Evergreen (6 page)

“They’re all Yale men in our family. Mr. Paul won’t be home from Europe till next week but I’d like to have the room dusted every day all the same. Now, on the top floor is your room.” They mounted the stairs again; more dark railings and no carpet on this flight. “This front room we use for the seamstress. She comes for two or three weeks every spring and fall to do my clothes. Back here is Cook’s room and yours is next to it.”

The two rooms were identical: a neat bed, a dresser, a straight wooden chair. Cook’s room had an enormous wooden crucifix above the bed. Unbelievable. Rooms like this, all for one person. With electric lights. Even a bathtub for the maids, a high white bathtub on claw feet.

“Do you think you would like the position?”

“Oh, I would, I would.”

“Very well. The wages will be fifteen dollars a month. Ordinarily I pay twenty, but you have no experience, you’ll need to be taught. Have you any questions?”

“No.”

“Anna, it is proper to say, ‘No, Mrs. Werner.’”

“No, Mrs. Werner.”

“Do you want to start today?”

“Oh, yes! Yes, Mrs. Werner.”

“Then you may go back and get your things. It’s eleven o’clock now—let me see—I shan’t be needing the car until two. Quinn can drive you down.”

“In a machine?”

“Yes. It’s a miserable trip in the trolley carrying heavy parcels.”

“I haven’t got very much. Just my clothes and my candlesticks.”

“Oh?”

“They were my mother’s. They’re very valuable.”

“Well, bring them, then, of course.” There was a touch of amusement, not unkind, at the corners of the lady’s mouth.

The cleanness of it. First the bath, the high tub filled with hot, hot water. Anna almost fell asleep in it. Then the fresh clean bed all to herself; she could turn, she could spread her arms and legs to the very edge.

Her mind went back over the day. The ride in that car, all closed in; it was like a little room, lined in pale sand-colored cloth as smooth as silk. A rug of dark gray fur with a big W sewn on it. Quinn the chauffeur sat outside without a roof. He didn’t talk to me. I think he didn’t like going down to Hester Street with all those people staring at the car. There was hardly room for it because of the pushcarts. Then the children started climbing on the car and Quinn got angry. But he did help me with my boxes.

I wish Joseph had been there to see that car. Ruth said again that I was crazy to give up my freedom to be a servant,
but I can’t see what freedom she has. And if I stayed there, I’d only get like her. Still, I shall miss her.

“How is it that you are called Mrs. while I am called by my name?” Anna inquired of the cook in the morning.

“The cook is always called Mrs.,” replied Mrs. Monaghan. “You’re the first Jewish housemaid we ever had here, you know that? Even though the family’s Jewish.”

Anna was astonished. “The Werners are Jewish?”

“Of course they are, and grand people, too. I’ve been here seven years now. My sister-in-law told me I was making a mistake to work for Jews but I’ve never regretted it. A lady and a gentleman, and no doubt about it.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Anna said stiffly.

“And did you sleep well, I hope? Your first night in a place, it’s hard to sleep.”

The coal fire, which had been banked all night, flared up. Something with a smoky pleasant smell was frying in a pan.

“What’s that?” Anna asked.

“That? Why, bacon, of course. What’s the matter?”

“But you said these are Jewish people! How can they eat bacon?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. Ask them. Mister has bacon and eggs every morning. She only has a cup of tea, toast and marmalade in her room. I’ll show you how to fix her tray, and you’re to take it up at a quarter past eight. You’ll have to step lively, there’s no time to waste in the morning.”

“I can’t eat bacon,” Anna said, the acid of nausea in her mouth.

“Well, don’t eat it!” Then Mrs. Monaghan’s face brightened. “Oh, it’s your religion, ain’t it? You’re not allowed to.”

“No,” Anna said.

“And why would that be?” Mrs. Monaghan asked, flipping the bacon.

“I don’t know. It’s not allowed. It’s bad.”

Mrs. Monaghan nodded sympathetically. “Now, the butcher boy will be ringing in the areaway to take the order
for dinner. The family will be having duckling and, seeing that it’s Friday, I’ll be having fish.”

“Why must you have fish because it’s Friday?”

“Well, our Lord died on a Friday, you know.”

Anna wanted to ask about the connection between fish and the death of the Lord. But the bell sounded in the pantry and Mrs. Monaghan scurried.

“Heavens, she’s early this morning! Here, reach me a cup and saucer, the blue and white china. And put the
New York Times
on the tray! Oh, for pity sake, that’s the iceman ringing! Answer, will you? Tell him fifty pounds, there’s a good girl—”

It wasn’t hard to learn the life and ways of the house. Open the door and take the lady’s coat, the gentleman’s hat and stick. Serve from the left and remove from the right; don’t chip the china or the crystal. Water the flowers; don’t spill a drop on the tables, it turns the wood white. Bring in the tea things at five o’clock: remember Miss Thorne? Mrs. Werner and her friends come in from shopping; the chill air enters on their furs; their perfume smells like sugar. Learn how to use the telephone; you crank it on the wall, you give the number to central and put your mouth close to it when you talk. Be sure to write all messages accurately on the pad.

And when you are all finished in the evening, you may go up to your room, your own private room, with the row of books standing on the dresser. You can lie in bed and read, finish
The Cloister and the Hearth
—what a wonderful story! … and even have an orange or a bunch of grapes.

“Might as well eat them,” Mrs. Monaghan says, “before they go bad.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Monaghan says, resting her elbows on the kitchen table, “rich people is queer, all right. The Mister’s folks has got a place in the Adirondack Mountains, a big homely house made out of logs, like those pictures of Lincoln’s cabin, only big. You look out the windows and all
you can see is the lake and trees, not a living soul for miles. Gives you the positive creeps, I wouldn’t pay a penny for it. Takes you all night to get there from here. You go up in a sleeper. Though I must say, that part of it is kind of an adventure.

“They was awfully good to my nephew Jimmy! After he broke his leg they took him and his sister Agnes up there with us for the whole summer. Jimmy and Mr. Paul is the same age, you know. They had a great time. When they was kids, I’m talking about. Jimmy works in a garage now and Mr. Paul’s in the family bank. Did you know they own a bank? Big place, Quinn says. On Wall Street or somewheres.

“You’ll like Mr. Paul, he’s that nice and easy to like. They say he’s smart, but he’s that plain, you’d never know it. Except he keeps buying books all the time. There’ll be no more room in the house for them soon, I’m thinking.”

It is a treasury of books. Anna always takes her time doing his room. There are antique books on yellowed paper, in tiny print. There are volumes of vivid art: columned marble archways, palaces; mothers and children; women naked under casual scarves; even pictures of the cross and the hanging man (the peaceful expression while the blood oozes from the hands and feet!). Anna turns those pages quickly.

What kind of man is he who owns all these?

He arrives home early in September, taking the front steps two at a time, followed by Quinn and a pile of cases labeled: Lusitania, First Class.

It comes to Anna, standing in the front hall with the family, that she must, without thinking, have expected him to resemble his parents, to move neatly in small spaces as they do, to measure his speech neatly.

He moves, instead, like someone striding fields, too loose a person for narrow halls. His bright blue eyes (surprising eyes in a dark face!) look as if they have just finished laughing. He has brought presents for everyone and insists now on giving them out immediately.

“Perfume?” says Mrs. Monaghan. “And where would I be wearing perfume, an old woman like me?”

“To church, Mrs. Monaghan,” Mr. Paul says firmly. The blue eyes twinkle:
Funny old soul, isn’t she!
“There’s no sin in bringing the smell of flowers to your prayers. Doesn’t the Virgin herself wear flowers?”

“Oh, the glib tongue of him!”

“And a bottle for Agnes; she hasn’t entered the convent yet, has she?”

“Not yet, and I don’t think she will, although it’ll break her father’s and mother’s heart if she don’t.”

“Oh, I hope not, Mrs. Monaghan.” The laughter leaves his face. He says seriously, “Agnes must do what she must with her own life. That’s her right and she oughtn’t feel guilty about it.”

Anna lies in bed that night unable to sleep. She thinks she hears her heart pounding. Whichever way she lies, on either side or on her back, she feels her heart. It seems to her suddenly that the world is full of sharp and beautiful excitement, that it will pass by. She is missing it all, she will work and die, having missed it all.

“Well, what did you think of Mr. Paul?” Mrs. Monaghan asks.

The vine grows imperceptibly during the night. In the morning it looks the same as it did the evening before. And then there comes a morning when one sees that it has grown halfway up the tree; how did that happen? It must have been growing all the while, because here it is, thick and strong, clinging so tenaciously that one can barely tear it away.

It is so ridiculous, so shameful to be thinking about Paul Werner all the time! How did it happen? She doesn’t know a thing about him and she has no business knowing! He walks in one day, a stranger who scarcely knows that she exists, and he takes possession of her mind. Absurd!

In the morning, straightening his room after he and his father have gone to the office in their dark suits and hard, round hats, she has to hang his dressing gown in the closet and arrange his brushes on the bureau. Her hands tremble. It troubles her so to touch these things, to smell them (hair tonic, shaving lotion, pipe tobacco?). Often she hears his voice from the floor below. Knocking at the door of the upstairs study, he calls: “Father? Father?” Then afterward in her mind’s ear the voice repeats, exact in tone and timbre: “Father? Father?” And all day long she hears it, while she is dusting the Porcelains, even while she is talking to Mrs. Monaghan at lunch.

Mrs. Monaghan likes to gossip about the family. They have, after all, been almost her entire world for so long.
She tells about the cousins from Paris who came visiting. She tells about the daughter’s wedding at the Plaza. “You should have seen the presents! It took a van to carry them out to Cleveland. We gave the bridesmaids’ dinner here at home; twelve girls, and every one of them got a gold bracelet from the bride. The ice cream came from Sherry’s, molded in wedding bells and hearts, oh, it was lovely!”

Mrs. Monaghan would be only too pleased to talk about Paul Werner. Anna could easily guide the conversation that way, but she is too ashamed, not because of the old woman, but because of herself.

When she looked in the mirror her face went hot with embarrassment. The house was full of mirrors. Ten times a day she met herself in apron and cap: a becoming cap, really, a lace coronet on her dark red hair which was now piled high because of course she could hardly wear braids anymore! Sometimes it seemed to Anna that she was a very pretty girl, and sometimes she thought she looked stupid in the cap and apron. Stupid like the organ grinder’s pathetic monkey in his cap. She felt anger inside. Why should he look at anybody like her? Why should he? He hardly ever did look at her, except at breakfast and dinner, and he was often out for dinner. She wondered about the places where he must go and the girls who would be there, girls in taffeta and feathered hats like the occasional daughters who came calling with their mothers in the afternoon. At breakfast he only smiled, “Good morning, Anna,” which he would have done if she had been Mrs. Monaghan.
Well, what did you expect, Anna, foolish Anna?
Mr. Werner always had some extra remark, some little pleasantry about the weather, all that cold stagnant winter, gray with snow: “Better put ear-muffs on if you go out today, Anna, or you’ll freeze your ears off.”

But the son never said anything.

Whenever she had to talk to him it seemed he must know her thoughts, that they must be visible in her face. The saying of her few words, the delivery of a message (Mr. So-and-So called and will call again at nine o’clock)
were made to seem so much more important than they could really have been. Then his answer would sound in her head: (Mr. So-and-So, you said? He will call back at nine?)

Why should one human being be drawn to another this way? Why?

“You aren’t yourself,” Joseph observed after some minutes’ silence. They were having supper in the kitchen on Mrs. Monaghan’s Sunday out. Mrs. Werner, having met Joseph once in the basement hall, had remarked that he was “a very nice young man,” and that Anna was welcome to ask him to stay to dinner. “What’s brothering you? Aren’t you happy here?”