The Moment of Tenderness

by Madeleine L'engle

  “Oh” came Nana’s light voice. “Vicky’s back. You’d better not come in, darling.”

  And Frederick’s voice: “Well, we had a nice holiday. I wish it didn’t have to be over. You’re too conscientious.”

  “Shh.”

  “She’s asleep.”

  “Shh anyhow.”

  “When will I see you tomorrow?”

  “At the theatre.”

  “Not before?”

  “Not tomorrow. Good night, my sweet.”

  “Good night, my love.” And a long kiss.

  * * *

  Nana locked and bolted the door, and came over to Vicky’s bed. “Vick?”

  Vicky rolled over. “Hello.”

  Nana sat down on the edge of the bed and slipped her arms out of her coat. “Did you have a nice time in the country, darling?”

  “Lovely.”

  “How was Pat?”

  “Oh, fine.”

  “You cleaned up my mess.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “I meant to do it before you got back.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “When did you get back from the country?”

  “Just this evening.”

  “You know it’s a funny thing, darling, but I was sure I saw you in Times Square yesterday.”

  “Oh.”

  “Were you there, sweet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not in the country?”

  “No. And I won’t be able to pay my share of the apartment for a while.”

  “Oh?”

  “You make enough to pay the extra for me, and Frederick gives you everything you want.”

  “Do you think it’s quite fair of you, darling?”

  Vicky turned over, away from her. “I don’t much care.”

  “How much will you be paying?”

  “I guess I’ll make enough to give ten dollars.”

  “That’s not very much.”

  “Personal maids usually get good salaries. Please leave me alone now, Nana. I’m tired and I want to sleep.”

  “Oh, all right, if you feel that way about it.”

  She lay very still while Nana got ready for bed. It always took Nana at least an hour and a half to get ready for bed. Tonight it was half an hour.

  “Vicky,” Nana said as she climbed into bed.

  “What? I don’t want to talk. I’m asleep.”

  “Maybe we’d better give up the apartment.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I mean, I don’t think it’s very fair to keep it this way, you not paying your share in everything, darling, and I sort of decided while you were away that now’s as good a time as any to marry Frederick.”

  “Oh.”

  “You can easily find a job that will support you. Anybody with a college education can get a job nowadays. Or you could be a WAC or a WAVE.”

  “I’m a nurse’s aide. That’s just as important.”

  “Well, you can get a good job anyhow. And if I’m married to Frederick you won’t have to clean up for me anymore. What was your job with the magnificent salary?”

  “I was going to be an usher at the Booth.”

  “Oh.”

  “You needn’t say ‘oh’ in that tone of voice.”

  “I wasn’t using any tone of voice, darling. Well, I must say I think you can easily get a better job than that. From German teacher in a good girls’ school to usher isn’t very dignified.”

  “It’s what I want.”

  “Well, I think it’s just as well. You certainly should be doing something better than that. I’ll see if I can’t get Frederick to lend you enough to take a secretarial course. You could probably get a big paying job in Washington. God. I’m exhausted. Good night, Vick darling.”

  “Good night.” Vicky opened her eyes wide and stared at the ceiling, and at the cheap chandelier in the middle of it. Then the chandelier blurred as her eyes filled with tears.

  After a while Nana spoke again. “Where were you if you weren’t in the country?”

  “That’s my own business.”

  “Oh, all right, darling, if you want to have secrets it doesn’t bother me…Why are you crying?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Go to sleep, then.” Nana yawned. “You want to be fresh to look for a new job in the morning. Good night, my sweet.”

  “Good night.”

  “And don’t wake me up in the morning.”

  “Do I ever?”

  Nana didn’t answer. In a moment her breathing came slowly and rhythmically. Vicky raised herself on one elbow and stared at Manhattan in the early morning light. Nana lay curled up like a kitten, her face pillowed on her arm, rosy and childish. Vicky watched her for a long time. Then she lay down and closed her eyes and pressed her face into the pillow. But she didn’t cry.

  A Room in Baltimore

  It was about eight thirty when the train, several hours late as usual, pulled into Baltimore, and we were starved because we hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. No stop long enough for us to dash to a station lunchroom, nobody coming through the train with paper cups of coffee and sandwiches, no dining car. We were tired, too, because we’d just done a lot of one-night stands, and the prospect of a week, of seven whole nights, in one town, was very welcome.

  I left my roommate, Fiona, at the information desk. Hugh and Bob, our two best friends among the men in the company, took our suitcases along to their hotel so we wouldn’t have to carry them. Fiona and I were the only two in the company who weren’t settled in a hotel, and Fiona wasn’t settled solely out of kindness to me. I wasn’t settled because of Touché.

  Touché is a very small silver French poodle, and she had quite a big part in the play, far bigger than mine. Touché had three curtain calls and I only got in on the big general company one. Touché shared the stars’ dressing room on the stage floor while I was always several rickety flights up. I don’t know whether it’s a tribute to my noble nature or to Touché’s charm and undoubted acting ability that I didn’t mind her having a juicy role while I was just several walk-ons and general understudy, and that I never wished she didn’t belong to me when no hotel would accept our reservations or I had to spend ten hours in a freezing baggage car when the conductor didn’t melt at the sight of her lovely little face, or when I didn’t get away with holding her under my coat in the general position of my middle, and looking wan and in an interesting condition.

  I got Touché out of the baggage car now and joined Fiona. She had once played a summer of stock in Baltimore and had stayed in a boarding house where she was great friends with everybody, so we weren’t, for once, worried about finding a room.

  It was quite dark and starting to snow, which meant I couldn’t find a star to wish on. This depressed me a little, since I’d almost had a quarrel with Hugh on the train over a game of double solitaire called Spite and Malice which we played on a suitcase balanced on our knees; but I knew that with no hotel to be depressed in, and on an empty stomach, I had better squelch my superstitions. Besides, Hugh was trying to teach me not to say “bread and butter” when something came between us, or to go back around the block when a black cat crossed my path; and every time I came to his dressing room he started whistling.

  Touché was as hungry as Fiona and I, so one of the first things we did was to stop at a lunch wagon and buy her a hamburger. We had some coffee but resisted the temptation to get a couple of hamburgers for ourselves because we had decided to get settled first, and then meet the boys for a real bang-up dinner, bottle of wine and all. We had to get the room first anyhow because we couldn’t go into a restaurant with Touché—though in emergencies I’d found the enceinte trick worked very well, and Touché never gave it away by moving or barking, but lay, far quieter than any baby, born or otherwise, with her little grey head under the table cloth, nudging my knee gently if I didn’t slip her a bite often enough.

  Now, anyone who knows Baltimore knows that there are two stations, each one at oppo
site ends of the city. Of course, Fiona’s boarding house was very close to the station we hadn’t arrived at. So Fiona led the way. I’d played Baltimore once before but I never did have any bump of locality, so I just followed her blindly, and wherever I went, Touché went, too. The only thing I was sure of was that I would never go back to the dreadful hotel where four of us had stayed on two very dirty double beds and where there was a bathtub bang in the middle of the room with a screen around it—but no toilet. The fact that we paid four dollars a week apiece didn’t make up for the filth that even the bottle of Lysol that was our constant companion from hotel to hotel couldn’t make us forget.

  “It won’t be long now,” Fiona said comfortingly after we had tramped for blocks and blocks and blocks and Touché was beginning to drag on her leash. “It’s a lovely boarding house with great big rooms and it’ll be a lovely change after all those awful hotels.” Fiona’s full name is Fiona Feanne (pronounced for some reason Foy-een-ya) O’Shiell, and she is a creature almost as ravishingly beautiful as Touché (than which there could be no higher praise) with masses of red hair and alabaster skin and a body so lovely that most people, learning that we were in the theatre, asked if we were playing the Gaiety, or whatever was the name of the nearest burlesque house. She walked along now, her face held up to the soft white flakes of snow that were beginning to fall, humming a little, and Touché and I dragged along, and finally Touché deliberately held up one forepaw and started limping along pathetically on three legs until she got her own way (as usual) and I picked her up and carried her under one arm.

  We walked and we walked and we walked and we walked, and Touché, for all her beauty and grace, grows heavy after a while. Finally Fiona said, “Funny we aren’t there yet. This doesn’t look like a very nice neighborhood.” She hailed a passing man and asked for the address of her boarding house. The man leered at us both, his eyes going suggestively from our heads to our feet and back up again, in a most unpleasant manner, but he did make it clear to us that we had walked all the way across Baltimore for nothing; Fiona’s boarding house was a few blocks from the station at which we had arrived.

  Fiona turned red and then white and then red again. “I don’t know how it could have happened—I could have sworn—Oh, please, forgive me!” she gasped.

  If it hadn’t been for Touché and me, Fiona would have been safely settled in the Lord Baltimore with Hugh and Bob and most of the rest of the company. How could I help forgiving her? I stamped my very wet, very cold feet, in shoes that needed resoling. “It’s okay, Fifi, but let’s get going. I’m starved and frozen.”

  Fiona flung her arm around me. “Tonight I’ll give you a ten-dollar back rub,” she said. “That’s a promise.”

  Touché growled as Fiona touched me, but she just pulled the curly grey puff of bangs. “Angel, I am not molesting your mistress, so shut up. What on earth are you going to do with Toosh on your wedding night?”

  We tried to take a taxi but it seems in Baltimore dogs are not allowed in taxis and she kept slipping out from under the front of my coat. We knew it would do no good to try a bus, so we walked. In about a weary hour and a half we were back in what, to Fiona, was familiar ground, and soon we went up the brown stone steps of a very nice-looking house. I didn’t care what sort of a room they gave us. I didn’t even care much about dinner with wine with Hugh and Bob. I just wanted to take a hot bath and get into bed and have one of Fiona’s ten-dollar back rubs.

  The boarding house keeper gave one look at my beautiful, my sweet, my adorable Touché, and said they didn’t take dogs and couldn’t make an exception even for a dog who worked to earn her own living. Fiona cajoled and wheedled with all her Irish charm, and Touché, true to her histrionic nature, stood on her hind legs and danced, but the boarding house keeper (who shall be nameless) was a hatchet-faced old sour-puss and there was no getting around her. As she was gently pushing us out the door she started to coo over Touché. This was the last straw.

  “If you refuse to allow my dog in your home, please stop gurgling over her,” I said coldly, and stalked out. Fiona hurried down the steps after me.

  “Angel, that was rude of you, you know,” she said softly. I was ashamed of my temper as I always am once it’s lost, but I wasn’t going to admit it. I reached in the pocket of my old trench coat and pulled out the typewritten list of Baltimore hotels that Al Finch, our advance manager, had posted on the call board. We started by trying all the hotels in the neighborhood. They were without exception expensive, but that needn’t have bothered us because they wouldn’t take Touché anyhow. Finally we decided to forget the size of our weekly paychecks and try the frightfully expensive hotel where Miss Le Gallienne and Mr. Schildkraut, our stars, were staying.

  “I’m sorry,” the manager said, “but we don’t take dogs.”

  “Look here.” I was almost in tears. “Miss Eva Le Gallienne is staying here and she has two cairns and a combination Manchester terrier–Chihuahua. And Mr. Joseph Schildkraut is here, too, and he has three Chihuahuas. I know because I walk them every day.”

  At this point the hotel orchestra, which we could hear playing dimly in the distance, for some reason began to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.” This was also played at the end of the overture and we had taught Touché, waiting on stage with the rest of the company, to stand at attention. As she heard the familiar strains her grey ears pricked up, and, tired though she was, she rose to her hind legs and put one small grey paw to her forehead. I relaxed, certain that now we would be shown the bridal suite.

  The manager didn’t change expression. “I’m very sorry, but we take no dogs.”

  Now, I think Miss Le Gallienne and Mr. Schildkraut deserve every possible consideration a star can get, but this hotel business was beginning to burn me up, not to mention my rage at anyone crass enough not to appreciate Touché. Also, I was having a hard time to keep from crying with anger, hunger, and fatigue. I looked up at the manager with brimming eyes. “If you keep on telling lies like this, someday God will strike you down. Come, Fiona. Come, Touché.” And we stalked out again.

  This time Fiona did not scold me for being rude. Back in the street I turned up my collar and blew my nose. Fiona quietly took the list of hotels from me. “Here’s one that says theatrical rates only a couple of blocks from here. Come on, angel.”

  “Look, Fifi, Toosh and I will understand perfectly if you go on back to the Lord Baltimore. Do go on, please, and we’ll call you when we find a place and tell you where we are.”

  Fiona said nothing to this and walked determinedly down the street, and Toosh and I staggered after her. We got to the corner where the theatrical hotel was supposed to be, but at that number was an imposing-looking building with a canopy leading to the front door and we guessed with sinking hearts that the management had changed and the rates would no longer be “theatrical.”

  “Well, let’s try anyhow, it’s only money,” Fiona said. We went up to the door and were just about to go in when Fiona clutched my arm in a frantic manner and pointed to a brass plate on the door. In chaste letters it announced: CREMATORIUM.

  We turned and ran down the steps and I started to roar with laughter. “What,” demanded Fiona, “is funny?”

  “I was just thinking,” I explained, “of how they’d have looked if we’d gone in and asked if they took dogs, and could they put us up for the night!”

  Well, we started back to the center of town to the hotels that were nearer the theatre. It was a good bit after eleven o’clock by now and even the inexhaustible Fiona was on her last legs.

  We looked for a phone and I finally went into a bar and called the boys at the Lord Baltimore to tell them to check our suitcases downstairs and go on to bed. We’d probably sleep in the station or maybe find a church that was open all night. Hugh was properly sympathetic but agreed to leave the bags downstairs, saying they were very tired and they’d already had something to eat anyhow because they hadn’t heard from us.

  They were tired! I
thought furiously, and hung up just as a large cockroach crawled across the telephone box. I am terrified of cockroaches so I dropped the receiver like a hot coal and dashed out to Fiona and Touché, quite certain that my name would never be changed to Mrs. Hugh Franklin. (Funnily enough, it is.)

  It took us a good half hour to get into town through the falling snow that at least had the grace to be getting drier instead of wetter. My feet were so cold now that I couldn’t feel anything, even the blisters on the backs of both heels. Touché lay like a pathetic lump of lead in my arm, and I thought wistfully of all the pleasant autumnal walks we’d had earlier in the tour, when Hugh would walk me back to my hotel after the performance.

  We always walked until Touché had done a final wee wee for the night, and on the evenings that I was not with Hugh she would always head for the nearest lamppost (because it was a spotlight, not because it was a lamppost) and perform; on the nights when Hugh, of whom she approved, was with me, we would sometimes walk for over an hour before she would finally have to give in and squat.

  “What about the hotel you stayed in the last time you were here?” Fiona asked tentatively.

  “Fifi, we simply can’t stay there. It’s too awful to describe and Toosh would never agree to it.”

  By midnight we had tried all the hotels on the list except one. The remark after this was “Cheap, but certainly wouldn’t recommend it for the girls.”

  It was only a couple of blocks from the theatre so we decided to try it anyhow. The exterior didn’t look too prepossessing. Outside a dirty brown building a large sign in lurid red lights said, ONE DOLLAR A NIGHT.