APRIL 12, 1955
Little Italy, Baltimore, Maryland
I was about to enter LoPresti’s Butcher Shop when the bells at St. Leo’s started ringing and the siren at the fire station blared. A couple of car horns joined in the cacophony and the other shoppers and I stopped walking and simply stared at one another. What on earth was going on? The war was long over, yet I was sure every one of us was reminded of how the church bells tolled that day as well. I had no idea why they’d be ringing today.
I walked into the butcher’s to find the customers talking excitedly to one another. Old Mrs. Bruno grabbed my arm.
“Did you hear, Tess?” she asked, nodding toward the big radio on the shelf behind the meat counter. “That new Salk polio vaccine’s been approved! They just announced it!”
“Oh!” I said. The bells and sirens suddenly made sense. I stood in the middle of the crowded shop, the women chattering around me and Mr. LoPresti asking his familiar “who’s next?”, but I was no longer truly there. The raw, meaty smell of the shop was gone. Instead, the air filled with the scent of freshly cut lumber, antiseptic, and hot wet wool. I heard the sound of saws and hammers. The whoosh of the iron lung and the cries of a frightened child. They took my breath away, those sounds and smells.
“Can my kids get the vaccine from Dr. Vince?” Rose Merino asked.
I shook off my memories and gave her my attention.
“I’m sure he’ll have it soon,” I said. “You can call the office and ask.” No one wanted that vaccine more than my husband.
“Imagine a summer without polio hanging over our heads!” Michelle Abruzio said. One of her children was asleep in her arms. Another dozed in the stroller at her feet. I’d lost track over the years of how many she had.
“I miss when you used to work in Dr. Vince’s office, Tess,” Rose said, a mournful look in her big brown eyes.
I smiled at her. “I’ll be back in the office again before you know it,” I said.
I’d thought Vincent was crazy when he suggested I go to medical school, but he knew me better than I knew myself. He knew I needed to be challenged and he was right. I loved my classes. One more year in school, followed by my internship and residency, and I’d be working with Vincent again, this time as his partner.
“A lady doctor.” Mr. LoPresti shook his head as he pulled a roast from the glass-fronted case and began wrapping it for Mrs. Bruno. “That’s as wrongheaded as a lady butcher,” he said, but he winked at me over the top of the counter and I knew he was teasing, at least in part.
“I don’t know how you manage to keep house and go to school at the same time, Tess,” Michelle said. “At least you only have the one kid. My five keep me hopping.”
“I bet they do,” I said. There was a time when her comment would have stung, but Vincent and I had long ago made peace with the fact that we could have only one child. Maybe that was a good thing, since Philip was such a little pistol. Last Tuesday was his eighth birthday and to celebrate he drew mustaches on every picture in our new Life magazine and broke his arm when he fell out of the dogwood tree—the tree we’d planted in my mother’s memory. He was full of energy and hard to keep in one piece, but he was a good boy. He had his daddy’s brains and kind heart.
* * *
Vincent and Philip were already home and in the kitchen when I walked in the door with the groceries and the mail. Our three-story brick house was only a few blocks from where Vincent and I had grown up, but it was three times the size of our childhood homes and, best of all, we owned every inch of it. I set the groceries and mail on the table, gave Vincent a kiss, and hugged my son more tightly than he would have liked. I ruffled his thick, jet-black hair. He was already shying away from my displays of affection, so I would get them while I still could.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the mail on the table as I let go of him.
“What’s what?” I followed his gaze. On the top of the stack of mail was a postcard with some sort of illustration on it. I picked it up and saw that it was a drawing of a skull entirely composed of intricate floral designs. The image was both spooky and beautiful and the three of us looked at it with knitted brows.
“I think it’s supposed to be a sugar skull,” Vincent said.
“What’s a sugar skull?” Philip asked the question I was thinking.
“It’s Mexican,” Vincent said, resting his hands on Philip’s shoulders. “A symbol of Mexico’s Day of the Dead festival. Who sent it?” He reached for the card and flipped it over. “Postmarked Mexico City,” he said, but I was already reading the few lines of neat, slanted handwriting.
Tess and Vincent,
We’re in Mexico City and when H spotted this card, he said he thought you’d appreciate it. You can tell he’s gotten a sense of humor in the last few years! Sincerely, H, H, J, F, C, and P.
I smiled. Every couple of years we’d get a postcard from them, each one with a new initial at the bottom. Their family was expanding.
“Who’s H, H, J, and … all those letters?” Philip asked.
“Old friends of ours,” Vincent said. “A husband and wife and their children.”
“What do the letters stand for?” Philip asked.
Vincent looked at me and I gave a small shake of my head. The likelihood anyone would ever come around asking us questions about Henry and Honor at this late date was not strong, but I didn’t want to take chances.
“They just like to go by their initials,” I said to Philip.
“Dopey,” Philip said, backing away from us. “Can I go to my room?”
“Dinner in half an hour,” I said. “Wash up, all right?”
He mumbled a response and disappeared down the hall. I was still holding the card, and once Philip was out of our hearing, I said, “I don’t understand. Why did Henry say I’d appreciate this card?”
Vincent turned the card over so that the skull was facing us again. “He was probably thinking of Reverend Sam’s skeleton,” he said.
“Oh!” I laughed. “I bet you’re right. Do you think they’re visiting Mexico City or living there?”
“You can never tell with those two,” Vincent said, walking to the cupboard near the sink and taking out a glass. Over the years, Henry and Honor’s postcards had come from Seattle, North Dakota, Dallas, and now Mexico City. We didn’t know if Henry was using his own name or some other in the places they lived. The less we knew, the better.
“They’re together,” I said. “That’s all that matters.” I set down the card with a shake of my head. “It’s such a coincidence that this came today,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about Hickory all afternoon.”
“The polio vaccine,” he said, filling the glass with water from the tap.
I nodded. “It’s wonderful news, isn’t it?” I said. “When will you get it?”
“Should be Monday,” he said, then smiled. “The summer of ’55 will be a worryfree summer.”
I began unloading the groceries from the bag on the table. “Do you ever think about all those kids we treated?” I asked.
“Often,” he said, leaning back against the sink as he sipped the water.
“It’s hard to believe they’re all ten years older than when we knew them.” I added a few oranges to the fruit bowl on the table. “Some of them are probably married with kids of their own by now,” I said. “Jilly Johnson is fourteen. Amy Pryor’s baby is ten.” I shook my head. “I hope they’re all leading wonderful lives.”
Vincent put his glass in the sink, then smiled at me. “You’re a romantic, do you know that?” he asked.
I barely heard him. For the second time that day, I was lost back in memories of 1944. “Hickory changed me for the better,” I said soberly. “I was falling apart when I got there and it slowly made me whole again.”
Vincent was loosening his tie, heading for the hallway and the stairs, but he stopped walking to look at me.
“You always say that, Tess,” he said. “But have you ever stopped to think about how you changed Hickory?”
I stared at him, puzzled.
“Look what you did for Henry and Honor and Jilly, not to mention for the hundreds of patients at the hospital, some of whose lives you literally saved. I can personally testify to that.” He walked over to me. Kissed me on the lips. “Hickory’s the better for you having been there, sweetheart,” he said.
I watched him turn and walk down the hallway. Heard him climb the stairs. I felt a little choked up. I looked down at the postcard and the intricate floral designs on the skull. I smiled, remembering Reverend Sam and his crazy anteroom and his skeleton. I remembered the day he told me I was kind. No one else had ever asked him if his gift left him tired, he’d said. I remembered Adora telling me I’d saved Henry from “something terrible.” I remembered endlessly tucking hot wool around the thin, useless legs of frightened children, and breathing life into Amy Pryor’s baby. And I would never forget the journey across country, the nine days that turned into two treacherous weeks, and the very real dangers faced by a little girl and her anxious mother.
I stood next to the table, my hand pressed to my cheek and my eyes stinging. No, I hadn’t thought about how I changed Hickory, but from now on, I would. I’d remember how, during that year so long ago, Hickory changed forever.
And I was a part of it.