Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 21

“Mother,” Belle said when she came in the apartment door.

It was afternoon,  and Fanny  was scrubbing  Sammy’s school uniform shirt in  a  sudsy bowl. “What is it?”

“I had lunch with Frank, and he said Louis is sick.” Fanny dropped the shirt and wiped her hands on her skirt.

“It’s his eyes. Will Low told Frank that Louis is in bed and he can’t see a thing.” Fanny hurried into the bedroom to pull her boots on. “Go to my sewing box and get out a
thimble. Fill it with boric acid crystals and wrap it in a clean napkin.”
She’d noticed Louis’s eyes growing worse in the past day or two. Yesterday morning she had mixed a few grains of the white stu? in water and dripped it into his eyes, then sent him home to rest. When he hadn’t shown up at two o’clock, as he usually did, she assumed he  was  writing  away.  Fanny  threw  on  her  coat.  “Watch  Hervey!”  she  called over  her shoulder to Belle.

“I know who you mean,” Belle called back.

Snow had brought the cabs and trams to a crawl. When Fanny got to Will Low’s studio, she saw the large white-haired head of an otherwise tiny doctor bending over Louis’s bed. The man was disheveled, and his spattered shirt cu?s gave proof that he was at the end of a long workday. In pro?le, his nose was a bony ridge upon which sti? bristles of hair stood up like porcupine quills.

Louis was talking gaily in French to the old man.  “What does he say?” Fanny asked Louis.

“There’s  my  lady,”  Louis  said.  “Hello,  sweet  one.”  He  stared  blankly  in  her  general direction.

“Louis, what does he say?”

“I got meself a roarin’ eye infection. Fever, too.” “What are we to do?”

“Drink a pint a’ whiskey.” “Please, Louis … “

“He says I need to have the bandages changed every fifteen minutes,” Louis said. Will Low’s jaw worked furiously as he watched.

“Tell me what the doctor just said, can you Will?”

“He says Lou could go blind if he does not care for his eyes. He shouldn’t have any light.” Will covered his wispy mustache with a paint-splattered hand. He looked around his studio, dismayed. “I could put sheets over the windows … “

“Will, kindly ask the man precisely what we are to do and when. And ask him where I can get whatever medicine I need.’

“Of course,” he said. His face, boyish beneath a sealskin toque, registered his profound relief that she had arrived.

“I know how to do this, Will. Between the two of us, we should be able to get Louis into a cab and over to my ?at.” Fanny patted Louis on the shoulder. “You’re coming home with me,” she said.

“‘My young love said my mother won’t mind,’” Louis sang.

Will  Low  blinked  nervously. “I  thought  a  little  drink  might  take  his  mind  o?  the
burning.”


Fanny glared at Low. “He’s pixilated. Get his trousers on him, will you?” Fanny set him up in her bed and pulled a chair next to it. During the night, light from the
streetlamp fell on his body. She had never seen him asleep, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. His face was as beautiful as Raphael’s. She had seen a painting once of the artist as a young man and his face was oval, with pensive dark eyes, like Louis’s. Here is a man so full of life and goodness and gifts,  she  thought. And utterly reckless with his health. He had ignored the burning in his eyes for a week, just kept on working.

Ten days ago he had come with pages to read, and she’d felt almost immediately that a new door was opening for them. He began with his canoe essay and read sections of it aloud over a period of a week. But yesterday he had arrived with a piece about falling in love.

Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural … She had pursed her lips to suppress the greedy pleasure she took in the words. The essay was written in generalities, but there was no doubt about it: It was an open love letter to her. Louis planned to send it off to Cornhill magazine.
She ran her hand over his forehead. He was twenty-six and she was thirty-seven. She had spent a good part of her life being regarded as the young one. “Such a young bride, such a young mother, so young to be traveling alone,” people had always said to her. How odd to

?nd herself the older one. She didn’t feel ?nished yet. She felt as young as he was. What did age matter, anyway? Not a scintilla. Except that it had allowed her to walk into love this time, eyes wide open—there was no falling about it.

In the morning, when she stood up, she nearly dropped over from want of sleep. Belle was  lounging  in  the  parlor.  On  seeing  her  mother  emerge  from  the  bedroom,  the  girl clasped her hands and said, “I’m not judging you, Mama.”

“There’s nothing to judge,” Fanny responded testily. She put her hands to her waist and stretched backward. “Ten grains of boric acid mixed with water.” She pointed toward a cup on the windowsill. “You watched me do it last night, right?” She yawned. “Oh, do I need to move these legs! If he wakes up, tell him I will be back soon to make breakfast.”
Fanny made it down to the newsstand and was on her way to the bakery in the next block when her ankle buckled. It was the right foot, the foot that had ailed her since Grez. She gritted her teeth and hobbled back to her building, hoping against hope it was not a real sprain.

Four ?ights. Up  to an  awful apartment. Sam had made certain  they couldn’t get too comfortable in Paris. When she had returned from Grez, her Paris doctor had told her she was still fragile from Hervey’s loss. “You will need a housekeeper,” he’d said. “You’re much too weak to do that sort of work.” Ha! Housekeeper, indeed. She had dared not tell him they lived on the fourth floor and felt lucky to have it.

When  Fanny  returned,  Louis was sitting  up.  “They’re much  worse today.” There was despair in his voice. “A man can write with bad lungs. But what does he do without eyes?”
Fanny took his hand. “Louis, I think you should go home.” She waited for a response, but none came. “We’ll get Bob to take you to your parents’ house,” she said finally.
“Bob isn’t in Paris, Mama,” Belle said. “He’s gone to Scotland for a week.” “Two weeks,” Louis corrected her. “He left yesterday.”

Another silence.

“There is a good doctor in London I have gone to,” Louis said. “I have close friends there who have taken care of me before. Colvin, my editor friend. And Fanny Sitwell. She would help us, I’m sure of it. Henley is there, too. He owes me a little fussing.”