The Hired Girl(116)

“Brava, Miss Lovelace,” said Mr. Rosenbach, and I remembered David telling me that Brava is what you say when a female singer is good. I felt my cheeks grow warm with pleasure.

Mrs. Rosenbach regarded me with surprise and — dare I write it? — respect. She hadn’t thought I could guess the riddle, but I had. It made me feel a lot better, and not so ashamed.

I stood up and excused myself. Then I went upstairs and packed my things. Being a slain buffalo hasn’t done my suitcase much good.

It wasn’t far to the Marlborough apartments — only about a fifteen-minute walk. The building has a mechanical elevator, with a little page boy to run it. I’ve never gone up in an elevator before. I’d thought it would be thrilling, but it was jerky and slow.

When Mrs. Friedhoff unlocked the apartment door, Oskar ran to her and hugged her. Then he threw his arms around me. Moonstone sidled into the room, her eyes bright with curiosity. I wanted to pick her up, but I didn’t — Thomashefsky has taught me discretion. She’s not a kitten anymore; she’s tall and rangy, and her eyes are gold instead of blue.

Oskar wanted me to play with him, but I said no, I couldn’t, not when the apartment was such a mess. His blocks and toys were scattered throughout the apartment. Mrs. Friedhoff told him to gather every single block and make the tallest tower he could. That was a good idea, because it kept him out from underfoot, though of course I had to stop work every so often to admire the tower.

I rolled up my sleeves and set to work. It made me mad, how messy those rooms were. If I could afford to live in a beautiful place like that, with everything new and handsome and fashionable, I’d keep things nice. Some of the furniture had been dusted in a no-account sort of way, but the lamp shades and picture frames were furry with dust, and the baseboards were filthy. The bookcases had books all jumbled and slanty-wise. In the bathroom, there was a greasy brown ring around the tub, and the space between the toilet and the wall was nasty. That bathroom wasn’t fit for a good Jewish home, especially during the High Holy Days. I have pure contempt for the last girl who worked here.

I dusted and wiped and straightened and scoured. Mrs. Friedhoff watched me with something like awe. Supper was good, but the Irish girl, Kitty, is careless about kashrut. (She isn’t really a girl; she’s thirty.) She mixes the dish towels and lets the dishes sit in the wrong dish drainer. Kitty whispered to me that what Mrs. Friedhoff doesn’t know won’t hurt her. But her kitchen was spotless, which surprised me, because I’d always heard the Irish were dirty.

After supper, Mrs. Friedhoff put Oskar and Irma to bed. To my surprise, she put on an apron and cleaned with me, side by side. By the time we finished, it was half past ten, and the rooms looked lovely. Mrs. Friedhoff thanked me and said I should go to bed, because she was sure I must be tired.

I’m not that tired. I feel jittery, because I don’t know when I’ll see David again. I wonder if I still have Tuesday afternoon off. I could write to David and ask him to meet me in the park, except Malka takes in the mail, and she might recognize my handwriting, and if she did, she’d open my letter.

And what if David never came?



Monday, September the twenty-fifth, 1911

Today was an awful day. The Friedhoffs came — Anna’s in-laws, I mean: two pursy-lipped, patronizing old biddies. Of course they patronized me, because I’m the hired girl, but they were horrid to Anna as well. They said that Irma looked sickly and told Anna she’d never raise her. Mrs. Friedhoff (the old biddy, not Anna) asked if the beds had been aired properly, and Miss Plaut (the sister) complained about cat hairs on the sofa. Both of them believe that cats are unhygienic, and that Moonstone will suck Irma’s breath.

It rained all day. I couldn’t take Oskar out, and keeping him amused took every ounce of patience I possess. I felt sorry for him, because the Friedhoff ladies insist on kissing him, and Oskar doesn’t like kissing. But he had promised his mother to be good, so he screwed up his elderly little face in a paroxysm of disgust (I think that is a very well-turned phrase) and let them peck at him.

I’ve had hardly a moment to think, but when I do think, I think of David, who is an easy walk away from this apartment and might as well be in China. More and more, I think I was sent here because Mr. and Mrs. Rosenbach want to tear us asunder. I keep thinking about a framed engraving Miss Chandler had on the wall of her little parlor. It was a colored picture of Mariana in the Moated Grange, who is a lovesick lady in Shakespeare. Lord Tennyson wrote a poem about Mariana, who is always wailing, “I am aweary, aweary! I would that I were dead!” I never had much sympathy for Mariana in the Moated Grange because the Moated Grange looks very luxurious in the engraving, and I thought it compared favorably to Steeple Farm. But now that I am marooned in the Marlborough apartment building, I see how little surroundings matter when one is lovesick. My mind is fixed on one object, drawing all its flavors, both bitter and sweet, from the thought of my beloved.