The Hotel Neversink

by Adam O'Fallon Price

  In the lobby, his mother stands talking to the custodian, Michael—short, shy Michael, a Gentile hire from the sticks who has always been kind to Lenny. His mother nods as she moves on, attending to other matters. Michael holds a toolbox in one hand and smiles through a soft beard of blond down. “Hey, Lenny,” he says. “Heard you’ve been under the weather.”

  “I’m better now.”

  “Good.”

  “Did they ever find him?”

  “The boy? No. It’s a horrible thing.”

  “Where do you think he went?”

  “I think someone took him, someone evil.”

  “It’s my fault. I was supposed to find him, and I didn’t.”

  “Oh, Lenny, no. Listen.” Michael sighs and puts down his toolbox. He sits on it with his elbows on his legs, so that he’s looking directly into Lenny’s eyes, and Lenny knows that the man has something important to tell him. “This wasn’t your fault. Do you know Ecclesiastes?”

  “Not really.” The hotel rabbi had read passages from it recently, but Lenny had paid no attention.

  Michael casts his eyes down, seeming to search in his mind for the words. “It says, As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them. What that means is that sometimes people are just unlucky. It’s the way of the world. Me, I’m not so lucky, though working here is a great blessing.” He gestures at the huge lobby, looking up its high, arched ceiling, the physical dimensions illustrating the enormity of his fortune.

  “And I was lucky?”

  “Lenny, you are a Sikorsky. You are lucky, one of the lucky ones. Never forget it.”

  Michael ruffles Lenny’s hair and heads to the pool, and Lenny moves through the Great Hall. On aching legs, he climbs the main staircase to the second floor and lies on his belly, surveying the scene below as he had three days before.

  Three days before seems like an eternity. Three days before, he’d seen the room with a child’s eyes, imagining a wolf had taken the boy. Now he knows it could be anyone, perhaps even one of the guests below. The range of human experience, human destiny, is vast and mysterious. Michael’s words return to him, and he thinks about himself and Jonah, two boys playing a game they didn’t know they were playing: the one hiding meant for unknown sorrows, the one seeking meant for success and happiness. The lucky ones, yes. He’d always seen the Neversink as home, never understood it for what it was: a birthright.

  Caught up in this moment of lordly awakening, he hardly notices the dark-eyed maid, a distant cousin, climbing the stairs behind him. At her muttered hello, he turns and registers the pressed black-and-white uniform, the pail of cleaning supplies. “Hi, Hannah.” She scurries on, late, sixty rooms to clean and her day just beginning.

  3. Hannah

  1955

  The maid stole something every day. It didn’t matter what it was. It was usually something small and insignificant that would never be missed—for example, a penny from a nightstand covered in loose change, or an extra button pulled from the hem of a cardigan flung carelessly over the back of a chair. On rare occasions, it might be something big enough to be noticed; one time she’d stolen a pair of expensive yellow high heels still in their price-tagged shoe box, a brazen act of thievery that resulted in a staff meeting during which the head of housekeeping spat and swore and interrogated the entire janitoriat in pidgin Polski. It could be something she needed, but it usually wasn’t. It could be anything at all: the important thing was that she stole something, and that she did so every day.

  She didn’t understand why it was important. At night, lying in her cot in the drafty garage apartment, listening to her son, Isaac, snore, it seemed, in fact, important to stop. She imagined being caught, fired, perhaps thrown in jail. Isaac, presently separated from her by a thin pasteboard partition, would be separated from her by prison bars and foster care. Her nightmares took the form of gray institutions, unclimbable walls enclosing endless queues with a faceless bureaucrat at the end. During the day, too, she suffered for this habit, this vice, or whatever it was—a low-level, febrile guilt like a persistent cold she couldn’t shake. In a state of icy resolve, she sometimes managed to get through most of the day without touching or taking anything. But as the clock edged toward five, as the remaining rooms on her list dwindled to four, three, two, she would thaw and begin idling in front of wristwatches, children’s yarmulkes, half-eaten lunches saved for later on the windowsill. She might run her finger up and down the length of a toothbrush angled in a glass by the sink, as though it were a lover’s smooth skin; she might drop it in the front pocket of her white cleaning smock, or she might leave it and move on to some other object. Everything was up for grabs; anything was possible. If she made it to the last room, then the last room would be the scene of the crime. Not taking something was unthinkable by that point. Into her uniform’s marsupial pouch the item would go—a small, suckling entity of shame and relief.

  If the thing she took was the right kind of thing, she would give it to Isaac. Isaac was eight and frail from polio, convalescing at home for the last six months, and these things—a little metal soldier, a yo-yo, a piece of cherry bubblegum, a cat’s-eye marble—both brightened his day and brought a rumor of the outside world. On these days, she told herself she was doing it for him, that he needed these things, although this was patently not the case. Isaac did not need, for example, a racy paperback book entitled The Price of Salt, written by someone named Claire Morgan (she’d flipped through it to a scene of such deviant filth that she slammed the book shut and glanced shame-faced at her son, momentarily fearing he could read her mind). He also did not need, of course, a pair of yellow high heels, size six. Neither did she, for that matter, with her barge-like peasant feet, feet built for being stood on all day, not for twirling across the dance floor as she’d seen guests do on nights when she worked late, lurking in the shadows beneath the ballroom stairwell and thrilling to the sight of them in their evening gowns and finery, their almost inhuman elegance as they danced—on one vivid and memorable occasion, a blonde girl in sequins who spun on her axis like a top. These shoes, and many other useless items, she kept in the small utility closet near the front door. A purgatorial space, for while she had no use for most of these things, she could not throw them away, either.

  Why did she do it? Did she hate the guests? No. Though she envied them sometimes, it was true—the dancing girl, for instance, or the newly married couple at whose banquet reception she’d worked scullery, whose untouched canapés, congealed on a dirty plate, nonetheless tasted better than anything she’d ever eaten—she didn’t hate them. Most of them were very nice; some were incredibly generous. The Steinbachers, who came every fall and brought presents for the employees’ children—for Isaac, a brilliant white baseball that sat untouched on his dresser, a promise of healthier future days. Or the bachelor who’d stayed by himself during the week of summer mixers that Mr. Cohen ran. She’d never met him, the bachelor, yet when he checked out with the room in disarray, there was a lovely note thanking her for cleaning up his mess and a ten-dollar tip. From him, she’d stolen a Polaroid picture of a young, dark-eyed woman grinning under a white shadbush in the hotel courtyard.

  That night she’d lain the photograph on her dining room table and allowed the woman to speak up at her in judgment. You are a monster, said the woman. There is something wrong with you. Who does a thing like this? The woman went on with her chastisement for a while, until the maid took her to the closet and dropped her on top of the other stuff. Her voice came through the door but grew quieter as the night went on, and by the following night, it had become muffled, inaudible.

  And so it had gone for what seemed like forever, a circle of satisfaction and guilt so reliable that it became a hateful comfort. And it might have continued forever had it not been for Mrs. Gerson and her brooch.

  The Gersons were a fairly unexceptional family. The maid had idly observed them upon their
arrival as she vacuumed the length of the third-floor hallway. The father seemed like a type: late forties, slightly stooped by the punishing mundanity of his work life, clearly some sort of clerical job, as he was too reedy for manual labor and too timid for management or sales. The children were unremarkable, too: an older girl already drawing away from the family, buffered by an invisible wall of brooding solitude; a younger boy who yelled with excitement at nearly everything that happened in this new, fascinating place.

  The mother, however, was not unexceptional. For one thing, she was enormous. Not just fat, though she was, with ankles and wrists the size of most people’s arms and legs; advancing distantly down the hallway, her chest brought to mind a World War II newsreel clip of a battleship’s prow cutting though the mist. But she was also the tallest woman the maid had ever seen, her low heels and blonde bouffant putting her well over six feet. She wore a pale-yellow and somewhat shapeless dress, to which she’d pinned a startling brooch. It was red, a sparkling cherry that caught the light of each antique sconce the woman passed. The flashing red light was like a signal, a code aimed at the maid’s weary brain, receptive from seven hours of cleaning. She found she’d stopped vacuuming, was simply standing there in a dull trance, watching Mrs. Gerson until she turned into their room, her family in tow like little vessels caught in a crashing wake.

  The maid didn’t usually prize individual objects, but she knew she would steal the brooch, and two days later, when the Gersons were down at the pool, she did. She found it in a wooden jewelry box left carelessly by the TV—it was better to think it a careless act than one borne of a naïve trust she was presently violating. She lifted it out and held it in both hands, feeling the weight. It winked in the light like a living thing, a thing that somehow knew her mind and her soul, that understood and forgave her weakness, this trespass. She dropped it in her pocket and looked once more at herself in the mirror, and she felt a tremendous relief, thinking yes, this is the last time, this is the last thing. Now I can stop.

  The door opened.

  Mrs. Gerson entered, though it seemed to the maid as though the entire room shifted sideways and expanded to accommodate the woman’s presence. With the survival instinct of a small animal, the maid froze in place, though she couldn’t help glancing at the jewelry box with the foolish hope she’d closed it. She hadn’t.

  After a long pause, Mrs. Gerson shut the door. She said, “Do you like that?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t be stupid—the brooch you were stealing.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Oh no?”

  “I wasn’t.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  The room slid closer to Mrs. Gerson. The woman pulled off the terry-cloth gown she wore and dropped it on the bed. The one-piece swimsuit she wore was ruffled at the hips and crowned her chest with a an outsized, girlish bow. “It’s not worth anything, that’s the sad part. Just cheap costume jewelry. I wouldn’t leave anything valuable out.”

  “I’m sorry.” The maid tried to edge around her next to the TV, but a minute shift in the woman’s bulk to the left blocked this path of egress.

  “Could you have thought I wouldn’t notice? What would happen if I reported this?”

  “I would be fired.”

  “If not worse.”

  “Yes. Please don’t tell.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” The maid registered the woman’s towering anger now, and how the woman controlled it by assuming a contemplative air, a livid thoughtfulness that felt more dangerous than simple rage.

  “My son, Isaac. I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Eight. And sick. He has polio.”

  “Cue the violins. So did our president, but Eleanor didn’t go around stealing jewelry, at least not that I’m aware. Do you think this gives you the right to steal?”

  “No, I don’t.” She began to cry.

  Mrs. Gerson sighed. “I’m not going to tell. I don’t want your being fired on my conscience.” The maid stood very still, like a small child waiting for punishment to be dispensed. It seemed that if she made herself very still and very small, the enormous woman might forget her and go on with her enormous life.

  “What’s your name?” said Mrs. Gerson.

  “Hannah,” said the maid. It felt inappropriate saying it to a guest.

  “Hannah what?”

  “Hannah Kohl.”

  “Hannah Kohl. It’s a pretty name. My name’s Annette. Sounds like Hannah, though I like yours better. Annette Gerson.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh?”

  “I asked at the desk. I was curious. I am curious about guests sometimes.”

  “Hmm. Do you steal things sometimes?”

  “No.”

  “I imagine,” said Mrs. Gerson, sitting on the bed, “that that isn’t entirely true. I imagine items have a way of disappearing from the hotel, from rooms you clean.”

  It would be a simple matter now, the maid thought, to walk quickly from the room, to finish her chores and return home for the day, and wait for the phone call that she hoped would not come. And might not—after all, Mrs. Gerson had already said she didn’t want to get her fired. But instead, she remained rooted to the spot in curious terror. The woman was frightening, and fascinating, and what was truly fascinating was how the woman seemed fascinated by her. “You have the look,” continued Mrs. Gerson, “of a filcher. A guilty little kitten filching fish.”

  The maid didn’t know what to say to this, so she said nothing. Mrs. Gerson patted the bed for the maid to sit beside her, and she did. “Where are you from, Hannah?”

  “Poland.”

  “In the camps?”

  “No. My father moved us before. He is Amshe Sikorsky’s second cousin from Wrocław. Mr. Sikorsky helps pay our way, a little. We come in 1938, first to the city but just for two years.”

  “Then where?”

  “Then to Monticello, to farm. A few years ago I come up here, and they give me this job.”

  The maid sensed that the woman wanted her to speak, so she spoke. She told how they had moved to the country, and how, in high school, she’d met a local boy who she thought was nice, but who wasn’t. How he’d tricked and misused her, getting her drunk on pear cider and taking off her clothes. She couldn’t believe she was telling the woman these things, but they came pouring out of her in a rush, before she had time to think about what she was sharing. She described the pregnancy and her family’s shame. The wedge it had driven, made so much worse when her father had died. Death had eased her father’s shame, but her mother and older sister blamed her for the series of strokes he’d suffered, said she’d killed him. Things had never been the same. She told Mrs. Gerson how things were now, that they helped here and there with Isaac and his illness, but that he was tainted to them. “I see how they look at him, how they talk to him. You know?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Gerson. “I do know.”

  Now that she was talking, the maid couldn’t stop. She told the woman everything: their tiny home, Isaac’s illness, and the constant worry she had for him—not just the polio, but the local children who had disappeared in the last few years, the helpless feeling of something being out there, a fear that sometimes rendered her shamefully glad that her boy was in bed, at home. Then she moved to the stealing—the sick fever that came over her, the damnable urge that overtook her innocent hands, the locked room full of other people’s possessions. She told the woman everything, up to the very moment Mrs. Gerson had walked in on her.

  “You poor thing,” said Mrs. Gerson. “You’re a kleptomaniac.”

  “What is this word?”

  “The urge to steal. It’s a condition, I have to imagine, related to your experiences, and to anxiety about your son. You must be so frightened.”

  “Yes,” said the maid, suddenly crying again, now ashamed of how much she had told this stranger. Without warning, Mrs. Gerson reached over and thrust her hand deep
into the pocket of the maid’s apron. The maid stiffened, but the woman pulled out the forgotten brooch.

  “Now then,” said Mrs. Gerson, holding the pin in front of her as though she were speaking to it. “We leave in two days, but I want to help you. I will set up an appointment for your son to be seen by our physician. It sounds as though—what was his name?”

  “Isaac.”

  “—Isaac has not been receiving adequate care.” She put the brooch back in its box and shut the lid. “You will both stay with us in the city. I’ll leave the details for you at the front desk.” She put her robe back on and laid a heavy hand on the maid’s shoulder. “I’ll see you soon, Hannah.”

  The trip into Manhattan took nearly all day, though they left home in the violet cold. Simply walking to the bus stop in town took nearly an hour, with Isaac having to stop several times to rest. The maid wanted to carry him—it would have been easier—but even at eight, the child was willful and proud, and would not allow himself to be carried like a baby. They edged along on the short shoulder of the road, shrinking into themselves as the occasional truck yawned by, heedless in the waking dark.

  From downtown Liberty, it was a two-hour ride to Newburgh and across the Hudson, then another hour waiting for the next train to New York. Seated on the wooden bench in the small station, they passed a bag of stale peanuts back and forth. These she’d taken from the hotel kitchen pantry in anticipation of the trip—theft, too, though not in the same spirit as her theft from guests. Peering down the long canal of bent trees from which their train was due to emerge, Isaac said, “What are they going to do to me?”