30
Family Wisdom
Dr. Sawtelle said to call her Mary. Jennie—and Gracie—progressed well. Both kept their weight where Mary felt it mattered. Jennie ate fresh vegetables and apples from the Smith Family Orchards owned by early founders of Salem. Baby conversations would blend into doctoring and Mary’s experiences.
“We really need a medical society in this state to address the charlatans who claim they’re doctors while offering hot peppers and salt as a cure for catarrh and even gonorrhea or sell pure liquor put up in medicine bottles.” Dr. Sawtelle put a fresh apron on over her dress. “Of course, as a woman I’d have to fight my way in. Eclectics tend to dismiss homeopathic doctors. Men will find any number of ways to keep a woman from achieving her highest goals.”
“Your husband is supportive.”
“He is.”
“Mr. Parrish wants me to go to medical school.”
Mary narrowed her eyes as though assessing Jennie’s capability. Jennie hurried on. “He always has. It’s very endearing and I did once tell him I wanted to do that, but now, with babies, I couldn’t be more content.” Gracie was already seven months old and a diamond in her father’s chest of feminine jewels. He delighted in Gracie’s one dimple on her right cheek, her serious frown, and how the child could focus on a single toy, not be distracted by other shiny things until she was ready.
“Ha. You may find in time that your interest makes gains, weaving through the blooms of motherhood, being a wife, a good citizen. I know any number of women who have chosen that profession later in life. Bethina Owens did. Gave her child to the care of a friend and headed off. ”
“You know her?”
“I do indeed. She’ll graduate next year. Does that hurt?” She pressed Jennie’s abdomen. “One day medical school will be six or even seven years long, as long as it takes to become a preacher. But for now, two to three years and we have our diploma. Baby moving well?” Jennie nodded. “But she’ll want further study in surgery, I suspect. Now, how are your bowels moving?”
Mary seemingly held several thoughts at once. Perhaps Jennie’s own flightiness as a child could be honed into the ability to keep many subjects in her mind at once, as Mary did. It might be a requirement of a physician.
She pushed Gracie in a perambulator down Winter Street, pinecones crunching underfoot and squirrels scampering. The azaleas bloomed bright red, and once or twice yellow petals invited notice, bobbing toward the street. Lilac perfume wafted over their heads as Alex pointed to a rodent with a walnut in his mouth, its eyes still and staring at the little boy.
“You’re an only child, Ariyah. How did you get so wise?” She had just told Jennie that having a sister—and maybe two—was good for Douglas, that larger families help children learn they aren’t the only note in the symphony.
“My mother,” Ariyah answered. “She made sure I had lots of friends. Maybe that’s what Douglas is missing.”
Jennie thought back. “Douglas really hasn’t had many friends. He had such a good time with Quilton. I think that porcupine was his best friend.” She bent down to make sure seven-month-old Gracie was still asleep in the May sunshine.
“Whatever happened to that pet?”
“Charles visited at my parents’, and after that terrible encounter with me, Douglas let him go. He told me of Quilton’s leaving without much affect, like he’d seen a squirrel with a walnut in its mouth, staring. It was almost . . . eerie, like he punished himself without showing pain.” Jennie shivered with the memory.
“Were you there? Did you see him release it?”
Jennie shook her head.
Ariyah let Alex walk beside her then, holding his hand while he helped push his own perambulator. “I shouldn’t say anything. I mean, I don’t really know, of course.”
“What?”
“Douglas, well, this has happened a couple of times. He, Douglas, doesn’t always tell the truth, Jennie. Once when I watched him for you, I found him in the cupboard where we keep the medicines. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was ‘ogling.’ But he had the laudanum in his hand and the cap was off. I . . . took it from him, of course, and he didn’t act as though he’d had any but . . . he insisted he was just looking with the bottle still in his hand.” The women had stopped. “I could see he lied. He was old enough he should have known he wasn’t telling me the truth. And there were other times I questioned his veracity. I’m sorry.” She looked away. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Jennie hadn’t seen him be untruthful, had she? When they’d spoken to Douglas about his teacher’s concerns, he’d said the teacher didn’t really like him, that he treated him differently than the other children, called on him more often to make him look bad. Jennie confessed that she thought the teacher made erroneous assumptions too. He might have been accurate about Douglas being a scamp, but he hadn’t said he lied. Honesty was such an important virtue. How could her son have drifted past it?
“I’m glad you’ve told me. I’ll watch for it.”
“Maybe invite some friends for him. Or cousins. Take him out to your brother’s farm more often. He could ride horses there.”
“Yes, that would be good.”
Instead she decided to watch Douglas and to ask Lizzie if she ever questioned Douglas’s truthfulness.
“Oh, la, Mrs. P. I do wonder at times. But my brothers told tall tales too, to get themselves out of trouble. They weren’t very good at it and neither is Douglas. I don’t think you need to worry.”
Their second baby had a plan of her own. Jennie’s contractions began the evening of August 19, a full month earlier than expected. Josiah went immediately for Mary and Jennie heard them mumbling in the hall.
“If that’s your wish,” Mary said. Jennie suspected it was the “father in the birthing room” conversation, and this time it lasted only a moment and occurred early in the process, as Jennie had spoken with Mary about it months before.
Because Jennie wasn’t dilating, she and Mary discussed ways to move the birthing forward and agreed to try physical things before offering tinctures. Jennie was up and waddling, Josiah at her side. Then Lizzie filled the clawfoot tub with warm water—as the Tillamook women might do it, Josiah reminded her. The steaming water eased Jennie’s back but did nothing to bring on the awaited arrival of a baby.
“I don’t detect infant distress,” Mary said. She set the stethoscope tube, like a fat sausage, down on the tray beside the bed, and so Jennie got up and walked again.
“You didn’t say anything about mother distress,” Jennie chided her.
“I worry over mothers when they aren’t distressed.”
Jennie actually laughed in between gasps and pants. Mary was almost as good as having Ariyah with her, who wasn’t there because this baby was coming early and Ariyah and Alex had gone to the coast.
But in the early morning of August 21, Josephine Lunalilo Parrish was born. They named her for Josiah, called her Josie and then JoJo as she grew. Her middle name came from the king of the Sandwich Islands and honored Josiah’s many coastal friends who had been brought to the territory by the Astorians. The name meant “generous and benevolent,” and so she was, her presence a noble gift.
Josie had her father’s thick, dark hair and Jennie’s green eyes, and both parents couldn’t have been more pleased.
“Where’s Douglas?” Jennie asked as she held Josie in her arms. Lizzie rocked Gracie’s cradle. She’d turn one in less than two months. The nanny looked as exhausted as Jennie, as she and Josiah had carried all those tubs of steaming water up the stairs.
“Lizzie, go see if he’s in his room. In all the excitement I never saw him.”
Lizzie rushed out and returned with a puzzled look on her face. “He’s resting, Mrs. P. Sleeping like a baby, as they say. But—”
“But what?”
She held up a bottle of laudanum. “I was sure it had some left in it and, la, it’s missing much.”
They kept no liquor in the
ir home, but that afternoon, Jennie wondered if they even ought to keep laudanum around. Douglas denied he’d taken it, didn’t know how it was the bottle could have gotten into his room. “Lizzie musta left it.”
Jennie assured him that was not the case and they would have to think of some consequence, which then aroused him to howling about how unfair she was, which woke Josie and caused Gracie to cry. She vowed to deal with Douglas when she was more rested, but then the babies needed feeding. She sent him back to his room to “think about what you’ve done.”
“He claims it was already empty and he was just being curious of what was in the cabinet that might ease your discomfort.” Josiah returned after escorting Douglas out.
“He was worried about me?”
“It’s possible that medicine was used up before,” Josiah said. “You’ll never win an argument with a child on the facts.” He held Gracie in his arms, wiped her little face of mother’s milk.
“I don’t want to be unfair, but he ought not to have had it in his room.”
“Maybe Lizzie did leave it there by mistake. Or I did. I’ve been known to have a lapse now and then.”
That was true. Jennie had noticed that Josiah sometimes repeated a question she’d just answered for him. At sixty-seven, he wasn’t old, but with many things on his mind, one could be forgetful at any age. “I doubt that you’d forget that.”
“Parents seek fairness and justice when a behavior is in need of reprimand while the child has nothing else to do but plot adventures. There were occasions with my boys—”
“So what do I do? We can’t let him slip by us.” Jennie raised her voice. “Ariyah said once she caught him in her medicine cabinet.”
“We’ll keep it locked, get a different key and hide it.”
It was a lapse on her part, her nose in an anatomy book rather than tending her son. The nux vomica hadn’t been secured either. What woman of medicine would be so careless? More evidence that her place was here, in this home, paying better attention.
They celebrated Gracie’s first birthday, then Douglas’s tenth that October. Jennie had asked Josiah to buy Douglas a pony of his own to ride. She hoped giving him an animal to enjoy and be responsible for would interest him. He walked around the gray horse with an almost white mane and tail, patted his neck.
“Did you get me a gun too, Papa?”
“Douglas. Please. Don’t be rude. This is an exceptional gift.”
“Would you like to ride him?” Josiah asked. “His name is Biscuit. The white mane apparently reminded the owner of good bread dough.”
“I guess.” Douglas let Josiah help him mount the animal, take the reins, and trot around the paddock. Lizzie held JoJo and Jennie carried Gracie on her hip and they watched her son. Dust followed the horse around the fenced circle. When he finished, he trotted right up to the collection of women, a little too close. They all stepped back as he slid off. “Will I have to take care of him?”
“Yes, of course.” Jennie’s face burned with embarrassment. “Your papa has brought you a lovely gift, but such an animal needs attention to be maintained.”
“I guess.”
When it came to Douglas, guessing was what they all did.
Raising three children consumed them that year: loving them all, trying to anticipate what they needed to be healthy and strong and grow wise, matching discipline to acts and age. It was Jennie’s hardest year.
So, when Douglas turned eleven and Josiah suggested he attend the boarding school part of Willamette, Jennie considered it.
“He’ll make new friends there,” Josiah said. “Perhaps it’ll help him realize that the girls need your attention now and that Lizzie’s time too is taken by the little ones. Maybe he’ll develop some interest in a team activity.”
He could make friends his own age; and she was tired. Every day seemed to have some new challenge, a negotiation over whether he had fed Biscuit or whether he’d left Van’s leash out in the rain. It was often easier to do things herself rather than struggle with getting Douglas to do it. But a boarding school? When they lived in the same town? Wasn’t that admitting failure?
The turning point came a year later when Charles showed up with his new wife.
Thankfully, Douglas was at school. She would always be grateful for that divine timing. Josiah was working at the barns, so it was Jennie who saw her former husband to the parlor.
“Meet Felicity Kellog Pickett.” She was a short woman, Jennie’s height but heavier. She wore a bonnet with new ribbons, the burgundy matched her dress, the ribbon bunched tight at her throat. Charles looked better than he had that day at her parents’ farm, less gaunt, his eyes clearer.
“I work with her brother at our store on Main and Second.”
She didn’t comment about his having a penchant for working with his wife’s family and instead congratulated him on his store ownership and his new marriage.
“We have hats for sale and other doodads for ladies,” Felicity said. “Charles thought you should know, as you like nice things, he says.” Her eyes gazed around the room that was still furnished with most of Elizabeth’s furniture.
“I know I gave you full custody of Douglas when we separated.”
“When you divorced me.”
“But now I’m a family man and thought it would be good to have my son with me.”
She didn’t blink an eye, but her heart lurched and she heard a silent “No!” scream in her head.
“Douglas should have a say,” Felicity said, “his being almost fourteen and all? He’d be a good worker for the store.” She added that last under her breath, answering an unspoken question Jennie had of “why now?”
“We could do it legal-like or you hand him over.”
“He’s just twelve. Still a child.”
“Why, I was working for my da when I was eight. It’s good for a lad or lassie, isn’t that so, Charley?”
“I’d need to confer with my husband.”
“Old Man Parrish? What’s he got to say about my son?”
“He’s helped raise your son, fed and clothed him, is educating him at Willamette.” Lizzie had brought in a tea tray and Jennie served as her hands shook.
“It’s a father’s choice about how his son is raised.”
“Josiah’s been a father to him when you were . . . indisposed.”
“I’m not now.”
“So you say.”
“Let the boy decide,” Felicity insisted. “He’s of an age.”
Jennie sat up straighter, heard feet in the nursery overhead, breathed a prayer of gratitude for provision. “I’ll not ask Douglas’s preference and neither will you. But I will speak with Mr. Parrish. Some decisions are best left to the adults.”
She wanted to say, You take him and see how hard it is to raise a child affected by grief and abandonment and liquor. Did she worry that Douglas would do well with his father and it was she who had created the problems in Douglas’s life? Yes, a little. But it was out of protection she hesitated, her son’s safety and his father’s history ruling her thoughts.
“If you care to check back in a week or so, I’ll have had time to talk with Mr. Parrish.” She had nothing more to say to Charles. Gray swept his temples, washed-out white speckled his beard. She tried not to judge the woman he’d married. Charles’s decision to leave them had brought newness to their lives, so why should she begrudge his having a new life too? And maybe Douglas would be happier with his father. She did wonder what Felicity had that kept Charles happy; what held the two together and what was the lack in her?
A police report in the Enterprise the next morning answered her question. They’d both been arrested for disorderly conduct outside a saloon in Salem. Felicity must have gone drinking with him, something Jennie never would have done.
31
A Carousel
Their lives moved like horses on a carousel, ups and downs, circling a center. Yes, they had daily troubles with spilled milk or bumps and bruises, but they
knew the moments of down would soon be replaced by a rise above. Jennie had found wisdom in the lower places, discovering that even there she was not alone. A divine spirit walked beside her and she learned to trust that those dark places would not last. A fox would trot into her life when she most needed a reminder about healing grace.
Gracie’s focus turned to music. JoJo scribbled pictures and had a flair for colors and relished it when her antics brought on adult laughter. They both loved books and Josiah read to them with animation, making sounds of animals and creating suspense with his voice. Jennie loved seeing her husband enjoy his girls.
Jennie hated to admit it, but Douglas being in the boarding school helped enormously. He came home on weekends, and they all walked on pebbled trails then, ignoring little discomforts. He was respectful to adults, appeared to enjoy being with the little girls, who adored his attention. The time when he was at school gave them respite to prepare for the uncertainties of when he was with them. She felt justified in not telling him that his father had come calling.
Then came the dreaded school conference. That unpleasant man had left—and his physics teacher said, “Douglas neither works nor spins. His charm will get him through though.”
“What did he mean by Douglas not spinning?” Jennie asked as Josiah helped her into the carriage. “Was he talking about him not doing even light work, like spinning yarn?”
“He’s a physics teacher, so I took it to mean he lacks a kind of momentum, what’s needed to keep a top upright so it keeps spinning.”
Both characterizations worried her for his future: indolent and purposeless. But there were no reports of minor thefts of laudanum and the school rules prohibited smoking or drinking. If he was going to learn to work and spin, he was in the best place to make that happen.
All She Left Behind Page 22
