Dully, she went inside and climbed the stairs to her old room once more, then lay beneath the covers, cold and lonely.
Each night she’d expected Theodore to come to her. She’d lain and imagined him opening the door silently, standing in the shadows and looking at her sleeping form, men kneeling beside the bed to awaken her, press his face to her neck, her breast, her stomach, and say, “I’m sorry, Lin, please come back.”
But this was the eighth day and still he had not come. And he was down in the barn jigging with another woman while his pregnant wife lay in tears. Why, Teddy, why?
She was determined to stay awake until the dance ended and the wagons pulled out of the yard, then watch through the window to see if he came straight to the house. But in the end she fell asleep and heard nothing.
In the morning she awakened as if touched, her eyelids parting like two halves of a sliced melon. Something was wrong. She listened. No sound. Not so much as a tinkle of silverware or the crackle of an expanding stovepipe. Stretching an arm she found her watch on the table. Why wasn’t Nissa up at seven-fifteen? Church would begin in less than two hours.
She heard footsteps on the stairs just as her heels touched the floor. Without wasting time on a wrapper she flung the door wide and met Theodore on the landing, his eyes dark with worry, hair tousled from sleep.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Ma. She’s sick.”
“Sick? You mean from blackberry wine?” Even as she spoke, Linnea was following Theodore down the stairs in her bare feet.
“I don’t think so. It’s chills and congestion.”
“Chills and congestion?” Linnea’s skin prickled as she rushed to keep up with Theodore. At the bottom of the steps she grabbed the shoulder of his underwear, swinging him to an abrupt halt. “Bad congestion?”
His eyes and cheeks appeared gaunt with concern.
“I think so.”
“Is it... ” After one false start she managed to get the dread word past her lips. “... the influenza?”
He found her hand, clutched it hard. “Let’s hope not.”
But that hope was dashed when the doctor was summoned from town. When he left, a yellow and black quarantine sign was tacked on the back door, and Theodore and Linnea were given instructions that neither of them was to enter Nissa’s room without a mask tied over both nose and mouth. The two stared at each other in disbelief. The influenza struck soldiers in the trenches and people in crowded cities, not North Dakota farmers with an endless supply of pure air to breathe. And certainly not old bumblebees like Nissa Westgaard who buzzed between one task and the next so fast it seemed no germ could catch up with her. Not Nissa, who only last night had been tippling wine and dancing the two-step with her boys. Not Nissa, who rarely even contracted a common cold.
But they were wrong.
Before the day was over Nissa’s respiratory system was already filling with fluids. Her breathing became strident and chills racked her body, unmitigated by the quinine water they periodically forced her to drink. Theodore and Linnea watched helplessly as her condition worsened with fearful rapidity. They sponged and fed her, kept her propped up with pillows, and took turns sitting watch. But by the end of the first day it seemed they were fighting a losing battle. They sat at the kitchen table, disconsolately staring at the servings of soup neither of them felt like eating, their hands idle beside their bowls.
Their worried gazes locked and their own differences seemed inconsequential. He covered her hand on the red and white checked oilcloth.
“So fast,” he said throatily.
She turned her hand over and their fingers interlocked. “I know.”
“And there’s nothing we can do.”
“We can keep sponging her and feeding her the quinine. Maybe during the night she’ll take a turn for the better.” But they both suspected it was wishful thinking. The influenza preyed first upon the very old, the very weak, and the very young. Few of them who contracted it survived.
Theodore stared at their joined hands, rubbing his thumb over Linnea’s. “I wish I could get you out of here where you’d be safe.”
“I’m fine. I don’t even have a sniffle.”
“But the baby... ”
“The baby’s fine, too. Now you mustn’t worry about us.”
“You’ve put in a long day. I want you to rest.”
“But so have you.”
“I’m not the pregnant one, now will you do as I say?”
“The dishes... ”
“Leave ‘em. I can see you’re ready to tip off that chair. Now, come on.” He tugged her hand, led her to their bedroom, turned the bed down, sat her on the edge of it, then knelt to remove her shoes. His tender consideration wrenched her heart, and as she looked down at the top of his head it seemed she could scarcely contain her love and concern for him. He had suffered the loss of a beloved brother; his son was off fighting a war; must he now watch his mother die, too?
When her second shoe was off, Theodore held her foot, caressing it while raising his eyes to hers.
“Linnea, about Isabelle—”
She silenced his lips with a loving touch. “It doesn’t matter. I was stupid and childish and jealous, but you’ve got enough on your mind without worrying about that now.”
“But I... ”
“We’ll talk about it later... after Nissa gets well.”
He tucked her in lovingly, securing the quilts beneath her chin, then sitting beside her on the edge of the bed. With hands braced on either side of her head, he leaned above her, studying her face as if in it he found the strength he needed.
“I want to kiss you so bad.” But he couldn’t; not while there was influenza in the house. He could only look at her and rue the past week of idiocy that had kept them alienated, that had made him do foolish things to hurt her when she was the last person in the world he wanted to hurt.
“I know. I want to kiss you, too.”
“I love you so much.”
“I love you, too, and it feels so good to be back in our bed again.”
He smiled, wishing he could crawl in beside her and snuggle tight behind her with his hand cradling their moving child. But Ma was in the next room and she’d been untended long enough.
“Sleep now.”
“Wake me up if there’s any change.”
He nodded, rested a palm on her stomach, turned off the lantern, and left.
Nissa’s lungs filled with fluid and she died on the third day. Before the undertaker’s wagon could come to bear her body away, Linnea’s worst fears were realized: Teddy was stricken with the dread virus. She was left alone to nurse him, to mourn, and to worry, locked in a house with nobody to spell her bedside vigils or comfort her in her grief. Already depleted from three days of little sleep and weighted by despair, she was near exhaustion when a loud banging sounded on the door and Isabelle Lawler’s voice came through. “Mrs. Westgaard, I’m comin’ in!”
Linnea called, “But you can’t, we’re under quarantine.”
The door burst open and the redhead pushed inside. “Makes no difference to a tough old buffalo like me. Now you need help and I’m the one’s gonna give it to you. Lawsy, child, you look like that undertaker should’ve toted you off, too. You had any sleep? You eat?”
“I... ”
The brazen woman didn’t give Linnea time to answer. “Set down there. How’s Ted?”
“He’s... his breaming isn’t too bad yet.”
“Good. I can poke quinine down him just as easy as you can, but you got his young one to take care of and if I let somethin’ happen to it or to you, I’m afraid I’d lose my cookin’ job around here, years to come, so step back, chittlin’.” While she spoke, Isabelle shrugged out of a heavy, masculine jacket. Linnea got up as if to take it.
“Set down, I said! You need a good meal under your belt and I’m just the one to see it gets there. I’m the best durn cook this side of the Black Hills, so don’t give me no sass, sister. You
just tell me what needs doin’ for him, and how often, and if you’re worried about me seein’ him in his altogether, well, I seen him that way before, and you know it, so I ain’t gonna blush like no schoolgirl and cover my eyes. And if you’re thinkin’ I got designs on your man, well, you can put that out of your head, too. What was between us is finished. He ain’t the least bit interested in no loud, sassy moose like me, so where’s the quinine and what would you like to eat?”
Thus the audacious Isabelle dug in for the duration.
She was nothing short of a heaven-sent blessing to Linnea. She mothered and pampered her with continued bumptiousness, and took her turns seeing after Theodore’s needs with equal brashness. She was the most flagrantly bold woman Linnea had ever met, but her very outspokenness often made Linnea laugh, and kept her spirits up. Isabelle blew through the house like a hurricane, her rusty hair ever standing on end, her mannish voice loud even when she whispered. Linnea was utterly grateful to have her there. It was as if she forced the fates to accept her zest for life and to transfer a good bit of it to the ailing Theodore.
When he was at his worst, the two women sat together at his bedside, and oddly enough, Linnea felt totally comfortable, even knowing that in her own way, Isabelle loved Theodore. His breathing was labored and his skin bright with fever.
“Damn man ain’t gonna die,” Isabelle announced, “cause I ain’t gonna let him. He’s got you and the young one to see after and he won’t be shirking his duty.”
“I wish I could be as sure as you.”
Another woman would have reached out a comforting hand. Not Isabelle. Her chin only jutted more stubbornly.
“A man as happy as he is about that baby and his new wife’s got a lot o’ reason to fight.”
“He... he told you he was happy?”
“Told me everything. Told me about your fight, told me the reason you were sleepin’ in the spare room. He was heartsick.”
Linnea dropped her gaze to her lap. “I didn’t think he’d tell you all that.”
Isabelle spread her knees wide, leaned forward, and rested her elbows on them. “We could usually talk, Ted and I.”
Linnea didn’t know what to say. She found herself no longer able to harbor jealousy.
Isabelle went on, her eyes on Theodore while she leaned forward in her masculine pose. “It’s nothin’ you need to worry about, what me and Ted did together. You’re young yet, you got things to learn about human urges. They just got to be satisfied, that’s all. Why, shoot, he never loved me — the word never come up once.” She sat back, reached in her pocket for cigarette makings, and started rolling herself a smoke. “But he’s a kind man, a damn kind man. Don’t think I don’t know it... I mean, a woman like me, why... ” Her words trailed away and she gave a single self-deprecating sniff, studying the cigarette as she sealed the seam, then stroked it smooth. She reached in her apron pocket and found a match, set it aflame with the flick of a blunt thumbnail, and sent fragrant smoke into the room. She leaned back, rested her crossed feet on the edge of the mattress, and puffed away silently, squinting through the smoke. After some time she said, “You’re a damned lucky woman.”
Linnea turned to study Isabelle. Her apron was filthy. Her stomach looked more pregnant than Linnea’s. She held the cigarette between thumb and forefinger like a man would, and her chair was tilted back on two legs. But in the corner of her left eye Linnea thought she detected the glint of a single tear.
Impulsively, she reached and lay a hand on Isabelle’s arm.
The redhead looked down at it, sniffed again, clamped the cigarette between her teeth, patted the hand twice, then reached for the cigarette again.
“You’ll be back next year, won’t you?” the younger woman asked.
“Damn tootin’. I’ll be dyin’ to git a gander at Ted’s young ‘un.”
On the seventh day they knew that Theodore would live.
26
THE VERY OLD, the very weak, the very young. Indeed, the Spanish influenza preyed first upon these, and it chose from the Westgaard family one of each. Of the very old it took Nissa. Of the very weak, Tony. And of the very young, Roseanne. Nissa died never knowing her grandchildren, too, had fallen ill.
It was a mercurial disease, indiscriminately ravaging home after home on the Dakota prairie, while leaving others totally untouched. There seemed no rhyme nor reason as to whom it took, whom it left. Its very unpredictability made it the more deadly. But as if Providence had better things in mind for Theodore and Linnea Westgaard, Theodore pulled through with nothing longer lasting than a ten-pound weight loss, and Linnea was untouched.
On the morning Theodore awakened clear-eyed and clearheaded, she was there alone beside the bed, asleep in a chair, looking as if she’d fought the war single-handedly. He opened his eyes and saw her — slumped, breathing evenly, hands folded over her high-mounded stomach. Linnea, he tried to say, but his mouth was so dry. He touched his forehead; it felt scaly. He touched his hair, it felt oily. He touched his cheek; it felt raspy. He wondered what day it was. Ma was dead, wasn’t she? Oh, and Kristian — was there any news of him? And what about the wheat... the milking... Linnea...
He rolled to one side and touched her knee. Her eyes flew open.
“Teddy! You’re awake!” She tested his forehead then gripped his hand. “You made it.”
“Ma... “he croaked.
“They buried her over a week ago.” She brought a cup to his lips and he drank gratefully, then fell back weakly.
“What day is it?”
“Thursday. You’ve been sick for two weeks.”
Two weeks. He’d lain here two weeks while she looked after him. She and Isabelle. He had a vague recollection of Isabelle tending him, too, but how could that be?
“Are you all right?”
“Me, oh I’m fine. I’ve come through unscathed. Now no more questions until I get you something to eat and you feel stronger.”
She would brook no more talking until she’d brought him strong beef broth and, after he’d drunk it, washed his face and helped him shave. She herself had found time to change her dress and comb her hair, but even so, he could see on her face the effects of her long vigil. When she was bustling about, cleaning up the room, he made her sit down beside the bed and rest for a minute.
“Your eyes look like bruises.”
“I lost a little sleep, that’s all. But I had good help.” She glanced at her lap and toyed with the edge of her apron.
“Isabelle?” he asked.
“Yes. Do you remember?”
“Some.”
“She refused to obey the quarantine sign. She came in and stayed for nine days and took care of both of us.”
“And she didn’t get it either?”
Linnea shook her head. “She’s some woman, Teddy.” Her voice softened as her gaze met her husband’s. “She loves you very much, you know.”
“Aww... ”
“She does. She risked her own life to come in here and take care of you, and of me because she knew it would hurt you if anything happened to either me or the baby. We owe her a lot.”
He didn’t know what to say. “Where is she now?”
“Out in the cook wagon, sleeping.”
“What about the wheat?”
“The wheat is all done. The threshing crew kept right on working.”
“And the milking?”
“They took care of that, too. Now you’re not to worry about a thing. Cope says he’ll stay on until you’re strong enough to take over again.”
“Has there been any news from Kristian?”
“A letter came two days ago and Orlin read it from the end of the driveway.” Orlin was their mail carrier. “Kristian said he hadn’t seen the front yet, and he was just fine.”
“How long ago did he write the letter?”
“More than three weeks.”
Three weeks, they both thought. So many shells were fired in three weeks. She wished there were a way to reassure T
heodore, but what could she say? He looked gaunt and pale and inutterably sapped. She hated to be the one to add new lines of despair to his face, but there was no escaping it. She leaned both elbows on the bed, took his hand in both of hers, turning the loose-fitting wedding ring around and around his finger.
“Teddy, there’s more bad news, I’m afraid. The influenza... ” How difficult it was to say the words. She saw the faces of those blessed children she’d come to love so much. Such innocents, taken before their time.
“Who?” Theodore asked simply.
“Roseanne and Tony.”
His hand gripped hers and his eyes closed. “Oh, dear God.”
There was nothing she could say. She herself ached, remembering Roseanne’s lisp, Tony’s thin shoulders.
Still with his eyes closed, Theodore drew Linnea down atop the coverlets. She lay beside him and he held her, drew strength from her.
“But they were so young. They hadn’t even lived yet,” he railed uselessly.
“I know... I know.”
“And Ma... ” Linnea felt him swallow against the crown of her head. “She was such a good woman. And sometimes, when she’d... when she’d get bossy and order me around I’d wish to myself that she wasn’t here. But I never meant I w... wanted her to die.”
“You mustn’t feel guilty about thoughts that were only human. You were good to her, Teddy, you gave her a home. She knew you loved her.”
“But she was such a good old soul.”
So were they all, Linnea thought, holding him close. John, Nissa, the children. They’d lost so many... so many: Lord, keep Kristian safe.
“Oh, Teddy,” she whispered against his chest, “I thought I was going to lose you, too.”
He swallowed thickly. “And I thought the same thing about you and the baby. At times I’d wish I could die real quick, before you got it, too. Then other times, I’d come to and see you sitting there beside the bed and know I just had to live.”