She looked at me sharply as I followed her up the stairs. “Impertinence will not be tolerated either.”
“Duly noted.” I continued in silence as we went down a long, narrow hallway. There was a small staircase at the end, which I assumed led to servants’ quarters. Knowing my luck, that was where I would end up.
Instead, she stopped at the last door on the right and turned the knob. The room was austere, with a brass bed covered in a white eyelet coverlet, a dressing table, a nightstand, and a freestanding armoire instead of a closet. It smelled vaguely of mothballs and disuse. “Home, sweet home,” I said with as much fake cheerfulness as I could muster.
“The bathroom is next door. My room is down the hall. Lillian’s room is next to mine. You’re not to open closed doors.”
“Lillian?”
“My companion.”
“Ah. Mama said she had to go home—sick mother or something?”
“‘Sick mother or something,’” she mimicked. “Her mother is dying. A little compassion goes a long way.”
“I’m sorry for her—impending—loss.”
Ada nodded curtly. “You’ll be taking on some of her duties until she returns.”
“Which will entail . . . ?” If she intended for me to do the cooking, she was about to be sorely disappointed. I could barely make toast.
“Doing as you’re told.”
“Right, of course.”
She nodded. “I’ll let you unpack. I have work to do.”
And she was gone, closing the door to my new jail cell behind her. I sat on the bed, which creaked. No radio. No books. And while I was sure she had both downstairs, I wasn’t allowed to touch anything.
“Daniel Schwartz was not worth this,” I said to myself. Then I stood up and pulled the key from my purse and opened my trunk.
As I went to put away my underthings, a piece of paper in the back of a drawer caught my eye. After glancing over my shoulder to make sure this wasn’t a test and that Ada wasn’t watching me from some portrait on the wall with eyeholes cut in it, I removed the page. But it wasn’t paper—it was a photograph. Two women stood on a boardwalk, Atlantic City’s Steel Pier behind them. The younger had her arm around the elder and was planting a kiss on her cheek. The elder was clearly Ada, younger, her hair darker, but vibrant and smiling, an arm raised in the air in a celebratory pose. And the younger—I squinted. It was hard to tell from the profile, but I was pretty sure the younger was my mother. I flipped the photograph over and sure enough, in my mother’s script were the words “Rose and Ada, August 1932.”
I looked to the door again. Did she put this here on purpose? Or was my mother the last person to stay in this room? Turning back to the image, I studied it more closely, spinning a story in my head about the circumstances that could have led to her arriving in this room. And how on earth did she look so happy with Ada? Had the fun been sucked out of my great-aunt in the preceding twenty-eight years by age or some tragedy?
No, Mama said Ada was strict. So none of it made sense. And my mother would have been nineteen when the photograph was taken. A year before she married my father. Three years before Harold was born. Did Ada arrange their marriage?
I left the clothes on top of the dresser and dug through my trunk for pen and paper. There was a small chair at the dressing table, and I sat down, already composing the letter.
Mama,
Why didn’t you tell me why you spent a summer here? What did you do? Was it scandalous?
I stared at the page. She would never answer that question, especially not in writing. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t ask it.
Ada is strict, as you said. And she’s said I’m not to borrow any of her things—can you send my radio and some books? I’m afraid I’ll die of boredom otherwise. And while Daddy might be okay with that, I know you’ll take pity on your only daughter.
Love,
Marilyn
PS: She stole my lipstick! Would you please run into Saks and get me another? I’m not sure they actually have real stores here . . .
I folded the monogrammed paper and slipped it into the matching envelope, licked and sealed it, scribbled the address, and placed a stamp in the corner. But then I realized I didn’t know the address here. So, being flippant, I wrote my name in the return address corner, and under it, “Ada’s house of horrors.”
Then I returned to unpacking.
CHAPTER SIX
Dinner was less the quiet affair than I imagined, Ada peppering me with so many questions that I was hardly able to take a bite before I needed to answer the next one. Though the food was excellent because she employed a cook. But she wanted to know absolutely everything from my dress size to my favorite books to what happened with Daniel.
And much to my surprise, when I told her what I’d said as my father dragged me out of the sanctuary, she laughed. “No, I don’t suppose Walter would have handled that well at all. Though how your mother managed to keep a straight face, I will never know.”
“Why did my mother come stay here?”
She waved a hand at me. “That’s her story to tell, not mine. I don’t meddle.”
“You’re a matchmaker. Isn’t that professional meddling?”
That elicited a small smile. “I didn’t matchmake her. She found that fuddy-duddy all on her own.” She leveled a gaze at me. “But apparently you can’t breed out exuberance.”
I tried to imagine the word exuberance being used to describe my mother. Sure, she was more fun than my father, but exuberant? Then again, she certainly looked so in the picture in my room.
But Ada wasn’t done. “And you refused to marry the boy?”
“It’s not the Dark Ages. And it wasn’t like I was going to—” I stopped myself. If my mother had fainted at me saying I wasn’t pregnant, I didn’t want to kill Ada.
“Find yourself in a fix,” she finished. “No, I agree.”
“You do?” She nodded. “Mama fainted when I said that in front of the rabbi.”
Ada threw her head back in a deep belly laugh. “Oh my goodness. Yes, we have our hands full, don’t we?” She pushed her plate away and blotted at her mouth delicately with her napkin. “Go get ready for our walk. I think you’ll be good at this part of the business.”
“Business?”
She winked at me.
I didn’t think I needed to get ready specifically, but Ada rejected my first three outfits. “Aren’t we just going for a walk?”
“A working walk.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
She pulled a dress from the armoire and held it out at me, closing one eye. “This one.”
“Can I have my lipstick back?”
“No.” And with that, she left the room so I could change.
Once I was dressed suitably enough for a walk down Fifth Avenue back home, Ada adjusted my hair and neckline.
“You’re not trying to fix me up with someone, are you?” I asked warily.
“You?” She laughed. “Goodness no. You’d be the end of my business.”
“Then what—?”
“Come on. Let’s see how good you are.”