“That settee has lumps in it, Mama,” Gracie noted. “Unless you’re little. Douglas’s feet will hang over the end.”
“Like a sleepy scarecrow.” JoJo offered floppy arms and the girls giggled.
Lizzie followed and took her daughters to the table where Chen already had their barley bowls steaming. Barley. Also good for stomach pain. Jennie took a deep breath and headed into the parlor.
Douglas wasn’t there. Her knitting basket sat undisturbed. Van slept beside it. The quilt was folded, neatly left on the settee, the only evidence he’d been there at all. Should she look for him? She checked the watch pinned to her bodice. Try to track him down? Or make my class? What would a good mother do?
She chose the class. Forever after she would wonder, was she selfish? Had the barnacles of motherhood been worn smooth, reshaped who she was? Did repeated bouts of alcohol affect those who did not imbibe but who stood in the vortex of the addicted person’s swirl? But that, too, was a part of who she was: the worrier fighting off the fiend, the person who struggles leaving “this is over” behind, reworking it like a cow chewing her cud.
She presented her memorized paper, adding on the spot that additional exploration was needed on how a bystander’s life might well be changed by repeated exposure to a loved one’s drinking. “Alcohol Consumption Repercussions” is what she named it. Her original title, “The Bystander Brain,” seemed too light for the weight of this subject. She recalled her wedding dance and Charles’s fall. Maybe the changes in who he became started with that moment and the alcohol was simply his way of treating a longstanding pain. That didn’t change its impact on their family.
Callie came up after she finished, whispered in her ear, “You look terrible but that was fabulous.”
“Quite inventive a theory,” one of the male students said. “A bystander brain. I suspect you’ll receive a high score for it, though how one can apply it in practice I fail to see.”
She allowed him to “fail to see,” too fatigued to explain that she sometimes questioned her own saneness in trying to affect the behavior of an addict.
After the class, Jennie told Callie about Douglas’s visit as the women walked to Willamette’s secondary section. Jennie asked for an appointment with the dean. She was granted immediate entrance. How she wished Josiah was with her, but she was a grown-up now. She wouldn’t always have Josiah with her to help fight her battles.
“Do you want me to stay? I will,” Callie offered.
“No. You go home to Lorena. I’ll be all right.”
Callie hugged her, and Jennie was ushered in, sweet tea served. “I understand there is an issue with my son, Douglas Pickett.”
“An issue?” the dean said. “Several.”
“Why am I just now learning of them? And through my son.”
“We try to handle problems in-house.” He handed her a copy of the letter he said had been sent out the day before. “It’s his drinking that is the primary issue. We’ve had demerits. We’ve punished him with refusal to allow him to participate in desired experiences such as climbing Mt. Hood this summer. We’ve put him on kitchen duty for more than a week. Nothing. We’ve tried rewards for his attendance, for remaining sober. We’ve gone further than with any other student because of his—well, your husband’s position here. He’s the last remaining trustee who began this institute, saved it from financial ruin. That’s worth something, we all felt.”
Her face burned with the humiliation of so many people knowing of Douglas’s behavior and that even Josiah’s reputation had not been enough.
“Is the expulsion permanent?”
“Yes. His cheating was the final stroke. He broke into the office where the tests were kept, took one, and of course managed an excellent score, even though he had shown little accomplishment in the course throughout the term.”
“Could you tell me of his friends?” Shame accompanied her having to ask about who her son spent time with. She should have known. Or was that fiend rising up again?
“They aren’t students here. People he’s met elsewhere. Not the best crowd, I’m afraid. I don’t really know their names.”
“His father was here, I understand?”
“We asked him to leave. He was . . . under the influence.”
But coherent enough to tell his son that he had asked for him to live with him and that his mother had refused.
She walked to Ariyah’s, thinking he might have gone there. She was his auntie.
“He’ll return. He knows a good thing, Jennie. He’s probably embarrassed. Didn’t you say that was part of the pattern people told you of: shame, remorse, renewed effort?”
“Until the next craving. Maybe he’s at my parents’.”
“Go home. You look exhausted yourself. Get some rest if you can.”
“All my efforts of study, my whole idea of becoming a doctor, was to help him.” Is that true? “And I’ve failed even as I get a sterling grade for my paper. What’s the point?”
“The point is that you are pursuing what you believe to be the best path toward loving your son and your fellow man. And woman. There aren’t any promises that all will be well, but what’s the alternative? God’s timing, remember.”
“Douglas mocked me with that phrase last night.”
“He’s hurting and you may not be able to relieve that, Jennie. Shakespeare said to ‘Give sorrow words; The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.’ He has to find his own words.”
She heard the sound before she realized what it was. Someone chopping wood. Jennie rushed to the shed, hoping Josiah had returned. But it was Douglas there, sweat beaded on his bare chest, his brown curls wet, his hand on the axe.
“Douglas?”
He put the axe down. “I’m so sorry, Mother. I am.”
“I know you are.” He looked as vulnerable as a newborn lamb, his head hung down, breathing hard from the exertion. She opened her arms to him and he let her hold him, sobbing.
“I’m such a disappointment to everyone, to myself.”
“Shh, shh. We are all disappointments to ourselves. But we are loved nonetheless.”
“What will I do?”
“You’ll come here. Be tutored. Or work on one of Josiah’s projects. You’ll grow and change, like we all do. We’ll keep praying.”
“Why would God listen to someone who keeps doing the same hateful things?”
“Oh, Douglas, God knows we’re frail and needy and loves us anyway.”
Jennie vowed to be the example of such love.
37
Through the Rapids
Josiah arrived home the following week. He looked tanned and younger than when he’d left. There is something about discovering your passion and being allowed to pursue it that is invigorating. At least that was how it affected her husband. He scooped her into his arms and said, “I missed you so, Jennie, my girl.” He rubbed his whiskers across her cheeks and she giggled like her daughters. He set her down, looked up and saw Douglas. He reached his hand out to shake Douglas’s. “Doug, how’s your summer been?”
“Good. I, uh, Mother’ll fill you in about things. I repaired the back fence. Under Tom’s direction. And we harvested the wheat.”
“Good, good. Tom needs good help. I hope it didn’t take you away from your studies.”
“We can speak of that later, husband. You must be exhausted. Douglas, will you take care of Josiah’s horse for him and then come join us?”
It was October and leaves fell, a colorful rainbow marking the paths. Douglas led the horse away, and Josiah and Jennie entered the house.
“I’ll get the girls shortly. They’ll be so happy to see you. As am I!”
“So what is it Douglas referred to that you’ll fill me in about?” He set the saddlebags down.
Jennie began the latest saga and told him how she’d chosen to attend the class rather than seek Douglas and even mentioned her theory of consumption repercussions. “We all act crazy at
times trying to figure out what to do to help the addicted person. I mean, it isn’t normal to lock up cooking sherry or in my case laudanum when they’re on the top shelves well out of reach of children. But that’s what we do and deride ourselves because we think it’s our fault, that we prompted another person to choose that behavior. But I think now more than ever that it isn’t even a choice for them.” She called to Chen to bring in coffee for Mr. Parrish, then continued. “We don’t choose an infection or a cancer. Oh, maybe there are things we do that expose us to the problem—not cleaning that wound so it gets infected. But what about a cancer? And what about an addiction? I think some of us are prone to it and some not.”
“We are fearfully and wonderfully made.” He motioned for her to sit beside him on the lumpy settee. His words reminded her of what she’d witnessed while he was gone that had given her such joy.
“There was an emergency Caesarean, and oh, Josiah, it was . . . divine.” Her eyes started to tear. “To know that life was plucked from death with both mother and child surviving is to see the hand of God.” She was quiet, then, “I want to do surgical work in Portland after I graduate. If you approve. With Douglas no longer at Willamette, maybe we should all move to Portland.”
“Doug’s not at Willamette?”
“It’s a long story. Too many demerits, drinking, cheating. Not spinning.” She recalled that physics teacher’s observation. “And we need to talk about what to do when he drinks again, which I believe he will. Like his father, I don’t think he can help it. He doesn’t know how to spin.”
“A man goes away for four months and the world shifts.”
“The world shifts whether a man goes away or not. But it’s so much easier to manage the wobble when there’s a good woman by his side.”
“Indeed,” he said and kissed her soundly.
Douglas remained with them until he didn’t, one day leaving a note saying he was going to live with his father. Jennie did not attempt to change his mind.
Graduation, July 29, 1879, was a day of celebration. Six men and the three friends received diplomas and permission to call themselves “doctors.” Almost everyone came. Her parents, brothers, Lucinda, and Joseph attended. Lucinda looked thin and pale, but she brushed Jennie’s observation off. “Working too hard is all.” Nellie and Mary arrived, wearing wide-brimmed hats with pins nearly a foot long. “Nellie’s working at Millie’s Millinery.” Jennie hadn’t known, her world taken up with her family and studies and not much with her nieces. “We’re so proud of you, Jennie. We surely are,” Lucinda said. “It’s like we’re a tiny part of it getting to watch someone fulfill a childhood dream.”
Josiah’s family attended, except for Charles Winn as they resided several days away, or so Jennie told herself. Ariyah and Alex and even her parents fanned themselves in the pews of the Taylor Street Methodist Episcopal Church, where the commencement was held. They had all contributed to this day. Lizzie sat between the girls in the row with Josiah. Even Tom Winston, the farm manager, and his wife attended, on her lap a basket of bread so fresh Jennie could smell it several pews behind the graduates.
Dr. Cusick ushered in his wife and daughter, Ethel. Callie’s Lenora sat with Esther’s family, and they would later sip sarsaparilla and savor sweets at their parties.
At the reception, her brothers “the twins” brought gifts for her and the girls too. “You shouldn’t be the only one getting raves,” DW told her, and the girls squealed in delight with their new lockets as Jennie fingered a hat with a yellow ribbon. Such good brothers she had.
And Douglas appeared, late and saying he wasn’t drunk but under the influence. Josiah walked him away, called a carriage, and sent him back to his father’s. Jennie didn’t know any of that had transpired until later. She thought he hadn’t come at all. But she determined not to allow his lack of presence to mar the joy of this day so long hoped for.
Van’s death marred her packing, but she supposed their grief over the little dog set the tone for a melancholy she fought against. One morning he was running about slower than usual and the next day he didn’t wake up. They held a funeral for him in the garden, Gracie sobbing and JoJo’s realistic words bringing a smile to Jennie’s lips. “We all have to go sometime.” Yes, they did.
Jennie knew her sadness over Van mingled with the impending separation and her departure for a year. Josiah was very supportive and a part of Jennie wished he had said she couldn’t go. But he would never do that, and Jennie knew she would have defied him if he had. She needed this special instruction in surgeries, and New York was the best place to get it. Josiah had been approached by a group of Portland men thinking of starting a homeopathic college. Why they didn’t ask a woman doctor didn’t surprise her; that Josiah agreed, did. “It’ll be something to occupy my time while you’re gone. Now that Willamette Medical has moved to Portland, a homeopathic college might offer a solid alternative, if not competition.”
“You’re much more political than I thought.”
He grinned. “Was I not present at the Champoeg vote choosing our territory to be American over the British? Politics must be in my blood.”
She left immediately after graduation for New York. She wanted at least one term focused solely on surgery. Josiah and Jennie had agreed to place the girls in Willamette’s elementary boarding school for the fall term. She didn’t say it out loud, but she wanted to keep them away from Douglas for fear of his bingeing and them having to see their brother that way. She doubted he’d appear at Willamette, but he might show up at the house.
She boarded the ship to San Francisco, then caught the train across the continent to Chicago and on to New York. That Jennie Lichtenthaler Parrish had the courage to travel and be so far from home, on her own, amazed her. How far she’d come from the timid child afraid to stand in front of a class because she could not read.
The bustle of the city with its omnibus and cable cars mingling many bodies going from here to there surprised her. But so did the degree of sickness and poverty she saw in the women’s clinics. They talked of difficult pregnancies, their aches and pains soaked in the stories of drink and abuse. “I don’t know why I stay, Doctor,” they lamented and yet were too frightened of what would happen if they left. Jennie followed up on surgeries, walking past community houses teaching English to new immigrants, and climbed the steps, dipping past fresh clothes drying in the smoke of factories making fabric.
But she took pleasures too. One weekend while summer lingered, she rode the train to Philadelphia to see firsthand Dentzel’s “flying horses,” the carousel she’d read about, a steam engine in the middle pushing the horses around while a band played off to the side. She even rode on it beside the children, wishing Gracie and JoJo were there to share the joy.
Several of her instructors were women who also had private practices. They were more open about the trials of doctoring alone in a city. “You’ll be businessmen,” one told the men and women. “And have all the trials of that—collections, hiring and firing, renting space. Find someone who can help you with that so you can care about your patients.”
A supervising physician complimented Jennie, a rarity. “You’re good with the women and children. They don’t flinch when you tell them about a tonsillectomy or discuss a terminal illness like cancer. You were excellent. They trust you.”
“I suppose I can relate to what they tell me.”
He frowned.
“No, I haven’t had a cancer, but I’m not only Dr. Parrish, wife of a prominent Oregonian, mother of three. I’m also Jennie, divorced wife of an alcoholic and mother of one as well. For a great number of these women, their troubles began with their family member’s decline. Perhaps they trust that I’ve walked where they walked.”
“Empathy and not just sympathy.” He grunted. “You’ll need to distance yourself, however, or you’ll take on their pains.”
“Perhaps. But wouldn’t it be better to take on a wound rather than let the patient feel they were abandoned by a
too-distant physician?”
He didn’t reply.
And so she wore the gown and put on the mask and assisted with a Caesarean surgery, the thrill of doing greater than watching. At another delivery, the umbilical cord had wrapped around the child’s throat but the newborn lived. Baby Ariyah was in her heart more that day. She helped repair a botched abortion; assisted when a clumsy surgeon removed an ovarian cyst and the woman nearly bled to death. Knives could heal and then might not. It was an art as much as a science. With her instructor’s guidance, she completed a sterilization of a woman already mothering eleven children and she was Jennie’s age, thirty-six.
Christmas came and went. She visited the community center in the tenement and helped serve a meal, her hands so busy dishing out the potatoes she barely had time to look each person in the eye as they said “thank you.” She’d remain until the following summer, completing a rotation at the asylum in New York while Josiah looked for an apartment in Portland so she could begin doctoring close to a hospital.
And then the carousel stopped.
The telegram read:
LUCINDA PASSED. STOP. SLOAN DEVASTATED. STOP. COME HOME. STOP. LOVE, J.
Life hands out wounds that need healing whether one is ready or not. Jennie missed Lucinda’s funeral, taking several days to return after receiving the news. And once she arrived, family needed her. Lucinda’s girls, her parents, Sloan. Jennie had noticed Lucinda’s paleness at the graduation but had not pursued it. It was cancer, she was told. Jennie took little time for her own grief. She was the healer who must grow new flesh.
Not having Lucinda to share the opening of her practice in Portland proved to be a new sadness, another “missing” of her sisters. But between Samuel, Josiah’s policeman son, and Jennie’s policeman brother Fergus, Josiah had learned of an empty apartment at Fourth and Harrison, number 403. Police officers often knew of empty places.
Josiah, Jennie, and a weeping Nellie took a carriage to the apartment where they’d all be staying. Lizzie had remained in Salem to tend the house there; Chen was with them, stir-frying venison at that moment.