All that because four children weren’t inoculated with the diphtheria vaccine. No wonder Dr. Rouse had taken Debba Clow out there. The thought of Debba turned her away from the window. Whatever Allan Rouse had told her that night, it hadn’t persuaded her to go ahead and have her little girl vaccinated. If, as everyone assumed, Dr. Rouse had committed suicide, Debba would be off the hook as far as police suspicions of her involvement went. But she would still be facing a custody battle with her ex and, more significantly, an ongoing struggle with her children’s father about what was best for them. Clare couldn’t do anything to budge Debba off Russ Van Alstyne’s very short list of suspects in Rouse’s disappearance, but she could give the artist the support she needed to help make decent decisions about the future. And the first step, Clare decided, would be to find out more about the past.
Hi, Mrs. Marshall,” Clare said as the older woman opened her front door. Mrs. Marshall rearranged her look of obvious surprise into a more polite welcoming smile. “Can I come in for a sec?” Clare stepped into the foyer. “I’m sorry I didn’t call first, this idea popped into my head and I-oh! Hello, Mr. Madsen.” Norm Madsen smiled from the door to the dining room. We don’t invite ourselves over to other people’s houses, young lady, her grandmother Fergusson said. “Oh.” Clare could feel her cheeks pinking. “I’m afraid I’m intruding.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Marshall said. “We’ve just finished lunch. You can join us for coffee. Did you get your furnace repaired? You were having a problem with it earlier this week, weren’t you? You know, you should save your bill and bring it to the vestry. We would recompense you.”
If they ever want to raise money, I can take it off their hands and get a sweet price for it! “It didn’t cost enough to make it worthwhile getting the vestry involved,” Clare lied. “Hi, Mr. Madsen.”
“Great sermon this morning,” Mr. Madsen said, walking her to the round-edged table. “Lacey and I were just talking about it. We agreed you hit it spot on when you said that thing about abundance and scarcity.”
“How difficult it is to make a meaningful sacrifice when you have everything in abundance,” Mrs. Marshall clarified. The luncheon plates had been cleared away, and a tray holding a coffee service was stationed next to Mrs. Marshall’s seat. It was silver, the pieces buffed and curved like the fenders on a ’50 Cadillac. Wedding present, Clare thought. Mrs. Marshall gestured to a chair across the table from her. “Please, sit down. Coffee?”
For a moment, Clare was tempted to ask if she had any leftovers. The smell of pot roast emanating from the kitchen was making her mouth water. “Yes, please,” she said, thereby proving that there were still meaningful sacrifices to be made.
“It was a different world when we were growing up,” Mr. Madsen said, holding out his cup to be filled. “I remember when Christmas meant three toys-one from my parents and one from each set of grandparents. Plus socks or mittens and some candy.”
“And you were one of the rich kids in town,” Mrs. Marshall said. “Milk?” She passed him the pitcher.
“I guess I was, at that.” He poured a generous amount into his coffee. “The point is, when I had to give something up, it hurt. And when I got something, I really appreciated it. Every one of my toys fit into a box the size of a small suitcase when I was a boy. You should see my great-grandchildren’s rooms. They look like FAO Schwarz.”
“Milk?” Mrs. Marshall asked Clare.
“No thanks,” she said, reaching for the sugar bowl. She looked across the table to Mrs. Marshall, who was pouring her own cup. “It’s funny you should have been talking about your childhoods, because I have a question for you. If you don’t mind.”
“What is it?”
It felt wrong to start by firing a salvo into a sensitive subject, so Clare said, “I’m doing some counseling work with a woman who has doubts about vaccinating her youngest child. I wanted a better feel for what might go into that decision, and I was hoping, I wondered…”
“Whether I could tell you more about my parents’ decision?” Mrs. Marshall said.
“I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk about it.”
“I just don’t know if I have any useful information. My grandma Ketchem told me back then, they didn’t get children immunized ahead of time. If you fell sick, you’d get the serum. You have to remember, it was brand-new. Antidiphtheria serum wasn’t even available in this country when my brother Peter and sister Lucy were born.”
“People were slower to run to the doctor then, I think,” Mr. Madsen said. “Nowadays, we’re at the doctor’s office every time we feel a twinge. Back in those days, you had to be some hurting for your parents to get the doctor out to the house.”
“That’s true,” Mrs. Marshall said. “I hadn’t really thought about that. There was no telephone out at the old farm. No electricity. My parents didn’t own a car until 1929.” My father would have had to drive his buggy into town and find Still-man any time they needed any medical treatment.”
Clare lowered her coffee cup. “I just met a Dr. Stillman at the Washington County Hospital. He said he was the third generation of his family to practice medicine here in Millers Kill. He’s an orthopedic surgeon.”
Mr. Madsen snorted. “Well, the old Dr. Stillman was a country doctor. Which meant he did everything from setting bones to delivering babies to performing surgery-”
“-on kitchen tables. With the patients’ butter knives.” Mrs. Marshall arched an almost invisible eyebrow at her old friend. “You think everything was better back then.”
“Maybe the old Dr. Stillman didn’t push the vaccine back then,” Clare said. “Since it was so new.”
Mrs. Marshall tilted her head for a moment. “No, I don’t think that was the case. As I remember him, Dr. Stillman was always after you with a needle.”
“You were immunized?”
Mrs. Marshall smiled a humorless smile. “Against everything.”
“Me, too,” Mr. Madsen said, apparently oblivious of the expression on his hostess’s face. “I think you’re right. I think he was a bug about inoculations. No pun intended.”
“Would your parents have gone to Dr. Stillman for their other children?”
“I suppose so,” Mrs. Marshall said.
“Dr. Rouse was your mother’s physician in her last years, right?”
Mrs. Marshall smiled wryly. “Allan Rouse was my mother’s physician from the moment he proposed serving in the clinic in exchange for the money for his medical degree. Not that he treated her. That didn’t come about until she was in her seventies. But he was hers. As much her creation as the clinic itself.”
“Do you know if she ever spoke to him about what happened to your older brothers and sisters?”
“I don’t know.” Mrs. Marshall sipped her coffee. “She so rarely spoke of anything to do with those times. If it weren’t for my own memories of the farm and my father, I might believe that my life started at age six, in the little house on Ferry Street.” She replaced the cup precisely on its saucer. She left a faint imprint of today’s lipstick on the rim. Scarlet. “I must have been a poor substitute for what she had lost, one child instead of four. And, of course, I was alive, and so could make mistakes and speak rudely and come home with disappointing grades and smoke cigarettes behind the garage. It must have been too painful to compare me to those perfect, dead children.”
“Perfect?” Clare said.
“Haven’t you noticed? Every dead thing is perfect.” She glanced at Mr. Madsen, who was gawking at her over the rim of his cup. “Like Norm’s yesterdays. Unchangeable, and so unable to disillusion you.”