A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies (23 page)

Aunt Lily stirred in her sleep. “Is it morning?”

“Not even nearly,” whispered Charlotte.

“Have to get to the hospital.”

“You will. It’s the middle of the night. Go back to sleep.” She liked the way her aunt rolled over like an obedient child. Charlotte pulled up the covers and snuggled closer to her.

Hays. There were plenty of things about her that Hays would never know. When he’d found her at Miss Georgeson’s—and that was what he said, “I found you,” as if she were a mushroom hiding under leaves and old brush in the woods somewhere—he seemed to have thought she only that minute began existing.

Miss Georgeson had told him two things about her: that she was an orphan, which wasn’t true, and that she rode a horse like a man.

Miss Georgeson called all her girls orphans. She enjoyed the melodrama of it. “My orphans, alone in the world but for the Lord and my little academy.” She said this even about the girls who had parents coming to visit on Sundays and taking them away for holidays.

Charlotte stopped crying. Thinking about Miss Georgeson caused her—whether she wanted to or not—to brace herself up. Miss Georgeson believed that a girl who couldn’t be firm with herself was a girl who might as well have a backbone made of jelly.

And a girl with a backbone of jelly is a girl, she would say, who could never get onto a horse, because she’d slide right out of the saddle.

Every girl at the academy had to have a thing or two that mattered, so that the teachers could have something to threaten to take away. It was the basis of Miss Georgeson’s teaching philosophy: allow for a passion, and then threaten it.

It didn’t matter what the passion was. It could have been candies, dresses, magazines, books (but only for a few, who anyway never misbehaved), or the pet ducks by the barn (“We’ll have your Mrs. Quack for dinner if you don’t attend to your Latin”), or swimming, or climbing trees (which was condoned), or speed and horses.

It was as if Charlotte had a middle name of it. Charlotte Speed-and-Horses Kemple.

Miss Georgeson herself had told Charlotte that as soon as she realized Hays Heath took an interest in her—that was exactly the way she put it, took an interest—she felt it necessary to tell him, “She doesn’t ride a horse like a girl, but like a man, and I wouldn’t estimate she’d be willing to change that, much as we’ve tried.”

Poor Hays. He must have blinked at Miss Georgeson as if she’d told him that Charlotte had robbed a bank. Miss Georgeson admired the way he rose to the occasion. He felt that, if the rules of the school allowed it, that was that; he pointed out that ladies were beginning to ride the new bicycles without sitting sidesaddle, because their skirts would catch in the spokes. Why not extend it to horses, at least rurally?

“I admire your liberality,” Miss Georgeson had told him. She was crazy about Hays; everyone was.

But never once did he ask if there was a pre–Miss Georgeson’s Charlotte Kemple, a Charlotte Kemple who’d lived a life before, in a house with a mother and a father. You had to be at least five years old before the academy would take you.

Didn’t he look around and see there weren’t babies; it wasn’t a nursery? Miss Georgeson wouldn’t have lied about actually going to an orphanage and scooping up tiny girls, and bringing them to the school. She wasn’t that inventive.

Well, Charlotte thought, when it comes to most people, if you find a mushroom in the woods, you don’t ask how it came to grow there, or how it grew at all, or what it was made of, or why it sat on its stem so staunchly, with a little brown umbrella for a head, or a little beige thimble. You asked, Is this something I can eat?

At her wedding, a huge and lavish production on the lawn of the household, in late June, with white tents put up everywhere, and an orchestra, and every flower from every hothouse for miles, there were thirty-four guests from the academy: teachers, servants, girls, and Miss Georgeson herself, plus half a dozen more from the pony school in New Hampshire.

Everyone mingled with the Heaths, but there were over two hundred guests. It was, after all, the wedding of the family’s youngest son, the wedding of the Heath who, at the age of thirty, was more successful in his career and his income than all the rest of them put together: he was their shiny emblem, their prize. “Hays is marrying an orphan from a school in the country, very polished.” That must have been what they said. When they seized her arm and said they’d just been talking to her family, that very nice lady over there, that well-behaved girl, she didn’t correct them.

He’d never, ever asked her anything. None of them did. Arthur did. “Tell me about where you come from.” Arthur hadn’t said that like it was part of the Beechmont process. He’d said it like he wanted to know.

Aunt Lily was stirring, grumbling. Charlotte slipped out of bed. She knew she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. She put the last of the coal on the fire and watched the embers flare up, and then she gathered up her things: her purse, her coat, Everett Gerson’s big wool mittens.

Her aunt called out crossly, “What are you up to
now,
Charlotte? Are you planning to give me even more headaches than you’ve given me already?”

“I went to look at Miss Singleton while you were sleeping.”

“Oh,” said Aunt Lily, softening. “How was it up there?”

“It was all right. The hearse came.”

“And now are you planning to go off to sea with her?”

“I am not,” said Charlotte, “hysterical. Does everyone think I’m at your apartment, really?”

Aunt Lily heaved herself to a sitting position. Her eyes were bloodshot; her hair was a mass of tangles. “You should thank God the woman looking after my rooms is as good as gold. It would seem she’s got you holed up in that back room, where all I ever did was store things.”

“Has anyone gone looking for me there?”

“Charlotte, yes. Turned away every time.”

“Hays?”

“Your father-in-law. Two of your brothers-in-law. I don’t know who else.”

“Then let them think I’m still there.”

“Where are you going?”

“On a train.”

“Tell me where or I’ll—”

Charlotte smiled at her. “Forbid me to go to the stable? That’s what Miss Georgeson used to do. The mistress of my school. She said if I wasn’t good my spine would disintegrate to jelly and I’d never be able to get on a horse.”

Aunt Lily was fully awake. She didn’t care about spines right now, and she didn’t care about Miss Georgeson.

“I’ll take you by the hand to the hospital with me. I’ll bring you into the wards, then I’ll bring you into the receiving area for people who have rotten things the matter with them, and nowhere else to go. After half of one hour, you’ll be as shocked as if your soul itself had been raked.”

“That’s the way you used to talk to me about morphine, but I don’t remember anything you actually said.”

“That’s because you were on it when I talked to you.”

“I got off. I got well. Why did you tell me I had a brain disease?”

“Brain, virus, spine, it’s all the same thing. What does it matter what I called it?”

“That doesn’t sound doctorly.”

“I just woke up, I don’t feel it. I had terrible dreams all night. And my friend is dead. Where is Arthur?”

“At his cutting-up.”

“Are you going to Arthur? Charlotte, look at me. Tell me you’re not doing that.”

“I’m not. I wrote a letter to Uncle Chessy. He’ll get it soon. I asked him to take care of some business for me.”

“I don’t need hearing about that right now. Going on a train where?”

“I want to see my mother and father.”

Aunt Lily fell silent. She hadn’t known a mother and father existed. She looked up at Charlotte for a long moment, carefully, then said, “You’ll need some money.”

“I have some. I have plenty.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know. A day.”

“When you come back, Charlotte—are you coming back?”

“Oh, yes, I would have to.”

“Where will you come back
to
?”

Charlotte hadn’t planned that far ahead. “Perhaps I’ll come back here,” she said, and Aunt Lily fell back on the pillow and groaned. Poor Aunt Lily.

T
he boy in the front room of the
Daily Messenger,
on the bottom floor of the only office building in Bigelow Mills, was working on the words for an advertisement for a cheese shop.

“Cheese, please,” he murmured. The newspaper covered the whole of the Blackstone Valley.

The boy was about fifteen, scrubbed-looking, earnest, the kind of boy Charlotte’s sisters-in-law called “dewy,” as in, “Look at that dewy boy over there, couldn’t you just go up to him and devour him?”

He paced about with a notebook and a thick pencil. His eyes were intent on the page the notebook was open to. “Cheese. Cheese, cheese. Please.” It was obvious that this was the first assignment he’d been given, besides fetching things and general servitude.

It was a derelict room, freezing cold, with old desks here and there and a front counter. The only other
Daily Messenger
person there was a woman of about Aunt Lily’s age, sallow-faced, unhappy, bundled up in a coat and a scarf at one of the desks. She was trying to make a connection on a telephone, which she appeared to loathe. The connection kept not going through.

The woman gave a kick to the little coal stove; it appeared to have had better days. It was smoky and almost useless. The ceiling and upper walls were sooty-grimy from it, and so were the windows, which had the look of having never, ever been washed.

“Excuse me, I want some information,” said Charlotte, and the woman looked up and eyed Charlotte up and down and made it clear she wasn’t having anything to do with what she saw.

“I’m using the telephone.” But nothing was happening. The woman was merely holding it.

“Hang on, I’ll come talk to you, soon’s I try this out,” said the boy. He cleared his throat for a recitation. His voice was in the act of changing over to a man’s, so he was one minute squeaky and the next, an alto. “Got it, Miss Eckhart. It’s good, give a listen.”

“You got an illustration?” said Miss Eckhart.

“Almost.”

“They want it with the picture. They want it already. An hour ago they wanted it. Who gets blamed you don’t have it?”

“I’m a word man,” said the boy. “But don’t worry about a picture, I can do it.”

“Me, that’s who gets blamed. I’m the one brought you in. You want to be a reporter? You’re far from it, far.”

“I can describe it. Take me half a second to get it drawn.”

“What’s the words?”

The boy puffed out his chest. “A youth. A boy, nine, ten years old. He’s asking for cheese.”

“What’s the words exactly?”

“Please, please, cheese. Good for the caterpillars, bad for the bees.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“What do vermin have to do with selling cheese?”

“It’s not vermin. It’s the indirect approach. That’s how they do it in the cities. You have to lure them with an angle.”

“What’s the illustration?”

“A boy, like I said. A backyard, big porch, nice people. Summer. Barefoot. A chunk of cheese in one hand. A caterpillar crawling over one foot, another one that just got turned into a butterfly. That’s what he’s looking at. A bee’s in the air, near his head, big one. Wants to sting the shirt right off him. He holds up the cheese. It’s a protection. It’s a
shield
. The bee hasn’t got a chance. Great, great things happen when you eat cheese.”

“You were supposed to appeal to a married lady with a house to run.”

“I appeal to her children.”

“Children don’t read papers.”

“It’s simple words. They can look over her shoulder. They’ll beg for cheese sandwiches, when they never liked them before. They’ll be flattered someone’s operating at their level. They’ll comprehend it. It’s a story, see. With a hero.” The boy looked at Charlotte. “What do you think?”

“I want to find out information about the shoe store on Market Street,” said Charlotte.

“Go in there. It’s open.” Miss Eckhart appeared to have given up on her telephone call. “I wish they never invented these things. I wish they would stop inventing things that’re supposed to make things easier, and they only make everything maddening.”

“It’s the snow and the wind,” said the boy.

“That’s all I’ve been getting in my ears all morning from this thing.”

“I didn’t find the information I wanted at the shoe store,” said Charlotte. “It used to be a house. It used to belong to a family named Kemple.”

“My ad,” said the boy.

“I think,” said Miss Eckhart, “we’ll use the same one we used this whole month.”

“It’s a wedge of cheddar with two little legs and a mouth,” said the boy despondently. “A walking, talking wedge.” He came over to the counter and put his elbows on it, right in front of Charlotte. “Do you know what it’s saying? It’s saying, ‘Randall O’Keefe has the best cheese in America, and I got that straight from a cow.’ There’s a cow down in the corner. Isn’t that the worst thing you ever heard?”

“No, it’s not,” said Charlotte. “But maybe you should try something simpler.”

“You in papers?”

“No. I want someone to tell me what happened to the people who lived where the shoe shop is. There must be someone here who would know.”

“Artie would know,” said Miss Eckhart.

“Who is Artie?”

“He owns the shoe shop.”

“He’s not there,” said Charlotte. “I saw a woman who told me she’s only been working there a few weeks. She told me the owner went to New York to look at new designs.”

“That’s just what he did.”

“The woman in the shop didn’t want to talk to me.”

“Were you there to buy shoes?”

“I was looking for information.”

Miss Eckhart gave Charlotte a look that meant something like, “Between you and me, we both know that someone like you would never buy shoes there.” She got up from her desk and turned her back on Charlotte and strolled to the hall at the back of the room, signaling, with a bristling display of disdain, “Go away.”

Charlotte wished she’d borrowed Mabel Gerson’s coat as well as her dress, which she wasn’t wearing anyway. She had changed into her own before leaving her room at the Beechmont. She was fully aware that her clothes cost a great deal more than Miss Eckhart’s. She wanted to say, “I don’t blame you for looking at me the way you do,” but that would have made everything worse.

“Wait, please,” said Charlotte. The woman paused in mid-step.

“Maybe Artie went to New York, but there’s never new designs here, don’t believe it,” said the boy.

“My problem is,” said Charlotte patiently, “I’ve been sending money, in the form of postal checks, once a year to that address, for nearly ten years. I have regularly received notices that the checks were cashed. I’ve just come by train, a long way, which took an age, and it was not a pleasant ride, and I have to ride it all over again, which I am not in a happy mood about. And now I’ve arrived to find that what I was looking for isn’t there. I want to know why I’ve been giving money to shoes, and I believe, if something is taking place which is not on the up-and-up, not that I’m saying so, it would possibly be an interesting story for your paper.”

“I’ll get Burke,” said Miss Eckhart, and disappeared down the hall.

“Golly,” said the boy. “Embezzlement.” His eyes went bright with future headlines; his intensity made Charlotte think of Dickie, the old Dickie, not the policeman but the boy in the tannery.

Burke turned out to be a plump, bustling, nearly totally bald man at the furthest edge of adulthood. He smelled like printer’s ink and cigars, and he was clean-shaven, unlike most men his age. His face was unlined and pudgy, and relatively youthful, but you had the sense, at any second, he’d be overwhelmed by his years, and be changed against his will into someone very elderly, all pasty and wrinkled and moaning, with every bone in his body complaining. He gave off an electric tension, and seemed to know this about himself; he wanted to be admired for the fight he put up against decrepitude, which Charlotte was happy to do. She offered him a bright smile, which was not completely forced. The boy grudgingly moved out of his way as Burke approached Charlotte at the counter.

If Charlotte expected sympathy from this man, she was let down. He established his own vigor very quickly, and then the credentials of Artie of the shoe shop, who was his friend, his gun partner; they’d gone out in the woods and to the ponds every fall some forty, forty-five years. Deer, grouse, pheasant, turkey, duck, they stocked their own larders plus did their bit for charity: a whole ton of game, if you added it up through the years, for the feeble-brained asylum in Chetterdon and also for the hospital in Oakville. Was the lady inquiring about either of those places, seeing how the subject was the sending of money?

He didn’t ask Charlotte for her name, which was just as well. She would have given a false one.

The Valley was as geographically intact as if it existed as its own state, and it was known to keep to itself, but there was a branch of the Heaths not far away, in one of the bigger, more prosperous towns. They owned the one bank and had a summerhouse out in Lenox, which everyone west of Boston would probably know about. It was called a palace, because that was what it pretty much was; it looked like a thousand-tiered wedding cake made for all the gods of Olympus and every French king put together. There was a painting of it in her father-in-law’s study, which he only kept, he said, because he liked to be reminded of the base and vulgar road he had managed to avoid by staying out of the allure of the Berkshires, and closer to Boston, in his simple, by comparison, monastery-like little house, as if the household were nothing but a box. Her father-in-law and her mother-in-law had little to do with that branch, but Hays’s sisters and their husbands were always going there for weekends.

She couldn’t call herself a Heath and she couldn’t call herself a Kemple, because who knew what that would imply personally?

“Anonymous,” she might have said, for a name. Burke seemed satisifed with just “lady.”

She’d been sending money for what purpose, if not charity?

“There was a family named Kemple who lived in the place where the shoe shop is,” said Charlotte. “I—I represent someone who has an interest in them. An old interest, over the years.”

“Like a benefactor?” Burke’s interest was waning. He only seemed to care that his friend was not being maligned.

“Something like that,” said Charlotte.

“They sue somebody? We had a family that hauled the paper mill to civil court for putting acid or something in their creek, and they got a settlement so big, they became investors. They put it all in the mill, and now they’ve got a fortune.”

“It wasn’t for anything like that.”

“You looking for Kemples?”

“I am.”

The boy wandered over to a desk, scowling at his notebook. He wrote down some words, crossed them out, wrote some more.

“Artie’s got a daughter married to one. Gloria. The husband’s Cyrus, Cyrus Kemple, works logging, a big guy. Artie never said anything to me about checks going into his shop.”

“That’s all right,” said Charlotte. “Who are Cyrus’s parents?”

“Don’t know.”

“Where can I find Gloria?”

“Can’t, just now. Went to New York with him. Get her out, give her a little whirl. Nice girl, her. Doesn’t get out much.”

“Where can I find Cyrus?”

“Can’t. He’s out in the woods, where he always is.”

“Are there any other sisters or brothers?”

“Artie’s got nine, six boys, three girls, and they’re every one of them living.”

“Cheese,” said the boy, sitting down in a battered old chair, which creaked in spite of how slight he was. He was reading aloud from his notebook as if he were alone, trying out lines. “Cheese on my toast, cheese on my roast. Cheese on my taters and cheese on my peas. Cheese on my baiters and cheese on my knees.”

Burke looked over his shoulder. “You got a picture with that?”

“Give me two minutes.”

“What’s a baiter?”

“Uh, fishing,” said the boy. “Guy fishing. Lunch sack full of cheese.”

“Make him young. A boy,” said Burke. “Make him a twelve-year-old. His mother packs his sack. I want to get rid of that wedge with the mouth. Put on the lunch sack, Randall O’Keefe’s Best Cheese in America. I think he might go for it.”

“Yes, sir!” cried the boy.

“Do Cyrus and Gloria have children?” said Charlotte.

“She’s barren,” said Burke, as plainly as if he were talking about an acre of land.

“Does Cyrus have sisters or brothers?”

“There’s a sister out on one of the farms, outside Ware. Pretty place, Ware. No, wait. She died. Diphtheria. Was a spinster. Ran her obit, half a paragraph, oh, eight, ten months ago. You want it dug out?”

“Yes, please.”

“It’ll cost you.”

Charlotte opened her purse, then changed her mind and snapped it shut. “I’ll be happy to oblige with payment, after you give me what I need. I would also like to know if there were any other notices regarding Kemples.”

“Weren’t. Payment’ll be two dollars.”

“Is it actually?” said Charlotte. “I think that’s quite high.”

“Information’s precious.”

“But I won’t have you rob me. I’ll pay you a quarter.”