A Fierce Radiance

by Lauren Belfer

  “102.4.”

  The fever was down, dramatically. Stanton steeled himself to a pretense of calm impassivity. “Take the temperature again, would you, Nurse Brockett.”

  “Yes, sir.” She looked as if she doubted it herself. Afterward, she went into the hall, where the light was brighter, to read it. Claire took a shot looking through the darkened doorframe, the hospital bed a shadowy presence on the left, Nurse Brockett in full light in the hall beyond as she read the thermometer. It was a design that reminded Claire of Dutch paintings: women glimpsed through doorways. Claire was risking handheld long exposures because she didn’t think Dr. Stanton would take well to flashbulbs going off near his patient or to the maneuvering of the tripod. She prided herself on being able to remain absolutely still for a half second or even more to secure night shots without intrusive equipment. The photo-lab staff would push the film during development.

  Claire glanced up: Stanton was watching her. Unexpectedly, she felt self-conscious, sensitive to his opinion of her.

  Rejoining them, Nurse Brockett repeated, “102.4.”

  “Kindly draw blood for a slide, Nurse Brockett.” Make no conclusions yet, Stanton cautioned himself.

  “Yes, sir.” She followed his instructions, taking a small amount of blood from Mr. Reese’s left index finger. Stanton smeared the blood on a slide and stained it. When it was dry, he examined it through the binocular microscope on the counter. He made notes on what he saw. Even now, he didn’t let himself make a definitive conclusion.

  “Mrs. Shipley, take a look?”

  He beckoned to her, suddenly eager to share his work. He didn’t tell her what to do. He assumed she knew.

  Claire hadn’t looked through a microscope since she took a required biology course as a college freshman. She didn’t want to disappoint the doctor or embarrass herself by making a mistake. The eyepiece was a jab of cold metal against her skin. She decided that the large black knob on the side must be the focus, and she turned it. He stood beside her, observing. His close physical presence stirred her.

  “You’re looking for colonies of Staphylococci. Staphylo means ‘grapes’ in Greek, and that’s what they look like. Round and clumped together, like a bunch of grapes.”

  Gradually dark shapes came into view, small, clustered circles like grapes, harmless-looking shapes that could make a thirty-seven-year-old man, and a three-year-old girl, die.

  “I see two groups.”

  “I found three, but even so, very few.” He turned to Nurse Brockett. “Well, I think we’re finally making some progress.” All at once he felt exuberant, as if pure energy flowed through him. His years of effort suddenly became worthwhile. When Claire raised her camera to capture the joy on his face, she sensed that his defenses had dissolved and she was sharing his thoughts.

  Patsy Reese slept on. Stanton decided not to wake her. Let her catch up on her sleep. Good news is welcome anytime it arrives.

  “Hi, everybody.” A young doctor bounded into the room with the boisterous demeanor of a man who’s just gotten out of bed, had three cups of coffee, and can’t wait to start the day. DR. LIND said the name embroidered on his white coat. He was blond and had the big, pudgy appearance of a college football player who’s no longer getting enough exercise. “You okay, boss?” he asked Stanton. “You look a little…off.”

  “The fever’s down and he doesn’t know what to do next,” Nurse Brockett said smugly, as if she’d known all along that the medication would work. She prepared to turn her authority over to the night nurse, a pert middle-aged woman who looked like a Puritan and who rapped her fingers on the counter impatiently as Nurse Brockett reviewed several dozen details.

  “We’re not ready to break out the champagne yet,” Stanton said, “but things are going well. Better than I expected. Sit down, Lind, and I’ll brief you. Mrs. Shipley,” he said with resigned forbearance, “Dr. Lind is covering for the night. The patient’s condition has stabilized, and I’m going to get some sleep.”

  At least he would try to get some sleep; he felt so jazzed up he doubted he’d be able to. As a resident physician at the Institute, he was required to live at the hospital, which was both good and bad on nights like these: good because his bedroom was nearby, bad because he could have used a little distance, a quiet walk home to gather his thoughts.

  “I suggest you do the same,” he said.

  Claire saw no reason to insist on working all night if the physician in charge, her story’s co-protagonist, felt confident enough to go to bed.

  “You may come back tomorrow. Around noon, shall we say?”

  “That sounds a little late.” Claire challenged him because presumably he would expect it, while thinking to herself, good, I’ll be able to walk Charlie to school and drop off the film at the lab.

  “No visitors in the morning, hospital rule. The patients have to be bathed and the rooms cleaned. Dr. Rivers made an exception for you this morning. I’ll tell the guard at the gate to let you in at 11:45.” He felt unexpectedly pleased at the prospect of having her around tomorrow. “Good night, Mrs. Shipley.”

  “Good night,” she replied, putting on a bright tone.

  On her way out, she captured the two doctors reviewing the chart, their faces drawn together in concentration. The angle of the light, a slanting wedge from the desk lamp, emphasized the darkness around them.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Look, Daddy’s article,” Charlie said the next morning.

  The discovery of one of Bill Shipley’s newspaper articles, which occurred almost every day, was always a cause of excitement. For Charlie, at least. He sat at the kitchen table, the Herald Tribune open before him. Their house, on Grove Street in Greenwich Village, had belonged to Claire’s mother. Claire had grown up here, and now she was raising her son here.

  Eight years old, in third grade, Charlie had narrow shoulders and a slight frame. His cheeks were round and full, his face still shaped by baby fat. His strawberry blond hair, straight and fine, was trimmed in a bowl cut.

  Watching Charlie from where she stood at the stove, apron over her work clothes, Claire’s yearning for him was like a stab in her chest. If anything ever happened to him…she couldn’t finish the thought.

  Emily, impish and giggling on an autumn day, gazed at Claire from a photo on the mantel. Pictures of Emily filled the house. As much as the pictures hurt Claire to see, taking the photos down would be like saying that Emily had never lived, and that would be worse. After all, what evidence did she have that Emily had, in fact, existed? A lock of her hair. Her first pair of shoes, barely worn because Emily had outgrown them so fast. Her favorite doll, stained and tattered. And these photographs.

  After Emily died, Claire’s mother had warned her that some parents responded to the loss of a child by turning away from their surviving children. Claire had responded the opposite way, loving Charlie with a vehemence and protectiveness that could be frightening even to her.

  As a mother who’d lost a child, what was she supposed to call herself? Maybe if she could find a word to define herself, she’d be able to cope with both her suffering and her possessiveness. The English language had a word for a woman who’d lost her husband, a man who’d lost his wife, a child who’d lost parents, but why wasn’t there a word, an identifier, for a parent who’d lost a child? Did other languages have such a word? Claire didn’t know.

  Charlie, too, had had his share of illnesses. Nature’s way, the doctor told her. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The frailty of life greeted her along with her love each morning when she teased Charlie awake.

  “Daddy says, ‘The British government’s reaction to the news of America’s entry into the conflict…’” Charlie labored to sound out the long words.

  From her position at the stove, Claire listened, gently correcting his pronunciation when necessary. She was making French toast. The kitchen was on the ground floor in the back of the house. Glass doors opened onto a walled garden, which looked dreary and barren under toda
y’s gray sky.

  “‘British naval reaction to the losses suffered by the American fleet at Pearl Harbor…’”

  Claire hated this morning routine of searching the newspaper for Bill Shipley’s dispatches from London and reading them aloud. She put up with it only because Charlie needed the contact with his father. Typically Bill wrote to him once a week, but for the past several months, Charlie had heard nothing from his father. Claire hadn’t received any checks from Bill for Charlie’s support, either. Claire’s questioning letters and telegrams to Bill, and a series of messages sent through his office, went unanswered. Claire wanted to get on with her life without Bill’s specter haunting the background of her thoughts and plans, but she found herself continually pushed into confrontation with him, not only in her imagination but also in the time-consuming chores required to force him to fulfill his obligations.

  “‘Prime Minister Churchill told the Tribune this morning’—Daddy’s trying to tell me that he got to see the prime minister!” Charlie exclaimed.

  “Yes, you must be right.” Claire tried not to sound as grim as she felt. For want of any other explanation, she’d told Charlie that the ships carrying Bill’s letters to him had been sunk by German U-boats in the North Atlantic. She had no idea whether this was true, and it was an awful excuse, but Charlie believed it. As long as Charlie had the newspaper articles to prove his father was alive, he didn’t seem to notice the lack of letters. Charlie cut out the dispatches each day and pasted them in a scrapbook. He seemed to think that they’d been written for him personally and were filled with secret messages.

  Before turning over the French toast, Claire added a touch of cinnamon.

  “‘American Special Envoy—’ would you read me the rest?” Charlie pushed away the paper in frustration.

  “Breakfast is almost ready. Let’s have a break from Daddy’s article. I’ll read it to you later.” In an ideal world, she’d never have to read one of Bill Shipley’s dispatches again. “Let’s find some maps.”

  Before serving, Claire reorganized the newspapers that were spread across the table and emblazoned with the war news: the Japanese bombing of the Philippines, air raid alarms in San Francisco, the horrific suffering of the men trapped on the Arizona at Pearl Harbor. Claire wanted to protect her son from understanding how bad the situation was for America. Protect him from the unanswerable questions that filled her own vision of tomorrow, next week, and the months to come.

  Maps were the solution. The Times could be counted on for several maps each day. With the objectivity of a geography lesson, the maps showed the movements of enemy forces around the world. The arrows and dotted lines revealed no hint of the human slaughter that these movements represented. Claire found what she needed, then brought the plates to the table. She and Charlie examined the maps while eating. Soon their fingers were covered with black newsprint. Between bites of French toast with maple syrup, they laughed at their muddled pronunciations of Tarakan and Balikpapan, Soerabaja and Makassar. The names took on an incantatory power. A week ago Claire had never heard of these places in the Pacific. Now they were vital to the nation’s future.

  Claire and Charlie had begun their morning map reading in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. By the spring of 1940, they were monitoring the German invasion of Denmark and Norway. In May and June of 1940 they followed each day as the Germans marched across the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. They learned about North Africa through the battles fought there in 1941. Sidi Omar, Mersa Matruh, El Agheila, Soluch—the strange names became familiar. Charlie pinpointed the location of Crete when it fell to the Nazis. In June of 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, and Claire and Charlie traced the borders of the Ukraine and Belorussia. They located the Pripyat Marshes and the Dvina River.

  In the beginning, their map reading had been extremely personal: Bill Shipley was reporting from Berlin in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Now Bill was in London, where he’d been during the worst of the Blitz in September 1940. Claire had managed to shift Charlie’s attention away from the nightly bombing raids on London by studying maps of the Italian campaigns in British Somaliland and Egypt taking place simultaneously.

  The geography of war. Claire never knew how much Charlie understood or how he visualized the world in his imagination. She hoped that for Charlie the war meant arrows across a newspaper, not blaring radio reports on casualties, and particularly not the whispered speculation on whether New York City would be bombed.

  Charlie pursed his lips as he examined the newspapers. His hair was like an artist’s palette with half a dozen colors, blond, red, pale brown, even shades of gray. Claire wanted to touch his cheek, caress his hair, but she stopped herself, knowing he’d be annoyed. He liked to think of himself as being very grown up.

  Charlie claimed that he remembered his sister, but he was only six months old when she died. He talked about her as if she grew younger as he became older. Nowadays he imagined her as a baby. Baby Emily. Remember when Baby Emily learned to walk? Remember the time she took her nap in the laundry basket? Maybe Charlie was projecting from photographs, or from stories Maritza or Claire herself had told him. Or perhaps he was projecting memories of his own life onto her.

  Emily and Charlie, her children. Claire put her hand on Charlie’s shoulder, hoping he wouldn’t shrug her off, grateful when he didn’t. She was afraid that she would lose him, especially now, with the world enflamed.

  When the United States entered the Great War in 1917, Claire had sat here at the kitchen table with her mother and studied the maps in the newspapers. The second battle of the Marne, the movement of Bolshevik forces during the revolution in Russia…together they’d followed the events far away. Even at the breakfast table, preparing for a day of volunteer work at the settlement house clinic, Anna had worn a lacy shirtwaist, pearls, and a flowing skirt. She’d held herself with the stiff elegance born of corsets. A powdery scent of perfume surrounded her. Anna wore muslin gloves to prevent the newsprint from dirtying her fingers.

  Anna had been a rebel as well as a lady, living openly with another man while awaiting her divorce from Claire’s father. Of course she was financially independent, which made all the difference in a woman’s life. She’d taught Claire not to fear the judgments of others, to look forward, not backward, and to work toward her goals regardless of what others might say to discourage or dissuade her. She’d given Claire her first camera, a birthday present when Claire turned fourteen. When Anna died, she’d left Claire this house, virtually all that remained from an inherited fortune lost during the crash of 1929. Sitting at her mother’s table, using her mother’s china and silver, Claire could pretend that Anna’s spirit was with her still, giving her an extra push when she faltered.

  Claire sighed. The past years had been filled with death, first Emily, then Claire’s stepfather, then her mother. Now the country was at war once more, her family’s personal losses set in perspective against the charnel house of the world.

  December. Winter pressed upon them. Claire had forgotten to fold towels against the cracks at the base of the French doors to keep out the wind. Her feet were cold in her slippers. She felt an urge to bring Charlie a blanket to wrap around his legs, even though she knew he would push it aside. Late last winter, along with a half-dozen kids in his grade, Charlie had contracted scarlet fever. He’d been out of school for six weeks, four of those weeks spent in isolation. Claire was beside herself. Simply hearing the words scarlet fever could strike terror in a parent. The doctor told Claire to burn Charlie’s sheets and blankets, his pajamas, his books and toys. This was the treatment for scarlet fever. No medicine could fight it. Claire took a leave from her job and sat with him, night after night. In the end, Charlie was one of the lucky ones: he didn’t die, and he suffered no permanent physical harm. Several of his classmates experienced severe hearing loss, and two boys developed rheumatic fever and heart damage. With help, Charlie had managed to catch up in school, and he hadn’t need
ed to repeat the grade.

  Claire and all the parents she knew defined the seasons based on the diseases that preyed upon their children. In this neighborhood, generally one child went deaf or died from meningitis each winter. Last year it was Danny, the younger brother of Charlie’s friend Ben, made deaf overnight from meningitis; his parents were grateful that he’d survived. Several children struggled with pneumonia each winter. When Charlie was in second grade, his classmate Rebecca died from pneumonia. Her wooden desk with its attached chair remained empty for the rest of the school year. Early spring was the time of septic sore throat and scarlet fever. Every summer, two or three children—in the bad years many more—were crippled or killed by infantile paralysis. Guilio down the block now walked with leg braces and crutches. Like Danny, he was considered one of the lucky ones: he was alive. As a parent, you could never let down your guard. Measles, whooping cough, diphtheria…. Some children survived, some didn’t. The luck of the draw. Nature’s way. God’s will. Claire never took Charlie’s life for granted.

  She thought of Edward Reese and of the story she would continue today. She tried to comprehend James Stanton’s hopes and ambitions, and the sense of futility he must sometimes experience. Doctors could do nothing, or next to nothing, to help their patients. Serum treatments. Several vaccines, including those to fight diphtheria, tetanus, and smallpox. Recently (too late for Emily) sulfa drugs, with their toxicity and limited effectiveness. Pneumonia could put an otherwise healthy adult in the hospital for a month. Claire’s colleague Jen, one of the reporters she worked with, still hadn’t returned to work after contracting double pneumonia in August. President Coolidge’s son had died from a blister he developed while playing tennis in new shoes. A scratch from a rosebush could kill you. Three summers ago, a rose-thorn scratch had killed Andrew, the gardener at St. Luke’s church down the block; he’d left four young children, and the church raised money to help his widow. Tuberculosis was rampant and contagious. Last May, Claire walked Charlie to school and learned from the other parents that Miss Robertson, his art teacher, had been “sent to Saranac.” Claire knew what that meant; everyone knew what it meant. Saranac was a village in the Adirondacks where TB patients received treatment in isolation from their families and friends, so they couldn’t infect them. Some patients stayed for decades. A wave of fear had passed through Claire for Charlie, but the doctor said Charlie appeared to have escaped TB infection—this time, at least.