Leave Well Enough Alone (2 page)

“Dear,” said Mrs. Hoade, her eyes fastened on the gold cross that hung against the front of Dorothy’s navy-blue uniform jumper. “You would be an absolute saint if you’d get up on a chair and take down the two valises in the bedroom closet. I’m afraid to do it. I’m eight and a half months.”

At two o’clock, after an hour and a half had passed, Dorothy was exhausted. She’d helped herself to another Coke. She had retrieved the suitcases, plus three other large ones from under the bed. She’d sorted two huge piles of clothes and hung twenty-two little-girls’ dresses in the cedar closet. She’d made two beds and packed three huge cartons full of toys and books. Mrs. Hoade, to her dismay, had not once mentioned the wallet or gone over to where it lay on the coffee table. Instead she’d twittered on about taking care of the girls’ sick great-grandmother in Llewellyn, the difficulties in getting reliable household help, and the awfulness of pregnancy. Dorothy had the distinct impression that Mr. Hoade was going to leave Mrs. Hoade if the baby was not a boy.

“Look at that!” Mrs. Hoade said, coming to a dead stop in the midst of sorting great numbers of mismatched socks into senselessly arranged groupings and then dropping them all in a forlorn heap in the middle of the bed.

“What?” asked Dorothy.

“It kicked. It doesn’t kick very much, I’m afraid. Put your hand right there!” With excruciating loathing, Dorothy touched Mrs. Hoade’s stomach lightly. She felt a small movement under the maternity smock and withdrew her hand instantly. “See!” said Mrs. Hoade. “I think that was an elbow. It only kicks once in a great while. I’m worried. Both girls kicked horribly. I’m sure something’s wrong but the doctors never tell you anything. I go to Marnie Eisenhower’s gynecologist, but I’m sure he looks after Marnie better than he does me.”

“Have you ever seen her in the waiting room?” Dorothy asked, hoping to steer Mrs. Hoade away from the topic of babies.

“Mrs. Eisenhower doesn’t wait in waiting rooms,” Mrs. Hoade said sadly. “I’m sure they fly the doctor right down to the White House and do the whole thing in the Lincoln Bedroom.”

Dorothy cleared her throat. “I’ll have to be going,” she said. “I have to get back to my class trip before they find out I’m gone.” She thought regretfully about the wallet. Try as she might, she had not been able to introduce that topic back into conversation. I know it’s retribution, she thought, for being greedy and wanting a reward instead of letting God reward me with His love and approval.

“Dear,” said Mrs. Hoade suddenly, “how would you like a job?”

“A job! But I live in Newburgh, New York.”

“I mean for the summer.”

“The summer?”

“I had a girl lined up months ago. A mother’s helper. You know, from the Anne Carpenter people? A college girl. She was lovely. A week ago I got a letter from her saying she was going to Europe instead. The little ... In any case, I’m stuck, as you can see. The agency can’t promise me anyone at this late date and I hate to take a chance on another debutante anyway. Can you swim?”

The figure of four hundred dollars now nickered briefly in Dorothy’s imagination. She thought, perhaps, come next Labor Day she would stand in the middle of her room and throw all four hundred dollar bills into the air and shout Wahoo! Of course it all had to go into the bank. She might have been able to keep a hundred of it if it hadn’t been for Stanley Inglewasser and her sister, Maureen.

“May you burn in hell, Stanley!” Dorothy allowed herself this wish for the fiftieth time since “it” had happened. “It” had happened smack in the middle of Reverend Mother’s opening prayer at the Senior Awards Assembly. Dorothy’s older brother, Terrance, had been about to receive the Boys’ Good Citizenship Medal. It would be announced, also, that he had won an athletic scholarship to Holy Cross. A beaming, fidgeting Terrance sat upon the stage with the other award winners, flanked by the Boys’ Glee Club and the Girls’ Choir, behind formidable, six-foot-three Mother Superior, whose vast white flowing habit and hawklike eyes gave the impression of a terrifying, magic bird.

Stanley had passed her the note at the beginning of the assembly. Dorothy hadn’t looked at it until she was sure Reverend Mother’s eyes were tightly closed in prayer, but when the opening prayer was over, Reverend Mother had inclined her head slightly, and like a bullfrog snapping up a fly on a remote leaf, she’d said, “
Dorothy Coughlin
!” in a tone that could have shattered marble. “You will read to the assembly whatever that note contains since it takes such precedence over our prayers.”

Dorothy could remember her Latin book sliding off her lap, hitting the floor with a slap that made several people giggle in nervous appreciation. She could remember wishing she could go into a six-hour faint so that everyone would think she was near death, but she only managed to shake. Her hands, particularly. Looking at the quivering paper, she’d nearly whispered, “Meet...meet me after school at the bus stop.” There were snickers.

“No one can hear you,” Reverend Mother responded. “Please come up and read it from the podium, Dorothy.”

Hundreds of faces watched Dorothy. Open-mouthed and unsmiling they rose before her and then receded like an ocean wave. She wondered if they’d all heard her say “Excuse me, excuse me,” at least a dozen times as she’d made her way from her seat to the stage. She wondered how many heard her say “I’ll meet you after school at the bus stop,” in almost as soft a voice as she’d used before. The titters were general.

“You read it differently this time, Dorothy,” Reverend Mother commented evenly. “The first time you said, ‘Meet me.’ The second time you said, ‘I’ll meet you.’ Perhaps you’d better let me see the note.”

Reverend Mother plucked the miserable, damp piece of notebook paper from Dorothy’s hands. She indicated Dorothy should stand down, and adjusting her steel-rimmed bifocals, she glanced at the door at the end of the auditorium, as if she were about to announce a pep rally, and read out, “Cicero or Caesar, question mark.” Then she looked over at Dorothy. “To what does this refer, Dorothy?” she asked.

“I’m not sure, Reverend Mother.” Reverend Mother’s tongue slipped out between her perfect, dull white teeth. Teeth Dorothy’d never had the stomach to look at because they were false and occasionally lost their position in Reverend Mother’s mouth. Reverend Mother waited for Dorothy’s reply.

“It refers to the Latin final, I guess,” said Dorothy at last, her eyes avoiding everything in the room.

“The examination you just took?”

“Yes, Reverend Mother.”

“The same examination Freshman Latin section two is to take sixth period this afternoon?”

“Yes, Reverend Mother.”

“I see.” More silence. No one giggled now. Dorothy had once turned to look at the audience behind her in the middle of the scariest part of
The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
The expressions in front of her were similar to those. “And who do you think sent you this note, Dorothy?”

“I’m not sure, Reverend Mother.”

“It looks like Stanley Inglewasser’s handwriting to me.”

“Yes. Yes, well it probably was...him.”

“He.”

“He.”

“Stanley is to take that examination sixth period, I believe. Had you intended to reply to his question?”

“No, Reverend Mother.”

“I see.”

“Reverend Mother, it wasn’t
my
fault. I never...

“You and Stanley will see me after Assembly. You may take your seat. We shall continue the program. I believe your brother Terrance is the first to be honored.”

Reverend Mother’s interview was painful enough. She announced at the conclusion that Dorothy’s and Stanley’s mothers had been asked to come in at three o’clock.

Reverend Mother kept Dorothy and Stanley waiting in the foyer of her office for exactly fifteen minutes while she spoke first with Mrs. Inglewasser and then with Dorothy’s mother. Dorothy did not once look at Stanley. She tried to hear what Reverend Mother was saying, but Reverend Mother’s door was too thick. Dorothy sat in as stiff and prim a posture as she could manage, as if to ward off the rays of terrible power that seemed to emanate from Reverend Mother’s office. Stanley, on the other hand, kept one ankle cocked over his knee, showing a dirty white cotton sock. He slouched, and needed only a cigarette between his fingers to appear as if he were simply waiting for a bus.

Dorothy’s mother said nothing when she emerged from the office. She nodded to Mrs. Inglewasser, who for some reason was still in the foyer, standing between Dorothy and Stanley as if she didn’t quite know what to do. Since Reverend Mother had closed the door without coming out again, Mrs. Inglewasser did sigh as if something had been completed, and the four of them walked down the darkened corridor to the big double doors that led to daylight at the end. No one said a word. Four pairs of shoes echoed hideously on the shiny waxed floor.

Her own mother’s humiliation and disappointment were unbearable to Dorothy, but it had been Maureen who’d made her feel like a criminal.

Plain Maureen with her baby, her migraines, her dandruff shampoo, her Jergens Lotion and her Nair for the upper lip. Maureen was twenty and she was already married and had corns. Corns! And special shoes! That evening, when Dorothy’s family gathered for what turned out to be a rather glum celebration of Terrance’s success, Maureen had observed airily that she supposed Dorothy would no longer be taking her fancy-pants job in Pennsylvania. Maureen thought that would be an excellent penance.

Dorothy’s eyes had filled with tears. She watched her father’s and mother’s faces across the table, under the dim kitchen ceiling light. Maureen thought Dorothy ought to take a job as a volunteer candy striper in the Veteran’s Hospital. After all, hadn’t Reverend Mother suggested some sort of penance? It was the four hundred dollars that had saved Dorothy in the end. Maureen couldn’t argue with money. “You’ve disgraced your family,” she insisted. “With Daddy on the force and Arthur on the force and Terrance winning the medal! It’s a disgrace. Worse, it’s a mortal sin.”

Dorothy’s father was a sergeant on the Newburgh police force. Maureen’s husband, Arthur, was a patrolman. Arthur didn’t look terribly disgraced to Dorothy. His mouth was too full of meatloaf. Her father just appeared puzzled.

“That doesn’t mean I have to give up four hundred dollars which I intend to use for my college education,” Dorothy had shot back. Her father’s wiry gray eyebrows had lifted at this and he’d exchanged glances with Dorothy’s mother.

“Then how do you intend to atone for what you’ve done? Reverend Mother told Mom that she’d told you that you have to atone for what you’ve done,” said Maureen.

“I have to take the Latin exam over again in September.”

“That’s not enough. Stanley was failed and has to take the whole year of Latin again. Besides, Latin’s always been a cinch for you.”

“
Stanley
sent the note, Maureen. I didn’t even answer it.”

“You were going to, though. Weren’t you? If you hadn’t been caught red-handed. I know you have a picture of him in your wallet that Judy Dugan gave you. I know you go four blocks out of your way every afternoon after school on your bicycle just to see Stanley’s chest when he takes his shirt off when he mows his neighbors’ lawns. It’s indecent!”

“That’s enough, Maureen,” Dorothy’s father had interrupted at that moment and Dorothy knew she’d won.

“It isn’t fair!” Maureen had cried.

“What isn’t fair?” Dorothy asked in a newly confident voice.

This time Maureen’s eyes had filled. “It isn’t fair because she gets everything. She always has. She’s a spoiled brat. She gets away with murder.” Maureen threw down her napkin. “She’s going to wind up in jail someday. You wait!” Maureen left the room to tend Bridget, the baby, who was by this time howling.

“Come visit me if I do!” Dorothy had trilled merrily after her sister. “And bring me a cake with a knife in it so I can escape and come home and baby-sit for you which is all you want.”

“Shut up,” said Arthur. “You know she’s pregnant.” That was the first and only thing Arthur said all evening.

“You shut up,” said Terrance. “Dorothy’s right.” Dorothy’s father observed that he didn’t like the word shut up.

Thank heaven Stanley had had the brains to wash off Dorothy’s initials before they’d gone in to see Reverend Mother. When she’d seen them, tattooed to his hand in ballpoint pen, before the assembly, her heart or her stomach or whatever it was in her middle had turned over in ecstasy. Now, as her train pulled in to the Thirtieth Street Station, the one she was not supposed to disembark at, that same organ turned over again, but in a sad, stinging way. Dorothy had explained to Reverend Mother that she’d felt guilty about getting someone else into trouble and was therefore, by the dictates of her conscience, obliged to lie about the contents of the note for moral reasons. Reverend Mother could not recall a lie having been told for moral reasons under any conditions save those in wartime, but perhaps she had detected some ember of innocence behind Dorothy’s tearful words and so she was easier on her than she might have been. With Stanley, Reverend Mother had shown no mercy. Not only did he have to repeat a year’s work but she obliged him to clean and polish every inch of statuary in the church.

Dorothy squeezed her eyes shut to make the evil feeling vanish. It was clear why Stanley, who’d never before given her the time of day, had written her initials on his hand. He just wanted the answers to the exam. She’d lied to protect him because of it. She would try to atone. But she’d never tell anyone even if she did find a way. She opened her eyes again and fastened them on the sign that said “Thirtieth Street.” That’s where I don’t get off, she told herself as the sign began to pull behind the slowly moving train. Another sign beyond said Thirtieth Street again. A mistake
not
made, said Dorothy, trying to cheer herself up.

Premeditated lying was, of course, a mortal sin, but supposing one lied in simple reaction without thinking? When Mrs. Hoade had asked her how old she was she’d answered right away, “Fifteen,” which was what she’d be in October, after all. She guessed the sin would not be wiped out in October. When Mrs. Hoade had asked her if she had brothers and sisters, Dorothy had said, “Oh, yes, two brothers and a sister,” which was quite true. However, she hadn’t mentioned that she was the youngest and had no experience whatever in taking care of children. Mrs. Hoade had simply replied that large families were nice, and that Dorothy looked older than fifteen. Dorothy had thanked Mrs. Hoade. Her own mother had been very dubious about an inexperienced fourteen-year-old taking a job in Pennsylvania, six hours from home, but Dorothy had worked on her father, who knew how much she dreaded a summer alone with Maureen. Her parents, Dorothy reasoned, probably felt a little guilty about going off to Ireland for the whole summer by themselves, the first time they’d been on vacation alone since their honeymoon in Atlantic City, twenty-five years before. They were going to visit Dorothy’s other brother, Kevin, who was studying for the priesthood somewhere in the west of Ireland. Mercifully, Dorothy’s mother had seemed to like Mrs. Hoade’s voice when Mrs. Hoade had called up to reaffirm her offer of a job, and to assure Mrs. Coughlin that Dorothy would be safe. Her mother had not volunteered the information that Dorothy was inexperienced with children—which was unusual, because Dorothy’s mother was so scrupulously honest that she put dimes back in vending machines and telephones that gave more change than they ought. “A telephone is not a slot machine,” she’d told a dismayed Dorothy on more than one occasion.