How It Ends

by Laura Wiess

  Like one night when his mother went out shopping with the girls (she does that a lot) and his father was watching TV, Seth drank some vodka, got way too chatty and showed me things in his room, like the smudge on the wall behind his bedroom door, which was a souvenir left by Bailey’s—who was out in Arizona in rehab—sunless tanner the first time he did her standing up, a dent he’d kicked in the wall near his desk when Bailey had dumped him that last time, and the scratch the hatchet-faced mall girl’s studded bracelet had left on his headboard.

  I didn’t say anything, just listened and felt sick because he sounded so proud of it all, especially the little notches he had scratched on the back of the headboard where nobody could see them, and so I said, “Is mine up there yet?”

  And he grinned and said, “Nope, not till we do it,” and then he started kissing me.

  I had to remind him that the door was open and his father could come along any minute. He snorted and said, “Don’t worry about it; he doesn’t see shit around here. If it ain’t work, it ain’t important.”

  So I asked him what his father did and he said he was an engineer, and that sounded boring, so I didn’t ask any more because I really didn’t care. Besides, I had a lot worse things to think about, like how many girls had been here before me, and even more hurtful, if he had loved any of them besides Bailey.

  Even stupider, I had the urge to leave my own mark, but I didn’t use sunless tanner or wear studded bracelets, so the best I could do was put on lip gloss and kiss the top left-hand side of his dresser mirror, leaving a perfectly hot lip print.

  It wasn’t much but it made me feel better.

  Seeing those hidden notches started me thinking, though, especially about how he’d said I was the only girl he’d ever made orgasm just by having a hand in my pants. It made me wonder (and not in a good way), what he actually thought of that, and of me for letting it happen. Hell, not only letting it happen but pretty much showing him how to make it happen.

  Hmm.

  I probably shouldn’t do that again.

  I wore the pearl pendant Gran had given me for my birthday to her house today, thinking maybe she’d be happy to see it again, and I’m pretty sure she was as her thrashing was quieter and she managed to swallow four sips of water before I settled into my chair and hit play.

  How It Ends

  I didn’t want to be a foster child. It meant the home actually had the power to give me away. I didn’t want to leave the only familiar place left and be sent away with a man I didn’t know to a place I’d never been, but I had no say in the matter. Out of the eight girls the staff had discussed with Dr. Thaddeus Boehm before he arrived, he had chosen four to meet, and I was one of them.

  He rose when I entered the ward mother’s office. He was a tall, dark-haired, distinguished-looking man in a dapper gray suit, topcoat, polished wingtips, and thin gray driving gloves. His hair was graying at the temples, his mustache neatly trimmed, and his gaze cool, sharp, and assessing. He smelled of rich, sweet cherry pipe tobacco and, beneath it, something…spoiled, like the vaguest hint of rancid lard.

  “And this is Louise,” the ward mother said, giving me a look that said, Smile.

  “Louise…?” the man said, closing a docket with my name on it and watching me.

  “Bell,” the ward mother said.

  “Closson,” I said at the exact same time.

  His mouth curved into a chilly smile. “I see. Well, it’s nice to meet you, Louise. I’m Dr. Boehm.” He nodded but didn’t offer his hand, so I said, “Pleased to meet you,” and clasped my hands in front of me, not sure what I was supposed to do next.

  “Louise has been with us almost a year now,” the ward mother said, giving me a warning look. “She grew up an only child caring for her sickly mother, so she is used to having responsibilities and is a very bright, well-behaved girl.”

  I forced a smile.

  He gave me a clipped nod. “Thank you, Louise. It was very nice meeting you.”

  “You too,” I said and, with a peek at the ward mother, who looked disappointed, spun on my heel and left.

  A half hour later the ward mother found me, told me to pack my things and come to her office immediately.

  Dr. Boehm had chosen me.

  He drove a shining black Chevy Bel Air with sparkling chrome and a spotless black-and-white interior. The only thing he said when I arrived clutching my sad little box of hand-me-downs donated by the local church and my Ciro’s souvenir photo tucked safely in my purse was, “This is everything?”

  I looked at the ward mother, wanting to ask about the Evening in Paris bottle and the last few things of my mother’s.

  “We keep the children’s documents and possessions for six months after placement, so once we’re certain she’s a good fit for your family, you may call and request we send them on,” she said.

  The doctor nodded, unlocked the trunk, and set my box down in the corner near the spare tire. He closed the trunk and glanced at me. “The passenger side is unlocked. Please wipe your feet before you get in.”

  I was careful to do so, as the floor mats were white and nothing I owned was as perfect as the interior of this car or even the blanket covering my side of the seat.

  We said good-bye to the ward mother and I gazed desperately at her for a moment, wishing she’d snap her fingers and say, No, I just remembered you can’t have Louise, we need her here! Pick someone else instead, but she didn’t, only nodded and stepped back, so I glanced at the girls clustered in the windows. I didn’t smile because I wasn’t triumphant; I was scared and worried and shy at being in a car alone with a strange man. I had no idea what the rules were or what would be expected of me.

  “We have a two-and-a-half-hour ride ahead,” he said, pulling away from the home and onto the street. “If you have any questions, you may ask them.”

  “Thank you,” I said nervously, smoothing my skirt down over my knees.

  He waited a few miles and, when I didn’t speak, told me why he had chosen me, that despite my unfortunate circumstance of birth, which had not weighed in my favor, he had been encouraged by our brief meeting as I appeared to be a neat, clean girl with good manners and modest expectations. He had carefully reviewed my file and my health records, and while my mother dying of tuberculosis had been troubling, the experience I’d gained caring for her had tipped the scale in my favor.

  “Do you have any questions?” he said.

  “No, thank you,” I said and stared unseeingly out the window as the last of the familiar places passed and the unfamiliar began.

  He spoke again about an hour later when we stopped for gas and to use the restrooms. He bought himself a cup of coffee and me an icy bottle of Coca-Cola, and as we stood outside the car in the cold drinking them because even a small spill might stain the seat, he told me he had a handyman who did all of the outside work and a woman he referred to as Nurse, who not only assisted in his practice but for the last ten months had also taken care of his wife and, when the office was closed, acted as a live-in housekeeper.

  “Naturally this is too large a burden for any one person to carry, hence the decision to bring in additional help,” he said and sipped the steaming black coffee. “Nurse will still be responsible for my wife’s medication and intimate personal care but her other duties must come first, so in addition to companioning Mrs. Boehm, you will be expected to assist with the cooking and housekeeping. We’re not going to enroll you in school immediately, either. We will reconsider once the influenza epidemic has run its course. I trust this will not be a problem?”

  I looked out past the gas pumps to the highway where so many people in so many cars were traveling in so many different directions and said quietly, “Not at all,” because I’d already been orphaned long enough to know that my fate could have been far worse and that I was actually very lucky.

  There had been a girl at the home, a slim, pretty girl with a knowing way and a ne’er-do-well father who would reel in every payday drunk on
Kentucky mash. He was a short, square-headed man with a lank Hitler mustache and a fringe of thin, mousey blond hair. He’d stand out front on the curb, dungarees sagging, eyes bleary, scratching at the pestilence plaguing his groin and calling, “Where’s my little darlin’? Come on out here and give your old man a squeeze!” and she would come tripping down the stairs, smile wide and gaze hard, wrap her arms around him, and curve her hips against him, and the whole time she was cooing and squirming in his arms, her hands were busy in his pockets, scandalizing the entire state-home staff.

  The home fostered her out four times, and four times she was sent back for inappropriate behavior. She got caught in the boiler room with the janitor on payday, then with the scrap hauler in the slaughter room at the butcher shop on payday, and finally, in a move that didn’t surprise anyone, disappeared with her daddy on payday and never came back.

  We heard later, via the whispers racing through the home, that they had been arrested in Le Claire, her for prostitution in the back of a car, him for renting her out and collecting the cash.

  Hers was not the darkest story. There were others, nightmare tales of kids who were worked or starved to death, beaten, chained behind buildings and locked in root cellars. The stories were whispered rather than openly discussed, and any kid who had lived through the torment and returned to the home alive was always avoided, as if their fate might be catching.

  Almost as chilling were the reports of whole families dying of influenza and the endlessly echoing ravages of polio, both swelling the home to capacity with the influx of newly made orphans.

  So I decided then and there that if I had to leave the home—which I did—then I didn’t mind being kept safe in the capable, gloved hands of the doctor and in the isolation of the Boehm residence.

  He spoke again after we’d finished our drinks and gotten back on the road.

  This time he told me what to expect of his wife, a woman of fragile emotional status, an only child whose mother had died giving birth and who had been sheltered from life’s harsh realities first by her late father, also a respected physician, and then by him.

  She had come close to death thirteen years ago during the delivery of their only child, a little girl born with a debilitating infection and severe, inoperable deformities, and who had lived less than two days before succumbing to the inevitable.

  Losing the child—he did not say her name—caused his wife to become inconsolable and, unfortunately, irrational. She demanded to see the newborn, which, because of its horrific appearance, had been withheld so as not to further disturb her.

  Finally, hoping to ease her distress, he had brought her the infant, having taken care to completely swaddle it from head to toe, but his wife had insisted on unwrapping the body, and the shock of what she’d delivered caused her to collapse.

  When she awoke some hours later, he discovered that the trauma had affected her mind, causing depression and spontaneous hysteria. He’d immediately had her moved from the maternity ward to a room of her own, affording her privacy and uninterrupted rest, but sadly, there was no measurable improvement.

  She was treated with electroshock therapy only once, as inducing the grand mal convulsion had cost her several fractured ribs and a torn ligament in her left leg.

  The pregnancy had also exacted a dire toll on his wife’s physical health, and in addition to her fragile mental state, she was plagued with feminine health problems requiring several surgeries over the years, which he himself had performed. The last of these operations had been ten months ago, but instead of improving with bed rest and carefully controlled stimuli, his wife was still caught in the unrelenting grip of moodiness, fluctuating emotions, and bouts of depression.

  He recited all of this in a very precise voice that didn’t invite questions.

  “Her father was a great mentor to me and I promised him that when Margaret and I married I would always keep her well; however, I fear this last year has been an exercise in futility. Just the sight of me agitates her now.” He tightened his gloved hands around the wheel. “In addition, the stress has exacerbated my own health issues and I’ve had to cut back on my office hours.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

  “Thank you. Unlike my wife, I’m of fairly robust constitution, thanks to my late father-in-law’s edicts of fresh air and exercise, so that continues to help.” He flicked on the signal light and exited the highway. “Some of his ideas would be considered old-fashioned now, but I never underestimated his wisdom and very much enjoyed our debates. We spent many an evening discussing the effects the female reproductive organs have on feminine mental health.”

  His voice was calm and deliberate with no hint of anything personal; however, I could feel myself blushing in the twilight and wished he would change the subject.

  “He believed educating women would be catastrophic, as the body’s energy could only effectively serve one organ at a time, and if a woman was redirecting hers to develop her brain, then her real purpose in life, to bear children, would suffer and her uterus would atrophy.” He shook his head. “Again, old-fashioned perhaps, especially with this fellow Freud going around spouting theories, but who’s to say my late father-in-law’s theory isn’t also valid? Margaret was an innocent, obedient girl when we married, but over the years—coincidentally just about the time she began reading books and desiring a child—her compliant nature began to change. Now a stranger stands in her place.”

  Dr. Boehm lit the pipe clenched between his teeth, and a roiling cloud of sweet-scented cherry tobacco filled the car. He fell silent, puffing as the sky darkened and the traffic on the two-lane road grew sparse, finally giving way to nothing but miles of thick woods, opossums trundling along the side of the road, raccoons peering out through the underbrush, and deer crossing ahead, their eyes glowing like tiny moons in the headlights.

  It was the sight of a doe and a yearling poised in the center of the lonely road, watching our approach that made me lean forward and breathe, “Oh, look how pretty!”

  Dr. Boehm slowed the car and we grew close enough to see the doe’s ears twitch and her muscles bunch as she flipped up her fluffy white tail and, with the yearling behind her, bounded off into the trees.

  “Game is plentiful this season,” he said, accelerating. “I intend to bag my limit and improve my taxidermy skills. Have you ever eaten venison, Louise?”

  “No,” I said, “but my mother took me to see Bambi on Christmas when I was five.”

  “Ah, yes, your mother,” he said after a moment, his tone slightly acidic, and so we didn’t speak again until we arrived at my new home.

  Nurse met us at the kitchen door and showed me upstairs, past the doctor’s bedroom at the end of the hall, to my room, which had a connecting door—closed and locked now—to Mrs. Boehm’s bedroom.

  “I’ve never had my own room before,” I said.

  Nurse snorted. “It comes with a price,” she said and muttered a few more things, none of them complimentary, and as I listened, I discovered that if Dr. Boehm was God to Nurse, then Mrs. Boehm was a silly, useless albatross around his neck, a woman who, thanks to her late family’s money, might have been useful once by putting the good doctor through medical school but who had long since become an embarrassing burden with her feminine problems and weak, needy nature.

  “Is it any wonder the doctor can’t bear to be in the same room with her anymore?” Nurse said, nodding and closing my bedroom door behind her, leaving me listening to the heavy, unrelieved silence in the room beyond the connecting door.

  Out of all the things Dr. Boehm and Nurse chose to tell me about Margaret Boehm before I was allowed to meet her, what I still find the saddest, even after everything that happened, is that no one told me she was dying of neglect.

  When I went downstairs the next morning, I was told that Dr. Boehm had decided to keep me separate from his wife for an incubation period, a safety precaution, as I had, after all, just come from a state home teeming with outca
sts, urchins, the unwanted and unwashed, and who knew what kind of maladies I’d brought with me.

  So instead of tending to the invalid, for the next several weeks I cooked, cleaned, and absorbed the odd, tense rhythm of the household. It was different from anything I’d ever known, this life that revolved around a man, the rush to put him first, to fulfill his requests and obey his demands without question, especially a man who seemed to believe he was well within his rights to expect the servitude and, while a part of me chafed under the censorious looks and sharp tongue of Nurse every time I moved too slowly or gave the doctor a questioning look, another part of me was very eager to fit in and very grateful to have a home, even if it wasn’t a happy one.

  At first I thought the tension was because of Mrs. Boehm secreted upstairs, but as the days passed, I realized it was Dr. Boehm who was turning out to be more than a little eccentric.

  One morning at the end of January he told Nurse to schedule all of his appointments on Mondays only, until hunting season ended, as his health was in sore need of the restorative powers of nature. She looked at him, eyes lit with wariness, but didn’t argue, only said, “All right, Doctor.”

  He wore his surgical gloves everywhere, even to dinner, and had the odd habit of tucking them down between each finger, one hollow at a time, over and over as if to ensure they wouldn’t somehow slide off if he wasn’t vigilant. Nurse would watch, and after two or three go-arounds, she would clear her throat or ask him to pass the carrots or do something to interrupt the habit.

  He cared for no opinion but his own and spoke cuttingly of the poor and indigent, especially the unmarried women with illegitimate children who always arrived as Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Jones and left knowing their coy pretenses hadn’t fooled anyone.

  The first time he told one of these stories, I kept my gaze on my plate, eyes full of unshed tears, refusing to blink and release them, face hot, soul sick and burning. I felt sure he was mocking my mother and I hated him for his supercilious tone and casual cruelty.