Beacon Street Mourning (6 page)

I clung to that thought as I alighted from the cab, paid the driver, turned toward the hospital, and immediately found
myself confronted by a distressingly steep flight of steps. It appeared that the main entrance of this place was on the second floor!

Surely that could not be right. Sick people cannot be expected to climb or descend so many steps—this was my reasoning, and it turned out I was right. Perhaps those steps were meant to present an impressive appearance, but fortunately they also concealed a large pair of doors right at ground level, the threshold perfectly, reassuringly flat. I entered through these doors with ease, and inquired at an information desk for the number and floor of my father's room.

"I am his daughter," I added, "Caroline Fremont Jones."

I had not told anyone, including Dr. Searles Cosgrove, that I would be visiting this afternoon, but that did not seem to matter. The sweet-faced, gray-haired woman who manned the desk smiled when I said I was Leonard Jones's daughter, and provided me with the room number and a set of thorough instructions on how to proceed.

Hospitals always seem to me like a foreign land with laws that are incomprehensible to the average person, ruled by a corps of white-coated dictators, all male, usually bearded. That these dictators are generally served by attractive handmaidens does not further endear them to me.

Also, hospitals smell peculiar.

Getting into the elevator with two of the handmaidens, otherwise known as nurses, reminded me that Priory is a Catholic institution. The nurses were nuns; I must remember to address them as "Sister." I did not think I would have any trouble remembering—their headdresses, which were shaped like wings, made it hard to forget they were not ordinary women.

As I followed two of the wing-headed creatures of this alien land off the elevator, I had a sudden, stabbingly sharp mental image of the winged skull on the tombstone in King's Chapel graveyard.

I could have done without that, I thought—mentally, as it were, shaking myself to dispel the unwelcome sight from my mind.

Yet I could not make it go away. And so it was that I approached my father's hospital room with a vision of Death, in the stark form of a skull with wings to either side of its hollow eyes, floating in the air before me.

I STOOD in the open door of my father's hospital room. He appeared to be sleeping. He lay on his back with his mouth open, his breath coming in gasps that did not sound at all normal. I could hear him better than I could see him because of the light from the windows beyond, which cast his form in shadow.

It was late afternoon; ironically, the sun had chosen this time of day to escape from the sky's heavy gray cloud cover, and now blazed forth in brief glory. Father had one of the better rooms in the hospital, with two windows side by side on the far wall, overlooking the Charles River; which is to say, the windows faced northwest and thus had a view of the setting winter sun. I saw his face in profile against the sunlight, which made a nimbus of his hair—hair that had once been dark and thick but was now sparse and pale. Thus haloed, my father looked like an ungainly angel. If not for the harsh, irregular sound of his breathing I might have thought him already dead.

The Sister behind me gave a little nudge. "It's all right, you can go on in," she said.

"But he's sleeping," I whispered.

Now that skull with the wings was floating over Father's
bed. I could see it—only in my mind's eye, I knew, but still I could see it.

"Then wake him." She had a smile in her voice—I didn't have to see her face to know that smile was there. "He will want to spend every possible minute with you. I know he will, for he has talked of you often."

Her warmth gave me courage, and I entered the room. I walked around to the other side of the bed, so that I would no longer have the sun near-blinding me. I heard the Sister close the door . . . and then I was alone with my father.

I had a lump in my throat the size of China.

Oh, he was so dreadfully different from the father I had always known; different even from the greatly changed man I had last seen less than a year ago. He looked a hundred years old. No, more than that, he looked as if he were already partially in the grave. Even worse, his body bore a faint odor that seemed on the edge of decay—even though one had only to glance at him to see that he was being scrupulously cared for, his nightshirt and bed linens pristine. His skin had an alien yellow-brown cast and lay slack upon his bones, as it does with people who have once been full-fleshed but have morbidly wasted.

I moved closer and bent down, wanting to kiss his cheek, but at the last moment I found myself afraid to do so. My presence suddenly seemed an intrusion. For a few moments I felt almost as if I should leave, or as if I should not have come—this chilled me. I backed away from the bed.

I stood there horribly confused, not knowing what to do, to stay or go. But then, through the confusion came a faint glimmer of understanding: My mother had died in this lingering way. I'd been only fourteen then, and had to watch uncomprehending as slowly her life, all that remained of her existence, became focused more on something or someplace beyond, than on the room in which she lay, or with the people—my father
and myself—to whom she was so dear. I'd felt held at a distance from Mother as she died, by some invisible force; nothing I could do would bring her closer to me. Inexorably she'd drifted farther and farther away until finally one day my mother was not there at all. Her death had been a bitter lesson.

My impulse to go away now and leave Father to his dying was selfish—I only wanted to spare myself the pain of that slow yet final separation. But I was not fourteen anymore. Nor was Father dead yet. He needed me for a while longer, and I would stay. But I did not want to wake him, simply being in the room with him was enough for now—so I refrained from kissing his cheek.

Father was dreaming, or so I fancied, for his eyes were moving back and forth behind his paper-thin eyelids, as if he were watching something only he could see. What else could that be but a dream? I hoped the dream was a good one, for it was clear that Father's life outside of dreams was not good, not now.

Once again I silently cursed William Barrett for planting in my mind the insidious thought that I was responsible for causing my father additional suffering. Then I cursed Augusta Simmons for being the origin of that idea in the first place. Who knew but what, if he'd had proper medical attention in a hospital months ago, he might not be in this condition now? For at least the hundredth time I wondered how much of his illness was Augusta's fault, and hers alone.

Father had not moved. His breath, though full of unhealthy noises such as wheezes and an occasional whistle, came at reassuringly regular intervals. I adjusted the slats of the window blinds so that the sinking sun's light was directed upward, where it might bounce off the ceiling and fill the room with a mellow glow. Then I took off my hat and muffler, hooked my canes over the arm of a chair placed near the bed for visitors, sat down, and began to unbutton all the buttons down the front of my burgundy wool coat.

This took a while. When I looked up from undoing the final three buttons nearest the hem, my father had opened his eyes.

"Is it really you?" he said. "My girl has come at last?"

"Yes, Father," I said, biting my lip, which suddenly quivered uncontrollably. "I came as soon as I was able."

He opened his near arm to me, and I rose, forgetting everything except an overwhelming desire to feel that arm around me. I do not know how I got to his bed without my canes, nor do I remember what I said to him or he to me in the first overwhelming joy and pain of that meeting.

But I do remember the sunset on that February day in 1909, how brilliant was its light, how red it glowed off the ceiling and walls of my father's hospital room, like being bathed in blood.

"AUGUSTA WILL BE here soon," Father said much later, after we'd talked and I had shed a few unavoidable tears. "She generally arrives when they bring the evening meal. She'll make it her business to see that I eat. I'd far rather she didn't—" He paused to cough, a painful process obviously, which racked his thin chest and left him shaking.

"How soon do you suppose that will be?" I asked as soon as the coughing spell had passed. Glancing around the room, I did not see a clock. Nor was Father's pocket watch on the table at his bedside. I supposed he could tell the time as I had done during my own period of invalid's incarceration, by an internal clock that takes some of its cues from things like the rising and setting of the sun, and certain noises that come regularly from the world outside the doors, and eventually—when one is well enough—from cycles of hunger and sleeping.

Father said nothing for a moment. Then he turned his head on the pillow and said, "Perhaps it would be best if you were to open the door now. She could arrive at any minute. It is
positively uncanny how the woman—I mean Augusta—and the Sister with the dinner tray arrive most nights simultaneously. "

I got up, walked across Father's room using both canes, and opened the door. I could not help being excruciatingly aware of how closely he watched me. Indeed, at Father's insistence we had talked more about my recent calamities than about his much more serious condition.

Because I was unhappy to hear of Augusta's imminent arrival and did not want my father to see that on my face, after opening the door I went to the window and tweaked the blinds, so that I could see the river and the scattered lights of Cambridge on the other side. While doing these things I composed myself.

"You won't need those canes much longer, I think," said Father.

I turned, forcing a smile. "I hope you're right. It seems a long time I've been unable to walk the way I used to."

"Raise the blinds all the way, if you'll be so kind, daughter. And leave the curtains open. I like to look out at the night."

I did as he asked, then returned to my place in the chair once more. Previously I'd pushed it as close as possible to the bed, so that I could hold Father's hand as we talked.

"Fremont, who used to be Caroline, my daughter," Father said. I waited for him to say something more, but he didn't, only my name. His eyes shone even though the whites were clouded. I took his hand again and he placed his other hand on top of mine. His were cold and bony, but there was warmth in his shining eyes.

It was hard to look directly at him for very long. I think he knew it. He said, "I'm dying, you know."

I bit my lip and nodded my head. I wanted to protest, to deny, but somehow I could not.

"They're trying to make me well in this place, but they
can't. It's too late. Even for Searles Cosgrove, who thinks he knows everything. Always has thought that ever since I've known him. Heh."

Father tried to laugh at his mild gibe, but only succeeded in coughing more. I tried to smile, with not much more success.

"Perhaps you are wrong," I said, suddenly finding my voice, along with a store of denial—or was it hope?—I had not known I possessed. "You're stronger now than when you were brought to the hospital, or so I've been told. So perhaps you will regain more strength, and then who knows what may happen!"

"I'm not wrong."

In spite of those discouraging words, Father smiled. His smile brought back so much. For a blessed, fleeting moment I could see in his face the father I'd relied on throughout my childhood, the father I'd loved so much, still loved too much to lose him.

"But you're too young to die! You're not yet sixty years old, and many people live to be much older than that."

"Dearest daughter, I don't mind. I'm going to be with your mother. But I'm glad I'll have a little time with you, at least, before I go—now that you're here. Thank you for coming. Now give me a kiss and be on your way. You'll be here again tomorrow?"

I supposed he wanted me to go back to the hotel now so as to avoid a confrontation with Augusta. I gave him the kiss and my promise to return soon, and then I left as he'd asked.

SEARLES COSGROVE kept an office in Back Bay, on Commonwealth Avenue. Somewhat in the manner of the house Michael and I shared on Divisadero Street, Dr. Cosgrove had his suite for seeing patients downstairs and his own private quarters upstairs. However, Cosgrove's house was far larger—a
full three stories—and far more impressive than the residence of Jones and Kossoff and the offices of the J&K Agency.

"Commonwealth Avenue," Michael said as he assisted me up the few stone steps from the sidewalk to the arched front door, "looks more like Paris than any other place I've been. Do you suppose they planned it that way?"

"Without doubt."

"Except perhaps for St. Petersburg"—Michael carried on with his thought as if I had not spoken—"which would look a good deal more like Paris without its canals."

"Paris has canals? That's the first I've ever heard of it."

"No, St. Petersburg has canals. I must take you there sometime, Fremont."

"To St. Petersburg or to Paris?"

I had reached the top of the steps, largely without assistance, because Michael had stopped to give all his attention to the view. I did not mind this in the least, because now I could congratulate myself on having done well alone. I was a little out of breath, that was all.

Flushed by this small victory I added, "I think I should like to see both."

"Then you shall. It's hard to believe you've never been to Europe. Your education has been sadly neglected, Fremont."

"If Mother had lived, she would have accompanied me to Europe. Father never had time, and of course I could not go alone."

Michael waved his arm in continuing appreciation: "Just look at all those mansard roofs. I think a mansard gives a handsome look to a house. But it is the use of stone, really, that gives such a feeling of elegance. We don't quite achieve this kind of thing in San Francisco."