Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 6

It had begun with chills and swollen lumps in his neck. Then red patches appeared on his skin.

“Scrofulous tuberculosis,” Dr. Johnston said. “Scrofulous?”

“He’ll develop ulcerations. He will bleed. It’s possible it is in his lungs as well. He may recover, or he may not.” Johnston, whose kindly face sagged with sadness, looked directly at her. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said. But she didn’t. Not then.

“Give him seven grains of quinine mixed with water to make a teaspoon. And spread this on him.” The doctor put a jar of salve into her hands.

“It  burns my  eyes,” Sammy  cried,  running  out  of  the  room when  Fanny  applied the claylike stu? all over Hervey. Belle had already made haste out the door on a pretext of getting a newspaper.

“I won’t lie,” Fanny said. “It is not the best smell on earth, but it’s no bother if it makes you well. Isn’t that right, Hervey?”

The boy nodded, covering his eyes with a washcloth.

“We have to do what the doctor tells us.” Fanny bustled around the room. “You’re going to be in bed for a while, sweetheart. It’s no fun being sick at Christmas, but we have each other. That’s the main thing.”

There wouldn’t be any Christmas at all, but it wasn’t yet time to tell the children. Sam had written recently that he had no money to send them that month. With Hervey’s illness, medicine came ?rst and other needs after. The food she and Belle and Sammy ate was the simplest possible: black bread, smoked herring, soups.

At seven, Sammy su?ered most from the lack of money. He was a sturdy boy, but he’d developed a wan look as he’d grown older: pale hair and eyelashes, light skin beneath freckles. In Paris, his pallor had grown even more pronounced.

Once, when Fanny went out to get medicine, Sammy accompanied her. Emerging from the chemist’s, she found the boy, nose pressed against the window of the patisserie next door, eyeing the glazed fruit tarts. He was hungry for something besides stew and bread, and it grieved her that there was nothing she could do about it. Each morning he ate only a

roll and milk  before he walked out the door in  his little uniform to attend his private school. At least he got lunch there and had a happy place to be during the day. Thankfully, the tuition was paid up through May. They were all growing thin, including Hervey, who had lost his appetite. Fanny gathered together a few pieces of jewelry and pawned them, then bought expensive foods to encourage the child to eat, but to no avail. When Hervey left untouched some grapes—plump  violet greenhouse grapes that Sammy eyed for two days—Fanny quietly put them on the older boy’s bedside table.

The winter days passed slowly. Her admirer, the surgeon, had departed a month earlier for  Italy,  and she  wished she  had not  restricted herself  so much  to only  his company. Without him, she had no male protector in Paris.

On his last visit to their apartment before his departure, he had looked at Hervey lying on  the  sofa,  looked  at  her  and  the  children  growing  thinner,  grimaced  at  the  shabby furnishings, and blurted out,  “What will become of all of you when I leave?” It was not insincere, his concern. But it wasn’t enough to keep him there. She couldn’t blame him for fleeing troubles that he didn’t want as his own.

Fanny  fought  o?  melancholy  with  sewing  projects  during  the  gray  winter  hours— patching stockings, making a costume for Belle. Mr. Julian announced that he would give a fancy dress party for the ladies at the New Year, and everyone was encouraged to come. There would be piano music, and the students already knew the refreshments: brioche, wine, and fruit. Fanny’s stomach growled to think of it. She pieced together a colorful dress for Belle out of two old ones, and a headdress from the leftover material. Fanny wanted the girl to feel as festive as the others. She would stay home, but it would be a chance for Belle to escape the dreariness of evenings in the apartment.

Every few minutes, Fanny looked up from her sewing to observe Hervey. He was so thin now. Once his cheeks had been fat’d and he’d had the sunniest disposition. She had carried him in  a  sling  when  he was tiny,  when  his head was smooth  as an  egg,  and they  ?t together as if they were one piece. How vividly she remembered the day he was born! The midwife had held him up by the feet, and Fanny had fallen instantly in love with that little upside-down petal-pink face. He was her ?nal vote of con?dence in her marriage and the last good thing she took from it. How, in the face of such beauty and hope, could Sam have taken on yet another woman? Fanny knew then that Hervey was her last child, and she would keep him for herself. She would never say it aloud, but of the three, he was her best

beloved.

During those lonely Paris hours, she sang every song she could think of to Hervey, and helped him hold a crayon in his hand to draw the lions, always in cages, that he preferred as his subject matter. When the boy slept, she kept herself awake by composing lengthy letters, cajoling her friends to write. Do send me some gossip, she wrote to Rearden. You know I love to hear about our literary friends. But no bad news. I could not bear it right now. Above all, don’t tell Sam that Hervey is sick, I beg of you.

Day to day, she debated whether to alert Sam. The strange reality was that she could not discern how serious Hervey’s illness was. In the past week the boy had been delirious with a fever, but then yesterday he had recovered. He’d sat up, smiling, and played with Sammy and seemed nearly well enough to go out for a walk in the park.

Rearden sent a letter scolding her for the reckless trip; he had put down on paper the words Sam was surely thinking. But her old friend—old sparring partner, more like it— included money to buy Christmas presents, and for that Fanny could forgive Rearden his cruel remarks. When the envelope arrived, she was sitting in a chair with the remainder of their cash in her lap, trying to imagine how they would make it to the end of the month. The surprise funds brie?y brightened the miserable household. Fanny bought toys for the boys and filled the kitchen cupboard.

Through the bitter cold of January, she kept two ?res going in the parlor during the day to keep Hervey warm as he lay on the sofa. At night, she and Miss Kate took turns staying awake beside him. His sores had begun to bleed and had to be dressed constantly. His frail little body had to be shifted to take the pressure off new sores.

When Belle and Sammy returned home from their classes, they kept vigil by Hervey’s side.  One  day  Belle  brought  a  newspaper  and  sketchily  translated  an  article  about  a wealthy California woman who had taken over a whole ?oor at the fancy H?tel Splendide. A  picture  showed  a  woman  in  a  white  dress  and  feathered  hat,  surrounded  by  her entourage.

Fanny studied the faces in the paper. “I know this woman,” she said. “I knew her when she didn’t have a nickel. In Austin, Nevada.”

Belle perked up. “Truly?”

“Tell about the camp!” shouted Sammy, who never seemed to tire of the old stories. “It was winter,” Fanny began. “Belle and I hadn’t been in camp with your father all that

long. We heard there was going to be a party in the next settlement, a few miles away. I had brought a trunk full of dresses with me, only to ?nd that they were far too ?ne to wear in Austin, Nevada. The camp was just a gulley of falling-down shacks, and the few women living there had to wash their things in the brown river water. No plumbing. No furniture. Nothing but a makeshift bed and a couple of pots in your father’s cabin when I got there. But I did get to wear one of those nice dresses the night we went to that party. Somebody had made a sled out of a packing box with some runners on it. There wasn’t a mirror to be found in the whole gulley. When the other women came to get me, one of the girls held up a lantern and a metal pie pan so I could see to ?x my hair.” Fanny touched her ?nger to the newspaper. “This woman in the article—she was the one who held up the tin pan.”
“Oh.” Belle sighed, struck by the fairy-tale ending. “And now she’s rich.” “At least somebody got rich,” Fanny mused. “I bundled you up in a blanket that night,
and we piled onto the sled with the other ladies and sang all the way to the next camp.”
“Did I dance?” Belle asked.

“Like a dervish. I’ll never forget you swirling around that room. You were too little to need a partner. Oh, and I remember that was the night I met that preacher, Reverend Warwick. He had two gold front teeth. I said to him, ‘I didn’t know there was a minister in these parts,’ and he said, ‘You musta heard of me by my nickname. It’s Smilin’ Jesus.”
Sammy knew that part of the story already, but he laughed heartily, as they all did. How desperately they needed to laugh.

Fanny remembered the night in Nevada as if it had just happened. At that party, she had danced  until  dawn,  with  a  di?erent  partner  for  every  tune.  Some  of  the  women,  she learned,  were from the whorehouse in  the next camp.  Later,  Fanny  wondered if  Sam’s philandering had already begun by the time she and Belle arrived in Austin.
“Will you call on her at the Splendide?” Belle asked.

Fanny knew that her daughter was wondering if she might work herself into the rich woman’s good graces. “No, I won’t,” she replied. She studied the photo of the woman she had known. How strange to think they had been  together in  that hardscrabble mining town, each of them part of a couple bent on striking it rich. How could she have dreamed then that she would someday end up in Paris, camped nearby and yet a world apart, in a suite of cheap rooms with her three children and without her husband?
She realized then how much she really did miss Sam and how afraid she was for Hervey.