Allergic to Horses

All the women see the miraculous restoration of their Sister Sarah’s appearance. They praise their Z God as The Great Preservative and beseech him, in his compassion and wisdom and power, to shower them, too, with long-lasting youth and good looks. Laudette would rather not think about it, but she prays she might lose some weight, and the following day she notices a decrease in her appetite. Two eggs at breakfast seem more than enough and she is not tempted to eat again all morning. The change terrifies her so much she eats four pounds of baloney sandwiches for lunch to break the spell, all the while cursing Lord Z as the devil for what he had almost done to her, and praying to Emanual X more fervently than ever, for he had never answered her prayers to be thinner and she has faith he will not start now. She would rather discontinue going to meetings than suffer any decrease in her mammoth appetite. Still, the meetings are exciting and she cannot give them up all at once. For a time she serves two Masters. When she climbs into bed with the ring of witches, she is guarded even as she feels herself slip into a light trance. But in the thirteenth week, the tail end of May, comes the meeting when the women have a vivid dream collectively: the Master initiates them into a vocabulary of sacred syllables whose sound is more significant than their sense. Of course such power words cannot be repeated in front of the uninitiated. In the Craft tradition, the special formulae you learn in your trances work as long as you do not go chirping them out loud in public.

Art in Heaven respects the secret oral traditions which say, quite loudly and straightforwardly, No Unauthorized Personnel. Of course, as a result of his clip from heaven, my brother can be everywhere, see everything, and make whatever slips of the lips he fancies. When he keeps secrets it’s not because the dictates of heaven prevent him from speaking freely, it’s because knowledge of the mystery cannot be derived from books, although words can point to it by referring to themselves. These things are secrets less because the insider is not at liberty to reveal them, but because we outside, or who think we are outside, the hour of our death, refuse to understand that which we dread and wish to have no experience of. It does not matter if you chee-chee “cheese” or say the seven super-refined syllables, the process of illumination goes on as long as you are consistent and repeat yourself.

Now when Miss Lord receives her special guardian sounds, she says, “Thank you, Your Hairy Tunaship, but no thank you. I know when I’ve had enough Ping Pong. I admit I’ve seen and heard some remarkable things here. But it just so happens that I believe more in faith than in experience. And my faith is in Emanual. I’ve said the Lord’s Prayer just as the Dipster taught me ever since I was a little girl and I reckon I’ll stick with it. And I don’t want to be sounding like a spoilsport, but these stories are a little risky for my blood. I don’t know if X told bawdy stories, but I don’t imagine, with His friends being fishermen and prostitutes and tax collectors and such, that He didn’t hear them on occasion. Still, I’ll bet He just turned the other cheek when someone tried to bend His ear about some frisky business. Yes, the Bread of my life is seasoned with the Salt of the Earth and I don’t think my heart can take so much extra spice on it. Besides I’ve got work to do. If this place is not going to be a haunted house, I’ll be damned if it’s going to look like one.”

Amen and allelujah! Laudette, the pit the fruit and nut meetings were formed around, does exactly what she’s supposed to do. She kicks the habit, leaves the coven physically but remains in the wings, to serve as its thirteenth wheel, the supernumerary, the often overlooked but essential ground nut in the human network crystal, the one who starts it, the one who exists outside of it to protect and preserve it, and in the end the one who will bring it to dissolution. In the meanwhile, she serves as general contractor and interior designer for the museum.

The summer and fall pass. In December, as they approach the first anniversary of their being in the house the place still has some way to go before the renovation is complete. The details created by Sarah’s notion to keep up as much of what is old as is practical and try to make the new fit in with it create a task of trial by endless detail for the conscientious Laudette. In addition, the Swans have never hired a household staff. Harry hasn’t been able to get Heidi and Bridget, the two servants in the Emmenthal country house who turned out to be his sister’s spies, out of his mind. And although the playboy does not consider himself above cooking or cleaning up, his housekeeping standards are so far beneath the cleanly Miss Lord’s that much of that work falls in her lap.

The “cheese” stands alone. Sarah is ever more remote. With an hour’s chanting to do before meals and at bedtime added to her yoga, jotting, and other daily routines, she fusses with herself more than ever. She chee-chees her mantra as she plucks her eyebrows and combs her hair, counting the strokes, until it is as smooth and soft as milk. But however reclusive Sarah’s beauty meditations, trance poses, and sexual postulations are they are never so profound or lofty that she will not put them aside whenever her five-star general contractor knocks.

“Oh, Sugar, the trouble I’m seeing getting this house in order! Today I had to fire the old house painters for being sloppy joes. Then I had to talk to some conservatives—I’ve never heard of such a folks—to see what they say about cleaning the dirt off those darn naughty murals. And what about all these electricity wires I’ve got to get going here and there. I swear, Sugar, when you don’t know about something, someone who does can really give you the razzle-dazzle. And all the while I’ve got to keep an eye on everything. It wouldn’t be bad if that’s all I had to do, but I have to cook dinner, make beds, and keep the house clean. And on top of it all I am still the baby-sitter. I’m expected to be on duty seven days and seven nights a week. I know you pay me as if I were some kind of movie star, but what good is all that darn money when I have no free time. Even the Almighty rests one day. I thought we were as rich as any people were on this whole kerflooey Freeway. Why don’t we hire some help?”

Sarah puts her arms around Laudette. “Thank you for your patience, Miss Lord. Without you taking charge I don’t know how I would have survived. And all the while I was saying those dreadful things to you. Yes, you’re a great baby-sitter, a good friend, and both Harry and I think you’re doing a wonderful job with the renovation. Why, you’re really quite a designer! I promise you that right after the holidays we’ll see about getting you all the help you deserve.”

When Sarah next sees her husband she talks to him about a staff for the house. Harry is only too happy to prove to his sanctimonious sister that the wages of sin are bliss. “Indeed if there are spies all the better. In this house of love what can they relay but reports of nuptial delight.”

Three days after the new year, Harry contacts an agency for domestic help, but leaves the hiring in the hands of Miss Lord. A fine baby-sitter, interior decorator, and contractor, Laudette has no tooth for being personnel manager. She finds something to like about everyone. What’s more, she is naturally sympathetic. As it’s hard times and everyone who comes by is hungry for a job she can’t help wishing she could hire everybody. Finally, with the exception of the cook, a chef named Shepp, an overweight one-named wonder from L’Institut de Cuisine, she chooses the hungriest. There is a general factotum and majordomo who says he’s from the Grammar School of Fine Service named Pearly Gates. Laudette gets a kick out of his name and is impressed by his bald head, monocle, and accent, a stagy, upper-crusty Brutish. Mona Monaghan is the housekeeper. She comes with a starchy, clean uniform and a fine recommendation from a “good family” uptown. And there is a pretty little girl named Kitty Cramer to help Mona and work as a prep girl for Shepp.

Except for Kitty they all have worked with one another before, and waste no time developing a common attitude about their new situation. As the Good Shepherd is true god and true man, Laudette Lord is true boss and true worker. She comes as a friend to them, a co-worker, yet they resent her and will not accept her as one of their own. Does one of their own talk back to the Mrs as if she were family and sweeten up to her by calling her “Sugar”? Does one of their own sit in the kitchen at two-thirty in the morning eating pancakes with Mister Swan? Does one of their own sleep upstairs all fancy in an antique bed in the Suite of Roses? No, the staff must stay down in the servants’ quarters where the rooms are small and have a bad smell, like a hold full of slaves.

Their resentment shows up in their work. They are servile and willing only when the Mister or the Mrs bids them. When Laudette is around the staff cuts to another corner of the house; they are never where she needs them. Mona is a snob who does everything she can to make Laudette feel the commonness of her upbringing. And almost instantly Laudette is disappointed to see that on Pearly’s tax forms he lists his name as “Wheatstraw.” He explains to her that “Gates” is just a sobriquet. His big words now perplex rather than impress her. By the end of three months she knows that the closest he comes to being from the Grammar Isle is when he leaves the Other Eden, an Inklish style pub, at closing.

“I’m really not a butler,” he boasts, “but an out-of-work thespian. If it weren’t for all the bad luck I’ve had, and other actors with connections purloining parts that should have been mine, I’d have no doubt been as eminent as Sir Edgar Humphreys.”

“No doubt, Pearly. But, gee, when you get a chance, could you come help out with the garbage in the old garage?”

The latest construction site is next to the servants’ quarters. Originally outside as part of the stables and the carriage house-garage, this space is being overhauled, rewalled, and attached to the house to serve as pantries and assorted storage cubicles. The whole week there have been grey clouds of dust hanging in Laudette’s life. Mona is a strict specialist in silverware polishing and using the feather duster. She will not touch construction debris with a ten-foot broom handle. Pearly lifts one bar, totes two pails of broken lathing, and takes a break. He’s sweet on Kitty, the cute cookie in the kitchen with the coffee. Chef cooks but the others are totally remiss; they dare Laudette to fire them, judging her too much of a mushy sap to do it.

For six days straight Miss Lord works with the dust pan and the broom cleaning up the mess of old boards and chunks of plaster left by a demolition crew, while the four of them are in the kitchen, whistling around the coffee pot. On the seventh day, Miss Lord has had it. She goes to Sarah and cries, “Sugar, thank you but no thank you for that staff. Why I’d rather lean on vipers. You should see the mess of cracked-up plaster and rotten boards those wreckers left downstairs in the old garage. And, can you believe it, that big hunk Pearly Gates leaves hauling it all for me! And Mona’s not much help, either. All she’s good for is rubbing the forks and knives shiny and dusting her way through the mystery books in the library. And the girl does nothing all day but make coffee. At least the cook worked out; he knows what he’s doing, I’ll give him that. But he’s in with them, thick as a pack of thieves. If I don’t get some support around here, I swear I’m getting on a downtown subway and going straight across the river to live with my sister Florene.”

It is a boon to Laudette that most of her family still live in Kingsborough. Having several loving homes to go to increases her bargaining leverage.

Again Sarah is not so lost that she loses sight of the fact that losing Miss Lord would be a sin.

The statuesque Madam Swan puts on a day dress and goes to the kitchen. She finds Pearly halfway through one of his daily dozen cups of coffee, making eyes at the little kitty who holds the pot.

“Mum!”

“Mister Gates, if you don’t mind, will you come with me, please.”

“Yes, Mum.”

She leads him along with Laudette to a pile of old wood, the remnants of stalls.

“Now Miss Lord is having trouble finding someone to carry those crossbeams. Surely you don’t expect her to do it by herself? All this needs to be taken out right away and by a stronger back than hers. This is what you were hired for.”

“Mum, I’m allergic to horses,” says the fair-haired Pearly.

“But there hasn’t been a horse in here for over ten years, Mister Gates.” says Sarah.

“It runs way back in my family, Mum. The Gateses are all very sensitive to animals. Every single one of us breaks out in a rash of boils and blisters at the slightest contact with anything four-legged.”

“Come on, Pearly, you’re not even a real Gates,” Laudette injects. “You’re a gosh-darn Wheatstraw.”

“Quite,” says Sarah. In the meanwhile she summons Mona. The housekeeper’s best defense also runs along family lines. “We Monaghans have always worked for the better families, you see, the ones who have dark people to clean up such messes.” Then she adds, offhandedly, as if she were stating the obvious. “Well, menial work is in their blood.”

Instantly Laudette’s eyes light up with outrage and indignation. Dark people? She shoots a dark look at the housekeeper. Just who do you mean? Laudette’s dear old godmother was “a dark person” and many were the Sunday mornings she washed herself clean of sin and prejudice in the Dipster’s big tub, scrubbed the backs of her brothers and sisters, whatever their color, and had her back scrubbed by them.

Of course, Gloria, the present Swan heiress, is the shade of brown sugar, and might not be able to pass the housekeeper’s standards. “Miss Monaghan,” Sarah says, “in case you haven’t noticed, my daughter happens to be ‘a dark person’.”

“Sorry, Mrs, I certainly didn’t mean any offense to you or the Miss. It’s just I don’t see the Miss as dark.”

Nonplussed, but trying not to show it, Sarah turns to Laudette to hear what she should do, “Miss Lord, I see what you mean. On your say-so, I’ll fire these two for being lazy and shiftless.”

Laudette believes that they know not what they do. Her irritation gives way to feeling sorry for them. Times are tough and she would not want their unemployment on her conscience. Miss Lord helps those who help themselves, and even those who don’t. “Sugar, just tell them to work with me instead of against me and everything will be all right.”

“Did you hear that? You both have Miss Lord to thank for your jobs. If you want to continue to work here I suggest you get busy picking up this garbage.”

The staff does as they are told, but they do not thank Miss Lord. Instead, in their hearts, they harbor a hatred of her: that uppity fat woman with the gold-capped tooth who not only informs on them, but has the mammoth nerve and the warmth to forgive them. They know they would never respond in kind to her trespass.