by Mary Volmer
“I wasn’t—”
“It’s Japanese,” the young lady said.
“Oh.”
“From Tokyo. That’s in Japan. Women there paint their faces white and their lips red and they act out fabulous dramas without saying a word. You don’t know where Japan is, do you?”
I ignored the question, and her tone. “Well, what’s it do?” I asked instead, then wished I hadn’t.
“Do? It doesn’t do anything. Miss Rose loves to collect beautiful things,” she said, lips pinching into a smirk. “And oddities.”
I might have pounded that smirk right off her face, except she was climbing again, casting behind her a long list of shalts and shalt nots. I was to say, “Yes, Miss Rose,” never “No.” No one said no to Miss Rose.
As we reached the second floor, a sound, much like a labored human moan, tumbled down from the third, but neither the young lady, her white hand gripping the bronze handle of a heavy wooden door, nor the servant, dusting the baluster, paid any notice. The young lady opened the door and ushered me inside. Then, telling me to stay put, she crossed the great carpeted room and stepped out onto a balcony.
Even if she hadn’t ordered me to wait there, I’m not sure I could have moved, for that room was a wonder of curiosities: paintings, sculptures, trinkets. A little statue of a hugely pregnant woman with a trunk, legs, but no head sat on the mantle to my right. What froze my legs in place, however, were the mirrors.
Mirrors everywhere, of every shape and size. Mirrors framed on the wall, balanced on stands, propped behind a broad, polished desk. Mirrors winking across the room at one another. I could not look anywhere without seeing myself and might have fled, except that with a breeze through the open balcony door, came the enormous f igure of a woman in a blue-gray checkered gown, along with a sharp, sweet scent. Rosewater. Lavender.
I watched, mesmerized, as she ducked beneath the door frame, easing those caged skirts and layered flounces over the threshold. The young lady followed, then a slouching man in a very nice suit.
“But this scheme of yours,” the man was saying, wiping his bald head with a handkerchief. “Are you in earnest, or making a point?”
“Does it matter?” Miss Rose replied. The girl eyed me, but remained a shadow behind Miss Rose.
“Yes,” said the man. “Yes, I’d say it does.”
“Fine. In earnest and making a point. Mrs. French says a woman would be perfectly within her rights to run, even if she was not allowed to vote.”
“She was making a point, I think, Rose, about the absurdity of—” he paused. “I really do not think she intended anyone to act upon her words.”
Miss Rose laughed. “Well, that is where Mrs. French and I differ. I have never believed words alone possess the power to change anything.”
The man tucked his handkerchief in his breast pocket.
“Aldus,” said Miss Rose. “You cannot doubt that I came here to care for my father. And I would have come even if my fortunes had not—”
“Of course,” said Aldus.
“But one cannot bear complacency. One cannot, after the life I have lived, retire into obscurity and abandon causes to which I have been so long conscripted. And this town needs . . .”
“What?” asked the man, smiling.
“Me.” She took him by the arm. “Dear, dear Aldus. Don’t think I don’t adore your advice.”
“Huh.” He kissed her cheek in a baffled, brotherly way. “Even if you never heed it.”
“Yes,” she said and, looking up, spotted me. They said their goodbyes. Miss Rose asked him to remember her in New York to a very long list of people. And then he was gone, and for the f irst time I felt the full weight of Miss Rose’s attention.
“Violet?” Without taking her eyes from me, she rested a hand on the pretty girl’s shoulder. “My little ornament,” she said into the girl’s ear, “go fetch Mrs. French from her studies.”
The girl left. Twin clocks on the f ireplace mantle struck the quarter hour. “Come here,” Miss Rose commanded in the thin ringing that followed, but I felt rooted in place by a strange, stone weight of anticipation, or dread, or both.
“Closer, girl. Come closer!” she said.
Rosewater and lavender. I tried to close my senses to all but the smell, yet I could feel Miss Rose’s eyes like a touch; and then a touch, kid gloves across my stained left cheek. I jerked away and might have run, except that her voice and manner abruptly changed. She turned from me to scrutinize herself in a three-paned vanity mirror behind the desk. “My dear, my dear,” she said.
Not just the woman, but that great abundance of cloth—all those flounces, pleats, and gathers—reflected, reflected, and reflected again to dizzying effect in that three-paned mirror. I took hold of an armchair to steady myself; she placed a hand to her curls much as a man might adjust his hat. She was older than I thought a Miss should be (how old, I couldn’t say) and more striking than beautiful, with light, widely spaced eyes, knobby cheekbones, and a long, narrow nose. It’s hard to describe the disorienting effect she had on me, but there, in her presence, all the rumors I had heard became flat as paper dolls and I felt an overwhelming urge to please her.
“Your sister”—she caught my eye in the leftmost mirror—“is a beautiful woman.”
I had nothing to say to this and looked away.
“I have always liked the shape of my nose. How would you . . . ? Look at me. How would you document such a feature? I once paid a girl to draw my nose to size. The result I framed and placed by my bedside.” Again she caught my eye in the mirror. “One must remind oneself of one’s small perfections.” She turned to face me. “Can you draw?”
“No.”
“Have you tried?”
“No.”
“Then your answer is premature, is it not?” She circled me, wrapping me in her scent and the rustle of cloth. My knees were shaking. I stared straight ahead at the window curtains. “Our Mr. Dryfus believes that character is foretold in the features. Do you agree this is the case?”
“He’s writing a book about it.” He had been, too, every day since May. A big book with a very long title.
“And that makes him right?”
“Don’t know.”
“I don’t know,” she corrected me. “I have a higher opinion of Mr. Dryfus than he might think. He is a man who understands but refuses to become a slave to popular opinion. Men gain respect for such resolve.”
A thump above our heads and what sounded again like a high human moan; I know Miss Rose heard it too. Her head angled to the ceiling, but her eyes remained on me. “You can read?”
“Yes.”
She handed me a thick leather volume from her desk; the hastily cut pages, serrated and torn, made the strict columns of verse inside all the more intimidating. “Well? Read.”
I did, but with no thought to meaning or inflection, intent only on touching each word correctly.
“No! No. No!” She revised the line in a trembling alto that seemed to rise with great force from somewhere near her liver. “‘Of bodies chang’d to various forms, I sing: Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring!’”
My second attempt deteriorated into stutters and stammers.
“Enough. Good enough. Viii-oh-let!”
Violet composed herself in the doorway. Behind Violet stood a wiry, gray-headed woman, wearing the f irst pair of bloomers I’d ever seen.
“Mrs. French! I have discovered a girl who may suit our needs,” said Miss Rose as if she’d found me wandering the wilds. Holding me by the shoulders, she pushed me toward the other woman, who f ixed oculars to her nose only to stare over the wire rims.
“Introduce yourself,” said Miss Rose.
“Madelyn.”
“Speak, my dear, as though you mean to be heard. You are not meek, are you Madelyn? You must not be meek fo
r the designs we have for you.”
Violet chortled behind her hand and I all but snarled at her.
“Good! Good girl!” said Miss Rose. “I knew I had seen boldness behind that mask of yours. Janus-faced little f iend, are you not?” And then turning from me. “What do you think, Mrs. French? William spoke well of her”—she paused—“intelligence.”
The housekeeper appeared behind Violet in the doorway. “Miss? Sorry to bother, Miss, but the Master—” Miss Rose silenced her with one raised f inger. Mrs. French considered me.
I glared down at the carpet, could feel my heartbeat in my temple, and when f inally I dared to look up again, found Mrs. French’s eyes behind those oculars, pinched to a discriminating half smile. “She may do,” said Mrs. French.
When Dot died, I had no idea how completely the circumstances of my life would change. For weeks I wallowed in grief and ignored, as best I could, the dread that descends when the unknown imposes upon the familiar. That afternoon, as I stood with Mama in the print shop study, listening to Mr. Dryfus read the terms of my engagement, I was still only vaguely aware that another such crisis was upon me.
“What’s it mean?” Mama said. “‘Exchange for services rendered.’”
“It means,” said Mr. Dryfus. “To receive one thing for doing another. Miss Rose wishes Madelyn to sit with Old Man Werner and read to him and, assist the nurse as need arises.” He looked skeptically at me. “In exchange, she will receive an education.”
Mama distrusted that word. To Mama, education was a fancy house she’d never been invited into. Mr. Dryfus bit his pipe, looked back and forth between us, but kept his thoughts to himself.
“No,” said Mama f inally. She turned to Mr. Dryfus. “No. I say I need her here, with me. With the baby. No. I say they can’t have her.”
“Well, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Dryfus, “I’m afraid this is not your decision. Or mine.” He folded the letter and slid it over the desk to me. “Madelyn?”
13
The truth is, if Mama had not been so quick to say no, I would not have been so quick to say yes. I answered as much against her as for myself, and we both knew it.
She followed me from the study to the base of the stairs, sparing not a backward glance for Mr. Dryfus calling her name. “You leaving me is what you’re doing. Leaving me to be a servant in a rich lady’s house.”
I had not expected a quaver in her voice. It stopped my breath. “Not a servant. You’re just. You’re jealous,” I said, regaining myself. “You’re jealous because Miss Rose is going to make me educated.”
And then for spite, I guess, because we both knew this promise had not been made. “She’s going to make a lady out of me.”
Mama said nothing. I looked up, half-expecting a cuff, but found instead a look of thoughtful disgust on her face. “This about William. That it?” she said.
Hanley, holding a grinning Little John under one arm like a sack of potatoes, stepped through the kitchen doorway. Mama didn’t care who heard her. “You’re doing this to impress William?” And then bending close, grabbing hold of my arm. “Don’t be a goddamn fool, Madelyn.”
“Doing what, Maddy?” asked Hanley. “What is she doing?”
“Let go of me, Rebecca.” I said, yanked my arm free and ran up the stairs.
After that I had no choice but to appear eager and conf ident when I was anything but, and when the anger burned off, well, I felt like a fool. What had I said yes to, exactly? I hadn’t even met Old Man Werner. And what if—What if I did not “do?” Nothing of Mrs. French’s examination, carried out in the manor library the hour before I returned to the print shop, suggested I would; that she had not rescinded her qualif ied sanction seemed, as I tossed sleepless in my attic room, an even greater mystery than it had at the moment.
Apparently, I didn’t know how to hold a pen, to sit in a chair, to pronounce vowels; I had not known what a verb or a noun, much less what a participle was (though it sounded like someone religious in the Bible). I had been unable to pick out Illinois on a map, much less Reliance or Chicago or London or Rome. Dot had taught me to f igure some, but I had never painted and never read a score; the only music I knew were bawdy songs backroom men taught me. I had seethed with humiliation, of course; my def iciencies had never been paraded before me so incisively. It bothered me, but not as much as it might have, because by the time Mrs. French f inally declared the examination over (thank Jesus and all his many participles), I had had little intention of returning to the manor, William or no.
I still didn’t quite believe it when late the next morning Miss Rose’s shiny hansom rattled to a stop before the print shop to collect me. What Mama thought of it? I don’t know.
Clara kissed me on the forehead, Hanley said good luck, even Mr. Dryfus said goodbye. Mama didn’t say a word to me all morning, just stood there with Little John, watching through the print-shop window, her face unreadable and drawn. I tried to make a show of it, but was unsure how to conduct myself. An old Negro driver in fancy livery asked for my trunk, but I had no trunk. Besides the clothes on my back and the charm around my neck, all I had, inside Mama’s old carpetbag, was a dress, extra drawers and underthings, rags for my monthlies, and my scrapbook. I’d had the forethought to hide William’s “Dear Miss Branch” letters behind a crate in Dryfus’s attic, but I couldn’t bear to leave my scrapbook and didn’t fancy handing the carpetbag over to him. He thought better of taking my hands in his white gloves to help me up, so I climbed up myself and made a point not to look back until the print shop was out of sight. I stared down at my offending hands, instead.
To pass time and to keep my mind dull, I’d been sorting type in the print shop with Hanley, and though I scrubbed them bloody, my f ingertips were still ink black; my dress collar too, I discovered, for the f irst thing Violet said, when again I stood in the marble foyer of the manor was, “Well. Don’t you look the little char girl!”
I felt like cutting off my hands, or slapping her face, or running away to the river; better than crying, which I fought the whole way there. From the glare of the gallery, Mrs. Hardrow, the housekeeper, appeared, stepping smartly, a small pale servant in tow.
“There you are, Madelyn. Susan, her bag,” she said to the servant already reaching.
“No!” I said, clutching it close, then seeing their faces. “No, thank you. I’ll be keeping it.”
Miss Hardrow, a stern woman of middle age, had a handsome pockmarked face and large, colorless eyes that gave away—but also, it was clear, missed—nothing. She considered me, then my carpetbag, then she nodded to the servant. “Never mind, Susan. I think, after all, I should like to show Madelyn where she is to stay. You won’t mind, Madelyn, waiting until after luncheon.”
I didn’t answer. It wasn’t a question.
Although the day was overcast, shafts of light through the cupola gleamed on scrubbed marble floors and statues, looming tall above me as I followed Mrs. Hardrow. She walked me through the gallery, past the sweating glass doors of the conservatory, to the library. What, if anything, she knew of the inauspicious hour I’d spent there with Mrs. French the day before, I didn’t know. “Wait here,” was all she said, not for what or how long, then closed the oak doors behind her, shutting me into relative darkness.
Blood beat in my temple. I must have stood a full minute, tense and listening, for the door to open, I suppose. Instead I heard footsteps in the room above, wind rattling six ceiling-tall windows. Cut-glass lamps danced rainbows over tabletops on which they rested and on the polished wood floor. Yet it was the smell that recalled with unsettling clarity the wonder that arrested me at f irst sight of this room the day before: pipe smoke, leather, dust.
The smell of books. So many books. More than I’d ever seen, lined up, leather bound, covering two whole walls, floor to ceiling. After Mrs. French began her examination, I became dulled to all but my wounded pride. But my f irst
glimpse of those books then, as now, awakened in me a kind of wonder, a kind of cautious awe.
A movable ladder rested against the far wall. I looked at the closed door behind me, then starting at the ladder, walked the length, thumping my f ingers along book spines, and back again. Mr. Dryfus’s off ice shelf (not to mention Hiram Cassidy’s satchel) were a pauper’s offering next to this. Had that woman, Mrs. French, read each one? Was that why her eyes were poor? My hand came to rest on a title. Just easing it from its place, breaking that rank and f ile and holding it in my hands, felt so thrillingly reckless, I didn’t even open it; instead, I slipped it back and nosed over to a thick volume already open on the table.
It was weighted by something round and silver and shiny. A fob watch, but without a chain, the letters H. F. worn smooth to the touch on the back. I picked it up, and looked at the book, which was heavy with words, but of quite a different character than the one Miss Rose had read aloud. After the event of marriage, the property of a married woman shall . . .
“What. Are. You. Doing?” Each word a sentence. I spun to f ind Violet poised in the doorway. I hadn’t heard the door. “What is that?” she said, striding in. “Did you take something?”
“I didn’t. I wasn’t.” The watch was still in my hand. I didn’t know what else to do so I put it back on the book. “I was just—”
“If you take anything that is not yours, I will tell Miss Rose and you will go back to where you came from.”
She looked at me then as if estimating the level from which I’d come, eyes settling briefly on my carpetbag. Then, with a thin, false smile, she turned and walked out into the brightness. “Come along.”
The sweating glass doors of the conservatory were open now. My stomach growled. I could smell cooked meat and see three or four people at luncheon through the glass. Violet went the other way, left at the spiral staircase, before the dining room, and stopped in front of a door made to look like a panel in the wall. The door opened to a narrow service staircase. I climbed down after Violet to a stuffy, dimly lit corridor so contrary in character to the vaulted rooms above, it took me a second to orient myself. Two servants, arms full of linen, hardly glanced at me as they rushed past and didn’t say boo to Violet. She greeted no one in the scullery or servants’ hall. She spent a sharp word on a young man in a footman’s vest, leaning against the kitchen door frame. He looked over his shoulder at her, f inished whatever he was saying before moving. Inside, the cook, a short, florid woman with a beaklike nose and wattle chin, looked up from a list she was making at the prep table.