Myrtle seemed a bit nonplused at this additional complication. Faye put a hand to her forehead, groaning, as Myrtle received a light bulb moment. “Errm . . . the janitor. His family always worked for my father, so we keep them because of memory, you know.”
“Ah?” said Mr. Waterton vaguely. His smile was detached and seemed to have much more to do with his novel-writing escapades with Mrs. Waterton than anything these silly kids might be trying to say to him or to each other.
“Janitor?” Mr. Rivers burst out indignantly. “Myrtle Haverton, how dare you . . .”
Artie snapped his fingers. “You’re getting fresh, sir. Think you can get away with things now old dust mop’s not in the picture? Well, think again. You two—go clean the bathroom.”
Before Faye could even register this command, Grover and Horace had positively thrown her and Mr. Rivers towards the stairs. She had no idea how pretending Mr. Rivers was a janitor had moved to pretending she was one too. And she had no chance to see how Myrtle planned to comport herself in the undoubtedly delightful persona of Mrs. Carter. Grover was leading those fascinating, deeply human Watertons outside, and Faye found herself facing an indignant Mr. Rivers and a closet full of mops.
The next few days were somewhat ludicrous. Faye didn’t want to be a stiff shirt, but Ed had been right about the danger to private property and her uncle’s valuables. As more and more people stormed in—some invited by Grover and some on their own, it was hard to differentiate—things inevitably got knocked over and broken. Two precious Waterford crystal vases of Aunt Betty’s crashed in a million pieces when some clumsy teenage boys bumped through the house on their way to play tennis, and an old man come to rent the harp in the back room for his granddaughter brought a large dog that tore down a stretch of curtains. These particular curtains were comparatively new (replaced right before the Crash eight years ago.) Faye winced, but she had no time to worry about it. She was too busy Getting the Dog Out From Behind The Sofa and trying to circumvent disaster.
An hour after the Waterton’s second visit to the lake pavilion—they had brought their own chairs, they didn’t like Uncle Warren’s—the doorbell trilled again. Faye ran down the hall. Please be someone nondestructive. Please be someone nondestructive.
“Hello,” said a smiling young man, who had very long legs encased in brown slacks. He waved a brown-leather artist’s portfolio at her. “I heard from Mr. Grover that the wooded lawn behind the house is available. I think it would make a perfect landscape for my collection. Could I paint it?”
Faye smiled wanly and scratched her head. Had Grover ever told her about this visitor? She couldn’t remember. And what’s that noise I’m hearing . . .? “Sure. Be my guest. I mean, our guest. Oh well, you get the picture. Literally, I mean.”
Several ineffective passes between her and the young artist left him still in the door and unable to get by. BeBe trailed in, sucking on a pretzel. She wore a very large hat, which Faye did not recollect seeing before. Where had BeBe picked that up? Am I losing my mind? Well, as long as it’s not my arms and legs I can’t complain. People are more likely to notice if those are missing.
The artist tipped his hat respectfully. “And is this your mother? Old Mrs. Haverton?”
Oh, so Aunt Betty’s my mother now? I wish Grover would keep me up to date. I can’t keep inventory of his fibs on my own. “Um, no, this is . . .”
BeBe, absolutely outraged at being mistaken for an elderly lady, grabbed a nearby orange urn painted with large flowers. Faye, leaving the door to flap in the artist’s face, rushed to her. “No, BeBe, not the vase. You know Aunt Betty’s friend from Toledo made it.”
BeBe’s face was bunched up in a tight knot of anger. She swerved the vase away from Faye’s clutching hands. “Aw, who cares? It’s butt-ugly anyway. We all hate it!”
Faye let the degradingly harsh phrase “butt-ugly” pass under the emergency. “Sure, we all do. But Aunt Betty doesn’t.”
BeBe bypassed her with amazing athleticism considering she’d never once pretended to like sports and threw the vase at the painter, exhibiting outstanding aim. He staggered backwards as it bounced off his chest and then smashed into a million pieces, give or take a few thousand. They were too small for Faye to count. The painter fled across the room, tripping over a turned-up edge of rug from Faye’s adventure with the curtain-destroying dog. No sooner had his brown slacks disappeared down the garden than Artie stormed in, Aunt Cora following.
“My mother! Good Lord, why on earth would you say a thing like that, you old frog?” Artie bellowed indignantly.
Aunt Cora’s eyes bulged. “Those high school boys inquired, if you recall!”
Artie spat some grass out of his mouth and produced a tennis ball from somewhere inside his shirt. Grimacing, he handed it to Faye. “Yes of course I recall, idiot. They pounded us with tennis balls like they were shooting shells at pigeons. But my mother? Honestly, couldn’t you think of anything else to say? I’ve never been so insulted in my whole life!”
Aunt Cora raised her chin haughtily. “Well, I don’t know why you would say that. The Corksansers were always a well-liked family, and we all of us got married even if we didn’t go in for American beauty honors. And Idiot is no way to address your mother, young man.”
Artie blew out his breath and stuffed his hands into his pockets at the mere idea of Aunt Betty, Aunt Cora, or the yet-unseen Mrs. Powell going in for beauty pageants. Faye heard Grover yelling for her and assumed it was about those garden trenches. After saying he was an irrigation engineer, he decided the garden needed to look as though someone had been working on it. Since he hadn’t the first idea how to go about this, he’d set Faye to digging little trenches while he supervised. Faye wasn’t very good at it, and he often yelled at her.
She rushed towards the glass garden door. “I’m coming!”
Outside, she found Ed squabbling with Grover while two men and a drab twelve-year-old girl in a painter’s smock carried long planks through the garden door she had just opened. They swung the planks dangerously near Uncle Warren’s collection of animal figurines carved out of ivory. No, no, no . . . oh dear, two got knocked over.
“Grover? What in God’s name is going on? You promised no damage to the property,” Ed exclaimed. “Tearing up the walls of the house is lunacy!”
Faye winced. Did Ed have to curse? He was right of course. But cursing . . .!
Grover looked rather stung. “Shut up and stop preaching at me. The professors renting from the library need temporary steps to reach the shelves. There won’t even be skid marks on the floor.”
Ed blew out his breath. “No skid marks? Come on, Grover, show some common sense. And what’s this about Mrs. Hartson’s cat? She says you sold it to someone who left for South America.”
Yeesh. I wonder who’d want to take that cantankerous Hartson cat on a twelve-hour flight.
The doorbell rang again as Grover stamped out of the hall to avoid more arguments with Ed. Faye opened the front door to find herself staring at a boy wearing a drab mail-delivery uniform. He held a huge collection of white boxes tied with silky white ribbon.
Ed tugged her sleeve. “Faye, have you seen Helene?”
The boy shoved the entire collection of boxes, ribbons, and bags in Faye’s face. “Packages for Miss Haverton from Neiman-Marcus, ma’am. Signature here, please.”
“Faye. . . Helene,” Ed pressed.
Faye spat a silver ribbon out of her mouth as she awkwardly signed the paper. “She’s right behind you.”
Ed whirled around to find Helene standing in a black lace hat, smiling. “Why, Helene! You snuck up on me like a beautiful surprise,” he remarked, oddly.
“Oh no! Not at all,” Faye replied, when Helene inquired about the packages. “These are part of Myrtle’s wedding trousseau.” Quite ironic when the wedding seems less and less likely every day. But the official story is that Myrtle is getting married, and the official story is what you give Neiman-Marcus.
Helene shot a bemus
ed glance at the sofa, behind which Myrtle’s blonde head tossed back and forth. She and Horace had been back there with a book of photographs about France for some time. “Um—certainly, I think weddings are swanky. When they happen, that is.”
Faye glanced at the sofa. In the midst of all the confusion, Myrtle’s antics continued, ignored by almost everyone. She spent most of her days lounging around in her mother’s green bathrobe, claiming this made her faux marriage more realistic. Faye wondered why she thought married people wore nightgowns in public. She’d never seen them do that. Granted, she knew very few newly married people. Faye was currently a most unromantic person, busy sweeping up shards of broken vases and rummaging for ivory figurines behind the hutch.
“Oh, Myrtle!” she called. “There’s a package for you.”
Horace popped up from the sofa as Myrtle retied the robe’s silk ribbon. “Neiman-Marcus? I imagine it’s exquisite.” He didn’t seem at all embarrassed by this reminder of Mr. Rivers. “You’re very lucky to have a man so willing and able to give you the best.”
Myrtle bit her lip rather sourly and hesitated for a moment before quickly running out with the box. A package was a package after all—who cared who it was from? Faye opened the closet to find another mop and a bucket filled with dirty water that she’d forgotten to dump out yesterday. She had left Mr. Rivers scrubbing an unimportant upstairs bathroom about an hour ago. When Grover’s voice called behind her, she assumed it was about those inevitable gardens and quickly left the bucket on the stairs.
Grover was stalking down the hall directly towards her. He looked about as happy as the north wind. “Faye, where did Ed run off to? He’s supposed to talk to that movie scout at six thirty. It’s six o’clock now!” (Having finally given up on protecting his father’s property, Ed had invited a prestigious movie scout who wanted to use Bellevere for a Cary Grant movie and then forgotten about him.)
Oh right. Well, since I can’t be any help at all, I should just play dead. “I haven’t seen him around,” she commented limply.
Grover blew out his breath and started to take off his jacket. “Well, forget about it. Come out, we’ve got more digging to do.”
Faye had sometimes wanted to ask him what these trenches were for, since filling the gardens with little dirty rivers didn’t seem very useful. But she hadn’t asked. She had a strong idea it would be useless and bring on a rant. As she followed him, a shriek erupted behind her. BeBe had tripped over the bucket Faye had left on the stairs and was now soaked in stale water. Faye ran to help her up, but BeBe slapped her away, howling.
“What . . . idiot . . . left . . . a bucket of water . . . on the stairs?” she heaved, furiously, beads of dirty liquid dripping from her ears.
Faye, preferring to leave that information vague, gently took a towel and wrapped it around BeBe’s shoulders. “It’s no big deal. Just let me dry you off, huh?”
BeBe shoved her away and raced upstairs to her room. Faye, grimacing, retrieved the bucket and then remembered Mr. Rivers. He had been stashed in a remote third-floor bathroom that didn’t really need cleaning because almost no one knew it existed. (But the idea was to keep him out of Myrtle’s way, not make him useful.) Surely Grover could let her have three minutes to peep in on the offended affianced, since supervising him was Faye’s unofficial duty at the moment. She raced up the stairs two at a time.
He had, it turned out, done practically no work. When Faye poked her head in the bathroom door, he was standing with arms folded over his slightly untucked office shirt. His eyebrows were drawn in a stiff line as he stared at a dazzling array of hardware over the bathtub. There were four faucets, a long tube of silver pipe for the shower, handlebars on all sides of the bathtub, and about five knobs for turning and regulating the water. At least, Faye guessed that was their purpose. She thought them mildly overabundant.
Mr. Rivers eyed her dourly. “You know, sometimes I try to examine why Myrtle made me the janitor in the way she did. That seems funny to me. Does it seem funny to you?”
Oh, you have no idea. “Well, they did it to me too. So I guess we’re in this together,” was all she ventured, aloud.
Mr. Rivers let out a frustrated breath as he glanced around the uninviting, small room. “Well, there’s nothing that says I can’t clean the bathroom. I’m a wealthy and independent person. I can do whatever I want. Although, I don’t particularly want to clean a bathroom.” His eyes widened as Faye held out a mop. “What’s that?”
“It’s a mop. You know . . . to scrub the floor? I’d rather you did it. Last time I used one I slipped on the wet floor and broke my leg.” Slightly false, but perhaps it will induce him to work. If I let on how much I can do, he’ll never lift a finger, and I’ve got to get back down to Grover.
Mr. Rivers paused in carefully rolling up his sleeves and straightened indignantly. “Wait! Johnny Thompson said my hair looked like one. Well, of all the . . .”
Faye asked when this incident had happened, just to keep the stiffness that permanently clouded all moments with Mr. Rivers from settling into a sort of cocoon. He didn’t seem to want to enlarge on the topic and stepped into the bathtub, sniffing mightily.
Chapter 12
Mr. Rivers methodically inspected each of the faucets, none of which seemed to work. He stubbornly strained at each knob, as if at the tiller of a huge ship. The entire bathtub was a brilliant pinkish color, which matched the sink, and unfortunately by now matched Mr. Rivers’ face. Finally, he released the uncooperative knobs and wiped his brow. His glare on Faye was beady.
“Explain this situation to me, young woman.” He snapped his fingers. “Get in here and help.”
Faye gingerly stepped over the rim, nearly colliding with him as he refused to move. It’s” Faye,” for your information. And believe it or not, I have somewhere else to be. “Golly, this is really stuck, isn’t it? This bathroom is never used. Probably that’s why no one’s noticed the faucets.”
Mr. Rivers’ lips twitched. “Never used? Why do we have to clean it, then?”
Probably shouldn’t have blurted that out.
Shrugging, he randomly swiped a faucet with a cleaning rag Faye handed to him. Suddenly, icy water shot viciously out of the faucet, drenching his pants. Faye leaped out of the bathtub. The water collected with astonishing speed, rising well above Mr. Rivers’ ankles. He slipped and fell into the thunder of sloshing water pouring out of the faucet.
“Off, off, off!” he yelled angrily. “Do something, young woman! How can you allow this indignity to happen to me? I’m surprised at you!”
Faye’s brows lowered. “My name is ‘Faye,’ not ‘young woman!’”
She squealed as Mr. Rivers angrily grabbed a small bowl and threw cold water into her face. Gasping, she paused as her blonde hair was flattened and water poured down her forehead. With a tight, swift gesture, he threw the bowl aside. “This isn’t my bathtub at home. That’s the one I know how to operate. I wish I was there now, rather than with an uneducated person like you.”
She grabbed the bowl and poured water right back into his face. Squinting and spluttering, Mr. Rivers turned another knob. It immediately shot fierce sprays of more water—this time very hot—all over him. The tub was overflowing. He grasped the handle alongside with his now slippery hands, as streams of hot water blew over him.
“Ahh! Turn it off. Turn it off!” he ordered, yelping.
Faye’s fingers frantically yanked while her lank hair hung in wet strings around her face. Finally, she turned the right knob and the water died. Gasping, she clung to the slimy side of the bathtub while Mr. Rivers sloshed unsteadily out. Uneducated . . . really? At least I can turn off a faucet, which is more than can be said for you.
Mr. Rivers looked in helpless outrage at his clothes, which had been chosen with great care. The understated style, he called his mode of dress. Now it was largely the damp and dripping style. Faye quickly shoved a towel at him, and he, viewing her presence as of negligible importance, tore off h
is damp, sticky shirt so he could wipe his shivering, saggy form. What, am I not here or something? He then pulled the soaking shirt out of his pants and wrapped the towel around his damp shoulders. As he did this the door opened. Faye whirled around.
“I was just going to go . . . ah!” BeBe shrieked. Her eyes went from dripping Faye to shirtless Bill, and her hands went to her mouth. Turning pink, she backed away, her eyes goggling. “Sorry to interrupt. I didn’t know you guys . . . were doing anything!”
Breaking off, she turned red and slammed the door. Faye heard her footsteps rushing far, far away. Faye leaned against the door with a hand to her forehead. What a ridiculous embarrassment.
Worst. Day. Ever.
When at last she got Mr. Rivers downstairs, he was still shirtless and still quite damp. Droplets dripped from the towel that persisted around his shoulders. Faye left him to dry off, obscured by the dim sunlight pouring from the open window. An elderly woman named Ruby Dodder drifted slowly out of the library where she had been examining some Haverton family portraits, but the large living room was otherwise empty. The afternoon should have been peaceful, long streaks of light bringing out the hues in Uncle Warren’s lawn and the pink cheeks of the old-fashioned shepherdess figurine on the shelf behind Mr. Rivers. But there was never going to be quiet until there was an end to Grover’s scheme. And this time Faye herself was an example. As Ed and Helene entered the hall she unceremoniously rushed to them and seized Ed’s collar.
“Ed! The movie scout!”
Ed’s eyes widened. “Oh! I forgot! Helene, you’ll have to excuse me a minute.”
Helene took Faye’s arm. “Faye, are you wet? Did something happen to you?”
“Oh, this? It’s nothing,” said Faye, grinning cherubically. “Just—cleaning the bathroom.”
Miss Dodder puttered innocently towards them on her way out the door. She assumed Ed and Helene were newlyweds, probably because they were linked arm in arm. As she congratulated them on their happiness, Ed and Helene turned bright red and hastily dropped hold of each other.
Bellevere House (Vintage Jane Austen) Page 10