“To the San?” the porter asked, looking from Papa to Mother.
We, like nearly everyone else on that darkening platform, had come for one reason: to seek the treatment of the famed Dr. John Kellogg. A physician by trade, the brilliant Battle Creek healer attracted the sick from the East Coast to the West—old money and new—and even from across the oceans. Slumped in his chair, Papa let loose a low, faint groan.
“No, to this address,” Mother answered. Even though Dr. Kellogg and his wife had adopted dozens of children over the years, they did not look kindly on little ones roaming the campus, disrupting the hundreds of feeble patients and busy medical staffers, so Mother had arranged for us to take furnished lodgings in a house just several streets from the San campus.
“It is the home of a widow, a Mrs. Elizabeth Gregory.” Mother handed the porter a paper with our destination scrawled in her stiff cursive, and she watched, rigid as the frozen lampposts, as the young man oversaw the unloading of our few trunks and boxes. While Papa’s body had gone slack with sickness, as though his bones could no longer hold him entirely together, Mother’s figure seemed to coil ever tighter under the strain of our situation. I don’t remember any hair color of hers other than white.
“I understand that the address is near the Sanitarium campus of Dr. Kellogg?” Mother asked the porter, who nodded and assumed control of navigating Papa’s wheelchair through the crowded depot.
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Everything in Battle Creek is near the San.” Mother nodded her terse approval, taking my hand in her too-tight grip as we followed the young man and made our way down the platform toward the noisy street.
Papa groaned as the porter did his best to gently lift him from the chair into a waiting wagon, where Mother and I also took seats. “You take care now, sir,” said the kind young man. “Dr. Kellogg will have you fixed up in no time. We see miracles every day—folks limping off the train for treatment who end up skipping their way out of town.” Papa did his best to answer the attendant with a dim smile and a nod. Mother simply folded her gloved hands in her lap, eyes fixed on some indeterminate point across the flat, frost-covered farmland. I sat up a bit straighter as Papa turned his gaze toward me and offered me a wink. We’d heard that Dr. Kellogg’s ways were unorthodox and his treatments expensive, but all our hopes hinged on the man. Papa was near the end of mortals, to hear Mother tell it, and we had come here at the end of our hopes and our pennies; if anyone could heal Papa after years of these baffling ailments, we hoped it would be Dr. Kellogg.
* * *
—
Mrs. Gregory answered the door at number 61 South Division Street just a beat after Mother’s quick series of knocks, giving me the impression that she’d been standing right on the other side, awaiting our arrival. “Ah, the Posts have come,” she announced at the threshold of her home, her loud voice sounding deep and authoritative from out of her broad, ample chest. “Heard the train when it rolled into the station. Welcome, welcome. Come in. You must be frozen through. Come all the way from Texas, haven’t you?”
I didn’t need to be invited twice; I quickly stepped inside, grateful for the blast of warm, bright air that filled Mrs. Gregory’s modest entryway. The house smelled like steamed apples and cinnamon, and I felt my entire frame soften. Mother followed behind me, and Mrs. Gregory helped Papa to enter. “Come now, in you go. I think you’ll find our Battle Creek winters a touch harsher than anything you get down there.” Mrs. Gregory’s features were large, her cheeks ruddy, and I immediately saw her resemblance in the small group of clean, sturdily built children who gathered in front of the house’s stairwell. I smiled toward them. “Well, don’t just stand there staring like I never taught you a single manner,” Mrs. Gregory said, chiding the youngsters with a stern tone that was tempered by her smile. “The Posts have traveled far enough, and they are frozen and tired. And probably hungry. Help them with this luggage.” Our hostess’s commanding words sent her offspring into a flurry of dutiful motion, and they descended on us, taking our coats and hats, our trunks and the leather valise Mother clutched.
“Course they’ll be bunking together,” Mrs. Gregory said, gesturing toward her children, “given our Gregory homestead is a modest house. But you’ll have plenty of room.” She guided us up a steep, narrow stairwell to the second floor. I noted how Papa clutched the banister, white-handed and hunched, as he labored up the stairs, with Mother and me moving slowly behind him. “Nothing fancy like in those spa towns of Newport or Saratoga Springs, but I keep it clean. And there’s always plenty to eat. This’ll be for Mr. Post.” Mrs. Gregory led Papa into the first bedroom at the top of the stairs, modestly sized and simply furnished with a single bed, a wooden dresser appointed with a pitcher and washbowl, a plain chair, and a rug woven in dark blue and maroon.