The Maid (16 page)

It is three-thirty when Detective Stark dismisses me from the white room. I walk myself out the station door. No courtesy ride home this time. I haven’t eaten since the morning, and I haven’t had so much as a cup of tea to tide me over.

My stomach roils. The dragon awakes. I have to pause a moment on the sidewalk in front of my building just to keep from fainting.

It’s my deception, not hunger, that’s having a deleterious effect on my nerves. It’s the fact that I haven’t disclosed fully about Giselle nor about what I currently have hidden over my heart. That’s what has me in such a state.

Honesty is the only policy.

I can see Gran’s face, twisted with disappointment, the day I came home from school at the age of twelve and she asked me how my day was. I told her it was ordinary, nothing to report. That, too, was a lie. The truth was, I ran away at lunchtime, which was far from ordinary. The school called Gran. I confessed to Gran why I’d run away. My classmates had formed a ring around me in the schoolyard and ordered me to roll around in the mud and eat it, kicking me while I obeyed their order. They were keenly inventive when it came to tormenting me, and this iteration was no exception.

When the ordeal was over, I went to the community library and spent hours in the bathroom washing the grime off my face and mouth, scraping the earth out from under my fingernails. I watched with satisfaction as the evidence circled down the drain. I was so certain I’d get away with it, that Gran would never find out.

But she did find out. And she had only one question for me after I confessed to being bullied. “Dear girl, why didn’t you just tell the truth right away? To your teacher? To me? To anyone?” Then she cried and embraced me with such force that I was never able to answer her question. But I had an answer. I did. I didn’t tell the truth because the truth hurt. What happened at school was bad enough, but Gran knowing about my suffering meant she experienced my pain too.

That’s the trouble with pain. It’s as contagious as a disease. It spreads from the person who first endured it to those who love them most. Truth isn’t always the highest ideal; sometimes it must be sacrificed to stop the spread of pain to those you love. Even children know this intuitively.

My stomach settles. Steadiness returns. I cross the street and enter my building. I bound up the stairs to my floor, heading straight for Mr. Rosso’s door. I extricate the wad of bills I’ve placed by my heart for safekeeping. I was aware of them the whole time I was at the police station, but far from being a nuisance, they felt protective, like a shield.

I knock loudly. I hear Mr. Rosso padding down his hallway, then the scratchy squeal of the lock twisting. My landlord’s face appears, ruddy and bulbous. I hold out the bills in my hand.

“Here is the rest of this month’s rent,” I say. “As you can see, I take after my gran. I’m a woman of my word.”

He takes the money and counts it. “It’s all there, but I appreciate your diligence,” I say.

When he’s done counting, he nods slowly. “Molly, let’s not do this every month, okay? I know your grandmother is gone, but you need to pay your rent on time. You need to get your life in order.”

“I’m well aware of that,” I say. “As for order, it is my express wish to
live as ordered a life as possible. But the world is filled with random chaos that often bedevils my attempts at arrangement. May I have my receipt for full payment, please?”

He sighs. I know what this means. He’s exasperated, which does not seem fair. If someone were to place a wad of bills into my hands, rest assured I would not sigh like this. I’d be grateful beyond measure.

“I’ll fill out a receipt tonight,” he says, “and give it to you tomorrow.”

I would much prefer to have that receipt in my hand
tout suite
, but I defer. “That would be acceptable. Thank you,” I say. “And have a lovely evening.”

He closes his door without so much as a mannered “You too.”

I go to my own entrance and turn the key. I step across the threshold and lock the door behind me. Our home. My home. Exactly as I left it this morning. Neat. Orderly. Unnervingly quiet, despite Gran’s voice in my head.

There are times in life when we must do things we don’t want to. But do them we must.

Normally, I feel a wave of relief flow through me the instant I close the door behind me. Here, I’m safe. No expressions to interpret. No conversations to decode. No requests. No demands.

I take off my shoes, wipe them down, and place them neatly in the closet. I pat Gran’s serenity pillow on the chair by the door. I take a seat on the sofa in the living room to collect my thoughts. I am all a muddle, even here, in the peace of my own home. I know I must consider my next steps—should I call Giselle? Or maybe Rodney, for support and advice? Mr. Snow, to apologize for my absence this afternoon, for leaving my rooms without completing my daily quota?—but I find myself overwhelmed by the very thought of it all.

I feel out of sorts in a way I haven’t felt in a while, not since Wilbur and the Fabergé, not since the day Gran died.

In that too-bright station room today, Detective Stark laid blame on me, treating me like some sort of common criminal when I’m nothing of the sort. All I want is to turn my head and find Gran sitting on the
sofa beside me, saying,
Dear girl. Do not fret yourself into a tizzy. Life has a way of sorting itself out.

I head to the kitchen and put the kettle on. My hands are shaky. I open the fridge and find it mostly bare—just a couple of crumpets left, which I should save for tomorrow’s breakfast. I find a few biscuits in the cupboard and arrange them neatly on a plate. When the water has boiled, I make my tea, adding two sugars to compensate for the lack of milk. I mean to savor each bite of the biscuits, but instead I find myself devouring them greedily and washing them down with big gulps of tea right at the kitchen counter. My cup is empty before I even know it. Instantly, I feel the tea working. Warm energy flows through me again.

When all else fails, tidy up.

It’s a good idea. Nothing raises my spirits more than a good tidy. I wash out my teacup, dry it, and put it away. Gran’s curio cabinet in the living room could use a bit of attention. I carefully open the glass doors and remove all of her precious treasures—a menagerie of Swarovski crystal animals, each one paid for with backbreaking overtime hours at the Coldwells’ mansion. There are spoons, too, silver mostly, collected from thrift shops over the years. And the photos—Gran and me baking, Gran and me in front of a water fountain in a park, Gran and me at the Olive Garden, glasses of Chardonnay raised. And the one photo that is not of us but of my mother when she was young.

I pick it up. My hands still aren’t entirely steady. I have to concentrate as I dust and polish the glass frame. If my fingers slip, the frame will fall to the floor, the glass will shatter into hundreds of deadly shards. I get down on my knees to be closer to the ground. It’s safer this way. I’m holding the frame in both hands, studying my mother’s image. I’m surrounded by all of Gran’s lovely things.

Another memory surfaces, not a recent one, one I haven’t thought about in a long time. I was about thirteen years old when I walked through the door after school one day to find Gran kneeling on the floor much like I’m doing now. It was Thursday—
dust we must—
and
she’d started the chore, her collection strewn about her, a polishing cloth and this photo of my mother in her hands. As soon as I crossed the threshold, I knew something wasn’t quite right. Gran was disheveled. Her hair, which was usually perfectly curled and coiffed, was in disarray. There were stains on her cheeks and her eyes were puffy.

“Gran?” I asked, before even wiping down the bottoms of my shoes. “Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer. She just stared at me with a glassy, faraway look in her eyes. Then she said, “Dear girl, I’m simply going to tell it to you as it is. Your mother. She’s dead.”

I found myself glued to the spot where I stood. I knew that my mother was out there in the world somewhere, but to me, she was as abstract a figure as the queen. To me, it was as if she’d died long ago. But to Gran, she meant so much, and this is what had me worried.

Every year as Mother’s Day drew near, Gran would begin her thrice-daily peregrinations to our mailbox. She was hoping there’d be a card from my mother. In the early years, cards appeared, signed in shaky scrawl. Gran would be so happy.

“She’s still in there somewhere, my little girl,” she’d say.

But for years on end, Mother’s Day after Mother’s Day, no cards arrived and Gran would be glum for the rest of the month. I compensated by splurging on the biggest, cheeriest card I could find, adding a “Gran” before “Mother,” filling the inside with evenly spaced
x
’s and
o
’s, and red and pink hearts that I’d color in, careful not to stray outside the lines.

When Gran told me my mother was dead, it wasn’t my own pain that I felt. It was hers.

She cried and cried and cried, which was so unlike her that it unsettled me to my core.

I hurried to her side and placed a hand on her back.

“What you need is a good cup of tea,” I said. “There’s almost nothing that a good cup of tea can’t cure.”

I rushed to the kitchen and put the kettle on, my hands shaking. I could hear Gran sobbing on the sitting-room floor. Once the water had
boiled, I made two perfect cups and brought them to the living room on Gran’s silver tray.

“There we are,” I said. “Why don’t we have a wee sit on the sofa.”

But Gran wouldn’t move. The polishing cloth was balled up in one of her hands.

I stepped through the obstacle course of treasures and cleared myself a spot beside her on the floor. I put the tray down to one side, picked up both teacups, and positioned them in front of us. I put one hand on Gran’s shoulder again.

“Gran?” I said. “Will you sit up? Will you join me for tea?” My voice was trembling. I was terrified. I’d never seen Gran so weak and diminished, as fragile as a baby bird.

Gran eventually sat up. She dabbed at her eyes with the polishing cloth.

“Oh,” she said. “Tea.”

We sat like that, Gran and me, on the floor, drinking tea, surrounded by Swarovski crystal animals and silver spoons. My mother’s photo was beside us, the absent third person at our tea party.

When Gran spoke next, her voice had returned, composed and steady. “Dear girl,” she said. “I’m sorry I was so upset. But not to worry, I’m feeling much better now.” She took a small sip from her cup and smiled at me. It was not her usual smile. It traveled only halfway across her face.

A question occurred to me. “Did she ever ask about me? My mother?”

“Of course she did, dear. When she’d call out of the blue, it was often to ask about you. I’d update her, of course. For as long as she’d listen. Sometimes that wasn’t very long.”

“Because she was unwell?” I asked. This was the word Gran always used to explain why my mother had left in the first place.

“Yes, because she was terribly unwell. When she called me, it was usually from the streets. But when I stopped providing funds, she stopped calling.”

“And my father?” I asked. “What happened to him?”

“Like I’ve said before, he was not a good egg. I tried to help your mother see this. I even called old friends to help me coax her away from him, but that proved ineffective.”

Gran paused and took another sip of tea. “You must promise me, dear girl, to never get mixed up with drugs.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“I promise, Gran,” I said.

I didn’t know what else to say, so I reached out and hugged her. I could feel her holding on to me in a whole new way. It was the only time I ever felt that I was giving her a hug, rather than the other way around.

When we separated, I didn’t know what the correct etiquette was. I said, “What do you say, Gran? When all else fails, tidy up?”

She nodded. “My dear girl, you’re a treasure to me. That you are. Shall we tackle this mess together?”

And with that, Gran was back. Perhaps she was dissimulating, but as we arranged all of her trinkets, freshly cleaned and polished, and put them back in the curio cabinet, she chirped and chattered on as though it were an ordinary day.

We never spoke of my mother again after that.

Here I am now, in the same spot as I was that day, surrounded by a menagerie of mementoes. But this time, I’m dreadfully alone.

“Gran,” I say to the empty room, “I think I’m in trouble.”

I arrange the photos on top of the curio cabinet. I polish each of Gran’s treasures and stow them safely behind the glass. I stand in front of the cabinet looking at everything inside. I don’t know what to do.

You’re never alone as long as you have a friend
.

I’ve been managing on my own through most of this, but perhaps it really is time to call for help.

I go to the front door where I left my phone. I pick it up and dial Rodney.

He answers after the second ring. “Hello?”

“Hello, Rodney,” I say. “I hope I haven’t caught you at an inopportune moment.”