I pretended I was a Zen practitioner, closed my eyes and took ten deep breaths, even though I wasn’t completely sure that’s what a Zen practitioner would do in such a moment.
When I opened them, I saw that while they’d still been closed, Steinway had jumped up on my desk.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“Meow!”
“And stop looking at me like that!”
But then I realized that the cat had a point: back in the days before indoor plumbing and all the other good stuff, writers hadn’t had the advantage of computers that could do nifty little tricks to work on. If they were lucky, they had some kind of writing implement, paper and, yes, a crummy candle. If the electricity still held through the storm we were gearing up to get, a storm I could see brewing right outside my window, threatening to replace the steady rain with something more thunderous, I’d at least have something a damn sight better than a candle to write by.
I took out one of the legal pads, clicked open a pen.
Now, for the big part, what had formerly been the hard part: What was I going to write about?
I was going to write a novel based on my experiences. I was going to tell the story of me and Buster, without naming names, tell of my love and pain and desperation. Based on emotional truth rather than emotional fantasy, it would be a good book, even if neither the critics nor the readers—assuming I ever had any of either—ever agreed with me on that. I realized, finally, that it only mattered what I thought of what I wrote.
If the book ever fell into Buster’s hands and he actually read it, would he sue me?
Somehow, I doubted it. After all, to take legal action, he’d have to out himself as being the real guilty party. Somehow, I didn’t think he would ever do that. And even if he did sue me, so what? The telling of the tale would be my reformation, my regeneration. In telling the tale, I would take back my own life.
I would heal myself.
Writer, heal thyself.
I put pen to paper, started to write.
People think it must be easy for you, when they see you out here on the wire…
It was dinnertime, the knock coming at the door with Mrs. Fairly carrying a tray, before I stopped.
I heard the dog before I saw anything else.
Having slopped spaghetti sauce all over my damp sweater, I realized that it was a good thing I had delayed putting on my dress. Sliding into my heels, running a comb through my tangle of black curls, I glanced in the full-length mirror only long enough to verify that I was indeed as presentable as I ever was. Whatever the image that looked back at me, it would have to do.
I came down the staircase, holding tight to the railing so as not to trip in my unaccustomed heels. It wouldn’t do, I thought, to fall at the master’s feet as prelude to our first meeting.
As I said, I heard the dog before I saw anything else.
And then an impatient voice, an oddly familiar bass voice:
“Captain! Stop that infernal barking! One would think you smelled the blood of someone you knew.”
Oh no! I thought. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. How could it possibly be?
It was.
I had just been about to enter the library, where I was to meet my master for what I thought would be the first time, what I now knew would be the second, when I’d heard that bass voice call out its message to the dog. Realizing that there was only one person in the world who could own that voice, and that I had already met him and had no desire to repeat the awful experience, I turned abruptly on my heel.
And tripped, of course, over the edge of the runner in the long hall.
“Who put that there?” I muttered to myself.
“Is that the new governess I finally hear?” the voice called out, an annoying laugh contained within it.
He did not wait for my answer.
“Well, do not dawdle,” he went on. “Delay no further. Annette has been spending this last hour telling me all manner of wonderful things about you.”
Meekly—what choice did I have?—I brushed off my dress, entered the room.
And there he was: sitting in a leather armchair beside the great fire.
Captain, upon seeing me, commenced to barking again.
“You!” said the man in the chair, clearly shocked.
“I,” I said, rising up to my full lack of height and steeling my courage.
I moved to stand before him, hands clasped behind my back as though to prove I had nothing to hide. What could he do, I had realized, fire me? There was nothing too awful he could do to me that life hadn’t already done. I was almost sure of it.
“You is right,” he said. “You’re the woman who scared my dog.”
“I?”
“Yes, you. If you hadn’t been such an abominable horsewoman, if you’d had more control—”
“If you and your, your…compadres hadn’t trampled at my heels, if you hadn’t let that horse you call a dog bark at me so—”
“If you hadn’t been in the wrong place at the wrong time—”
“Nor you,” I countered.
I was reminded yet again of how somewhat unattractive he was.
By now he had risen from his seat and was staring me down, hands on hips, as though with no more than his stern gaze he could destroy me.
But I stood my ground. “Nor you,” I said again, just in case he hadn’t heard my insult the first time.
Just when I was beginning to think he looked angry enough that he might indeed hit me, an extraordinary thing happened: he laughed.
It was that same laugh I’d heard earlier in the day, a lifetime ago it seemed, when he had laughed on the horse trail.
In that moment, I forgot how somewhat unattractive he was.
Surprising myself even more than I surprised him perhaps, I started laughing, too.
“It is a good thing,” he said, getting his own laughter under control, a smile still dancing around his lips, “that we both have good senses of humor. I do not think Annette would like it, were we to go on fighting so in front of her.”
“No,” a little voice piped up.
I had not seen her there before. He so sucked up all the oxygen in the room, there was no space for anyone else.
“Annette,” she said, “would not like that one bit.”
She bounced out of her chair, came up to us. I saw now that she had on a pretty, overly girlish frock, just as she had the first time I met her in New York. I assumed her father liked to see her this way.
“You and Papa must become friends,” she said to me. “It would not be fair to make me choose between you.”
“Oh ho!” her father said, turning a look to me that was half amusement, half accusation. “You’ve only been here a short time, yet already your importance has grown so much that my daughter thinks any choice between us would be equal?”
Hearing the two of them, father and daughter, speaking in the same room for the first time, I was finally able to see where Annette got her peculiar formality from. Edgar Rawlings was nothing if not formal. I would have thought it a by-product of being an ambassador, whether the job caused the formality in the man or the man had been chosen for the job because he was so formal, but I had already known one ambassador, hadn’t I? And Buster Keating had never been like this.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean that at all.” I blushed. “Children have a tendency to overstate even the simplest of cases.”
“Oh no, Miss Bell,” he said, sitting down again. “Once a thing has been said, it cannot then be unsaid. My daughter has declared by implication that her feelings for us are equal. We must now deal with the world such as it has been presented to us.”
“If you insist,” I said, no longer knowing what to say to this strange man.
“Please sit,” he said abruptly. “It makes me nervous having you tower over me so.”
I hated to give up the advantage, but saw no polite way in which I could refuse.
“If you insist,” I said a
gain, tucking my skirt carefully under me as I took a seat beside Annette on the sofa.
“Do you find me attractive?” he asked suddenly.
I wondered if he had somehow read my mind earlier.
“Why do you ask?” I countered. “Is that a requirement for employment here?”
“No requirement.” He shook his head. “I was merely curious. You seem so…unsettled by me.”
“I don’t even know you,” I said. “I cannot answer such a question without knowing you.”
“Not even objectively?” he said.
“I don’t know how to be objective,” I said. “It is a trick I have never learned.”
“Papa has brought me a present!” Annette cried, no longer able to contain her excitement in the face of all this boring adult talk.
“Papa always brings Annette a present when he comes back after having gone away,” Ambassador Rawlings said. “And,” he added, looking at her pointedly, “if Annette behaves herself and lets Papa continue his conversation with the new governess, perhaps Annette will get her present from Papa tonight.”
“That hardly seems fair,” pouted Annette, crossing her arms. “Why should I have to wait?”
“Because waiting for good things builds character,” said her father. “Now then,” he continued, turning to me, “Annette has been filling my head this last hour with how accomplished you are at a wide variety of things.”
It seemed to me that Annette and I had barely talked since I’d been there. What could she have been talking of then?
“I am guessing that,” he went on without waiting for an answer, “like the last governess, you play the piano well?”
“The piano?” I almost choked on the words.
He put a hand to his ear, obnoxious man. “Is there an echo in here?”
He indicated the piano in the corner with an abrupt gesture.
“Play,” he commanded.
“Play?”
“Yes, Little Sir Echo, play something for us, for our amusement.”
That’s Little Ms. Echo to you, I thought, rising to my feet and striding to the instrument. If they wanted amusement, I could surely provide them with that.
Sitting down, I tilted my head to one side with eyes staring into space affectedly, as though I were waiting for Beethovenish inspiration to come.
Then I tickled the ivories.
Duh, duh, duh. Duhduhduhduhduhduh. Duh, duh, duh. Duhduh—
“Stop!” he cried.
I looked up. “You do not like my song?” I asked.
“Chopsticks?”
“You are familiar with the tune, then?” I said.
“Yes, I…” he sputtered. “Surely you can play something other than that…can’t you?”
I gave the matter a moment’s serious thought, head tilted again.
“I can play the first twenty-five notes of ‘Stairway to Heaven.’” I thought some more, counting on my fingers this time. “And I can also play the first sixteen notes of Für Elise. I can even repeat them so it sounds like a bit of a song. But when it gets to the part where it changes? That part I don’t know how to do at all.” I thought one last time. “I’m pretty sure that’s it,” I said.
He looked at Annette as if someone had to be to blame for this turn of events.
“Don’t blame her,” I said. “I don’t believe for a second that she misinformed you about my musical talents, of which I have, as I’ve amply displayed, none. I’m sure that she must have merely said I have some sort of talents and you, basing your extrapolation on your experience of previous governesses, leapfrogged to this insane idea that I could play on demand.”
I rose from my seat, prepared to take my leave.
“Since it is now obvious that I cannot entertain you in the way in which you desire…”
“Sitsitsit.” He was impatient as he pointed to the couch. “There is no need to be so prickly with me all the time, Miss Bell…Sit!”
Now, there was an invitation that would be hard for a girl to resist.
Despite my instinct to bolt and run, I obeyed the instruction.
“Your lack of piano…finesse is not really important. The last governess played well enough, but she had the tendency to play the same song. She played it over and over again. I really thought, after a point, that I might go mad with it.”
“And what song was that?” I couldn’t help but ask.
He rolled his eyes, smiled ruefully.
“Für Elise,” he said.
I stifled a smile.
He settled back in his own chair, a lion temporarily appeased.
“Well,” he said, “if you can’t play the piano, and you most clearly cannot, then what can be these sparkling talents of yours that dear Annette is so keen on?”
“Miss Charlotte is a great writer!” piped up Annette, no longer able to remain out of the conversation.
“A great writer?” He looked at me with mocking interest. “Annette did say something earlier about you being a writer, she was insistent that you should have writerly…things in your room, but I assumed she must be talking about something that was no more than a hobby of yours.”
“Some would indeed call it just that,” I conceded.
“Oh no, Papa!” Annette was truly distraught at this. “Miss Charlotte is going to be a bestselling novelist!”
“A best…?” There was that mocking look again. “Why then have I never heard of you before?”
“Perhaps you don’t like novels,” I said.
“Oh, I like novels very much,” he said. “Tell me—which bestselling novels did you write?”
“Didn’t you hear the part where Annette said ‘going to write’?” I said. “I haven’t written any yet.”
“Ah.” He gave a smile, more like a smirk or a sneer, that I did not like at all. “You are one of those kinds of writers.”
“Which kind is that?” I demanded, trying my best to impersonate a woman who could do haughty.
“The kind that want to be writers without having written, of course,” he said.
How dare he?
“You asswipe,” I muttered under my breath.
“What was that, Miss Bell?” He placed his hand behind his ear as though straining to hear me better. “You speak so softly at times.”
“I said—” I smiled sweetly through gritted teeth “—You. Are. Wise.”
I turned to Annette.
“Somehow,” I said, “I don’t think your father is impressed.”
“Not impressed?” She looked surprised, wounded. Suddenly, she brightened. “Then how about this.” She turned to her father, challenging him. “Miss Bell is a star!”
“A star?” He was incredulous.
So was I. What was Annette talking about?
“Oh, yes,” Annette bubbled. “Mrs. Fairly told me all about it.”
Oh, no, I groaned inwardly.
“What exactly did Mrs. Fairly tell you?” he asked.
“She said that, when Miss Charlotte was a little girl, even younger than me, she starred in commercials!”
He turned to me. “Commercials?”
I barely nodded.
Please, I prayed, don’t let Annette say any more.
“What commercials did you make?” he prodded.
“I was the Gubber Snack Foods Kid,” I muttered so quietly I could barely hear myself.
“What?” he asked.
“She was the Gubber Snack Foods Kid!” Annette shouted.
“The Gub…? What?”
“Gubber Snack Foods,” I said tersely. “They make organic snacks. For kids.”
“How…progressive.” He smirked. Then: “My, you are a star.”
“She is!” said Annette. “She really is! Miss Bell, tell Papa your famous line.”
I felt like a particularly silly bug under his microscope. “Please do,” he said.
I studied the floor. “‘It’s…’” I couldn’t get the words out. “‘It’s…it’s…Gubberlicious,’” I finally said du
mbly, leaving off the exclamation point from all those commercials.
“‘It’s…Gubberlicious’?” he asked.
I nodded.
He settled back in his chair, smirked again.
“Yes,” he said, “a real star. We are lucky to have you, I see.”
Perhaps he grew tired of taunting me about one thing, for he moved on to something else.
“Do you know anything at all about the country in which you find yourself, Miss Bell?” he asked.
I shrugged. “It is an island,” I said. I shrugged again. “The people here are almost invariably tall. And blonde. They do not seem to be much like me.”
“It also has the highest percentage of books per capita than any other country in the world.”
“I didn’t know that,” I conceded.
“Perhaps one day they will have your books here.”
Don’t hold your breath, I wanted to say. But this time, at least, I was wise enough to hold my tongue. Why give him anything at all, since every time I spoke, it only seemed to provide him with more ammunition with which to embarrass me.
Perhaps he took pity on me, or had grown bored with the game, for he turned to the little person beside me.
“Annette,” he commanded, “if you look in the hall closet, behind my briefcase, you will find a prettily wrapped present that is solely for your enjoyment. Go get it and bring it back here so that Miss Bell and I might have the pleasure of watching you open it.”
He was such a different person with her—still stiff and formal, but with an underlying and unmistakable feeling of love—that it would have been easy, in that moment of watching the two framed together, to forget what a jerk he could be.
But, of course…
While she was gone, we engaged in a staring contest, one I refused to lose. And for the first time, it occurred to me that I was enjoying myself. I had led such a solitary existence that, previously, I had rarely had the chance to wrangle with a man’s mind. Buster, by virtue of his job, had been a smart man, and his connections should have made him an interesting man, but whatever smarts he had possessed, he had never bothered to use them with me.
How Nancy Drew Saved My Life Page 10
