Wickett's Remedy (2 page)

For four years she worked behind a lustrous wood counter on the store’s ground level, amid polished marble floors and hanging crystal lamps. Gilchrist’s Tiffany rotunda gazed down from three levels above like an emerald eye. Inside her starched, white shirtwaist, her hair piled into a careful bun, she felt as if her best self lurked just beneath her skin, a shimmery fish that might breach the surface at any moment. Standing before a selection of men’s shirts in a dazzling array of colored fabric, she could eye a man’s collar size, budget, and tastes in a glance and knew, just by looking, the thread count of a cotton shirt or the origins of a piece of silk.

Even after four years, she thrilled at sealing a customer’s payment into a pneumatic capsule and sending it to the cashier for change. Miles and miles of pneumatic tubing crisscrossed Gilchrist’s walls and ceilings. Capsules left Men’s Furnishings on a current of compressed air to travel over Silks and Velvets, over Embroideries and Trimmings, past Veilings, and past Black and Colored Dress Goods. Lydia pictured her customers’ sales slips speeding past counter girls whispering among themselves in Millinery, past the
solitary salesgirl at Umbrellas who every day prayed for rain.

Lydia once visited the Cashier’s Office just to see the veritable pipe organ of commerce where each capsule arrived with a thunk, its contents scrutinized by a woman whose hands were bound to smell like money. Lydia wondered if the woman scrubbed the scent from her fingers each night, or if her dreams wafted with visions of wealth. Whenever Lydia retrieved a returning capsule containing a customer’s correct change, she felt the cold, dry breath of the tube tickle the back of her hand. On slow days she hearkened to Gilchrist’s pneumatic exhalations. After four years, she still marveled at the notion that money pumped through the store no less fervently than the blood in her veins.

The morning of Lydia’s first lunch with a customer, she had been standing with her back to the sales floor straightening stock when her attention was redirected by a neighboring counter girl, who whispered Lydia’s name once the gentleman had been standing a few moments unattended. The fellow was impressively dressed for someone so clearly uncomfortable in his own skin. His clothing seemed to subsume rather than enhance his form, as if his legs were no match for worsted wool, his chest unequal to the task of imported linen. Though he was a striking man, Lydia was reminded of a child dressed with care by his mother.

“How may I help you?” she asked, having already determined his measurements. She intended to skip straight to silk unless cotton was specifically requested, and then only cambric would do; Fridays were slow and the hardest days in which to meet her sales quota.

“Oh, but you see, you already have helped me,” the man stammered. “I wanted to thank you. The shirt you sold me? My mother liked it very much.”

“Of course!” Lydia lied with professional zeal. She racked her brain for a memory of the sale; normally she was good with faces. “I suppose you’ve come for another shirt,” she offered. “I’ve just the thing. We received the shipment this week from Italy—they’re brand new for the season. I’m sure you’ll appreciate the quality.” She hoped to convince him to buy two.

The gentleman shook his head and looked at Lydia with such regret she wondered if she had insulted him, though she could not imagine anyone taking offense at an Italian shirt.

“Ah no,” he replied with a quavering sigh. “Thanks all the same, but I don’t intend to make any purchase today.” He was blushing with unusual violence. “I was hoping I might accompany you to lunch. To thank you. You see, my mother really did like the shirt and she is so often hard to please. You were very kind and patient, and I thought it was the least I could do.”

“You want to take me to lunch?” Lydia echoed.

“To thank you,” the fellow repeated. Though he appeared to be in his twenties, he had the demeanor of a much older man. “For your assistance. That is, if you’re permitted?” With her silence, his blush returned. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry. I haven’t even introduced myself. My name is Henry Wickett. You can be certain of my good intentions, and if my motives prove unseemly you could easily wallop me yourself.” By this time the fellow’s voice had grown so soft Lydia could barely hear him above the bustle of the store.

Lydia scanned the floor for the manager, but Miss Palantine so seldom left her desk that she had been dubbed “Her Royal Boulder.” There were rumors Miss Palantine had been barred from sales after an incident in which she had tearfully but with some force thrown a ladies shoe at the head of a male customer after a heated exchange in Neckties. It was difficult for Lydia to imagine the drab, officious Palantine involved in passionate discourse of any sort, but then she had also been shocked to learn that Her Royal Boulder was not a spinster in her thirties, but merely twenty-three.

Invitations from customers were uncommon but not unheard of; it was not technically improper to take lunch elsewhere so long as one did not return late. Until now Lydia’s curiosity had been tempered by her refusal to be an object of pity or lust. Such intent was absent in Henry Wickett who, true to his own appraisal, looked far easier to fend off than the Southie boys she had, on occasion, needed to put in their place.

“I haven’t got time for a proper lunch,” she replied, “but I won’t say no if you don’t mind being quick about it.” Never had consent garnered her so sweet a smile.

As well as she knew Washington Street, she was a stranger to its early afternoon habits: Gilchrist’s was a creature that inhaled its personnel in the morning and held its breath until evening. Among the businessmen and lady shoppers Lydia was revisited by the feeling, birthed by her girlhood visits, that she had arrived at the center of things. After years of close observation she had perfected her bearing. She walked with the ideal combination of confidence and propriety, and held her chin at just the right angle. The appeal of this lunch invitation, she realized, lay in walking in such a
fashion and in such company. Having studied the world of Washington Street for so long, she could now display her erudition.

Timeliness demanded she elect Monty’s, a salaryman’s lunchroom convenient to the store, but once inside she wished that she and her lunch date might have promenaded longer. Monty’s was a noisy place that smelled of boiled beef. Its counter was overhung with stooped diners abridging as much as possible the distance between mouth and plate. A harried plug of a man in a stained apron served as cook, waiter, and cashier and was adept at none. At the sight of Lydia Kilkenny and Henry Wickett he gestured dismissively at the restaurant’s few tables. Lydia selected one in the front corner that offered a view of the street. With her back to the restaurant she could imagine she was dining in more genteel circumstances.

“It’s not much to look at,” she apologized, “but I hear the food’s decent. Anything fancier and I’d risk being late.”

“Please order anything you like,” Henry Wickett urged. As they waited to place their orders he concentrated on his flatware, displaying the absorption of a child immersed in a private game. She waited for him to speak; she was uncertain what sort of topics gentlemen discussed over lunch and feared sounding common. At unexpected intervals Henry Wickett darted his head upward—a swimmer gasping for air—and she leaned forward in anticipation of conversation but each time was disappointed: his intention was merely to look at her before blushing and returning his gaze to the table, as if she were some brightly burning thing that could only be glimpsed at intervals.

“It was kind of you to ask me to lunch,” she offered. “It’s nice to get a bit of air.”

“Please don’t thank me,” he demurred. “I’m afraid you’ll find I’m not very good at conversation.”

“No?”

“No,” he confirmed, and returned his gaze to his fork.

“Are you a student?” she attempted. Henry Wickett had small, uncallused, unscarred hands marred only by habitual nail-biting. In Southie such unused hands would be cause for embarrassment but here, across the bridge, Lydia viewed them as she might an exotic zoo specimen.

“Yes,” he affirmed, his head darting once again upward as if for a lungful of air. “I study medicine. I’m meant to be a doctor. This table is really quite interesting.”

“What?” she stammered. The table was filmed with grease and scarred from top to bottom with the names and initials of former diners, details that had previously escaped her notice. Before she could speak, the waiter arrived to take their orders. Her dismay over the state of the table was compounded when, after ordering the daily special for herself, her companion requested only a bowl of chicken broth. “I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I suppose this isn’t the sort of place you’re accustomed to.”

“No need for apology!” Henry Wickett exclaimed. His startled hands winged upward and upended his water glass, revealing the surface of the table to be sloped in his direction. One hand enlisted an oversized handkerchief to stop the flow while the other righted the glass. Lydia watched, powerless as a small rivulet escaped blotting and dropped onto Henry Wickett’s imported wool trousers.

“Oh dear!” she cried, and started up from her chair with her napkin.

“Please don’t!” he urged. The water was sopped, the glass righted. Henry Wickett darted a glance in Lydia’s direction while his hand furtively blotted his pant leg. “Since childhood I have been allergic to most foods,” he explained. He reached for his water glass and brought it to his lips: it was empty. “My stomach is quite sensitive and so in unfamiliar restaurants I order only calming liquids. And as for the table, it reminds me of an oak.”

“An oak—” she echoed. She observed her reflection in the restaurant window for the first time since leaving the store. The starch had left her collar, and the bodice of her shirtwaist was deeply creased from a morning of refolding stock. Her hair had become mussed and dark shadows ringed her eyes. She was grateful her back faced the other diners. The restaurant had become strangely silent since she had risen from her seat.

“Yes!” Henry affirmed, seemingly unconcerned or unaware of their impression on their fellow diners. “The venerable trunk of an oak, carved by generations of courtship beneath its branches—” His eyes widened. “That isn’t to say—I didn’t mean to imply—” But words failed him. He dabbed vehemently at the water stain on his pant leg.

Their food arrived. According to the restaurant clock she had fifteen minutes in which to eat her meal and return to her counter to avoid being fined for lateness, precluding the possibility of further conversation. By the time she finished her lunch, her companion had taken barely three spoonfuls of soup but insisted he
was satisfied. After escorting her to the store’s employee entrance he scurried toward the bustle of Washington Street with the single-mindedness of a mouse seeking its mousehole and Lydia assumed that was the last she would see of Henry Wickett.

But in the days that followed, while Lydia rode the trolley or tallied receipts, Henry Wickett’s image surfaced in her mind. His unexpected observation—initially forgotten in her embarrassment over spilt water and inelegant dining—now echoed in her memory. “It reminds me of an oak,” she would think to herself, and the smaller details of the world would sharpen.

When Henry Wickett reappeared the following Friday and asked her to lunch a second time, she was taken completely by surprise. “Are you sure?” she asked. Though pleased at the chance to refine her first impression, she feared for Henry Wickett’s digestion, as well as for his trousers. “We’d have to go to Monty’s again.”

“I’ve come prepared this time,” he replied, and pulled three handkerchiefs from his pocket. Lydia had never laughed inside Gilchrist’s before; until now, that pleasure had been relegated to the other side of the bridge. Henry’s smile at the sound reminded Lydia how guarded most faces were. Even once the smile passed, she could see its stamp on his face in the small, light lines around the skin of his mouth and eyes, faint ripples that only graced a face that smiled often.