Ada took a moment to reply. “I’d say work on your novel, but I have a feeling that roman à clef hits a bit too close to home now.”
I winced. “It’s not a roman à clef.”
“Please. An upper-crust New York girl and a boy from a horrendous family meet and marry?”
“Well, that certainly didn’t happen.”
“And aren’t you glad now that it didn’t? What if this girl had shown up with a child six months into your marriage? Then you’d really be stuck.” She thought for a minute. “Actually, that would make quite the book.”
“No.”
“Well, find something to entertain yourself. The more you sit around and worry about your cycle, the longer it’s going to take to arrive.”
I turned my head so I could see her with one eye, the other still buried in my pillow. “Is that true?”
“In my experience it is.”
In her experience—I sat up. “That’s a story I want to hear.”
She pointed to the typewriter. “Write one of your own, and I’ll think about telling you mine. But take a shower first. Just because some writers choose to be bohemians doesn’t mean I’ll tolerate that kind of behavior in my house.”
For three days, Ada kept me entertained. We watched television and played card games and swapped books. And when I could, I tried to write. But the words weren’t coming.
“Don’t write your own story,” Ada said. “You haven’t lived enough for that. But use what you’ve learned.”
“What have I learned? Other than that I should listen to you?”
Ada smiled. “What a lovely start.”
I kept expecting her to light into me about breaking the rules. About ignoring her advice and dating Freddy anyway. But she never did. In some ways, I would have preferred if she did—it would have alleviated some of the feeling of dread that I hoped was all that was wrong with my stomach. I had some cramping, but Ada warned that could go either way.
“How do you know so much about this?”
“You don’t get to my age without learning a few things.”
I looked at her. It was obvious she had been extremely beautiful when she was young—she was still handsome now. “Why didn’t you ever get married? The real reason.”
She sighed. “I was engaged once. But he died.”
“How old were you?”
“Your age.”
I did the math. It would have been 1905. She must have been very in love with him to never marry after losing him so young. “How did he die?”
“It was a fire. They think his father fell asleep while smoking a cigar. None of the family got out.”
Whether it was hormones or the excitement of the past few days, I felt tears springing to my eyes. I couldn’t imagine being so in love and then having to live the rest of my life—
“Don’t look at me like that,” Ada said, interrupting my thoughts. “I said I was engaged. I never said I was in love with him.”
I blinked rapidly. “Excuse me?”
“We were friends, yes. And I suppose I loved him. But it wasn’t passion and fireworks—it was a shidduch.”
“A what?”
“‘A what?’” Ada mimicked. “A match.”
I stared at her. “Your parents hired a matchmaker for you?”
She shook her head. “No. It was informal. Our parents agreed on it and told us we were getting married. I was happy, as things went. They could have picked someone far worse for me. Plenty of my friends wound up with much older widowers who could provide for them.”
She plucked at the blanket on the back of the sofa. “When Abner died—well, I told my parents I wanted more time. And that more time kept growing until suddenly I was an old maid. And according to my father, too ornery to make a good wife.”
I made a sour face at the idea of her father saying that. Although it was something my father would say as well.
“Wrinkles,” Ada said, tapping my forehead. “He didn’t mean it like that. He was fine with my choice as long as I was happy. And he helped me train to be a nurse. I cried far more when he died than when Abner did, I’ll tell you that much. Papa was—Papa was born out of time, I think. He would have been down South fighting for civil rights if he were alive now.” She looked at me. “He’d have loved you.”
I knew almost nothing about my great-grandparents, but there was something comforting in knowing he would have approved of me. Especially now.
“You said you’d been in love though—if not with Abner, then with who?”
“That’s enough for today.” She opened her book to end the conversation.
I shook my head, picking up my own book, pretending to read while actually studying her, spinning a tale about her tragic past in my head. “Are you going to read that book or not?” she asked. I never understood how she could know what I was doing without looking at me, but she always did.
Sticking my tongue out at her, I flipped the book facedown on the sofa and stood, stretching out the crick in my back from sitting for so long, then shuffled down the hall to the bathroom.
When I wiped, a streak of blood came away on the toilet paper.
I put my head in my hands, my elbows on my legs, near tears in relief.
Before I went to get a sanitary pad, I returned to the living room. Ada looked up anxiously as I approached—the first sign I had seen that she was actually worried. I shook my head, smiling widely. “We’re in the clear.”
Ada sank back against the couch cushions, closing her eyes. “Thank goodness for small favors,” she said. Then she looked at me. “Do you feel better?”
“Much.”
“Good,” she said, rising. “But you’re out of the business now.”
“What?”
“You broke the rules. And I don’t tolerate that. Don’t worry. There are plenty of other ways I’ll put you to work. But you’re out.”
She strode past me to the kitchen, humming softly, and I stared after her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
When Ada’s clients returned on Tuesday, I was banished from the living room. “I can at least show them in,” I argued.
“You can stay out of sight is what you can do,” Ada replied. “I don’t care if that means upstairs or out of the house entirely, but I meant what I said: you’re out.”
I skulked upstairs and sat at my dressing table-turned-writing-desk, huffing loudly and staring out the window. There was no way to return to what I had been writing. I couldn’t quite throw it away though either. Instead, I shoved the pages onto the shelf at the back of the closet and put a new sheet of paper in the typewriter.
But I could feel the old story behind me. Almost like it was calling my name.