I looked away as if to prevent them from seeing tears forming in my eyes. Actually, they were forming. I’m good at this, I thought. I’m better than Ava ever could be, because she’s too hard-hearted to create any sympathy for herself. She’d laugh in the faces of those who tied her to the stake, the most feared and ancient way to rid the world of our kind.
“No wonder you ran off. Please, take as much time to eat as you want,” Mrs. Winston said, her hand now pressed against her heart, tender with compassion. “We’re in no rush here.”
I hadn’t realized how hungry I really was and was gobbling my food. Mrs. Fennel would say I was vacuuming it up from the plate. She’d give me a look so stern I would go into slow motion.
“Thank you. I’m sorry to go on and on like this about my father and his witch,” I said. “I’m sure it’s depressing you, and you don’t need someone new coming here with emotional and psychological burdens. Everyone has his or her own troubles. I’d understand why you wouldn’t be so eager to have someone like me as a tenant.”
“Oh, no, no. We’re happy to listen,” Mrs. Winston said, and she looked at Mrs. McGruder, who nodded emphatically.
“I’d like to get my hands on that woman for ten minutes,” Mrs. Winston said. “I just hate that type, and we’ve seen enough examples of them.”
“Amen to that,” Mrs. McGruder added, like the loyal alter ego she was.
I was confident that they wouldn’t want to send me on my way. Rather than depressing them, I had the feeling I was giving them their entertainment for the day, if not for the week. Feasting on the private lives of their guests was probably what they needed to nourish their own existence in a world where the most excitement came from statues and plaques.
“This is delicious,” I said, nodding at the salad.
Mrs. McGruder had made a Waldorf salad. Before she served it, she went into the history of it, telling me that it was first created in 1893 by the maitre d’ of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. I wondered if everything presented to me in that house would have a biography attached. I really was going to live in the middle of a history book, but oddly, that made me feel safer. It was as if I had gone through a door and traveled not only thousands of miles away from my father and my sisters but a few hundred years away, too.
Actually, despite the sorry face I wore, I was enjoying the first really relaxing moments I’d had since getting into the truck with Moses. The dining room was surprisingly bright and airy because of the sliding patio doors and two large windows. Mrs. Winston explained that this part of the historic house had recently been renovated. Recently, I learned, meant within the last twenty years.
“I didn’t want to do it, but the business required it. Naturally, the historical society made us jump through hoops,” she said.
“And then some,” Mrs. McGruder added.
There was a long light oak table that could comfortably seat a dozen people, a matching armoire with shelves of very old china, and two side chairs in opposite corners. Above us was a pewter chandelier that looked as if it had once held candles instead of light bulbs. The walls there, as they were elsewhere, had pages from old newspapers in frames, drawings of Colonial government figures, and an occasional print of a watercolor depicting farms or the original streets in the city.
“We don’t usually provide lunch for our guests,” Mrs. Winston continued. “This is a bed-and-breakfast, but we do have what is called half-board if you want to take your dinners with us as well.”
So there would be no misunderstanding, she wrote out the prices.
“The room you’ll be getting is our Abigail Adams. All six of our guest rooms are named for Quincy historical figures. Abigail was, of course, the wife of John Adams, who was the second president of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, who was the sixth. I’m giving you a discount because you’re just starting out here.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for lunch. It’s delicious.”
“Everything Mrs. McGruder makes is delicious. At the moment, our three other guests are half-board because they know they’ll get a dinner ten times better than anything in any restaurant out there,” she added.
“I’d like to do the same,” I said.
“Very wise decision. Well now,” she said, seeing that I had finished my lunch, “shall we show you the Abigail Adams?”
“Yes, please,” I said.
We went out to the stairway and started up. It was only a short stairway, but because the windows in the upstairs hallway were small and far apart and because there were no lights on at the moment, it was much darker.
As if she knew what I was thinking, Mrs. Winston turned to say, “We don’t waste electricity here. I don’t put the lights on until after dusk. For years after electricity became a big thing, my family held on to candles and oil lamps. I think we might have been the last ones in this section of Quincy to install a telephone. One should not be so eager to give up one’s history. Not all change is for the better, you know.”
I didn’t say anything, but I understood her point. None of her ancestors had given up as much as I was trying to give up and deny about my own history.
We turned right and went to the third door, where she paused as if we were in a movie and she was anticipating some entry music.
“The Abigail Adams,” she announced, and opened the door.
I imagined it had been renovated, too, because it had two large windows, one on each side of the simple white enameled four-poster bed, maybe half the size of the king-size bed I had in California. It was made up with simple light blue linen. There was an old-fashioned crocheted bedspread with knotted fringe. The windows faced the street. The chintz curtains were tied back so the light fell fully on the small table beside the bed. On it was a shaded reading lamp. Although there was a mirrored dressing table with a cover of clear glass, there was also a long mirror on what I imagined was the closet door, two chairs, one of which was wicker, and a footstool. In the far right corner was a writing desk. The walls were papered with a small pattern of flowers in soft colors, and there was a large plain green woven rag rug. On the left was a bureau.
“That’s Abigail Adams,” Mrs. Winston said, nodding at a painting over the bureau.
Both she and Mrs. McGruder were obviously waiting for me to say something that would reveal how impressed I was.
“This is a beautiful and very comfortable-looking room,” I said.
“And immaculate,” Mrs. McGruder added.
“Why don’t you settle in?” Mrs. Winston said. “I’m going to make a phone call for you right away.”
“Phone call for me?”
“I’m calling my nephew Ken Dolan. He owns Dolan Plumbing Supply and is always looking for qualified help. I’m sure he’ll grant you an interview, maybe today,” she said.
“That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Winston.”
“Yes, well,” she said, glancing at Mrs. McGruder, “you can call me Amelia.”
“Thank you.”
“Mrs. McGruder is not as fond of her given name and likes to remain Mrs. McGruder.”
“Oh?”
“Hortense,” she said disdainfully. “My brothers had a good time with that, as you can imagine.” She rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue.
“Now, as to the rules,” Mrs. Winston said, cutting discussion short. “Obviously, we don’t tolerate any smoking in the house or on our grounds.”
“I don’t smoke,” I said.
“Good. Hopefully, you’ll keep to that. It goes without saying that drugs and alcohol are off-limits as well. We do serve wine at dinner, and we do from time to time provide after-dinner brandy and a homemade elderberry wine. I don’t think it will do you any harm to partake despite your age. We do that mainly on holidays or other special occasions, but no alcohol is permitted in any of the bedrooms.”
I nodded.
“We expect you will respect the furniture and the linen and towels we provide. Everything is replaced
daily, but how you keep your room tells us pretty quickly how much you respect it. As to comings and goings . . . you’ll be provided with your own front-door key, of course. We’re not here to supervise anyone. We just ask that you take care to move about quietly after eleven. There are no overnight guests permitted,” she concluded, and pressed her lips together quickly, as if to keep any other reference to such a thing from slipping out.
“You two are the only ones I know here,” I said.
“For now,” she instantly retorted. “Any young lady as pretty as you will soon have a trail of young men coming to the door. We permit socializing in the living room during decent hours, of course, and you can offer anyone tea or coffee and biscuits during the visit if we know about it in advance.”
She took a deep breath and looked around the room with the expectation that I would follow her gaze.
“As you see, there is no television or radio in your room,” she continued, “nor is there a telephone. This is what I meant when I said we run a very quiet rooming house. There is, of course, a television set in the den downstairs. So, unless you have any questions . . .”
“No, everything is wonderful,” I said.
She smiled. “Mrs. McGruder will bring your towels and washcloths shortly. As we said, you’re sharing a bathroom on this side with Naomi Addison.”
“She’ll be surprised,” Mrs. McGruder muttered. “She’s had it all to herself up to now. That’s a woman who is used to her own personal comfort and not used to sharing anything except her troubles and unhappiness.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure you will not monopolize the bathroom, nor will she,” Mrs. Winston said firmly. “As in any good rooming house, we are all dependent upon everyone else, respecting everyone else, Mrs. Addison included.”
Mrs. McGruder grunted with some skepticism. Mrs. Winston glanced at her, thought for a moment, and then turned back to me.
“Mrs. McGruder is of the opinion that Mrs. Addison . . .”
“Soon to be ex–Mrs. Addison,” Mrs. McGruder corrected.
“That ex–Mrs. Addison has her sights set on my nephew, Ken Dolan, and that this was her true intention when she came here to stay until her matters are settled. Ken’s wife left him soon after she gave birth to their son, Liam. Ken had a daughter with her, too, four years earlier, Julia. Liam is twenty-one, and Julia is twenty-five. Neither of them is at all fond of Mrs. Addison—I mean, the soon-to-be-ex–Mrs. Addison—but men are blind when it comes to the wiles of coquettes.”
I couldn’t help smiling. The wiles of coquettes?
“Amen to that,” Mrs. McGruder said. “My husband made an absolute fool of himself whenever he was confronted by a bubbling bosom or a seductive wisp of a smile to accompany a wiggling hip.”
Mrs. Winston cleared her throat and gave Mrs. McGruder a chastising look. “Yes, well, I wasn’t going to turn her away. How would that look? A woman in the midst of a bitter divorce left out in the cold. But I’m not worried. Ken won’t fall for a woman who resembles his first wife. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
“Amen to that, too,” Mrs. McGruder said.
“One of our current two other guests is Mr. Jim Lamb, a twenty-four-year-old man who teaches English in the Adams School for Girls,” Mrs. Winston said. “It’s a private secular school for grades six to twelve. He mostly teaches the high school students. He’s a very serious young man. And our other guest is Mr. Martin Brady, a man in his fifties who is a dental supply salesman. You’ll meet everyone at dinner, if not before. Do you have any questions, dear?”
“No. I’ll just settle in, as you say,” I said.
She nodded. “I’ll let you know what my nephew says.”
They both left and closed the door behind them, their looks and voices fading quickly, like breath in very cold air. The resulting silence felt heavy.
Everything that had happened to me and everything I had done had gone by so quickly that I hadn’t paused long enough to think about it all and fully contemplate the possibilities that loomed on the horizon. Now that Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder had left me alone, it all came flooding back at me. The reality was that this was the first time I was really on my own, the first time I was away from whatever family I had known, and the first time I was totally responsible for myself.
As it would for any older teenage girl, that prospect filled me with mixed emotions tugging against one another, especially excitement and concern. For a few moments, I thought only of my freedom to do whatever I wanted. The rules Mrs. Winston had described were restraints that applied only in the house. Out there, I could dress, say, and do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I didn’t have to worry about what my father would think or say, what Mrs. Fennel would think or say, or what Ava would think or say. The only one I had to please was myself. If I wanted to get drunk and make a fool of myself, I could. I didn’t have to be careful about whom I spoke to and what I said, as long as what I said had nothing to do with the life I was fleeing.
I wasn’t afraid of my freedom, either. I had always had great self-confidence, even though there were times when I doubted or questioned it. In my heart of hearts, I knew that I could compete with any other girl my age or older in any way on any field. None of them was as well equipped for life’s normal challenges as I was.
Now, on my own, I was even more grateful for my extraordinary intelligence, the speed with which I could master any new subject, the breadth and depth of my memory, and the perception I possessed, a perception that for other girls came only after years and years of experiences and acquired wisdom and that wasn’t guaranteed. Mine was inherited. There was no ordinary human being I couldn’t handle, master, and defeat if I had to. Look at what I had just been through with that fiend who had pretended to be an attorney. I smiled to myself, imagining how Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder would have reacted at lunch if I had described those events in any detail.
How silly and insignificant their concerns for me were. My biggest problem should be sharing a bathroom with a divorcée who was full of herself.
All of this filled me with optimism, but when I gazed out of my bedroom windows and looked down at the bright, Norman Rockwell streets reeking of peace and contentment, imagining the happy families that occupied the other houses, with their manicured front lawns, their sparkling driveways and walks, their potted flowers and sprawling old trees that had quietly witnessed the birth of a nation, I could imagine the creeping, crawling, dark shadows seeping in and over it all, finding the cracks in the perfection, slipping through any tiny opening, oozing over the immaculate streets and sidewalks, embracing the houses and darkening the hearts of parents who would suddenly fear for their teenagers as much as for themselves.
Was Daddy ever far away? Had I been deluding myself?
I opened the window and listened to the breeze tiptoeing over the tops of houses and trees until it circled the house to dance a ballet in the sunlight. On the right side of a house across the street, a tree of metal butterflies jingled. Down toward the west end of the street, a car door slammed. Someone called out to someone. There was a trickle of laughter. High in the sky above, a twinkling star metamorphosed into a commercial jet. I suddenly could hear Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder below discussing the dinner menu and then dropping their voices into whispers, surely to talk about me. How quickly they had begun to care and worry about me.
What a wonderful choice I had made. Life here was surely a breath of fresh air. I told myself that Ava, Daddy, and the others most likely expected that I would flee to some darker sanctuary, a place where my inherent nature would feel more at home. They’d search for me in urban alleyways, large, busy cities where someone like me, and like them, would have an easier time disappearing. For a frightening moment, I wondered if they weren’t right to assume that and if I wasn’t wrong to ignore it. Would my true nature be too obvious in a place like this? Would these people take second looks at me, see the veil of darkness that was always beside me, step away, and
then choose to avoid and ignore me? Would they, in short, become afraid of me?
It didn’t matter that they could not identify what it was exactly that turned them off to me. Whatever it was, they would instinctively feel that it was something born out of a netherworld, some grotesque swamp crawling with repulsive creatures, some so loathsome that they weren’t even imagined in nightmares. My terrible fear was that they would sense all of this, and I would soon be on my way again, fleeing, searching for that impossible place that would enable me to deny my second self and let me become ordinary.
I couldn’t help wondering, maybe wishing it, if such a hopeful dream existed for my sisters, too, if during some free moment when they were alone, they permitted themselves to admit to the same longing. For them, however, the moment they opened that door, the terror and guilt came rushing in behind their fantasy, ripping and tearing it apart, growling and roaring until they cowered and chastised themselves for having even a moment like mine. It occurred to me that they might be pursuing me not out of anger but out of jealousy. I had gone farther away than any of them had. They couldn’t tolerate the fact that there was one of us who could escape, because that reinforced and drove home their own failure. And for me, at least right now, their own doom.
I would not succumb.
I would not surrender.
I would not turn back.
Daddy would turn back. In the end, he would reluctantly decide to let me go. He would be touched by mercy and also by the love he once held so strongly for me. Maybe it was the last trace of humanity at work in him, some part of his early existence that had lingered. At least, that was my prayer.