Secrets of the Morning

  There were two matching dressers on the left and a closet between them, the door now closed but a sign over it read, EXIT. I turned to Trisha with a smile of confusion on my face.

  "She's taken things from stages and put them in this room. That's an actual makeup table from an old theater. And those drapes," she said, nodding toward the windows, "were made from actual stage curtains.

  "Every morning she leaves this room, she pretends she's starring in a new play," Trisha added. I looked at the pictures on the walls. They were all pictures of Agnes wearing different costumes from the different productions she had been in. I recognized some of them from the scrapbooks.

  Suddenly, it all struck me as being very sad. Agnes lived in the past because she had no present and no future. Every day she wove her memories together on a loom of fantasy to avoid facing reality, facing the fact that she was no longer young and beautiful and in demand. She lived vicariously through her talented residents. I began to wonder how much of what she had told us was part of an illusion.

  "If the letter is anywhere," Trisha said, "it's probably on that desk."

  We went to it and began to search through the papers piled in a rather disorganized manner—bills were mixed in with personal letters, theater periodicals and advertisements. We didn't find Grandmother Cutler's letter there. Trisha opened the drawers and rifled through them, but again, we came up empty-handed.

  I touched Trisha's shoulder and indicated she should be quiet when I thought I heard footsteps in the corridor outside the door. We listened, but heard nothing.

  "We better go," I said.

  "Wait." Trisha gazed around the room. "This letter, it's probably part of some sort of scene in her crazy head. A secret correspondence . . ." Trisha mused aloud and studied the room like an amateur sleuth. "I remember this play we put on last year, a mystery . . . Agnes was there, of course . . ."

  She walked slowly toward the bed.

  "Trisha, let's forget it," I pleaded. Surely, if Mrs. Liddy came out, she would hear us searching in the room. Trisha held her hand up to indicate I should be quiet while she thought. Then she lifted the comforter a bit, knelt down and stuck her hand between the mattress and the box spring. She ran her hand along the side of the bed, came up with nothing and went around to the other side to do the same thing. "Trisha."

  "Wait."

  She knelt down out of sight. I stepped back to listen at the door. A moment later, Trisha stood up smiling with the letter in her hand. We met at the desk and

  Trisha took the letter out of the envelope and spread it before us in the light of the small Tiffany lamp. I read it softly, aloud.

  Dear Agnes,

  As you know I have enrolled my granddaughter Dawn in the Bernhardt School and asked Mr. Updike to have her housed in your residence. I am relying on our friendship. I hate to place such a formidable bur-den on your shoulders, but frankly, you are my last hope.

  This grandchild has been a terrible problem for us all. My daughter-in-law is absolutely beside herself and has nearly had a number of serious nervous breakdowns as a consequence. I can't tell you how much my son Randolph has aged because of this . . . this . . . I'm afraid I have to say it . . . bad seed in our family.

  The irony is she has musical talent. Since she has done nothing but gotten into trouble in one public school after another because of her juvenile delinquency, which includes sexual promiscuity, I thought sending her to the school of performing arts might help. Perhaps if she is made to concentrate on her talents, she will be less of a delinquent.

  The fault lies with all of us. We have spoiled her. Randolph has rained gifts upon her ever since she was an infant. She's never done a true day's work at the hotel. No matter what we ask her to do, she always complains.

  Furthermore, I'm afraid she has become a rather sneaky person, not above lying right to your face. She even went so far as to steal from one of my elderly guests.

  Even though I have warned her against it, she might stay in contact with some public school friends who have been bad influences on her. Watch out for that and please be sure she lives up to your rules and does whatever she is supposed to do. I will, of course, be speaking to you shortly in more detail about all this.

  You don't know how much I and my family appreciate your willingness to take on what I would have to honestly admit is a major problem child.

  At this point we are afraid of the bad influence she will have on Philip and Clara, who are both doing so well.

  Rest assured, I will not forget you.

  Sincerely yours,

  Lillian Cutler

  Trisha looked up at me and then put her arm around my shoulder.

  "The entire letter is one big lie," I said. "One big, horrible, cruel lie. A bad seed, sexually promiscuous, spoiled, a liar and a thief! And she hates my mother, hates her," I said through my tears. "I can't believe she wrote that I would be a bad influence on Clara. You know some of the things she did to me and to Jimmy."

  "You expected something like this," Trisha said softly, her hand on my shoulder.

  "I know, but to actually see it all in writing. She's the most atrocious, loathsome woman I have ever met. I wish there was some way I could get back at her," I said, clenching my teeth.

  "Just be a success," Trisha said calmly. "Be everything she says you're not."

  I nodded. "You're right. I will try harder and harder and every time I get an A or receive a compliment, I'll think of how she has to accept it."

  "We better put this back," Trisha said, returning the dreadful letter of lies to its envelope. She shoved it between the mattress and the box springs again and then we slipped out of Agnes's bedroom and quietly made our way out of the corridor, but when we turned toward the stairway, I paused and looked back. I just had the feeling there were eyes on us in the darkness. A shadow moved.

  Trisha didn't know I had stopped. She kept moving up the stairway, but I took a step back and saw Arthur Garwood, his back pressed against the wall. Because he was so thin and he was wearing his usual black shirt and black slacks, it was nearly impossible to see him. Although he must have known I had spotted him, he didn't step forward. Instead, he continued to press himself to the wall and cling to the darkness. I started to call out to Trisha, but didn't. Instead, I just turned back and followed her up the stairway to our room. As soon as I closed the door behind me, I told her.

  "He just kept standing there in the dark?" she asked.

  I nodded and embraced myself because the incident had left me cold.

  "He doesn't want us to know he was spying on us. Don't worry, he won't say anything to Agnes," she assured me.

  "How did he know we were going to sneak into her room?" I wondered.

  "He might have just been following us or . . ." Her eyes went to the door. "Maybe he's been listening in on our conversations," she concluded. "If I ever catch him doing that, I'll give him something to be sad about. Forget about him," she said quickly. "He's just weird."

  I nodded, but it was easier said than done. Arthur's slim silhouette lingered on the inside of my eyelids. For a moment I wondered if maybe it hadn't just been a shadow, my overworked imagination. I went to the door and opened it a crack to peer out just to see if I would catch him returning to his room. I saw nothing.

  "Forget about him," Trisha advised again. "He's not worth the worry."

  I closed the door and Trisha turned on the radio so we could listen to music while we did our homework. Afterward, I had a terrible time falling asleep because of the letter. My mind reeled with the images and memories of my every conversation and confrontation with Grandmother Cutler, from the first time we met when she told me I would have to change my name from Dawn to Eugenia to our showdown when I let her know I had discovered the truth about my abduction and her involvement in it. She wasn't a woman who took defeat gracefully. In ways I feared I was yet to discover, she would work her revenge.

  At the end of the summer session, the Bernhardt School closed down. Some seni
ors remained to practice and prepare for auditions, but most teachers and students took advantage of the short break between the summer and the fall semesters to go on holiday. I had already decided that I wouldn't return to the hotel. I really didn't want to return, and no one at the hotel, my mother included, even asked if I were returning, much less insisted I do. Agnes seemed to expect it.

  Trisha went home of course. I couldn't blame her. She was anxious to see her parents and her boyfriend, as well as some of her old friends. She kept inviting me to go home with her, but I thought I would only be in her way.

  "Maybe you'll change your mind afterward," she said and wrote out directions for me to take a bus upstate.

  "I'll call you in a few days," she warned, "and nag you to come. I hate leaving you here alone," she added, looking as if she would burst into tears.

  I was to be alone. Even Arthur Garwood left. His parents stopped by to pick him up the day before Trisha left, and we happened to be downstairs at the time, so we got to meet them. When Agnes introduced me and Trisha to Arthur's mother and father, I thought he might very well have been adopted. He didn't look anything like either of them. Arthur's father was short and almost completely bald. He had a pudgy face with a small, tight mouth and beady hazel eyes.

  Arthur's mother was an inch or so shorter than his father and built like a pear. She had strawberry blond hair, light blue eyes and fair skin.

  The only thing I sensed they shared with Arthur was their dour personalities. They hardly spoke and seemed only concerned about keeping to their schedule. They were embarking on what they called a work-holiday. They were going to participate in a chamber music recital in Boston, after which they would do some sightseeing and go to Cape Cod. Arthur was reluctant to go along, but they were insistent. He didn't say goodbye to anyone, but just before he walked out the front door, he turned and looked at me with those large, melancholy eyes and for the first time, I felt more sorry for him than anything else.

  I didn't realize just how lonely I would be without Trisha until everyone was gone and I was upstairs, alone in my room. I did some reading and then decided I would go out and buy a notebook to keep as my journal. Our English teacher had suggested we do something like this, for other reasons. He wanted us to write down impressions and descriptions we could then draw upon later when an assignment required them. I wanted the journal as a way of helping myself to understand my kaleidoscope of emotions.

  I kept busy during the day helping Mrs. Liddy, who said she always used the end of the summer break to do a thorough cleaning of the house.

  "Usually, there's no one here," she said, but she didn't say it with any resentment. She smiled immediately.

  Cleaning the rooms from top to bottom one at a time reminded me of my work as a chambermaid at the hotel. I wondered about some of my friends from the hotel, like Mrs. Boston, the chief housekeeper for the family, and Sissy, who by taking me to Mrs. Dalton, had unknowingly helped me to discover the secret of my abduction.

  I dove into the work, getting on my hands and knees to scrub the floors and dusting and polishing the furniture until everything, no matter how old it was, glimmered like new. I washed the windows and cleaned them down to the smallest speck of dust so that it was nearly impossible to tell whether they were opened or closed. Every once in a while, Mrs. Liddy stopped by from a room she was doing and stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips, shaking her head. Later that afternoon she brought Agnes up to see my work.

  "Isn't this wonderful, Agnes?" Mrs. Liddy said, clapping her hands together. "We've never had a pupil work as hard as this, have we? My own mother back at our rooming house in London didn't get our rooms as sparkling clean."

  "Yes," Agnes said, gazing down. "I'll have to write a letter and tell your grandmother about this."

  "Yes," I said. "Why don't you? Although that's not why I'm doing it. You might ask how someone who is so spoiled and selfish knows about cleaning rooms," I added, a small, tight smile around my mouth. Mrs. Liddy's eyes twinkled amusingly.

  "Perhaps you're changing," Agnes said and walked away, leaving me feeling infuriated.

  I passed my time visiting the museums and window shopping on Fifth Avenue. One afternoon, I went into the Plaza to just sit in the lobby and watch the fancy-dressed people coming and going. I tried to imagine Jimmy and me staying here for one glorious week. I would buy some beautiful dresses and we would go to the expensive restaurant and maybe even dance in the ballroom. I thought of my tall, strong Jimmy, his dark eyes staring down at me, a slight smile teasing his full lips, his hands warm and protective as he held me in his arms. Small shivers, delicious and terrifying, went through me at these thoughts.

  Of course, Jimmy wouldn't want to dress up and he wouldn't want to put on airs and be someone he was not; but maybe, when he returned from being in the army, he would be different, older and perhaps even more ambitious. Why shouldn't he want the same things? I thought.

  After I had returned from a day at the Museum of Natural History, I lingered in the sitting room, tapping out a melody on the piano. I never heard Agnes come up behind me, but suddenly, I felt someone else in the room and turned to see her standing there staring at me in the strangest way. For a moment I thought she was angry I had played the piano without asking her first.

  "My father was a talented pianist," she said, "but he didn't think it was honest work for a man so he did nothing with it."

  "Oh. Perhaps that's where you get your talent from, Agnes."

  "Yes, perhaps," she said. I had never seen her look so melancholy. She was even dressed in black and wore little makeup and no jewelry, which was very unusual.

  "Do you have brothers and sisters? I didn't see any pictures of any in your scrapbooks," I said.

  "No, I was an only child. My mother went through such a time giving birth to me, she swore she would have no other." Agnes sighed.

  "Didn't you ever want to be married?" I asked. The way she stared back at me I expected she would bawl me out for prying into her private life. Suddenly though, she smiled.

  "Oh, I had plenty of opportunity, but I was always afraid of marriage," she confessed.

  "Afraid? Why?"

  "I was afraid marriage would clip my wings and put me in a gilded cage like a beautiful canary. I would still sing, but my voice would be filled with longing and dreams. It is very difficult to be a good wife and mother and live a life on the stage," she lectured. "Show people are a different breed. You will understand in time what I mean when I say our first love is the stage and no matter what promises we make to our loved ones, we will never betray our first love and never really sacrifice when it comes to our careers.

  "Something happens to us when those lights go on and we hear the applause. We make love to an audience, you see. Actually," she said, looking about the sitting room as if we were on a stage, "I have been married all this time, married to the theater."

  "Don't you think I can be a singer and still have a husband and a family?" I asked, desperation stealing through me at the thought that I would be forced to choose between my dreams.

  "It's difficult. It will depend entirely on your husband, how understanding and loving he is and whether or not he is the terribly jealous type."

  "Why jealous?"

  "Because he will have to see you sing of love to other men and kiss them and recite vows of love so convincingly that audiences will believe you love these men."

  I had never thought of these things before. It brought a heaviness to my heart that made it feel like a lump of lead in my chest. I tried to imagine Jimmy sitting in the audience watching me do the things Agnes described, Jimmy who seemed so tough to the outside world, but who I knew to be easily wounded.

  "But," she bragged, "I did crush some young male hearts. Do you know what is in this vase I keep under lock and key?" she asked, approaching one of the cabinets. I had simply assumed it was a valuable antique.

  "No. What?"

  "The ashes of Sanford Littleton, a young man
who was so in love with me he committed suicide and left instructions for the remains of his cremated body to be given to me," she said and followed it with a shrill laugh.

  "Oh don't look so glum. You don't have to plan your whole life this moment," she chastised. I wasn't glum; I was shocked. She turned to leave and then pivoted on her heels to look back at me. "A letter came for you today," she said.

  "A letter?"

  "Yes. Mrs. Liddy brought it up to your room when she went up with some linen."

  "Thank you," I said and ran upstairs to find the letter on my bed. I had been expecting a letter from Jimmy telling me about his plans for a visit to New York, but I saw from the envelope that it had been forwarded here from the Cutler Cove Hotel. When I turned it over, I saw it had been opened and resealed with tape. But the name and return address made my heart leap. It was a letter from Daddy Longchamp, the man I had grown up thinking was my father, and who still seemed much more like a father to me than Randolph Cutler ever had.

  I threw myself on the bed and opened the envelope quickly. I saw from the date on the top of the letter that it had been mailed nearly three weeks ago.

  Three weeks! How horrible, I thought. How long had it been kept at the hotel? And I just knew Grandmother Cutler had read it. What right did she have to do such a thing?

  I tried to put aside my rage for the moment but I might as well have tried to hold my breath for three hours. I was still shaking with anger as I read.