The Other Typist

by Rindell, Suzanne

  “Well, I don’t know what you think I ought to’ve done. She’s hopeless, I tell you. Hopeless!”

  “You might try being a role model,” I heard Dotty say in reply. “She could use one.” I leaned a fraction to the right and could just see a peek of the room through the door crack. Helen was sitting in a chair holding a mug of tea. Hat pins stuck out at rakish angles from her reddish hair, but the hat itself—a rather large, outdated, and dramatic number—sat on the kitchen table by her elbow. Meanwhile, Dotty had her back to the room and was lifting something out of the oven, replying to Helen’s conversation over her shoulder in a distracted manner as she went about her chores.

  “Oh, I know—she’s an orphan and means well and it’s so sad and all that . . . But it’s just that she’s so painfully boring; talking to her is like watching paint dry! You can hardly blame Lenny for poking fun once her back was turned.” Dotty turned around from the oven, and Helen peered up into her face with an innocent, doe-eyed expression. I recognized it immediately from the repertoire of faces Helen frequently made while looking in the mirror. When her voice came again, it was demure and sweet. “You think I’m very cruel to say so, don’t you?”

  “Well, you know what they say: Shouldn’t judge till you walk a mile in someone’s shoes ’n’ all that.”

  “Ugh! But what ugly shoes they are.”

  “I’ve also heard ’em say a charitable heart looks smart on ev’ry woman,” Dotty said in the familiar chastising voice I recognized as the one she normally reserved for speaking to her children. She slipped a soiled dish towel under the iron casserole dish she had just extracted from the oven and paused to wipe her brow. “Not that there’s many who’ve shown me much charity ov’r the years, and you know, you think they would, too, what with Danny’s death and the childr’n and all. . . . Wouldn’t you know, Millicent Jasper, who used to be so chummy before Danny died, can’t even be bothered to bring over a dish or two or offer to give me a hand with the childr’n ev’ry now and then. And, of course, then there’s Helena Crumb, who’s no better . . .”

  Dotty began to list the people who had failed to demonstrate their ample charitable spirit with regard to her widowhood and the hardships of being left on her own to raise the children. It was a list I’d heard before, and one I knew she mentally updated on a daily basis. Helen, for her part, was clearly not as interested in Dotty’s heroic strife as Dotty herself was. She tipped the saltshaker upside down, allowing a thin stream of bright grains to jet out, and proceeded to push the tiny snow-white pile around the kitchen table with her fingertip. She frowned as though deep in thought.

  “Throw some ov’r your left shoulder,” Dotty commanded upon taking notice of Helen’s activity. Helen did so with a distracted air, the thoughts she’d been ruminating over rising to her lips.

  “It’s just impossible to be a role model to a girl like Rose,” Helen said. “Her clothes and manners are just so homely . . . and she doesn’t even pretend to be interested in feminine things.”

  “What do you expect, Helen? Lady Diana Manners? The girl was raised by nuns. They don’t exactly emphasize puttin’ on the frills, you must remember.”

  “I know . . . it’s just that . . . well, she isn’t entirely unfortunate-looking. It’s a shame she can’t be bothered to care a little more or do a little more with what she’s got. Think what a clever girl could’ve done with those brooding Sarah Bernhardt eyes already.”

  “Not all girls are clever like you, m’dear. And even fewer are clever and charming,” Dotty advised. “You should count your blessings and be kind to girls less favored by the boys. And in the first place, you can’t expect all girls to have the same . . .” She paused in the middle of folding a dish towel and looked up to the ceiling, searching for the right word. “The same . . . well—types—of romantic goals . . . if you know what I mean.”

  “What do you mean?” Helen asked, looking up at Dotty with renewed curiosity. Dotty hesitated and looked around the kitchen briefly as though to ensure they were not being surveilled (little did she know, they were), then moved a little closer to where Helen sat at the kitchen table. She slipped into a chair just opposite Helen and lowered her voice.

  “Well, the way I heard it, Rose was quite close to one of the nuns in particular. You know, kind of funny-close. A young novice named Adele, and things between them were quite . . . entangled.”

  Helen let out a small gasp. “No!”

  Dotty nodded solemnly, trying to restrain the wicked delight that was threatening to break through the surface of her face as she delivered this piece of “regretful news.” She leaned into Helen another half a degree and dropped her voice even further. “I even read the letter she sent here once.”

  “She? You mean the novice?”

  “Yeah. She sent Rose a letter telling Rose to leave ’er alone and stay away. I steamed it open over the stove and then put it back inside and dabbed a little flour and water on the envelope to reseal it.”

  This was news to me. A fine mantle of sweat beads broke out over my forehead as my temperature turned wildly erratic. My cheeks burned hot; meanwhile, my blood shot icily through my veins. I knew exactly the letter that Dotty meant. But I did not know someone other than myself had ever read it.

  “Did she say anything about Rose’s behavior or what it is Rose might’ve done?”

  “No, she just said—”

  They halted upon hearing a loud clattering from just outside the kitchen door. Too late, I had tried to grab for the broomstick but narrowly missed it, cringing as it landed with a loud smack upon the wooden floorboards.

  “What the devil?” I heard Dotty say as I quickly skirted up the stairs. In the brief flash just after the broom dropped, I had gotten my shoes off and was already carrying them in my hand, my stocking feet padding very softly on the tread of the staircase as I sprinted on tiptoe. By the time Helen and Dotty poked their heads out from the kitchen door, I imagine they found nothing but the broomstick lying on the floor, having been knocked over by an unexpected draft. It was not difficult to picture the scene in my absence—the two of them shrugging to themselves, righting the broom with an air of annoyed complaint, and resuming their conversation.

  Up in my room I picked up a novel, but after my awkward exit downstairs I was agitated and couldn’t quite focus on what it was that Mr. Darcy was saying—or not saying, I suppose, as was so often the case in Ms. Austen’s books—to Elizabeth Bennet. I was flustered and frustrated. The luxurious feeling that had once surrounded the unexpected boon of free time had been stripped away in one fell swoop by the mean jibes of a girl I hardly even considered my friend. What did I care for the fact that Helen had nothing better to do than gossip about me? But there it was, eating away at me. And worse still was the fact that Dotty had read Adele’s letter. I felt an instinctual wave of nausea wash over me as I recalled the words and details inscribed in that letter, and in my mind I read them over and imagined how they must’ve looked to Dotty’s ignorant eyes.

  I suppose I should explain about Adele. To be honest, I understand how people might not understand about Adele. But it was nothing underhanded or improper, I assure you. How horrified Adele would be to think her letter had ultimately resulted in Dotty’s particular brand of mistaken impression! Perhaps if she had known an outsider would interpret it that way, she wouldn’t have ever sent the letter in the first place. It really was an unnecessary letter in the end; there was nothing in it I did not already know.

  Dotty had it a tiny bit right, you see, about how close Adele and I had grown over the years (nothing unnatural, mind you . . . we were just so like-minded and dear to each other, we were like sisters—or else bosom buddies, at the very least). I think it was guilt that made Adele write to me, saying the things she did. The guilt a person was bound to feel when one found oneself torn between one’s ecclesiastical calling and one’s . . . well, secular life. The latter being t
he sort of life I believe she wanted to lead with me. You see, I think deep down within her, Adele wanted nothing more than to shed the habit, run away from the convent altogether, and have a sort of second start at life. We talked about saving money and traveling to faraway places, about going to Florence and looking at all the lovely pictures in the museums there, or perhaps to exotic Stamboul, where we could spend all day at the Turkish baths and shopping in the bazaars for only a few pennies. Once I’d left the orphanage behind me, I wrote to Adele about these plans regularly—I didn’t want her to think I’d given them up, and I was quite serious we should see them through. I admit I probably rhapsodized quite a bit in my letters, and perhaps my romantic vigor over the prospect of our future scared Adele somewhat, but I maintain these had once been our shared fantasies; it wasn’t as if I were a madwoman pulling it all out of the air. In any case, I would venture to guess the mere suggestion to run away and give up the habit naturally made Adele feel very guilty, and there I was, tempting her with my impassioned accounts of the world that lay spread out before us, ripe for the taking.

  This is not to imply I embodied some sort of corruptive force in my youth—I am hardly the type to play the seductress—and perhaps it would be wise to mention at this point that when Adele and I met, I was her junior. She was sixteen and I was fourteen. Unlike me, she was not an orphan, but rather a girl who had come to the convent after waking up one morning and telling her mother she’d had a calling to devote her life to the Good Lord. Her mother acted very quickly on Adele’s proclamation and brought her straightaway to the nuns, who took Adele in on the condition she train for a few more years until she came of age and was of adult mind and body to take the vows she so longed to take. I overheard some of the nuns grousing one day about Adele’s mother (you might not think so, but nuns grouse, too—although they almost always dutifully repent shortly thereafter), criticizing the woman’s haste to dispense with her daughter’s room and board. Very convenient on the household budget, I recall hearing them say. But I’m not sure this was an accurate assessment of her mother’s motivations. I think the hastiness on the part of Adele’s mother to take action had less to do with economic convenience and more to do with the fact that Adele’s stepfather had begun “accidentally” popping into the washroom whenever Adele undressed to take her bath.

  Adele told me about these unfortunate incidents one night when we were alone and it was very late. I remember being quite surprised by my own enraged desire to inflict bodily harm on a man I had never met. She never told me as much, but I think Adele made the mistake of also confiding her stepfather’s history of misbehavior to old Sister Mildred, because one afternoon they met for many hours in Sister Mildred’s tiny and often stale-smelling office that was adjacent to the schoolroom, and after that Adele was made to do a very long and exhausting penance of prayer and bathing and fasting “to cleanse her mind of impure thoughts.” That would be just like Sister Mildred—to blame Adele herself for the offense that had been done to the poor girl.

  Sister Mildred was from a long line of matriarchs very practiced in the art of insinuating that no woman ever received advances she did not herself invite. Her ideas about the world were antiquated, crusty things, a series of notions that had all been nibbled about the corners. To tell the truth, I think it was not that little room but Sister Mildred herself who smelled stale, as she was nicknamed Mildred the Patron Saint of Mildew by the other orphans.

  Even if Sister Mildred’s interpretation had been founded on something other than her own antediluvian assumptions about the world, I cannot think Adele ever intimated any desire for that loathsome man. I have heard Adele give her stepfather’s description in great detail, and I assure you, there is nothing in his description I can believe a young girl could possibly want to invite closer to her person.

  Adele’s mother got her out of the house as quickly as she was able. Whether it was an act of feminine jealousy or maternal protection I cannot really say, as I have never met the woman. The fact remains that once she had delivered her daughter over into the capable hands of the Almighty, she never again visited the convent. I believe this left Adele feeling quite lonely. I don’t have any memories of my own parents, so I can’t say I understood exactly what Adele was going through, but I have a pretty good imagination, and I tried to demonstrate my sympathies by leaving little notes filled with words of encouragement and pressed flowers. In no time at all we were as thick as thieves.

  Of course, there had been one incident in particular that caused me to realize for the first time how much I truly loved Adele. We were in the kitchen with Sister Hortense, kneading the dough that was to be eventually baked up and used for Communion, when Adele suddenly turned to me and said, Rose, you have such a knack for this! The bread never comes out flat or mealy when you’re on the job. It rises perfectly. Just absolutely perfectly! Naturally, an unbidden rosiness appeared on my cheeks underneath the light dusting of flour that had settled there. But Adele just smiled and babbled on amicably, as though her thoughts were a liquid she might pour into the bread to give it some additional friendly flavor. Maybe you inherited the gift from your mother, she mused, or maybe your father—yes, just think: Maybe your father was a master baker! Oh, but that would certainly explain it!

  Upon hearing this remark, Sister Hortense snorted loudly. Startled, Adele turned to look at her in surprise, but I was no fool. Long ago I had overheard the subject of my parentage being thoroughly parsed by the nuns. Time and time again, I’d heard them recall the evidence surrounding the circumstances that led to my entry into the orphanage. If the nuns’ stories were to be believed, my parents were hardly the downtrodden malfortunates that so famously populate the novels of Charles Dickens—which is to say, my birth was not the inconvenient result of a lovelorn encounter in a slum, nor was my time at the orphanage the result of my guardians’ having died tragically in a great house fire. They say fact is often stranger than fiction, but if you ask me, I believe truth has always been much more disappointing on this score. In the version of the truth I was told, my mother and father were a middle-class couple of relatively sound material prosperity. I suppose there was a decent enough chance my parents might have kept me and I might’ve been raised in the normal way, if my father had not contracted a certain venereal disease that one could only get by exposing oneself to a numerous variety of . . . well, I shall be frank and simply call them ladies of the night. As the nuns tell it, my mother “donated” me to the orphanage to spite him. She defied my father to try to retrieve me against her wishes. As far as I know, he never attempted to do so, leading me to conclude his fear of her wrath turned out to be extremely effective indeed. Her sense of justice was ruthless, but beautifully simple: If he wouldn’t be faithful to her, she would refuse to keep and raise his children.

  Of course, I would’ve much preferred a tragic house fire to this tale of petty jealousy and spite. I admit, as orphan stories go, mine is a rather lackluster one, which leads me to believe the nuns did not make it up. The bassinet in which I was found attests to my parents’ middle-class standing, and my mother left a letter in the basket recounting the rather graphic details of my father’s transgressions, while tidily neglecting to sign her name or reveal her identity.

  When Adele began speculating about the identity of my parents, Sister Hortense promptly educated her on the subject and gave an abridged account of my father’s misdeeds and my mother’s attempt to even the score. Sister Hortense was not one for coddling girls, and I suppose I ought to be grateful the nuns did not infantilize me by ever lying to me about my origins. Nonetheless, my lips could not help curling into a faint, pleased little smile when Adele exclaimed, Sister Hortense, shame on you! How could you suggest anyone would willingly give up such a delightful and clever girl as Rose? Then she turned to me, took my hand in hers, and said, Truly, Rose—you must know this horrid story can’t be true; you’re worth much more than that. Sister Hortense only rolled her eyes, w
rapped the dough she’d been kneading in a damp cheesecloth, and placed the lumpy mass in the ice-box. But still holding Adele’s hand in my own, I could not have been more dizzy and affected than if I had just been knocked sideways by a wrecking ball. Something special was happening; a tiny door was opening inside my chest. I glimpsed a future wherein I would not always be alone, and I know Adele had glimpsed it, too.

  I suppose after hearing Dotty’s inaccurate and depraved assumptions whispered in the kitchen downstairs and feeling my stomach churn, I got to reminiscing and realized I still missed Adele very much. I sat and thought about her, about her very brown eyes and the little crinkle that was always present on her forehead, and the way she used to sing whenever the nuns gave her work to do in the kitchen, and how her hands were perpetually chapped from all the chores she did, and how she could never remember to put on a scarf, and how she sometimes declined to carry an umbrella because she worried that wanting to keep her hair dry counted as an act of vanity. There was so much to remember, and I sat there lost in my reverie, remembering all the details.

  I snapped to attention when the door opened and Helen let herself into the room. I realized I had been waiting for this to happen all along, sitting in apprehension and turning the pages of my book without really reading what was written on them. She looked extremely startled to see me just then, perched upon my bed and reading a book, and I think this gave me a slight feeling of smug satisfaction.