Everyone laughed and started to pack up their bags.
“You really know your stuff,” Caleb said appreciatively, zipping his computer case. “How’d you get to be such a history geek?”
“How about you?” Laura teased, artfully dodging the question. “You’re like a walking encyclopedia. Do you have a photographic memory or something?”
“I wish. No, my dad was a history major. You should see our Nantucket house. The library is packed with history books. It’s a little weird.”
They walked out of class together and Laura replayed his comment in her head. Our Nantucket house. The library. The words were like pins, popping her euphoria and reminding her of the different planets she and Caleb inhabited. He’d said it all so casually, like having a beautiful summer home was as normal as having an arm or a leg.
Did he know how lucky he was? Laura wondered. She watched him pass through the door, his computer case slung low on his shoulder. She hoped so. More than anything, she hoped so.
Some things about this reality would never seem normal to her. It wasn’t hers, and no matter how hard she tried, there would always be something she just couldn’t understand. She was the imitation, and the imitation always failed to measure up in some way or another. Always.
22
The tone of a household is determined by the people who run it.
—The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette
Cigarettes. Smokes. Butts. Fags.
Willa had found them by the boatload. Or, to be precise, she’d found a porcelain mallard stuffed to the beak with Lucky Strikes. Unfiltered.
“Yuck,” she said. She twisted one of the thin sticks around in her fingers before letting it fall back inside the bird.
It had been an innocent enough discovery. She’d been dusting the Mortimers’ living room when she noticed that the bird’s head was loose and wobbling. Her attempt to fix it had resulted in an accidental decapitation.
As she glanced around the tartan living room, Willa’s eyes sought out the Mortimer family picture. Hays and Muffin Mortimer and their three flaxen-haired children smiled at her from the top of a snowcapped mountain. All five wore the same Christmas sweater.
“I don’t smoke!” the cherubic faces seemed to sing as Willa studied their blond innocence.
“Please,” she admonished. “That duck didn’t swim in here by himself.”
A tall, thin woman rushed into the room. Her velvet headband looked like it had been surgically attached to her wheat-blond head.
Enter Muffin Mortimer.
Willa opened her mouth, then clamped it shut. She’d promised Laura to speak only when spoken to, right? Grabbing her Swiffer, she tried to look busy. She’d wait for Mrs. Mortimer to say hello first.
But the woman didn’t seem to be in a talking mood. Breezing past Willa, she headed straight for the duck, snapped off its head and placed it noiselessly on the floor beside the mallard’s glazed tail feathers. As one hand slid into the bird, her other hand worked its way through her light green Kelly bag and emerged with a sterling silver lighter. Smokes and fire in hand, Muffin glanced around the room, confirming that the coast was indeed clear. She allowed herself a small, congratulatory giggle before heading out onto the grand wooden deck for her afternoon smoke.
The mystery of the mallard was solved.
Unbelievable,Willa thought as the door slammed behind her employer. It was like I wasn’t even in the room. At all. It’s almost like I was—
“Invisible.” Willa said the word out loud—and loudly—as if to prove just the opposite.
Laura had warned her about this, she realized as she trudged up the stairs toward the bedrooms.
Well, why didn’t she elaborate? Willa wondered. And she definitely knew about that duck. How annoying.
Then Willa straightened, remembering Laura’s words. It’s not something you can explain, she’d said. She had a point. Besides, Willa had always been on the Mortimer side of the issue. How many times had she marched by a staff member—a cook or cleaning person—at Pogue Hall without saying hello? Laura and her mother were really the first employees she’d ever gotten to know. She’d always assumed that people disapproved of her, but maybe she was reading too much into things. Maybe they were simply waiting for her to be friendly. And since she never was, they weren’t in return.
What a strange world she’d entered. All her life, Willa had been taught that success was standing out; her consistent failure to do so had repeatedly plagued her. But in her new role, blending in was more than acceptable—it was valued. And essential.
As early as this morning, Willa had seen nothing wrong with that philosophy. After all, this was what she’d always wanted: freedom from her family—from the Pogue name. And now, if these people couldn’t see her, well, it was impossible to disappoint them, right?
But the scene in the living room had hardly been liberating. Mrs. Mortimer had treated her like less than nothing. The experience had been a lot more bruising than one of her parents’ stupid lectures. She’d never really thought about it before, but now she knew: falling short of your potential was definitely not as bad as having no potential at all. And that was what these people thought of people like Laura and her mom.
Fresh guilt twisted Willa’s stomach as she padded down the hallway.
Instinctively, she reached for her phone. A quick rally with Lubé would definitely bolster her spirits.
Willa froze midstep. What was she thinking? IM was off-limits during the day, no exceptions. Wow. One bad experience with a grown woman named Muffin and her carcinogenic duck, and she was quivering like Jell-O. How insecure can I get? she thought.
She was going to stick to the game plan. Regardless of the experience downstairs, this had to be better than Fenwick.
She really had to develop some thicker skin if she was going to do this job. Actually, forget the job. Thicker skin was a good idea in general. The world—especially hers—was filled with Muffins. And ducks. She just had to learn to ignore them.
“Whatever,” Willa muttered, grudgingly. “She still could’ve said hi. A little wave would’ve been nice.”
The first door off the long, wide hallway wore a huge, handmade DO NOT ENTER sign just above the knob. Written in bright pink and purple bubble letters, the words looked warm and inviting, so Willa hastily brushed it aside.
The room belonged to Phoebe Mortimer, the youngest member of the family and a sophomore at Greenwich Academy, the local prep school. Phoebe’s bedroom was huge—almost as large as Willa’s room at Pogue Hall—and made American Girl Place seem butch by comparison. Decorated entirely in hot pink and lavender, the place was coated in lace and ruffles (Laura was so right, ruffles were just the worst to clean—you had to shake and shake, and they never really did get completely clean, did they?). After only ten minutes, Willa sank down on the end of the bed for a little rest.
“Excuse me?”
It was hard to say what scared Willa more—the voice or that telltale smell of cigarette smoke. Willa jumped up and spun around. Mrs. Mortimer’s head poked into the bedroom. She didn’t look mad exactly, but she wasn’t smiling, either.
“Um, I—I’m sorry,” Willa stammered. What rotten timing! If she got Laura into trouble she’d kill herself. “I was cleaning and felt a little faint so I sat for, like, just a second, you know? Then I was—”
“I wanted to remind you that my daughter’s scent is lavender.”
“Her scent?”
“Lavender,” Mrs. Mortimer repeated impatiently. “When you launder my daughter’s sheets, please use the lavender water in the iron. My husband and I use the rosewater, while the boys get Crabtree and Evelyn’s Spring Rain. I thought I should remind you, since it’s been a few months.”
“Uh, thanks,” Willa said, but Mrs. Mortimer and her Lucky Strikes were already moving down the hall.
“Also, Phoebe’s dirty field hockey uniforms are in her laundry basket,” Mrs. Mortimer shouted over her shoulder. “It
’s the season now and she’s the star center, so please don’t let them sit.”
“I won’t,” Willa replied, even though she knew nobody could hear her.
She walked over to the purple wicker hamper and flipped open the lid. It was stuffed with dirty clothes, but there was no field hockey uniform.
Great, she thought. She rolled up her sleeves and started looking.
Fifteen minutes later Willa was still looking. She’d collected the entire Mortimer family’s dirty laundry, including their sheets and towels, but Phoebe’s hockey uniform was still missing.
She was on the verge of giving up—she still had another house to clean—when she found a red gym bag with a hockey stick stitched on the front buried under a pile of stuffed animals in the closet. Inside were a pair of stiff new cleats, two roundtrip ticket stubs to Grand Central Station and a pamphlet: “How to Care for Your New Tattoo.”
“Looks like Muffin isn’t the only Mortimer with a secret,” Willa said, shaking the bag to see if she’d missed some hidden treasure. A paper flopped out onto the rug. It was riddled with angry-looking red slashes that Willa recognized immediately. A test. A failed test.
Phoebe Mortimer was failing geometry, according to her teacher. It said so at the top of the paper, along with a bright red “See me.”
Willa felt a pang of sympathy. She’d taken geometry twice herself and had found the class impossible. It had somehow managed to get even more confusing the second time, with more shapes floating around in her brain.
On the back of the test, Phoebe had scribbled a note to someone:
Mom thinks I have practice every day after school so Seb and I are taking the train into the city. Cover for me if she stops by the field? Phoebe
Unbelievable, Willa thought. Muffin’s out on the porch chain-smoking while her daughter’s in Manhattan with her boyfriend, getting tattooed like a member of Hells Angels. What were the brothers doing? Boiling bodies down in the basement? Was the father polygamous?
Sufficiently creeped out, Willa finished up and beat a hasty retreat over to the Watsons’.
Unfortunately, the Watson residence was hardly an improvement. Willa had only just started cleaning the kitchen when a tiny woman laden with Bergdorf’s bags exploded into the room.
“Come on,” she snapped. “Quickly now.”
Frozen with surprise, Willa stared at the woman. She was pretty but way too thin, and that thinness gave her face a hard, mean quality. And she was definitely wearing her weight in perfume. Willa could smell it from six feet away.
“Come on,” the woman repeated.
Come on what?Willa thought.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you waiting for a written invitation?” Mrs. Watson held out a garment bag, shaking it for emphasis.
“Oh,” Willa said, relieved that she finally understood.
“Take everything upstairs to my dressing room and remove the clothing, then place the bags and boxes in the fireplace and burn them,” instructed Mrs. Watson rapidly. “All receipts should go in the way, way back of my nightstand. Fast! My husband comes home early every Wednesday before golf. It is essential that he not see these items. Is that clear? Do you speak English?”
Her face on fire, heart pounding, Willa grabbed the shopping bags and ran.
At least Mrs. Watson had acknowledged her presence immediately, right?
As she dumped the clothes onto an overstuffed love seat in the master bedroom, Willa absorbed her surroundings. Never in her life—neither in Phoebe Mortimer’s bedroom nor at Christmas—had she seen anything more overdecorated. Flowers in bright yellows, greens, purples and violets warred with shells, horses and three different kinds of plaid. Ornate balloon shades, blinds and curtains dressed each of the eight windows. The massive room was the emotionally disturbed offspring of Ralph Lauren and Laura Ashley.
The layout was confusing, too. Five different doors led from the room. Willa tried a few of them before she found Mrs. Watson’s dressing room.
Willa’s fingers moved quickly over tags and hangers, pulling and tearing until everything was hung up. She looked down at the mess of receipts in her hands and turned toward the two nightstands. She yanked one open.
It was filled with copies of Playboy.
Definitely Mr. Watson’s side of the bed.
She walked over to the other side of the bed and shoved the receipts as far back into that nightstand’s drawer as they would go.
I could switch the two hiding places, she thought, imagining the look on Mr. Watson’s face when he reached for a Playboy and pulled out a fistful of clothing bills.
But then Mrs. Watson would fire her. Correction: Mrs. Watson would fire Laura Melon. And Willa had promised Laura she’d behave herself.
Not that the Watsons don’t deserve it, she thought, shaking her head. These families were awful.
Willa froze as she realized that her family was no better.
After all, didn’t her parents think their daughter was safely ensconced up at Fenwick Academy?
“Just clean,” she muttered as she gathered the shopping bags and boxes. “Just clean.”
23
No messes too mean!
—Brillo
“Oh, honey, you should see me! I look like a beach bum! I’ve got the tan, the floppy hat, the flip-flops. You wouldn’t recognize your own mother!”
As her mom’s voice filtered through the phone in loud, staccato bursts, Laura leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “It sounds amazing. I’m so glad you’re having a great time.”
“I am, sweetie. I really am. And I’m just so proud of you, holding down the business like you are. You’re the reason I was able to do this.”
Laura swallowed. She’d dreaded this first conversation with her mother. Alone, walking around campus, Laura could push herself into the fantasy. Some days she almost believed her life here was real.
But the sound of her mother’s voice ruined everything. It made pretending impossible. She’d known it would.
“It’s nothing,” she whispered.
“It’s not nothing,” her mother insisted. “You’ve taken on so much.”
There was a pause on the other side of the phone and Laura thought she heard a sniffle.
Oh, please, don’t let her be crying, she thought.
“I’ve been working full-time since I was fifteen years old, but you’re the best job I’ve ever done. I really mean that. I love you, honey.”
“I love you, too.” Laura covered her face with her hands. Her eyes stung.
All she wanted to do was crawl back into bed for the next twelve hours so she wouldn’t have to think about what a terrible person—and disappointing daughter—she was. But she had history and she couldn’t call attention to herself by skipping classes her first week. Willa was counting on her.
Laura grabbed her backpack and scooted out of Hub House, pausing only to toss Mrs. Pogue’s latest care package—a throw pillow shaped like a leafy green vegetable with the words LETTUCE MAKE YOU THIN! embroidered across the front, accompanied by a short, frosty note “from Mother” as dictated to Emory—into the garbage.
As she walked, she kept her eyes trained on her feet. She was too depressed to play the “where’s Caleb” game today.
“Willa!”
Laura twisted around as a hand jabbed her in the shoulder. Mr. Stade stood behind her, red-faced and breathless.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said, coughing slightly, clearly embarrassed by his outburst. “I didn’t mean to scare you or anything. I was just calling your name for a while—didn’t you hear me?”
Great. She really had to start being more alert. It didn’t matter what mood she was in; she couldn’t jeopardize the plan. Too much was at stake.
She shrugged. “Uh, no. Sorry. I guess I’m just tired.”
Mr. Stade fell into step beside her. “Well, you have been working overtime. I read through your proposal last night. It’s excellent, Willa. I’m very impressed.”
He was right—she had worked overtime. She’d started researching her first paper a few days ago and had worked incessantly for days. And if the compliment had come yesterday, she would have been elated. But after the conversation with her mother, she wasn’t sure what to do with the praise.
“Thanks,” she said, pushing an enthusiasm into her voice that she didn’t feel.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a student hand in a topic only five days into the semester.” He laughed, his eyebrows rising slightly from behind his round glasses. “The ambitious ones usually start around Columbus Day, but most leave all the work until Thanksgiving.”
Laura shrugged. She knew she was supposed to be Willa Pogue, total academic slacker, but she’d already prepared an excuse. “A year ago, I wouldn’t have bothered to write any papers at all, but I’m really trying to be organized now.”
“What inspired this sudden change? I hope you don’t mind my asking. It’s just rare to see—especially so late in a school career.”
Laura stared at her feet and forced herself to breathe. “Well, I guess I just got scared after the whole Shipley experience.”
“Well, whatever the trigger, you should be very proud of yourself.” Mr. Stade cast her a sidelong glance. “It really is hard to believe you’re the same person who attended Shipley, Willa. . . .”
Laura felt her insides twist. Oh no.
“. . . Between this paper and the way you carry class discussions, you’re performing like an honors student.”
False alarm. “Thanks.”
Relax, she ordered. And cheer up. He’s saying such nice things about a person he thinks is you.
“Junior year is when the college pressure really starts up,” Mr. Stade said as they climbed the stairs to Regan Hall. “Although I think students at a place like Fenwick feel college pressure when they start nursery school.”
“Right,” she agreed. Her stomach clenched. “It starts when you can hold a sippy cup.”
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