by Mary Volmer
Now I could feel Miss Rose’s gaze upon me. “I’m speaking to you,” she said. “What are you doing there?”
“Nothing,” I said, but nonetheless felt guilty. “Only looking.”
Miss Rose considered the statue. I considered Miss Rose. She wore a f itted bodice, a high monkish collar, a white bustled skirt splayed like the tail of a swan. I was aware I was staring. Aware, too, that she expected this of me.
“You like this?”
At f irst I thought she meant her dress, but she was speaking of the statue.
“Yes,” I said. “No. I mean, it’s beautiful. And terrible.”
Violet rushed through the conservatory entrance. Miss Rose ignored her. I was sure I had said something foolish.
“You are right. Quite beautiful. Quite terrible.” She turned as if to make a formal introduction. “This is Daphne. She was a beautiful nymph, desired by Apollo. She ran away and when she appealed to the Gods to save her, the Gods, in their great wisdom, transformed her from a girl into a laurel tree. And left Apollo untouched.”
She raised one arm in much the same pose as the marble orator to her left.
“A beautiful woman’s face is not her own. It is”—with a sweep of her hand she acknowledged her stone and marble audience—“like a statue or a portrait on the wall, destined for public consumption. Women gaze with envy upon another woman’s beauty and f ind the tiniest imperfection the greatest of comforts. And men? Men admire, in a woman’s face, the reflection of their own hopes and fantasies. They f ind themselves under a spell of their own making and call it love. They write poetry and make war, not for the woman, but for her face. And then blame the woman when her face feels nothing in return.”
Miss Rose’s arm remained aloft. Violet began to clap, and Miss Rose, dropping her arm, looked hard at me.
“Well?” She placed a cautious hand to her curls. “I thought it quite good. Mrs. French is not the only wordsmith in this house. Yes, I shall recite it for tonight’s gala. Enough, Violet!”
Violet stopped clapping.
“Mrs. French has been rather impressed by your progress.”
This was news to me.
“But you.” With one f inger, she tapped the side of her nose, then with the same f inger, pointed at me. “You are often underestimated, I think. You will come see me, tomorrow, after your lessons.”
I glanced at Violet, knowing the comment was too close to a compliment for her taste, and after Miss Rose, gathering her skirts, left us there, I braced for wrath.
“It will be lovely, divine, exquisite,” Violet said sweetly.
“Violet!” Miss Rose called.
“Christine Willison is going to sing Faust. I may recite Lear or Macbeth. I have not decided. William will be there. Too bad,” she said—“too bad you are not invited”—and rushed after Miss Rose.
I glared after her. I had mentioned William only a few times in Violet’s presence, but like all royal witches, she was monstrously perceptive.
She also had, to my untrained ear at any rate, a full and lovely singing voice she was not bashful about showing off, and a good eye for drawing. Her trim waist and pale complexion were points of pride, as were her nails, blunt and perfectly clean, and she walked very prettily, like a dancer, on the balls of her feet. While she was not nearly so advanced in her studies as she f irst led me to believe, her memory was remarkable—she needed only to read a poem to know it. What I hated most about her, I think, was that I would have liked to like her, and whether I admitted it or not, I wanted her to like me; I think she knew this, too, because for weeks she’d dangled the possibility before me with the odd kind word, only to yank it away with subtle and calculated meanness. I was used to being feared, sometimes pitied out of hand, but these were cursory reactions to my appearance. No one had ever taken the time and effort to abuse me so artfully.
After three weeks in the manor, I could guess, from the tone of her voice alone, with whom she might be speaking. Her “Miss Rose tone”—deferential, soft, quick to agree, withholding all contrary opinion—must have been a great effort to maintain, because the moment she was beyond Miss Rose’s hearing, she sought some servant to abuse. Really she must have been quite lonely, but I had no pity. Her “Madelyn voice” promised to be a work of expertly understated nastiness.
I could only imagine the voice she might use on William.
The thought worked on me all afternoon and was still festering when I escaped Old Man for the rose garden before dinner. It was late October, a metal taste of snow in the air and the gray sky loud with geese heading south. Upriver, the Missouri spilling into the Mississippi looked like a coffee stain on a piece of brown worsted. Mist hushed from warm eddies near the riverbank, and the oaks and maples were brilliantly dressed.
They reminded me of fancy ladies. Of Violet. Of William.
Of William in a vest and top hat. William with his freshly shaved face and new manners, shiny as a pocket watch. Would Mama be there at the gala as well? Feeling the solid weight of the charm beneath my blouse, I took it off to admire—my habit when alone and thinking—when Alby, pipe in hand, emerged from the topiary. I closed my f ist quick around the charm.
“Dear Lord, if I peel another potato, gonna turn into one! How am I meant to learn a kitchen if all she ever got me doing is peeling this and scrubbing that?” She slumped beside me. “Huh. What’s the matter with you, then? Look like someone shot your dog. Smoke?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“No? And you got nothing in your hand either, huh? What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Alby searched her pocket for a match, found only a broken half. “You take something, huh? I always say Miss Rose got so many treasures, not likely to miss a little, but Cyrus says don’t go pissing on the hand that feeds you.”
Cyrus was the driver and the gardener, a Creole. Alby, whose mama had been Creole, was about the only one who could understand what he said. She flicked the broken match away, nudged closer. “Lemme see.”
“I didn’t take anything from Miss Rose.” But there was no way around showing her. Even in the waning light, the little eight-sided charm sparkled richer than anything I had a right to own. Her shrewd eyes pinched.
“Found it,” I said.
Alby said nothing.
“Someone gave it to me.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“William.”
The name, out of my mouth before I knew it, gave a sharp little thrill.
“William Stark gave it to me,” I said. “But he told me . . . he told me not to tell anyone.” The developing f ib raised my spirits considerably. After all, who’s to say William wouldn’t have given me such a charm, if he’d had one to give? Soon the statement felt more like an embellishment than a lie. And if a lie, then a harmless one, surely.
A different picture had formed in Alby’s head. “Well, I’ll be!”
“What?”
“Well, I just wouldn’t-a guessed a girl—town girl, what I mean—like you would be giving for favors. Lizzette maybe.” We’d caught Lizzette, the cow of a chambermaid who’d slapped me, and the houseboy, Tom, rutting behind the garden shed the day before. “I’m not judging, mind, but you got to be careful.”
“Not like that. It’s not! I’m not giving anything for anything.” And here, I gathered myself. “I. I love him. And”—I was standing now—“he loves me. We’re in love!”
The laughing call of geese pierced the sky above. Alby, wisely, said nothing; she didn’t need to, for those last words rang hollow even to me, and made me tense all night, and defensive when Violet, with more than her usual sweetness, greeted me the next day. She spent all morning giving me self-satisf ied smirks across the table without saying anything about William or the gala, and damned if I’d ask. So I was in no good mood when, at the appointed time, I knocked on Miss Rose’s off ice
door.
From the sound of her voice within, Miss Rose was in no good mood either.
I followed Mrs. Hardrow into the room, staring at my feet, and still those mirrors caught pieces of me like blackberry thorns. Miss Rose hunched over the desk, muttering to herself, her gloved hand stained black from the frustrated scratch of her pen. Dozens of discarded pages lay scattered about the carpet. Dozens of pages, and not even foolscap! Miss Rose lifted her head carefully, as if it carried a great weight. Then she balled the page she’d been writing and tossed it in disgust on the floor at my feet.
“Pick it up,” she said. I did. “Read.” I did. “Aloud,” she said.
When I was conceived, the Mississippi flowed backward.
I handed the crumpled page back, and she threw it again into the air and watched it plummet lifeless to the carpet among its fellows.
“There it is, Madelyn. My life. The blank pages of my life!” Her eyes rested upon me as I stood one awkward moment, two, feeling as I often would with Miss Rose, that I was little more than another mirror before which to practice phrases and faces for some anticipated performance. She sat back as much as her dress would allow, then recast her gaze upon me.
“You know Mrs. Smith the dressmaker, do you not? Your sister works for her, I believe? Stand up straight. Look at me.” I did both. Her smile, replicated in so many angles, pinned me in place. “What does Mr. Dryfus think of such”—she thought for a minute—“such industry? A great many men believe themselves more progressive in principle than they are comfortable being in practice.”
I didn’t know what Mr. Dryfus thought.
“And you. You have not been back to visit your sister since arriving, is that right? Mrs. Hardrow tells me you haven’t even asked. I hope there is no rift between you?” I said nothing. “It is often said that family bonds are the hardest to break. This may be true. Maybe.” Her eyes darted to the ceiling, to Old Man. “But once broken, they are very, very hard to mend.
“I want you to do something for me, yes? Look at me. Yes?” Digging into her desk drawer she produced a paper-wrapped box—roughly the size and shape of the cigar box of naked ladies I’d found the year before in William’s desk—and a note. “I want you to take these to Mrs. Smith. Will you do that? Straight to Mrs. Smith. Wait to see that she reads the note, and don’t leave without a reply.” She stared down her long, beautiful nose at me. “Then, my dear, go home to your sister. My father can do without story time this afternoon.”
It’s hard to explain the effect Miss Rose had on me. She was not particularly tall, and her girth was an illusion of cloth, but she wore height and girth to the greatest possible effect, her posture and gestures so grand as to seem part of a script only she had read. It can’t be said that I was afraid of her exactly (though I was afraid of displeasing her) or that I admired or trusted her. Not then. Not yet. I merely succumbed to her dazzling presence as you might to a sudden fever, helplessly, without forethought or will.
Nevertheless, by the time I reached the town green, I had all but recovered myself.
“Go home,” she had said. “To your sister.”
A church bell, then another, chimed two o’clock, and boys and girls spilling from Main Street School scattered like birds in all directions. Fine. Fine, I would deliver Miss Rose’s box and note. But beyond that I wasn’t sure. Because. Because technically I had no sister, did I? No home, either. The thought a dry scouring rush on the back of my throat. Technically, I wouldn’t be disobeying if I didn’t visit.
After all, Mama had not seen f it to visit me.
18
Elegant Attire, the only establishment owned by a woman on Union Street’s terraced block of brick shops, smelled of paraff in and herb sachets. A bustled gown dressed the window; a little cast-iron stove, shined up nice, crouched beside bins of buttons and beads. Inviting displays of fabrics, collars, and cuffs arranged by color and texture brightened the long wall. Ribbons dangled from spools behind the counter, where I couldn’t see but heard Henry, Mrs. Smith’s deaf old dog, whining in his sleep. There were no customers. To my relief, no Mama, either. I thought Mrs. Smith might be on an errand until, behind the felt curtain partitioning the shop front from the cutting room, I heard two or three voices—distinctly male voices—garbled and rough. “There in a minute!” Mrs. Smith called out from among them.
I peeked around the curtain and found two men seated to tea with her at the cutting table—Emil Le Duc, the cobbler, and Simon Hershal, the druggist, whose businesses stood shoulder to shoulder with the dress shop.
“Shouldn’t be allowed,” Hershal was saying. Le Duc, holding his china cup with nervous care, nodded agreement. “As much a crime, I say, to threaten a man’s livelihood as his life. Take him to court if he won’t listen to reason.”
The “he” I guessed was the same “he” who had kept shopkeepers on that street complaining all summer: Sonny Schwartz, whose sin, apart from being a Jew, was opening a general store that carried factory-made shoes and dresses and a whole cabinet full of patent medicines (guaranteed to cure all but man’s f inal complaint), all for a fraction of the usual cost.
“I’m afraid the law is on his side, Simon,” Mrs. Smith replied.
“Well, change the law then. Isn’t Stockwell running for mayor? Where does Stockwell fall on this?”
But Mrs. Smith had risen, and to my delight and embarrassment, beamed at me. “Why Madelyn! What a nice surprise. Welcome!”
I tell you, no one else on earth has ever said that word with such sincerity. A good thing for Mrs. Smith’s business, too. By choice or necessity, most women in town made their own dresses or altered ready-mades to f it. Mrs. Smith was not the only one with skill and a sewing machine. Even so, a great many women stopping in only to browse the fabrics or trimmings stayed for tea in the back room where the men now hulked. Most of the time they left the shop with the peace of mind they’d been looking for, or the promise of such, and patterns, lace, and yards of cloth they had not.
Probably it was the transparency of her own calamitous past that compelled even those who didn’t share her political leanings to share their own troubles and embarrassments, not to mention their hopes and fears. They forgot, I guess, that Mrs. Smith did have secrets. She had all of their secrets, varied and numerous as button blanks. Indeed there was little about the town’s constellation of household concerns that Mrs. Smith did not know by insight, rumor, or confession—though she never seemed to know.
“You’re looking well,” she said, stepping through the curtain. The men gathered their hats. “Still shouldn’t be allowed,” said Hershal on his way out. Le Duc lingered conspicuously by the display of lace collars. Mama’s collars. “I rather expected to see you last night at the gala,” Mrs. Smith continued. “Miss Violet made quite a showing. That girl thinks a great deal more of herself than she ought.”
“Violet,” I said. “She’s nothing much. Miss Rose bailed her out of the tombs after she got caught thieving.”
“Miss Maddy, where’d you hear that?”
I faltered at her tone. “I just heard it.”
“Well, it’s not the case,” she said, but made no effort to revise the story. “Do you think it kind, spreading that on hearsay?”
I was chastised, maybe, but not at all penitent, and Mrs. Smith wasn’t the kind to brood over other people’s sins. Soon she was talking about how pretty they’d made the Turner Building, with the banners, and little round tables, each set with candles and a cornucopia, oh, and the dessert table! “Can’t for the life of me understand why your sister wouldn’t come along. I told her it was for a good cause but she”—Mrs. Smith held a ribbon to my gingham hand-me-down, her tone offhand—“she hasn’t got any help, has she? With the baby since you left?”
I don’t think she meant this as a judgment, but it felt like one. Probably she was just curious. Mama was, I suspect, one of the few souls in town w
hose secrets remained secret to Mrs. Smith.
“What about William? William was there, wasn’t he?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. Mrs. Smith obliged the change in direction.
“What about William? All the young ladies want to know, don’t they? Walked once around like he was looking for something, put his nickel in the box, and left without a dance.”
My heart leaped at this. No wonder! No wonder Violet had said nothing about him!
“That man . . .”
“That man what?”
“Oh,” she rolled the question away with the ribbon. “Never mind. What was it you said you needed?”
I’d nearly forgotten the box in my hand.
“What’s this?”
“From Miss Rose.”
“Miss Rose? Well.” Opening the box, she held in her palm a curious rubber cap, like a thimble made for a very large f inger. Then in one motion, she snapped her mouth and the box lid closed and glanced over her shoulder at Le Duc, who was still pretending interest in those collars. Then she read the note, looking all the while a bit feverish, though I couldn’t think why. I’d read the note on the way to town, naturally. There’d been no seal. Miss Rose had not said not to. And to my mind, there had been nothing of any interest. Nothing to be feverish about, at any rate.
Dear Mrs. Smith,
Enclosed, please f ind samples of the aforementioned French fashions. If you come to believe, as I have done, that more articles after this nature might be secretly in demand, then we might, together, see to it that this demand is met.
“You okay?” I asked. She tucked the box and the note deep in her apron pocket. “I’m meant to wait for your response.”
“Of course.”
She rummaged in a drawer, scrawled “Agreed” on a half sheet of paper, and placed it with a button blank in the palm of my hand. “For your scrapbook.” Then turned back to Le Duc, still worrying his hat.
“Emil? Is there something more?”