My Latest Grievance (26 page)

On campus, no one could come or go. Eventually cooks and servers stuck at Curran Hall on Monday night stayed stuck, stayed on campus, slept on infirmary beds. Backup and powdered food came out of storage. The milk went first, then eggs, then anything that would qualify as fresh or green.

From the first day of what turned into the Great Blizzard of '78, Dr. Woodbury was unable to return from Providence, Rhode Island, ordinarily one hour from Dewing. Bunny went home, heeding the radio's warnings, urging the nurse to leave at the dot of three
P.M.
Laura Lee was in charge of Mrs. Woodbury. After one hour, she called the infirmary: Mrs. Woodbury needed help.

"What kind of help?" asked the nurse.

"She's hungry," said Laura Lee.

"I hope you're joking," said the nurse.

Laura Lee said, "Dr. Woodbury is lost somewhere in the storm. I don't even know where he is. I'm not allowed to go up to her room."

"Why not?" asked the nurse.

"For personal reasons," said Laura Lee.

The nurse felt entitled to hang up on Laura Lee after ordering her to pitch in and to be thankful she wasn't a one-woman skeleton crew with a half dozen infectious girls under her care.

Next Laura Lee tried Aviva at Tibbets Hall and my father and me at Griggs. "Explain to Mrs. Woodbury that it's an emergency," my father advised. "No, I most certainly won't send Frederica. I'm not even letting her visit her mother a stone's throw away. We're playing Scrabble."

Laura Lee asked him if he thought Student Employment could send a girl to undertake the quasi-nursing chores.

He said, "Laura Lee? Do you not understand that no one is at the college? The school is closed. Student Employment is closed. And even if her office were open, Mabel Fiske would never ask a student to leave her dorm in
this.
"

I could hear the tone of Laura Lee's ranting, but not the words. My father said, "Of course she'd be agitated ... Yes, that, too ... But she isn't violent, is she?"

He listened to her reply, then flinched. "Hung up," he reported.

I asked, "Do you think she'd let Mrs. Woodbury die?"

My father said, "No, I don't. Nor do I think a patient calling for ice cream is a genuine emergency."

"Didn't we decide Laura Lee was a sociopath?"

"I think I'll open that new bottle of Scotch," he said.

I waited until he had poured himself a glass before I said, "You know, if you and I ran over there together, and wore boots and hats and carried umbrellas, and held onto a rope—we could make it easy."

My father walked to the window. "Look at the drifts," he said. "The snow must already be several feet deep."

"So? How tall are we?"

He swirled his Scotch and sat down. "Are we doing it for Laura Lee or for Mrs. Woodbury?"

"Mrs. Woodbury, I swear. I'd hate to find out tomorrow that she was lying in her own feces."

My father said, "We can't stay more than a few minutes. I mean it, Frederica. We'll feed Mrs. Woodbury, assess the situation, and
then we leave immediately. With the snow falling at this rate, and the wind, it could be a foot an hour."

"Let's go," I said, and dumped my unpromising Scrabble tiles back into the box.

The once shoveled paths were now only an indentation between drifts. My father wanted to turn back, but when I kept shouldering my way into the wind, he had to follow. "She'd better appreciate this," I heard him yell. When we passed students, he'd order them back inside, which would provoke another round of his beseeching me to stop this foolishness.

I said, "Don't be a sissy. It's only snow. We can't drown in it. We're almost there."

The president's manse looked to be up and running. "Maybe Dr. Woodbury made it home," I said. We stomped up the front stairs to the door. The wind was driving needles of frozen snow against us still, despite the shelter of a porch roof. I rang the doorbell once, then a second time.

"We're going in," said my father.

Laura Lee was halfway down the stairs, smiling a hostess's smile, dressed in a heather blue skirt and matching sweater that I could swear belonged to Marietta. "Hello, you two!" she called. "How is it out there?"

"We're practically dead of exposure," my father panted, and dropped onto the silk-upholstered bench where visitors waited to see the president.

"You really didn't have to come," she said.

I said, "Dad, the bench. You're going to ruin it."

"You're dripping as much as he is," Laura Lee chided.

"Where is she?" I asked Laura Lee.

"Do you mean Grace?"

"Yes, I meant Grace! Why do you think we came over here?"

Laura Lee leaned over the banister to state prettily, "We're fine. In fact, we were having the
best
conversation when the doorbell rang."

This brought my father to his feet. His face was bright red from the cold, his sleety eyebrows melting down his face. "What did you say to her?" he asked.

I took the opportunity to dash past Laura Lee, up the stairs, and into the hallway. I passed Marietta's room, then the scarlet room assigned to the out-of-state daughters, and then I headed toward the wing that was the master suite.

Laura Lee called upstairs helpfully, "She should be in the green guest room, Frederica."

And she was. Grace Woodbury was on her feet, unaided and stark naked, standing before the mirror, applying lavender eye shadow to her closed lids and nose. Her hair was unkempt and two-toned; several inches of it, from the roots outward, were gray.

"Hi, Mrs. Woodbury," I said softly. "It's Frederica. Are you okay?"

"Getting dressed," she said, and held out a tube of lipstick as proof.

"Good," I said, finding my mother's-helper voice. "Getting dressed is ... good."

"For church."

I said, "But it's snowing hard. Nobody can go outside."

"I have to," she said. "I'm getting married."

There was a quilted bathrobe in a heap around her ankles. I picked it up, and said, "This is pretty. Should we put it on?"

"Pretty," she repeated.

"It's cold outside," I said. "A humungous blizzard like you wouldn't believe." I put her arms into the sleeves and fastened the big plastic buttons from the bottom up, wondering what I'd say when I reached the top.

"Thirsty," she said.

I said, "I'll be right back, okay? You stay. I'm going to get another friend."

"Eric?" she asked.

I patted her arm. I went as far as the doorway, where I stuck my head into the hall and yelled as loud as I could for my father.

D
AVID AND I COULD HAVE
soldiered across the quad to Griggs but were reluctant to leave mentally diminished Grace with mentally unstable Laura Lee. The snow was already up to the first-floor windows, and—no small consideration—the president's larder was stocked to a much greater and more inviting degree than our inadequate refrigerator at home. We called Aviva and asked if she was up to braving the storm and crossing campus, with us at the other end as a reward. She said, "How can I leave? I think you're forgetting that I'm in charge of not only my dorm but yours."

My father said, "If the telephone lines go down or the power goes out, and you need me for anything, sweetheart..." He listened, looking pained, then said into the phone, "I don't know. Snowshoes?"

"Tell her Mrs. Woodbury took her clothes off while Laura Lee was supposed to be watching her," I prompted.

"Did you hear that?" my father asked Aviva. "We can't trust Laura Lee, and we sure as hell can't take Grace out in the storm to—what? I don't even know? The infirmary? Laura Lee asked them to admit her, and they said, 'Fat chance.'"

Mrs. Woodbury was sitting with us in the front parlor, listening or not, understanding or not, and surveying the room as if pleased with these congenial strangers and their handsome antiques. Laura Lee was glued to the president's private line, harassing the state police, insisting we had a missing person to report. Earlier, my father had retreated from Mrs. Woodbury's room, turning the fairly embarrassing chore of dressing her over to Laura Lee and me. Our docile patient had sat on the edge of the bed, lifting an arm when we asked for a foot and vice versa. Laura Lee was supervising rather than helping, telegraphing me looks that I interpreted to mean,
Who cuts her hair?
and
Her nurse must not believe in shaved armpits,
and, most clearly,
Is it any wonder that her husband turned to me for love?

Poor Mrs. Woodbury. I knew from the way she calmly accepted the ministrations of me the kid and Laura Lee the enemy that there were no villains in her house, that she submitted to this upkeep with the benign acceptance of a toddler whose mother habitually left her in the care of strangers. When we had dressed her in a pair of perky pajamas and a shiny Christmas-plaid robe, and had slipped Chinese slippers onto her unattractive feet, I called to my father, not wanting to trust Laura Lee as Mrs. Woodbury's guide down the stairs. David answered my call; he knocked first for propriety's sake on the open doorjamb, and then boomed in a nursing-home voice, "Don't we look nice! What a charming outfit!"

Mrs. Woodbury looked down at her lap. "Santa," she whispered reverently. We talked her down the steps, promising good conversation and ice cream. My father kept up the chatter:
What a pretty stair runner. What a lovely banister. Currier and Ives originals, according to my daughter, the campus guide.
When we reached the foyer, I sent him and his patter away, suggesting that he call Griggs's bell desk or Aviva—anyone—and steered the obliging Mrs. Woodbury into the kitchen.

From the number of cans of Chickarina soup in the cupboard, I guessed that I'd found her favorite meal. I held up a can and asked if she'd like a bowl now. "Soup," she said.

I found a can opener and a saucepan. I could hear my father worrying aloud to RAs about nervous parents and unaccountedfor girls. Alone in the kitchen with Mrs. Woodbury, I kept up my own nursery school patter as I stirred her soup and predicted its upcoming deliciousness. "Have you ever seen so much snow?" I asked. "It looks like Antarctica, don't you think?"

She shook her head, not unhappily. I said, "Do you remember that you moved to Massachusetts from Maryland? Not much snow there, I bet. No comparison."

"Eric did it," she said.

I thought I should report this utterance—another mention of her husband—to a professional. I called in what I hoped was a sunny voice, "Dad? Can you come here for a sec?"

"Dad!" Mrs. Woodbury echoed in comradely fashion.

He didn't answer my first summons. When I called to him again, he yelled back, "I'm on the phone with Russell."

I said to Mrs. Woodbury. "He's speaking to Mr. O'Rourke, the dean of students. You've met him many times."

"Eric?" she said.

I said, "Eric's not home. He had a meeting in Providence today. The capital of Rhode Island. It's very slowgoing on the roads during a blizzard."

I snapped off the burner, found a ladle, found a bowl that looked cheerful and juvenile. I led her to the breakfast nook, tucked a dishtowel under her chin, and handed her the spoon.

"Feed me," she said.

I mashed up the big pieces just to be sure a meatball didn't kill her. My father had not appeared. I asked her carefully, "Do you know who Eric is?"

She puzzled out my question for a few seconds before answering, "Daddy?"

I said, "Okay. That fits. Why not?"

I could hear my father talking to Dean O'Rourke, yet another administrator stranded off-campus.
Buddy system,
I heard.
Bed check
...
I had no other choice.

Mrs. Woodbury opened her mouth wide, a big misshapen O. I said, "This is your first course, often called the soup course. You'll have some more food with us, in the dining room. Can you say 'Chickarina'?"

"Ice cream?" she answered.

I told her that ice cream was the dessert course. Later. Then I asked—employing one of my best babysitting tactics—"Want me to tell you a story?"

Mrs. Woodbury nodded. I knew she wasn't going to mind borrowed source material, so I retold "The Three Little Pigs," always a hit with the under-five crowd because of my sound effects. Even though I told her the abridged version, approximately three minutes, she alternated intent stares at my face with ardent gazes at the refrigerator.

"Still hungry?" I asked.

"Thirsty," she said.

"How about some milk?"

"Ovaltine."

"Okey-dokey," I said. "Let me look." I was pushing bottles around in the crowded refrigerator when Laura Lee swished into the kitchen, headed for a windowsill above the sink and its array of pills, took one from each bottle, swallowed a palmful with a few gulps of water, turned off the tap, and left without a word.

I delivered the chocolate milk with a straw, and asked Mrs. Woodbury, "Do you know who that was—the lady who just came in to take her vitamins?"

"Yes?" she said uncertainly.

"Is her name Laura Lee?"

"Eric did it," she repeated.

"Is she a babysitter?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Woodbury.

"Is she a
nice
babysitter?"

My patient nodded.

I leaned a little closer. "Is she a menace to society?"

Mrs. Woodbury said yes.

I whispered, "A sociopath?"

Mrs. Woodbury smiled back hopefully.

I checked the doorway to make sure no one had sneaked up on us. "A crazy woman and a homewrecker?"

Mrs. Woodbury's eyes told me that something had clicked. "Whooo, whooo—blow your house down," she recited.

I patted her dry, ringless left hand. "Good girl," I said.

***

My father seated Grace at the head of the table, where she tucked her napkin into her bathrobe and passed gas, a string of staccato toots, without apology.

"Hence our attempt at a little socialization," said my father.

"Don't blame me," said Laura Lee. "I was, as you know, banished from the second floor." She had a desk phone at her elbow and was redialing the police after every few bites of the tuna fish sandwich I had fixed.

My father said, "What if he's trying to get through to you? He's going to be getting a busy signal all night. Why don't you take a break?"