Leave Well Enough Alone (4 page)

“Well, I
am
proud of my Dad,” said Dorothy after a pause. “He’s Chief of Police of Newburgh, New York. My brother-in-law, Arthur, is on the force too. He’s the head of the crime lab. He used to be a detective before they promoted him.”

“What an accomplished family!”

“My brother’s going to law school. He’ll probably go into criminal law one day.”

“Is he at Harvard or Yale?”

“Holy Cross.”

“That’s even better!” said Mrs. Hoade in such a desperate voice that Dorothy felt sorry for her. She was trying to say something nice. Dorothy decided not to be angry.

“Haven’t you ever done something like that?” Mrs. Hoade asked miserably. “Say with an Italian? Said something like ‘How thin you look! How do you manage with all that spaghetti?’ ˮ

“Yes,” said Dorothy. She had, after all, almost called Stanley Inglewasser a dirty kraut after the interview with Reverend Mother. “I guess everybody does.”

“Good then. Am I forgiven?”

“Of
course
!” said Dorothy. She really wanted to give poor anxious Mrs. Hoade a hug.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Hoade humbly. “Whenever I think of the Irish, I think of Yeats.”

Dorothy thought she’d change the subject before Mrs. Hoade went on to list Saint Patrick and Hopalong Cassidy. “How’s the baby?” she asked with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. “I bet it’s just as cute as...anything!”

“I was just going to say something about that,” said Mrs. Hoade. The speedometer hit sixty-five. Why does she drive so fast if it makes her sweat so much? Dorothy wondered, as the Ford careened around another blind curve. “She was born a mongoloid. Have you ever heard of...

“You mean one of those—”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” said Mrs. Hoade.

“Now, Dorothy. I want this understood. Lisa, our nine-year-old, is very impressionable. She has nightmares and suffers from enuresis—”

“What’s
that
?” interrupted Dorothy.

“Well, she wets her bed occasionally.” Dorothy stopped herself just in time from saying
Oh no!
She tried to look interested, instead, in the ailments of the new baby. Mrs. Hoade was going on about not bothering the nurse, who was taking care of it. And not going down to the cottage where it was living.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” said Dorothy, wondering whether “occasionally” meant every night or every other night. The prospect of changing wet sheets determined her, at that moment, never to let Lisa within a mile of whatever cottage Mrs. Hoade was talking about. Poor Mrs. Hoade. The whole subject of her baby evidently distressed her very much. There was unmistakable shame and guilt in Mrs. Hoade’s voice. Dorothy tried to think of something cheerful to say. “Please don’t think I think anything bad about it,” she began, noticing a vein throbbing in Mrs. Hoade’s left temple. “I mean, I was almost a mongoloid too.”

“What on earth do you mean, dear? Almost a mongoloid?”

“Well, my mother was forty when she had me. She told me I could easily have been one.”

“Forty! My goodness. What about your brothers and sisters? She must have been worried about them.”

Dorothy breathed deeply. “Well, I guess I didn’t mention it, but they’re all...older.”

“No young ones in the family?”

“I’m afraid not, Mrs. Hoade. I didn’t mean to lie. I guess I just didn’t say anything because you didn’t ask. I wanted the job so much. I suppose I’d better tell you I’m not terribly experienced with children.”

“Well, my goodness,” said Mrs. Hoade.

“Are you angry?” asked Dorothy immediately.

“Do you think you can manage?”

“Of course, Mrs. Hoade.”

“Say no more then,” said Mrs. Hoade.

Dorothy stared out the window. She heard the diesel whistle somewhere behind the next hill. For the first time she noticed how lovely the softly rolling hills were, how peaceful and reassuring the old farms looked. She wished to jump out of the car and run right through the nearest meadow. She wished her family lived in a place like this.

Two small figures sat on the only bench at the Monastery station. They swung their legs and slouched, evidently unperturbed by what to Dorothy was a very menacing-looking building, even in the daylight. The station had been long closed, it appeared. Its windows and door were boarded over and weeds straggled through the cracked platform. The wood-shingled roof did not incline on an even plane but undulated slightly, like a woman’s hat. The eaves, at least two feet deep, overshadowed the blinded windows. How she would have identified the station, had she stayed on the train to this stop, Dorothy didn’t know, for the single sign had long faded into illegibility. Mrs. Hoade screeched to a halt. At least the brakes worked on this car, Dorothy thought.

Four hundred dollars, she reminded herself again, after riding in the car with Jenny and Lisa for several minutes. Jenny, a doleful, pear-shaped child with dull blond hair and a sallow complexion, had not said hello. She’d only stared at Dorothy’s extended hand and announced that she was eleven years old and that her sister was nine. Lisa, a much livelier specimen, had corrected this to nine and a half, and the two of them argued the exactitudes of their respective ages until Mrs. Hoade interrupted with questions about school. Dorothy did not listen. She felt like an intruder. She wished they would just disappear. She found herself thinking she’d discovered her penance.

When the subject of Miss Parker’s third grade and Miss Parker’s fifth grade had been exhausted, Jenny asked, “How’s the kid? Still sick?”

“It has a very bad cold,” said Mrs. Hoade.

“That’s a pretty long cold,” Lisa commented. Dorothy bit her lip. She was not the only person inclined to palatable half-truths in this world.

“Now I don’t want you going down to bother the nurse or the baby,” said Mrs. Hoade. “All we need is to have you catch—”

“Don’t worry,” said Lisa. “How’s Great-grandma?”

“She’s off on a visit,” said Mrs. Hoade cheerfully. Somehow Dorothy could tell instantly that this was another lie.

“How could she be off on a visit if she was so sick?”

“She’s much better now,” said Mrs. Hoade. Mrs. Hoade drove as if she had to catch another train. Dorothy watched the speedometer.

“Who’s she visiting?” Lisa asked.

“She’s visiting friends at a lovely place called Crestview.”

“Sounds like a nuthouse,” Jenny said.

“It happens to be a first-class, top-drawer...well, resort, almost, for elderly people who want to have a little vacation.”

“Oh,
Mom
,” Jenny drawled.

“I don’t want to be late. We’re having a party tonight,” Mrs. Hoade explained to Dorothy, noticing Dorothy’s position, which was not unlike that of a rider in a roller coaster. “You’re perfectly safe with me. I know these roads. I used to be a dangerous driver, I guess,” she went on. “But John, my husband, made me slow down the minute I married him. I haven’t gotten a speeding ticket in twelve years.”

“That’s nice,” said Dorothy, not releasing her viselike grip on the armrest beside her.

“He’s a wonderful man. You’ll like him very very much, I’m sure.”

Dorothy noticed the tension that had crept into Mrs. Hoade’s voice at the mention of her husband. What a curious woman, Dorothy thought. Mrs. Hoade bore not the slightest resemblance to anyone else’s mother, to any of the Sisters at school, even to lay teachers. There was an irreverence about her laughter that Dorothy found shocking in an adult. She was reminded of something her mother had said late one night when they were finishing up a pile of dishes. “All I ever did at your age, Dotty, was laugh, just like you and Kate. Enjoy these years. They come to an end soon enough.”

“But you laugh too, Mom,” Dorothy had said, frightened suddenly.

“I laugh. But it isn’t the same.”

The Hoades were rich. That much Dorothy could tell from their New York apartment. Did that mean that Mrs. Hoade could go right on laughing all her life? Did she never have to worry about discipline and organization and humility? The car slowed down at last and turned into a long driveway filled with fallen yellow willow leaves. At the end of the driveway was the biggest house Dorothy had ever seen. Homesickness overcame her for a moment. She missed the small kitchen at home with the church calendar that still showed January because no one ever bothered to turn the pages. She missed her mother and her mother’s smooth, white, manicured hands that looked as if they never touched dishwater. “Always take care of your hands. People will judge you by them,” her mother advised. Dorothy noticed Mrs. Hoade’s hands were red, the nails bitten and uncared for. Surely Mrs. Hoade didn’t do laundry and floors. And why did she dress so poorly? She was as disheveled as Mrs. Kroll, down at the end of Dorothy’s street. She’s married a rich man, Dorothy concluded. But she’s kept a lot of bad old habits like not dressing well, not taking pride in her appearance. Just like Polly Kroll, who never wore a clean uniform to school and whose brothers and sisters were always running around looking disgusting and saying dirty words. Dorothy decided that if she were ever to marry a rich man, she would have no trouble at all adjusting to an expensive wardrobe and would immediately start acting as if she’d been rich all her life.

“M
IND THE BEES,” SAID
a voice. Dorothy looked up. A tall man in a blue blazer was grinning at her. He held a drink in each hand. His silk shirt was opened down three buttons to allow a curly tangle of hair to be seen on his chest. He was deeply suntanned and except for his bent-in teeth, he looked like a movie star. Dorothy thought he was a movie star.

“No, thank you,” she said to the drink.

The man gestured to the phlox and roses that grew at the base of the nearest stucco arch. A few sleepy bees hovered unthreateningly. “I’m John Hoade. You must be the new girl.”

“Well, thank you,” she said, feeling she ought to accept the drink. She could at least hold it and look polite. “I’m Dorothy Coughlin,” she added. “Pleased to meet you, sir.” Dorothy was very grateful that Mr. Hoade took the conversation from there, as she couldn’t think of a single other thing to say.

He was so strange. Everything was so strange. Strange and wonderful. The pool, for example. Instead of a concrete rectangle painted aquamarine blue, the Hoades’ swimming pool was oval and made entirely of white tile with a colored mosaic of zodiac signs around the inside. The water was limpid, inviting. It was clear, of course, and looked like...Dorothy paused in the middle of this train of thought...like real water instead of the unnatural vibrant-blue fluid in the pool at the YMCA. “Thank you for the drink, sir,” said Dorothy as Mr. Hoade moved off, smiling. Evidently he too had run out of things to say.

Dorothy sat down on the nearest chair, careful to gather her best cotton dress up beneath as she did, careful to keep her legs together. Careful to smile as if she didn’t notice not talking to anyone. She didn’t mind, really. She wanted to consider these surroundings for the moment. She sniffed at the nearly colorless liquid that swirled around the olive in the small conical glass Mr. Hoade had given her. She didn’t think she’d sip it. The odor was too powerful. She guessed it was gin. Dorothy knew the difference between the smells and colors of gin and whiskey. She and Kate had inhaled from Mrs. Codd’s empty liquor bottles on the stoop next to Kate’s house. To their disappointment neither she nor Kate had ever gotten drunk in this fashion although Kate’s younger brother said you could.

The people around her, laughing and chattering away with each other, were not costumed in togas or gold lame bodices. They were not lying on their backs consuming great quantities of grapes and wine. No one was holding a lance or a torch or a spear, but they might as well have been for the impression they made upon Dorothy.

The pool itself was surrounded by stucco arches, each of these covered with Virginia creeper in tender scarlet-and-green leaf. The pool house and the four cabanas that stood beside it were fronted with miniature Doric columns, that was why she thought of Ancient Rome. There were no tacky folding awning-cloth chairs here. All the furniture was heavy wicker, and had been painted with shiny white enamel. A bartender in a brilliant red jacket stood a little way off, polishing crystal glasses. Dorothy watched him. Someone backed into the bar, knocking a glass to the floor, shattering it on the frosty-white tiles. The person looked down for a moment and then resumed talking. The bartender produced a silver dustpan, small enough to be a child’s toy, and swept up the pieces in one soundless, graceful motion. Dorothy discovered she’d half risen from her seat in reaction to the breaking glass. She sat down quickly, hoping no one had seen. There were servants to pick things up here. “No one breaks
my
Waterford!” her mother’s voice rang in her mind’s ear. At home, when her father’s friends came in for a “quick one,” they just drank out of the Li’l Abner jelly glasses, or whatever happened to be lying around. They poured their own drinks too. We don’t
need
to have servants! Dorothy told herself proudly. But there was envy on the rim of her feelings, as surely as there were blood-red edges on the Virginia creeper leaves.

“Dorothy!” called Mrs. Hoade from somewhere, and Dorothy’s agreeable shell of quiet observation broke, giving way to a sense of caution. Dorothy wanted very much to appear at ease. To say the right thing. She had not seen Mrs. Hoade since Mrs. Hoade had left her and the girls in the two rambling bedrooms that were to be theirs for the summer. She had first led them into the kitchen, stranding them there for the moment, and had taken the back stairs like a jackrabbit, saying something about being late for her own party. Dorothy had not dared follow her immediately, for fear Mrs. Hoade might have forgotten something and decided to come barreling downstairs at the same rate, crashing into all three of them. However, Mrs. Hoade had reappeared, more sedately, in a slip, remembering indeed that she’d forgotten to show Dorothy and the girls their rooms.

“Dear, you’ve met John, I see,” she said. “Are you hungry? We’ll get you something to eat.” Mrs. Hoade’s arm rested easily around Dorothy’s shoulders. She had transformed herself somewhat from that afternoon’s dowdiness, with tiny diamond earrings, a chunky diamond necklace, and a saffron yellow watered-silk dress. The whole effect was to make her look broader and squarer than before, but the silk! Dorothy wanted to finger the soft gleaming silk. Twelve dollars and fifty cents a yard, she calculated silently. And the diamonds! “Oh, come this way, dear, there’s someone I want you to meet,” Mrs. Hoade said, apparently forgetting Dorothy’s empty stomach. Mr. Hoade, another man who had a swarthy, foreign look about him, and a woman stood near the deep end of the pool. The woman was so thin, so exquisitely dressed and combed and made up, that Dorothy wanted to hate her, but she couldn’t because the face was intelligent and had a lively grin. She was introduced as Vita Berensen, Mrs. Hoade’s oldest and best friend. Dorothy didn’t catch the man’s name.