by Mary Volmer
“What makes no sense?” She asked in response to my complaint. Rather than taking a place across the table, she had seated herself by my side, and her closeness, as much as my confusion, flustered me. She wore the same shapeless, worsted housedress. Her thick gray hair was braided down her back, and her forearms, tanned like her face, were thin, vein-tracked, muscled.
“Well, why’d he leave in the f irst place?” I asked.
“What does the story say?” She tapped her pencil on the thick book before us.
“That he was compelled. Forced, right?” She nodded. “But who forced him?”
Mrs. French said nothing.
“Why’d he go back?”
“What does it say?”
“You know what it says!” I blurted. “I’m not asking what it says. I’m asking why.”
“A shrewd distinction,” said Mrs. French.
“Maybe he was crazy!” I said, done with this nonsense. “Or feverish, the white light and such. Maybe he should have stayed put in the f irst place and saved everyone a lot of grief.”
“Maybe,” she said, equable as usual, except this time I looked her in the eye and found there a smile and a restrained but obvious amusement, which I decided to resent, though that was not easy either. She had one of those faces with lines and ridges so stern that any smile broke it into another face altogether, youthful, almost—almost, but not quite, handsome. And though it is true her voice—pinched and reed thin—was a poor vehicle for passion, something in those eyes, or maybe in that lithe little body, so vital and young compared to her face, made demands of me.
When she did speak openly, she spoke in declarative riddles—effusive riddles at that. “Woman must not be content to become a temple, beautifully adorned, admired, empty. Woman,” she said again, this time slowly and with great emphasis, “must build within herself a full and independent city of abilities. Only then can she stand alone, a citizen in the kingdom of man to which she has so long been subject. Woman is not born dependent, girls. She is bred that way.”
I’m not sure what Violet, who hadn’t yet been called away, thought of such a statement, but it was not what anyone else I knew said about women. And I imagined real prophecies were meant for larger, more imposing voices. Voices like Miss Rose’s.
In the face of these contrary methods of instruction, I became increasingly contrary. On the third day, after Violet left, Mrs. French placed before me paper and pen and asked me to write. I all but revolted.
“Write what?” I asked.
“Whatever you wish.” Then she returned to her own seat at the other end of the oak table and opened her book.
It’s hard to describe the anxiety that overcame me as I stared at the blank page. I had with no provocation written letters and poems and a great many other things in my scrapbook over the years, but I didn’t know what to write for Mrs. French. Even if I had known, I was sure whatever I wrote would turn out trite or silly, or just plain wrong. I was mad at her, mad at myself, and when f inally she left her own studies to observe my progress, I braced myself, fearing, half hoping, for some kind of clear and unequivocal response.
She merely considered me through, then over, the rim of her oculars. “Look at you, Madelyn.” She said this with f irmness but no malice. “Look at you. You cannot afford not to try. Do you understand that? You will have no choice but to make something of yourself. To be self-reliant. To discover a vocation. To make money, Madelyn. Do you understand?”
She took off her oculars, rubbed the purple imprint bridging her nose, stared down at me for a response I hadn’t made. Then she tapped the blank page before me. “I want you to compose one statement, one clear statement, before we’re done today. I want you to tell me what it is you want.”
“What I want?” I asked, incredulous.
“What you want.”
At this she took herself again to her place across the table and resumed reading. Outside, the wind rose; tree limbs scraped the library’s leaded windows; the blank page, fluttering softly, mocked me. I sat glowering at the top of Mrs. French’s gray head. Then, in a vigorous rush of def iance, I wrote:
To start, I don’t think I want a city inside me. I looked up. Mrs. French turned her page. Or a temple. I want love! I added another exclamation point for good measure. I want to be loved. And I want to be beautiful. Beauty is the key that opens hearts.
Nearly overwhelmed with my own profundity, feeling, indeed, as though I had shouted those words aloud, I shoved the paper beneath her nose, stopping whatever thought cut jagged lines into her brow and gaining for my boldness a stare that just might, as Hanley claimed, freeze men in their tracks. It was not that stare, however, but the way she read my words, pen in hand, judging every phrase, that froze me. An eternity passed. My courage, too.
“Ma’am?” The housekeeper, Mrs. Hardrow, from the doorway. “Sorry to intrude, but Miss Rose would have a word about . . .”
Mrs. French looked up at this. Both women looked at me.
“She would have a word.”
Mrs. French nodded with some annoyance, then with a breath stood and left me in the library, staring from across the table at my paper. Even before nosing my way to her chair, I could see that Mrs. French had written more in the margins than I had in my whole statement.
I do not want, she had written. I do not want a temple inside of me. If your convictions are to be taken seriously, you must state them with conviction.”
She had underlined Beauty is the key that opens hearts.
Good, she wrote. This is a much stronger statement than the f irst—elegant, in fact. Do you hear the difference between them? I do suggest replacing the fallacious absolute, “the key,” with “a key.” Beauty is a key that opens hearts.
As for love, my dear, it is my opinion that we are better off desiring only . . .”
Here the housekeeper had interrupted the response. Desiring only what? She did not return to f inish her sentence, and I was still distracted and ruminating after lunch, as I followed the servant sent to fetch me—for what purpose she didn’t say—to the guest room on the second floor.
Cream curtains danced in open windows; the canopy bed anchoring the green Turkish carpet was so imposing and my thoughts so oppressive that I didn’t at f irst notice the copper tub. Nor did I connect the steaming water buckets and the presence of a servant, a stout, young, red-faced woman, with her intention. It was the second servant, bumping through the door with an armful of dresses, who sent me leaping onto that bed to wrap myself, arms and legs, around a bedpost, shocking both of them, and me too. Foolish to strand myself like a treed raccoon when I might have made for the door, but there I was.
When asking didn’t work, they tried prying me off, one at a time, then one on either side, until I was screaming, biting, mad as a cat and just as heedless. This went on for some time before the stout one, growing weary, bloodied my lip with the back of her hand and was about to lay it on again, I’m sure, when both stood quick off me.
In the doorway, Miss Rose glistened in purple silk and taffeta. The third eye of a peacock feather rose high above her hat. “What on Earth!”
Mrs. French appeared behind her, then Violet, but the other curious faces dispersed with the arrival of Mrs. Hardrow. Said the servant who’d bloodied me, “She won’t budge, Miss. We—”
Miss Rose held up a hand for silence. Mrs. French’s eyes tracked from tub to servants to me and back again.
“What have you to say?” Miss Rose asked, and so I told her.
“I’m not going to strip to my skivvies in front of that cow. Not for you or God himself!”
The cow caught her breath. No one said anything. Everyone was watching Miss Rose, who looked as if someone had snuck around and pinched her hard on the behind.
“You little f iend,” she said, giving each word the attention of a sentence. Violet smiled. I was in
for it, sure, but beyond caring. No one but Dot, Mama, and the great Almighty had ever seen me in my glory. Banishment would be superior to the humiliation expected of me. Even so, when the clock on the mantle struck the quarter hour, regret as much as def iance rang through me. I tightened my grip, staring so hard at the Turkish carpet to keep tears from falling that the pattern began to melt before my eyes.
“You glorious f iend,” said Rose.
I looked up. Violet stopped smiling. Between Miss Rose and Mrs. French passed a silent communication I couldn’t read. Miss Rose sent Violet and Mrs. Hardrow from the room, but her presence seemed to expand and f ill the empty space, leaving little real estate for Mrs. French, staring down at me.
“I am going to make some assumptions,” said Miss Rose, picking up one of the dresses abandoned in a pile by the bed. “I am going to assume that it was the assistance, rather than good hygiene or my generosity, that you objected to with such . . .” She paused.
“Decisiveness,” Mrs. French supplied.
“There is soap by the tub, and towels,” said Miss Rose. “I expect you washed and dressed in half an hour.”
I looked at Mrs. French, back to Miss Rose. What if I was not washed and dressed in half an hour? What then? But I didn’t ask this. And after another silent communication, the women walked out. The door clicked shut. Steam serpents whisted from the copper tub; the mantle clock tick-tick-ticked. I counted twenty ticks, then with diff iculty, my limbs tense and bruised, I unwound from the bedpost and tried the door.
Open.
Well, a locked door would have decided me, but an open door? I swung it wide and stood with one foot across the brightly lit threshold. The landing was deserted except for a chambermaid crossing the landing with an armload of linen.
“I’m leaving,” I told her. “I’m leaving and you can’t stop me.”
“Suit ye’self, miss,” she said and carried on out of sight.
I stepped back into the room. I closed the door, stood alert and for a moment, undecided.
By the time I was done, as much water wetted the carpet as browned in the tub. I felt like I’d left more of me inside than came out again: half expected my mark to have washed away with the summer grime. But, of course, there it was, clear as a line on a map and bright as strawberries, especially in those tender regions that never saw the light.
The difference I felt more than saw. The difference was the gravel beneath the skin of my chest, twin nipples alert in the cold. The difference was the wisps of dark hair coarse under my arms and in the cleft between my legs. My f ingers, I let them travel there and linger—and what came to mind, along with the odd warmth coiling in my belly, was William.
The clock struck the quarter hour. I crouched, dripping and naked under the towel, and listened. No movement outside the door. I counted another minute, two, then retrieved the charm from the end table, exchanged the towel for a blue dress, a donation from the Wayward Home box, maybe, but the nicest I’d ever worn. Still no one came for me, and after a while, I realized no one would. I left Mama’s dress balled with the towel on the floor and took myself upstairs to read to Old Mr. Werner.
That’s what I meant to do, at least. Somewhere between the landing and the servants’ staircase, I changed my mind.
Mrs. French was not in the library, or the parlor, or the gallery. I found her resting in a wicker chair in the conservatory, with a sketch pad. If surprised at the sight of me, she didn’t show it. Another woman, most any other woman, would probably have made some blithely encouraging comment about my appearance or the dress, would have felt obliged to do so. Mrs. French said nothing.
“Desiring only what?” I asked, pleading as much as demanding. “On my paper, you said I’m better off desiring only . . . Only what, Mrs. French?”
I could not have endured one of her questions in return. She must have seen that.
“Desiring only,” she said after a moment’s indecision, “that which you might by will and effort attain.”
I stared at her. I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t feel anything, satisf ied or otherwise. Just spent and a trifle disappointed. “Oh,” was the only response I could muster. I turned to go.
“Madelyn,” said Mrs. French. I stopped but didn’t turn. “Nothing. I—” She took a weary breath. “See you tomorrow, my dear.”
17
It was only looking back on them that made the next three weeks pass quickly. Nurse Lipman, having accepted my presence, conceded one drawer in the wardrobe and part of the bed—so long as I kept my feet clean and off her side, courtesies she did not feel compelled to reciprocate. We woke before dawn to wash, change, and feed Old Man. Lessons with Mrs. French and Violet began at eight in the library. I had an hour of idle time after lunch, then three hours in the sickroom reading to Old Man in the yellow, kerosene lamplight, then back to the library, then dinner, then bed, then do it again. And haunting me all the time weren’t spirits so much as Mama.
Live people can haunt, you see, as well or better than the dead, and in those f irst weeks, I measured everything I saw or did against what Mama might say or think about it—silly, given that Mama was never one to share what she thought or felt. To keep her out of my thoughts, I occupied myself, even at idle times. Which is not to say I was useful. Servants accomplished all labors I used to. Mrs. French, who was never idle, encouraged me to wander the gardens and write about plants that most attracted or disturbed me, to improve my descriptive skills (because heaven forbid if even idle time did not pass in service to self-improvement).
Mostly I read in a crook in the sculpture-gallery wall nearest the conservatory. A lighter fare than Plato—Collins, Cummins, Dickens, Radcliffe—populated the library shelves, and Mrs. French censored nothing. Or I’d sit back and, listening to the strange and constant movements of that house, imagine those marble statues breaking from their pedestals, to resume those scenes of love and terror in which they were frozen.
One statue in particular, nearest the conservatory, enthralled me.
It was of a young woman, a garland in her hair. She was running, but looking back, her mouth open, a cry on her lips. One of her hands, reaching up, became f ive branches with leaves. One foot, planted hard against the earth, became a root; her belly was bark. To be honest, I nearly jumped out of my skin when f irst I saw her. She appeared so lifelike, so fearful, so soft to the touch, it was an honest relief when I summoned the nerve to tap her thigh and found it stone.
One day midweek, as I sat reading beside her, Miss Rose burst through the great double doors of the manor and into the foyer, shedding wrap, hat, and gloves in furious haste. Robert, the butler, trailed after.
“The good women of the Ladies’ Auxiliary,” she said, “have no need for the vote! No need, they say. And that Mrs. Morrison. The women of Reliance do not wish to have the vote thrust upon them. Thrust upon them? Had you any idea just how boorishly arrogant that woman was?” The butler had not. “The presumption! And she would not be allowed past the lobby of the New York Hotel wearing that dress. Except to clean it. Violet!”
She looked about. It was quiet, the servants occupied elsewhere. She spotted me and I felt my guts sink.
“You. Where is Violet?” I rather made a point of avoiding Violet.
I’d also been quite happy to avoid Miss Rose. Since the bath, I’d been a brainless, forgetful, stuttering fool around her. The unaccustomed impulse to please did this to me. I had no practice in flattery or self-aggrandizement, and in a frenzy to say something, anything of value, I blurted half-formed thoughts I then felt foolish about and later drove myself silly wondering what she thought about me, when it was obvious Miss Rose thought little about me.
Hardly an afternoon passed when Miss Rose was not visiting some relief foundation or orphans’ home or entertaining this or that charitable concern. She woke late each day, at nine, and labored for an hour over her toilette
with Mrs. Hardrow. Breakfast at ten, Mrs. Nettle told me, was a pastry or a sweet bun and a poached egg in a silver cup. At eleven she called Violet from the library to play piano and practice vocal scales and elocution exercises such as “nine hundred ninety-nine nuns interned in an Indiana nunnery.” While she liked to complain that she was ab-so-lute-ly exiled from society in that river town, she still managed to secure dinner plans three days a week, and visitors, mostly men, always seemed to be coming and going. And of course, there were the soirees, every third Wednesday of the month (the next one in a week) to which Mr. Stockwell so objected.
Every third Wednesday, society arrived in the shape of local musicians, artists, and singers—Reliance had its own small bohemian set, William primary among them. With them came a host of uninvited guests—shopgirls and clerks in their Sunday best—who all became, by the end of such evenings, Rose’s “brilliant, brilliant darlings” and she their “Heavenly Rose,” the name that emblazoned broadsheets when she graced the New York stage. Now and again this core was enlivened by a troupe of acrobats, a famous actor, or a writer en route to or from the West. All came to eat and drink, to perform and luxuriate in Miss Rose’s lavish praise, and to repay praise with the flattery Miss Rose demanded. Sometimes the young men stayed for days, wandering the gardens with note and sketchbooks and pensive expressions, entertaining what could only be divine revelations. Most often they stumbled away the next morning, bound for fame or obscurity or worse. I didn’t know. There was to be some sort of benefit gala that night in town. But since I arrived at the manor, there had only been one soiree, which I’d watched from the second-floor balcony, hoping for glimpses of William (who hadn’t come to visit me, as I’d expected).