Trust (18 page)

And so, because there was nothing else she could do, my mother sentenced herself and me to America.

And Enoch? It might have been that he, on his part, felt himself a victim. Perhaps he believed he was a failed Ezekiel. Thigh-deep in all those names and designations—crumbled, a million times over, into ash, and the ash of ash—he could not recall them into flesh and sinew (what would renewal bring but smoke?); and even if he had been able, who would summon in them the wind of life?

I started to ask him how long we would live on the ship—but when I stood up to speak the door had closed and he was gone.

In half a minute it opened again, and the head and neck of my stepfather reappeared in the crevice. "Allegra—"

My mother jumped urgently out of contemplation. "What, is he here already? What is it?" she said in alarm.

"No, I was only wondering—" Enoch's head came a little farther into the room. "What does William say?"

They had, all that while, forgotten the cablegram.

My mother slit the envelope and began to read quickly. "'Heard accident report on radio'—didn't he get my cable?" she interrupted herself. "Oh!—yes he did—'before receiving wire; glad no injury to you.' That means he's furious," she noted crisply, "I mean about the publicity and fuss and all!" She Crackled the paper and went vigorously on with it. "Well, thank goodness, he's getting someone who's over here anyhow to take care of it, the insurance and everything—and oh God, if Armand should really sue—
that
would be nerve!—but isn't it lucky! it's a man who happens to be on a commission in Paris right now!—His name's Pettigrew, do you know him?"

"You might have killed that chauffeur," Enoch said.

"But I didn't, so it's all right, isn't it?" she countered. "Are you sure you don't know a Pettigrew? He's in your area, sort of, I mean he's in Europe to see what the war did—" she consulted the cablegram—"he's a Special Assistant to the State Department: doesn't that sound like a wonderful appointment?—Only he's a Democrat," she added. "How I wish you'd get a job like that, practically a stepping-stone—"

"If you don't finish packing before he gets here you'll have to do it afterward," Enoch said, "and you'll miss your train."

"Well, the Democrats can't
always
be in power..." My mother grew thoughtful. "There was a Pettigrew who went to Miss Lamb's with William and me when we were little, and afterward married a girl from the West, if it's the same Pettigrew—only I didn't think he'd grow up to be a Democrat.—Miss Lamb's?" she repeated, picking up Enoch's look. "Oh, that's a dancing school."

"Then I don't know him," Enoch observed shortly, and drew his head behind the door and bitingly shut it.

In the room which had lately been Anneke's and mine I took off all my clothes down to my underwear and put them on a hanger to dry, and let the hanger dangle on its hook from the light-chain in the center of the ceiling. And then, because I was damp to the skin, I stripped off my underwear too, and spread it out on one of the two empty beds.

After a while the concierge brought a pair of flat buns, a lick of jelly, and a cup of pale tea, in which the narrowly rolled leaves quivered like bits of hair. "Beurre?" I inquired feebly, but she seemed offended at this and pointed to the jelly as though even that were a luxury beyond reasonable expectation. "Madame Vand asks me to oblige her, so I oblige her; it's a great concession," she said in the deafening French she reserved for simpletons, foreigners, and the dull ears of her husband (but
he
was in the first category anyhow); she stared and stared at the madness of my mid-afternoon nakedness. "I don't run around every day carrying trays—I have plenty to do without it! I hope she knows I expect her to pay for it—she's rich enough, she'd better not think she can fool me. I sleep with one eye open! I'm not so gullible as my old rooster, you may tell her, who's so played out he can't see the difference between a pauper and a millionaire ... What! One would suppose she could afford another dress for you," she broke off. "You don't expect anything to dry in such weather?" I maneuvered my cold buttocks onto a chair and carefully aproned the tray across my knees to hide myself from her inflexible scrutiny; but she did not leave off her looking. "What age do you have, ha? You don't even begin to show your little bumps? Not a shred of hair between the legs yet, ha? In the armpits?" She grabbed my arm, lifted it, and let it fall in triumph. "Nothing! I've always heard they come late to these things in America," she confided. "A cousin of my old rooster, on the mother's side, gave birth at eleven years—she started having her courses at seven! But that was an unusual case," she admitted loudly. "One would think that at least in matters of this kind the nations would all be alike, but by no means. I've heard that in England the women don't take lovers! And in Holland it's only the women who
do
—the lowland vapors make them especially fit for it. If you don't believe me just consider your own governess!"

She went on zealously babbling, and, since I understood not half of that gossip and roily patter, and could only sit shivering in my prickled hide, dumb and with scarcely a glimmer of her meaning, it seemed clear it was not for my sake that she whirred her nasal rhetoric through those gaps and bits of yellow bone (her teeth were shocking) where her in-and-out tongue tumbled: for now and then she waited, and appeared to listen, and plainly intended her monologue, which was more than audible and altogether public, to be received next door.

But it was already one o'clock; the private visitor had not yet arrived; and my mother had been out of her room for some time.

"I know those Hollanders, believe me—they're always in need of a finger in the dike!" the concierge bellowed hopefully at the wall. "Didn't I say I sleep with one eye open? There's little that goes by
me!
Madame Vand would have known nothing of it if not for me—she owes me something besides a thank-you, I may tell you, for putting her wise. Oh, I don't say much, only a small tip..." But the wall neither affirmed nor protested. "Who do you think gave the alarm? And who do you think sniffed out the fellow's identity?—There's not a single occupant of any room in town I can't catch news of—especially the paupers and foreigners! I don't believe in competition. I'm with all the landladies like
this
" —she interlocked the fingers of both hands and gripped them suspiciously. "Well? Where is she? Your mother's not in her chamber?" she demanded finally.

"I think she went to sit on the porch," I murmured.

"If it's to watch for the rain to finish she'll be sitting a long time," the concierge said resentfully, and stamped over to the beds and began pulling off the sheets. "Here—take your bloomers, they're in the way. You think I have time to waste? I have to prepare for the next occupant—Madame Vand paid only until noon, all the rest is unofficial. But I'm goodhearted, I allow it. In the busy season, on the other hand, I wouldn't be so good-hearted." She charged toward me under a snowbank of linens and offered me her crinkled frown. "Listen, it's nothing I can say to her face: so be sure you tell your mother afterward how you thought I could use a little tip for my trouble—little, I don't say cheap. She's well rid of that girl, you know, it wasn't such a cheap favor I did her. It's one thing to deceive a husband—I've done it myself in my time and prime, and without discovery—but it's going too far to deceive an employer!" She clucked and cackled close to my ear, feeding me her breath of boiled farina, until my defensive wince assured her she had delivered her point. "Aha, you're an intelligent child after all, although if one were to go only on looks one wouldn't think so. The brain isn't as backward as the glands, that's lucky. —Be sure to tell your mother what I said!" she reminded me at the door. —"But it always rains on laundry day," I heard her sigh into her bundle as she lumbered into the corridor: "
tant pis!
"

At two o'clock the private visitor still had not come.

I finished my little meal very slowly, to make it last, for my mother had warned me we should not eat again until we were safely on the train.

But at half-past two she suddenly reappeared. "No, your things aren't still wet!" she marveled hoarsely.

Suspended from the ceiling and vaguely sweating, my dress turned and turned in the humid air.

"Well, never mind, we'll have to wait anyhow," my mother said. "It's too much to hope for that he's had a change of heart and won't turn up! But he will, he will," she miserably intoned. She went rubbing and scratching at her neck. "Enoch won't let me near him any more, I'm that nervous—he shooed me off the porch actually. I wish I could hang myself!" She ripped away the collar of her traveling-dress to clutch the peevish spot—and sure enough, her uneasy relentless nails had marked out a sort of rope-burn there.

"The concierge wants some money," I informed her.

"I'm sure that doesn't concern
me,
" my mother said haughtily. "She charged us as much for her rat-trap as the best Paris hotel, that shrew."

"But I think she wants a tip."

"Enoch tipped her plenty. The old man, too. And the kitchen maid. —They think Americans are to squeeze white," she snapped. "My blood doesn't run dollars, you know—I like to get something in return!" She sounded positive enough; and I considered that I had done as much as could be expected in behalf of the concierge (toward whom I felt an obligation on account of what had seemed a real solicitude on the night the brass demon invaded my sleep—how disturbed she had been to find a deserted child!); and I would have said nothing further: but my mother was watching me slyly. "What made her tell you that?"

"Because of Anneke. You would never have known about Anneke without her," I repeated faithfully, although I was still uncertain of my governess' crime.

My mother resumed her fretful scraping. "She takes a lot of credit for herself, the old bat!"

"She sleeps with one eye open," I acknowledged in awe.

"One eye isn't worth rewarding. I give prizes for two eyes only," my mother said with a quick rough laugh. "Do you need to go down the hall?" It was her habit (an Americanism, Enoch observed) to refer obliquely to the toilets; she waited scrupulously until I assured her I had already called on them. "Because I'm going to lock your door. Enoch's afraid you may forget and run out. We don't want anyone to know you're here," she suggested suspensefully.

"The concierge knows I'm here."

"The concierge knows too much," my mother admitted. "I was thinking of the visitor."

"Maybe he isn't coming."

"He's two hours late already," she remarked, but more to herself than to me, and dipped after a large key in her pocket; a worn bit of paper was caught on the teeth. She unfurled it and gave it a surly squint. "But I was the one who set the time, after all, and that by itself's enough to persuade him to ignore it. He'll come when it suits him," she said decisively, holding the little square sheet stiffly before her.

"Is that the cablegram?" I asked, peering after a portent of William in her melancholy evasive hand—but clearly it was commerce of a different sort she just then crumpled from my glance. "No, it's not, and never mind," she charged me severely, but a moment too late: I had seen one word, ambiguous to my eyes, and a signature plain as a primer. My mother withdrew the whole with a rapid sense of error, and signified by her gasp of denial that she had permitted something to happen which ought not to have happened. She attempted to deflect me: "Are you certain you don't have to go down the hall right now?" she insisted.

But I pursued, with my finger arrowed at her fist, "What's in that?"

"Nothing," she said shortly.

"Is it a letter?"

"I told you never mind"—but consternation marred her authority.

"I know what it says anyhow," I ventured.

"Don't be too tricky with me!" she advised; her expression tacked from disbelief to fear. "It has nothing to do with you." Nevertheless she continued to hide it from me.

"Doesn't it say 'confer'?" She did not answer. "Then it says 'career'," I hastily tried again.

"
Must
you badger!" she blew out at me. "I've said it's nothing to do with you, isn't that enough?—It's a business letter," she went ahead with a deliberateness almost too convincing, "it's someone asking for an appointment with Enoch. I
hope
you don't disapprove," she finished heavily.

"I don't like that name," I observed.

"What name?"

"The name in the letter—Nick."

"You saw that!"

The long shock of her breath lingered.

"Is Nick the man who's coming to see Enoch?"

"Haven't I just explained—" She scowled and struggled palely. "Now look, a person has simply written to ask for a business appointment, is that so complicated? Really, I should slap you for this!"

"But is it the same man? The one who's coming right now?" I persisted. "The one the concierge said—"

But she would not allow herself to hear, and instead quickly gave in. "Yes," she said, "all right, yes."

"Then the concierge
ought
to get a tip."

"That gloating old bat gets nothing. Madame Pandarus, the go-between! I hope I'm not obliged to her for telling me what I already knew," she muttered, stuffing the ball of paper into her pocket as though it were an invidious apple from the Tree of Knowledge. "I'd like to wring her neck! Well, go sit on the bed," she commanded, "I'm going to lock your door."

"I don't like that name: Nick," I said again. "Nick. Nick." I kept trying it out, rattling the sound. "It goes too quick. Nick."

My mother blinked with each needle-prick of repetition, as with a sting. "Quit that, for heaven's sake—as though it had anything to do with you! I've told you that, how many times do I have to say the same thing? No wonder Enoch decided to turn the key on you"—she brandished it—"he's absolutely right. You can't be trusted."

"That's what he said about Anneke too," I reminded her.

My mother maintained uncomfortably, "That was quite another matter."