In a neighborhood west of Washington Square on Manhattan Island in New York City, the streets run a little crazy. They break up into small strips called "places," and these "places" have strange angles and curves. Streets in these "places" seem to begin at one point and then end abruptly, only to begin again someplace else entirely! An artist quickly discovered what a wonderful asset living there would be. He said to himself, "Think of all the bill collectors who would get lost here trying to find some poor artist who owed money for paints and paper!"
This neighborhood became quaint old Greenwich Village, and the artists soon arrived looking for big windows full of natural light, eighteenth-century gables, high-ceilinged attics, and low rents. So many artists streamed into Greenwich Village over time that it soon stopped being a "place" and became a "colony," an artist’s colony filled with artists’ studios.
At the top of one three-story brick building, Sue and Johnsy (a nickname for Joanna) had their studio. Johnsy was from California and Sue was from Maine, and they had met in a small restaurant on Eighth Street. Over dinner, they found they had so much in common about food, fashion, and art that they decided to open a studio together.
That was in May, but in November, a cold, invisible killer appeared and stalked the colony. The doctors called the killer pneumonia, an infection of the lungs, and it touched one person here and another there. On the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where most of the poor people lived in tenements, this disease struck boldly and claimed many victims. Fortunately, the maze of narrow and moss-grown neighborhoods west of Washington Square remained fairly safe, but only for a while. Soon, the little woman named Johnsy from sunny California came down with pneumonia. She was no match for the disease, so Johnsy lay, scarcely moving on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small windowpanes at the blank side of the next brick house.
One morning, a busy doctor who had just visited Johnsy in her bedroom invited Sue into the hallway. "She has one chance in ten of surviving this illness," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his thermometer. "And the only thing that will give her that chance is for her to want to live. For some reason, your friend has made up her mind that she’s not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?"
"She . . . she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day," said Sue.
"Paint?" said the doctor. "Is that all? Doesn’t she have anything else more important on her mind? A man, for instance?"
"A man?" said Sue, sharply. "Is a man worth more than her art? No, doctor, there is no man."
"Well, I will do all that science can accomplish," said the doctor. "But whenever a patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession, the odds of survival go down. If you get her to ask one question about the new women’s fashions, I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of a one-in-ten."
After the doctor had gone, Sue went into the studio and cried until her handkerchief was dripping wet. Then she got herself together and swaggered into Johnsy’s bedroom with her drawing pad, whistling a popular tune. Johnsy lay, making hardly a ripple under the covers, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep. Then, Sue sat down and began to work on an illustration she had been hired to draw for a magazine story.
"Young artists must make money on their way to making real art," Sue said to herself. "Just as young authors write magazine stories before they can write great literature."
As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horse-riding pants and a figure of an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, repeated several times. She went quickly to the bedside.
Johnsy’s eyes were wide open, and she was looking out the window and counting—backward.
"Twelve," she said, and a little later, "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "seven," almost together.
Sue looked anxiously out of the window. "What is she counting?" she said quietly.
There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed halfway up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had pulled the leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.
"What is it, dear?" cried Sue.
"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They’re falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it’s easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now."
"Five what, dear? Tell me," said Sue.
"Leaves, on the ivy vine. When the last one falls, I must go too. I’ve known that for three days. Didn’t the doctor tell you?"
"Oh, I’ve never heard such nonsense," said Sue, scornfully. "What have old ivy leaves got to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so much, Johnsy. Don’t be silly. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well soon were very good! Try to sip some chicken broth now, and let me go back to my work, so I can sell the illustration and buy some wine for my sick friend, and pork chops for my greedy self."
"You don’t need to get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No, I don’t want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I’ll go too."
"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by tomorrow. I need the light, or I would draw with the shade down."
"Couldn’t you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.
"I’d rather be here by you," said Sue. "Besides, I don’t want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves."
"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as a fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one fall. I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of thinking. I want to let go of my hold on everything and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves."
"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I’ve got another magazine illustration to do—an old hermit miner—and I must go get Mr. Behrman to be my model. I’ll not be gone a minute. Don’t try to move until I come back."