Leave Well Enough Alone

by Rosemary Wells

  “I’m Dorothy Coughlin, sir,” she said boldly. “I’m very honored to meet you.” Mr. Hoade did not look pleased.

  “Are you the little girl who wanted the autographed picture?” he asked, taking a large black cigar out of his mouth and grinning broadly. He was wearing a vest, Dorothy noticed, and trousers with front pleats, so he was probably a Republican. If there was to be a scandal, all the better.

  “Yes, sir. I was hoping, if you had a minute, sir...I’m the editor of our high-school newspaper,” Dorothy lied headily, “at Sacred Heart in Newburgh, and I’m going to be a reporter someday and I was wondering if I could ask you some questions on the coming campaign... I...I certainly would appreciate it and I’m sure everybody at school would appreciate it too, that is...if it isn’t too much trouble.”

  “Shoot!” said the toothy, cigar-filled mouth. The pale blue eyes called off Mr. Hoade’s intervention with an amused blink.

  “Well, sir,” said Dorothy, her mouth drying up. “May I ask what office you’re running for?”

  “President.”

  “President!”

  “You heard it right.”

  Dorothy tried to swallow. If this man was running for president, it was beyond her wildest dreams. She had counted on governor or even senator, but president! “And what,” she heard herself ask, “is your position, sir, on...on the Russians?” she managed to blurt out.

  The cigar was removed again.

  “You mean the longshoremen’s strike?”

  “Longshoremen’s strike?”

  “Yes, the dockers’ boycott.”

  “Yes...that one.”

  “Well, I support them, naturally, but that’s a different union, you know.”

  “A different union?”

  “Honey?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Did you think I was running for president of the United States?”

  “Uh...no!” said Dorothy.

  “John, what have you been telling people?” The mouth and the four fat chins began to jiggle in tremendous merriment. The laughing voice went abruptly serious again, however, and to Dorothy’s disappointment informed her that the presidency in question belonged to a labor union, but if Dorothy was interested in finding out about the Russians, she should write a letter to Congressman Such-and-such from the second district in Philadelphia, mention his name, and she would get a personal reply to all her questions. As soon as this advice was given, Mr. Hoade steered Dorothy to the buffet table, placed a dinner plate in her hands, and with a sarcastic bow disappeared into the crowd of people.

  There was nothing on God’s green earth, Dorothy thought sadly as she helped herself to some beef Stroganoff, that was more boring or unglamorous than labor unions. Her father belonged to the P.B.A., and she hated it when he talked of the tiresome meetings he attended and the gray-faced, ill-spoken men who ran them.

  Lisa and Jenny, uninterested in the Stroganoff, found their way to the television early. “This is all I could get you,” said Dorothy, presenting them with two soggy cream puffs. “There were no éclairs and no meringues.”

  “We saw,” said Lisa.

  “What are you watching?” Dorothy asked.

  “Return of the Cat People,” Lisa answered, “and Mom said we could.”

  Lisa’s singsong assertiveness convinced Dorothy that she was back to normal after the tantrum. She left both girls and went into her own room with the intention of losing the earlier humiliations of the evening in Istanbul, or wherever Agatha Christie would take her.

  Perhaps, she thought, as she settled herself on the bed, a slowly melting cream puff on the dresser, I’ll be able to wangle a ride tomorrow. Agatha Christie did not successfully obliterate the memory of the horrid, fat jowls, or the mocking laughter she’d endured. And all my fault, Dorothy told herself. She wished she’d brought the pair of riding boots back and could have spent the evening cleaning them up. After all, she reasoned, I could tell Mrs. Hoade that Baldy gave them to me. It isn’t stealing to take something that nobody wants or even knows is there. “Oh, yes, it is!” said Maureen. “It’s stealing and it’s lying!” “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind!” cautioned Sister Elizabeth. “The thief doth fear every bush an officer!” The source of that wisdom escaped Dorothy. Sister had used it every day in class for two weeks until Michael Brodie finally returned a five-dollar bill he claimed he’d found on the ball field, but that everybody knew he’d slipped out of Mary Beth Pendleton’s desk when she wasn’t looking.

  I didn’t lose the watch after all, she went on, trying still to concentrate on her book, and Miss Borg was good enough not to rat on me. I’m grateful. God has been merciful, and look what I’m doing. I’m still thinking about stealing those boots. I’m the best example of a miserable sinner I can think of, Dorothy decided. Maureen’s absolutely right. I’ll probably wind up in jail someday. Mrs. Hoade could fire me for stealing. That would look just dandy at home, wouldn’t it. She went back to Istanbul.

  Dorothy read three pages. She turned back to the beginning of the story. She’d forgotten what was going on. Baldy’s riding breeches (not the same as jodhpurs, as she had been told by Baldy) had an elegant look. They were enhanced, even on chubby Baldy, by the soft leather and potent shape of her old mahogany-topped hunting boots. Dungarees and loafers, despite Dorothy’s svelte figure, made her feel silly and amateurish next to Baldy. The boots would help, even without the breeches. The girls would be busy with their Cat People for at least another hour. The party would go on down at the swimming pool, far from the cottage, until midnight, surely. As usual, Dorothy remembered to lock her door before she went out, in case Lisa sneaked in to go through her things and discovered she wore a 32A instead of a 34B bra.

  Thunder rattled somewhere miles away. A strong wind blew a cloud in front of the moon, extinguishing its light, hiding Dorothy as her feet scudded through the mounds of newly mown grass. She hadn’t been able to find any more flashlight batteries, but had managed to locate a candle and a book of matches. I’m not frightened, she told herself. The cloud moved away and then moonlight broke out again, lighting the tops of the grasses around the narrow path to the cottage. Not a bit frightened. After all, if I were an archaeologist I’d have to do a lot of things scarier than this. There had been a time, that past winter after Sister Elizabeth had gone off on a tangent and spent a whole class talking about Heinrich Schliemann and the discovery of Troy, when Dorothy had made a final decision to become an archaeologist. She and Kate had written to the Museum of Natural History to apply for summer jobs on a dig anywhere in the world. The Museum had responded politely that they were much too young, but Dorothy still had it in her mind to discover a lost city in the East someday. Think of Heinrich Schliemann, she told herself as the trees rustled around her. He wouldn’t be afraid of snakes and spiders in some silly old basement in Pennsylvania. Once she stopped and peeked through the brush to the faraway party. All she could see were the Japanese paper lanterns swinging wildly in the wind like captive balloons. I can still go back, she said, mentally shaking a finger at herself. Greed is pushing me forward. My good conscience is weak. Dear God, let me get the better of this.

  The thunder rattled again, not so distant this time. The little house looked dark and comfortable ahead of her. She rummaged around in the vines and nettles for several minutes until she found the heavy metal ring again. The trapdoor creaked as it gave and then rose under her urging. She stopped. No light was turned on in the cottage. By now there was enough cracking and soughing of branches to hide her movements anyway. Dorothy placed her right foot on the first rung of the ladder. I’ll tell Mrs. Hoade, she resolved. I’ll tell Mrs. Hoade the truth about losing her watch last night, and finding this door, and being very careful not to get hurt. I’ll tell her I found the boots and I’ll ask her if I may borrow them for the summer. Dorothy sighed. She smiled. If the riding boots could be shined up and made presentable, they would be worth risking Mrs. Hoade’s annoyance at her explorations here
. She climbed down without hurrying and lit the candle when she reached the floor. The burst of warm friendly light showed the boots, lying on their sides, exactly as she’d left them. She shook each one just to make doubly sure nothing had nested inside. A white deposit fell off the leather onto her fingers; however, it seemed still to be in tolerable condition underneath. Suddenly a massive clap of thunder echoed outside. The cellar would be a good place to wait out the storm, Dorothy reckoned; on the other hand, I might be here all night and they may come looking for me. She pinched out her candle and, boots under her arm, crossed the sandy floor to the ladder.

  The first of the rain pattered down on her face. She closed the door soundlessly and took refuge under the ash tree as another deafening crash roared overhead. What a stupid place to be in a thunderstorm! she said aloud, holding her hands over her ears. THIEVING MOTHER’S HELPER STRUCK BY LIGHTNING! said the Daily News headline in her mind. Dorothy prepared to make a dash for the big house, when the lightning seemed to split open the entire sky. It illuminated the woods and cottage and every blade of grass in an eerie sliver of deadly clarity. Then she saw someone standing at the window of the cottage looking out at the storm. The person was too tall to be Miss Borg.

  Chapter Six

  “DADDY, WILL YOU PLAY with us today? Will you go swimming with us today?” Lisa asked, pushing the cereal up the sides of her bowl to give it the appearance of having been eaten.

  “If I have time, Lisa. I have lots to do. I have to wait for a call from Mommy.”

  As Dorothy poured herself a second cup of coffee, Mr. Hoade turned to her and remarked, “You’re an ambitious type of kid, aren’t you?”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Hoade?”

  “Daddy, when is Mommy coming home?” Lisa asked.

  “I told you before, I don’t know. Sit down,” he said to Dorothy, “but first get me another cup. Pour the rest of that out. It’s cold.”

  Dorothy set the coffee before Mr. Hoade. She sat. Her head pounded from a nearly sleepless night.

  “You really the editor of your school paper?” Mr. Hoade asked.

  “Why, yes,” Dorothy answered. Lying, she figured, would be easier than explaining why she’d lied.

  “Well, you must be the best student in the whole school, then.”

  “No.” She hesitated. “Not really. Why?”

  “Because,” said Mr. Hoade leaning across the table and smiling slyly, “editors of high-school papers are always seniors!”

  “Not at Sacred...

  “You interested in politics?”

  “Yes, well, I...

  “Not in labor unions.”

  Dorothy took a scalding swallow of coffee. “Well, my Dad belongs to the Policemen’s Benevolent Association and it’s awfully dull,” she said, relieved to be allowed to finish a sentence.

  “Daddy, what’s wrong with the baby? Why is it sick? “Lisa asked.

  “I told you, it’s just very sick, that’s all. We won’t know anything more until Mommy or the doctor calls. Now shut your mouth and eat your breakfast.”

  “How can I eat my breakfast with my mouth shut?” Lisa whined.

  “Do you want Daddy to swim with you?”

  Lisa toyed with her spoon. She didn’t answer. Mr. Hoade turned back to Dorothy. “I just thought I’d tell you something,” he said smugly, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands over his stomach. “If you want to be a reporter, you ought to know one thing.”

  “What’s that, Mr. Hoade?” asked Dorothy, knowing she was supposed to say that and wishing his chair would topple beneath him.

  “Power,” he continued, lighting a cigarette, “real power, is never where you think it is. It’s never where people want you to believe it is. You probably think all these glamor boys who run for office are the people who make things work. Not in a pig’s eye,” he said, blowing a stream of smoke straight up in the air. “Except for a few committee chairmen in Washington, and the son of a bitch in the White House, union president, this union in particular, is one of the most powerful jobs in the country. But my man doesn’t get his picture in the papers unless there’s a strike, and he doesn’t have his hair done by some monkey from Paris. Someday,” Mr. Hoade added after making a face at the dregs in his coffee cup, “you’ll know things like that.”

  “Thank you for telling me,” said Dorothy as earnestly as she could.

  “You never heard of my man before, did you?”

  “No, Mr. Hoade.”

  “You probably thought you were going to meet somebody like Sparkman or Kefauver, didn’t you?”

  “Well, I knew his name began with an N, so...

  “My man is a whole lot bigger than Sparkman or Kefauver or Stevenson or all of them rolled into one.”

  “Yes, Mr. Hoade.” said Dorothy. She wondered what a “monkey from Paris” was.

  “Well, you didn’t get very far last night, so you can ask me what you want for your paper.”

  “Well,” she said, swallowing the last of an English muffin, “the only thing I can think of to ask is...wasn’t that the union that had the trouble recently?”

  “What trouble?” he asked coldly.

  Dorothy gulped down some more coffee. “Well, um, there was a murder, wasn’t there? Of a man who was going to be the president of the union? And there were some witnesses to it? The children’s governess, wasn’t it? And one of them was killed before the trial? And the other one hasn’t ever been found?”

  “You know something, honey?” said Mr. Hoade.

  “Yes, Mr. Hoade?”

  “One of the first things about being a good reporter is getting your facts straight.”

  “I didn’t mean... I just thought...

  “And if you were a real reporter, instead of a fifteen-year-old kid, and what you just described didn’t happen to be in a different union, which it is, and didn’t happen to be mixed up with the Lindbergh kidnapping, and you brought up anything like that to me or anybody at the party last night, you know where you’d be right now?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Out of a job with your head in a toilet!”

  “Daddy, that’s not nice!” said Jenny.

  “Excuse me!” he said. “You’re absolutely right, honey, and don’t tell Mommy I said that. But it’s true. There’s a whole lot of things in this world that aren’t so nice, and you know what I’d do if I were you?” he asked Dorothy.

  “No, sir.”

  “I’d go to a nice college and meet a nice boy and have some nice babies and forget about anything else.”

  “But,” Dorothy gasped, “I don’t want to! I want to be somebody!”

  Mr. Hoade held his head cocked to one side. A habit of Lisa’s, Dorothy noticed. He looked at her keenly and grinned devilishly. “I knew you’d say that,” he said.

  Sensing an opening, Dorothy plunged right in. “Mr. Hoade, may I ask you something? I mean it’s none of my business, I suppose, but I was just curious. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want, but something is bothering me.”

  “Like the man said, shoot!”

  “Well, do you think it’s right to keep a mongoloid baby separated from its brothers and sisters? I mean its sisters? I mean to say, or to ask, is it just a plain old mongoloid, because sooner or later Jenny and Lisa will...

  Mr. Hoade drummed his fingers on the table. He looked quickly at both his daughters. “Go up and get your suits on,” he told them. “I’ll meet you at the pool.”

  Jenny shrugged and left the table, twisting her hair around her finger. Lisa slid her uneaten cereal into the sink and followed Jenny out. When they had gone, Mr. Hoade turned back to Dorothy. “What exactly did Maria say to you?” he asked.

  “You mean...Mrs. Hoade?”

  “Mrs. Hoade,” he repeated slowly, lighting another cigarette.

  “She...she told me the truth, I guess. That your...daughter is a mongoloid. She didn’t say that to the girls.”

  Mr. Hoade leaned across the kitchen table. He tapped Dor
othy’s gold cross with his fingernails. She jumped. “Curiosity killed the Catholic!” he said and chuckled at his pun.

  Dorothy wished her head were clearer. She sat in the empty kitchen, staring at the dirty breakfast dishes. I ought to make myself do them, instead of leaving them for Dinna. Her hand lay shadowless on the cool marble table. Dorothy’s head bent, suddenly, like a flower bowed with rain. She slept.

  “Where’d you get those boots?” Lisa asked.

  “Baldy gave them to me.”

  “They sure are awful-looking.”

  “They won’t be, when I finish cleaning them up,” said Dorothy, scraping at the heel of one boot with a piece of twig. “Why don’t you take a swim, Lisa?”

  “When did Baldy give them to you?” Jenny asked.

  “Yesterday.”

  “There goes Daddy,” said Lisa.

  Dorothy turned to see Mr. Hoade driving away. He was going to the hospital, he’d said with a funny look at Dorothy’s riding boots. “Horses, huh?” he’d added.

  “How come you didn’t have them when you came in from riding last night?” Lisa’s voice began to assume a teasing rhythm. Dorothy reddened and clenched her teeth. “I’m gonna tell Mom,” said Lisa matter-of-factly.

  “Just what are you going to tell your mother?” Dorothy snapped, rubbing the heel of her boot vigorously.

  “That you stole them.”

  “I didn’t steal them.”

  “How come you went out of your room last night? I heard you. And how come you came back into your room after a while with those boots? I peeked out and saw you.” Dorothy said nothing. “Are you going to hit me?” Lisa asked. Gladly, Dorothy would have thrown Lisa into the pool and drowned her at that very moment.

  “When Baldy drove me home yesterday,” Dorothy said, “she dropped me at the end of the driveway because she couldn’t turn around with the horse van. We got...talking and I forgot the boots. I went out to get them, so there.”