After the Fog

by Kathleen Shoop

  “That’s right,” Mr. Sebastian said. “I took up for Henry saying he was only helping his daughter. That he was desperate to help her and was late from break for that reason. He was not simply milling around the hospital with the nurses for fun. But now I see. The whole Pavlesic family has a bent toward making trouble. You can forget about that clinic of yours being funded. You are out of line and starting January, 1949 you are out of a job!”

  He slammed the door on Rose making her stumble.

  She’d lost Theresa again and now, it seemed, Henry’s story of what he’d been up to in order to get fired had changed yet again.

  Chapter 13

  Rose stood dazed outside the Sebastian’s home, the zinc mill grinding away across the street, sending smoke into the air. Mr. Sebastian knew who she was?

  The fog had grown more tangible, grainy as though she could chew it. She was comforted by its odd weight; it would hide her from anyone she passed.

  Her eyes began to tear, slapped with emotion of twenty years. She wrapped her coat tight against her, her shoulders bunched up as though she were walking into whipping wind rather than the stillness that kept the fog battened over the town.

  Walking home, the fog filled her lungs, choked her, made her feel like Unk must feel every blessed day of his life. She cleared her throat repeatedly, feeling claustrophobic. She pressed on, catching her toe on this crack, her heel falling into that crevice, moving as though she were drowning in the Monongahela River.

  Voices rose and spiked the fog as she passed clutches of people, made anonymous by the scratchy fog. The passersby excitedly discussed Saturday’s football game, the way they were going to beat the Monongahela Wildcats to all hell.

  Donora Dragons had been rated the best football team in the country a few years back and it wouldn’t take much for them to garner that distinction again. And people discussing Johnny—murmurs of the scouts in town to watch and meet him—the idea that at least one more fella would be headed off to college on a scholarship.

  The town, not just the person who earned the award, always shared that pride. Johnny needed to understand that. He and his success belonged to Donora as much as it did his family and John, himself. It wasn’t just Rose who wanted this for her son. He’d see that some day. Many knew the gift college would bring.

  Rose tripped over a bulky, soft thing in the sidewalk, surprised to discover she’d tripped over a person.

  Adamchek squealed like a woman. “Don’t it just paint the right damn picture that it’s you falling over my big ass in the middle of the street.”

  “You, Adamchek. Fourteen thousand people in this town and all I ever see is you. Quit following me. I’m not in the mood for any of your bullshit. And, stay away from Buzzy.”

  The two of them scrambled to their feet using each other’s bodies for leverage, grunting to be the first to regain their balance.

  He smelled like garlic perogies. Rose brushed the front of her coat. “Watch it next time, Dumbo,” she said.

  “We’ll see who the dumbo in this town is. Don’t you worry.” Adamchek brushed past Rose, knocking her shoulder to the side.

  “Is that supposed to be a threat of some sort?” Rose wondered if his words had something to do with Buzzy, Henry?

  “You just make sure your son shows up to play Saturday. He’s gallivanting around town playing music to all hours. I got cash on that game, you know. Your kid will make or break more than a few fella’s accounts,” he said and disappeared into the fog.

  She looked around wondering if anyone was close enough to have witnessed any part of the exchange, but she couldn’t see another soul. She was relieved her reddened face was hidden. What the hell did he mean? She coughed into her hand as she started walking again, then stopped, the cough buckling her over at the waist. Mother of God, that fog was rotten, Rose thought.

  When she got to Doc Bonaroti’s office, a pair of ladies stood in the doorway, huddled and mumbling—one with an accented voice, the tired cadence familiar to Rose.

  “Mrs. Lipinski?” Rose said.

  “It’s me.”

  Rose stepped closer and saw that Mrs. Lipinski was supported by Nurse Dottie Shaginaw. Rose felt a swell of anger.

  “Nurse Shaginaw,” Rose said.

  “Hello, Nurse Pavlesic. So good to see you.”

  Rose unlocked the office door with her key and held it for Dottie and Mrs. Lipinski to shuffle through.

  “Thank you Nurse Shaginaw. I’m sure you have many a man’s life to save in the mill hospital. Maybe one of the supervisors has a head cold and needs you to assist him? I don’t want to hold you up with matters of community nursing.”

  Rose took on Mrs. Lipinski’s weight and used her foot to hook the leg of a metal chair and slide it across the floor to where she could get Mrs. Lipinski to sit. Dottie bent over her nurse’s bag and shuffled through it as though she were prepared to administer care to Mrs. Lipinski. She straightened with her stethoscope in hand, affixing the ear buds in place.

  “Just a scorched Achilles or two, Pavlesic. At the mill. Just a bit of advice for this man or that. You know. I’m sort of a jack-of-all-nursing-trades in the mill.” Nurse Dottie put one fist on her hip and shook her stethoscope at Rose. “I’m there to help whoever needs it in whatever way he needs it. My goal is to be just like you, in the mills, instead of the neighborhood, but just like you.” Dottie bent into Mrs. Lipinski and put the stethoscope into place to listen to her chest. She lifted her eyes to Rose.

  Rose pulled a second chair over to them and placed her bag there.

  “You do not own the community, Pavlesic. I will nurse whoever needs me. I’m there for everyone. That’s just how I am.”

  Rose pulled out her stethoscope and felt her anger, raw as an animal’s. Was Dottie taunting Rose? Was she admitting to helping Henry and Magdalena? What was she insinuating?

  Rose plucked Dottie’s stethoscope out of her ears and pushed the woman aside with her hip, placing her own stethoscope on Mrs. Lipinski’s chest. Rose forced a smile at Mrs. Lipinski who appeared apprehensive.

  “It must be something to have no life except nursing, Shaginaw. Hit the Bricks and stay the hell away from me. From my life. From my patients.”

  “You are awful, Rose.” Nurse Dottie stalked out the door, stuffing her stethoscope into her bag as she went.

  Rose felt her body relax once Dottie was gone. She pulled Mrs. Lipinski to standing and moved her into Doc’s office where she stripped off her coat. The woman had a scorching fever and complained of a headache so sharp she couldn’t hold her eyes open any more. Rose shut off the bright light in Doc’s office and let the hall light suffice to softly illuminate her work.

  Rose administered some aspirin and massaged the woman’s entire head area, working around her skull, cheekbones and neck, and felt fear. Her life as she’d known it had come against a brick wall. By losing control at Theresa’s home, she jeopardized the clinic’s funding, and behaved like a sixteen-year-old rather than a seasoned nurse. She smoothed a frozen compress on Mrs. Lipinski’s forehead and shivered with the realization that her decisions in the past few days, like the fog, were far worse than she realized.

  Chapter 14

  Friday, October 29th, 1948

  At four-thirty in the morning, Rose woke with sweat drenching the nape of her neck, heat encasing her head to toe. She felt like she had during those days after giving birth, when her body disposed of its extra fluids. She tossed and twisted now in bed, trying to find a cool part of the sheets, but Henry’s body released too much heat.

  Her head was cluttered with too many thoughts. What if she had lost the clinic? She considered the consequences for herself, for Bonaroti, the town. Acid burned her stomach and pushed up her esophagus. She stumbled from bed, raced down the hall to the bathroom and vomited.

  The thick fear was tangible. With her life balancing on poor decisions she wasn’t sure she could recover. Not if she lost the clinic funding. Her hands quivered as she washed her
face and brushed her teeth with baking soda.

  Anxiety sent Rose to the kitchen where she made coffee and mentally ticked through her To-Do list. But would she have anything to do? What if Mr. Sebastian had already phoned Doc Bonaroti and told him his wife was not funding the clinic and that they might as well fire Rose now? She would know when she got her assignments in a few hours. Whether her termination was imminent or not, she had work to do that morning. She had promised to make Leo a lion costume for Halloween and Sara Clara had left a note saying she had not gotten to finish it the day before so Rose would start with that.

  At the kitchen table, Rose sat, sewing, quietly drinking her coffee and two shots of vodka. It soothed her, like it always had since her first drink at twelve. The initial sting was worth the numbing of pain. That was the one useful thing Mr. Reeves from the orphanage had taught her.

  She smiled at the thought of Leo. He’d seen the Wizard of Oz six times and could not be swayed to put together a simple cowboy costume or pull an old sheet over his head to be a ghost. Rose couldn’t get used to the idea that Leo choosing to be the lion over any of the other options meant he may identify with the weaker people in the world. She’d already dummied up the costume and fitted him in it twice. All she needed to do was stitch it and attach a ropy tail and it would be ready to go for the parade.

  Rose shifted in the chair, ignoring the way her foot stuck to the linoleum. She couldn’t believe she’d jeopardized her nursing career, letting go of a situation, forgetting what her job was, letting her personal problems interfere with her work.

  She jabbed the lion’s leg stitching it in a frenzy. She and Bonaroti should have come up with a hard source of funding the minute they got the okay to start the clinic. They shouldn’t have trusted that every single wife of every single superintendent would want to contribute to their cause. She had thought her time was best spent nursing, not finding alternate funding sources. How could they have been so naïve?

  She had nearly finished both legs of the costume when she noticed it was half past six and time to prepare for breakfast. She looked up from her sewing and felt dizzy from the coffee and vodka. No matter. Both would have worn off by the time she had to go to work. Screw Sebastian and what he thinks he knew about her. Screw all of them.

  * * *

  Magdalena couldn’t sleep, and heard her mother shuffling past her room. She turned on her side and curled under her covers, pained that she had disappointed her mother. The disclosure of her pregnancy caused her to understand the term “broken hearted.”

  The room grew stuffy and hot as though it took on the misery she felt inside. Magdalena rolled onto her back, drawing the covers up to chin, and stuck a leg out for some cooler air. She had spent her entire life trying to please her mother and now there was no way to ever do that again.

  Magdalena couldn’t erase what had transpired. She had felt so alone, then excited by Tony’s desire for her, and the two things together made her agree to let him have her. But she refused to admit it and give credence to her mother’s words. Not that she needed to hear them from her mother to know they applied.

  She was a slut. It was more than pleasurable for her—sex. There wasn’t a bit of it, leading up to it, the act itself, and afterward that she hadn’t liked. Nothing had been the way her friends said it would be—horrible, ugly, painful. She not only let it happen. She made it happen.

  Magdalena stared at her ceiling as she had millions of times, remembering how Tony’s hands felt on her breasts, thighs, how his mouth moved all over her.

  She thought she would go crazy lying here now. She thought she saw blue air swirling above her bed. Had she finally turned the bend? She raised her hand and tried to grab the moving air. Was she really seeing that?

  She sat up, staring at the ceiling. Was it a ghost? Of future lifelong regret, probably. She reached over, turned on the bedside light, waiting for the illusion to disappear, but instead, it picked up separate pinpricks of light, swirling them as if in dance. She covered her mouth. Science was her strong suit and she knew that when a person was seeing a smog dance recital on her bedroom ceiling, something was dreadfully wrong.

  Magdalena ripped her blanket off, pushed her arms into her worn bathrobe and headed to the kitchen, tying the belt as she went.

  She got there in time to see Rose throwing back a shot of booze.

  “Mum? Something’s really wrong. The smog’s in my bedroom.” Magdalena looked up at the ceiling to see if the same bluish circus act could be seen in the kitchen. “Look, the ceiling. Doc was right. This is bad.”

  Rose would not make eye contact and Magdalena stalked across the kitchen.

  “Mum? Listen to me. Please. You have to go to that meeting today, the council meeting. You need to find out what’s happening here”

  “I have a job to do. I’d love to have the time to join the town blowhards, but I have patients to see, Leo’s costume to sew, clothes to wash, a daughter…” Rose’s words slid into each other and Magdalena could not believe she never noticed before—the degree to which her mother drank. “Mum? Can you hear me at all?” Rose pushed her sewing needle into the lion’s tail and pulled it back out.

  “Mum?” Magdalena said realizing how many times in life she had to ask her mother if she was paying attention. The booze in front of Rose made Magdalena feel as though she’d downed a fifth of it herself.

  Magdalena felt as if her body was reaching to her very core to expel her insides and she ran to the sink and threw up. She heard Rose come up behind her. Her mother slipped one arm around her and pulled her hair back from her face. Magdalena cupped her hand, and washed out her mouth with water from the faucet. Rose knotted Magdalena’s hair around itself as Magdalena wiped her mouth, hand shaking.

  Magdalena turned to her mother to pull her close. But Rose stiffened. Clearly she had not yet forgiven Magdalena.

  Her mother looked away, the scent of whiskey filling the air. Magdalena grimaced. If her mother would not do the talking, spread her truthful, even harsh advice, then Magdalena would do it for her. She would not cower in the face of her big strong mother.

  “I guess,” Magdalena said. “I should listen to Cathy at Dr. Bonaroti’s office. I should just see her fella in Pittsburgh. Would that make you happy? Then we could all pretend that things are like they were before. You could go on treating the town like your family and your family like strangers. We could all just pretend we’re happy. That’s how you like it right? Just pretending things are the way you want them to be!” Magdalena’s hands flew above her head, shaking them with every word. Words that came out before they were formed and censored in her mind.

  Rose squeezed her eyes shut, “Listen, Magdalena.”

  Magdalena pounded on the countertop. “No! You listen. You don’t have to worry about me asking for anything. I don’t—”

  Rose gripped Magdalena’s forearm. “I am trying to—”

  Magdalena ripped her arm from Rose’s grasp. “I won’t listen, Mum. I. Don’t. Trust. You.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have to worry, you don’t have to do anything for me. I’ll be out of your life…you can have your booze and your perfect son Johnny and your work. That’s all you care about!”

  “You don’t trust me? I’m not the one who’s been living a lie, young lady.” Rose jabbed her own sternum with her forefinger.

  Magdalena grasped the belt around her robe and pulled it tight, squeezing her belly with it. “You never trusted me. Or Johnny. Or Dad, or anyone living in this house.” She stopped, looked up at the ceiling as if she would find her courage there. “Admit it, Mum. We’re not good enough. We never will be. Not even if we follow your plans.”

  Magdalena turned the faucet on and off then met Rose’s gaze. “I look at you, Mum. I can’t help it.” Magdalena swallowed hard.

  Rose shrugged. “Can’t help what?”

  Magdalena looked at her feet then back at Rose. “Part of me hates you. So, there, you’re off the hook
. You don’t have to fake your concern anymore.”

  The nausea kicked back in. Magdalena covered her mouth and ran from the kitchen, knowing she would never treat her child the way Rose had treated her. Her baby would mean something more to her than just the right thing to do.

  * * *

  Rose staggered back to the kitchen table, and couldn’t stop her hand from trembling as she reached for the vodka and poured herself another shot. She’d stare at the full glass before throwing it back. Then another and another until the downing of the booze freed her emotions, rising and rushing through her body, streaming down her cheeks. Her body quivered with the truth that she had pushed away since her first time getting pregnant and made herself emotionally unavailable.

  Her tears felt like poison, cleansing her body as they shuddered out of her. Rose knew the truth about who she was. Now Mr. Sebastian did, too. Would he tell his wife? Rose was overwhelmed with despair. The chance of Sebastian funding the clinic was gone. Rose dropped her face into her hands. Could Magdalena really hate her?

  The thought was more agonizing than she could ever have imagined. Rose had spent plenty of time considering the abandonment of children by their parents, but never did she consider it the other way around. After all she’d been through in life, the idea of her children pushing her aside excoriated her, leaving her to feel like she had so many times as a child: empty, alone, and undeserving.

  * * *

  Nursing had saved Rose. Sitting in the kitchen, she thought back to Sister John Ann who had seen something in her and pushed her toward nursing school where Rose had remade her life. She remembered the first time a patient dying of cancer said Rose made his last days worth living. Rose had brushed his teeth, changed his IV’s, shaved him, and made him presentable for his grieving family. But most of all she talked to him as though he were due for lunch at the Elks the next day. She scolded him for not sitting up straight, for grumbling when she changed his sheets.