Leave Well Enough Alone

by Rosemary Wells

  “It’s really Dickens and Twain and Scott,” said Dorothy, but the conductor was no longer listening. “All aboard!” he shouted in the middle of her word Twain.

  Dorothy took a seat. To her dismay, one of her discarded stockings had somehow attached itself to the hinge of her suitcase. The conductor had set the suitcase down for a second after his first attempt to lift it. No doubt he’d set it down on one of the stockings. Now it had freed itself and hung down from the overhead rack like some dreadful nylon boa. She would have to do something. She stood up and yanked it off and jammed it angrily into her pocket. Everyone in the train watched. Get organized now! she scolded herself under her breath. She looked again at the instructions Mrs. Hoade had given her.

  “Llewellyn, I guess,” she said when the conductor came back to take her ticket.

  “Now make up your mind, honey. Is someone going to meet you at the station?”

  “No, I’m to phone them,” said Dorothy. “Llewellyn, then.”

  The train made stops at Wayne and Bryn Mawr. This can’t be the express, she told herself, but I’d better get off at Llewellyn anyway since I’ve paid for it and he’ll think I’m hopeless if I change my mind.

  To Dorothy’s surprise, she saw Mrs. Hoade waiting for her at the Llewellyn station as the train pulled in. The conductor followed Dorothy to the door of the train and helped her once again with her suitcase. He gave her a smile and pat on the arm. “Dropped something,” he said as she descended to the platform. It was the stocking.

  “So lovely to see you, dear,” Mrs. Hoade said, grappling with Dorothy’s suitcase. “What happened to the handle?”

  “It...came off,” said Dorothy.

  “Dear, where are the girls?” Mrs. Hoade added immediately as the train pulled out. “Where are the girls?”

  “The girls?”

  “Didn’t I tell you to look for them on the train? They were on the same train with you. Didn’t I tell you to look for them? Let me see my instructions.”

  Dorothy handed over the register tape, praying the instructions to look for Mrs. Hoade’s daughters had not magically appeared since she had looked at it last. Mrs. Hoade’s lips moved as she read her own handwriting. “You’re right,” she said. “No matter...the school promised to put large tags on them with hard-to-open diaper pins. Besides, Jenny knows to get off at Monastery if she by any chance missed you. I talked to the headmistress last night. We’ll have to rush to catch up with the train. No dear, don’t use that door. It hasn’t opened for months. Get in my side.”

  Dorothy crawled across the seat of the very dirty old black Ford. Mrs. Hoade jumped in after managing to get Dorothy’s suitcase into the trunk. She pumped the accelerator vigorously. “This hasn’t worked properly in months, either,” she said. “There’s something about getting a car fixed that I can’t stand.” She ground the gears horribly and lurched through a ditch onto the road. Mrs. Hoade ran her fingers through her hair nervously, like a man, Dorothy thought. Her old linen skirt was creased, and despite the heat she wore a sleeveless woolen pullover. It had been put on inside out. Without her pregnant stomach, Mrs. Hoade was still squarish in shape; Dorothy decided Mrs. Hoade might have been pretty enough if she could lose fifty pounds and do something about her hair and clothes.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m wearing this sweater inside out,” said Mrs. Hoade, taking note of Dorothy’s eyes, which had fastened on the stray threads along her shoulder. “It’s a long story.” The speedometer hit forty and then fifty. Her face broke into a grin as she steered the car over the wildly rutted road. There were no houses here, Dorothy noticed, at least none she could see behind the hedges and stone entrance gates that occasionally appeared by the roadside. All that was visible to her were woods and meadows full of daisies and black-eyed Susans. The parched sandy gulleys on either side of the road were overgrown with intimidating-looking thistles.

  “Excuse me,” said Dorothy. “But shouldn’t we follow that other road along the tracks if we want to catch the train?”

  “This is a shortcut,” said Mrs. Hoade.

  “You were saying about...inside out?”

  “Oh, yes. I knitted this thing from a complicated pattern in the Vogue book, you know,” Mrs. Hoade went on, “and I didn’t see until I was almost finished that I’d knitted the initials in the book instead of my own. Can you imagine? But it was too late. I can’t very well go around in a sweater that says PEN instead of MCH, so I wear it inside out.” The Ford hit a particularly deep pothole. “Are you uncomfortable, dear?” asked Mrs. Hoade speeding up again as soon as the rear axle had dislodged itself from the macadam.

  “No, I’m fine,” said Dorothy. The catch on her loose garter belt was biting into her leg.

  “I’ll teach you to drive this summer, dear, if you like,” said Mrs. Hoade kindly.

  “But I’m only...fifteen. I won’t be able to have even a learner’s permit until I’m...

  “Never mind. The police never pick up anybody on these roads. I learned when I was eleven. Went right through the hedge the first time. The car stuck in the middle of the hedge and I couldn’t go backward or forward!” Dorothy gave what she hoped was an appropriate gasp of horror. “Never laughed so much in my life,” said Mrs. Hoade. “But I’m a good driver. Fast but good. I’ll teach you how to shift gears. Then you’ll find one of those automatics a breeze.”

  “I couldn’t,” said Dorothy. “If my father found out he’d absolutely die.”

  “Why, dear?”

  “Well, he’s a policeman.”

  “A policeman!” said Mrs. Hoade in a particularly explosive voice. The left wheels spun hideously around a right curve. Then she added, “Well, of course. You are Irish.”

  “I know. And I have the map of Ireland on my face,” said Dorothy more resentfully than she’d intended.

  “Oh, dear. I didn’t mean it that way. I think it’s wonderful that he’s a policeman. It’s just that you hadn’t mentioned it and it took me by surprise and I have a habit of blurting out whatever’s on my mind at the moment. I’m terribly sorry!”

  “Well, I am proud of my Dad,” said Dorothy after a pause. “He’s Chief of Police of Newburgh, New York. My brother-in-law, Arthur, is on the force too. He’s the head of the crime lab. He used to be a detective before they promoted him.”

  “What an accomplished family!”

  “My brother’s going to law school. He’ll probably go into criminal law one day.”

  “Is he at Harvard or Yale?”

  “Holy Cross.”

  “That’s even better!” said Mrs. Hoade in such a desperate voice that Dorothy felt sorry for her. She was trying to say something nice. Dorothy decided not to be angry.

  “Haven’t you ever done something like that?” Mrs. Hoade asked miserably. “Say with an Italian? Said something like ‘How thin you look! How do you manage with all that spaghetti?’ ˮ

  “Yes,” said Dorothy. She had, after all, almost called Stanley Inglewasser a dirty kraut after the interview with Reverend Mother. “I guess everybody does.”

  “Good then. Am I forgiven?”

  “Of course!” said Dorothy. She really wanted to give poor anxious Mrs. Hoade a hug.

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Hoade humbly. “Whenever I think of the Irish, I think of Yeats.”

  Dorothy thought she’d change the subject before Mrs. Hoade went on to list Saint Patrick and Hopalong Cassidy. “How’s the baby?” she asked with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. “I bet it’s just as cute as...anything!”

  “I was just going to say something about that,” said Mrs. Hoade. The speedometer hit sixty-five. Why does she drive so fast if it makes her sweat so much? Dorothy wondered, as the Ford careened around another blind curve. “She was born a mongoloid. Have you ever heard of...

  “You mean one of those—”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” said Mrs. Hoade.

  “Now, Dorothy. I want this understood. Lisa, our nine-year-old, is
very impressionable. She has nightmares and suffers from enuresis—”

  “What’s that?” interrupted Dorothy.

  “Well, she wets her bed occasionally.” Dorothy stopped herself just in time from saying Oh no! She tried to look interested, instead, in the ailments of the new baby. Mrs. Hoade was going on about not bothering the nurse, who was taking care of it. And not going down to the cottage where it was living.

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” said Dorothy, wondering whether “occasionally” meant every night or every other night. The prospect of changing wet sheets determined her, at that moment, never to let Lisa within a mile of whatever cottage Mrs. Hoade was talking about. Poor Mrs. Hoade. The whole subject of her baby evidently distressed her very much. There was unmistakable shame and guilt in Mrs. Hoade’s voice. Dorothy tried to think of something cheerful to say. “Please don’t think I think anything bad about it,” she began, noticing a vein throbbing in Mrs. Hoade’s left temple. “I mean, I was almost a mongoloid too.”

  “What on earth do you mean, dear? Almost a mongoloid?”

  “Well, my mother was forty when she had me. She told me I could easily have been one.”

  “Forty! My goodness. What about your brothers and sisters? She must have been worried about them.”

  Dorothy breathed deeply. “Well, I guess I didn’t mention it, but they’re all...older.”

  “No young ones in the family?”

  “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Hoade. I didn’t mean to lie. I guess I just didn’t say anything because you didn’t ask. I wanted the job so much. I suppose I’d better tell you I’m not terribly experienced with children.”

  “Well, my goodness,” said Mrs. Hoade.

  “Are you angry?” asked Dorothy immediately.

  “Do you think you can manage?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Hoade.”

  “Say no more then,” said Mrs. Hoade.

  Dorothy stared out the window. She heard the diesel whistle somewhere behind the next hill. For the first time she noticed how lovely the softly rolling hills were, how peaceful and reassuring the old farms looked. She wished to jump out of the car and run right through the nearest meadow. She wished her family lived in a place like this.

  Two small figures sat on the only bench at the Monastery station. They swung their legs and slouched, evidently unperturbed by what to Dorothy was a very menacing-looking building, even in the daylight. The station had been long closed, it appeared. Its windows and door were boarded over and weeds straggled through the cracked platform. The wood-shingled roof did not incline on an even plane but undulated slightly, like a woman’s hat. The eaves, at least two feet deep, overshadowed the blinded windows. How she would have identified the station, had she stayed on the train to this stop, Dorothy didn’t know, for the single sign had long faded into illegibility. Mrs. Hoade screeched to a halt. At least the brakes worked on this car, Dorothy thought.

  Four hundred dollars, she reminded herself again, after riding in the car with Jenny and Lisa for several minutes. Jenny, a doleful, pear-shaped child with dull blond hair and a sallow complexion, had not said hello. She’d only stared at Dorothy’s extended hand and announced that she was eleven years old and that her sister was nine. Lisa, a much livelier specimen, had corrected this to nine and a half, and the two of them argued the exactitudes of their respective ages until Mrs. Hoade interrupted with questions about school. Dorothy did not listen. She felt like an intruder. She wished they would just disappear. She found herself thinking she’d discovered her penance.

  When the subject of Miss Parker’s third grade and Miss Parker’s fifth grade had been exhausted, Jenny asked, “How’s the kid? Still sick?”

  “It has a very bad cold,” said Mrs. Hoade.

  “That’s a pretty long cold,” Lisa commented. Dorothy bit her lip. She was not the only person inclined to palatable half-truths in this world.

  “Now I don’t want you going down to bother the nurse or the baby,” said Mrs. Hoade. “All we need is to have you catch—”

  “Don’t worry,” said Lisa. “How’s Great-grandma?”

  “She’s off on a visit,” said Mrs. Hoade cheerfully. Somehow Dorothy could tell instantly that this was another lie.

  “How could she be off on a visit if she was so sick?”

  “She’s much better now,” said Mrs. Hoade. Mrs. Hoade drove as if she had to catch another train. Dorothy watched the speedometer.

  “Who’s she visiting?” Lisa asked.

  “She’s visiting friends at a lovely place called Crestview.”

  “Sounds like a nuthouse,” Jenny said.

  “It happens to be a first-class, top-drawer...well, resort, almost, for elderly people who want to have a little vacation.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Jenny drawled.

  “I don’t want to be late. We’re having a party tonight,” Mrs. Hoade explained to Dorothy, noticing Dorothy’s position, which was not unlike that of a rider in a roller coaster. “You’re perfectly safe with me. I know these roads. I used to be a dangerous driver, I guess,” she went on. “But John, my husband, made me slow down the minute I married him. I haven’t gotten a speeding ticket in twelve years.”

  “That’s nice,” said Dorothy, not releasing her viselike grip on the armrest beside her.

  “He’s a wonderful man. You’ll like him very very much, I’m sure.”

  Dorothy noticed the tension that had crept into Mrs. Hoade’s voice at the mention of her husband. What a curious woman, Dorothy thought. Mrs. Hoade bore not the slightest resemblance to anyone else’s mother, to any of the Sisters at school, even to lay teachers. There was an irreverence about her laughter that Dorothy found shocking in an adult. She was reminded of something her mother had said late one night when they were finishing up a pile of dishes. “All I ever did at your age, Dotty, was laugh, just like you and Kate. Enjoy these years. They come to an end soon enough.”

  “But you laugh too, Mom,” Dorothy had said, frightened suddenly.

  “I laugh. But it isn’t the same.”

  The Hoades were rich. That much Dorothy could tell from their New York apartment. Did that mean that Mrs. Hoade could go right on laughing all her life? Did she never have to worry about discipline and organization and humility? The car slowed down at last and turned into a long driveway filled with fallen yellow willow leaves. At the end of the driveway was the biggest house Dorothy had ever seen. Homesickness overcame her for a moment. She missed the small kitchen at home with the church calendar that still showed January because no one ever bothered to turn the pages. She missed her mother and her mother’s smooth, white, manicured hands that looked as if they never touched dishwater. “Always take care of your hands. People will judge you by them,” her mother advised. Dorothy noticed Mrs. Hoade’s hands were red, the nails bitten and uncared for. Surely Mrs. Hoade didn’t do laundry and floors. And why did she dress so poorly? She was as disheveled as Mrs. Kroll, down at the end of Dorothy’s street. She’s married a rich man, Dorothy concluded. But she’s kept a lot of bad old habits like not dressing well, not taking pride in her appearance. Just like Polly Kroll, who never wore a clean uniform to school and whose brothers and sisters were always running around looking disgusting and saying dirty words. Dorothy decided that if she were ever to marry a rich man, she would have no trouble at all adjusting to an expensive wardrobe and would immediately start acting as if she’d been rich all her life.

  Chapter Two

  “MIND THE BEES,” SAID a voice. Dorothy looked up. A tall man in a blue blazer was grinning at her. He held a drink in each hand. His silk shirt was opened down three buttons to allow a curly tangle of hair to be seen on his chest. He was deeply suntanned and except for his bent-in teeth, he looked like a movie star. Dorothy thought he was a movie star.

  “No, thank you,” she said to the drink.

  The man gestured to the phlox and roses that grew at the base of the nearest stucco arch. A few sleepy bees hovered unthreateningly. �
�I’m John Hoade. You must be the new girl.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said, feeling she ought to accept the drink. She could at least hold it and look polite. “I’m Dorothy Coughlin,” she added. “Pleased to meet you, sir.” Dorothy was very grateful that Mr. Hoade took the conversation from there, as she couldn’t think of a single other thing to say.

  He was so strange. Everything was so strange. Strange and wonderful. The pool, for example. Instead of a concrete rectangle painted aquamarine blue, the Hoades’ swimming pool was oval and made entirely of white tile with a colored mosaic of zodiac signs around the inside. The water was limpid, inviting. It was clear, of course, and looked like...Dorothy paused in the middle of this train of thought...like real water instead of the unnatural vibrant-blue fluid in the pool at the YMCA. “Thank you for the drink, sir,” said Dorothy as Mr. Hoade moved off, smiling. Evidently he too had run out of things to say.

  Dorothy sat down on the nearest chair, careful to gather her best cotton dress up beneath as she did, careful to keep her legs together. Careful to smile as if she didn’t notice not talking to anyone. She didn’t mind, really. She wanted to consider these surroundings for the moment. She sniffed at the nearly colorless liquid that swirled around the olive in the small conical glass Mr. Hoade had given her. She didn’t think she’d sip it. The odor was too powerful. She guessed it was gin. Dorothy knew the difference between the smells and colors of gin and whiskey. She and Kate had inhaled from Mrs. Codd’s empty liquor bottles on the stoop next to Kate’s house. To their disappointment neither she nor Kate had ever gotten drunk in this fashion although Kate’s younger brother said you could.

  The people around her, laughing and chattering away with each other, were not costumed in togas or gold lame bodices. They were not lying on their backs consuming great quantities of grapes and wine. No one was holding a lance or a torch or a spear, but they might as well have been for the impression they made upon Dorothy.