And all the while, Jimmie records her ongoing relationship with Stouten. She drops off friends’ watches for him to repair, and then picks them up; he showers her with gifts—a mirrored music box shaped like a grand piano, bouquets of roses and sweet peas, a gold lavalier necklace with a diamond, opal, and sapphire (her April birthstones) pendant, a Shirley Temple doll. Stouten takes her bowling, and on a fishing trip. Jimmie refuses a kiss.
On night duty, Jimmie serves trays and assists with patients in the maternity ward. She cares for a patient with an ectopic pregnancy, is “showered with amniotic fluid,” and “cuts the cord.”
Several doctors routinely ask her to be their instrument nurse. Jimmie knows that “Dr. Stein likes to have the instruments slapped firmly in his palm. Dr. Cooper likes a gentler approach.” On a busy night in July, Jimmie scrubs for and assists with eleven surgeries, including a ruptured appendix and multiple accident cases that expose her to a panoply of injuries—fractured pelvis, ruptured bladder, concussion, punctured lung, extensive laceration of tongue, fractured skull, fractured leg, fractured patella. Some nights, Jimmie says there is a “full house” at the hospital, and they have to use “the last bed.” On one particularly busy night, she deals with “45 patients, 8 babies, cots everywhere.”
One night in September, a patient with the DTs gets out of bed and has to be put in a straitjacket. On another night, an accident case is dead on arrival, and a young woman dies from eclampsia. The next day’s dairy entry: “Wanted to resign. Very much upset. Slept all day.”
She returns to night duty, scrubs for Dr. Stein, and assists with an emergency repair of a ruptured gastric ulcer. She continues night after night, dealing with pneumonia, a chartered plane accident, emergency appendectomies, stillbirths, premature delivery of an infant with spina bifida. She is busy one night with five compresses “to keep up with.” She has “a run-in” with a head nurse.
On December 3, 1937, ESB meets Jimmie and her mother in Elkton. “License passed.” Jimmie is “unable to sleep” that afternoon before going on night duty. On December 4, ESB calls at 7:15 P.M. His “last call before ceremony.” On December 5, ESB does not show up for the “ceremony.” Could this be a wedding ceremony? Jimmie goes home with ESB’s mother and sister. They are “very lovely to me.” Again, Jimmie is “unable to sleep.”
Jimmie’s next entries about ESB occur in 1938, and speak of a separation. He is leaving for Florida, for the Pensacola Naval Air Station, to begin training as a navy pilot.
Fri, Feb 4: ESB called tonight at 8 P.M. Coming home Sunday.
Wed, March 9: ESB called at 9 P.M. Separation last night. Moved out completely today.
These messages send me searching for a framed photo I came across one day, not long after Jimmie died, in her dressing table’s bottom drawer. I rummage through layers of Jimmie’s white nursing hosiery. It’s still there, in black and white—an eight-by-ten-inch photo of a handsome young man in a navy pilot’s uniform, cap tilted back jauntily on his head, dark features like Jimmie’s, his wide smile brimming with good humor and self-confidence. A trace of despondency is beginning to show in his eyes. It’s signed, “Only Forever, Eddie.” This must be ESB! I don’t show the photo to Daddy—that would betray Jimmie, pierce Daddy’s heart, and shatter an old man’s fragile memories.
I stop reading the diaries to Daddy, but continue to search their yellowing pages for clues and innuendos. I am searching for myself, for the adult conversations I will never have with my mother. I remember a brief comment I once heard Jimmie make to another woman. They were talking about what it was like being married to a much older man. “It’s a deeper, more mature kind of love,” Jimmie said.
No more mention of ESB until 1941, when Jimmie corresponds with him in Pensacola. On November 13, Jimmie drives to Baltimore, goes to the bus terminal to get rates for a ticket to Florida. That same evening, she dines with Stouten; their discussion on the future is “undecided.”
Dec 8, 1941: Simon girl delivered with low forceps, 9-lb boy at noon. Scrubbed for Dr. Stein, appendix. War declared with Japan at 4:10 P.M., USA.
With the war, Jimmie’s workload at the hospital picks up night after night. Two soldiers from Fort Meade come in after a brawl needing sutures for ear and jaw injuries. Jimmie helps suture a woman who has been slashed with a razor blade across the buttocks. Six soldiers are involved in a car accident on a toll bridge. One dies on the table; the others are transferred to Walter Reed.
Jimmie continues to dine and go to the movies with Stouten while corresponding with ESB in Pensacola. For Christmas 1941, Stouten has a radio installed in her car and showers her with gifts—an inlaid lamp, wooden salt and pepper shakers, cut flowers with roses, two pairs of kid gloves (red and blue), six linen hankies, two pairs of nylon hose, and a wine-colored turban. ESB sends her a Christmas card. In January, Jimmies receives a letter from ESB telling her he has “just taken exams.”
Stouten continues to take Jimmie to dine at the Pickwick Inn, the Log Cabin Tea Room, the Oriole. They see many movies together—at the Hippodrome, Howard, New, Keith’s, Little, Mayfair—often several in one week—and snack on fruit and popcorn. After seeing Jimmy Stewart and Hedy Lamarr in Come Live with Me, Stouten mentions the “future in a casual way.”
On Valentine’s Day 1942, ESB sends Jimmie a two-pound box of chocolates and a card. On February 19, she drives to the blood bank, gives a pint of blood to the Red Cross, and gets a parking ticket.
On April 12, 1942, Jimmie learns that ESB “made rating,” and will be having a fifteen-day leave. On the same day, Jimmie shops downtown with Stouten. They buy sheets and material for a suit. Jimmie’s mother will be making a suit for Stouten.
In the next weeks, airmail missives soar past each other on parallel flight paths between Havre de Grace and Pensacola, as plans are made. In April, Jimmie receives a “Birthday Anniversary” telegram from ESB; Stouten gives Jimmie a three-drawer glass candy box for her birthday. In May, Jimmie sends a birthday card to ESB.
On June 5, Jimmie dines with Stouten at the Oriole. She buys four new dresses for her Florida trip. On June 9, she sends an airmail letter to Pensacola and buys two bathing suits. On June 23, she comes off duty for vacation at 7:30 A.M., has her car greased, and goes home to the farm “for dinner, a good night’s sleep, and a fond farewell.”
She leaves next morning at 7:30 A.M., drives 440 miles through intermittent showers, and stops at a hotel in Florence, South Carolina, for the night. On the way, she runs out of gas, and a truck driver comes to her rescue. “Everything is fine thus far,” she writes.
On June 25, she drives through showers to Savannah, Georgia, where she has dinner. As she continues her trip, Struggle stalls out on train tracks, but she manages to get the car started and makes it to Jacksonville, Florida, at 8:05 P.M., where she checks into the Hotel Burbridge. She has Struggle’s gas line cleaned and tires checked, and calls Pensacola, but ESB can’t be located.
Jimmie’s cursory diary notations, like the blank pages of a coloring book, trace only the perimeters of her trip. I long for more vibrant images of Jimmie’s Florida adventure, so I rely on a Florida atlas and tour guide I’ve borrowed from the school library to bring Jimmie’s story to life.
On June 26, Jimmie leaves Jacksonville at 10:20 A.M. She drives through rolling fields of citrus, traverses a lush garden and a bird sanctuary. Here, at the summit of Iron Mountain, on one of the highest points of Florida’s peninsula, rises a 205-foot tower of pink and gray marble and coquina stone, the Singing Tower, its full length mirrored in a reflection pool. Jimmie must marvel at the sight of it. She is caught in the rain and waits it out in the ticket booth, perhaps serenaded by the tower’s sixty-bell carillon, then continues on her way.
Coming into Canal Point, she has a flat, gets it fixed at a gas station, and arrives at Pahokee at 9:30 P.M. She hooks up with an old friend from nursing school, and the next day, they drive up between sugar cane fields to Canal Point, overlooking Lake Okeechobee. They chat
for most of the evening.
On Sunday, June 28, she goes with her friend to early Mass. In the afternoon, her friend’s brother takes them both for a drive, and they go to a Methodist church service. On June 29, Jimmie drives on to West Palm Beach, buys two new tires for $17.50, and spends the night at her friend’s home.
The next day, she drives 172 miles, stays one night at a cabin, and continues on to Pensacola. She arrives at 6:30 P.M. and calls ESB. He meets her at the naval post gates; they go out to dinner, and chat until one A.M. “ESB is glad to see me,” Jimmie writes.
She “puts up at a tourist home.” The next day, she leaves ESB behind to take a side trip to Mobile, Alabama; Gulfport, Mississippi; and New Orleans, Louisiana. She passes back through Mississippi, bathes in the Gulf of Mexico, and is “nearly eaten up by mosquitoes.” Again, she stays at a tourist home.
The next day, she leaves Mississippi and meets ESB in Pensacola at 2:35 P.M., dines with him; they drive on, arrive in Jacksonville at 12:10 A.M., and spend the night at cabins for three dollars a cabin. On July 4, they drive around Jacksonville until noon. Jimmie bids ESB “a fond farewell” and begins her trip home, stopping at Myrtle Beach to see the ocean. Then she drives all night, arrives in Baltimore at nine A.M., breakfasts with some nurse friends, goes back to the farm, and tells her mother “all about the trip, etc.” The next day, the airmails between Jimmie and ESB resume.
On July 19, 1942, ESB arrives home in Harford County, and spends the next week in Maryland. On July 21, Jimmie and ESB go to visit her mother, who is in Maryland General Hospital for the removal of kidney stones. On July 23, Jimmie goes with ESB to buy tickets for Florida. On July 25, she has dinner with ESB and his family. She and ESB go out for a drive until midnight. She sleeps until 2:30 A.M., then drives ESB to Baltimore’s Penn Station, in time for the 4:52 A.M. train on July 26. She sleeps all day, writes a letter to ESB, and mails it the next morning. This is the last mention of ESB.
On some Sunday afternoons in our sun parlor, “Florida,” Daddy puffs his cigar and tells me about how, after months and years of “courting,” he finally “won” Jimmie.
“It was May 8, 1945, Victory Day. The war in Europe had just ended, and I thought it was time to go after a more personal victory. I unlocked my safe and pulled out the blue velvet ring box I’d been keeping there. That box held the finest diamond ring Regal’s had to offer—only the best for Jimmie. Bought it years before from Irvin Weinstein, and stashed it away until the time was right. So, while the country celebrated, I asked Jimmie to be my wife.
“The next day, your mother went down to Regal Jewelers to take in some watches for me. She asked to see Mr. Weinstein. When the secretary told her she would need an appointment, your mother just flashed her new diamond engagement ring at her and said, ‘But you don’t know who I am. I’m engaged to marry Mr. Stouten R. Power.’
“After hearing that announcement, the secretary escorted Jimmie right in to see Irvin. He got on the phone with me to say, ‘Congratulations! I just heard the good news.’ I said, ‘Yes, we finally put those Nazis in their place.’ ‘No,’ Irwin said, ‘I mean your engagement. I just met your lovely bride-to-be.’ There was a long pause on the line, and then, both at the same time, old Irvin and I busted out laughing.
“I married your Mother on Christmas Day, 1945. And the rest, as they say, is history.”
Daddy’s cigar has burned to its end. Daylight is gone from the sun parlor. I shiver as evening shadows surround us, clinging like black webs on dusty windowpanes.
After a while, Daddy stands up, comes over to me, and strokes my hair. His voice is heavy with sadness and regret when he says, “And I thought I knew your mother so well. She never mentioned this ESB fellow to me. Just goes to show you, Lissa. Wisdom doesn’t always come with age. There’s no fool quite like an old fool.”
“You’re not a fool, Daddy,” I say. “Jimmie loved you so much she gave me to you. Don’t you remember?”
“How could I forget?” Daddy says, and we leave “Florida” together to find warmer havens in the farmhouse.
My “Florida” talks with Daddy leave me curious to know more. What actually drew this lively young nurse, at the age of thirty-two, to marry a sixty-seven-year-old man?
I go up to the attic and do some more digging. Far back in a dark corner, I find one of the “courting” gifts from Stouten that Jimmie described in her diary, a glass-paneled music box shaped like a baby grand. The miniature piano’s blue and silver mirrored glass is blackened with grit sifted down through the asbestos roof tiles. I raise the piano lid. Inside, a thick stack of yellowed envelopes tied with a faded pink ribbon wait to be reopened, reread. As I unknot the ribbon, it falls apart, crumbles to dusty tatters in my hands. A handwritten gift card flutters loose: “Candy and music for a little girl for the wee hours. Stouten.”
For a LITTLE GIRL? I’M his little girl. It sounds like something Daddy would write to me!
Sitting cross-legged on the attic floorboards, head bent, neck cramped under the low pitch of the roof, I read through each letter, searching, searching for clues. Most of the letters are from Amish Mennonite relatives in Kansas or from Jimmie’s nursing buddies—congenial, folksy, newsy. But two letters, on heavyweight ivory stationery ornamented with a gold gothic capital “S,” stand out. They are from Stouten.
Baltimore, Md.
July 14, 1937
Dear Jimmie:
Well I was over to see the radiator and fender people to-day but they didn’t seem to be able to give me a very definite answer as to how long it would take to give your sick child a treatment. They said it might take two hours or two days they couldn’t tell until they see it. Their place is under a different management since I was there, so I didn’t know any of the bosses.
Anyway, you bring it in as early as you can and we will take it over and get it fixed O.K. even if we have to stand by and supervise the job ourselves.
“It Shall Be Done.”
Now don’t you worry, we’ll see that your little sick Struggle gets all cured and as good as new again.
When a certain little girl has troubles with her sick child, and is worried and sad, it just simply has to be fixed and cured so that she will be glad.
Now take care of yourself until then.
Your Pal,
Stouten
Did Daddy really treat Jimmie like a little girl? He obviously loved her and wanted to take care of her the way he takes care of me. But was there any adult passion concealed beneath this lovey-dovey baby talk? Could this adventurous young woman ever have been completely satisfied with an old man for a lover? I remember how she said it was a “different kind of love” they had. Was this what she meant? Maybe this explains those many early mornings I would come into the kitchen and find her, sitting all alone at the big round table, staring into space. Maybe it explains why, sometimes, she would start to cry for no apparent reason. I read the second letter.
Baltimore, Md.
June 24, 1942
Dear Jimmie:
After all, I let you get away and didn’t get the size for that pretty little dress that you liked, the one in Brager’s store window. So if you will just jot down the measurements of the correct size to fit a certain little girl and mail to me before you leave on your trip, we will have it all ready for the fishing trip when you return. So now don’t forget, and take good care of yourself on your trip, and have a good time.
Your Pal,
Stouten
This, I realize, coincides with the date Jimmie leaves for Florida to meet up with ESB.
Inside this letter, there’s a snapshot of Daddy and Jimmie. Jimmie stands at the edge of a pier, having just stepped out of a large rowboat. She looks like a buxom gypsy in a full-skirted striped and flowered dress, her black hair tied back with a matching scarf, her dark eyes fixed on what looks to be a catch of a least six fish, tied and dangling from the cord she holds. Daddy, slim and solemn and dapper in a suit and straw hat, stands opposite her on the p
ier and reaches across with slender, delicate fingers to touch, tentatively, one of the dead fish.
I find one other photo, tucked away at the bottom of the music box. Here, Jimmie and ESB stand side by side on our front lawn. There are no maples yet. Striped awnings shade the front porch. Tender young grapevines are just beginning to twine around bare wooden stakes to form the grape arbor. ESB, handsome in a three-piece suit, is caught mid-sentence, his hand blurred in a lively gesture. Jimmie, looking young and happy, is smiling, gazing directly into his eyes—with a different kind of love.
One afternoon in “Florida,” I say to Daddy, “Once, Jimmie told me she always wanted four children, but she said she guessed that ‘wasn’t meant to be.’”
Daddy pauses for a moment, starts to pluck at his hair, stops himself, and says, “Well, you know, Lissa, your mother lost two babies before you and Spence were born. Made her very sad.”
“Oh, maybe that’s what she meant—about wanting four children.”
“Could be.” Daddy looks down at the backs of his hands, smiles a quick, embarrassed smile, and blurts out, “I was strong as a bull when I made you. Was taking hormones. Strong as a bull!”
I think that’s the closest Daddy and I have ever come to talking about sex.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AT LOW EBB
THE old iron pipes corrode, rust deposits form on the white porcelain under the faucets, and the tap water runs red. When I try to wash the old sun parlor windows, the cracked putty comes loose and smears the glass. In midwinter, the old furnace clogs and puffs out black smoke that leaves a coating of soot on furniture, walls, and windowpanes. We are almost out of financial resources, and Daddy is desperate to earn a living so he can support Spence and me and pay for repairs to keep the house from falling down around us.
At the Far End of Nowhere Page 15
