Mid-December 1886 Chicago, Illinois

Mary Agnes’s two-hour Sunday visits to her aunt and uncle’s have provided a respite from what Helen calls “the ruthless Rutherfords.” Mary Agnes thinks she may have overshared—gossiped, really—about the Rutherford clan, anxious Claire, bookworm Theresa, diva Doria, and the impossibly handsome twin boys who so far have not paid her a shred of attention. But she doesn’t care. They are good fodder for conver—gossip.

And her new dresses have arrived! When she unwraps them, even the crinkly white tissue paper in which they’re wrapped seems too precious. The green! And the rich brown and cream stripe! She smoothes the paper and folds it ever so carefully. She will reuse it for Christmas gifts next year when she can afford to buy them.

“Hurry up, slow poke,” Helen says, as she whisks the dresses from her bed and holds them up for inspection. She hurries Mary Agnes into the dresses, and oohs and ahhs over Mary Agnes. “Will you look at this trim? Straight from Paris!”

Mary Agnes catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror in the fancier of the two dresses and her hand goes instinctively to her scalp. Her hair is approaching her ears, but she still looks more like a boy in a girl’s dress.

“You’ll be a beauty yet,” Helen says.

Mary Agnes doubts it. Not anytime soon. No boy will look at me, looking like this. But what a dress! She runs her hand down the bodice to the waist and pauses there. She has had her monthly again, so there will not be a babe.

Two weeks into her position at the Rutherford’s, Mary Agnes has memorized the family’s schedule and plans her hours accordingly. If the talk isn’t about Claire’s upcoming wedding, it’s about Chicago culture and news and politics. More fodder for gossip next Sunday, she thinks.

“Blast!” Mr. Rutherford exclaims so loudly it can be heard in the hall, where Mary Agnes has joined Kathleen for a quick cup of tea, the first raft of her jobs completed: opening draughts, putting on coal, airing the dining room, sweeping the front hall, dusting the bannisters, cleaning doorknobs, and shaking out rugs. And it’s only 8:30 a.m.

“Damn that P.D. Armour!” Mr. Rutherford bellows. “There’ll be no more ordered from that swine!”

“P.D. Armour?” Mary Agnes whispers to Kathleen.

“The meat marketer. We order all our meat from him.”

From behind the dining room door that separates the Rutherford family at breakfast from the hall where the girls stand, they hear Mrs. Rutherford’s high voice.

“Do you need your pills, dear? Or St. Jacob’s Oil?”

Mary Agnes and Kathleen share a smirk. Kathleen mimics Mrs. Rutherford and mouths, “Do you need your pills, dear?”

The girls cover their mouths, move to the dining room door, and put their ears up to the wood.

“What can be done?” Mrs. Rutherford continues.

“What can be done?” Mr. Rutherford explodes.

Mary Agnes and Kathleen jump back from the door.

“All those boys maimed on the job, it’s criminal,” he says.

There is a long silence and then Mrs. Rutherford speaks up, her voice tentative. “Shall we write a check to the Lost Boys Fund?”

“Or write a check to us,” Mary Agnes whispers to Kathleen. “So we can buy new shoes and dresses and hats.” And eyeglasses.

Mary Agnes scurries then to the upstairs rooms. She’s learned Theresa lingers in the parlor practicing piano and doesn’t return to her room until mid-morning. As soon as the music stops, that’s Mary Agnes’s signal to head to Claire’s room. Will she be there today? Or out? Claire doesn’t seem to have a schedule at all. Sometimes she is in her room all morning; other times she can be found in her mother’s room weeping. When Claire is out shopping with her mother (and that one blessed day Theresa and Doria accompanied Claire and their mother to shop), Mary Agnes has ample time to straighten the elder girl’s room. As she dusts and straightens, she sings, sometimes old familiar tunes and sometimes ditties she makes up.

The next day, Claire rushes into the bedroom with her arms filled with packages and throws them on the bed. “Can a girl be as slow as you?”

Mary Agnes stands there, her song unfinished and the tune lingering in her head.

“Did you hear me? Move along!” Claire pokes her head out of the bedroom door. “Mother! The Irish girl is still in my room! And she’s singing again!”

Mary Agnes doesn’t want another tongue lashing from Cook for “bothering Claire at this time.” What time? Monday? Tuesday? Or doesn’t it matter at all, anytime?

The closer it gets to Claire’s wedding, the more Mary Agnes avoids her. She cannot imagine how unstable the elder Rutherford daughter will become by February, two months away. It will be a lavish affair at the house after the ceremony, all the plans set in motion. In the meantime, it’s yes, miss, of course, miss, right away, miss, bob, smile, and be on her way. Claire’s mood doesn’t match the scenario. A girl should look forward to her marriage day, shouldn’t she? Maybe she knows what she’s in for. Mary Agnes wonders why girls want to be married at all.

“Why is it that Claire is so cross?” Mary Agnes asks during supper. “I’m on eggshells all day.”

“You and everyone else,” Kathleen says. “But would you want to marry a man a full twenty years your senior?” Kathleen asks.

“But richer than Croesus!” Cook pipes in. “Wouldn’t I like to marry the likes of him!” She sashays around the kitchen in a rare show of humor.

“But truly, Cook, would you want to marry an old man?”

“I’d marry the fishmonger, if he asked. What I’d do to cook for just one man.”

“Yes, but there’s more to marriage than cooking,” Kathleen says, hiding a smile.

Cook bats at Kathleen with a spoon. “And how would ya know?”

Mary Agnes bursts with laughter. “I’m never getting married.”

“We’ll see how that turns out,” Kathleen says. “One day you’ll meet a handsome Irish lad. At Mass, I’ll wager.”

“Out of the kitchen, all of ya!” Cook barks, back to her usual surliness. “Except for Kathleen. We’ve got pies to bake.”

“How many pies can one family eat?” Kathleen whispers to Mary Agnes.

“And they don’t bake themselves!” Cook yells.

Mary Agnes wishes Cook would bake just one pie for the staff. Just one. Maybe one a week, or even one a month. She remembers eating the whole pie with Helen as she trudges up the back stairs. Cherry would be nice. Or peach. Even apple. But she doesn’t begrudge meals. She’s eating.

After straightening up Doria’s ever-messy room, Mary Agnes lingers at Theresa’s door to see if she is in. Has anyone read as many books? Henry James and Mark Twain and Emilie Zola. Fyodor Dostoevsky. William Dean Howells. E. W. Howe. When Theresa is out—which isn’t much, Mary Agnes has ascertained—she weasels precious minutes thumbing through Theresa’s copy of Henry James’s The Bostonians on her bedstand. Reading only snippets at a time, she wonders if Verena will ever marry Basil Ransom at this rate.

Mary Agnes hears a cough—Theresa always has a cough—and moves toward Claire’s room. As she rounds the corner into the room, she trips on a loose rug and sprawls on Claire’s bedroom floor. If it isn’t loose rugs, it’s wet floors, she thinks. As she gets up, she almost knocks a large blue and yellow chinoiserie vase off a side table. Or china. With shaking hands, she steadies the vase and waits for a moment to see if it is stable. Damn my eyesight, she thinks. I can’t be making mistakes here.

When she knocks an urn off a ledge in the mistress’s bedroom the next day, she is not as lucky. She watches in horror as the vase shatters into thousands of bits on the wooden floor. And the noise! Someone is sure to have heard. Mary Agnes freezes. So far, no one is running toward the mistress’s bedchamber. All Mary Agnes can think is if the mistress will finger her and how soon she will be sacked.

She quickly sweeps the shards into a pile with her bare hands and looks around the room. Where can I hide it? Looking over her shoulder to be sure the mistress hasn’t come up yet from breakfast, she pulls a fresh pillow sleeve from the closet and shoves the remains of the vase inside. Two of her fingers are bleeding now, tiny shards embedded in her skin. She picks out small shavings and stanches blood with the pillow sleeve. Her fingers throb. Pulling up her skirt, she jams the pillow sleeve into her waistband under the skirt. She will have to be very careful now.

Stealing down the back stairs to avoid the kitchen, Mary Agnes hurries to her cellar bedroom and stuffs the sack under her bed. She will have to dispose of it on Sunday, her afternoon off. But where to get rid of it? Certainly not the trash bin in the alley behind the Rutherford house. No, she will have to walk to an adjacent neighborhood, tuck into an alley, and dispose of the shards there. Without anyone noticing. But surely the mistress will notice it’s gone?

Mary Agnes sits on the bed to control her shaking. Maybe I should go to Mrs. Rutherford straight away. Confess. But no, that would have her sacked immediately. Better to hope the mistress doesn’t notice with all the décor in her boudoir. This Mary Agnes banks on.

THREE DAYS PASS AND NO MENTION of the vase. Mary Agnes feels a rush of relief. But she is wary of Doria. She is the only one who could have ratted on her that first day when she used the third-floor privy. Maybe she heard? And is waiting to use it against her?

Mary Agnes doesn’t understand Doria. How could a girl be as different from her? In every way? Magazines are stacked on Doria’s window seat: Godey’s Lady’s Book and Peterson’s and Harper’s Bazaar, with far more issues of the latter showcasing frivolous fashions replete with ruffles, flounces, ribbons, and lace.

Someday, Mary Agnes might be able to afford shoes like that. Or a hat with feathers. Or porcelain dolls. But she likely wouldn’t buy any of those things. She would buy books, shelves and shelves of them like Theresa or her uncle. And she would read them all, cover to cover. She almost has enough saved up for new boots, if she can keep half her wages, that is, but first, eyeglasses. Then books.

“Did you ever see so many shoes?” Mary Agnes whispers to Kathleen at supper one particularly dreary night when the food was equally dreary.

“I don’t get above stairs.”

“Never? Not even to peek?”

“I couldn’t, I’m only a kitchen maid. And, besides, I don’t get a moment’s rest. Most days, I wish I could trade positions with you, Mary A.” Kathleen cocks her head toward Cook and rolls her eyes. “In a snit today, that one.”

“Whatever about?”

“Mistress didn’t take to the change in menu tonight. As if it’s Cook’s fault that the pork roast she ordered never arrived.”

“I thought the duck smelled heavenly.”

“Herself disagreed.” Kathleen pulls a long face. “Cook had a talking to, according to him over there.” She tilts her head toward the butler, Mr. Higgins. “Cook wouldn’t dream of letting on, although it reflects badly on me as well. I’ll remember from now on: No duck. Well, what we got isn’t half as good as what they complained about above stairs tonight. Can you imagine? Complaining about duck?”

“Well, you should see Doria’s room, the lucky duck. She has more pairs than a shoe merchant,” Mary Agnes whispers. “I tried a pair on—”

“You didn’t!”

“I did, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I traipsed about her bedroom with a bedsheet tossed over my shoulder and did I feel like money!”

“That will be the day heaven sinks to hell,” Kathleen laughs.

“Watch me!” Mary Agnes laughs, and kicks Kathleen’s foot under the table.

“If I were to sneak a peek into any room, it would be the missus’s.”

“The missus is very kind. Her room is something out of a ladies’ magazine.”

Mrs. Rutherford is indeed kind to Mary Agnes, a blessing Mary Agnes doesn’t diminish when she prays at night. Can you pray for non-Catholics? she wonders. She does anyway, even for Doria.

Why does Mrs. Rutherford treat me with respect? Even if none of her daughters do? Was she a housemaid once? Not likely. No. She is probably afraid of losing another housemaid to another nasty situation.

Mary Agnes places mistress’s comb and brush just so. Always curtsies. Folds undergarments discreetly away and arranges the mistress’s dresses by color and season. Starches and presses the curtains and valances more often than they need attention, so that Mrs. Rutherford’s boudoir is inviting and spotless, giving the mistress more time to work for temperance causes or moral reform or foreign missions or whatever it is Protestant women do, other than take morning naps, write letters, or plan for weddings. But it’s as much for herself as Mrs. Rutherford. Mary Agnes can’t afford to be sacked, maybe even more than Mrs. Rutherford can afford to lose another housemaid.

She moves through her days as if invisible, tending to the room each morning as Mrs. Rutherford takes breakfast. She comes in on soft feet, does her work, and leaves before Mrs. Rutherford returns. She hopes the mistress will never miss the chinoiserie vase.

If only I had so many beautiful items that I didn’t miss one. Mary Agnes rebukes herself for her pride. Why do I wish for things I cannot have? A blanket? A cloak? A home? I will have to go to confession.

One morning close to Christmas, the house in a flurry and decorations adorning every mantel, door, and doorknob, Mary Agnes is just finishing up the mistress’s chamber when she spies a note on the vanity. She picks it up and holds it close to her face to read. The note is in Mrs. Rutherford’s fine hand.

My dearest Doria—

Sometimes words are best set to paper. When you told me of your young man’s intentions, I couldn’t find adequate words to respond.

My thoughts are three-fold. First, we cannot entertain any such talk with your sister Claire’s upcoming nuptials. And what would Theresa think? She, without yet a suitor and older than you? But the third reason is the most important. You are too young to be contemplating marriage. There is much you do not know of the duties. I am afraid I must tamp down my happiness on your behalf and demand you put an end to this frivolous arrangement . . .

Mrs. Rutherford rushes in, pale as snow, clutching at the hems of her tea gown.

Mary Agnes places the note on the vanity and continues, as if dusting. “How may I help you, ma’am?” Did she see me? Reading the letter?

“I need to lie down.”

Mary Agnes helps Mrs. Rutherford with her shawl and plumps up the pillows. “May I?” She bends to pull the coverlet down, helps her mistress into the wide bed, and removes the mistress’s slippers. Has she had another fainting spell?

Mary Agnes wonders if the woman ever eats, so thin she is, like a slender reed. Or if her corset is too tight to harness her waistline into that impossibly small size.

“Thank you, Margaret.”

“It’s Mary, ma’am. Mary Agnes.”

“Oh, please forgive me. I’m not quite used to Margaret being gone.”

“Do you miss her?” Mary Agnes bites her tongue. Have I said too much?

“I do, but it couldn’t be helped.”

Mary Agnes sighs. She doesn’t want to offend her mistress, but her tongue often moves faster than her brain. What couldn’t be helped? But no, she won’t ask. She has to watch herself even more now that she harbors a secret. She glances over to the ledge where the vase was. It is empty. Mary Agnes replays the memory of the vase falling falling falling and crashing onto the floor, red and green and black shards covering the mistress’s bedroom like sharp confetti.

“It’s usually the plain ones that find themselves taken by a dapper fellow,” the woman continues. She stares at Mary Agnes. “You’re quite a beauty, Mary, is it?”

She nods. “Mary Agnes.”

“Still, you must watch yourself at every turn. I say the same to my own girls, although I doubt Doria pays me any mind. I worry after her.”

“My gram said the same to me,” Mary Agnes says. “But I’ve no time for a lad.” And didn’t Doria warn me about her own brothers? Is that why Margaret and other maids have had to leave service?

“You get Sunday mornings. And every other Sunday afternoon.”

“Yes, and thank you for that, ma’am.” Mary Agnes smiles. It’s allowed to smile at the mistress, isn’t it?

“After Mass, I go to my people for Sunday dinner. You must know them, the Laffeys?”

The woman shakes her head.

“After all the food and the talk and the laughing, that’s enough for a day.” And I’m careful not to be alone with Uncle Fiach, even if it means listening to Helen gabber on.

“And I’ve been meaning to say”—here, she holds her breath to steady her guilty heart—“I appreciate you taking me on, ma’am. I’m ever so grateful.”

Mrs. Rutherford’s eyes close. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with Doria.”

Did mistress hear a word I said? Or does what I say not even matter? I could probably scream, and no one would notice.

DORIA.

Mary Agnes has her suspicions. The unlatched window, the unmistakable imprint of a man’s boot on the parquet, mussed sheets. What is that girl up to? Has she received her mother’s letter yet? Or doesn’t she care?

Mary Agnes leans out the window as she shakes out a rug. Coal dust flutters in the air like black snow.

Does he scale a ladder? Climb a drainpipe? Or has he bribed the cook and takes the back stairs at night?

Late the next evening, Mary Agnes pads up to the kitchen to root around for tea. Her monthlies leave her cramped and irritable. Tea always helps. As she rummages in the pantry—it’s here somewhere, I know it is—the door to the kitchen creaks open.

She peers out the pantry door to see a tall young man enter the kitchen and close the door quietly behind him.

Isn’t he the looker!

The lad nicks a piece of pie crust on the counter and steals up the back stairs. She follows after she’s counted to ten. If it’s an intruder, she’ll scream to alert the Rutherfords. But she knows right away it’s not a break in, her suspicions are confirmed. When she reaches the landing, she sees the tail end of a dark coat embracing Doria in her bedroom doorway. She ducks her head back into the stairwell until the door closes and then tiptoes to the door to listen. Hushed voices lead to hushed moans. No wonder Mrs. Rutherford has her suspicions. Doria is entertaining a young man in her own house!

The next day, up to elbows in suds, Mary Agnes forms a plan. Her birthday came and went without so much as a greeting, but she has one wish: To go to university. So no, she will not squeal. As much as she believes in being fair, she knows her place in the household order. It would be her word against Doria’s and who would believe a poor Irish housemaid? It is better to forget it and press on. Let Mrs. Rutherford find out another way. And Doria?

She can stumble over her own discretions and see if I care one whit.

Mary Agnes cannot afford to be sacked, and now less than a month to Christmas. She needs to save up to go to university, to buy gifts, to get eyeglasses. And she cannot go back to her aunt and uncle to stay for fear of what might transpire there, her uncle’s roving hands making her more uncomfortable every Sunday. The facts are plain. She must keep her head down and mouth shut. Work hard. Submit to the mistress, no matter what. It’s hard to swallow the inevitable, but swallow she does, resignedly: There will be Dorias at any house she works in, and the Dorias will always win.