The Forgotten Room(8)
Lucy held carefully to the banister as she picked her way down the steep, narrow stairs. Aside from the matter of her birth, she was as respectable as they came. She had no beaux; the boys back home found her too hoity-toity.
If by hoity-toity they meant that she wanted something other than to bear their children, to live from payday to payday, to pretend she didn’t smell the beer on their breath or know what went on in the pool hall down the street, well, then, yes, she was hoity-toity. And she wasn’t ashamed to admit it.
“Fortunately for me,” she said. “When may I move in?”
“The room is available for immediate occupancy.” Matron led Lucy out of the servants’ stair on the fifth floor, to the grand circular stair that spiraled through the main floors.
Lucy could feel her lungs expanding here, in the quiet of marble and polish, with the sun casting multicolored flecks of light through the stained glass dome high above. Off the staircase hall, heavy oaken doors led to grand bedrooms, bedrooms with high ceilings and long, sashed windows, nothing like the little cubby upstairs for which she was to have the privilege of handing over more than half her weekly pay packet.
But it was done. She was in. Where she slept was immaterial. What mattered was that she was here.
A little voice in the back of her head whispered that this was folly, that there was nothing she could hope to learn here, but Lucy silenced it. She had come too far down this particular path to turn back now. Her belongings, such as they were, were contained in an ancient carpetbag and a cardboard box in her friend Sylvia’s apartment. She had given up her job of four years at Sterling Bates and the prospect of advancement for a junior position at Cromwell, Polk and Moore.
Cromwell, Polk and Moore, among other, larger accounts, handled the affairs of the Pratt family.
They liked to keep the family in the family, did the Pratts. The junior partner in charge of the Pratt estate was the stepson of the notorious Prunella Pratt—the last remaining member of the once-thriving Pratt family.
The last remaining acknowledged member.
“My parlor is down that hall,” said Matron, and Lucy nodded obediently, turning her head in the indicated direction.
And stopped.
There was a terra-cotta bas-relief set into the wall. Against a stylized background, a dragon cowered at the feet of a knight on a plunging charger.
Not just any knight. Her knight.
Her dragon.
“Excuse me,” Lucy said, and had to clear her throat to get the words out. “But what is that on the wall?”
“Oh, that?” Matron looked at the mural incuriously, and Lucy wondered how she hadn’t realized that the temperature in the hallway had dropped at least thirty degrees, the world frozen around them. “I believe it is Saint George. The Pratts appear to have been rather fond of him. He appears in various forms throughout the building.”
Lucy made a noncommittal reply.
She remembered, very long ago, her father praising her mother’s painting. Her father had always praised her mother, her elegance, her grace, her cleverness, perpetually in awe that she had chosen him, married him.
To say that her mother had tolerated his praise was too harsh, too unkind. It was more that she deflected it, gently and kindly.
It was the day her mother had finished the mural in Lucy’s room. Lucy’s father had been loud in his admiration, but Lucy’s mother had only shaken her head, raising her hands as if to ward off further plaudits.
I am no artist, she had said ruefully. I can only copy. Mine is a very secondhand sort of talent. Not like—
She had stopped, abruptly, like a clock with a broken spring.
Lucy’s father had swung Lucy up in his arms and swept her away to make bun men from bits of dough, and the conversation had been forgotten.
Until now.
“Miss Young?” Matron was regarding her with concern.
“I can bring my things tonight,” Lucy said brusquely. “I get off work at five, although sometimes they need me later. Will that be acceptable?”
“Just let me get you your key,” said Matron, and Lucy followed her down the winding marble stairs, past a long drawing room with an elaborate, gilded ceiling, and dark paneled walls that seemed cool even in the heat of the summer day.
In the middle of the day, all the tenants were at work. The stairwell was still and quiet; the woodwork smelled of beeswax and lemon oil. If Lucy closed her eyes, she could imagine that the house was as it had been twenty-eight years ago.
When her mother had been here.
“I will need a deposit,” said Matron matter-of-factly, and Lucy dug quickly in her purse.
“How much?” she asked, hoping it wouldn’t be more than she had.
“Two weeks’ rent is standard,” said Matron, and Lucy counted out the crumpled bills, grateful that she was frugal about lunches and dinners and streetcar rides.
The front hall, once so grand, was marred by the addition of hastily constructed cubbies on one side, each marked with the name of a resident. On the other was a curious sort of concierge booth.
Lifting the hinged counter, Matron ducked behind it. Unlocking a tin cash box, she put Lucy’s hard-earned money inside.
“Room 603,” said Matron, and made a note on a piece of paper. “Miss Lucy Young.” Reaching beneath the desk, she drew out a key, frowning through her spectacles at the little tag attached to one end. “Your key, Miss Young.”