The bus arrived.
5
For all the lugging about of suitcases I’ve done in my life, I’ve never learned to carry one so that it doesn’t bang me about the legs. My new one wasn’t heavy—one advantage of cardboard —but it was awkward like all the rest. As I carried it from the bus stop toward the boardinghouse, feeling like an ant with an especially cumbersome crumb, I heard brisk footsteps on the sidewalk behind me. When I started toiling up the first flight of steps, they suddenly got a lot brisker, and a cheerful little man bounded up beside me. He looked about sixty, a bit old to bound, but he beamed as if he’d never felt younger and said, “Excuse me, young lady! May I relieve you of that? We seem to have a common destination.”
“Oh. Mm-hm, thanks!” I relinquished the suitcase and immediately had to hurry to keep up with him.
“Haven’t rented our corner room, by any chance?” He had a fine, deep voice that sounded as if it ought to be coming out of a much bigger man, and he said everything heartily, as if he were congratulating you. When I admitted I lived here now, he boomed, “Good! Too nice a room to stay empty so long. Allow me to extend a welcome. I’m perhaps the oldest living settler—aside from Mrs. Jackson, of course. I’ve been here thirteen years this month.”
“My! You sure must like it.”
“Yes, it’s handy to my work. By the way, my name’s Edmonds.”
“Oh. How d’you—pleased to meet you. Mine is—” And here was that little problem again, the one I was going to think about later, only here it was later and I still hadn’t thought about it. “I’m Georgetta Einszweiler Smith,” I said, casting the die.
He set my suitcase down on the porch, where we were by now, and shook my hand. An instant later his name registered on me. Edmonds. The Dr. Edmonds in the will? “Are you a doctor?” I asked incautiously. “I mean—that is, Mrs. Jackson mentioned—”
“Not the kind that cures measles. A mere pedagogue, I’m afraid. Raised in captivity and quite tame. I teach math and physics at the college yonder.” He beamed again, opened the door for me, and reburdened himself with my suitcase, adding, “I’ll just see you to your room.”
“Oh, don’t bother—”
“No bother at all. Tell me about yourself, Miss Smith. Are you newly arrived in Portland? Or just moving from another house?”
I told him I’d just arrived. In the few moments of walking along the dim, musty reaches of hall and passage and fumbling in the gloom for my keyhole, he had my whole Morton Center routine out of me, and my lucky-to-get-a-job routine, and an additional fact or two about my Idaho relatives and home life that I hadn’t known myself. It was a bit like finding yourself onstage, speaking lines, before you’re quite sure what the play’s about. “Well, thanks a lot,” I said in relief as I finally got my door open.
“You’re entirely welcome, Miss Smith.” He stepped in just far enough to set my bag down and smiled. He had a quick, warm smile and beaming dark blue eyes that were the only thing you noticed about his face. “I hope you’ll soon feel quite at home. We’ll do our best to help—we other lodgers.”
“Well, thanks a lot. How many other lodgers are there?”
“Just Miss Heater and Mr. Kulka, besides myself—and of course Mrs. Jackson and her daughter. It’s a small group, but we find ourselves quite congenial—remarkably so, I may say.”
You certainly may, I thought, as I recognized two other familiar names. I couldn’t help staring a bit at this blue-eyed, cheerful little man and marveling that crooks could look so much like anybody else. At that moment the cuckoo burst out of his little house to shriek about its being five o’clock. Dr. Edmonds’ eyes flashed to it, and a curious, complicated change came over his expression.
“Oh. You’ve wound her clock, I see.”
“Her—?” I said.
“It belonged to the previous tenant,” he murmured. “Well, I must run.”
He was gone before I could say another word. I closed the door and inspected the room all over again. “Her” clock, was it? I made a small bet with myself that he was referring to the late Mrs. Dunningham. It was probably “her” marvelous old highboy, too, and her bed—maybe even her books. I went at once to the bookshelves under the side window. Sometimes you can tell a lot about a person just from the books he owns.
Not this time. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Moore’s Héloïse and Abélard, French Made Simple, Priestley’s The Good Companions, Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way, a rhyming dictionary, The Wizard of Oz, Shelley’s Collected Works, a book about elephants and one about cheese, a couple of very fat old tomes about archaeology, a Guide to the British Isles—nobody could have deduced anything from such a mixed-up collection. I gave it up and started to unpack.
It was quickly done because I certainly hadn’t much, but half the lot was wrinkled from its two days in the camel-bag. I was just wondering if I’d have to buy an iron when there was a timid little knock at my door. I opened it to find myself face to face with a stack of skimpy towels like the ones in my bathroom, two plump, tanned hands holding them, and a lot of bushy dark hair showing above them. Below was the rest of what appeared to be a very large girl.
“I’ve brought the clean towels,” she said in a very small voice.
“Oh. Why, thanks, honey,” I said, vowels carefully flat. “Shall I—sort of take them?”
“Mom said I was to put them away for you.”
“OK. Come in.”
She came in, still hiding behind the laundry, and headed for the bathroom in a sort of cringing hurry, as if she’d found herself on the street without her skirt and was trying to get inside again before anybody noticed. It made my teeth hurt, just to watch her. I’ve been stiff and self-conscious in my day—my first year at Madame Fourchet’s, for instance—but never like that.
“My, that’s a fine supply. I’ll be able to take lots of baths,” I babbled, mainly to fill the silence. “You Mrs. Jackson’s daughter?”
“Yes,” the girl whispered, achieving the bathroom door and scuttling out of sight.
“Well—d’you think your mother’d let me use her iron?”
“There’s one for the boarders, in the util’ty. I’ll show you.” She emerged reluctantly from the bathroom, and I had my first look at her. She was about fifteen, and no taller than I, but she outweighed me by a good four stone. As far as I could tell, there was nothing much wrong with her features, but they were lost in the middle of that moon face and bushy hair, and she wore a shapeless tan dress, white ankle socks with big black loafers, and carried her head ducked between her shoulders. She did have nice skin—smooth and clear and brown, with a faint rose flush over the cheekbones.
“I’ll get my things,” I was saying as I took all this in. “I’m Georgetta Smith. What’s your name, honey, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Wynola.”
“Oh! Well—I won’t be a minute—” I went on talking at random, this time because I was startled. Plain “Mrs. Jackson” hadn’t registered as one of the significant names, but “Wynola Jackson” did. This girl was supposed to take sky-diving lessons? Three thousand dollars’ worth? I found Mrs. Dunningham’s sense of humor difficult to grasp.
While I collected my ironing and my key, Wynola just stood in one spot wishing she were invisible—oh, I could tell, I could remember—and looked at anything but me. I couldn’t help trying to put her more at ease, not that I accomplished it. I was in the act of wondering whether it wouldn’t be more merciful to stop my chatter about Idaho and just ignore her, like a chair, when she exclaimed, “The clock! You’ve started her clock to going!”
“Yes, shouldn’t I?” I asked, turning to see if she were going to look queer, too.
She only mumbled, “Oh, sure, it’s yours now,” and I couldn’t see how she was looking because she already had her back to me and was starting for the hall. It was the last word I got out of her; she led the
way to the utility room, waved toward the ironing board, and vanished through the nearest door.
Now if I were a real detective, I thought, I’d already have drawn some brilliant deduction from people’s reactions to that clock.
The cuckoo was announcing five-thirty when I got back to my room, reminding me I hadn’t much time to get in groceries for breakfast. On investigation, I found a makeshift but workable kitchenette behind the cretonne-covered screen in the corner near the bathroom door. I’d inherited half a tin of Earl Grey tea, too, presumably from Mrs. Dunningham, and I instantly put the kettle on to boil. Tea in the late afternoon is a habit I find very hard to break. I drank a cup while I scribbled a brief list, then walked down to the little grocer’s to fill it. Coming back, I met Dr. Edmonds striding along to the mailbox. He saluted me cheerily, then jammed on the brakes and swung around, asking if I planned to take my meals at Mrs. Jackson’s. I explained my arrangements.
“Oh, yes, I see. Well—we lodgers usually gather in the living room for a half hour or so before dinner. Why not drop in anyway, on your way to the Rainbow? I’ll introduce you to the others.”
Nothing could have suited me better. So at six-fifteen I was being ushered hospitably into a furniture-crammed lounge off the front hall. After a few pleasantries, Dr. Edmonds escorted me to a flowered wing chair near the big window and introduced me to Miss Heater, whom I hadn’t noticed—partly because she wasn’t the noticeable sort, partly because the room was so full of chintz and ruffled lampshades that it would have taken a while to notice an elephant in it.
Miss Heater was a faded, wispy little woman with glasses and a thin pink nose. She gave me a strained little smile and a little bird claw of a hand, then took them both back quickly and became very involved in wiping the nose with a minute pink handkerchief. She gave me several similar strained little smiles during the next fifteen minutes but scarcely said a word. I’d come in meaning to say scarcely a word myself, but lifelong training in decent manners is awfully hard to eradicate. Besides, there are questions to which “mm-hm” and “hmp’m” simply will not work as answers, such as “What’s the country like up around Morton Center?” Dr. Edmonds, obviously an expert at drawing people out, was full of such questions. I found myself describing a little town set among potato farms, and a big old house (like Aunt Doris’s), and a Wawkanap Creek where my lot always swam and picnicked. I invented a cousin Sam who’d cut his knee there last summer on a submerged log, then went on adding bits of autobiography and uncles and best friends that I knew I’d better take notes on soon or I’d be forgetting them myself, and was quite enjoying my performance when Mr. Kulka came in.
Guess who he turned out to be—the gardener. Only he was really an artist, Dr. Edmonds explained, and merely gardened for his rent. (Where the weeds came into this I couldn’t fathom.) He lived at the top of the house, in a big attic he’d turned into a studio.
“My, an artist!” I said, gazing up at him in an impressed way as I chewed my gum—though he looked more like a tough than an artist in his old corduroy pants, and his faded brown shirt that wasn’t tucked in, and his black hair falling over those Bronzini eyes. “What kind of pictures do you paint?”
He muttered something about drawings and etchings, and stared at me somberly while I told him I didn’t know much about art myself, but I knew what I liked, and that my Aunt Eugenia used to paint lovely pictures on plates. Well, naturally I was just practicing my accent and hadn’t expected him to greet these tidings with much enthusiasm, but neither had I expected him just to sit down in the middle of one of my sentences and pick up a magazine, without a word. That’s what he did, though, leaving me gaping at empty air. It took me a second to find my wits; then I lost my temper, abruptly and completely. It was all I could do to keep from slapping him. I did spin around with my back to him, though I doubt if he noticed. Fortunately, Wynola came in just then to announce dinner, and I escaped.
Serves you right! I told myself as I stalked down the concrete steps and along to the café. Hereafter, chew your gum and let the small talk muddle along without you.
I was beginning to get sleepy again as I worked my way through the Rainbow’s southern-fried chicken—no relation to Aunt Doris’s—and Mr. Bruce detained me afterward to issue me three uniforms and to remark that he’d see me at eleven in the morning. But when I plodded back to my room, I went dutifully, though wearily, to dig out the old red-bound journal I’d transferred from the camel-bag with everything else. There were all those notes to make on my mythical relatives, and it had struck me at dinner that I’d do well to take daily notes on the legatees, too—just jot down impressions and snatches of conversation while they were fresh in my mind. For all I knew, they might be full of significance, which Uncle Frosty might spot later if I couldn’t now. I read the first lot over when I’d finished, but if some vital clue lurked there, it escaped me. By then I was too sleepy to care much about anything but falling into bed. It had been an active day, and I suspected that tomorrow—my debut as a waitress—might be more so.
Courage, Camille, I told myself. You can’t detect everything in the first eight hours. Relax and lie still, or you’ll wreck that hairdo—then where’ll you be?
6
I did rather struggle with my coiffure the next morning. My hair is the slippery, heavy sort most susceptible to the law of gravity, and by now it was showing a decided tendency just to hang down and behave like hair, the way it had been doing for eighteen years. Obviously, I was going to have to renew Opyl’s stern disciplinary measures. They began with ruthless backcombing—that much I remembered. Then somehow she’d scooped and swooped the resulting mass into its tower, using the hairbrush gently as a butterfly’s wing just on the surface, so as to leave the tangles intact beneath. I imitated this technique as slavishly as I could, feeling as if I were sweeping crumbs under the rug, and achieved a fair copy of the original after about half an hour’s effort.
Then I fetched one of my new uniforms out of the closet and had a look at it. It was just the frock—the starchy white pinafores were issued us daily, fresh-laundered, at the café—and it was really quite pretty, with a full skirt and extremely full sleeves caught in at the elbow. But unfortunately, mine was not yellow, like Brünnhilde’s. I should have known—the waitresses matched the decor. I was to be grass-green, a peculiarly penetrating shade, which with my hair and bright-blue eyelids turned me into a kind of rainbow all by myself. I decided the color-conscious Mr. Bruce ought to like me fine.
When I walked in at eleven, he was behind the counter, polishing glasses in a dignified manner, while the waitress on duty—a dark girl in pink—carried coffee to some customers in a booth. As soon as he saw me, he abandoned his labors for some menial to finish later—probably me, I thought—and ushered me through the upholstered swinging doors to the kitchen. At the big stainless-steel sink, a bitter-looking party in a cap and long white apron was chopping vegetables as if he hated them.
“Oh, Malcolm, this is our new waitress,” Mr. Bruce said. “Our cook, Mr. Ansley, Miss Smith.”
I turned Opyl’s brisk smile on and off again and told Mr. Ansley I was pleased to meet him. He shot me a suspicious glance around his shoulder, then went back to his carrots without comment. Wondering if he and David Kulka might possibly be related, I followed Mr. Bruce into the linen room off the kitchen. “Your cook’s quite a chatterbox,” I remarked, with what I thought considerable restraint.
Mr. Bruce, who was opening one of the big linen drawers, stopped and looked at me consideringly and gave me a surprise. “Mr. Ansley has sound reasons for despising the human race,” he explained. “He prefers to limit his contact with it. Don’t worry,” he added quite kindly. “It needn’t have anything to do with you.” Before I could close my mouth, he went on, “Now, the pinafores are in this drawer. Table linens in these. We use tablecloths only at dinnertime. One of your duties will be to reset the tables each day around five o’clock,
matching the cloths to the tabletops, please. Number five is your locker; here’s your combination.” He found a slip of paper and gave it to me, along with another of his considering looks. “Now, don’t feel you must learn everything in one day,” he said earnestly. “We’ll soon ease you in. Just report to me when you’ve put on your pinafore.”
Five minutes later I was behind the counter, polishing those glasses.
The luncheon business hadn’t begun, apparently; there were coffee drinkers in two booths, and the counter was deserted except for one college boy who brooded over a book and an empty cup down at the far end where it curved parallel to the front window. While Mr. Bruce was explaining that the regular dishwasher arrived at eleven-thirty and that Miss Madison would show me where things were, a trio of coffee drinkers got up to leave. Mr. Bruce stepped to the cash register to ring up the check. A minute later the brunette in pink came back with the empty cups, gave me a quick look, and edged past me to the sink.
“Oh, Miss Madison,” Mr. Bruce said as he closed the cash drawer. “This is Miss Smith, our new waitress. Please help her learn her way around, will you? Miss Madison is a student at the college,” he explained to me, and drifted away across the room.
“Pleased to meet you,” I told Miss Madison, who was trying not to stare at my coiffure. “Fremont College, did he mean? You must be real smart. I hear it’s awful hard to get into.”
I hadn’t heard any such thing—it just came out when I opened my mouth—but all unwittingly I’d set the keynote of our relationship and established the pecking order, in my first dozen carefree words. Miss Madison’s smile was a study in gratification shading rapidly into condescension.
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