The Little Giant of Aberdeen County Page 22

  Inside the office, she changed into the paper gown provided for her, remembering when Robert Morgan had been a chattering boy with gangly elbows. It must have been strange for her to see him attired like his father and running a medical office, but with the same chin and eyes he’d had as a child. There was a tentative knock on the door, and then Robert Morgan’s gravelly voice asked if she was decent. Priscilla cleared her throat and twittered, “Yes. Of course. Yes.”

  She tugged the gown a little tighter around the back of her, feeling even more naked than she would have without it—a feeling I knew well. All around Prissy’s shoulders, the stiff edges of the garment stuck out like wings, and whenever she moved, she crackled. She looked around the room, uneasy with the hard edges and metal. She was used to the knotty wood of the schoolroom and its heady smell of chalk dust, pencil grindings, and bananas. On the table, Priscilla slumped a little as Robert Morgan prepared a dizzying array of instruments with which to check her, none of which looked at all familiar. She felt her head swim and put a hand down to steady herself, and I recognized that feeling, too—when you realize that the future has gone on and happened without you.

  Robert Morgan thumped her clavicle with his knuckles. “How long has it been since your last medical exam, Miss Sparrow?”

  The inside of her chest rang and reverberated like a hollow urn. “Years.”

  “I couldn’t find your records in our files.” Robert Morgan put his stethoscope in his ears and averted his eyes while he slipped the disk between her wrinkled breasts.

  “Oh, I used to go to a doctor in Albany, but it’s so far. I thought I’d just come here. I’m only having a little bunion trouble, you know. I have to wear those ugly shoes.” She tilted her chin toward the hated black oxfords squatting in the corner.

  Robert Morgan turned his head and removed the stethoscope. “They don’t look so bad.”

  “Oh, but they are. They really are.” How could Prissy explain that the awful black shoes were insinuating themselves into her life with the brassy arrogance of crows? She opened her mouth to elucidate but saw him frowning while he ran his fingers over her spine, the oxfords already forgotten as he concentrated on something in her back.

  “Does this hurt?” He pressed on one of her vertebrae, eliciting a small universe of pain.

  “Oh!” A ball of fire rumbled down the tracks of her central nervous system. It was the same sensation she’d been having in her foot, only from the top down, as if by switching direction, the pain were trying to cheat her—and Priscilla Sparrow hated cheaters.

  “Sorry.” Robert Morgan pulled his fingers away and closed the edges of her gown back together again. He frowned some more while he made notes. “Do you ever have dizzy spells, or breathlessness?”

  Well, come to think of it, lately she had. “I’ve been on a diet,” she explained. “Cabbage.”

  Robert Morgan stared down the length of his nose at her. “That’s not healthy.”

  “Neither is being fat, young man.” Her voice smacked like a ruler. By now, the unyielding corset of a schoolteacher’s voice was easy enough for Prissy to slip into.

  “I think you need to see a specialist.”

  “What? Why?”

  “An oncologist. I can give you some names, but you’ll have to travel. There isn’t even one in Hansen.”

  Priscilla scowled. “An oncologist? But that’s for cancer. I just have a little problem with my foot.”

  Robert Morgan shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He paused, giving the news time to sink in, then flipped open his prescription pad and wrote down a name and phone number. “I’d call this guy first. He’s the best, and if you tell him you’re a patient of mine, he’ll fit you in right away.” He tried to hand the paper to Prissy, but her fingers were stiff, and she dropped it. Undeterred, Robert Morgan bent over and retrieved it, making sure she held on to it this time. Every time he broke bad news to a patient, it was the same thing. They dropped the name of the referral or they lost it. Quite often, he had me call the person to make sure he or she followed up. Robert Morgan wouldn’t have that problem with Priscilla Sparrow, though. She was a rule follower through and through, right down to her cancerous bones. Just the kind of patient he liked.

  “If he absolutely can’t fit you in, call me, and I’ll give you the name of someone else,” Robert Morgan said, and swept out of the room.

  I watched Priscilla Sparrow emerge into the afternoon stunned, her face crumpled at its edges like a wad of wrapping paper waiting to be burned, and although it seemed impossible that the two of us would ever share anything in common, I somehow knew just how she felt.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Death is a kind of quilt in itself. We’re all alive in this world together, and we’re also all mortal, but when one person pulls his thread through to the other side, it can start a chain reaction you never in your wildest dreams saw coming. Maybe you’ll be left with nothing more than an unholy knot to unpick. Maybe a new design. Sometimes a whole new perspective on yourself.

  Marcus’s refusal to bring me any of the herbs from the wild border of Tabitha’s quilt began to sting in my craw. “Doesn’t he trust me?” I fumed to myself as I sorted laundry or mixed a pot of mashed potatoes on the stove. “What does he think I’m going to do? Slip them in the doctor’s dinner?” Although to be honest, the thought had occurred to me when I was watching my murder mystery shows on my little TV late at night, the rooms of the house an open conspiracy around me. At that time of night, plans just seem to get darker and rougher around their edges.

  The puzzle of the deadly knots of plants on the quilt began to bother me more and more. I tossed and turned under them when I slept, and during the day, I had a hard time keeping my hands from going round and round in circles over their stems and leaves. It occurred to me that Marcus could probably take one look at the thing and figure it all out, but it seemed wrong somehow to share Tabitha’s secrets with anyone else. All that winter, I fretted and schemed, and when spring burst, my curiosity was so great, it was all I could do to wait for Tabby’s nasty weeds to hurry up and bloom so I could see if my suspicions were right.

  I took a few samples of everything I found on the quilt: hemlock and oleander leaves, nightshade, daffodil bulbs, and foxglove. A little devil’s trumpet and a single castor bean seed. Thorn apple. Once again, I waited for the household to sleep, and then I crept downstairs. The mixture, as I mashed it with a mortar and pestle, turned from a mossy green pulp to an almost black paste. I held up the bowl and took a cautious sniff, expecting foulness, but was pleasantly surprised by how sweet it smelled. So sweet, I thought, it might just do the trick.

  All through the winter, I had pondered how to test Tabitha’s quilt. All joking aside, I knew I couldn’t disguise a mixture of fatal plants in the doctor’s food because I wasn’t sure what such a combination would do: sicken or kill. I thought about setting some out for birds or rabbits, but they would be hard to observe and follow, and we didn’t have any pets. I thought about giving up on the idea, but the maze of vegetation on the quilt maddened me more and more, and then, after one particularly miserable night’s sleep, I came up with a solution.

  I slipped out the kitchen door now, a pair of rubber boots on my feet, the black coat I’d found in the doctor’s attic thrown over my nightgown. There was a half-moon up and a few moth-eaten stars hanging in the sky, as if Aberdeen had gotten the leftovers from a long-dead vaudeville show, but they were enough for me to navigate by, and for that I was glad.

  It took about five minutes for me to walk to Amanda Pickerton’s house, and when I arrived, it took another moment for me to catch my breath outside her gate. All the Pickertons’ lights were turned off, even the porch light, and I pictured Amanda and the reverend tucked upstairs in their antique bed, their pillows angled in the same direction, their blankets pulled up high over their bony hips. I wondered if Serena Jane’s room was still covered in primroses, the vanity ruffled within an inch of its life, or if Amanda
had converted it into a sewing room or an upstairs den, and how she could bear to go in it if she had.

  The gate barely squeaked when I pushed it open, but the noise was enough to rouse the ancient Sentinel from his perch on the porch. If any creature had the secret of life, it was surely Sentinel, for he was nearly as old as I was. In the darkness, his eyes glittered like a younger cat’s, and his outline was once again sleek and dangerous. In the daylight, he had a gray muzzle and bald patches on his rear, but his temperament was ever the same, even if his claws and vision were no longer as sharp. Moving slowly so as not to spook him, I edged closer to the Pickertons’ front steps, pulling the jar of Tabby’s mixture out of my coat pocket as I did so and unscrewing it stealthily.

  To make the concoction more palatable, I’d added some leftover tuna and raw egg. Sentinel’s whiskers twitched, and he let out a hoarse meow. “Good kitty,” I whispered, trying to copy Amanda’s singsong rhythm, and set the jar on the top step.

  Sentinel paused, as if considering whether to attack my ankles or accept the offering, but finally chose the latter. He finished the pulp off in three bites but took an extra moment to lick the inside of the jar clean, his back arched with pleasure. He walked a tight circle around the jar, tail upright, as if it were a kill he’d made all on his own and dragged home. One circle, then two, and then, on the third circuit, he faltered, listing dramatically to the left, a look of cross bewilderment passing over his face. His legs buckled under him, and he meowed once—a punitive, accusing sound— before collapsing, paws twitching.

  Watching him writhe on the porch was both worse and better than I had imagined it would be. It was horrifying, of course, to see his furry stomach lurching and heaving and his chin tucked into his chest, but after it was over, he was beautiful in the silvery light—an object of perfect stillness. I reached over him and plucked the jar back up, putting the cap back on, and tucked it in my pocket again. Then I glanced over my shoulder once or twice. I felt as if I ought to say a little prayer or something, but my mind was empty, and my feet were growing numb from squatting. I heaved myself back up to standing and rearranged my coat around me again, being careful not to touch Sentinel. I made sure to latch the gate and began to walk back to the doctor’s house, keeping in the shadows as best I could, my head ducked low.

  I felt little satisfaction as I skulked home in puddles of darkness. My suspicions about Tabitha’s quilt had been correct, but now I wasn’t sure what to do with that knowledge. I cupped my hand around the empty jar in my pocket and tried not to think about the foam that had collected around Sentinel’s mouth.

  From now on, I imagined, a part of me would always be keeping in the shadows.

  Having been told she was going to die, Priscilla Sparrow wanted nothing more than to get it over with as soon as possible. In her opinion, her entire existence had been narrowed down to the fine art of waiting, and she was frankly a little tired of it. In her teaching career, she had waited for children to return from recess, then she had waited for retirement, and in love she had waited for Dick Crane to leave his wife and claim her, and now she was just waiting for an ending.

  Except that it never arrived. Dr. Morgan’s diagnosis of bone cancer didn’t finish her off, and neither did anyone else’s. For months she woke up skinnier, more wrinkled, pale around the chops, and mad as hell at the world. She visited a series of doctors. The last doctor she’d seen had actually shown up on her doorstep. He was young—barely out of medical school—and he’d sat in her little front room, a cup of tea trembling on his knee, shaking his head over and over again. “Are you sure the diagnosis was correct?” His voice rustled like a reed.

  Priscilla shrugged. “Three different doctors said it was.”

  She knew how the young man felt, for at first she, too, had been dismayed and amazed by Robert Morgan’s news. She had come home and peered at her face in the mirror, running her polished fingertips over and over the plain bones of her cheeks and nose. When she came back to the house to visit Robert Morgan, he scowled at her lab results again and thumped and massaged her, hitting all the sore spots. In the end, he was unable to give her any answers. She certainly wasn’t in remission, but neither was the disease progressing, he said. It was merely idling in her body.

  Prissy sat on the edge of the examining table, her bare feet dangling like a child’s. “So what you’re saying is that this could go on indefinitely?”

  Robert Morgan peered over the tops of his bifocals at her. He had a nasty cold, and he curled his hand into a fist and coughed. For the first time, he felt like one of his own patients. His head ached, and his bones ached, and he just wanted to go lie down. “We’re in uncharted waters here, but yes. It’s highly unusual, however.”

  Prissy shifted her weight. Her sinuses throbbed. Her mouth was always dry. She’d entirely forgone makeup, spectator pumps, and her narrow tweed skirt. She looked Robert Morgan in the eye. “Can things change?”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a doctor. You must know how to hurry things along.”

  Robert Morgan turned down the corners of his mouth. He thought about the mouthwatering temptation of holding the power of life in the pocket of his hand, but, in the end, rules were always rules for the doctor. The body had its own laws, and he was bound to follow them. He sighed. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s totally against medical ethics. I could lose my license.”

  “I see.” Priscilla hung her head.

  “You shouldn’t be thinking in those terms, anyway.” Robert Morgan pulled his glasses off his nose. “You should be staying positive. Try some gentle exercise—swimming, or gardening. Get together with a reading group. Enjoy this time you’ve been given. Also, I can give you the number for hospice.”

  Priscilla blinked at him. The nearest swimming pool was ten miles away, and she didn’t have a car. Her cottage had a garden the size of a postage stamp, and the only people she knew who would be interested in a reading group were the remaining friends of Estelle Crane. For the first time in her life, Prissy could see her days floating in front of her as empty and useless as children’s party balloons. She didn’t know whether to pop them or just let them rise and disappear.

  Priscilla sucked in her gut. “Yes,” she said. “You’re absolutely right. Of course.” She climbed off the table, got dressed, and went home, where she made herself a cup of tea, retrieved a forgotten deck of cards, and dealt herself a winning hand of solitaire. She reached for a tattered notepad and scratched another tick on it, adding the forbearance of sorrow to the paltry list of her life’s accomplishments.

  Everyone has a personal breaking point, and the day Priscilla Sparrow woke up to find her hair falling out in clumps was the day she decided she was fed up. Clusters of hair fanned over her pillow when she lifted up her head, and most of the rest of it came out in the shower, sliding off her scalp like rain off a roof before clogging up the drain.

  Alarmed, Prissy turned off the water and stepped onto the bath mat, bald and wet. When she finally got up the courage to peek in the mirror, she was shocked. Without hair, she finally saw what all of us had been looking at for years and years. Her brows were spindly and uneven. Her mouth was a ragged gash. And her nose—her nose was a pointy beak. Had she always looked like this, Prissy wondered, or was it simply age playing a trick, enchanting her mirror to reflect all her fears and miseries?

  She reached for a tube of lipstick, drew on a smile, then put her hands over her face and wept. Her bones throbbed. The corners of her eyes always felt as if they were filled with sand, and her heart buzzed and banged in her chest like a furious bee. It’s just a matter of time, the doctors all said. Time will take its toll. It was their answer for everything, but they knew about as much as a barrel of chimpanzees. For Prissy, time and pain ruled like two competing queens, the map of her body rolled out between their feet.

  She wound a chiffon scarf around her head, then removed it and tried her winter hat, but it was too warm for a
felt cloche. She knotted on the scarf again and added a brooch—something Dick had given her. A mermaid in gold and pearls with two emerald eyes. She’d pinned it to her lapel the afternoon he’d presented it to her but then had taken it off almost immediately and never worn it again. It was too girlish, she told herself. And secretly, she was afraid Estelle had one exactly the same. It would have been like Dick to buy them identical baubles, then turn hangdog when he got found out. Shoot, he would have said, grinning. It was too pretty to buy just one.

  Forgetting to lock her door, she rounded the corner, relieved to see the doctor’s house looming at the far end of the street. She put her head down and made for it. Come hell or high water, she vowed, this time she wouldn’t be leaving empty-handed.

  When I answered the doctor’s door, I could tell right away that Priscilla Sparrow barely recognized me. I was about three sizes bigger than I’d been on Bobbie’s first day of school, for one thing, and no longer wearing men’s clothes. My hair was bundled up in a bandanna, my feet were bare, and in my eyes there were pinpricks that Prissy had never noticed before. She put a self-conscious hand up to her turban and adjusted the mermaid pin. “Hello, dear,” she said.

  To be fair, I almost didn’t recognize Priscilla Sparrow. Her voice was the only unadulterated thing about her. High and clear, it still rang with authority. She fixed me with her cloudy stare. “May I come in for a moment? I have something to discuss with you.”

  In the front parlor, Priscilla Sparrow perched on the spindled edge of the Victorian sofa and glanced around the room. Almost no one ever came into the main house, and I could tell Prissy was surprised by the austerity of it. Plain wooden planks shone under her feet. The duck-egg walls glowed, and bare windows let in the sunlight.

  Prissy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. If she had been by herself, I thought, she might have been tempted to slip off her orthopedic shoes, stretch her legs on the sofa, and take a nap. Instead, she interlaced her knobby fingers, making a temple out of her hands for luck, knelt as best she could on the waxy floor, and started begging woman to woman.