Читать книгу Visting Nurse - Alice Brennan - Страница 5

THE LUIGUI apartment was in startling contrast to the Ryan place, where at least an attempt was made to keep it neat, and the window plants had provided brightness and color.

Here there was appalling squalor. Arleen had difficulty repressing her dismay at the filth and ugliness of the three rooms into which were crowded, as a quick glance at her notebook told her, ten human beings.

Anna Luigui was half lying, half sitting on a cot against one wall. Her coarse red face looked puffy and bloated. Incredibly dirty feet stretched out from beneath an equally dirty skirt.

Arleen turned her attention to the thin, undersized boy who had let her into the apartment. His nose was running and there was a patch of scaly skin on one side of his face that looked like ringworm. But it was impossible to tell, under all the dirt.

She started to hand him a tissue from her purse, but the moment she bent toward him he pulled back wildly, dashed to the far side of the room, and huddled against a wall.

A young girl of perhaps fifteen or sixteen, in a sweater a good two sizes too small, and a skirt that hugged her slender body as if she had been poured into it, laughed. “Poor Pietro. He’s so used to getting banged he thought that was what you were going to do.”

Arleen turned her gaze on the girl. She was quite pretty, or would be if she would wash off some of the heavy make-up she wore.

She returned Arleen’s look with mockery.

Arleen shook her head. “I’m sorry your little brother got that impression. I only wanted him to let me look at that patch on his cheek.”

The woman on the cot laid down the comic book she’d been reading. She put a finger to the side of her head and tapped. “Pietro ain’t right in the head,” she said. “That’s what makes him act like that.”

The girl swirled around to glare at the woman. “Pietro isn’t any more crazy than you are!” She flung at her. “If you’d stop banging him around the head every time he comes near you, he wouldn’t be so scared of people!”

The woman glared back. “Two years you go to high school, and you think you’re so smart! You make me sick. And them bad boys you run around with. Don’t think I don’t know about them? You want to get put in jail, huh? Answer me that. Huh? Girls who think they’re so smart, that’s what happens to them. Ain’t that right?” She turned her attention to Arleen.

Arleen ignored the attempt to bring her into the argument. “I’m the visiting nurse, Mrs. Luigui. You are Mrs. Luigui?” The woman nodded sullenly. “You didn’t show up for your last two appointments at the clinic,” Arleen said, speaking slowly and firmly. “These check-ups are for your own protection, and for that of your unborn baby.”

The woman shrugged and spat out the words. “Eight kids. That’s enough. Huh, that’s enough? Them doctors at that clinic, they’re always saying, ‘Now, Mrs. Luigui, you got to be careful you don’t lose your baby. You got to be careful!’ ” Her laughter rasped. “And why I got to be so careful? Huh? One less kid and the others don’t have to shove over in bed to make room for another one. Huh, how do you like that?”

Arleen wet her lips as she stared at Mrs. Luigui. It wasn’t possible for a woman to feel that way. It wasn’t possible! The way she talked it sounded as if she didn’t care if something happened to her baby. No, it wasn’t even that. She talked as if she wanted something to happen to it!

Arleen felt a tug at her skirt. A small grimy hand was gripping a fold of the blue cloth. Wide, dark eyes in a small, dirty face gazed upward. “Pretty,” the child lisped. “Pretty lady.”

Arleen felt her heart jerk as she stared down at the child. Mrs. Luigui hadn’t meant what she’d said. She was a victim of prenatal blues. It happened in young wives afraid they appeared ugly in their husband’s eyes. And in women like Mrs. Luigui, who had quite a few children and were exhausted by the endless demands made upon them. Of course she had not meant what she’d said.

The child’s wide, wistful eyes touched Arleen’s heart. She wondered if she still had the candy bar she’d bought last night. She could not remember having eaten it.

She opened her purse, being very careful to make no sudden movement that would frighten this child, as she had frightened the little boy when she’d first come in.

He still leaned against the wall, solemnly watching her and the little girl, one grimy thumb stuck between his pale lips.

Arleen found the candy bar and handed it to the little girl clinging to her skirts. The child grabbed the candy, her small hand closing around it fiercely. She turned from Arleen, letting go of her skirt, and it was suddenly as if Arleen had set off an explosion.

The child clutching the candy bar was surrounded by screaming, clawing children who bit and kicked and grabbed to get the candy for their own.

Arleen was shocked into silence for a moment. Then she said to the woman on the bed and the girl lounging against the rickety table, “Make them stop! Don’t let them fight like that!”

The woman shrugged heavy shoulders. ‘Oh, don’t mind them; they always fight. They’ll stop after while.”

Arleen looked helplessly toward the girl. There was bitter mockery on the young lips as she stared back at Arleen. “What’s wrong? Haven’t you ever seen kids fight over something they want? How much candy do you think they get? Of course they’d fight over who was going to get it. You should have known that!”

Arleen said unhappily, “I didn’t realize. . .

The dark head cocked to one side. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. I guess you never had to fight over a piece of candy. I guess you had all the candy you wanted.” The dark eyes slid over Arleen in envious scorn. “All of everything!”

Guilt stabbed Arleen and she could no longer look at this bitter child. It was true. Her parents had provided her with all of the necessities and a lot of the luxuries. There’d always been enough money. She had never known what it was to be without money.

The guilt stabbed harder. “It’s not my fault,” she told herself. “I’m not to blame!” Nevertheless she felt the need to make amends because she’d never known what it was to have to fight over a bar of candy.

There was the five dollars in her purse she’d been saving to put down as a deposit on that green dress she so liked in Arden’s window. She didn’t need the dress, and five dollars would provide the Luigui children with a generous supply of treats.

Impulsively she got out the five-dollar bill and handed it to Anna Luigui. The woman’s head jerked up. She looked at Arleen with real interest for the first time since she had come into the apartment.

Arleen said, looking at the mother, but in reality speaking to the girl by the table, “Use it to buy some treat for the children.” With sudden firmness she added, “It will also give you bus fare to the clinic.”

Anna Luigui was turning the bill over and over in her hand. Her head jerked up when Arleen spoke. “Yeah, I be there.” Suddenly there was a shining ring to her voice. “Maybe I do better with things if I had a better daughter. But that Rose—” shooting an angry glance at the girl by the table—“she don’t lift one finger to help. Not one finger. All she thinks about is telling me how much smarter she is than I am. And dolling herself up so boys will look at her!”

Arleen said firmly, “Be at the clinic at two on Wednesday, Mrs. Luigui.” She directed a hesitant smile around the room, but the children didn’t smile back; they stood in little huddles, regarding her mutely.

Arleen let herself out. As she stood ready to turn the door-knob, she looked back into the room and saw that Rose Luigui was regarding her, the dark eyes made even darker by. anger.

Arleen stepped out into the hall, closing the door quietly behind her. “I should have realized,” she thought, “that one candy bar wouldn’t near go around for that many children.”

The five dollars, she knew, was not going to make up for what she had not known. And to Rose Luigui’s way of thinking, Arleen realized that what she had not known was the ugliness of Rose’s kind of poverty.

She was surprised to find the young doctor who had bumped into her earlier waiting in the lower hall.

“I have the time to apologize for bumping into you,” he said. “I do apologize.” He had a most engaging grin, Arleen thought.

“I have a patient on the top floor,” he explained. “Usually she sends for me once a week, saying she’s dying. She has a bad heart, so I can’t be certain that she isn’t.”

“He not only has a very nice smile,” Arleen found herself thinking, “he also has the nicest eyes. I like that shade of gray.”

“I was rushing up to see her when I bumped into you,” he went on. The light brows drew slightly together. “You looked upset just now.”

“Upset?” Arleen gave a rueful laugh. “I just left the Luigui apartment. How can people. . . .”

He cut in, his voice gentle, “Live like that? People live in all sorts of ways. They bring up defenses to allow themselves to live that way. You’ll have to get used to people like the Luiguis.” His eyes scanned the uniform. “A visiting nurse has to accustom herself to the kind of special ugliness that lives here alongside the people.” Abruptly he added, “I’m Dr. Mark Wynter. Now that I’ve introduced myself, why not tell me your name, and then I think we should be properly introduced.”

Arleen laughed. “Arleen Anderson.”

He slanted a grin at her. “Called Arleen for short, I presume?” He stopped laughing, and in repose Arleen thought his face looked very sad. “Now, Miss Arleen Anderson, could I buy you a cup of coffee at Barney’s? It’s a very unclassy place, but he makes fairly good coffee, and he’s fairly clean. I must warn you, only fairly clean.”

“I could use a cup of coffee,” Arleen told him. She hesitated. “But I’ll accept your offer only if you’ll let it be dutch.”

He shook his head. “I see you’ve already heard about my poverty. But I assure you I can afford to buy two cups of coffee. I’m a special customer of Barney’s. He never charges me more than five cents a cup.”

Seeming to take her consent for granted, he stepped ahead of her, opening the door, holding it until she stepped out onto the cracked and littered sidewalk. A vagrant April breeze seized bits of paper from the gutter and sent them sailing gaily through the air like miniature kites.

Arleen looked at her car, and let out a gasp. Garbage had been flung at her windshield, and bits of orange and tomato littered the hood.

Behind her, Mark Wynter heard her gasp, stopped for a second to survey the car, said quickly, “Wait here. I won’t be but a moment,” and disappeared with long-legged strides down the street and around a corner.

When he reappeared he had three small boys in tow. He marched them up to the car and said sternly, “Miss Anderson is a friend of mine. I don’t like you playing such tricks on friends of mine. I want you to have her car cleaned by the time we get back. Understand?”

Still frowning fiercely, he let go of the boys, dug a hand into a pocket and came up with some change, which he distributed evenly among the three. “That’s for candy for each of you. But first the car has to be cleaned.”

As she and Mark walked away, Arleen asked curiously, “Will they do what you told them to?”

Mark gave a wry grin. “It’s a gamble,” he told her. “I don’t always win.”