Poughkeepsie - Short Story by Tina Hudak

 

Poughkeepsie

Short Story

by Tina Hudak

This wet, cold November morning in Philadelphia found Grace standing on the dirty platform at the train station at 11:05 waiting for the inbound 11:20 from Baltimore.  Phyllida, a friend from her Vassar days, was visiting, and if Grace was honest, she was nervous.  Despite their friendship in Poughkeepsie, they had not kept in touch the year after graduation in 1915.  “It’s the war,” she told herself, to assuage her guilt.  Phyllida had been a brick during the times Grace thought she would not make it through Vassar.  Enrolled she found that she was smart enough, but not from the proper background – teas, evenings in formal dress, and wearing gloves, always gloves.  It showed in every possible way, especially in the early underclassmen years.  But with her friend’s support and impromptu lessons in decorum, by graduation no one would have ever guessed that her mother was a maid, and her father a drunk. Standing in the fog, grinding in the platform dirt under her heels, she pulled down on her favorite hat as far as it would go for warmth or perhaps, security. This birthday gift from Phyllida was purchased at the famous Gimbel’s Department Store in New York.  Wrapping her worn, woolen coat tightly about herself, she let her thoughts drift to the past.  Thinking kept her from feeling; it kept the damp weather at bay. From a wealthy Main Line family, Phyllida McGhuire was the most practical and optimistic person she had ever met.  Her insistence on becoming a concert pianist had put her at great odds with her family.  Status through marriage is what they had wanted for their only daughter.  Grace, always ready with a smile and offer to help, was shy and insecure. Grace had taken to this remarkable girl immediately, her opposite in every way. With their lives as roommates, their fondness of one another had deepened into a true friendship. For the first time, Grace found herself confiding in someone about her home life. Now, Grace was only too happy to stand and wait; Phyllida had spent the past year abroad studying music from Vienna to Rome, while Grace moved to Philadelphia for training as a nurse in the Children’s Hospital. Recently Grace was approached by an administrator at Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania about enrolling in the medical school. Her name had come to the attention of the college through her steadfast work with the wounded soldiers at the Pennsylvania Hospital. At first glance, the staff thought she lacked the stamina for the physical hard work.  Despite her slight frame and pale skin, she possessed a fierce determination when confronted with any challenge – physical or otherwise.  Pulling upon every ounce of self-possession she learned at Vassar, and looking at her detractors with those coal-black eyes, she was immediately reassessed by the staff and accepted.  And hard it was – she was tired, all the time.  There was little sleep and less food along with the constant needs of the patients… always needing her touch, her voice, or just her presence.  Now it was she who needed help, to hear Phyllida’s good sense, as childhood self-doubts began to resurface.  These war years had changed everyone. While she was never a child with a light step or quick smile, she had kept hope. Showing little emotion had been the façade that kept her safe: from her father’s physical anger, from his verbal abuse, from her mother’s embrace of her suffering. But, neither had killed hope. It was the open window in her tiny room that kindled this. The birds cooing on the windowsill, nests, tucked under the broken-wood moldings and brick, offered the solace of angels’ voices. She was never one for self-pity; she worked hard, instead. She knew life was unfair. She held no grudges. The children who lost their fathers, the wounded who came to visit their children, the ones who would never recover, were now a daily part of her life at hospital. She did what she could, but she knew it was never enough. Not at home; not here. She continued to work. As her thoughts floated back to the boyish face of Cronan Molony, a tentative smile slowly spread across her face.  It was the hair. Despite his dark, sallow looks, the unruly shocks of chestnut hair sticking out in every direction had almost made her laugh, until her eyes looked beyond this.  A body lying there as still as stone, wrapped in crisp, sterile sheets on the white iron bed had jolted her back into reality. Her quiet gasp was enough of a sound to stir the body to life.  When his eyes opened gently, she found herself starring into pools of liquid ice.  It was then she realized her own ignorance.  She knew nothing about how much pain a soul can hold.  He was her first “assignment” on her first night working at the hospital.  Even now, standing at the station, she shivered not from the cold drizzle, but because of her own arrogance. Because of the reality in those penetrating eyes, she had met hopelessness. She had thought so well of herself – highly educated, especially in the newer field of psychology.  Despite the ridicule by the traditional male-dominated psychology circles, she latched onto the theories of Helen Thompson Woolley not only with her mind, but with her gut.  Approaching this injured soldier with his one arm, should be done with empathy and realism.  After all, they were made up of the same emotional components regardless of sex.  Even she would want this approach, she thought assuredly.  Walking down the dimly lit corridors with a clipped gait, she felt confident.  She softly stepped into the soldiers' ward armed with her theories, ready to release this man from his terrors. What a fool she had been!  Standing amidst the platform's bustle with eyes looking into her recent past, the smile disappeared as she withdrew into herself.

Oblivious to the commotion of the crowds and the porters’ jostles, Grace continued to live her waiting minutes within this reverie. At first Cpl. Molony was reluctant to speak to her.  There were times when he murmured little more than the common formalities of “thank you” and “please.”  Never with a smile, or nod to her. Gradually, over the days and months his story unfolded.  She never asked. She waited. It was the day she put down her clipboard on his bedside table, and pulled a chair within a foot of the bed itself, that she knew they had crossed his defensive barrier.  He looked at her with a fierceness she had never seen in a man, not even during her father’s drunken rage. She was rooted to her seat.  Back erect. With hands folded, her intellect for protection, she waited. She was afraid.  He spoke directly to her, without blinking, “I have something to tell you.”  The intensity of his bearing did not match the gentleness of his voice, and she found herself breathing again.  He, the patient – her patient – took her hand delicately, as if they were dancing, and led her through a series of events.  He told his story with a constant measured rhythm, distancing himself from her and his experience. His face relaxed as he eyes focused beyond her – some place she had no right to enter. He spoke as if it had happened to someone else.  As if he had not acted, only observed. She knew when he had finished. His eyes closed and his facial muscles echoed his pain. He let her hand slip from his.  Grace rose gingerly and with deliberate reverence, carefully taking the inside of his palm and placing in its center a blessing from her lips.  His eyelids never fluttered; his body lay still as she pulled the soft white blankets protectively around him. He was broken. He was beyond repair – her repair. She crept away, guilty for her ineptness, for her understanding. Only empathy for his pain lingered, and she latched onto that to keep her moving. That evening Grace scurried along the cobblestones, passing Independence Hall without a glance, on her way to church.  While she had been raised in the Catholic tradition as many European immigrants, her anger about the War, the city’s poor, and her own home life, was aimed directly at God.  Tonight, she did not know where else to go.  She needed the familiar comfort of her childhood sanctuary, St. Joseph’s.  It was Father Scully who looked in on her mother to make sure she had enough money to meet the rent, or enough food in her pantry for the cold winter months.  He counseled forgiveness in all things even with his knowledge that as of now, young Grace could not forgive.  Despite conflicting feelings, her footsteps quickened as memories flooded through her veins, until she found herself standing at the street corner of Fourth and Walnut. The following morning Grace returned with her heart open.  She would understand this man. He was her patient, after all. The sun was shining and although it was colder, the crisp air felt invigorating rather than threatening.  Her talk, and late-night dinner of cabbage and potatoes, with Fr. Scully was a homecoming.  After years of working hard in school and in the rarefied, socially stratified milieu of Vassar, she had lost herself.  Sitting in the rectory’s dining room across from the one man who knew her family and their struggles, she could let go of all those defences. Cronon’s words had left her exposed and humbled.  She saw herself – her haughtiness with the eyes of the other. It was not the pride of the gloved hand and lowered eyes; she heard her own false voice – yes, it was her tone. Cronon’s eyes, so direct and unflinching, had laid her bones bare. She had sat in judgement.  Grace slept deeply, and today, she could breathe. No assured staccato steps down the hospital hallways on this day, but ones flying with lightness, almost skipping, to meet her day with him. To help him move beyond his actions, and her, beyond her viewed narrowed by the personal. She caught herself just at the doorway to his ward and forced herself to stop and take a cleansing breath.  “It is a new day,” she reminded herself.  With the sun’s rays blinding her entry, Grace could not find him immediately and felt a panic rising in her chest.  Moving to the side, she again stopped and carefully looked down the row of injured soldiers for his bed.  It was empty.  Fresh sheets showed no indication that anyone had ever been there.  She slowly walked toward it, barely able to acknowledge the "hello" of other patients – their voices sounding so far away.  She stood motionless, looking down.  She asked herself in a whisper, “Was he real? Did I imagine him?”   She turned trance-like and walked back down the hallway.  This time there was no joy in her step, just a series of stumbles with hands outstretched, reaching for the cool tiled walls.  All these years she had kept the secret of Cronon Moloney.  All these many years.

Tina Hudak is an artist and writer living in the Washington, D.C. metro area since 1975. Her three recent books, a series of poems and flash fiction written during the pandemic years, were inspired by interactions with others, but especially with nature. She lives with her husband and two cats in an old farmhouse.