Jewel didn’t even blink when he told us. She listened politely when he suggested we take a room close to the clinic where they could at least try to do something for her, and she nodded and said that it was an excellent idea. Then the doctor reminded her that she must stop smoking at once, and Jewel wholeheartedly agreed. But that young doctor didn’t know Jewel, and not knowing her, he believed what she said. I knew better.
As soon as we were clear of the clinic, Jewel lit herself up a smoke. “Don’t you believe a word those doctors say, Darcy. They always exaggerate so as they can charge more. All I’ve got is bronchitis, and it’ll pass just like it always has. Now swear to God you won’t say anything about it to the girls.” Reluctantly, I swore. “They might be sympathetic and the worst thing for the sick is sympathy. Makes a person that much sicker because they’ve got to be worthy of it.”
Caroline came home that summer engaged. She had really come through for us this time. Her betrothed was a freshly graduated lawyer who would be joining his father’s practice in Connecticut. Of course, he had not gone to the same school as Caroline, which wouldn’t have been nearly good enough for him, but a prestigious one in his home state. (Prestigious was the first word Caroline had ever mastered that was more than two syllables, and she managed to use it at least fifty times during the first week she was home.) Caroline had met her lawyer at a tennis match, when his prestigious school had condescended to play Caroline’s. He sounded like a sissy to me, but he was a monied sissy, and Caroline, who never could look out for herself, would need somebody with money. Caroline would be leaving college as soon as they married. There was no point to it anymore.
Results with Jolene were less satisfactory, but I could have predicted that. She had chosen to attend classes straight through the summer. Journalism was her major, and Caroline, a natural tattletale if ever there was one, told us that Jolene was sleeping regularly with her married journalism professor. My youngest sister was nobody’s fool though. The professor had promised her a job working for a friend of his on a newspaper in New York as soon as she graduated. Jolene wanted to be a foreign correspondent and go all over the world corresponding. I wondered if she would ever get to go to Kathmandu and the possibility made me heartsick.
Originally, Caroline and the lawyer had planned to get married the following spring. But Jewel, who never did trust to long engagements, convinced them to do it in the fall. Luca agreed. He said, “Macaroni and matrimony have to go fast.” I guess it was some Eye-talian saying.
After the wedding, which we didn’t attend because Jewel wasn’t well enough, Caroline moved into a big new house in Connecticut. We never did get to see it, but she sent us pictures of every angle and view.
For a girl who wanted to be a correspondent, Jolene hardly ever wrote home. She came back to Galen exactly twice during her stretch at college, and I could have slapped her face the first time she returned, acting so bored with us all, as if we were morons in comparison to her college friends. The second time she came back, it wasn’t to see us at all but to cover a story for her school newspaper. It’s hard to believe something newsworthy could happen in Galen, but it did. Naturally, it was a disaster story, and Jewel and I were some of the first to know about it.
On a February night, as we sat close to the fire because we couldn’t afford heat that year, somebody started banging at the door, and just from the way they banged, you knew the person on the other end had nothing good to tell. A man stood on the threshold carrying a lantern that turned his face yellow. He wasted no words.
“You got a foreign boy staying here with you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he’s one of them. Been an accident at the mine. You better come.”
Jewel came with me even though I wanted her to stay home. The cold could only make her condition worse. But since she never believed she had a condition, she didn’t believe that anything could make it worse. Made me wonder if after she died, she would believe she was dead, and if she didn’t believe she was dead, would that make her a ghost?
The collapsed shaft didn’t look any different to me. The entrance hadn’t been damaged, but one of the tunnels inside had fallen in. A lot of men were running around yelling orders to each other while a small group of women huddled together against the cold. Unwillingly, I followed Jewel to stand with them. It was like standing in a graveyard. Not one of them spoke, not even to each other, and they were too scared even to be snooty to us. A child clung to the skirt of one girl and she neither picked him up nor pushed him away. I don’t think she realized he was there. Every eye was fixed on the mine. An old woman who could stand no longer, sat down on the frozen ground, and rubbed her bony hands together.
By and by, one of the hurrying men must have noticed how wretched the women looked because he came over and lit a fire in a metal can. But the women didn’t notice the man or the fire and not a one went over to warm herself.
There was something that set Jewel apart from the other women, and I suppose it was surprise. She was surprised that such a thing could happen. They were not. They had been
