Hadley closed his eyes. He knew, of course, that Lucinda couldn’t run off with the cook’s son and expect everyone’s blessings. Hadley was content with what Lucinda gave him. After all, it wasn’t Dickie’s blue blood she craved in the dark hammy corners of the smoke house. And when Lucinda read something dirty in a book, she didn’t mold Dickie’s hand with her thumbs. She molded Hadley.
“Hadley,” Mama said, molding his hand with her thumbs until he yanked it away. “I’ve been in service all my life. This is just the way these things go.”
Hadley didn’t believe that she was capable of understanding about Lucinda. He shook his head and felt the crumbs of his brain spin in circles around the inside his head. He sincerely doubted anyone had ever gone as far as he had for a kiss.
###
Two weeks passed as slowly as molasses before Lucinda finally found the time to pay him a visit. By then, Hadley’s color was much improved, but not his disposition. Lucinda didn’t seem to notice. She tore open the curtains, filling his sickroom with the harsh light of day.
In the sun, her hair was more buttercup-colored than ever. Hadley’s fingers on the blankets splayed like a rake, desperate to rip into those bright buttery strands.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“If you’re feeling fit, I think it’s time we for us to resume our lessons.” She fluttered her fingers in front of his face, blinding him with her diamond. “Have you heard the good news, darling?”
Hadley would have struck her right then, if only he’d been born more like his daddy instead of like his mama. Being like Mama, he just turned green.
Lucinda put the diamond behind her back. “Why are you looking at me like that? It’s just a little old wedding is all. It’s not like I intend to bite him or anything.”
“Didn’t it mean anything to you, Lucinda?” he asked, proud of himself for not screaming. Or bawling. “I about died for you, in case you didn’t notice.”
At Maple Lawn it was a written rule that Hadley must put on Sargeant’s big floppy gloves before handling the silverware. At Browning House, Lucinda took his blood into her mouth.
She ran her finger over the still-tender wound, and the pain he felt was not limited to his skin. “How can you marry him, Lucinda?”
“Did you think I’d marry you? Come on, dear, let’s read the new book. It’s just your sort of story—full of all sorts of breathtaking torture.”
“Get out,” he snapped.
“Oh Hadley,” she said, touching his face. “Are those tears in your eyes?”
Hadley slapped her hand away.
She couldn’t have looked more surprised if she tried. “Nothing has changed, honey. I promise.”
“That’s true,” he said. “You’re as heartless as ever.”
She stepped back as though he’d really used his fist instead of only thinking about it. “How can you say that? After all we’ve shared?”
Her heart thumped against the fabric of her dress, and for the first time in a month, Hadley sat up without a lick of trouble. He shoved the book at her and crossed his arms so she couldn’t give it back. “It’s over, Lucinda. The lessons. The secrets. The tricks. I can’t do it anymore.”
Lucinda’s lip actually trembled. Hadley missed those lips so much that he dug his fingers into the flesh above his elbows, shoveling graves in his skin with his nails. The last time her lips trembled like that, she’d pulled him into a broom closet by the collar of his shirt.
There was barely room for two brooms in that closet, much less two people, which only meant that they had to stand as close as brooms. Over the years, Hadley had felt Lucinda’s shoulder against his shoulder, her elbow on his knee, her hair on his nose, and her nose on his neck, but he’d never felt everything altogether at once. That day in the closet, Lucinda pressed him to the wall with every inch of herself and clamped down on his throat so hard, he had to bite on a broom handle in order to keep quiet. Afterward, he’d swept the Rose Bud Parlor with that broom, his palm cupped over the teeth-marks, and his blood trickling in a fiery thread down the inside of his shirt.
During their time in the closet, Hadley had memorized the feel of her, especially her lips. Why should Dickie Worther-Holmes have any right to those lips?
He was still thinking about the broom closet when he caught her by the forearms and jerked her down on the camp cot.
Mostly, Lucinda was a closed-mouth kisser and kissed like she was hiding something behind her teeth that was too good for the likes of Hadley. Hadley had tried a number of times to get in there, but as a rule, Lucinda would promptly switch to sucking on his neck the second his tongue got busy. This time Hadley didn’t give her a choice. He got in a few angry thrusts before she stabbed him with her diamond. Hadley pulled away. “Ouch!”
Lucinda smiled.
“Get out,” he said, and, by gosh, he meant it. He wished he’d never have to see Lucinda Browning again.
###
When Mama came with soup later, Hadley could tell that she could tell that he’d been weeping like a fool. “It’ll be okay,” she said.
Hadley slurped his sweet corn soup, determined to move forward. “Would you please find Ethel and tell her I’d like to see her today?”
“Ethel?” Mama said. “You mean that cute little upstairs-girl with the Chesterfield haircut?”
Hadley nodded. Lucinda Browning wasn’t the only fish in the sea.
“I’m sorry, dear, but I wouldn’t know how to find her. Poor thing got let go two weeks ago.”
Hadley inhaled a glob of corn. “They fired her?”
“Kissed the wrong person, I heard,” Mama said, closing the curtains with a snap. “You see, Hadley, you’re not the only servant in this household to have romantic troubles.”
###
As soon as Hadley was back on his feet, he started looking for new work. “Time I move on,” he told his mama.
The sight of Lucinda trying on wedding veils or laboring over sofa swatches with Dickie’s mama was enough to make him sick. The situation was getting dire. If Hadley didn’t find a new post soon, he would be serving pizzelles to the entire Worther-Holmes clan at the Night of Incantesimo engagement party that Dickie’s sister, Fancy, was cooking up for the last weekend in May. Fancy was married to a Sicilian and thought everything should be Sicilian.
To make matters worse, Hadley couldn’t grab a broom without running into a discomfiting memory. The creak of a door might summon one. The turn of a page. A struck match. In the vineyard, he was plagued by thoughts of the afternoon she crept up behind him, squashing fallen grapes with her bare feet. He didn’t know she was there until she drew a wet toe across his toes. “Read to me, Hadley.”
In the Log Cabin room, he was reminded of the time he’d taken the tiger tooth away from her and pressed it to the old knife scar on the pad of his finger until a black-red bead appeared. While Mama whipped potatoes on the other side of the door, Hadley rubbed blood across his lips and Lucinda ate it off.
Flowers were particularly dangerous. Flowers made him think of the day she’d taken off his bandage by the Butterfly bush. Ten minutes later, they’d both walked away with a headful of lavender petals that were only slightly less purple than the bite on his skin.
Hadley wondered if his memories were the same as those of other people. His memories were made of grape juice and toes, teeth marks and blood, carved words and carved skin. And she was still leaving him notes.
When are you going to forgive me?
One day, when they were setting up in the dining room for Lucinda’s spring meeting of the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene club, Lucinda touched his “garden-shears” bump, pressing the place with her nail. For several blood-pounding moments, Hadley surrendered to the gentle pain, unable to squeeze out a single breath. In fact, had Lucinda kept at it much longer, he would have keeled over on the radish roses.
“Don’t leave me,” she said.
His stomach churned with pain. Now the dining roo
m was ruined too. It was time for him to leave Browning House.
“Why don’t you try Muggin’s place?” Loomis suggested when they were pitching hay together one morning. “That old coot’s got more folks working on his lawn than Mister Wilson has tending to the White House.”
Hadley had an interest in doing lawn work and thought this to be a fine idea. That Sunday, he headed to Mr. Arthur P. Muggins’ place on Morning Dew Circle to talk to the man about a gardening job.
###
Hadley had often told Lucinda that he should be growing flowers instead of shelling peas. “A house ought to have a garden that suits its personality. I think I would be good at growing gardens with personality.”
Lucinda had laughed the first time he said this. “Does Browning House have a personality?” she asked.
“It sure does. It’s the coliseum, remember? If I were in charge of the coliseum, I’d plant blood-red hortensia under the windows and grow roses that smell like myrrh.”
“Where do you get such fanciful ideas, Hadley?”
“Hell, Lucinda, I was born with ideas.”
###
The house on Morning Dew Circle was the whitest, most painted house Hadley had ever seen. With a personality that was every bit as fussy as the mother-of-pearl jewelry box Mr. Browning bought for Lucinda’s bracelet collection, its gardens looked all the more showy against its blinding white walls. Three tiers of Bourbon roses tumbled under the front windows like rubies spilling from a drawer. A gazing ball cast sapphire reflections under a flowering Empress tree. And bright blooms fanned the porch in elaborate patterns edged with paths of pink sand. Every flower in the old man’s garden seemed planned down to the last petal. Suddenly Hadley’s big ideas felt awfully small. What am I doing here? he asked himself. I don’t know how to make a bed of forget-me-knots grow in the shape of a doily. His only hope was that Mr. Muggins’ might need his peas shelled. Before he could make up his mind whether to knock or leave, a Negro boy opened the door and made his mind up for him.
Inside, the place reeked of varnish and calcimine and the walls jumped with the steady crack of hammers hammering wood. A fine plastery powder filmed Hadley’s skin. He greeted Muggins with a sneeze.
The old fella was sitting in a wheel chair on the screened porch drinking a mint julep. A book lay open on his knee, the title of which Hadley read upside down; The Brawn of Bernarr McFadden: An Arresting Pictorial.
He ain’t gonna have need of me, Hadley thought as a parade of strong fellows filed by the porch with bricks stacked on their shoulders.
Mr. Muggins watched his army of workers from behind a pair of big sunglasses. Hadley watched, too. Being new to interviewing, he couldn’t think how to begin. Should he make small talk so as to appear friendly: How’s that pictorial going, Mr. Muggins? I hear it’s very arresting. Or was it best to jump straight to the point? I need to get away from Lucinda Browning, and I’m willing to trim your rose canes with my teeth, if that would work for you?
The Negro boy swished a fan around the old man’s head, and Hadley watched three unnaturally black hairs blow back and forth, back and forth. All the while, he couldn’t help but think how delightfully boring it would be to work as a fanner for Mr. Muggins. “I’ve come to ask if you have any work, sir,” Hadley said.
Two murky lenses turned his way and gave him a murky once over.
Hadley cleared his throat. “I’ve been at Browning House since I was nine. Before that I was with a family in Charlottesville called Tweeb.”
Muggins’ hair blew up. Muggins’ hair blew down. “What do you do for Winslow Browning?” he asked.
Hadley squared his shoulders. “I’m pretty handy, sir.” He ticked off his handiness on his fingers. “I know how to work a vegetable garden, fix a toilet, bake a Brown Betty, and I’ve been told I have a very cajoling way with pigs . . . ”
Muggins tapped on Hadley’s arm. “Let me see them.”
“Sir?”
“Your arms. I’m putting in a gymnasium, and I’m looking for strong arms.” Hadley peered into the man’s dark glasses and saw nothing in return except his own round eyes. “Have you got strong arms, boy?”
Hadley showed his arms.
Muggins kicked back the last of his julep and swatted the fan-boy away. “When can you start?”
“You mean you’re hiring me?”
“I pay a decent wage and offer plenty of opportunities to earn an extra buck. Does that sound like something that would suit you?”
Hadley was afraid to get his hopes up. Could it really be this easy? “That all depends. I’m going to need a place to stay.”
Muggins smiled for the first time since Hadley stepped into his bright white house. “Today’s your lucky day, son. I keep a dormitory upstairs for my boys.”
Hadley was so pleased with himself that he let out a yelp as soon as he was through the front door.
“You gonna work on the gym?” a voice asked from somewhere over Hadley’s head.
Hadley shielded his eyes and looked up. A boy about his age stood on a ladder, cleaning out a gutter. He was tall and brown and had the biggest muscles Hadley had ever seen. The boy gestured with the claw of a hammer. “Ole man’s aw’right. I made an extra V spot last week just for plumbing his drain.”
Hadley felt like someone had just lifted a buggy off his chest. No more watching Lucinda doodle pictures of wedding dresses. No more notes that hurt his heart. It seemed a little strange that the old man wanted a gymnasium, what with being in a wheel chair and all, but that’s how rich folks were. They spent money on all sorts of useless stuff. It wasn’t gardening, of course, and Hadley wasn’t sure how long a job as a laborer was likely to last, but he didn’t care. He was pleased as punch to be leaving Browning House behind.
###
Hadley wrote out his notice three times over before leaving it under the coal-lump paperweight on Mr. Browning’s desk. Even Mama couldn’t complain. She believed the move would be good for Hadley. In a month’s time, Lucinda would be married and moving into one of the fancy modern houses on Treebourne Street built by Worther-Holmes Homes. Regardless, she was sure to be making regular appearances with her young husband in tow.
“At Muggins’,” Mama said, “you can keep clear of Miss Lucinda forever.”
Mr. Sweet came into the kitchen just then and told Hadley that Mr. Browning wished to speak to him in the study.
###
Hadley had built fires in the study, of course. He’d once earned an afternoon off for repairing the baby toe on the claw foot of Mr. Browning’s desk chair after Lucinda had taken the coal paperweight to it because she didn’t have a mama. But Hadley had never been in the study when Mr. Browning was in the study.
“Sit,” Mr. Sweet said, nodding to a chair. The chair was parked directly across the table from Lucinda, who pulled a long pink twist of taffy from her teeth and smiled a Cheshire smile.
Recently, she had cut and waved her hair, and Hadley didn’t care for it. He thought it made her look older. Then again, this was probably not such a bad thing. For one, her hair wouldn’t be dancing across Dickie Worther-Holmes’ cheek nearly so often as it had danced across his cheek in the good old days. For another, Hadley didn’t want to be reminded of the good old days.
Mr. Browning was a tall elegant man with eyes that blinked two or three times as as often as normal. He was known around town for his bright yellow pointed-chin beard, which he stroked obsessively into the sharpest of triangles whenever he wasn’t using his hands for other things. Presently, he sat next to his daughter with his hands folded on top of Hadley’s letter. He looked ridiculously big behind the spindly writing table, and Hadley couldn’t help but wonder if this was why the man had chosen such a delicate piece of furniture for his desk. He motioned for Hadley to pull his chair up as if they were about to eat. Somehow, the table made Hadley feel like a runt, even as his employer tripled in size.
Mr. Browning did something then he had never done in a full eight years. He
released Mr. Sweet and spoke to Hadley with his own two lips. “I’m baffled,” he said, blinking ten times. “And I don’t get baffled much. No one has ever resigned their post at Browning House. Retired, yes. On rare occasion, we’ve been forced to dismiss someone. Usually people die first. Resignations are unheard of. So what’s the problem, young man? The pay is fair, so it can’t be that. The work is reasonable, and the hours are quite standard. What could possibly be the trouble?” He must have seen Hadley shift in his seat because he added, “You may speak freely, of course.”
For the first time in weeks, Hadley wanted to laugh. He even shot a look at Lucinda, hoping she’d get wiggly at the thought that he might actually speak freely. Well, you see, Mr. Browning, your daughter here has been giving me more than reading lessons for the past few years . . .
Much as he might like to say the words, he didn’t have the nerve. He hardly knew what to say at all. Hadley wished Mr. Sweet were doing the talking instead. “A man can’t live with his mother forever,” he finally said.
“So this is about living quarters? Is that it?”
“No, sir. It’s about doing something on my own.”
Mr. Browning patted Hadley’s letter as though it wouldn’t lay flat. He blinked some more. “All right then. I can appreciate that, son, I surely can.” He patted the letter again, though this time it was rather more like a spank. “I have to wonder though—how much do you really know about your new employer?” Triangling his beard into a saber-sharp point, Mr. Browning leaned across his little desk and spoke in the lowest possible voice. “Are you aware of the fact that Arthur Muggins has a reputation for hiring young men, such as yourself, to perform special ‘duties’ for extra cash?” He sat back in his chair. “If you catch my meaning.”
Hadley didn’t catch his meaning. “He needs laborers, sir.”
The Reading Lessons Page 7