The Moon by Night (22 page)

“Mm, I left some, didn't I?” she said, pulling herself with effort into a sitting position. “You brought my medicine? Thank heavens, how I need it. Give it to me, Marcus.”

His eyes narrowed as he poured the last dregs out of the brandy decanter into a cut-glass tumbler. The bar set was one of the few nice things they had left. With slow deliberation he turned, swirling the amber liquid with relish. His lip curling, he taunted her, “Why can't you get it yourself, my dear? Just can't quite get across the room these days?”

Her head drooped. Almost inaudibly she answered, “I did fall yesterday, Marcus. You should see the big black bruises on my hip.”

“I don't think so,” he said sardonically, taking a sip.

A very small sniffle came from Manon's bowed head. “I-I'm just so weak and dizzy. Every day now, it seems.”

“Take your medicine,” he said brusquely, “and stop drinking all my brandy.” He got his medical bag and walked to a small side table by Manon's recamier. It was littered with a tumbler, still half full of brandy and water, soiled handkerchiefs, crumbs of chocolates, a half-empty bottle of toilet water, a cheap romance novel, and Manon's reading glasses, small rectangles that sat on the end of her nose.

As Marcus pulled out four large brown bottles and one small clear one filled with a thick green liquid and found places for them on the table, he suddenly wondered how old Manon really was.

They had met almost five years ago, when she was the toast of Paris as the prima donna in Beethoven's opera
Fidelio
. He was an eager, passionate, fervent medical student of nineteen then, he recalled with bitterness, and Manon had told him she was twenty-two. She hadn't even looked that old, with her bright dark eyes and glossy black curls and slim, lithe figure. She looked, in fact, like a slender teenaged boy, without the awkwardness, which was why she had such extraordinary success in operas where she played a woman disguised as a man. Her slim, athletic body and rich mezzo soprano voice had enchanted Marcus from the first moment he had seen her.

And now,
he thought acidly,
just look at her. She looks like she's fifty years old—the wife of some coarse Cornish fisherman—

A baby's wail came from upstairs. It began as a low cry, then went up in volume and pitch until it was a high shriek. Marcus banged the last bottle down irritably. “Manon, go do something with her,” he snapped.

With elaborate nonchalance Manon picked up one of the brown bottles and started working the cork. “She's been crying like that off and on all day, Marcus. Perhaps something is wrong with her, yes? You should go see.” Her fat fingers worked and grew more frantic. Finally Marcus grabbed it out of her hands, pulled the cork, and handed it back. Her hands trembled with anticipation. Abandoning her attitude of carelessness, she took the bottle and turned it up, closing her eyes with relief.

“Not so much so fast,” he said irritably. As the baby's cries continued, Marcus turned on his heel, marched up two more flights of stairs to the second chamber floor, and threw open the nursery door.

A small waif of a girl with wispy no-color hair and enormous brown eyes looked up at him with alarm. She sat on the floor by a cradle that held a tiny baby with thick black hair. When Marcus came into the room the girl scrambled to her feet and curtsied nervously, her eyes downcast. She was wearing a dress that had once been blue but was now a dull gray, with a yellowed and stained pinafore. Her stockings were laddered, and she wore no shoes. For a moment, as Marcus looked at his stepdaughter, he saw her as an impartial observer would see her: a thin, sickly-looking girl of six with dirty hair and old tattered clothes. Her neck looked too thin for her head, which seemed much too large for her body. For a fleeting moment it occurred to Marcus that this was a sign of undernourishment in children, but his irritation at the shrieking baby pushed all other thoughts.

“B-bonsoir, monsieur,”
she stammered. Of course Solange spoke no English either.

The room stank. With narrowed eyes Marcus looked around at the bare wooden floor, the mean grate with barely a coal ember, the bed with one sheet and one coverlet, the two dolls and one monkey made out of rags that were the only toys in the nursery. It was dark, for only a single candle burned. Dimly Marcus saw a pile of diapers and rags in the corner and identified the stench.

With a guttural rumble of disgust, he went down on one knee and scooped the wailing child out of the cradle. She was soaked and soiled, and the cradle's bedding had been dirtied. He turned on Solange, and she flinched. “Has your mother been up here even once to see to this child today?” he thundered.

Solange's tiny hands, like a bird's claws, twisted in front of her filthy pinafore. “She…she isn't well, sir. She's too sick to come all the way up the stairs.”

“She's too fat and lazy to come all the way up the stairs,” he snapped. “Very well. Is there a clean diaper in this house?”

“I…I…” Solange half-whispered, her eyes darting around the room.

“Never mind,” he rasped, striding to the small half-bed and laying the child down on it. Gasping, half-retching, he stripped the baby of her long gown and dripping diaper. Her delicate skin was red and irritated, though she didn't have a rash or sores—yet. Grabbing the pillow, he stripped off the cotton pillowslip and wrapped the baby in it. Thrusting the baby brusquely into Solange's arms, he ordered, “Take Lisette downstairs. If your mother won't come up here and take care of her, then you two can just move into the parlor.”

Solange hurried out the door, holding Lisette in a desperate grip against her thin chest. She was afraid going down the stairs, for the stairwell was almost totally dark. Also, though Lisette was only eight months old and small too, she was much too heavy for Solange to be able to carry her with only one arm, so Solange couldn't hold on to the railing. Finally, hearing Marcus stamping and cursing in the nursery behind her, she tightened her hold of the baby and leaned heavily against the wall as she picked her way downstairs. She stopped at the parlor's open door, looking at her mother in the half gloom with hesitation. Lisette was still wailing.

Manon was staring blankly out the front window, her mouth slightly open, her eyes heavy lidded. Slowly, with a slight wobble, her head swiveled toward the door. “Solange? No, no, darling, take the baby back up to the nursery. I cannot bear her crying.”

“Dr. Pettijohn told me to bring her down here,” Solange said tentatively. With an effort she shifted the baby in her skinny arms.

“Oh, my head, my poor head,” Manon whimpered, pressing her fingers to her temples.

“It'll be all right,
Maman
. I'll try to stop her crying,” Solange said, hurrying to an armchair by the fireplace. Awkwardly she climbed up in it, holding the baby, and with relief laid Lisette across her lap. Already the pillowslip was wet, and the baby was cold. Solange pulled her pinafore across the baby and took both the tiny waving hands in her own. “It's all right, baby,” she whispered. “It's all right, baby. Don't cry…don't cry…” She began to hum in a whispering half breath, rocking slightly, very slowly, in time with the music.

Even through her drugged haze, Manon recognized the song her daughter was humming. “That's from
Serse,
” she said dreamily. “I sang Amastre. On opening night at the Imperial Opera House in Toulon, they gave me so many flowers that my dressing room couldn't hold them all…. There were flowers in the hallway, flowers backstage, flowers in every dressing room, flowers strewn all the way out the stage door to the street….” Leaning back and closing her eyes she began to sing softly:
“Ombra mai fù…”

The aria was from Handel's opera
Serse,
or Xerxes, King of Persia. It was the opening of the opera, a very famous passage, coming to be known simply as Handel's
Largo
. It was a slow, quiet song, and though it hardly seemed suited for a baby's lullaby, Lisette's blue eyes focused on Solange's face, and her wails quieted to soft little half whimpers.

Marcus stormed into the parlor and said mockingly, “How lovely, my dear. How amusing to hear you sing. But Lisette needs your attention, not your singing. She is filthy and hungry and wet, and she stinks. I haven't found a single clean diaper, much less a dress, for her in this whole accursed house.”

Viciously he flung his armload of ragged cloths onto Manon's lap. It was Solange's bedclothes and the old muslin curtains from the nursery window. “I'm going out to get her some formula, since you are no longer any kind of a mother to feed her. By the time I get back, I want her to be washed and dressed in a clean diaper and dress. If she is not—” He lowered his head and glared at Manon with such vitriol that she shuddered.

Turning on his heel, he stamped down the stairs, his footsteps hard and loud. The heavy front door slammed shut with a crash that shook the house. Lisette jerked and began to cry again.

Manon buried her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook with sobs. Helplessly Solange watched, still rocking automatically back and forth, trying to soothe the baby.

“Ohh, what am I to do? Whatever am I to do?” Manon moaned. Then suddenly she jerked upright and grabbed one of the brown bottles Marcus had brought, knocking over her tumbler of brandy and breaking her reading glasses. With desperate haste she yanked out the cork and turned the bottle up. The heavy liquid made two loud gurgling noises as she drank.

Manon wiped her mouth with a slow, careful movement. Then moving as if she were encased in thick molasses, she reached out the bottle toward the table. She weaved back and forth slightly, and the bottle wavered over the small table. With an extreme effort of concentration, Manon finally managed to set it down. Her eyes were almost closed, her mouth open, the jaw loose. A small dribble of spittle traced down her chin and dripped onto her breast.

“Oh, Maman, Maman,” Solange whispered helplessly.

Manon didn't hear her. Her head wobbling on her fat-folded neck, she fell back onto the recamier in an awkward half-sitting, half-lying position, oblivious. With a drunken wobble she turned her head again to stare out the window. It was dead dark, and there was nothing there to see, but Manon kept staring out at the dark glass and the blackness behind it.

With a tragic sigh much too deep for such a young child, Solange knelt down on the small woolen rug in front of the coal grate and laid Lisette down. Then she went to her mother and lifted her foot—one of them was still sprawled down on the floor—and placed it carefully on the recamier. Manon didn't move or look up. Solange took the tail of her pinafore and wiped her mother's chin, then picked up the bundle of cloths that were strewn around. She folded the curtains, sneezing because they were so old that the dust puffed out from them as she handled them. Then she smoothed them as best she could and laid them across Lisette, who was crying, softly now, from exhaustion. With one last worried look she dashed from the room and down the stairs.

It was ink black on the ground floor, and Solange groped down the hallway to the kitchen, her eyes darting back and forth in fear. In the kitchen she saw only vague outlines, odd shapes looming out of the dark, throwing shadows onto the walls that she could only see out of the corners of her eyes. With desperate haste she grabbed the milk pitcher from the worktable. It was empty, she knew, because she had soaked a rag in the last drops of milk that morning for Lisette to suck on. She set it in the sink, standing on tiptoe. Then, with a half jump, she grabbed the pump handle and started cranking. It made an awful creak that sounded like horrible shrieks, and Solange whispered fearfully to herself, “Hurry, hurry, please hurry.” The pump finally caught, the handle became hard to pull, and a trickle of water came out. Solange pumped until the pitcher overflowed, then ran water for a while to rinse it out clean. Finally she grabbed it and started back upstairs to the parlor, feeling her way with the desperate haste that children have when they flee the night terrors.

The water was icy, and Lisette cried pitifully the whole time Solange bathed her. Manon never moved.

Hurriedly Solange used a bathing flannel—the last clean one—as a diaper for Lisette and wrapped her as best she could in her own bed sheet. Then she climbed back up into the chair and by the dying embers watched the slow, deep rise and fall of her mother's chest and waited for her stepfather's return.

Thy word is true from the beginning:

and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.

Psalm 119:160

“Psorists and Scorists, Hydropathists, Iatromechanists, Iatrochemists, Magnetizers, Galenists, Modern Paracelsian Homunculi, Humoral Pathologists, Schoenleinian Epigones, Broussaisists, Contrastimulists—just look at this!” Cheney fumed.

“Okay,” said Shiloh uncertainly, lowering his newspaper. He had finished his lunch—a thick roast beef and cheddar cheese sandwich—and was sitting companionably with Cheney as she finished her breakfast, though it was just past noon.

“I didn't mean
look
at this,” Cheney amended, although she pointed to one of her magazines with a triangular piece of toast that dribbled butter all over a page that had Cheney's messy handwriting in the margin. “I meant
listen
to it.”

“Okay.”

“I started just jotting down some of the medical advertisers in the newspapers and in my ladies' magazines. This makes—let me see—thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight! Just today!”

“Thirty-eight what, Doc?” Shiloh asked patiently.

“If I were polite, I'd call them thirty-eight schools of thought, but since I'm not, I call them thirty-eight quacks,” Cheney answered indignantly. “I mean, can you imagine sending someone like Mr. Jack to an iatromechanist for his rheumatism?”