Malice

by Danielle Steel

  She wore a plain black dress that she'd bought the year before at Carson Pirie Scott in Chicago, and a red coat she'd bought at Lord and Taylor that morning. And she looked terrific. She was interviewed by personnel, and then sent upstairs to see the office manager, and the senior secretary, and meet two of the junior partners. Her office skills had improved over the years, but she still didn't take proper dictation, but they seemed willing to accommodate her, as long as she was able to take fast notes and type. She liked everyone she met, including both of the junior partners she would work for, Tom Short and Bill Martin. They were both very serious and dry, one had gone to Princeton undergraduate and then Harvard Law, the other had gone all the way through Harvard. Everything looked predictable and respectable, and even their location suited her perfectly. They were at Fifty-sixth and Park, only eight blocks from her hotel, although now she knew she'd have to find an apartment.

  The law firm took up ten floors, and there were over six hundred employees. All she wanted was to be a face in the crowd, and that's all she was. It was the most impersonal place she'd ever seen, and it suited her to perfection. She wore her hair tied back, very little makeup, and the same clothes she'd worn at Swanson's in Chicago. She had a little more style than necessary, but the office manager figured she'd tone it down. She was a bright girl, and he really liked her.

  She had been hired as the assistant joint secretary for two of the junior partners. They shared two women, and Grace's counterpart was three times her age and twice her weight, and seemed relieved to have all the help she could get. She told Grace on her first day of work that Tom and Bill were nice guys and very reasonable to work for. Both were married, and had blond wives, one lived in Stamford, the other in Darien, and each had three children. In some ways, they seemed like twins to Grace, but so did most of the men there. There seemed to be a sea of young men working there who basically looked the same to her. And all they ever talked about was their cases. Everyone commuted to Connecticut or Long Island, most of them played squash, some belonged to clubs, and all of the secretaries seemed equally faceless. It was precisely the anonymous world that Grace had wanted. No one seemed to notice her at all as she started work. She fit in instantly, did her work, and no one asked her a single question about who she was, where she had worked, or where she'd come from. No one cared. This was New York. And she loved it.

  And that weekend, she found an apartment. It was at Eighty-fourth and First. She could take the subway to work, or the bus, and she could afford the rent comfortably on her salary. She'd sold her bed and furniture to the girl who took her place in Chicago, and she went to Macy's and bought a few things, but was worried to find them so expensive. One of the girls at work told her about a discount furniture place in Brooklyn, and she went there one night on the subway after work, and smiled to herself as she rode alone. She had never felt so grown up and so free, so much the mistress of her own fate. For the first time in her life, no one was controlling her, or threatening her, or trying to hurt her. No one wanted anything from her at all. She could do anything she wanted.

  She did a little shopping on Saturday afternoons, bought her groceries at the A&P nearby, and went to galleries on Madison Avenue and the West Side, and even made a few forays into SoHo. She loved New York, and everything about it. She ate dim sum on Mott Street, checked out the Italian neighborhood. And she was fascinated going to a couple of auctions. And a month after she'd arrived she had a job, a life, and an apartment. She'd bought most of her furniture by then, and it wasn't exciting or elegant, but it was comfortable. Her building was old, but it was clean. They had given her curtains and the place had beige wall-to-wall that went with everything she'd bought. The apartment had a living room, a tiny kitchen and dining nook, and a small bedroom and bath. It was everything she'd ever wanted, and it was her own. No one could take it away, or spoil it.

  “How's New York treating you?” the personnel manager asked her when she saw him again one day at lunch in the firm's cafeteria. She only ate there in bad weather or when she was broke just before her next paycheck. Otherwise, she liked wandering around Mid-town at lunchtime.

  “I love it” She smiled at him. He was little and old and bald, and he had told her he had five children.

  “I'm glad.” He smiled. “I hear good reports about you, Grace.”

  “Thank you.” The best thing about him, as far as she was concerned, was that he loved his wife, and had absolutely no interest in Grace. None of them did. She had never felt as comfortable in her life. People went about their business, and sex seemed to be the last thing on their minds. No one seemed to notice her at all, especially not Tom and Bill, the two young partners that she worked for. She could have been five times her age, and she suspected they would never have noticed. They were nice to her, but they were all work. They worked as late as eight and nine o'clock sometimes, and she wondered if they ever saw their children. They even came in on weekends when they had briefs to write for the senior partners.

  “Do you have any plans for Thanksgiving?” the secretary who worked with her asked in mid-November. She was a nice older woman with a thick waist and heavy legs, but a kindly face framed by gray hair, and she had never been married. Her name was Winifred Apgard and everyone called her Winnie.

  “No, but I'll be fine,” Grace said comfortably. Holidays had never been her forte.

  “You're not going home?” Grace shook her head and didn't mention that she didn't have one. Her apartment was home, and she was very self-sufficient.

  “I'm going to Philadelphia to see my mother, or I'd have you over,” Winnie said apologetically. She looked like someone's maiden aunt, and she seemed to love her work, and the men she worked for. She clucked over them like a mother hen, and they teased her all the time. She told them to wear their galoshes when it snowed, and warned them of impending storms if they were driving home late.

  It was a very different relationship from the one Tom and Bill had with Grace. It was almost as though they pretended not to see her. She wondered sometimes if her youth was threatening to them, or if their wives would have been annoyed, or if Winnie was less of a threat to them, and more comfortable. But it didn't seem to matter. They never said anything of a personal nature to Grace, and while they made jokes with Winnie sometimes, they were always poker-faced with Grace, as though they were being particularly careful not to get to know her. It was a far cry from Bob Swanson, but she liked that a lot about her job.

  The week before Thanksgiving, she spent some time on her lunch hour making a few personal phone calls. She had meant to do it for a while, but she'd been busy settling into her apartment. But now it was time to start giving back again. It was something she intended to do for the rest of her life, something she felt she owed the people who had helped her. It was a debt she would never stop paying back. And it was time to begin again now.

  She finally found what she was looking for.

  The place was called St. Andrew's Shelter, and it was on the Lower East Side, on Delancey. There was a young priest in charge, and he had invited her to come down and meet them the following Sunday morning.

  She took the subway down Lexington, changed trains, and got off at Delancey, and walked the rest of the way. It was a rough walk, she realized once she got there. There were bums wandering the streets aimlessly, drunks hunched over in doorways, dozing, or lying openly on the sidewalks. There were warehouses and tenements, and battered-looking stores with heavy gates. There were abandoned cars here and there, and some tough-looking kids cruising for trouble. They glanced at Grace as she walked along, but no one bothered her. And finally, she got to St. Andrew's. It was an old brownstone that looked like it was in pretty bad shape, with paint peeling off the doors, and a sign that was barely hanging by a thread, but there were people coming in and out, mostly women with kids, and a few young girls. One of them looked about fourteen, and Grace could see that she was hugely pregnant.

  There were three young girls manning a reception
desk when she got inside. They were talking and chattering, and one of them was doing her nails. And there was more noise than Grace thought she'd heard anywhere. The building sounded like it was teeming with voices and kids, there was an argument going on somewhere, there were blacks and whites, Chinese and Puerto Ricans. It looked like a microcosm of New York, or as though someone had hijacked a subway.

  She asked for the young priest by name, and she waited a long time for him, watching the action, and when he appeared he was wearing jeans and an old battered oatmeal-colored sweater.

  “Father Finnegan?” she asked curiously. He had a real twinkle about him, and he didn't look like a priest. He had bright red hair, and he looked like a kid. But crow's-feet near his eyes, in a sea of freckles on his fair skin, said he was somewhat older than the kid he looked like.

  “Father Tim,” he corrected her with a grin. “Miss Adams?”

  “Grace.” She smiled at him. You couldn't help but smile at him. He had a real look of joy about him.

  “Let's go talk somewhere,” he said calmly, weaving in and out of half a dozen children chasing each other around the main lobby. The building looked as though it might have been a tenement, and had been opened up to provide a home to those who needed it. He had told her on the phone that they had only been in existence for five years and needed a lot of help, especially from volunteers. He had been thrilled to hear from her. She was one of the many miracles he said they needed.

  He led her to a kitchen with three old dishwashers that had been donated to them and a big old-fashioned sink. There were posters on the walls, a big round table and some chairs, and two huge pots of coffee. He poured a cup for each of them, and led her to a small room with a desk and three chairs. It looked as though it had been a utility room and was now his office. The place was badly in need of paint and some decent furniture, but sitting there, talking to him, it was easy to forget anything but him. He had that kind of presence about him, and he was completely unaware of it, which was why everyone loved him.

  “So what brings you here, Grace? Other than a good heart and a foolish nature?” He grinned at her again, and took a sip of steaming coffee, as his eyes danced with glee.

  “I've done this kind of volunteer work before, in Chicago. At a place called St. Mary's.” She gave Paul Weinberg's name as a reference.

  “I know it well. I'm from Chicago myself. Been here for twenty years now. And I know St. Mary's. In some ways, we've modeled ourselves on them. They run a very good operation.”

  She told him the number of people they serviced at St. Mary's each year, and that there were as many as a dozen families in residence at any given time. Not to mention the people who came and went constantly in a day's time, and returned frequently to avail themselves of the comfort offered at St. Mary's.

  “We offer the same thing here,” he said thoughtfully, looking at her. He wondered why someone like her wanted to do this kind of work. But he had learned long since not to question God's gifts to him, but to use them well. He had every intention of putting Grace to work at St. Andrew's. “We see more people here. Maybe close to eighty or a hundred a day, give or take a dozen, mostly give.” He grinned again. “We've had over a hundred women staying here at one time, sometimes twice as many children. Generally, we keep it to a dull roar, and we have about sixty women and a hundred and fifty kids here most of the time. We don't turn anyone away at St. Andrew's. That's the only rule here. They come to our door, they stay, if that's what they want. Most of them don't stay long. They either go back, or they move on, and start new lives. I'd say the average stay is anywhere from a week to two months, maximum. Most of them are out in two weeks.” It had been pretty much the same at St. Mary's.

  “Can you house that many people here?” She was surprised. The building didn't look that big, and it wasn't.

  “This used to be twenty apartments. We stack 'em as high as we have to, Grace. Our doors are open to everyone, not just to Catholics,” he explained, “we don't even ask that question.”

  “Actually …” She smiled at him, there was a warmth that came from him that touched her very soul. There was an innocence and purity about Father Tim that made him seem particularly holy, in a real sense. He was truly a man of God, and Grace felt instantly at ease with him and blessed to be near him. “The doctor who ran St. Mary's was Jewish,” she said conversationally, and he laughed.

  “I haven't gone that far yet, but you never know.”

  “Is there a doctor in charge here?”

  “Me, I guess. I'm a Jesuit, and I have a doctorate in psychology. But Dr. Tim sounds a little strange, doesn't it? Father Tim suits me better.” They both laughed this time and he went to pour them both another cup of coffee from one of the two huge pots.

  “We have half a dozen nuns, not in habit, of course, who work here, and about forty volunteers at various times. We need every one of them to keep the place running. We've got some psychiatric nurses who give us time, from NYU, and we get a lot of kids doing psych internships, mostly from Columbia. It's a good group, and they work like demons … sorry, angels.” She really loved him, with his freckles and his laughing eyes. “And what about you, Grace? What brings you to us?”

  “I like this kind of work. It means a lot to me.”

  “Do you know much about it? I suppose you do after two years at St. Mary's.”

  “Enough, I guess, to be useful.” It was all too familiar to her, but she wasn't quite sure whether or not to say it to him. She almost wanted to. She trusted him more than she had anyone in a long time.

  “How many times a week or month did you volunteer at St. Mary's?”

  “Two nights a week, and every Sunday … most holidays.”

  “Wow.” He looked impressed, and surprised. Priest or no, he could see easily that she was young and beautiful, too young to be giving up so much of her life to a home like this one. And then he looked at her carefully. “Is this a special mission for you, Grace?” It was as though he knew. He sensed it. And she nodded.

  “I think so. I … understand about these things.” She wasn't sure what else to say to him, but he nodded, and touched her hand gently.

  “It's all right. Healing comes in many ways. Blessing others is the best one.” She nodded, and her eyes were blurred with tears. He knew. He understood. She felt as though she had come home, just being here, and being near him. “We need you, Grace. There's a place for you here. You can bring joy, and healing, to a lot of people, as well as yourself.”

  “Thank you, Father,” she whispered as she wiped her eyes and he smiled at her. He didn't pry any further. He knew all he needed to know. No one knew better what these women were going through than one who'd been through it, battered and abused by husbands and fathers, or mothers or boyfriends.

  “Now, let's get down to business.” His eyes were laughing again. “How soon can you start? We're not going to let you get away from here that easily. You might come to your senses.”

  “Right now?” She had come prepared to work, if he wanted her, and he did. He led her back into the kitchen, where they left their empty mugs in one of the dishwashers, and then he walked her out to the hallway and started introducing her to people. The three girls at the desk had been replaced by a boy in his early twenties, who was a medical student at Columbia, and there were two women talking to a gaggle of little girls, whom Father Tim introduced as Sister Theresa, and Sister Eugene, but neither of them looked like nuns to Grace. They were friendly-looking women in their early thirties. One was wearing a sweat suit, and the other jeans and a threadbare sweater. And Sister Eugene volunteered to take Grace upstairs to show her around the rooms where the women stayed, and the nursery where they sometimes kept the children, if the women were too battered to deal with them for the time being themselves.

  There was an infirmary staffed by a nurse who was a nun, and she was wearing a clean white smock over blue jeans. The lights were kept dim, and Sister Eugene walked Grace in on soundless feet, as she signa
led to the nurse on duty. And as Grace looked around her at the women in the beds, her heart twisted as she recognized the signs she had lived her entire life with. Merciless beatings and heartrending bruises. Two women had arms in casts, one had cigarette burns all over her face, and another was moaning as the nurse tried to bandage her broken ribs again, and put ice packs on her swollen eyes. Her husband was in jail now.

  “We send the worst cases to the hospital,” Sister Eugene explained quietly as they left the room again. Without thinking, Grace had stopped to touch a hand, and the woman had looked at her in suspicion. That was another thing Grace was familiar with too. These women were sometimes so far gone and so badly treated that they didn't trust anyone anymore not to hurt them. “But we keep whoever we can here, it's less upsetting for them. And sometimes it's only bruises. The really ugly stuff goes to the emergency room.” Like the woman who'd come in two nights before whose husband had put a hot iron to her face, after hitting her with a tire iron on the back of her head. He had almost killed her, but she was so terrified of him, she had refused to bring charges. The authorities had taken their children away from them, and they were in foster homes now. But the woman had to be willing to save herself, and many of them didn't have the courage to do it. Being battered was the most isolating thing in the world. It made you hide from everyone, Grace knew only too well, even those who could help you.

  Sister Eugene took her to see the children then, and in minutes Grace had her arms full of little girls and boys, she was telling them stories, and tying bows on braids, and shoelaces, as children told her who they were, and some of them talked about what had happened and why they had come there. Some couldn't. Some of their siblings had been killed by their parents. Some of their mothers were upstairs, too battered to move, too ashamed even to see them. It was a disease that destroyed families, and the people who lived through it. And Grace knew with a sinking heart how few of them would ever grow up to be whole people or be able to trust anyone again.