Page 80 - Fever 1793

Eliza joined us by the flower beds. The shade felt like silk on my skin. Bees hummed lazily in the distance and swallows swooped overhead. This was how summer was supposed to feel. I could drink it in all day.
“I don’t know if this is true, mind, but I heard this story in the market, just a few days after you’d left with your grandfather. The oldest Ogilvie girl, the one who got sick?”
“Colette. Did she die?”
“Worse.”
“What could be worse than dying?”
“You wouldn’t think it was worse, but her mamma sure did. Miss Colette came down with an awful
case of the fever. You know how they are. They call in this doctor and that doctor. Spend money, fuss and holler. Nothing helps. The girl is burning up. The whole family gathers at her bedside, thinking she’s going to Jesus, when she sits up straight in bed and starts screaming for ‘Loueey! Loueey!’ Turns out this Louis is her husband.”
“But wasn’t she engaged to Roger Garthing?”
“Um-huh. And listen. This Louis was her French tutor. They had eloped just before she got sick. So everyone starts to scream and carry on, the younger daughter has a temper tantrum cause it turns out she was sweet on this Frenchie too, the mother faints, and their little dog bites the doctor.”
One is not supposed to laugh at other people’s misfortunes, but I could picture the scene in my mind so perfectly, it caused me to laugh until my sides hurt. “Oh gracious. I shouldn’t. Please tell me no one died.”
Eliza laughed. “No, they’re all alive and making each other miserable. Too spiteful to die, if you ask me. They moved into some relatives’ house in Delaware. Poor things—the relatives, I mean. And Louis, the son-in-law, is with them. I heard Miss Colette sat herself in the middle of the street and refused to budge until her mother agreed that he could come with them. Now stir your bones. That’s enough storytelling and idling for one day.” She peered down the street. “Let’s go home.”
We decided to stay on the cool street as long as we could. Nell skipped between us, seemingly free of worries and concerns. I was going through all the families I knew, trying to think of someone who might want to take in an adorable imp. Trouble was, I had no way of knowing which families still had parents.
Nell stooped to pick up a daisy on the sidewalk. She held it up to me with a smile, and I tucked it into her hair. We took another step and she found another daisy, laying on the ground, not growing there. As I stood puzzling, three daisies floated through the air. Nell put her hands up to catch them and spun around laughing.
“Eliza, we’ve had strange weather this summer, but I’ve never known daisies to fall from the sky.”
We looked up. The houses around us had their shutters closed. . . . Wait. “Look there!” I pointed to a second-story window. The shutters were open a crack, and an unseen hand was pushing out daisies, one by one.
“Well, I never,” began Eliza.
“Do you think they need help?” I asked.
“They have the strangest way of showing it,” answered Eliza. She went up to the front door and
knocked. No one came to the door, though we could both hear people moving within and talking. “I guess they don’t want company. Might as well be on our way.”
“Wait.” I looked up and down the street to get my bearings. “This is the painter’s house, Mr. Peale. You know, the one who gave all those strange names to his poor children: Rubens, Raphaelle, Rembrandt, and I don’t know what other nonsense.”
A daisy fluttered to my feet.
Eliza’s eyes widened. “That boy is apprenticed here, isn’t he?” she asked. She knew full well the answer.