A Sharp Intake of Breath. Джон Миллер

section.

      “My, my! Have you ever seen such a diamond? It’s enormous!” She flashed the page at us. I caught its headline, “Lady Fister stuns socialites with Orange Sunset,” but didn’t get a good look at the picture. Besides, I was ten years old, only cared about the Tarzan comic strip, and had no reason to concern myself with society folk.

      She spotted me spooning absent-mindedly at my porridge. “Toshy, eat up and don’t slouch.” Then, her eyes back on the page: “This woman looks familiar.”

      I considered my gruel. Ma always salted it too much.

      “Can I see?” said Bessie, who was sitting across from me, with perfect posture. She’d already finished her entire bowl.

      Ma passed her the newspaper. “That woman’s diamond brooch was a wedding gift from her husband,” she said.

      “I know how to read, Ma,” said Bessie, squinting at the text.

      Lil was sitting beside her and snatched the paper.

      “Hey! I wasn’t finished.” Bessie pulled it back, leaving a ripped corner in Lil’s hands.

      “You take too long.”

      “Girls, stop it. Bessie, read us what it says.”

      “It saaaaays,” she glared at Lil, who was leaning in to read over her shoulder, “‘Lady Fister makes a rare showing of the Orange Sunset, a thirty-six car-AT diamond...’ What’s a car-AT, Ma?”

      “It’s pronounced ‘carrot’ and it’s a measurement for how much a diamond weighs. Thirty-six carats is very, very big.”

      “‘...a thirty-six carat diamond that her husband purchased in South Africa after fighting in the Boer War. The diamond is an unusual amber colour, bezel-set in a gold brooch, and surrounded by twelve emeralds. After settling in Toronto, Lord Fister built a successful import-export business and he and Lady Fister had a son early in their marriage. Sources say the diamond is worth a small fortune.”

      I’d been pretending not to listen but I picked my eyes up from my porridge. “A fortune? Read what it says about that, Bessie.”

      “Hold your horses. I’m getting to that. It says, ‘Lady Fister almost never wears her wedding gift, and though some say it is because she is afraid of theft, those who know her well say that she finds it too ostentatious to wear in public.’”

      “Where else would she wear it?” said Pop. “In the bathtub?”

      We all laughed. I reached across the table. “Lemme see.”

      Bessie passed me the paper, but in a wide arc to avoid Lil’s clawing hands.

      I saw the photograph. There was a middle-aged couple, the woman sporting an enormous diamond on the breast of her gown. She was stout, much shorter than her husband, and though she wore a fur coat, a hat, and glasses, I knew her immediately.

      “That’s Nurse Grace!”

      “Who?” said Pop.

      “Nurse Grace, who took care of me when I was in the hospital.”

      “Nonsense,” said Ma. “That woman is rich. Rich men’s wives don’t work as nurses. Besides, you can’t possibly remember that; you were just little.”

      “I remember her. She was nice to me.”

      Ma got up from her chair and came around behind me. “My God, Saul, he might be right. She must have a very progressively minded husband.”

      “She said her husband gave her permission because she loved being a nurse. And she also told me about the diamond.”

      My parents’ faces showed their skepticism.

      “I remember!”

      And I did.

      When Ma brought me to Dr. Grover, I was almost five years old. It was early 1921, a bright, cold day in January, and we walked for an hour through the unplowed Toronto streets to make our appointment. Occasionally, we’d find one narrow track in the middle of a wide boulevard and follow it, the snow on either side of me reaching to above my knees. Ma carried me as much as she could, but I had to walk most of the way, complaining that she was tugging too much on my arm. She told me we would be late, that my legs were sinking too deep and that if she didn’t pull me along, I might get stuck. She brought a bag full of money to the hospital. Dr. Grover gently pushed it back across the desk and told her she should keep it until afterwards, and then send a bank draft.

      When I was a newborn, my parents had decided to wait even to have my palate fixed. The operations were expensive and Pop had heard from friends about the humiliating process they’d have to go through before the hospital determined it would pay. Pop was a proud man and decided they’d save for the operations themselves. They spent five years at it, putting aside a portion of the meagre proceeds of their silk and cotton retail store on St. Patrick Street. Without telling Pop, Ma went with her hand out to the Toronto Hebrew Benevolent Society, and since she kept the books, she was able to conceal the donation as business profits.

      My mother, if I may say so, was a dogged and intelligent woman. She was impressed with modern medicine but she was also skeptical and inquisitive. She sought to educate herself rather than rely solely on what the doctors told her. She read voraciously whatever she came across—critically, laughing at advice she found preposterous and mocking it to anyone who would listen. One day, years later, I found a booklet in her house called “Your Baby Has a Cleft Palate?” Ma had underlined the following passages: “His condition may have been a shock to you. Stop blaming yourself ... and stop regarding your husband with questioning eyes. No one knows as yet why this developmental failure occurs and until science discovers the reason, you should stop worrying about it.”

      She had scribbled “What nonsense!!!” in the margin. I wondered which part she felt was three-exclamation-mark nonsense: that parents actually blamed themselves for the condition, that somehow a husband’s indiscretion might be responsible for a birth defect, or that saying she shouldn’t worry would be enough to allay her fears.

      With Dr. Grover, however, Ma’s criticism drained away, as though it were light rainfall, and his smile, the porous earth into which it seeped. Even though Dr. Grover had embarrassed her by refusing her bag of money, she spoke of him with reverence. A young, single man helping sick babies, she said. He knew all of the latest methods. Maybe it was better, she rationalized, that they had to wait five years. When I was born, Dr. Grover was away treating wounded soldiers in France, just shipped off to help in the field hospitals of Verdun. The doctor who would have operated in his absence might have been older and perhaps not well versed in modern medical techniques, Ma speculated. Dr. Grover, on the other hand, had studied at Yale University. He was handsome and kind. If only he’d been Jewish, she would’ve surely introduced him to a single friend.

      I mostly remember a big man with round glasses, a wide forehead, and a wild tousle of auburn hair who had halitosis and who made me tilt my head back too far while he breathed into my open mouth. I remember his nurse much better, and more fondly: a stout Englishwoman who said to me, “Here at the hospital they call me Nurse Fister, but you can call me Nurse Grace.”

      She had limpid blue eyes, sat with me when my parents couldn’t be there, and said “there, there,” a lot. She made me feel safe by stroking my cheek.

      Before giving me a needle she said, “Grip your mother’s index finger, as tight as you can.” I squeezed hard, until my hand hurt so much I didn’t notice the needle at all.

      One afternoon, about a month after we first met Dr. Grover and Nurse Grace, the doctor stitched together the roof of my mouth, applying an aluminium splint to keep it together and to prevent me from sucking at the horsehair stitches. Nowadays, children born like me have better treatment, and it’s free. Back then there were specialists just as there are today, and the surgeons did the best they could, but the methods were less refined. The instruments appeared medieval, with hooks and barbs in places that couldn’t possibly have been for anything