Lady in the Lake(67)

Maddie wasn’t having it. She set her jaw, squared her shoulders, and marched up to the lovely house with the stained glass features and rang the doorbell.





The Wife





The Wife



When I glimpse that white woman standing on my porch, bold as brass, I wish for the first time that I had listened to Ezekiel when he suggested we have servants. Of course, we have help—a young girl (not too young), who comes once a week to do the heavy cleaning—but Ezekiel took the notion a few years back that we should have live-in staff. At least, that’s how it was presented to me.

I had come downstairs one day to find him at the kitchen table with a young couple, a husband and wife (or so they said, or so I thought, they could have been a brother and a sister, I suppose). They were country and fresh off the bus. I could smell the farm life on them, they had probably done their chores before leaving that morning. They were running away from something, I was sure of that.

But Ezekiel, who always took an interest in young people because, he said, we had not been blessed with children of our own, had seen them at that horrible coffee shop near the Greyhound station and brought them into our home. At least he had the good sense not to let them track up our rugs, to bring them through the back door and into the kitchen.

“This is Douglas Frederick,” he said, “and Claudia Frederick. They’re from Dorchester County.” Notice he did not tell me why they shared a surname. So they could have been husband and wife or brother and sister. “They have gotten themselves in a spot of trouble, through no fault of their own, and they felt it was better to leave Cambridge.”

“Hmmmm” was all I said, but I knew what was going on in Cambridge in the summer of 1963.

“Family reasons,” the man put in. He was slick, I saw that right away, but he wasn’t as slick as he thought he was, he was never going to be slick enough to get by Ezekiel Taylor. He had mistaken my husband’s kindness for weakness, whereas the truth about Ezekiel was that he could afford to be kind because he had no weaknesses at all. Well, just the one. It’s in his blood, he can’t help it. When a thing is in your blood, what can you do?

The girl didn’t say anything. She looked as if she were used to menfolk speaking for her, around her, about her. She had pale eyes. Not blue, not green, not hazel. Just pale. If I had to put a color to it, I’d say yellow, as faint as yellow can be, the color of urine when you’re healthy.

Ezekiel picked up the conversational reins. Some men, when they’re trying to get something past you, they talk fast. Not my Ezekiel. He slowed down, let his words roll along, meandering like a stream as if they had no particular place to go. But a stream is busy, a stream has purpose. A stream is full of life and agendas, many of them in conflict. It’s a microcosm, a world. In a stream, there is life and death.

“So I see these two, looking overwhelmed, studying the menu, two little rabbits, counting their money, not enough to buy a decent breakfast between the two of them, he was feeding her bites from his plate, and I thought—we could use a couple around the house to help us out.”

A couple of what? I was thinking.

“A handyman and a live-in girl to do the cooking and the cleaning.”

“I’m a good cook, Ezekiel,” I said. “You like my cooking.”

“I love your cooking, sweetheart. I still want my breakfast to come from your hands, no one else’s, but wouldn’t it free you up if you didn’t have to be the one putting dinner on the table every night?”

Free me up to do what? Free him up to do what?

He can read my mind, my husband, always could. He said: “More time for your church activities and whatever you want to do. I just want to give you the best life I can, Hazel. Let me do this for you.”

The girl was looking down at her lap, where her hands twisted like two squirming animals, something newborn and blind, helpless. They were hard-looking hands, dry and cracked, but they weren’t hardworking hands. I can tell the difference. I was country, too, once upon a time, but it was so long ago people tend to forget, even Ezekiel. He forgets that I was young and sweet and slender, with a downcast gaze and a laughably homemade dress, and that he had never wanted anyone like he wanted me. So he got me. Ezekiel Taylor tends to get what he wants.

But not this time, I decided that day. Not under my roof. I had to draw a line. So I said no to Douglas and Claudia. That was three years ago and I hadn’t given them a thought until I saw that white lady on my front steps and wished I had someone who could answer the door for me and say, “Go away, Mrs. Taylor is resting now.”

I can just not answer the door, I think. No one can make me open my own door. But if I can see her aspect through the lace curtain, she can see mine. Maybe, I think, she’s selling cosmetics. And, like a child, I believe my own wishful thought the moment I express it and by the time I open the door I am surprised that this woman does not have a valise. Ding-dong, Avon calling. Not a lot of Avon women are working Reservoir Hill these days.

“I’m Madeline Schwartz,” she says, bright as a new penny. She’s in her late thirties, a little older than she looked through my etched glass. I’m in my fifties, but I appear much younger than my years. I can pass for my forties, easily. But it was never about being young. Like I said, it’s in his blood.

“Yes?” I don’t tell her my name. If you’re standing on my doorstep, I assume you know who I am, where I stand.