Pish Posh

by Ellen Potter

  Then, scribbled hastily on the back of one of the pages:June 11, 1985

  Apointment with Audrey Aster to discuss results of her tests. Am prescribing stronger lenses for her glasses. Otherwise, eyes are healthy.

  When patient is given the results, she becomes very upset. Close to tears. Ms. Aster says it’s not jus her eyesight that is poor. Her other senses have been weakening, too. She can hardly taste her food anymore—as if tongue has gone numb. Sense of smell is growing weaker, and her ears feel as though they are filled with water. Says she forgot to put mitts on before pulling a pan of muffins out of the oven the other day, and felt nothing more than a small tingle. I am horrified to see that there is indeed a searing red mark across the palm of her hand and ugly blisters on her fingertips.

  “It is like I am fading away, a little at a time,” Ms. Aster says.

  I suggest she see a neurologist, but the young woman refuses. Says that Ms. Fizzelli told her I am the only doctor she tan trust, the only one who will understand her predicament.

  “What predicament is that?” I ask. But the young woman becomes hysterical, sobbing, and I can get no more out of her. I’m afraid she may be emotionally unstable-perhaps dangerously so.

  The following page read:June 12, 1985

  Spoke to Emma Fizzelli about her cook. Tried to get more information about the young woman’s state of mind. The conversation, however, took a strange turn. Here it is, to the word, as best as I can recall:

  “How well do you know Ms. Aster?” I asked.

  “I’ve known dear Audrey since I was a tiny baby.”

  “You mean you’ve known her since she was a tiny baby,” I corrected.

  “I meant what I said the first time,” Ms. Fizzelli insisted.

  “But how can that be?” I asked as gently as I could. “Your cook is twenty-four years old, and you are seventy-seven.”

  “Well, I know how old I am, Doctor.” She laughed at me. “I’ve been there for all my seventy-seven birthdays, and Audrey has baked me a lemon cake with white frosting for each and every one. she did the same for my mother and my grandmother and my great-grandmother as well. The fact is she has been with our family for generations, Doctor. I believe we have kept her secret admirably, and I ask that you do the same.”

  “But what you are telling me is impossible,” I countered.

  “The world is full of impossible things, my dear Dr. Piff. Do what you tan for her. I expect no more.”

  I’m afraid Ms. Fizzelli’s mind is not what it used to be. However, I told her I will do my best, but that may not be very much.

  Clara had been reading so raptly that she had forgotten about her Pop-Tart. She popped the rest of it into her mouth, then pulled a Twizzler out of its package.

  “Anything good in there?” Annabelle asked, lifting her head from the magazine.

  Clara nodded and, after biting into the Twizzler, which was a little like biting into a strawberry-flavored electrical cord, continued reading. There were many more entries documenting Audrey’s other visits to Dr. Piff’s office. It seemed, however, that nothing too dramatic happened until November 17, 1990:Ms. Fizzelli passed away this morning at the ripe old age of eighty-two. A sad passing for all, but saddest for Audrey Aster. The Fizzelli mansion is to be sold to a restaurateur named Pierre Frankofile, I am told, and the upstairs made into apartments. Ms. Aster is terrified of having to leave. She says that sitting by her window and watching the park is the only thing that gives her any pleasure. I don’t know why, but there is something about the young woman that makes me feel protective of her. Perhaps I can work something out with Mr. Frankofile.

  Work something out with her father? What would he work out? Clara turned the page, and her question was answered immediately.February 3, 1991

  Well, I have done it. After much and unpleasantness (indeed, Mr. Frankofile is a difficult man, to say the least), I have struck a deal with him. He will allow Audrey to continue to live in the mansion, in a small apartment above the restaurant, if she will work for him in his restaurant for very little pay. The rumor is that he has a hard time keeping employees, because he is so difficult. Audrey has agreed, and I do believe all will be well.

  Her condition seems to have stabilized. I am beginning to grow more hopeful.

  After that there were pages and pages of things that Clara could not make heads or tails of, mostly medications and tests, she guessed. Here and there a few brief notes: Complains of numbness in her hands again. Vision fuzzy.

  Then...November 9, 2000

  I have now known Audrey Aster for fifteen years, and I can no longer deny it. Though her condition worsens, she has not aged at all since I first met her. How is this possible? I am beginning to wonder if Ms. Fizzelli’s odd story is true.

  January 7, 2002

  I have tried everything—pills, tonics, even herbs from China—but Audrey does not respond. Her condition grows increasingly worse. Her sense of smell and taste are gone completely, and her eyesight is weakening rapidly. I do believe she will go completely blind within a few years. What will happen to her then? Frankofile will certainly fire her from Pish Posh. That would be the worst possible thing I can imagine! She’ll be forced to leave the house, and that will surely destroy her.

  I only wish that the Frankofiles’ daughter were older. She’s a sweet-tempered child of great compassion (which she certainly did not inherit from her parents), and she might have been a great help to Audrey—someone who would have kept her secret safe and seen to it that she remained in the house.

  The last passage took Clara by surprise. How odd it was to hear someone describe her that way. She smiled a little, then quickly glanced over at Annabelle, embarrassed. But Annabelle was too engrossed in her magazine to notice.

  Next came notes from a medical conference, and several more tests. Then, on March 18th, 2005:Another sad note: Clara Frankofile is a dismal disappointment. This child who once showed such promise has grown into a hard and unforgiving girl, trumped up like a tiny thirty-year-old snob. I pity her.

  Clara’s face burned bright red. A mixture of rage and embarrassment flooded her body. How dare he pity her?!

  She gathered up the papers and shoved them back in the envelope.

  “What’s wrong?” Annabelle asked.

  “Nothing.” Clara turned away so Annabelle wouldn’t see how red her face had become. “I’m tired. Can we shut off the light?”

  “Sure,” Annabelle said. She closed the magazine and shut off the light, and the two of them climbed under the covers.

  Much as she tried, though, Clara could not get Dr. Piff’s words out of her head. She felt an odd crumply feeling around her throat and a wettish tickle creep across her cheek-bone. She swiped her hand across it quickly, but it came again, faster and faster, and she could not stop it. I’m crying, she thought, stunned. Stop it, she told herself. You are not an infant. You will stop crying, you must stop crying! But though the tears were part of her body, they seemed to govern themselves. Utterly humiliated, there was nothing left for Clara to do but turn away from Annabelle and let the tears flow—which they did, long after Annabelle was snoring.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The next morning, Clara sat down to breakfast in the kitchen. Mr. Arbutnot had made twelve-grain hot cereal, which tasted like a cross between wet bread and beach sand. It was topped with soy nuts and chased with a tall glass of watery-looking rice milk.

  “You’re not eating your breakfast.” Mr. Arbutnot nodded toward Clara’s barely touched bowl of cereal.

  “I’m not very hungry, ” she muttered. Which was actually true. Her stomach felt knotted up, and her eyelids were swollen and hot-feeling from crying.

  “Soy nuts are good for lots of medical ailments, ” Mr. Arbutnot said. “Like fungus, for instance.”

  Clara turned to Annabelle angrily, but Annabelle deliberately avoided her eyes and gazed down at the newspaper on the table instead.

  “Hey, look at that!” she said and read the headl
ine: “Metropolitan Museum of Art Announces Its Face of the Middle Ages.” She held the paper up for them to see. There was a picture of June Loblolly, looking stunned as she stood outside the 464 Fifth Avenue office. Although she hadn’t been officially selected, all the hoopla must have convinced the Met that they had found their woman.

  Mr. Arbutnot considered the picture for a moment, then said, “Well, I guess she does have a certain look about her. But if the Met wanted to find a real Face of the Middle Ages, they’d have been better off finding someone with missing teeth and greasy hair. I have a patient who was a nursemaid in 1402, and she said she bathed once a year and cleaned her teeth with the end of a twig. ”

  After breakfast Clara asked to use the phone, first spending a few moments perusing the Manhattan phone book. Blurt, it turned out, was a most uncommon name. In fact, there was only one Blurt listed: Shelly Blurt. Clara dialed the number. The phone rang so many times that Clara nearly hung up, but finally there was a breathless voice on the other end.

  “Yes? ”

  “Ms. Blurt?” Clara asked.

  “Yes? ”

  “This is Clara Frankofile. I need to talk to you. ”

  Ms. Blurt hesitated. “Oh? What about?” It sounded like she was trying very hard to sound nonchalant.

  “The other night, when you fainted—”

  “It was all the excitement, I’m sure,” Ms. Blurt cut in nervously.

  “It was the soup cook, Ms. Blurt, let’s not pretend. You must tell me what you know about her. ” Clara thought it best to be stern with Ms. Blurt.

  “If I did ... no, really, the whole thing is impossible,” said Ms. Blurt.

  “Ms. Blurt, the world is full of impossible things.” Clara repeated Ms. Fizzelli’s words with a conviction that surprised even herself. There was a pause on the other end.

  “All right. But I’ll have to show you, rather than tell you. Can you come to my apartment? ”

  Ms. Blurt gave Clara her address. It wasn’t far from Annabelle’s.

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Clara said.

  Ms. Blurt lived in a tiny one-room apartment, up five steep flights of stairs. The stairway smelled of tuna casserole and cat litter, and all the doors had at least half-a-dozen locks on them.

  By the time she reached Ms. Blurt’s apartment, Clara was fairly out of breath from the climb and queasy from the odor. She knocked on the door, panting a little, and listened as the locks in Ms. Blurt’s apartment clicked and snapped for a full minute before the door opened.

  Ms. Blurt was wearing a pink pantsuit with a giant green butterfly sewn on to the bottoms of her pants’ legs and a matching butterfly on the pocket of her jacket. Multicolored butterfly barrettes were sprinkled through her mass of wild hair, their silver antennas wiggling.

  “Come in, come in,” she said hastily, and she hustled Clara inside the apartment. “I’m still looking for it ... I know it’s around here somewhere ... Sit down, sit down ... ” Ms. Blurt indicated a small brown sofa in the middle of the room that was completely surrounded by thick mounds of books, magazines, and papers, strewn all across the floor. “Just be careful not to step on anything,” she added.

  Not to step on anything? There didn’t seem to be any bare floor to put your foot upon. Still, Ms. Blurt trotted off easily through the clutter and began to scour a bookcase that covered the entire back wall.

  Clara looked down and saw that indeed there were bits of green carpet peeking through the clutter, and that the bits of green formed a trail, rather like stepping-stones across a stream, that led directly to the couch. Another trail, the one that Ms. Blurt had taken, wound its way around to the bookshelf with smaller branches that led to the tiny kitchen and an even tinier bathroom.

  Clara took the trail to the couch, staring down at the reading material as she planted her feet on one spot of green carpet after the next. The books and magazines were all about art—Renaissance art, primitive art, impressionist art. What was odd was that Ms. Blurt had no artwork at all on the walls. Instead, the walls were covered with different colored Post-it notes, scrawled with cryptic messages: Was the musician in Giancarlo’s painting a local pickpocket in venice? and The princess with the golden hair in DePonsy’s portrait looks bored, but really she was very ill and probably feverish. She died right after the portrait was painted.

  Clara sat down on the couch and waited, watching Ms. Blurt frantically pawing through the bookshelf. The books were lying every which way, crammed across horizontally and stacked vertically, with still other books balanced precariously on the scant space along the edge of the shelf.

  “Here it is!” Ms. Blurt exclaimed, pulling out a fat, hard-bound book that had many pages marked off with paper clips. She tucked the book beneath her arm and stepped nimbly through the clutter to sit beside Clara on the couch.

  Clara caught the title of the book before Ms. Blurt opened it: The Complete Collection of American Nineteenth Century Paintings. After a few moments of leafing through the pages, Ms. Blurt stopped at a glossy reproduction of a painting. She smoothed out the page and carefully placed the book on Clara’s lap.

  Clara looked at the painting but failed to see anything extraordinary. The caption below the painting read “St. Theresa and the Angel, painted 1817,” and it showed an angel holding an arrow and bending over a swooning barefoot young woman dressed in a white robe.

  Clara shrugged. “So?”

  “Look at St. Theresa carefully. The one who’s fainting,” Ms. Blurt urged.

  Clara looked at her face. Then she frowned and dipped her head to look more closely.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed.

  “Do you see it?” Ms. Blurt asked excitedly.

  Well, really, how could you not? Clara thought. Yet it was impossible!

  “Obviously, I could find no explanation for it,” Ms. Blurt said, “and I thought it best not to say anything until I could. But now that you’ve seen it, too, I admit I’m relieved. I was beginning to wonder if I’d been wrong ... ”

  No, Ms. Blurt had not been wrong, Clara thought. St. Theresa looked exactly like Audrey Aster, right down to that odd check mark-shaped scar on her chin.

  “And there are other paintings of her, too.” Ms. Blurt grabbed the book and flipped through it, showing Clara at least a dozen other paintings that featured the same model. In one she was posed as a peasant woman buying vegetables in a market, in another she was Eve sitting on a stone wall in the Garden of Eden, staring up at an apple dangling from a tree. And in yet another she was Juliet from Romeo and Juliet, standing on a terrace entwined with flowering vines, clad in a nightgown, her arms stretched up to the stars. There were different poses, different costumes, yet in each and every painting the woman was the spitting image of Audrey.

  “But this makes no sense,” Clara said.

  “None whatsoever!” agreed Ms. Blurt. Her voice sounded almost hysterical. “So I began to do a little research. Researching the people who modeled for painters is a little hobby of mine.” She flourished a hand around at the Post-it—covered walls, and the books and magazines on the floor. “Of course, it makes life a little messy at times.”

  “A little,” Clara agreed.

  “In any case, it was hard to find anything on Caleb Fizzelli’s model. He isn’t exactly well known, though if there were any justice in the world, he would be. ” Ms. Blurt closed her eyes and shook her head. “Such a gifted man! There’s a portrait of him somewhere, in one of these magazines ... ”

  She gazed around at the floor, and seemed in imminent danger of beginning another search until Clara reminded her: “The woman in the paintings, Ms. Blurt. Did you find out something about her?”

  “Oh, yes, and it’s a strange story, too. I discovered it in a letter that Fizzelli wrote to a friend. It seems that when he moved into his house in New York at the end of September, in 1812, he found a woman sitting by herself in one of the rooms. He asked her who she was and she said she didn’t know, that she had simply awakened on
e day in a bedroom upstairs. The house was entirely empty and quiet, but the pantry was stocked—and she wondered by whom, since not another soul was around. She told Fizzelli that she had been living like this for days, all alone, wandering through the rooms, staring out the window and hoping for a clue to appear that would tell her who she was.

  “He explained to her that he’d purchased the house and was to move in the following week, but the woman flatly refused to leave. I guess he took pity on her, and he decided to keep her on as a boarder. Instead of paying rent, he said she could pose for him, because he liked her face, despite the fact that she had a prominent scar on her chin.” Ms. Blurt took a long deep breath and stopped.

  “And was that all he said about her?” Clara asked.

  Ms. Blurt nodded, and the butterfly antennas in her hair wobbled crazily.

  “Ms. Blurt, ” Clara said, “I need to borrow this book. ”

  Clara reached out, took the book from Ms. Blurt’s lap before she could say no, and started down the trail of green carpet toward the door.

  “Oh, but you will be careful with it, won’t you?” Ms. Blurt called nervously after her. “Don’t remove any of the paper clips, and there are several Post-it notes on the pages, and the most important thing to remember is ...”

  But Clara was out the door before she could find out what that might be.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Annabelle, tell me the truth. Can your father really hypnotize people?” Clara had called Annabelle’s house as soon as she got home.

  “He’s a better thief than a hypnotist,” Annabelle said in such a strident voice that Clara knew her dad must be standing right there.

  “Can I speak to him?” Clara said. Getting a straight answer from Annabelle on this matter was going to be difficult.