by Maria Flook
Until the summer season started at Neptune’s, Holly was pleased to work with Robin in the big kitchen at Saint George’s. She knotted the cord of her full-length rubberized apron which fell to her shins. The front bib stopped at her collarbone. It didn’t matter how she looked underneath. The peppers were roasting and she liked the sweet tinge it gave to the chalky hallways. In this manner, she reached out beyond her tiny station, and the kitchen assumed power over the academic workings of the place.
The kitchen had modern equipment, but she liked best the grey marble slabs where she could slap bread dough and tug it back under the heel of her hand. The big stainless sinks had tall gooseneck faucets, and she filled ten-gallon speckled kettles until they were almost too heavy to lift over to the big double range, where eight burners could go at once.
It was institutional fare, but sometimes Robin made it interesting. Robin liked making soups. Clear soups. Root soups. Bean soups with smoked hocks. On the spur of the moment, Robin whipped fresh cream by hand, in a huge bowl set in a trough of ice. After the main course was finished, she walked out into the dining hall with the giant bowl in the crook of her arm and she dolloped satiny clouds of topping onto individual servings of sweet berries as students and faculty sat mesmerized. For this, Robin was loved.
Holly envied Robin’s friendly relationships. Most of Neptune’s tenants never even saw Holly. Except for a few repeat families, no one remembered her. They moved into the shacks long after Holly was finished setting up. She left a number-ten envelope for tips, resting it against the bureau mirror, but only about a third of the guests remembered to leave a gratuity. If a family was late at checkout and Holly stood around waiting for them with her trolley of sheets and towels, her industrial spray gun of Windex hung on her apron, they might notice her and say hello. Maids are not supposed to chat it up. But Robin had open lines of communication. She made molded candies in the shape of the school mascot and sold them at soccer games. At the holidays, Robin made giant Yule logs decorated with chocolate bark shavings and meringue mushrooms. These logs were placed at the center of every table, and students slapped each other’s hands to keep the centerpiece whole until the final course was over. Then, like savages, the students sawed their knives through the sugared crust and fought over the dense chocolate wheels. They told their parents about Robin and she received lavish Christmas presents from the contrite mothers who boarded their children.
Following Robin’s example, Holly shaved the rind of lemons, little hysterical twists of yellow with which she decorated the heavy slices of sauerbraten. She made gingered apples for the pork roast or dyed turnip roses whenever the dinner looked too bland or gloomy. She learned from Robin that basic nourishment must be embellished with excitements.
Elliot Tompkins, a don and biology teacher at Saint George’s, was also a trustee at the nearby Norman Bird Sanctuary and he often stepped into the kitchen to use the refrigerator for a jar of barnacles or some specimen from the marsh needing a cool temperature. He wanted the toaster oven to incubate woodcock eggs, but it didn’t always work out; its thermostat wasn’t precise. He came in to see what Holly was preparing that night. After he sniffed the steaming platters, making acid Mimi Sheraton comments, he turned around at the door and recited the same daily remark to show his solidarity with the kitchen staff. “To serve them all my days—” he announced with bittersweet refreshment. He liked making a pun while referring to the famous saga about an English public school instructor. He identified with the British and had adopted their courtesies and mannerisms.
Robin timed her butterknot rolls to come out when the peppers were ready. Next, she placed her fruit jumbles in the warming oven to take the chill off the refrigerated tart shells. Holly and Robin worked well together and everything was ready when they heard the students filing in, the chairs grinding backward over the oak planks, the silverware clanging as the students unfurled their napkins with abandon and some of the utensils landed on the floor.
Student servers came into the kitchen to collect trays, the pitchers of milk and ice water, and ceramic bowls of chunky butter pats. The self-important prefects came next to retrieve their tables’ vitamin supplements and the various medications, which were kept in the refrigerator. When the meal was in progress, Holly started scouring the roasters and kettles. She kept her industrial-grade rubber gloves on a hook in the pantry, the same gloves she’d seen fishermen use to scale fish or shuck oysters. Holly snipped a Brillo pad in half and she started to soak the broilers in scalding water. She used the edge of a spatula to loosen the caramelized sugar scrim from a big twelve-inch pie plate.
Holly was drying a colander when Willis Pratt walked into the kitchen. He startled Holly and the colander slipped out of her hands. When she picked it up she saw its aluminum mesh was dented. She stared at the gash in the colander’s silver hip. Willis leaned against the heavy butcher-block table, which stood on four girthy legs in the middle of the floor. He fingered the marred surface of golden wood and looked at Holly.
“What do you want?” she asked him. She tucked the colander on a rack above the sink. She kept working, stowing utensils and scraping her fingernail against an adhering particle of onion. She was unwilling to face him. She lifted a heavy trash bag by its corners until the plastic film stretched under the weight, then she cinched the bag shut, tying its four corners.
“When are you finished here? Maybe we can talk,” he said.
“Still have the dishes. They go in the machine, but it gets loaded twice. Two cycles. The tables aren’t even cleared yet.”
“I’m having trouble with your assumption about that dog,” Willis said. “It’s bothering me.” He paced around slowly. He picked up a long starched towel and he tucked it around his hips expertly, the way a waiter knows how to make an apron from a table napkin. He picked up a dishrag and wrung it out in one hand over the sink. He started to circle the rag over the countertops. When he stopped scouring, she picked up the rag and tucked it in a hamper.
“That dog? Oh, forget it. I overreacted.” She started spraying the sink.
“I have a problem with these violent ideas. These visions. Now you’re telling me I was trying to burn a dog—”
“My mistake. Really. I apologize.”
“Once something gets in my head, I might as well have done it.”
“You’re kidding. You might have set that dog on fire?”
“Not until you put it in my mind. That’s what I’m saying.”
“I said I was sorry.”
He looked away from her and she was overtaken by his honesty. Yet, when he turned to watch her again, he looked fine. She thought that this was some kind of a line he was giving her. It might be that easy for him sometimes, telling a girl his troubles, but she wasn’t going along with it.
She told him, “Did you ever try a psychiatrist?”
A student walked through with a tray of condiments. Holly took it from the boy and shoved the tray into the big double-sided refrigerator.
Holly was ready to show Willis out, but she had trouble looking him in the eye. She saw his slender figure, the form of him, leaning against the big appliances. She started to sway, imperceptibly, in a tide of anger. Then, when he looked at her directly, she felt light-headed, insubstantial, as if he might blow her around the room like a piece of fluff.
“I can’t talk now,” she said. She looked at his face. His skin was tight over his sharp features, like the porcelain gloss on exquisite figurines. His military haircut had grown out several inches to a modest length, a circle of unmanageable silk tassels. In the harsh kitchen light his tight pupils looked glossy and hot, wet black snips inside washed violet spheres. She was upset about the way he had tucked the towel around his waist, his aggressive, take-control-of-the-room act when he rinsed the dishrag under the tap. She stared at the white towel, which rose over his groin, and remembered to lift her eyes to his face. Such a fair complexion coupled with his immediate jaded aura was startling. “You’ll have to leav
e,” she told him.
Willis stepped up to the counter where Holly had begun spooning tapioca pudding into individual servings. He lifted a glass dish in the palm of his hand; the pearly mound trembled and shook.
He carved into it with a teaspoon.
He ate a mouthful.
She watched him swallow; his Adam’s apple triggered. She felt a delicious icy wave roll up her spine. She wondered if he knew what he was doing or if, in fact, Willis was innocent of the tremendous impulse she was feeling. She heard the students in the dining hall scratching silverware against their stoneware plates, a ceramic crescendo.
He might have seen that her resolve was melting away. He looked at her again, with complete familiarity. He looked at her the way a mechanic sees a big table of parts he has just disassembled, deciding if and when to put them back together.
“Well, good night,” Holly told him in a firm voice. The sound of her own voice embarrassed her and she brushed her apron with the heels of her hands and backed away. She turned and hurried into the crowded dining hall, where she knew he wouldn’t follow. After she pushed through the swinging door, she turned around and looked back through its porthole. Willis had strolled out the back door. He had permitted the neighborhood tom to wriggle past him. The lean cat leapt to the countertop and started to lick a greasy serving spoon. Holly came back into the kitchen and clapped her hands beside the stray. It didn’t jump down from the sink. Again she clapped her hands. She couldn’t scare it. She lifted the cat into her arms, cradled its haunches and rode her chin across the notched tips of its ears.
Chapter Ten
Holly and Rennie directed the children in the burial of their dog. They prepared a small ceremony; it was like Brownie theater. Holly burned a candle, cupping the flame with her hand, but there was a strong southeast wind and the candle kept blowing out. Rennie had several yellowed holy cards from various wakes in a dresser drawer and she divided up the cards between Lindy and Sarah.
The children sifted through the cards, distracted by the dramatic portraits of the saints. Holly told Rennie, “That’s a nice idea. It keeps their minds off the matter at hand.”
“Their minds will come back to it,” Rennie said.
“Well, it helps for now, anyway.”
Lindy fanned his cards before Rennie.
“Wait a minute. Give me that one. He’s my patron saint.” She took the card from the boy and put it in her pocket.
Holly arranged the dog in the shallow trench and smoothed her hand down its dull fur. Lindy placed seven dog biscuits, the remainder of the box, beside the puppy’s muzzle. Holly waited for the boy to tap the crumbs from the box, then she spooned the earth with the trowel until the puppy was covered. When the children went off, she tamped the grave with the flat edge of a garden hoe until the soil was packed down tight, but she could still feel the hump of its carcass beneath the topsoil.
It was dusk when Willis came over to the duplex. The water had warmed up during the day, just enough to grow a hairy vapor across the surface of Easton Pond at sundown. Holly stood beside him on the porch and they looked at the reservoir. Willis said he was sorry he had disturbed her at her job. He asked her to come out. Holly put on her sweater-jacket and pushed the cuffs past her wrists. Willis put Holly in the car. She stared out the shattered windshield as if it was nothing. He appreciated her restraint. Willis drove with one hand on the wheel, his broken arm rested in his lap. The plan was simple. They were taking a drive.
She sat tentatively on the bench seat beside Willis, her hands on either side of her hips. Why did her hips feel suddenly fragile, like two flared, bone-china saucers that might easily be smashed? The alternative might be just as bad, they might be put on a shelf.
Willis drove into a new housing development, several identical Cape Cod-style houses nestled against a sloping field above Narragansett Bay. He pulled around a cul-de-sac and stopped the car, letting its rough idle shake until the gear shifted another fraction. “See that house?”
“That one?”
“That’s right. She’s in there.”
“Who’s in there?”
“The mother of that baby. Sheila Boyd from my high school.”
Holly fingered the collar of her jacket. “The mother of what baby?”
“Sheila’s baby was born dead.” Willis stared at the pastel front door of the little Cape. “She’s a really nice person. One of these people you just can’t see getting knocked around. I should stop in and say something.”
“What could you say?”
“Shit. Anything. You know, whatever you say to someone who’s been through it.”
“Yeah,” Holly said, “then what?” She saw Willis was having trouble communicating; his obsession was all over him. It was like a net. Holly could see him snagged inside it, but he couldn’t see through it. His stillness was unnerving. She didn’t know the next step.
“I’d like to go ring that doorbell. You know, go in there and tell her my condolences.”
“Sure, I’ll wait here,” Holly told him.
“Can’t.”
“Well, of course you can’t.” Holly flip-flopped. “You can’t just go in there like a family member. Why don’t you just let it alone. I’m not making a criticism, but maybe you shouldn’t dwell on these tragedies. My father’s dead. Once they’re dead, they’re dead.”
Willis said, “I try to imagine them. I don’t mind trying. I like to give it the benefit of the doubt.”
“Are you talking about ghosts?”
“The human spirit,” he said.
“Maybe you could think about it once a day. Like when you pray,” Holly said.
“I don’t pray. Not since I was a kid. Do you pray?”
“Shit.” They turned their heads and looked out opposite windows. “No, I don’t take time to pray. Maybe we should start up again.”
Holly used to go along with her father to the Presbyterian church at Four Corners. The minister used those four corners in his sermons each Sunday, inventing antithetical metaphors, such as the corners of guilt and innocence; wrong and right; faith and despair.
The Sunday light clothed everything, streets and sidewalks in bleached muslin. She sat in a polished pew beside her father. The gleaming rows smelled like Murphy’s Oil Soap until her sinuses felt raw. Her father watched ahead, listening to the sermon, ready to follow the broader guidelines. Her father might be stinging from his losses at Lincoln Park dog track. Sunday mornings, Holly listened as her father shaved and dressed for church. If he mimicked the track announcer’s voice, his ascending singsong as he sights the mechanical rabbit and calls the start, “AND HERE COMES YANK-EE—” he had had a lucky night.
Willis steered the car away from Sheila Boyd’s Cape-style house. He wanted to show Holly another place. A graveyard by the sea. The misty twilight was perfect and eerie; it almost necessitated a cemetery visit. He drove along the salt marsh and rocky meadows of Second Beach and onto Indian Avenue. He pulled over at a forlorn place, a few empty acres called White’s Monument Village, and turned off the ignition. They got out of the car and started to walk.
Willis led Holly to a divided area in the park. Holly saw a stone monument that supported a large bronze scroll. The scroll had the word BABYLAND on it. Willis fingered the bizarre compound word. He said, “These little squirts didn’t know what hit them.” The scroll was a smarmy salutation welcoming children to their new home:
I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing out to sea,
and oh, but it was laden, with children good to see.
Strong arms that held the sails tight,
Red cheeks that laughed at cold,
And every child upon it was worth his weight in gold.
“That’s sick,” Holly said.
“That poem comes from the Gorham Monument Catalogue. Gorham is like Hallmark or American Greetings for the burial industry. This poem isn’t unique. There’s nine hundred of these Babyland scrolls in cemeteries all over the United States. Think of it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Fritz used to work here cutting grass. The groundskeeper was a chatterbox.”
“I guess it’s a lonely job,” Holly said, “tending graves. I bet it makes somebody want to yack.”
Holly didn’t like the poem. How could children be given such a short straw. She didn’t like the sentiment that a child was only worth its weight in gold. Willis walked ahead of Holly to a fresh excavation. The earth was carefully removed. All four incredibly short sides were expertly smoothed. It looked square as a lunch pail sunk in the velvet lawn. The grave did not yet have a marker.
“This one’s for Sheila’s baby,” he said, “when it gets back from the Research Triangle.”
“When it gets back from where?”
“When the medical students are through gawking at it.”
“How do you know whose grave this is?”
“A hunch. It’s too small for me. So I know it’s not mine.” He looked at her. “Shit. It’s about the size of a breadbox,” Willis said.
“Out of the oven and into the breadbox,” Holly said.
He didn’t like the joke. The baby cemetery was more than he could handle; for Willis an acre of tiny, doll-size skeletons was plenty enough reason for a man to slit his own throat.
“I’m not fucking you in a cemetery,” she told him.
He turned to face her and shrugged.
“Is this your idea of romance? Making love in baby graveyards? That kind of thing went out with the beatnik generation.”
He walked ahead, taking long strides. He went over a knoll before Holly could catch up. He was thinking of his mother’s grave in detached ruminations. Had the little chunk of sausage that had choked Wydette been buried with her remains? What happens to the undigested stomach contents, the velvety gruel left inside the bowel? All of it was part of the same soup, stirred by the worms.
Holly caught up to him and they stood together looking at the chalky grid, intensified in the twilight. Willis steered her over to his parents’ simple monuments. Both stones were engraved only with the surname Pratt. Lester was on the left, Wydette was on the right. In a few more years, no one would remember whose side was which. Willis had always thought that there was some sort of deception being practiced. The anonymity of the family name seemed crude.
