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ELISE GENERALLY SAW little of Anna during the workday, and when they did cross paths she made herself small. She had begun to make some friends among the nurses and medical students; she didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that Dr. Savard—who frightened almost everyone—had taken Elise under her wing. They were likely to accuse her of getting special treatment, which was in fact the case.
But there was another truth, one she reinforced with all her energy and concentration, every day: She didn’t take advantage. She worked very hard, asked no favors, and offered her help wherever she could, both at the hospital and on Waverly Place. And still today, just as she was finishing her shift Anna sent for her. Elise found her with her advanced medical students, all of them getting ready to leave the building.
“I thought you might want to come with us,” Anna said. “To see a thyroidectomy. It’s a very challenging operation. I myself have never done one. Not yet.”
Ten minutes earlier Elise had been looking forward to the garden and putting her feet up for the twenty minutes she allotted herself; now she felt as though she could sprout wings and fly.
They set off for New-York Hospital on foot, matching Anna’s quick pace. Elise was curious about the surgery, but she kept her silence and listened to the snatches of conversations that came to her about exams, a visit home, a lost notebook, a recent case they had been called on to write up as an assignment and how strictly Dr. Savard marked their efforts.
She wondered if these young women talked about Anna when she was out of earshot, and decided that they almost certainly did. About her classes and expectations, but also about her recent marriage. One of the nurses had approached her and asked straight out was it true, Dr. Savard had married an Italian? Because she couldn’t indulge in irritation, Elise feigned confusion. Better to be thought a little dim than to gossip about the person who had made this new life possible.
Even when the subject wasn’t forbidden, Elise often found herself at a loss, listening to the young women talk among themselves. They were hardworking, ambitious, and serious about their studies; they had made choices knowing full well that the goals they set for themselves would likely cut them off from the things most young women hoped for. Some of them would marry, according to Anna, but most would not. And still they admired men, and thought of them as potential mates, or at least bed partners.
Chiara had been the one to point out to Elise that men watched her.
“Watch me? Why?”
“Why not? You’re pretty.”
“I’m odd looking.” She ruffled her short hair.
“You’re pretty in an uncommon way, and you move like a ballerina.”
Upon close questioning it turned out that Chiara had never seen a ballerina except on a poster, but she stuck stubbornly to her assessment.
“I am a dumpling in the making,” Chiara insisted. “It’s the family curse. Age fifty, I’ll blow up.” She puffed out her cheeks to demonstrate. “But you’ve got long legs and a long neck and skin like silk. Men watch you because you’re nice to look at.”
The whole subject made her uncomfortable, but Chiara had started something that Rosa picked up on. When they were out in public together they kept a constant vigil and pointed out every admirer, some of which Elise truly believed they manufactured solely to fluster her. On the omnibus, a fair-haired man with a stack of books on his lap. A clerk at the notions counter at Denning’s Dry Goods with ears that stuck out from his head. The grooms standing outside Stewart’s stables, cheeky monkeys, every one. They swore that there were three different young men living in the Jansen Apartments—just across the way—who had gotten into the sudden habit of walking past the house at least twice a day, morning and evening. Chiara made up names for each of them, and jobs too: Alto was the tallest one and an assistant manager at a bank, Bruno had a big dark brown beard and taught at the Academy of Music, and Bello, with a face like an angel, was a passenger agent on the White Star Line. And all of them lived for a glimpse of Elise.
“If you’re right about this,” she wanted to know, “why haven’t any of them said a word to me?”
“Because you are pretty but distant. What’s the word—”
“Uninterested.”
“That’s not it. Distante. Aloof!”
Elise wondered if it was true. Did strangers see her as arrogant? Conceited? These were serious character flaws that were dealt with summarily in the convent. Had she learned them in the few weeks since she left?