“Teddy said—”
But suddenly a hairbrush went flying through the air and smashed against the wall behind me. I followed its trajectory back to its original source and saw Odalie’s face exploding in anger. “Teddy! What does he know! About anything! He’s a pimply-faced undergraduate, for Chrissake! He’s practically in diapers!”
I had never seen Odalie unsettled, much less losing her temper. The sight of it was both terrible and beautiful, like an angry comet hurtling down from the sky.
I didn’t mention Teddy for the rest of the afternoon. I exited the room quietly, preferring an afternoon walk along the seashore to a pretended nap alongside a terrifyingly angry Odalie.
• • •
BY EVENING TIME, Odalie appeared to have returned to her customary cool state of being. Refreshed by her afternoon nap (evidently the sleep I would not have been able to achieve had been a total success for her), she was once again pink-cheeked and even hummed to herself as we dressed for dinner. She seemed to be in great spirits, and her energized mood was reflected in her selection of a bold red dress for the evening. I can still remember how the vibrant hue of the dress contrasted crisply with her dark hair, it made her bob appear as slick and shiny as a pool of spilled ink. She was a picture to behold, and a very striking one at that. Perhaps it’s rather revealing to say so, but while I cannot for the life of me recall what I was wearing that evening, I nonetheless remember every little stitch of black embroidery on her red dress.
The stars were out in full force that evening; they appeared early—as though the Brinkleys had paid them to put in some overtime—showing up as bright points of light punched into the eerie bluish glow of the twilit sky. Dinner was served on the terrace just as it had been the night before (and this time consisted of rack of lamb with mint jelly), and the evening air was pleasantly tepid and salty. With some relief, I noted Teddy was not seated among our particular party. Once we’d come downstairs and Odalie had had a chance to survey the place cards that ringed our table, she became visibly more relaxed. Louise, the same woman who had been unintentionally snubbed earlier that afternoon when Odalie had bolted from the tea-table, was seated on Odalie’s left, and this time Odalie made an effort to listen to Louise as she prattled on. In no time at all they were as thick as thieves, and I had to settle for staring at Odalie’s back as she and Louise chattered and laughed. Of course I was annoyed, but I said nothing. Odalie was making up for her earlier trespass, I figured. So much the better.
Charity takes many forms, you see. And Odalie’s particular form of charitable expertise was to make less attractive girls feel they could, by learning some secret trick, obtain at least a fraction of Odalie’s inherent fluency in charm. But charity, when performed by such jolly unfeeling sharks as Odalie, is not without a sense of irony. Odalie could take a wallflower and flatter her into feeling like the belle of the ball. Just as chance plays no favorites, she sometimes did it for no reason at all, and with nothing to gain from it. Of course, I abhorred all these girls, never realizing I myself was one of them. But (lest we forget too quickly!) Odalie did stand to gain something from me. Quite a lot, actually, as it eventually turned out. But I’ll get to telling about that soon enough.
The main course was served, and the air filled with the buttery musk of lamb. I had never tasted such tender meat before; my experience with lamb was limited to its much older relation, mutton, and as the soft morsels of lamb melted in my mouth, I temporarily forgot my irritation over Louise. But by the time dessert was cleared away, it had returned. I had become quite a snob during my months with Odalie, you see, and now I turned my newly haughty gaze on Louise. Despite being quite young, Louise was an annoying, prematurely ancient specimen, with her lackluster dark brown hair piled on top of her head with such a dismal air, it was as though some variety of backyard bird had begun construction on a nest and halfway through gave up on it. Each time she laughed hysterically at something Odalie said, which was obnoxiously frequent, she revealed a top row of slightly crooked teeth. Even her clothing offended me—an offense I could’ve never afforded prior to Odalie’s sponsorship of my own wardrobe. Louise was wearing a dress that would’ve been hopelessly out-of-date if it had not been for the beaded chiffon overlay, and even with the overlay was only slightly fashionable. It was simply not possible Odalie could be genuinely interested in anything Louise had to say, I decided. Perhaps Teddy’s presence set her on edge more than I realized, and now Odalie was trying to fortify her position by acquiring new friends.
“You know,” Louise said, laying a hand on Odalie’s upper arm (as though I weren’t sitting right there to note her bold advances!), “I really ought to visit the city more often. All the best shops, all the ones that carry the chicest merchandise, are there, like you say. Do you know what? I’m going to ring you up, that’s what I’m going to do!”
“Oh yes, please do,” Odalie exclaimed. I scowled an invisible scowl to an audience who, evidently, was beyond perceiving me. Louise extracted a tiny pencil and a little address-book from her purse and took down our number at the hotel.
“Do you really think you could?”
“Could what?”
“Dress me to look like a movie-star?”
“Oh! Are you kidding me? Why, that’d be easy as pie!”
“Here’s my card,” Louise volunteered, extracting a white rectangle from her clutch. Quickly and upon instinct, I intercepted it.
“I’ll take care of that,” I said with a wide, generous smile. “For the life of her, Odalie can’t help but lose every single calling card that comes into her possession!”
Odalie nodded kindly at Louise. “It’s true,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s in better hands with Rose here.”
“Oh,” said Louise as her hand went limp, being more than a little reluctant to relinquish the card to my custody.
“There now,” I said, taking the card and slipping it into my own satin-trimmed clutch. “Safe and sound.” Odalie looked at me and raised an eyebrow. We both knew I would lose the card, but not by accident.
Without a second look at Louise, I snapped my clutch shut and surveyed the scene around us. Dinner and dessert had long since been served and cleared. Abandoned linen napkins littered the table like miniature deflated teepees, strewn amid empty champagne glasses and the stains and scraps of an evening’s feast. From out one corner of my eye I perceived a male figure rapidly approaching our table, and from out the opposite corner I saw Odalie bristle.
“Pardon me,” came Teddy’s voice. He bowed deep at the waist in Odalie’s direction, and it was understood he was requesting a dance.
“Oh!” The little involuntary exclamation escaped me. Suddenly all eyes—Odalie’s, Louise’s, and Teddy’s—were trained on me. Unable to explain my shock away, I merely shrugged.
Aware that we were being rude, Odalie lifted her head in Teddy’s direction and bared her teeth in what was a fierce and impenetrable second cousin to a smile. “Of course,” she said through a set of stiff, glistening, perfectly white piano keys. Teddy took her hand, and she rose from her chair with her face tilted up defiantly, like a flower blooming in spite of harsh conditions.
Her body language plainly stated she did not want to be within half a mile of Teddy, much less cheek-to-cheek with him on the dance floor. I’m sure she would’ve appreciated it if I had intervened and deflected him somehow, but as a woman, there was little recourse available to me. I suppose I could have pressed myself on Teddy in Odalie’s place—insisting he dance with me instead and perhaps even attempting to vamp him a bit—but such transactions were utterly foreign to me, and in this capacity I was rather hopeless. Instead I sat in silence, ignoring Louise as she prattled stubbornly to me as though I were Odalie’s proxy, and anxiously watched as Teddy steered Odalie around the dance floor.
They cut a fine line, but the stiffness between them was obvious, even from a distance. Her head remai
ned turned away from him at all times, cocked to the right in a very serious manner as though she were imitating one of those professional dancers who perform flamboyant exhibitions in dance halls. I observed Teddy was, in fact, very light on his toes; not surprising, given his thin frame and slight stature. They danced a full waltz, and by the end of it, to my relief, another man had cut in upon them. But Teddy, I noticed, never strayed too far from Odalie, and cut in to dance with her several more times as the evening wore on. Four orchestra songs later I dimly perceived someone hovering near my seat at the table.
I was barely conscious of it when a thin, nasal male voice inquired whether I’d care to dance with him. I looked up and in astonishment saw Max Brinkley blinking down at me, the magnified look of his monocled eye striking a comical incongruence with his unmagnified other eye. Still a little intimidated by the Brinkleys and apprehensive about the legitimacy of our stay, I rose to my feet automatically as he reached for my hand.
“Please, Miss Baker, tell me why your friend seems to be having all the fun,” he said as we set off gingerly in a foxtrot. “I’m sure Pembroke, equitable old chap that he is, would want you to enjoy yourself, too.”
“Well,” I muttered with an awkward grimace, suddenly feeling like the imposter I was, “you know Pembroke . . .”
“Sometimes I wonder if you can really know Pembroke,” Mr. Brinkley said. A tremor of panic ran through me before I realized Mr. Brinkley’s comment was an epistemological observation, rather than a social accusation. “My goodness! Are you cold, my dear?” Mr. Brinkley inquired, noticing my involuntary shiver. He glanced up at the stars, as though some celestial thermometer might be hidden there. “I suppose it is a bit chillier than usual out tonight.”
“Yes, Mr. Brinkley—”
“Max.”
“Max. Actually I am cold, come to think of it. I think I’d better run and fetch my shawl, if that’s all right.”
“Of course, my dear.” He stopped, mid-foxtrot, and took a gallant step back. “What kind of gentleman would I be if I forced you to freeze?” This was not an epistemological question; it was a rhetorical one. He bowed, his monocle staying miraculously perched on the apple of his cheek throughout, and I smiled. “Just don’t forget, now, to come back downstairs and have a good time. That’s an order,” he said. I nodded obediently, recalling once having read in a society article that Max Brinkley had been a Navy man. I thanked him and scurried in the direction of the house, which was now lit up like a blazing Christmas tree.
I wasn’t really cold, and didn’t really want my shawl, but I did want to find Odalie. Both she and Teddy had completely vanished. I checked the interior of the house first (stopping by our room upstairs to pick up my shawl, just in case I should run into Max Brinkley again). The house was quite large, with many rooms, and there were so many people milling about that as soon as I had finished searching all of the rooms I worried that I’d perhaps missed Teddy and Odalie in passing and I searched the whole house all over again. By the second go-round, I was somewhat satisfied they were not to be found indoors. I’d grown sick of the house by that time, where the gay atmosphere had seemed to turn more septic than it had outdoors. The fug of cigarettes hung densely in the air of every room, making me cough, and in opening a broom closet I had accidentally blundered into a necking couple who were not in the least pleased to have me open the door and witness their activities.
Back outside, I surveyed the terrace. Teddy and Odalie were not at any of the tables. Squinting at the passing faces of each turning couple revealed they had not returned to the canvas platform for another dance. I strolled the gardens: first the wide lawn that led down to the beach, then the little topiary maze. Moonlight streamed down, turning the leaves of the hedges silvery and making the neatly trimmed foliage appear like walls of cut stone. I hesitated. I had never much liked topiary mazes or the impetus behind them; the notion that being lost could be fun had always struck me as the stuff from which nightmares are born. And then suddenly it came to me. I remembered seeing a greenhouse on a hill just beyond the topiary maze, a small distance off the west wing of the house. If Odalie had wanted to talk to Teddy privately and was fearful of what he might reveal, I could envision her choosing to do it there.
As I drew up to the greenhouse, the windows were dark. It was an elaborately white-gabled affair, a true relic of the Gilded Age. I walked along the inclined path that led to the greenhouse entrance with a feeling of foreboding so potent, it almost caused me to stop and go back. The sounds of music and laughter tinkled dimly from far across the lawn, as though it emanated from some ghostly echo of a party rather than the boisterous affair I’d just left. When I tried the door handle, I found myself half hoping it would be locked, but it turned easily enough. Once inside, a thick humidity instantly enveloped my skin, and I inhaled the rich aroma of moist peat moss and wet ferns. The echo of the door boomed loudly throughout the large space as I pulled it shut behind me, and I was very still for several minutes. As I stood there straining to listen, at first I could only hear the dripping of wet plants and the gurgling of an ornamental fountain or two. But then I heard it—the distant sound of two voices talking in hushed tones. I listened for another moment; the voices definitely belonged to Odalie and Teddy, and despite the commotion I’d made shutting the door it did not appear they had detected my entry. The sound was coming from the far end of the greenhouse. Very quietly, I made my way along the stone pavers that led in the direction of the sound’s emanation.
I glimpsed the butt of a cigarette glow red as someone—it had to be Odalie—inhaled. Crouching down next to some sort of alien-looking, pointy-leafed bromeliad, I looked on and quietly tried to catch my breath. As my eyes adjusted to the dark of the greenhouse, the moonlight coming through the glass ceiling began to illuminate the two figures standing before me. Between them a cherub capered, a bow and arrow clutched in his chubby grasp and water gurgling at his stony toes. My ears eagerly worked to pick up the thread of conversation. Teddy was doing most of the talking, and slowly but surely I realized I had walked halfway into some sort of long-winded explanation. For the second time that day, I listened to Teddy tell the story of his cousin’s unfortunate death. When he reached the end, Odalie exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke and regarded him impassively.
“That’s a very sad story,” she finally said.
“Indeed.”
“Oh, but I rather wish you’d never told it to me!” Odalie exclaimed, suddenly looking up from her cigarette coquettishly.
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, well, because I’ve always wanted to visit Newport. It sounds so lovely! And now if I ever go”—she leaned toward him with an expression of sweet sympathy—“I’ll be sure to think of your story and how terrible that gruesome accident was!” As she spoke, a befuddled expression engraved itself with increasing intensity on Teddy’s face. Odalie glimpsed it, and in response her own manner turned sprightly and cheerful now. “You see, I’d hate to spoil it. I’ve never been.”
“Never been!” Teddy spluttered uncontrollably. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve never been to Newport?”
“I do,” she replied. By now her tone had shifted. It still had all the pretenses of friendliness, but there was also a deadly inflection to it, as though you could almost hear the dry, papery rattle of a venomous snake’s tail. Teddy swallowed hard and stared at her lips. She cocked her head innocently. “Yes. Never been to Newport. Can you imagine?”
“No . . . I can’t,” he stammered.
“Well, perhaps you should try,” she said, the mocking innocence gone from her voice now and in its place a flat, dull tone. And with that she strode away, swishing through the overgrowth of the greenhouse and passing perilously close to where I remained crouched and hiding. It was as though a bell had rung, and Odalie—consummately triumphant boxer that she was—had been called back to her corner.
When I crawled into bed later t
hat night, I knew two things for certain. I knew Odalie hoped to never see Teddy again. I also knew from the expression on Teddy’s face as he watched her stride away that it would not be long before he came to find her.
18
And then, just as abruptly as it had begun, our beach holiday was over. If Odalie and I were ever to drop in on the Brinkleys again, I daresay they would not be very glad to have us back. For one thing, we finagled our way into a week’s invitation but left after merely two nights. Moreover, we departed with the sort of abrupt haste that can only be interpreted as a total lack of common courtesy and respect for one’s hosts.
As I remember it, after her exchange with Teddy in the greenhouse, Odalie retired to our room for the night. I followed her and feigned ignorance (she told me nothing of her interaction with him). We prepared for bed, but it was apparent there was very little rest to be had. Instead of crawling under the covers and joining me, Odalie turned out the lamp and proceeded to roam the room like an agitated jungle cat. I knew then it was unlikely we would be staying much longer at the Brinkleys’ estate. As I slept (or pretended to sleep, rather), she paced at the foot of our bed in silence, gnawing indelicately from time to time at her fingernails. About an hour and a half before the sun came up, Odalie suddenly grew very still and very calm. She sat down in the middle of the rug on the floor and closed her eyes. I had never seen her do this before and found it very queer. It was almost as though she was praying, but even now, to this day, I doubt Odalie has ever prayed about anything.
When her eyes finally snapped open again, the morning sun was streaming in through the window. She telephoned for a taxi and packed our bags with a deliberate orderliness I was unaccustomed to seeing her exhibit. In general, Odalie’s actions were dominated by a very haphazard air—the world around her conspired to collaborate with her rhythms, not the other way around. I remember finding it odd to see her move around in such a rigid manner. Somehow I knew better than to ask questions or strike up a conversation that afternoon; rather, I very simply and obediently followed suit with this change in our itinerary, grateful to be returning to the familiar city I’d always known. I was perceptive enough to intuit something dark was brewing, and I had it in my head I would be safer back home. One might be inclined to point out what a fool I was, but of course I couldn’t know it at the time.
The Other Typist Page 24