Caroline bit her lips and moved over next to the bed. “I brought you your coffee, Ma. Maybe it’ll take your mind off your cigs.”
“Yeah, my one cup. Damned doctors. First they pump you so full of shit you don’t know whether you’re coming or going. Then when they got you tied by the hind legs they take away anything that’d make the time pass easier. I’m telling you, girl, don’t ever get yourself in this spot.”
I took the thick china mug from Caroline and handed it to Louisa. Her hands shook slightly and she pressed the mug against her breast to steady it. I slid off my heels into a straight-backed chair near the bed.
“You want to spend some time alone with Vic, Ma?” Caroline asked.
“Yeah, sure. You go on, girl. I know you got work to do.”
When the door shut behind Caroline I said, “I’m really sorry to see you like this.”
She made a throwaway gesture. “Ah—what the hell. I’m sick of thinking about it, and I talk about it to the damned docs often enough. I want to hear about you. I follow all your cases when they make it to the papers. Your ma’d be real proud of you.”
I laughed. “I’m not so sure. She hoped I’d be a concert singer. Or maybe a high-priced lawyer. I can just imagine her if she saw the way I live.”
Louisa laid a bony hand on my arm. “Don’t you think so, Victoria. Don’t you think so for one minute. You know Gabriella—she’d of gave her last shirt to a beggar. Look how she stood up for me when people came by and threw eggs and shit at my windows. No. Maybe she’d of liked to see you living better than you do. Heck—feel that way about Caroline. Her brains, her education and all, she could do better than hanging around this dump. But I’m real proud of her. She’s honest and hardworking and she sticks up for what she believes in. And you’re just the same. No, sir. Gabriella could see you now she’d be as proud as can be.”
“Well, we couldn’t have managed without your help when she was so sick,” I muttered, uncomfortable.
“Oh, shit, girl. My one chance to pay her back for everything she did? I can still see her when the righteous ladies from St. Wenceslaus were out parading around my front door. Gabriella come out with a head of steam that damn near drove ’em into the Calumet.”
She gave a shout of hoarse laughter that changed to a coughing fit which left her breathless and slightly purple. She lay quietly for a few minutes, panting in short, gasping breaths.
“Hard to believe folks cared so much about one pregnant unmarried teenager, ain’t it,” she said finally. “Here we got half the people outa work in the community—that’s life and death, girl. But back then I guess it seemed like the end of the world to folks. I mean, my own ma and pa, even, throwing me out like they did.” Her face worked for a minute. “Like it was all my fault or something. Your ma was the only one stood up for me. Even when my folks come around and decided to admit Caroline was alive, they never really forgave her for being born or me for doing it.”
Gabriella never did anything by half measures: I helped her look after the baby so Louisa could work the night shift at Xerxes. The days when I had to take Caroline to her grandparents’ were my worst torment. Rigid, humorless, they wouldn’t let me into the house unless I took my shoes off. A couple of times they even bathed Caroline outside before they’d admit her to their pristine portals.
Louisa’s parents were only in their sixties—same age as Gabriella and Tony would be if they were still alive. Because Louisa had a baby and lived by herself, I’d always thought of her as part of my parents’ generation, but she was only five or six years older than me.
“When did you stop working?” I asked. I called Louisa occasionally, when my guilty imagination conjured up Gabriella’s image, but it had been awhile. South Chicago hovered too uneasily at the base of my mind for me to willingly court its return to my life, and it had been over two years since I’d spoken to Louisa. She hadn’t said anything then about feeling bad.
“Oh, it got so I couldn’t stand anymore about—must be just over a year. So they put me on disability then. It’s only been the last six months or so I couldn’t get around at all.”
She flicked the covers back from her legs. They were twigs, thin bones a bird might use but mottled greeny-gray like her face. Livid patches on her feet and ankles showed where her veins had given up carting blood around.
“It’s my kidneys,” she said. “Darned things don’t want me to pee properly. Caroline takes me over two, three times a week and they stick me on that damned machine, supposed to clean me out, but between you and me, girl, I’d just as soon they’d let me go in peace.” She held up a thin hand. “Don’t you go telling Caroline that, now—she’s doing everything to see I get the best. And the company pays for it, so it’s not like I feel she’s digging into her own savings. I don’t want her to think I ain’t grateful.”