Ada was—I didn’t know how to describe her. But she was an excellent character study. Who was she? How did she get such a large house? Did matchmaking pay that well? Yes, it was a duplex, but so were all the houses in this neighborhood. Why was she so secretive about the upstairs rooms? And why hadn’t she ever married?
While I was curious to learn the real answers, I was also just as quick to make up my own backstory. When I finally stopped to flex my hand, my watch showed that an hour had passed.
I closed the notebook and yawned. I had woken up in New York but would be going to sleep in an entirely different world. And if Ada’s rock-throwing skills were any indication of what was to come, the following day would be another unexpected adventure.
Stifling another yawn, I pulled my toiletries bag from the dresser and went to wash my face and brush my teeth.
At home, I always awoke to the smells of coffee and breakfast being made, the sun peeking through my curtains. The never-ending sounds of the city outside my window.
In Philadelphia, I awoke to a fully dressed and girdled Ada throwing my bedroom door open and telling me I couldn’t sleep all day.
“Clients start arriving at nine sharp,” she said. “Get dressed. Breakfast is on the table.”
“What time is it now?” I asked. The bed was too soft, but that didn’t mean I was ready to leave it.
“Seven thirty.”
“I don’t need breakfast,” I murmured, rolling over to clasp the pillow.
But she pulled the covers off me. “I don’t tolerate tardiness. Get up. Now.”
Glaring at her, I sat up and swung my feet off the bed onto the floor. “I’m going.”
She tapped her foot impatiently until I stood.
An hour and a half later, I was seated in a hard-backed chair in the corner of Ada’s “office,” which was really another sitting room, minus the television of her actual sitting room, while Ada sat across from a mother and daughter, who perched on the edge of their seats with such ramrod-straight posture that I worried they would break in two if they tried to sit farther back.
A notepad was on my lap—Ada had told me my job would be to take notes on the girl’s qualities and concerns. Apparently it was also my job to fetch coffee and the platter of pastries that Ada’s cook had prepared. All of which sat untouched on the coffee table, despite her chastising me in front of the guests for not knowing to bring them.
“So, Stella,” Ada began. “Tell me about yourself.”
Stella opened her mouth to speak, but her mother cut her off. “She’s a good girl. She just needs a husband already.”
“And we will take care of that,” Ada said smoothly. “But I want to hear from Stella herself. What are your hobbies?”
“Hobbies?” Stella squeaked.
“Yes, darling, what do you do for fun?”
“We don’t encourage frivolous pursuits for the girls,” the mother said. “She cooks, she cleans, she sews, and she can play bridge.”
Ada pulled out a gold cigarette case and offered one to the mother, who shook her head. Ada selected one for herself and lit it from a matching lighter, taking a long pull before responding. It was my only sign that she was annoyed, and had I not been so carefully observing her, I wouldn’t have noticed.
“What sort of books do you read? Magazines? Television shows?”
Stella again opened her mouth, but her mother began talking. Ada stopped her. “Mrs. Edelman, with all due respect, I’m not looking for a husband for you. Let the girl speak.”
Mrs. Edelman’s mouth snapped shut. But she strangely didn’t look offended.
“We don’t have a television,” Stella said quietly. “I liked the movie Pillow Talk.”
Ada grinned. “Rock Hudson. Now we’re getting somewhere.” Stella smiled back shyly.
After they left, Ada turned to me. “Let’s see those notes.” I handed her my notepad. “You don’t know shorthand, I see.”
“Why would I?”
She ignored me as she read through what I had written. “You’re right that Mrs. Edelman will be a nightmare of a mother-in-law. We’re better off finding either someone with an equally awful mother or someone without a mother at all.” She continued reading. “Now that’s not fair. Stella will make a lovely wife for the right partner. Did you see that smile when she talked about movies? She just needs to get out from under her mother. No domineering men for her. Someone quiet who will let her blossom is who she needs.”
“You got that from talking about Doris Day and Rock Hudson?”
She turned her head to look at me from the corner of her eye. “Yes. You, for example, need someone who will stand up to you. You’ll never respect anyone who caves too easily. And you’ll bulldoze over anyone who gets in your way.”
“Explains why you never got married, then,” I said, unable to stop myself.
Ada smiled. “We know our own kind. The next client will be here in five minutes. Don’t make me ask for the coffee this time.”
Four more mother-daughter pairings came in and two mothers dragging sons, with a break for lunch before the final two customers. The heavy female-to-male ratio explained why she had me soliciting young men.
Then, after the final set, Ada turned to me. “You can take the afternoon off.”
I wanted to ask, “To do what?” But the reality was that I didn’t care what as long as I wasn’t sitting in that chair listening to people who couldn’t wait to get married. I was, however, curious how her method worked.
“What do you do now?”
“Find them matches.”
“But how do you do that?”
She wagged a finger at me. “I don’t share my techniques, and I don’t need competition. Go. You’re dismissed.”
After climbing the stairs to freshen up before going out to explore my new city, I paused at the end of the hall. She had said the other bedrooms were off limits, but she never said I couldn’t look around the rest of the house. With a backward glance over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t being observed, I ascended the second set of stairs.
I was right about the third floor having been intended as servants’ quarters, but the rooms seemed to be primarily storage. I peeked in a box and found an extremely old collodion photograph of a man and a woman in wedding regalia. I knew that one. It was my mother’s grandparents—she kept a framed copy on her dresser. But a peek below that one showed a whole stack of family photos from the late 1800s.
There was a noise below me, and I quickly replaced the lid. But I would be back up here. I knew that much. There were more boxes labeled “photographs,” along with discarded furniture, luggage, and several armoires. I peeked inside the armoire closest to the stairs, hoping for flapper dresses. But if Ada was seventy-five, that would mean she was born in 1885 and in her thirties when Zelda Fitzgerald was hopping into fountains. Too old for the costume wear I wanted.
Then again, with that bleached hair . . . But no. That particular armoire held an impressive collection of fur coats, capes, and stoles.