by Anita Shreve
“Yes, it was.” Grace clears her throat. “I’m wondering if you’ll buy the bracelet back.”
“It’s not our policy.”
He puts a loupe on his eye and examines the bracelet. “It’s got some denting here—gold is soft—and a residue of some substance encircling one of the diamonds.” Pink gin, Grace thinks. “You understand I can’t give you the price Mrs. Holland paid for it. It’s secondhand now, and there’s not a lot of demand for diamond bracelets these days, with most people around here barely coping. But still, I have quite a clientele.”
I’ll bet you have, Grace thinks.
“Do you have any identification?” the man asks. “How do I know you’re not a maid who stole the bracelet or waited for Merle to die before stealing it?”
“I’m not a maid. I’m the mother of Merle’s two grandchildren. My birth and marriage certificates burned in the fire.”
According to the appraisal, the bracelet cost eleven hundred dollars, a staggering sum of money.
“I can’t give you more than seven-fifty for it.”
Grace nods, unable to speak, the sum he’s named staggering in itself.
“I don’t carry that sort of money in the shop,” he explains. “I’ll have to go to the bank. Are you all right with meeting me back here, say, at one o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s a deal. Take your bracelet—here, let’s get a box for it.”
Grace leaves the shop in silence.
—
She has almost two hours to wait. Will the jeweler call the police and have her checked out? Will the police tell him that Gene is missing? Or will Jensen reveal to her, when she goes back into the shop, that the value of the bracelet has dropped to seven hundred dollars? What good would it do her to point out that they already had a deal? She would take the seven hundred, of course she would. She must find a restaurant and settle in for a long lunch, even though she has only seventy cents in her purse. Bus fare home, a twenty-five-cent lunch, and twenty cents to spare. She will pick up apples for the children.
Noting the blue plate special, three courses for a quarter, Grace decides to order that and make each course last. She starts with a cup of tea, moves on to tomato-cheddar soup, picks at a bacon and lettuce sandwich, and has Grape-Nut pudding for dessert, followed by a cup of coffee, over which she lingers.
—
The jeweler has the money in a fat envelope. He counts it out for her in tens and twenties and the occasional fifty. He asks her if she would like to count it, too, but she responds that it won’t be necessary. She receives the envelope into her hands.
—
The worn leather handbag she borrowed from her mother (who in turn had borrowed it from Gladys) glows with the envelope of money inside. She holds the purse to her chest, afraid that someone might snatch it. When she gets home, she’ll put the envelope at the back of the closet in a hatbox and remove money only when absolutely necessary.
She’ll find a job. With her first paycheck, she’ll fill the pantry, buy clothes for the children, and pay the utility bills that have been accumulating in a basket in the kitchen. With her second, she’ll dip into the hatbox and buy a used car. She’ll say she bought it on time with her paycheck. She hopes her mother knows little about financing or the price of cars.
—
The following morning, Grace enters the doctor’s clinic to ask about work and finds a full waiting room with no one at the desk. She walks beyond the desk and into the corridor of rooms and discovers Amy in the first room, taking a child’s temperature, the mother eyeing her watch. Grace doesn’t want to intrude, but she remains a second longer. Amy turns to shake down the thermometer and nearly shouts, “Grace.”
Grace steps away from the door to wait for Amy to be free.
“Are you okay? What are you doing here?” Amy asks.
“I’ve come looking for work.”
“Barbara never came back; she fractured her hip and elbow.”
Grace asks where Dr. Lighthart is.
“He’s in the back.”
Grace waits. She sees Dr. Lighthart darting across the corridor, and several times Amy comes back with a patient, ignoring Grace.
“Hello,” Dr. Lighthart says, slightly out of breath. “I’ve often wondered about you. Amy told me you were here and wanted work.”
“I do.”
“How’s your daughter?”
“Fit and healthy, thank you.”
“Can you start now?”
“Yes,” she says, “I can.”
“The front desk is a mess. Do you think you could sort through the piles of paper and put them in order and label them so that I could take a quick look after work?”
“I will.”
“Good.”
He disappears as suddenly as he came. Grace finds Amy and asks if she knows the order of patients and who came in first. Amy shakes her head and replies, “If you can, practice some triage. If a person looks as though he or she is deathly ill, I’ll take those first. And any child with a high temperature.”
Grace swallows.
—
In the waiting room, Grace asks the crowd a simple question. “Do you know who got here first?” There’s a moment of silence, and a woman points across the room. “That man there.”
“Okay, I’m going to go around the room in the order you all think is first-come, first-serve. Just tell me your name and how you feel.”
In the next few minutes, Grace crisscrosses the room, writing down names and symptoms on the back of a telephone bill. With a frightening uncertainty, she develops her own triage, putting some names at the top of the list.
“Are you in labor?” she asks a woman with splayed legs.
“Not yet, miss, but this is my sixth, and I can tell something isn’t right.”
The woman should be in a hospital. Grace puts her at the head of the line. When Amy appears in the doorway, Grace gives her the list. Amy calls the name of the pregnant woman, who can barely walk across the floor.
Grace sits at the desk, and tries to look official in the gray suit her mother remade to fit her. She finds a clean piece of paper on which she can write the names of the newcomers to the clinic when they come in. After that, she stacks all of the papers that were already on the desk into a large pile. She whisks off all of the coins and dollar bills and puts them into the top right-hand drawer. When the rest of the desk is clean, she lifts a handful of material and sorts by dates, the most recent first: bills in one pile, checks in another, Dr. Lighthart’s notes, letters from patients, medical reading material, official forms. She opens every envelope, reasoning that she can’t complete her job without doing so. She tries, when she scans a letter, to ascertain which pile it belongs to without reading all of the details. She’s invading privacy, she knows, and she doesn’t want to pry. As she works, individuals enter the waiting room and walk to the desk, where she records their names and symptoms. Amy and the doctor will be working nonstop for hours.
When Grace is finished with the sorting, she hustles to the kitchen to find plates to lay on each of the piles so that they won’t blow about when someone opens the door. She writes notes identifying the piles, and tapes them to the plates. The scheme looks unprofessional at best, but it’s all she has to work with. When finished with the top of the desk, she begins to search through the drawers. There are five, two on either side of her skirt, a horizontal one in front of her. One drawer is so stuffed with material, Grace can’t, without a knife, get it open.
—
Amy says, “You missed your lunch.”
“I lost track of the time.”
“You could eat now; you seem to have the room in hand.”
“If you’re sure,” Grace says, standing.
—
She takes her paper bag with her peanut butter sandwich to the kitchen at the back of the building. When she enters, she can see that Dr. Lighthart is asleep at a table in a darkened corner, his head on top of his ar
ms. She steps outside the kitchen to unwrap the waxed paper so that she won’t wake him. She doesn’t dare pour herself a glass of water.
Already the sun is lowering, setting the tall barren trees outside the window alight with an orange color she has loved all her life. She checks her watch. Three-fifteen. She has no idea when she should leave. A six o’clock bus will take her back to the coast road.
Though she has been as silent as possible, Dr. Lighthart slowly lifts his head, stretches, and stands. It’s only then that he notices her by the window. Grace moves toward the sink to pour herself a glass of water.
“Amy says you’re a lifesaver.”
“She exaggerates.”
“Amy? Never. Comes from an old Yankee family.”
“Do you want me to work here on a permanent basis?”
“Yes,” the doctor says.
She doesn’t dare ask about a salary. “My hours would be…?”
“Let’s try for nine to five, though it might go over a bit.”
“My bus leaves at six.”
“Leave in ample time to catch it. I paid Barbara thirty-five dollars a week. Will that suit for now? We can always revisit the subject.”
“That will be just fine,” she says.
His dark eyes fix on hers. “Did your husband return?”
“He hasn’t come back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says.
—
On her way home from her fourth day of work, Grace falls asleep on the bus and has to be woken by the driver. When she drags herself up the hill and into the house, her mother and children are in the kitchen with dinner on the table. They look at her as if they might not recognize her. Claire comes around the table and hugs Grace’s knees.
“What happened?” her mother asks.
“Nothing. The hours have caught up with me. It’s a long day, eight to seven.”
“I gave Claire a snack at four today so that she could hold out for dinner, but I’m keeping Tom on his regular schedule.”
Grace nods and sits in her chair without removing her coat.
“Which means,” says her mother, “that he has to go to bed in half an hour.”
“I’m so grateful,” Grace manages before she starts to cry.
“Now, now. Let’s just get some food into that scrawny body.”
—
Grace puts the files in the oak cabinet in order. Often she’s interrupted by patients, some of whom understand their symptoms, while others just admit to feeling lousy. Occasionally, a woman will enter with a fairly accurate diagnosis, which she recites in great detail. These are the women who have had experience nursing family members, Grace guesses. She makes notes, sometimes resorting to an agreed-upon shorthand of five phrases that both Amy and Dr. Lighthart understand. Almost always, Grace can locate the proper file. She attaches her notes to the first page inside the file, and hands it to Amy when she comes to the door.
“We’re going to need more files,” Grace tells the nurse.
“There’s a fund for petty cash in Dr. Lighthart’s office. You can get what you need there.”
When Grace first opened the door of the cabinet behind the desk that contained supplies, there was so much disarray she wasn’t even sure what the cabinet was for. After sorting, she makes a list of necessary items: envelopes for sending out bills, a roll of stamps, paper clips, several new pens, a new ream of paper, and a new ribbon for the typewriter. Finishing that task, she sits before her clean desk. She enjoys her little fiefdom, though she has arranged everything so that Dr. Lighthart and Amy can find what they need without trouble. Grace has become, in five days, adept at diagnosing illnesses. She can spot a patient with pneumonia almost as soon as he or she enters the waiting room: a certain hunching forward, as if protecting the lungs, the awful coughing, and the mouth hanging open, making it easier to breathe. She guesses the children with fevers by their glassy eyes and general listlessness. The pregnant women, even if they aren’t showing, are also readily identifiable: they almost always have hands on their abdomens.
At five o’clock, Grace makes her way into Dr. Lighthart’s office before she realizes she has no idea where the petty cash is kept. Nor can she just take the money without asking the doctor, whom she can’t find at the moment. She lingers at his desk, noting photographs at the edge. One of the doctor with a beautiful blond woman, both on skis, each wearing ski pants and a thick sweater, catches her eye. It must be a girlfriend, she guesses, since the two look nothing alike. Their smiles are exhilarating, their faces flushed.
“You’ve come for your paycheck,” Dr. Lighthart announces as he enters the room.
Grace senses a blush rising from her throat to her face.
“Actually, no,” she says. “I came in to ask for money from the petty cash box to buy supplies. Amy mentioned one, but I didn’t want to look without asking you first.”
He opens the right-hand drawer of his desk, which reveals a familiar sight: papers having been stuffed into it over a long period of time.
“I keep the cash at the bottom in a tobacco tin. There’s not enough in here to tempt a thief. I worry more about the drugs.”
He means the contents of a cabinet, hidden within a tall kitchen cabinet, which can be opened only with a key.
“Well, let’s see,” he says. “I have at least five dollars here. Will that do?”
“I should hope so.”
“I took a look at what you’ve done out front,” he says, searching underneath a pile of papers on his desk. “I’m extremely impressed. How long has it been since your last job?”
She folds her hands. “I’ve never had a job.”
“Really?” he asks, much surprised and looking up at her. His hair needs a comb. “You’ve taken to it like a, well…”
“Duck to water,” she finishes. “I was ready for a challenge.”
“You mean surviving a fire, taking care of your children, and trying to find housing wasn’t challenge enough?”
“Mental challenge was what I meant.”
“I know I have my checkbook here,” he mumbles, frustrated.
Grace can see the checkbook near the edge of the desk in front of her. Ought she point it out? Will she seem too eager to be paid? But what’s the sense of not seeing what’s right in front of her?
She slips it off the surface of the desk. “Is this it?”
She watches while he begins to write out her check, the first she has ever received. But then he stops. “Do you have a bank account?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, let me know when you do,” he says, ripping up the check. He reaches into his pants pocket and removes a large wad of cash. He counts out thirty-five dollars. She feels awkward taking the stack of money from his hand.
“I was wondering,” she says, making a sweeping motion over his desk, “if you’d like me to tidy up your desk and your office. If there are things here that are personal, please say, and of course, I won’t go near them. But I can see from here that there are papers that need to be filed.”
He examines the mound. “I can’t think of anything in here too personal. Did you read the patients’ files?”
“No,” she answers, “no more than their names and addresses really.”
“I want you to. The information doesn’t leave this building, but you should have an idea of the patients’ medical history. Also, if they’ve come from somewhere else and are first-time patients here, please make sure you have the name and phone number of the physician they used to see. Though you’d be surprised how many of them have never been to a doctor. The women have, usually, but not the men.”
Grace nods. “I’d better go. I have to get those supplies.”
“You won’t be able to get them now,” he notes, checking his watch. “Nor before you come in on Monday. Do you know how to drive?”
“I do,” she says, “but I don’t yet have a driver’s license.”
He smiles. His teeth are white. Only children, in her
experience, have such white teeth. “I’ll send you out on Monday morning in my car. You can get the supplies and your license in the same trip.”
“And open a bank account,” she adds.
Dear Rosie,
I’m guessing by now that you know that we survived the fire, that Gene didn’t come back, and that I lost the baby I was carrying. It was born dead, which was a great sadness to me, but I’m determined not to write about sorrow in this letter. I’ve had enough of it. The good news is that my mother and I and Claire and Tom have moved into Merle Holland’s big house on the water, ending our homeless period. There was a fellow squatting in the house when we got here, though that’s not a fair thing to say. He inhabited the house. Seeking shelter from the fire, he saw a piano in the upstairs turret and headed for it. When I entered the house for the first time, I heard music and discovered that the man was on the second floor playing the piano. He left us when he learned that he had an audition with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. We haven’t seen him since, so I gather he got the job.
My other news is that Claire came down with scarlet fever, and as a result, I drove her (yes, Rosie! I can drive a car!) to a clinic, where there was a doctor who successfully diagnosed her and cured her. After the pianist left, and it became clear that if I didn’t find work our little family would starve, I went back to the clinic and asked for a job as the receptionist. The place was busy when I entered, and they hired me. There’s a thing going around here that’s a form of pneumonia, due to smoke and ash inhalation during the fire. It’s pretty serious, so I thought I might mention it in case Tim shows any signs—a bad cough, listlessness, loss of appetite. But since I can’t imagine Tim not eating, I’m pretty sure he’ll never get it.
Oh, Rosie, my life has changed so much in three months, you would hardly recognize it as the life I had with you. I work, my mother takes care of the kids, we live in what you and I would have called a mansion. I’ve met new people—well, a few—and I feel different. I wish I could explain in depth what I mean, but that wouldn’t be something a woman could put in writing, if you catch my drift. I hope I haven’t shocked you.
One benefit of living in Merle’s house (me in Merle’s house—can you imagine? She’d be spitting out the nails of her coffin!) is that if Gene does make it back, he might search for us here. Worse, as far as Merle is concerned, is that I have raided her closet. Rosie, you would have shrieked if you’d seen it! It’s filled with very expensive dresses, fifty at least, and five fur coats. I wear her mink hat all the time. I can’t imagine where she wore all those clothes to. I certainly never saw them, but of course when she was coming to our house or we there, which hardly ever happened, she always wore something plain. I imagine she thought herself slumming or that one of the kids would spit up on her. I never liked the woman, and she certainly never liked me, but I admit I felt like a thief raiding her closet. I feel less so now because I really do need the clothes. My mother sews and knits all her free hours, but she loves doing it, so I don’t try to stop her. One night this week I came home and saw the children in a dress and in overalls made from a navy corduroy skirt I’d seen in Merle’s closet. We don’t touch the beautiful clothes, though sometimes I wonder why not. She’s certainly never going to wear them again. If I was ever asked out somewhere nice, I think I might choose a dress. But a working mother with two children is never going to be asked out, is she, so I don’t think I need to worry about it.
