After the Fog Read online

  Rose sighed. “So. What are our options for funding as we head into the last two months?”

  He pushed his glasses further back on his nose. “Present our case to the Easter Seals society, Women’s Club, Red Cross—”

  Rose’s teeth chattered, and she pulled her coat tighter. “Fanny has plans for the Red Cross donations.”

  Dr. Bonaroti nodded and held up his hand. “The new superintendent’s wife is the head of the Women’s Club now. She’s willing to look at your data, to go with you to the Lipinski’s and to another home of your choosing—”

  “To what? To watch me work? No. Think of the patients. They aren’t zoo animals.”

  Bonaroti set his bag at his feet and pushed up the arms of his suit-coat, revealing a trail of cheap watches people had used to pay him for his services. This was his way of reminding Rose that if citizens of a small town, even one with three thriving mills had to regularly pay a doctor with watches and the occasional hen, then she needed to make a damn good case for paying a community nurse.

  Rose shrugged. “You’re right. I made twenty-five hundred calls in the last ten months. We need three nurses if we need one. So, whatever it takes, I’ll do it. We can’t have more Isabellas.”

  Bonaroti pressed his lips together and pushed down his sleeves. He grinned, lifting his bag. “And a dentist, Rose. The Community Welfare Committee over in Moon Run springs for a dentist for the miners’ families. Surely we can rustle up some cash for a dentist to take a look at all these mouths full of mottled teeth.”

  He started down the steps that served as sidewalks, a necessity in Donora due to the sharp angle of the hills. The fog was thick and hid him from Rose though she could hear his footsteps.

  “Let’s get my services paid for another year,” Rose said, lifting her voice. “Before we add a dentist to the mix, don’t you say?”

  “Yes, let’s.” His disembodied voice carried over the groaning tugboats and screeching trains below.

  Rose straightened and took a deep breath, wondering how she’d make it through the day with all that had to be done.

  * * *

  The time between a difficult call and arriving home gave Rose a chance to reflect, to feel gratitude, to pray. She plodded through the misty night, negotiating uneven cement walks, moving slower than she liked, the fog adding heaviness to the darkness of the early morning hour.

  Around her, four hundred-fifty feet of mountainside lurched into the air, and slumped over the valley. Near the mills the narrow, soot-encrusted homes of its workers marched along the flatlands. Heading up the hillsides, houses were stacked; clinging to dirt and rock like children nestled to their mother’s chest.

  Rose enjoyed knowing the social makeup of the different sections of town and what that meant for her service to the people. Like a parent checking on children, opening bedroom doors and peeking inside to be sure they were sleeping peacefully, Rose did the same as she trekked home. She paused at certain addresses mentally ticking off whether all seemed well. She made lists of who she needed to check on the next day, which people might still be suffering after an earlier visit and who was covering up an illness that needed to be addressed in the first place.

  One section of Donora called Cement City boasted cement walled homes, built to last centuries and keep mill smoke out of the house. They were designated for mill management and lower-rung hotshots. Overlook Terrace, at the other end of town, was for the superintendents of each mill. But streets like Murray Avenue, where Rose lived, were home to American born newspaper editors and immigrant laborers. Some folks had money tucked away in Mellon Bank, growing as fast as their post-war families and others had barely managed to save a few dimes.

  Donora was full of people with all manner of education, breeding, and heritage. There were twenty-two churches and a synagogue in the compact town, yet somehow they managed to live happily. Rose knew much of the contentment stemmed from steady work in the mills. The promise of a secure source of income helped people keep soft hearts and open minds toward neighbors.

  Rose reached her hodgepodge home, drew a deep breath and sighed. She would not have enough time to sleep so she surrendered to the work ahead, hopeful that her large family would do their part to help.

  She grasped the oversized doorknob, and heard familiar huffing and puffing. Before she could turn, the mutt gently clamped her ankle with his mouth and licked her. Its stinking slobber wafted through the thick air.

  “Stupid dog!” Rose shook her foot to loosen its grip and grazed the dog’s muzzle. It collapsed into a ball, tail tucked in. Rose covered her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. Go away, she thought, I don’t like animals. Rose had learned lack of cleanliness was host to many deadly or debilitating diseases. So, she’d decided long before that when she met an animal that didn’t carry disease or filth with it, she’d let it in the house.

  Rose exhaled and stood over the pooch, disapproving of its shaggy fur, the ropey knots resembling the rags she used to clean house.

  “I’m sorry I caught your nose with my foot, but you shouldn’t be here.”

  It lifted its gaze and let out a raspy cry. Rose stared back, clutching her nurse’s bag to her belly. “Now go on, you raggedy rags!” He bolted, leaving a fresh burst of sour odor of scabby filth in its wake.

  Rose twisted the doorknob, threw her body against the side-door and heard the usual screech across the linoleum. Inside, she fell back, shoving the door closed. She tried to wipe the sound of Ian’s sobs from her mind.

  A rush of hot air from the radiator beside her flushed her face, and raised a rancid, bloody odor from her clothing. She looked at her watch. Five A.M. She felt every minute of the sleepless night. But The Techniques and Expectations of Community Nursing Manual demanded Rose immediately cleanse all used instruments and containers after a call. She swallowed a yawn and said another prayer for strength. Nursing meant everything to her; she was proud of her skill. To Rose, being a good mother was a given. She had no choice but to give her children a solid upbringing, but nursing gave her a sense of self-worth she’d never quite found any other way.

  All she needed was a sip of water before she set to clean her instruments and start breakfast. Rose shook off her tweed coat. She sighed as she hung it on its own hook as per manual instructions, away from the other coats that draped the rickety coat-rack in the corner, behind the door.

  Rose entered the kitchen and stopped short at the sight of her seventeen-year-old son hunched over the percolator, measuring coffee grains into the metal basket. Her jaw dropped at the sight of what he was using as a measuring tool. Urine sample cups. It didn’t matter that Rose scrubbed them after use with the prescribed green soap until they gleamed; they were still vessels for bodily fluids.

  “Johnny? What the hell are you doing?”

  He emptied one into the basket. “Making coffee?”

  Rose wanted to rip the cup from his hands and beat him on the skull with it, but didn’t have the energy for it. “They’re urine cups. You’re damn lucky those college football scouts don’t make surprise visits to be sure you fellas are as smart as you look on paper.”

  “Gee thanks, Mum.” Johnny laughed, dumping the coffee into the garbage can. “I was wondering why we had six coffee measures.” Rose got a whiff of alcohol as he turned toward her. He wouldn’t drink on a school night? Not him. Not her baby.

  “Geez-o-man, Mum, that blood.” He covered his mouth and collapsed over the sink, retching.

  Rose shook her head at his weak stomach, patted his back and leaned her hip against the sink. She sniffed near his mouth; the odor of booze was gone as suddenly as it had been there. Exhaustion must have been taking over her sanity.

  She yanked open a drawer and flipped a worn dishcloth to Johnny. He wiped his mouth and straightened, leaning against the sink, mirroring Rose’s stance.

  Rose fluffed his hair, its Vaseline sheen lost during the night. “Go back to bed for an hour.”

  “Can’t sleep.”


  Rose put her hand over Johnny’s. “You have a big week ahead of you.”

  He stiffened. A grimace flashed across his normally affable expression. Rose was hard on him regarding his future, but she knew when to push and when to let go. An argument about the importance of college and a scholarship wouldn’t help anyone at this hour.

  “I was wondering,” Johnny said. He squeezed Rose’s hand and seemed to search her face for permission to continue. “Maybe we could talk about college. This week, before the game.”

  Rose closed her eyes and bit the inside of her cheek. She could not have this conversation again. “Sure, college. We’ll talk about how you’re getting a football scholarship and heading off to live it up in a fraternity house, smoking cigars after colossal wins and big tests. You just rest up for your game.”

  Johnny laughed. “I know. Good rest, good food, good game on Saturday.”

  Rose caught the mockery as he repeated the words she said to him many times. Johnny was a good kid and must have been tired, and Rose let his sarcasm pass. She could trust him, but couldn’t trust that she would have money to fund the community nursing project another year.

  So, she put her focus there—on her nursing skill and experience that would persuade the new mill superintendent’s wife to direct any charitable funds she could toward the project. It wasn’t in Rose’s nature to ass-kiss and it would take all her attention and energy to do it well. Conflict upon conflict would not help anyone.

  “You’re a good boy, Johnny. Keep your wits about you and say your prayers and everything will be fine. You follow our plan and someday you’ll be falling all over yourself to thank me.”

  He nodded and headed toward the hall, jumping to slap the doorjamb as if he were dunking a basketball. He turned back to Rose. “Oh, yeah,” he said, “Something’s going on with Magdalena. Said she’s not roller-skating with the girls after school, even if all the smart boys are going to be there. She had that look, that scrunchy one where you know she’s going to lay you out if you press her one more second.”

  Rose turned on the faucet and washed her hands. Magdalena was as moody as Johnny was jovial. They may have been twins, but in recent years they seemed to take different emotional paths through life.

  “I’m familiar, yes,” Rose said, pulling a coffee mug from the cabinet and setting it beside the percolator.

  “Mum, this thing with Mag. I mean, I know you’re busy, but this time you really should stop and just really listen. She needs you. That’s all.”

  Rose nodded, but was already rehearsing what she’d say to Mrs. Sebastian to demonstrate her value, to persuade her that even the most destitute citizens deserved health care.

  Johnny shrugged then spun into the air, whacked the doorjamb and disappeared into the hall.

  “Next time, take a rag and wipe up there if you’re going to be jumping that high, anyhow.” Rose felt a smile squeeze her cheeks before sadness made her bite her lip. He was a smart kid. She could trust him, couldn’t she?

  “My sweet, sweet boy.” Rose said to no one. “You just keep your shit straight and all will be well.”

  Chapter 2

  Rose headed into the cellar to clean her instruments. She felt along the wall for the light. The paint lifted from the plaster like a leper’s skin. The cellar was built to hold coal, a toilet and a cinder block shower that cleansed the bodies of smoke-caked steelworkers. The shower kept a marginal amount of soot out of the house. At least it made the housewives in Donora feel as though it did.

  In a room dimly lit by one bulb, Rose waited for scalding water to fill the utility tub. The scent of bleach and green soap overwhelmed the space. Rose placed her instruments into the water to soak, and changed out of her uniform. She plucked the buttons and specks of Isabella’s dried blood flicked off the fabric.

  She shook her uniform down and stepped out of it. Only the hem of her slip was blackened from the mill smoke outside. She rolled down her stockings and analyzed them for future wear. For night calls perhaps, bleached to nearly nothing, they might pass.

  Rose dunked her uniform into the water and rubbed at the material, scouring away thoughts of sadness and loss. In a second tub, hands plunged into the water; she scrubbed her instruments, intent on scraping deathly images from her mind with the cadenced movement of her work.

  The sound of someone stumbling startled Rose. On the steps, arms extended above his head, stood Unk grasping the bare wood boards crisscrossing the low-slung ceiling.

  “Sweet Jesus, you scared the living hell right out of me.” His blaze-white legs caught her attention and her gaze trailed past his arthritic, cauliflowered knees to his veiny thighs, and finally to his shriveled penis and dangling sacks.

  “Ahh, Unk. Your pants.” Rose snatched a scrap of rag, dried her hands and hurried toward him. “Where are your night-pants, old man?”

  Unk’s face whitened with the fight he constantly had with his bad lungs. “Rosie? The mills? Any word?” His words came out in a squeak.

  He stepped further down and braced himself on the banisters. Rose grasped his torso to support him and shook her head. “You’ll break your damn neck and be half-naked doing it. How’ll that look when Doc comes to set your hip or your arm or whatever?”

  Unk’s slack jaw and narrowed eyes conveyed confusion. His chest expanded, thick with phlegm, and he coughed into his hand.

  Rose sliced the air with her hand. “Stay in bed, Unk. Doc said not to wander the house at night. You’ll snap your neck.”

  He begged Rose for some vodka. “Just comin’ to get the money,” he said. “Damn kid lost it again. And, a nip while you finish the instruments. I’ll be good. Just sit here loungin’ a bit. Don’t want to be alone.”

  Rose ignored her sadness at Unk’s beginning signs of dementia and settled him onto the stair. His breathing settled down. She certainly understood Unk’s desire not to be alone—she’d grown up in an orphanage and the brittle pain from that experience still came to mind when she least expected it.

  Rose reached above Unk’s head into a small opening between the studs in the exposed wall, dislodging a bottle of vodka. She opened the lid and took a swig before putting it to his lips, cradling his chin as he swallowed. Rose closed her eyes and let the vodka warm her insides and dissolve the sudden helplessness she felt.

  If Unk was wearing pants, his company would have been welcomed. She could not allow him to sit naked in a filthy cellar. She screwed the lid back on the vodka and tucked it back into its nest.

  She took his elbow and guided him up the front stairs. “This has to stop.” Rose said.

  “Shut up, Rosie. You’re just not that nice.”

  “Ah, you shut up, old man.”

  “I just wanted to get the money. He lost it again.” Unk turned to Rose. He opened his mouth to say something else, but he never formed words.

  “Who lost it again? Not Henry.” Rose searched Unk’s face for the answer. “Buzzy? Again?” The thought of her brother-in-law gambling away his pay was too much for Rose to handle that day, any day, really. For two decades, she and Henry had cleaned up his messes and she’d had enough. Henry assured Rose that Buzzy would not gamble again. And if there was anything in her life that was not a crock of bull it was the word of her husband, Henry.

  Unk opened his mouth again, but nothing came out. The whites of his eyes were yellowed, his jaw slack, saliva at the corner of his mouth curving down his chin.

  With her thumb she wiped away the moisture, and cupped his face, his prickly whiskers pinching her palm. She put her free hand on the small of his back and nudged him forward. He buckled and Rose positioned herself behind him, her shoulder in the middle of his back.

  “Go on, Unk, I have you.”

  They stepped upward.

  “Could solve all these problems,” Unk said, “if yunz guys would just save some money for once.”

  Rose pushed against his body, to keep them both steady and heading upward.

  “I see what you’re
saying.” Rose rolled her eyes, knowing he understood the many ways Rose and Henry had shared and lost their money to family members, not their own careless spending. The dementia ripped his memory and when he tried to form coherent thoughts, he stitched facts and words together like a crazy quilt. Colorful, but not at all representative of their initial form.

  “I can’t shave you today,” she said. “I’m due to show one hoity-toity lady the benefit of community nursing. Need to get her to loosen up her purse strings so our citizenry can keep in good health.”

  Unk grunted in response. His foot caught on a step, reminding Rose of when her children first learned to walk up stairs. She wished she had time to take extra special care of Unk.

  But, if she couldn’t get Mrs. Sebastian to fund the clinic, it would close until they found another revenue source. They’d been funded for one year—the project’s first year—to see if Donora could even use one nurse the way Pittsburgh used dozens. Rose’s thousands of home visits reassured her; the answer would be yes. They didn’t need the entire operation funded, but enough for the over fifty percent of patients she saw who didn’t have insurance or couldn’t partially pay.

  “I’ll send Magdalena to shave you before she heads out to school,” Rose said.

  “She’s cranky that one. A beauty, but touchy,” he said. “And what about that money? Lost it again. Call Doc Bonaroti. He’ll be in the know.”

  Rose and Unk stopped on the landing that led to the third floor. She bent over; resting her hands on her knees while Unk leaned on her back, digging his fatless elbows into her spine.

  “It’s not right to fib, Rosie,” Unk said.

  She craned over her hunched shoulder to see from his expression if Unk was purposely forming these thoughts. “What?” Rose said.

  “Everyone’s a liar, Rosie. Everyone. ‘Cept Auntie Anna, ‘course, not her.”

  Rose laughed. That didn’t help narrow the fibbers’ pool. A rectangular shot of daylight came through a window and lit the worn braided rug. The chute of brightness bulleted through the air, illuminating all the dust particles people never noticed until they blanketed the entire house.