After the Fog

by Kathleen Shoop

  It was paramount for Rose to present herself as immaculate, organized, and strong especially after Mrs. Sebastian stopped by her home for a surprise visit. Mrs. Sebastian was the sort of woman who could read folks, the kind who lived in a world peopled with slick operators who made decisions on intangible impressions as much as simple facts. Those people made their livings by feeling out other folks and either exploiting or joining forces with them.

  Rose would be formidable. She yanked on one glove then pushed the leather down on her fingers. She would be a woman Mrs. Sebastian wanted to support, whose name she wanted linked with hers. Rose pulled on the other glove. She would carry on the work of treating the kind of people she had once been—the kind who needed assistance just to get out of bed in the morning.

  Rose knew what that felt like—not wanting to live, but too weak to do something to bring about her own death. She recalled the last time, thirty years before, a family had considered adopting her. Standing in her foggy yard, fully grown, Rose covered her ear, flinching from the memory, the woman who had dragged her by her defective earlobe, shoving her in the closet, twisting her ear as though trying to remove it, screaming that Rose’s haughty attitude had turned the family sour on her more than her ugly ear. Rose had only been trying to appear to be intelligent, not sassy.

  As a teenager the desire for death revisited her. At sixteen she failed at selling herself to…well, she wouldn’t dwell on that. Leo bumped into the back of Rose shoving her out of her thoughts. “We goin’?”

  She looked down into his serene face. The result of her yearning for death had taught her that in order to live, she found people who needed her, even if they didn’t want her.

  Leo wormed his hand up Rose’s coat sleeve and tickled her arm and she kissed the top of his head.

  With newspapers under her arm, the Black Bag of Public Health strung over it, and Leo bounding along beside her, they walked down the center of the adjoining yard—the Tucharoni’s. The window emitted a picture of light and shadow, the fog making it an impressionistic painting. Beside the door were seven jack-o-lanterns, neatly carved and awaiting candles on Halloween. Rose wondered if the family had known to make use of the pumpkin for pies and bread, and roast the seeds for a special treat. Mrs. Tucharoni stood at her window, rubbing the glass with her palm, peering through the clean spot. Rose hoped she and Leo were hidden in the fog, that Mrs. Tucharoni would not come out to talk. They were fine as neighbors, but Rose did not have time for friends.

  Leo was bent over his shoes, attempting to tie them. Rose refused to help; she didn’t want the kid to be lazy and dependent. Rose shifted her weight and checked her map. When he was done, she tussled his hair. “Time to hustle, Leo.”

  They walked slowly down the pitted, dirt alley and emerged at Fifth Street, a plateau overlooking one hundred eighty-eight steps that ended at the bottom of Prospect Street. A man jostled them from behind, hat in hand, clearly late for work.

  “Scootch over, Leo. So folks can get by.” Rose and Leo descended the stairs, greeting people who moved past them faster.

  “How yunz doin’ today?” one person after another said. Rose was grateful no one stopped her that morning to discuss a medical problem. She needed to get to confession.

  “Too foggy, today,” Leo groaned. He grasped Rose’s hand, startling her. She squeezed his, feeling a sliver of contentment in their grip.

  Rose narrowed her eyes, peering across the way, trying to make out buildings that were usually easy to see. “Nah, same as always, Leo. See—there we go, the blast furnaces over there.” Rose pointed to the right where blazing fire shot into the sky and carved space out of the thick fog. Rose smacked her tongue off her teeth. Sulfur. More than usual.

  “That smoke and fire is money in the bank, Leo,” Rose said, “Sun must be a little lazy today, is all.”

  At the bottom, they turned left and headed north down the sidewalk, past the Methodist church, weaving in and out of pedestrians. Tugboats moaning, nails firing, steel being sheared and shaped, trains howling, and church bells ringing—each sound melded with another, narrating each step Rose took.

  She walked smack into the postman, Sparky, knocking him over. Rose and Leo helped him pick up his scattered mail.

  “Guess we both better wise up and fly right when it’s this foggy out,” he said. “Smell that filth? As though I stuck my head right inside the furnace down home.”

  “Always is foggy in the morning, Spark,” Rose said. Something was off about the fog, but it wasn’t something that made sense to say aloud. “You know that better than anyone. Sorry for knocking you to heck.”

  Rose grabbed Leo’s hand, moving as quickly as the fog would allow. They were silent, Leo’s gait double-speed, but in synch with hers. Rose went over her list of sins for the past few days, preparing for confession as she nearly fell off the curb. She pulled Leo out of the street several times as the fog kept the light of the streetlamps from illuminating the area below.

  Their normal five-minute walk to St. Dominic’s took noticeably longer. When they reached the soaring house of worship Leo stopped to pluck a stone from the sidewalk. He pocketed it then met Rose’s gaze, and pointed past her. “Hey a dog!”

  He rushed to a mound of rags as it emerged from the fog.

  Rose groaned. “Shoo dog, go on home!”

  “Sweetie, a dog. Look at him.” Leo shoved his face into the side of the dog. “He needs a home!”

  Rose cringed and held her breath as though she had been the one with her face buried in the putrid fur. “Go on, shoo dog!” she said again. “Stop looking at me. Get on home.”

  A man emerged from the fog, rummaging through his briefcase and nearly tripping over Leo and the mutt. Leo sprung backward and the dog disappeared.

  “Life-lesson number thirty-five, Leo, don’t be so easily distracted. It only leads to mischief.”

  Leo burped, the scent of bacon wafting up to Rose. Rose ignored him and readied her mind and heart for confession.

  Yellow bricks and stone steeples loomed as they headed up the steps into Church. Rose dragged open the hulking oak door and entered the foyer. Her nerves calmed at the sight of the ornate mahogany altar at the end of the center aisle. Painted saints all around the church made Rose feel as though she were in the company of friends.

  Rose’s heels hit the marble floor, the sound of her steps echoed as she walked into the sanctuary. She crossed herself with holy water and the scent of candles and flame floated from the vestibule to her left.

  She tried to walk slow enough to quiet her clicking heels. Rose looked reverently at the altar, a bastion of tranquility, power, answers, everything. She wished she never had to leave the church.

  She heard splashing and turned back. Leo was dousing himself in holy water. Rose sprinted toward him, heels clicking madly. “Damn Sam, Leo what the hell’re you doing? That’s holy water! With a capital H. I’ll drown you in it if I see you messing with it again!”

  Rose yanked the hat off his head, dragged him down the aisle and planted him in the pew across from the confessional. Someone was already inside so Rose stood at the door hoping her presence would somehow be noticed. She sighed and looked at her watch. The fifteen minutes she’d had to spare were almost gone.

  Whoever was confessing inside was speaking at a volume more suitable for a bar than a confessional. The voice—the rhythm that shaped it—was familiar, but Rose could not place it as the words were muffled by thickly carved oak. She slid into the pew out of politeness and took the time to pray for Henry and her children.

  The door flung open and Sara Clara from the South waltzed out, straightening her hat.

  Rose stood, gripping the back of the pew. “Je-sus, you’re not even Catholic.”

  “Mama!” Leo scrambled past Rose’s knees and dove into his mother.

  “I was simply trying to fit in. I told you, Rose; I would do my best to…oh forget it. Unk drove me down—” Sara Clara rubbed Leo’s hair and knelt down in front
of him.

  Rose clenched the straps of her bag. “Unk! Whose car did he drive? Oh forget it, Sara Clara. I’m busy.”

  Sara Clara’s efforts were good and noble, and the woman did have a lot to confess in Rose’s estimation, but a person didn’t just crash into confession as step one to becoming Catholic. Everyone knew that.

  * * *

  Rose entered the confessional where she dropped onto the kneeler. She fished her pearl rosary from her pocket, the only valuable jewels she owned, and held the beads to her forehead, eyes closed, waiting for Father Slavin to get things going.

  He shifted behind the screen, but didn’t say anything.

  Rose didn’t have time to wait for Father Slavin to begin and jumped right into her confession. “Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It has been two days since my last confession.”

  “Go on.” An unfamiliar, deep voice filled the confessional.

  Rose jerked and put her nose to the screen to see the large outline of a man, double the size of tiny Father Slavin. “Who the hell are you?”

  The priest’s shadow moved toward the screen, close enough for her to feel the warmth of his breath on her chin. “I guess we can tack on another rosary for cursing in church,” he said and laughed. Rose saw his form slide back from the screen into a more relaxed position. “I’m Father Tom.”

  “We don’t call priests by their first names around here.”

  “I’m a little different. But, I’m a priest all the same, with plenty on his plate today, so let’s move it along.”

  Rose’s jaw dropped.

  “Well?” Father Tom shifted behind the screen.

  “You’ve thrown me off.”

  “Why don’t you just go on and start at the top.”

  Rose was offended that the priest she’d never met thought there must be a “top” to start at. It didn’t matter that there was. “I’m sorry. This is a mistake. I have work to do.”

  “Well, you’ll be pleased to know Father Slavin will return in few days or so. Until then, why don’t you do yourself a favor and unburden with me. We’re all the same, us priests.”

  That sounded wrong. Rose squeezed her eyes shut. Should she just wait for Father Slavin? That wouldn’t help her soul to wait, she decided, and Rose rifled through her list of curses, unpleasant judgments and questionable deeds. She watched the priest’s shadowy form shift back and forth as though more or less curious depending on the sin she was confessing at the time.

  She took a deep breath as she wound down to the sin she always acknowledged in her mind but never aloud, never to a priest, never to anyone who hadn’t been there to see her bad deeds in person. The discussions about adoption at the breakfast table the day before, then with Mrs. Sebastian, the tenuous funding—a confluence of sin and anxiety made Rose decide she was experiencing a sign.

  She needed to finally say the words aloud. Perhaps this strange priest was exactly the one who should take her biggest sin once and for all. This Father Tom must have been accustomed to silence because he sat as still as any of the statues on the other side of the door.

  Rose took a deep breath, on the verge of hyperventilating. She clutched her bag tighter to her stomach, her hands sweating around the leather straps. “I confess that I engaged,” she said and took another shaky breath. She wanted to say it, and have a priest, anyone absolve her, but she couldn’t say the words aloud. As usual, she said them instead to God, silently in the safety of her mind. I had relations out of wedlock, had a baby and gave her away for adoption like she was a sack of extra sugar.

  Father Tom’s shadow straightened and he leaned toward the screen. That small act made Rose’s air leave her lungs. The priest must have read her thoughts. In over a decade of silent confession of that one sin, Father Slavin had never moved a muscle. Rose drew back exhaling.

  “Years,” her words caught in her throat. She cleared it. “Years ago…I can’t say it.”

  “You still carry this guilt, as though it were yesterday? You haven’t a bit of relief in, well, how many…?”

  “Twenty. Years, that is.”

  Rose didn’t know what to make of the question. She’d never been questioned in confession before. Father Slavin just allowed her to rattle on, then doled out her penance.

  “If you’ve confessed, you’ve been forgiven. Would you say you have godly sorrow in your heart?”

  Rose nodded and squeaked out an “umhmm.”

  “You have been forgiven, your sins are erased like chalk from a board—”

  “You can’t just erase something.” The quiet of confession brought back the past day’s events. She tried to explain, but couldn’t say the words out loud. The dead baby I delivered, and twice, twice, adoption was mentioned in casual conversation, it was like they knew what I had done. I just feel…suddenly…disjointed, exposed. I have this feeling I will never be forgiven. I gave that baby away like trash and I knew better. I’d seen what happened to some adopted kids. “But, God does forgive and coming to confession should heal you.”

  “You don’t know what I did and confession isn’t about healing,” Rose said. “It’s about suffering so I will be granted eternal life. Or it gives me a chance to make up for my sins by the time I meet the big guy. I haven’t done another horrid thing in my life since then. Sinful, yes. But not…not unforgivable.”

  Rose could see him shift, his shadow shrinking, as he must have reclined against the wall.

  This broke Rose’s train of thought. “Hey, look I have to go.” Rose held up her black bag as though he might be able to see it through the screen. “Give me my penance.”

  “Well, if that’s all you need.”

  Rose rubbed her forehead, holding in the rudeness she wanted to let out. Confession was about duty and preserving one’s soul, not needing, just doing and being and carrying out a proper life.

  Now, Father Tom’s silence made Rose think she may have hurt his feelings. She didn’t have time to care. It wasn’t as though this priest was going to be a fixture at the church. He assigned her two rosaries and some extra Hail Mary’s. But his issuing of the penance lacked the bluster she was accustomed to.

  Rose nodded and stood. “And just so you know, that woman in here before me? Not a Catholic.”

  “So you’re a rule follower. I wouldn’t have guessed,” the priest said as Rose was shutting the door.

  “As I should be,” she said to herself, and noted her heart did not feel lighter, as she expected. She looked over her shoulder at the priest’s door. With that priest offering confession, Rose decided, feeling unfulfilled made sense. He had offered as much of a soul cleansing as a confession offered by Leo. Father Tom should be disappointed in his performance. Rose would have been if she were the priest. She started down the aisle, heading into the world where she would be sure not to leave her work half-done.

  * * *

  The nurse and her charge stepped onto the Sebastian’s back porch. Only five homes stood on Overlook Terrace, an enclave carved into land below the Gilmore cemetery and above the spewing zinc mill. The home was a stunning red brick colonial revival, not as symmetrical as a four square but not as angled as a Victorian. Rose imagined it with the soot stripped clean from the brick pristine as the day it was built. Like anyone who performed a service at the home, Rose entered by way of the kitchen at the back of the mansion.

  Leo pinched his nose shut. “Ewwww,” he said.

  The sulfur stench stunk up the whole town, but above the zinc mill the odor was nearly solid to the senses. The bulk of the smoke raced across the Monongahela, winding over Webster on the other side of the river, but enough of the debris coursed up the hill to the Sebastian’s home that a foul smell was often present. The plume carried the stench as though it were a second river, drenching everything the liquid one didn’t.

  Rose characterized the Terrace section of town as “the desert.” She’d seen photos of Arizona and there wasn’t a difference between it and what she was looking at. Except that many hills in D
onora had less vegetation—no cacti with their own beauty, nothing but the great mill spitting its insides into the air, letting its residents know all was right with the world; Donora was productive and financially healthy.

  Rose sat Leo on the porch bench, told him not to move and gave him the missalette she’d taken from the church. He might as well be educated in Catholicism if his mother was going to pretend to be one.

  “But I can’t read,” Leo said.

  “Just stare at the blessed thing. The words will leap into your head like a frog. That’s how it happened with your cousin Johnny.” Everything came easy to Johnny, and while that was a comforting thought, Rose sometimes wondered if he’d be able to handle adversity as well as success. He never practiced that before.

  Leo’s lips quivered and his shoulders jumped with uneven breath. Rose knelt down in front of him. She squeezed his knees. “I’m joshing, Leo. Just sit and enjoy the peace. You’ll be in first grade next year and then you’ll learn to read. Think about the mill on the other side of this grand home and focus on how you’ll never, ever work there. That’s the idea you need to sear into your mind right here and now. You need to go to college and get the hell out of here.”

  “This place is great. I hear you say that.”

  “It’s confusing, Leo, I know. You should appreciate this town. It’ll make you tough. These mills produced more steel last month than any other in the world. Donora’s steel…well, it’s in everything, but that doesn’t mean your future is in that mill.”

  Rose’s eyes began to burn with zinc mill smoke so potent it peeled paint from siding. She coughed into her hand and looked around the dark porch. The fog should have been lighter by then.

  She squeezed Leo’s knees. “What you need to take from this town’s greatness is simply its muscle and will and determination. Get an education so that the only position you’d be qualified to hold in the mill is goddamn superintendent of the whole shebang. You can be anything you set your mind to.”