It was hard to resist the doctor’s suggestion. Charles felt itchy and hot all over. Last night, he’d barely slept. He trudged toward the living room to lie down on the sofa.
“Deaconess Cho,” Douglas said loudly, trying not to shout over the running faucet. “Here, let me help you.”
Leah brushed him off, smiling. “Elder Shim, you should check on the director. I’m fine right here. This I know how to do.” She air-swept her hand across the dirty things on the counter as if to display her province of expertise. “I’ll work better alone.” She nodded pertly, tipping her head toward the living room. She looked adorable to him, but Douglas stared at her soberly to see if she was okay doing this. Ignoring his discomfort, she went to the table and pulled out two cans of mandarin orange juice from one of the six-packs that the doctor had brought in and handed them to him. She couldn’t imagine finding two clean glasses and a tray nearby. Douglas went to find Charles.
Finally alone, Leah squeezed the water from the dishwashing sponge and dabbed some detergent onto it. Thankfully, there was soap for the dishes. It was better to work than to talk, she thought. What would she have said to the choir director, anyway? Typically in these visits, Elder Shim would lead the small group in prayer and ask his series of questions that he tended to ask the bedridden parishioner. Then they’d conduct a brief worship service, drink a glass of juice or eat a doughnut, then leave. In the book of James, Jesus’s brother wrote about how you had to take care of your neighbor’s practical needs as well as spiritual needs. Her father’s favorite passage in the Bible had been “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” If she could locate some teabags, she would boil water in a cooking pot—there being no kettle on the stove—to serve the men something warm to drink. She glanced about and noticed the rice cooker behind the large chrome coffee machine that she didn’t know how to use. At home, she and Joseph drank Taster’s Choice. In her mind, Leah ordered up a list of tasks she could try to accomplish in an hour.
In the living room, Douglas found Charles sleeping on the sofa, his body curled like an S, his face reddened by the pox. The doctor crept up the stairs quietly. Charles’s bedroom was the first large open chamber near the landing. The room itself was beautiful, with two enormous windows that opened like doors, shellacked hardwood floors, and a carved stone fireplace. The wide-planked floors were covered with dirty clothes and piles of newspapers. On the lone armchair, there were stacks of music scores. Douglas shook out the blanket rumpled over the bed and folded it over his arm. The bedsheets felt hardened to the touch from lack of wash. He put down the blanket to strip the beds and took the dirty sheets downstairs.
First, he went to cover Charles with the blanket. Then he snooped around the house and discovered the laundry room beside the kitchen and put the sheets into the washing machine. The stainless-steel machines were from Germany, a manufacturer Douglas had never heard of. He pressed a red button to start the load, and it was so quiet that he opened the top to see if there was water running at all. From the looks of it, the choir director didn’t possess many things, but the items he owned were costly and well chosen, and yet none of it was cared for—as if the owner wished the things themselves to fall apart from neglect or disrepair.
When he stepped out of the laundry room, he saw that Leah had swept the kitchen floor and was now on her knees mopping the tiles, the way the maids of his childhood home would clean the maru in smooth, concentric motions. When he was growing up, Douglas’s mother would chide the cleaning girls if she spotted one hair on the floor, and all the common-room floors of their enormous estate had to be cleaned twice daily. Leah was singing quietly, and he could not make out the words of the hymn. Douglas went to her. Leah, her knees tucked under her, a rag in her hand, looked up at him.
“I thought maybe I would ask Cecilia, my housekeeper, to come by tomorrow.” She also lived in Brooklyn, but Douglas didn’t know where exactly. He hesitated from telling the deaconess how bad the conditions of the upstairs room were. “I put his bedsheets in the wash.” He gestured to the shuttered laundry room door. Leah opened her eyes wide in surprise. It was hard to imagine the doctor doing a load of wash. “Maybe you could stop now,” he said. “The kitchen looks much better.” Leah smiled at the recognition. “Deaconess, it’s your only day of rest. Maybe we should leave after the director has woken up and we could pray for him.” He bent his head forward slightly her way. Her face shone like a happy child’s, and his heart fluttered a little, and he had to look away from her.