produced a pumpkin pie. ‘Missus had an extra’ was how he put it. I don’t know about you, but I could sure use a slice of that pie right now.”

  “Thank you.”

  While he’s gone, Grace gazes at Claire and tries to guess his age. Thirty, thirty-five? The white coat might make him look older than he really is, but there’s a certain gravity in the face. She wonders why he wanted to exile himself to such a backwater area when, as a young doctor, he might have been drawn to a city hospital.

  He returns with the pie, two plates, forks, and napkins. Touching Claire again, Grace watches as he cuts two large pieces.

  The first bite of pie makes her close her eyes with pleasure. It might be the odd circumstances in which she’s eating it, but she thinks the pie the best she’s ever had—it’s a dark pumpkin, tasting of mace.

  “This is delicious,” she says.

  “I have to do a better job of remembering patients’ names. I didn’t recall the man’s wife’s name, but I could see her face as clear as day. The next time I see her, I’ll thank her on your behalf.”

  For the first time all evening and night, Grace smiles. “And not yours?”

  —

  “When I saw you last,” he says after a time, “you were pregnant.”

  “I lost the baby.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. You have had a rough go of it, haven’t you?”

  “I won’t deny it.”

  “First things first. Let’s get this pretty little girl well.”

  —

  Grace collects the dishes and the silverware and walks with unsteady steps to the kitchen, a long narrow room with a white wooden counter. She covers the pie and puts it into the refrigerator, which is filled with medicines and two bottles of milk. For babies? For coffee?

  She locates the dish soap and sponge and washes the few items they used. She dries them with a towel and folds it neatly on top of the counter.

  She has trouble with the bathroom lock, though she can’t see the need of it. Her hands shake so much that she can barely get her girdle down. When she sits, she examines her fingers, which tremble even when she clamps them together. Her face is wet with tears. She tears a length of toilet paper to wipe them off, a useless gesture since she then begins to cry in earnest. She knows she can’t stop—it’s the simple act of being alone, of closing a door. And perhaps it truly is the cumulative loss, one after another, but the tears feel different—purely physical, pure release—and when she is done, she feels better, though there has been no change in her circumstances. She puts herself together, washes her face and hands in the sink, dries herself with a towel, and stands back to examine her face in the mirror. Her eyes are swollen, the whites pink. Dr. Lighthart will know that she has been crying. Well, what does it matter? What has she got to hide now?

  —

  He has a pad of paper on his lap and a pen in his hand. Making notes.

  He’s smiling when he looks up at her, but the smile fades. “What happened?”

  “Does anything more need to have happened?”

  He closes the notebook, clips the pen to his coat pocket. “She’s fine for the moment,” he says, “but the fever may climb again. We’ll see.”

  “You should get back to your work. We’ve taken up too much of your time. Besides, you need to sleep.”

  “I think you need to sleep.”

  “No,” she says. “I need to talk.”

  —

  “Were you in the war?” she asks.

  “I was. A medic. I was in my second year of medical school when war broke out. I finished the year and enlisted.”

  “What a horrible time you must have had.”

  “It was pretty bad.”

  “Do you ever speak about it?” she asks.

  “If someone wants to know.”

  “It’s funny, because my husband hardly ever mentioned the war. It’s been my experience that most men our age won’t.”

  “You can’t blame them. No one wants to revisit horror. Or guilt.”

  “Why do you say guilt?”

  “You’re given orders you don’t think are right, but you have to do them anyway. Every day, there are choices to make and sometimes you make a selfish one.”

  “What’s a selfish one?”

  “Triaging a man you guess won’t live past noon though he’s in line for surgery. Then you struggle with that decision for weeks.”

  For a moment, Grace is silent. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you end up here?” she asks.

  “After the war, I finished up med school, then just recently set out to hang my shingle. You get a map, and you shop for towns. If you’re lucky, someone takes you in and grooms you. I didn’t want hospital work. I’d seen enough of wards. I wanted a small-town family practice. After the fire, I’d heard that the local doctor’s house had burned down, and that he had a temporary practice here, in this hut. I came here to visit him and to offer my help, and I could see he was in a state. I told him what I was looking for, and he seemed immensely relieved. We brought the lawyers in, and I bought the practice.”

  She scans the Quonset hut, the metal rivets showing. “I hope you didn’t pay a lo
t for it.”

  He laughs. “The government owns the building. It’s temporary. I hope to build a house with an office attached.”

  “In Hunts Beach?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “You’ll have an awfully small practice,” she says.

  He glances at Claire, puts the back of his hand to her forehead. “If Hunts Beach were inland, I’d agree with you. Few families would want to rebuild in a place with no infrastructure. No schools, police, fire department. But Hunts Beach will always be valuable land because it’s coastal. It will repopulate. Whether it will be with the original inhabitants, I can’t say.” He pauses. “It’s as if you’re part of a diaspora now.”

  Grace is unsure of the word.

  “A scattering of a people from their homeland. Displaced.”

  She nods. The Jews. She has seen the movie reels. Horrifying and unimaginable.

  She glances out the window. The snow is still falling. Will her children be taught about the Jews at school?

  “But what about you?” he asks.

  Grace tells him about her father, the secretarial course, meeting Gene at the small college to which they both commuted, and marrying him before they’d started their second year. She doesn’t tell the doctor that when she met Gene she thought him handsome and serious, in contrast to the boys she’d been meeting at parties, and she took that seriousness for depth of character. She doesn’t tell him that they married when Grace discovered she was pregnant and that Gene began to shake with either anger or great happiness. This is good, this is what I’ve always wanted, she told herself. And if it wasn’t as romantic or as heedless as she had once hoped for, it was fine.

  “You mind if I smoke?” the doctor asks.

  “Not at all.”

  He offers her one, and she takes it. He crosses his legs and hangs an arm over the chair. He looks casual and very long. “Tell me more about your husband.”

  “He’s a surveyor on the Turnpike project. His mother died recently. I expected him to mourn, but I didn’t expect the silence.” She takes a pull on the cigarette. “I used to count up the number of words he said to me in a given day. Sometimes it was only two. When I was a girl, I always thought I’d marry the strong, silent type. But what a bore, really.”