by Maia Chance
“The Carnegies are awfully fond of their dogs, and so are the Astors. You don’t wish to give people the wrong idea about Willow Acres by banning dogs, do you?”
“Are you threatening me, Lola?”
I beamed. “Of course not. I’m helping.”
“Very well,” Chisholm snapped. “But do clean up after the dog. Nurse Astrid will see you to your room. Good morning.”
* * *
Nurse Astrid was a bony young woman with brown curls, a white pinafore, a white cap, and glasses. She directed one male orderly to park the Duesy in some hidden lot, and another to collect our luggage.
“No, no, I prefer to carry my own suitcase,” Berta said.
Nurse Astrid said, “But—”
“I insist.” Berta wriggled her suitcase from the backseat.
I picked up Cedric, and we followed Nurse Astrid inside. In the lobby, twin staircases spilled to a sweep of marble floor. Plushy furniture, potted banana trees, gilt-framed landscapes, an antiseptic hush.
“‘Room,’ in the singular?” I said, huffing and puffing to keep up with Nurse Astrid.
“Yes, I am afraid we are quite booked up, so you and Mrs. Lundgren must share a room. You will not spend much time there, anyway. We keep the patients busy here at Willow Acres.” Nurse Astrid led us up the stairs and along empty corridors.
“Where is everyone?” I asked. “Still asleep?”
“Willow Acres guests rise at six o’clock sharp,” Nurse Astrid said.
“Then they’re at breakfast?” I asked in a hopeful voice.
“Oh, no. Everyone supped upon bone broth and herbal tea at six fifteen, and they are now stimulating their muscles at the morning vigorology session. You must change quickly, and then you will be able to participate in the second half of the session.” We stopped at a thick oak door. Nurse Astrid unlocked it with a key from her apron pocket. “You will be staying just through here.”
“Why is the door locked?” I asked.
“Merely a precaution. We prefer to keep patients out of their quarters during the day to encourage full participation in the treatment program, and at night we will lock you in so you aren’t tempted to undo all your hard work by sneaking away to the fish and chips stand down the road.” Nurse Astrid ushered us down a corridor to the small room that Berta and I were to share. “Your vigorology costumes are in the wardrobe. Please change quickly. There is a small bathroom inside your room. I shall be waiting outside in the East Ward lounge at the end of the corridor in order to escort you outside.” She left.
I shut the door and let Cedric loose to sniff around. Berta slung her small suitcase on one of the narrow beds and flipped the clasps.
“Did you hear her?” I whispered. “She said ‘ward.’ I think we have been roped into one of Chisholm’s loony bins!” Did I mention that Chisholm is also the chief nerve specialist at Babbling Brook Hospital? His zeal for bettering other people knows no bounds.
“Nonsense,” Berta said. “They think of this place as a hospital, and in a hospital, floors are called wards. Do stop panicking. It makes that vein stand out on your forehead like a—”
“Chocolate!” I cried. Berta’s suitcase was neatly packed with about a dozen Hershey’s chocolate bars and several yellow tins of Rold Gold butter pretzels.
“Shhh,” Berta said. “The nurse will hear.”
“But you’ve brought chocolate in your suitcase.” I might’ve swooned.
Berta shut her suitcase. “I brought those items for professional reasons, Mrs. Woodby. The guests of this establishment are being deprived of every pleasure in life, so I conclude that they will be more than willing to pay top dollar for respite.”
“Black-market chocolate and pretzels?”
“You need not make it sound so unclean. The items could also be used for bribes, if necessary. For the diary job, I mean to say.”
“Could I have some chocolate? Please?”
Berta sighed. “Oh, very well.” She opened her suitcase, selected a Hershey’s bar, and handed it over. “But that is the last one.”
“Sure, okay,” I said, ripping through paper and foil.
Berta went to the wardrobe, opened it, and made an alarmed whinny.
“Is everything all right?” Nurse Astrid called through the door.
“Is she spying on us?” I whispered. I joined Berta by the wardrobe. “Oh. Zowie.”
“These must be the vigorology costumes,” Berta said.
“They certainly aren’t cocktail dresses.” Even though it was likely that Nurse Astrid was spying on us through the keyhole, I broke off a couple squares of chocolate and crammed them in my mouth. For courage. I hid the rest of the chocolate bar between the radiator and the wall.
* * *
A few minutes later, Nurse Astrid escorted Berta and me outside. Cedric followed, panting. The sun was already set to Broil. Four groups of patients populated the huge rear lawn, each being led through calisthenic rituals by an instructor.
“You will perform your vigorology sessions with the other occupants of your ward,” Nurse Astrid said. “You will take all your meals with them, too.”
Like a chain gang, I supposed. “Do you know if Grace Whiddle is staying in our ward?” I asked.
“Why, yes, she is. Are you her—?” Nurse Astrid gave me an assessing glance. “Are you her mother’s friend?”
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth.
Berta was peering hard at the group to which Nurse Astrid was leading us. “But this group includes gentlemen. Do you mean to say that we will be sleeping in a ward occupied by gentlemen?”
“Think of it as a hotel, Mrs. Lundgren,” Nurse Astrid said in a soothing voice.
Berta clucked her tongue.
Nurse Astrid left us.
I ushered Cedric to a bench in the shade, and Berta and I took our places behind six patients writhing on the lawn. Everyone was facedown and everyone wore—like Berta and me—black knee-length pantaloons, short-sleeved white cotton shirts, and canvas tennis shoes. Not a look from the pages of Vogue.
“One, two, three, four!” chanted our vigorology instructor, whom Nurse Astrid had referred to as Mr. Ulf. Ulf was clothed in nothing but a petite pair of white shorts, the kind circus strongmen wear. Although his face was that of an elderly man, his torso and limbs were muscled and spry. He had a thick German accent. “One, two, three, four!”
The six patients thrashed and moaned.
“We really need not do this,” I whispered to Berta.
“Indeed we must, Mrs. Woodby,” Berta whispered back.
“We could hide out in the dining room until lunch.”
“That would be unprofessional.”
“Who’s going to notice if we—?”
“Ladies!” Ulf boomed, stone-faced. “Take your places.” He pointed to the grass at our feet.
Berta placed her big black handbag on the grass. She rarely went anywhere without her handbag. We knelt, and Berta’s knees creaked and popped. Wait. Were those my knees?
“One more round of wheelbarrows!” Ulf yelled. “One, two, three, four!”
On and on it went. The sun slid higher in a vivid blue sky. Perspiration dripped from my hair and trickled down my back. Cedric looked smug on his shady bench.
I guessed it was Grace Whiddle up in the front row. Grace was by far the youngest, tall, fair, blond, and only slightly plump. Her glasses slipped down her nose with every corkscrew and gyration. Next to her was a short, wiry young man with muscular arms. He looked familiar.
Two more men made up the second row: one tall, lanky, and handsome; the other squat and redheaded. Two ladies made up the third row, both of whom I knew by sight. The first was the authoress Violet Wilbur, America’s unrivaled doyenne of tasteful home décor. Her photograph always accompanied her weekly magazine column. Violet was thin and droopy, with frizzled graying hair and a sour mouth. The second woman was Muffy Morris, the thickset, yellow-coifed wife of Senator Winfield Morris. She wore diamond earrings and pearls wit
h her regulation getup. What a show-box. She probably wore those jewels in the bathtub.
Muffy seemed to have her eyes stuck on Grace, and then it hit me: Muffy Morris was Grace Whiddle’s future mother-in-law. Just imagine visiting a fat farm with your future mother-in-law. Shudder.
At last, Mr. Ulf instructed everyone to rise for the final exercise. He called them “sunbursts,” but the sad truth is, we looked like a bunch of overweight toddlers leaping for the cookie jar.
“I’m going … for … the diary,” I panted to Berta as the class disbanded. “Would you … look after … Cedric?”
Berta, borscht-red and shiny with sweat, could only nod.
I crossed the lawn, went inside the mansion, and found my way to the door of the East Ward. I twisted the doorknob. Locked.
“Could I assist you with something, Mrs. Woodby?” Nurse Astrid asked, appearing beside me.
“I’m, um, simply dying to change out of this vigorology costume,” I said.
“Oh, that isn’t only your vigorology costume, dear. You will wear that during all your waking hours, unless, of course, you are in your bathing suit.”
That confirmed it: I was trapped in my own worst nightmare. Style or no, I won’t be caught dead in a bathing suit. Exposing my tender white flesh to the glare of sunlight and scrutiny? No, thanks awfully.
“Come along,” Nurse Astrid said crisply. “I’ll escort you to the exercise-apparatus room. I believe Dr. Woodby has prescribed for you and Mrs. Lundgren extensive time on the hip-slimming machines.”
3
The exercise-apparatus room must once have been the mansion’s ballroom, with its expanse of parquet floor, vaulted ceiling, and tall windows. But now, with all those steel contraptions and grimacing people, it could’ve been an up-to-date torture chamber. Three ladies pedaled stationary bicycles. A man trudged to nowhere on a grinding treadmill. Another man hoisted strongman weights, snorting, and two ladies wrestled huge rubber bands on the floor. Fun, fun, fun.
I caught sight of Berta in a chair, leafing through a magazine. Cedric sat at her feet. I went over.
“Did you retrieve the diary?” Berta asked me.
“No. The ward is kept locked, and I was intercepted by Nurse Astrid. Why aren’t you on a hip-slimming machine? I happen to know Chisholm prescribed those for both of us.”
“I informed the nurse that vibration of any sort riles up my heartburn.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?”
“As soon as I see Grace Whiddle, I will attempt to insinuate myself into her confidences.”
“Good plan.”
“This room smells quite overwhelmingly of underarm, does it not?”
“That, and despair.”
A nurse appeared and strapped me to a hip-slimming machine. “Simply stand still for thirty minutes,” she said to me, “and the strap’s vibration will melt your fat away.” She flipped a switch and left me. My hips joggled and buzzed.
Exercise? A cakewalk.
* * *
My teeth were still vibrating when I went to luncheon, but my hips didn’t feel a bit more svelte.
The dining room was elegant, with wainscoting and stained glass windows. Pristine linens, bone china, silver, and fresh roses decorated the East Ward’s table. Berta and Grace Whiddle were in the midst of a hushed heart-to-heart. Muffy Morris and the squat redheaded man spooned up broth side by side.
I sat, settled Cedric on my lap, and introduced myself to everyone.
“How do you do, Mrs. Woodby?” Grace said in a sweet voice. “I believe our mothers are the best of friends.” She went back to her heart-to-heart with Berta. Berta gave me a surreptitious nod: she was making progress.
The squat redheaded man turned out to be Hermie Inchbald, Muffy Morris’s brother. “How nice of you two to come to Willow Acres together,” I said.
“Hermie is an angel,” Muffy said. Her eyes and skin were dull, but her diamond earrings sparkled.
“My sister is my best friend,” Hermie said. “No one else understands me. Except Bitsy, of course.”
“Your wife?” I asked.
“His poodle,” Berta whispered.
The handsome, lanky man sat down next to me and stuck out a large hand. “Raymond Hathorne,” he said easily.
“Lola Woodby.”
“Well, I’ll be.” Raymond grinned. “I know you.”
“Do you?”
“Your mother, Mrs. DuFey, sings your praises every time she corners me. Saw her just two days ago at a polo match at the country club. She had on the most astounding hat.” Raymond’s Rs were ever so slightly throaty.
Raymond Hathorne. Of course. Mother had been attempting to throw me together with Raymond Hathorne for more than a month, ever since she met him aboard a Cunard ocean liner. I’d pictured him as one more bloated patriarch, but he was actually a bit of a sheik with his dark hair and eyes, sculpture-museum bone structure, and elegant strut. Honestly, Raymond was the only person in the entire dining room who didn’t look like Bobo the Clown in the regulation bloomers and tennis shoes. “That’s right,” I said. “Mr. Hathorne. You’re in—what was it?—soda pop?”
“That’s the ticket. Hathorne’s the name and soda pop’s my game. Fizz-Whiz—heard of it?”
“No.”
“Only available in Canada. Came down to make a go of the American market.” That explained Raymond’s throaty Rs; he must’ve been French Canadian. “Still in the research phase, though. Something tells me maple-flavored soda pop wouldn’t be much of a hot seller here.”
Maple-flavored soda pop sounded tasty to me.
The short, wiry man with the muscular arms sat down and introduced himself as Pete Schlump.
Berta peeped with excitement.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Schlump,” I said. “Of course. You’re the Yankees pitcher.” I’m no sports nut, but Pete had made the news a few weeks back when his pitching took a sudden nosedive. Schlump’s Slump, the newspapers called it. His rotten pitching had dragged the Yankees down a few notches in their standing.
“That’s me,” Pete said, looking a little sheepish.
Violet Wilbur perched on my other side, and I introduced myself.
“Hello,” Violet said, offering me her tiny, limp hand.
“I often read your column in Tête-à-Tête magazine,” I said. “Wasn’t it you who declared that rose damask upholstery by any other name is just as sweet?”
“Mm,” Violet said with a prickly smile. “Do you know, I’m just now up to my elbows in redecorating your former house for your sister, Lillian.”
“Oh? How lovely.” What a sucker punch. After my husband died, Chisholm inherited what had been my house, and since Lillian was to marry Chisholm … well, you get the picture.
“You’ve just published another instructional book, too, I understand,” Muffy said to Violet.
“Yes,” Violet said. “The Tasteful Abode.”
“Perhaps I ought to give dear Grace a copy as a wedding gift,” Muffy said with a spiteful glint in her eye. “She will need all the assistance she can find in attempting to make a proper wife for my Gil.”
The table fell silent.
“Now, see here,” Pete Schlump said.
“Petey,” Grace whispered in a warning tone. Maybe it was because Grace wasn’t wearing her glasses, but when she looked at Pete, her eyes had a dreamy, Vaseline-on-the-camera-lens glow.
Good thing I need not break that news to Sophronia Whiddle.
“Golly, what I wouldn’t give for a highball and some smoked salmon sandwiches,” I said in a chummy undertone to cut the tension. “I’d even settle for some rum punch in this positively tropical heat.”
“Oh, I do agree, Mrs. Woodby,” Muffy said, leaning forward eagerly. “Although, of course, not rum. I never touch that vile stuff. But a highball, yes, a highball would be refreshing—”
Hermie touched Muffy’s arm; Muffy clammed up.
Well, well. Looked like Muffy was in the clink for tippling.
A waiter appeared with a dish of sautéed steak for Cedric. I cut up the steak and set the dish and Cedric on the floor. I’m ashamed to say my mouth watered.
“That’s a Pomeranian you have there, isn’t it, Mrs. Woodby?” Hermie asked me. “I breed poodles myself.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a balm for the soul. I first encountered the breed in France during the war. They’re trained to sniff about for truffles in the forests, you know. Awfully clever beasts.”
“I didn’t know you were in France, Inchbald,” Raymond said.
“Yes.” Hermie poked his gold-framed glasses back up his nose. “I don’t like to talk about it, but I have a Silver Citation Star and all that.”
“Indeed!” Berta said. “Those are awarded for ‘Gallantry in Action,’ are they not? You are a war hero.”
“Were poodles and truffles the defining characteristics of France for you, Inchbald?” Raymond asked.
“I suppose so, yes. That and the pâté. Oh—and the fighting, of course.”
For the briefest moment, something like rage rippled over Raymond’s features.
“France is just great,” Pete Schlump said. “No one cares about baseball over there. I go to take a break. The French are too busy with their wine and cigarettes to care about much else, is my theory.”
“I disagree,” Violet Wilbur said in an acid tone. “My column is translated in a French magazine, and it is extremely popular.”
Waiters whisked away our bowls of broth and replaced them with celery salads. After that I suppose we were all too depressed to talk much.
* * *
Berta and I made a second attempt to retrieve Grace’s diary later that afternoon, when Nurse Astrid let us all into the locked ward to change into bathing suits.
“Grace has taken me into her confidence,” Berta whispered to me as soon as we shut ourselves in our room. “It seems she looks upon me as a grandmotherly figure.”
“Is the diary in her room?”
“I believe so. She mentioned it in passing. What is more, she wishes to purchase some of my chocolate and pretzels. She claims those revolting vitaminizing drinks make her ravenous.”
“Oh? Mine made me gag.”
