by Sara Donati
The rest of the house was very quiet, by design. Noah Hunter had corralled all three dogs into the stable and then brought the carriage around in order to take Laura Lee and the youngest of the children out for a ride. Carmela was upstairs sitting beside Tonino’s bed watching over him while he slept, exhausted after yet another examination, and Mrs. Tolliver had charge of the kitchen.
Rosa sat between Sophie and Aunt Quinlan, all her attention fixed on Abraham Jacobi, who was telling her about the lymph system. He managed this with Ercole’s help and illustrations from Sophie’s old anatomy textbook. He was a good teacher, simplifying a very complex topic for his audience in a way that made a student curious, even eager to know more.
“Think of strainers or sieves,” he told Rosa. “The lymph nodes are like very small strainers placed all through your body to catch things that might make you sick.”
There he paused while Ercole translated.
“In a healthy person the lymph nodes are small and soft,” he went on, “but when there’s illness or infection the lymph nodes get bigger and harder as they fight off the sickness.” He held up the anatomy text and pointed out the lymph nodes in the neck and throat and the underarms as he talked. Again he waited for Ercole to explain.
More slowly he said, “Sometimes the lymph nodes themselves can get sick, and that is what has happened to Tonino.”
Rosa’s expression was difficult to read, because she was trying very hard to remain calm and grown-up, for fear of being sent out of the room.
She cleared her throat. “The sickness in Tonino’s linfonodi—” She glanced at Ercole.
“Lymph nodes.”
Rosa repeated the term carefully. “Is the sickness in his lymph nodes very bad?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Jacobi. “I am afraid there is something very wrong.”
Aunt Quinlan put a hand on Rosa’s shoulder.
Rosa said, “Is it the sickness that Uncle Cap had?”
“No,” Anna answered. “Uncle Cap had tuberculosis.”
She herself had thought Tonino might have tuberculosis, but the results of the tests on the blood sample they had taken the evening before had made that unlikely. Dr. Jacobi’s diagnosis was based on many years of practicing medicine, and she considered his opinion final.
“Is it the spotted sickness? Morbillo? Il tifo?”
“Measles or typhoid,” Ercole translated.
“No,” Dr. Jacobi said. “Those are sicknesses that are passed from person to person, or from insect to human. We don’t know how or why some sicknesses start. And that’s true for Tonino, we just don’t know.”
“But—” Rosa said.
Anna reached across the table to touch the girl’s hand. “Please let Dr. Jacobi finish, Rosa.”
The girl bit her lip with such force that Anna wouldn’t have been surprised to see blood.
Dr. Jacobi said, “Tonino has many swellings in his lymph nodes, from his neck and throat and underarms down to his hips. And in his spleen. There are probably other swellings in his chest and abdomen that we can’t see or feel.”
“But what is the sickness called?” Rosa asked. A thought occurred to her, one that made all color drain from her face. She turned to Ercole. “Cancro?”
Anna recognized the word cancer, as had everyone else in the room.
Ercole inclined his head. “Si, cara. Cancro nei linfonodi.”
Dr. Jacobi said, “Lymphoma is the name of the cancer.”
“Then he is going to die.” Her tone was almost calm.
Jacobi’s gaze was direct, unwavering, and still gentle. “Yes, he will, I am very sorry to say. Sometime in the next month or two he will leave you. You see, we know a good amount about this disease, more all the time, but we have no way to stop it. The tumors in his neck are growing and they will make it harder and harder for him to breathe and eat.”
Rosa shook her head so violently that her braids flew. She leapt out of her chair and ran around the table to throw herself into Ercole’s arms. “Nonno, non è così, bambini non muoiono di cancro!”
Sophie met Anna’s gaze. They had heard this sentiment too often in too many languages to misunderstand. Rosa wanted them to tell her that children did not die of cancer.
Suddenly Rosa turned to Anna. “You can’t cut it away?”
Anna shook her head. “I wish it were possible.”
“Maybe it is possible, you just don’t know how to do it.” A flush had returned to her face. Anger rising up now, like water coming to a boil. She turned back to Jacobi.
“Isn’t that possible, that another doctor would know how to stop it?”
“No,” he said, his tone even and steady, leaving no room for doubt. “I have seen many cases of this disease and read about many more. There is nothing we can do but try to make him comfortable for the time he has left.”
Rosa looked at each of them, all the adults she had come to love and trust, and something vital went out of her eyes.
Ercole said, “Let’s go sit with him now, shall we? You and I?”
“He doesn’t want me,” Rosa said. “I’ll go to Lia.” She ran from the study without looking back.
“She has reached her limit,” Sophie said, a catch in her voice. “As resilient as she is, as much as she has borne, she has been drained dry.”
Aunt Quinlan touched Sophie’s wrist. “She will rally. Because he does need her, she will rally. But now, Dr. Jacobi, tell us, what treatment plan have you got for our Tonino? What can we do for him?”
Anna sat, hands in her lap, and listened as Dr. Jacobi and Sophie discussed medications that would ease the boy, possible therapies that would not lengthen his life but might make the time he had more bearable. Because it would not be a quick or easy death.
Somewhere she had a copy of Dr. Hodgkin’s original report on the disease that now bore his name. When she found it she would read it again and remind herself of what was to come. Because she was a physician, and she could not rid herself of what she knew any more than she could wish Tonino’s cancer away.
Her gaze shifted to Ercole, who reminded her just then of the hundreds of men who waited to hear from her about their wives and daughters, their sisters and mothers. Some met bad news with frozen expressions, unable or unwilling to show any emotion. Others wept openly and cursed the heavens. And some, like Ercole, stayed aware and alert, waiting for an opening when they might be of service. She could see that he was torn: he wanted to find Rosa and comfort her, he wanted to sit with Tonino, but he sat here because someone might need something from him.
Anna said, “Please find her, Ercole. If she went to tell Lia, she shouldn’t do that alone.”
* * *
• • •
AUNT QUINLAN SAID, “Anna, I want you to come home with me now.”
Anna opened her eyes, grainy and dry, and recognized the weight of the child in her lap. Lia had cried herself out and slipped away into sleep with her face pressed to Anna’s throat, her breathing whisper soft. When Lia escaped into sleep, Anna had done the same.
“What time is it?”
“Four,” said her aunt. “Come now, we’ve done all we can for the moment. Everyone is napping.”
With that Anna remembered it all, and she shifted to right herself. Carmela came forward from where she stood, just behind Aunt Quinlan, to take Lia.
She said, “I’ll put her to bed.”
“Rosa?”
“With Ercole, in the sickroom.”
“Well, then.” Anna got up. “They’ll be waking up soon enough. I should—”
“That’s all sorted,” her aunt interrupted. “Laura Lee will have supper ready when they rouse. Mrs. Tolliver is here to help, and Carmela. Mr. Hunter has brought the carriage to the door, and you and I must go.”
It felt wrong to Anna, but she recognized the anxiety in the set of
her aunt’s shoulders and understood that she was needed.
“I want a word with Sophie first. Where is she?”
* * *
• • •
ANNA WENT INTO the garden to see Sophie standing in the shade of the hedgerow, a closed book in her hands, and all three dogs collapsed at her feet. Beside her was Noah Hunter, his arms crossed, his head canted toward Sophie as she spoke.
She paused, uncertain about interrupting what seemed like a very serious conversation. In itself that was a strange thought, that in a house full of family members Sophie should seek out a stranger to talk to. On the other hand, Anna reminded herself, someone who didn’t have strong opinions on the subject at hand might be exactly who she needed at this moment. Someone who listened without prejudice, and with bottomless goodwill.
She liked Noah Hunter, she realized. She liked and trusted him, and now she saw that Sophie did, too.
* * *
• • •
AT HOME ANNA drank two glasses of lukewarm water, stripped down to her chemise, and went to take a nap in the cool of her darkened bedroom where white linen draperies lifted and fell in the breeze. When she woke it was dark, and Jack sat beside her on the edge of the bed.
He said, “I know about Tonino. I heard it all from your aunt.”
Anna drew in a deep breath. “Have you eaten?”
“Yes. And I brought you a tray. I’m going to wash while you eat.”
* * *
• • •
CHIN-DEEP IN THE bathtub, Jack considered the family he had married into, so different from his own and in some ways very much the same. There were subjects the Mezzanotte children never raised, first and foremost about the rift in the family that had caused all five sons—including Jack’s father—to come to the United States, abandoning a business that had been in the family for five hundred years.
In comparison it had seemed to Jack that Anna’s family was far more open and it wasn’t until they were married six months that he stumbled on the subject that changed his mind.
Over dinner there was talk of a letter from Blue, Aunt Quinlan’s oldest daughter, with a complicated story about pigs let loose in an apple orchard that raised questions about farmsteads and families, going back to the first Europeans to settle in the village that came to be called Paradise.
A question occurred to Jack, and he asked it without thinking. “Why did you leave Paradise for the city? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that story.”
All eyes turned to Aunt Quinlan, whose color drained away so quickly that he thought she might faint. Then she folded her napkin and excused herself from the table, without explanation or excuse.
Later while they were getting ready for bed Jack waited for Anna to explain, and finally gave in and raised the subject himself.
He said, “Should I apologize? I don’t know what I’m apologizing for, but if it will help—”
She turned toward him quite suddenly, surprise plain on her face. “Nothing,” she said. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
But she sat down on the edge of the bed, her shoulders slumped.
“I take it this is not something you want to talk about.” He sat next to her.
She studied her hands. “I knew I’d have to tell you, sooner or later. I was hoping it would be later. Much later.”
In the end, the story turned out to be shocking but not particularly surprising or new. Aunt Quinlan’s daughter Martha had died very young, and violently.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Remind me, which one was Martha?”
“Her fourth daughter. Martha was a little slow, is how they put it. Aunt Hannah told me once there had been some problem with the delivery and Martha was deprived of oxygen for a few minutes too long. She was sweet natured, eager to please, but slow.”
“And her children—”
She shrugged. “Imagine the worst.”
“And where was your uncle?”
“Dead, or it never would have come to pass. So Auntie left Paradise, and moved here with Hayley and Nathan, her youngest children.”
Jack pulled her closer and kissed her temple. “I can see why the subject is never raised. I’ll keep clear of it from now on.”
But he wondered, sometimes, when he caught Anna’s Aunt Quinlan looking pensive. She might not allow discussion of the tragedy that had made her leave her home, but thoughts were free roaming and ungovernable, and he didn’t doubt that she spent some part of every day lost in the past.
And that was the crux of the matter, he realized. His family had lost children, young and older. Sickness, war, tempers roused to violence had marked them, as every family was marked. But somehow the Mezzanotte women embraced the pain, while Anna and her Aunt Quinlan seemed set on ignoring it.
* * *
• • •
ANNA HADN’T REALIZED she was hungry, but her stomach told her it was true. While she ate cold lamb and buttered bread and slices of cucumber she tried to think of nothing at all, and failed.
Jack appeared in the doorway.
“Tell me about your day,” she said, and held out a slice of cucumber, a small payment for a story. Then she realized how exhausted he looked, his face dark with beard stubble.
“Or not,” she said, and bit the cucumber slice in half.
He sat beside her. “Oh, I have a story. You remember Pittorino?”
“The Italian artist?”
“The Italian con artist.”
Jack was the kind of storyteller people sought out. His nephews and nieces begged him for old stories they had heard dozens and dozens of times but always wanted to hear again. Now he told her about Pittorino, who made his living appealing to the vanity of rich men and taking their money, providing nothing in return at all. He told her about the house being built for a German brewer, the discovery of another set of blank walls where a masterpiece was supposed to be under way, and the fact that Pittorino was expected back at a very specific time.
“So while we were waiting we went over to the Dakota. You remember Mrs. Lee talking about it?”
“That new French apartment building on the west side of Central Park,” Anna said. “Mr. Clark’s building. Was Pittorino at the Dakota? It sounds like a place he’d be drawn to.”
“We thought maybe he would be but, no. We caught up with him back at the brewer’s house. It was very matter-of-fact, in the end. The workers were standing around on a break, all the carpenters and plasterers and painters, you know how they are on construction sites, throwing dice and telling tall tales and slinging back ale at high speed.”
“And Pittorino was there with them?”
Jack nodded. “He might as well have hung a sign around his neck, the way he stood out. No more than five feet tall, but perfectly proportioned, like a doll. He was dressed like one too, in high fashion and not a speck of paint on him anywhere. So Oscar whistled, and I yelled—”
“His name!” Anna laughed. “That trick always works for you, doesn’t it?”
“Not always, but this time it did. I yelled his name and threw out both arms, like an old friend. He looked surprised but not especially alarmed, so I called out to him in the broadest Lombardi accent I could muster, ‘Is it true, the bishop of Milan is your uncle?’ And Oscar jumps in and shouts, ‘Did you paint his walls too?’”
Anna laughed, delighted at this picture. “Did he understand then?”
“Oh, yes. The look on his face made that clear. But I have to give the man credit, he knew he was caught and he didn’t try to run. He gave up with—dignity, I guess I’d have to call it. Like a man who loses everything in a poker game, but bows to fate. And all the way back to Mulberry Street in the cab he had us laughing at his jokes.”
“Were they funny?”
“To an Italian, sure.” He leaned over to rub her cheek with his and she wrinkled her
nose at the bristle. Then she put her arms around his neck and let out a great sigh.
They were silent for a long moment.
“So,” Jack said. “Tell me.”
* * *
• • •
WHILE ANNA TALKED about Tonino’s diagnosis and explained something about cancer in the lymph system, Jack listened, holding himself still for fear of upsetting the composure she had gathered around herself so carefully. It was, of course, bad news, as bad as he had feared. And still Anna explained and answered his questions in the voice she used when she talked about her work. She was utterly professional, because she had been well trained and would allow herself nothing else.
“I don’t know what we would have done without your father,” she finished.
“You would have managed,” Jack said, smoothing a curl away from her cheek. “You always do. So have you seen this disease yourself, before?”
Her mouth pursed thoughtfully. “It’s not something I’d come across in an operating room, but when I was a student, yes. I saw two cases, both boys less than fifteen. And I saw the autopsies for both of them, as well. You want to know what to expect.”
Not so much a question, but he nodded. He could see her weighing her words, out of uncertainty or worry that she would shock him.
She folded her hands together and studied them, her jawline knotted with concentration until she had gathered her thoughts. “There are clusters of tumors under the jaw on both sides, spreading down along the nodes in his neck. Some are no bigger than a pea, but some are already quite large, as big as pigeon eggs. And they will get bigger. Those clusters continue down into his armpits, and beyond. But it’s the ones in his throat that are the most immediate threat. They are pressing on his esophagus and trachea already. If they continue to grow quickly, he won’t be able to eat or drink, and the end will be difficult but not too drawn out.” She paused to look at him, as if she could tell by his expression whether this information was more than he could bear.
