FINN REALIZED WITH SHAME that Isabelle had probably picked up on his wife’s hostility. It was hard to miss. He had mishandled the whole situation. He didn’t properly prepare Vanessa—couldn’t properly prepare her, but that was beside the point. It was disrespectful to both women. He trapped one and offended the other.
After Vanessa blustered outside, Finn sheepishly returned to the parlor room, where Isabelle stood waiting. But she wasn’t alone. Finn’s little girls were standing by her side, curiously looking up at her. She was looking at his two children with an expression Finn couldn’t decipher. There was something bottomless in it.
“Who is this, Daddy?”
“This is Isabelle,” Finn said. “She’ll be staying with us for a while. She’ll be helping Wicker in the kitchen, and Loretta and Martha and Edith, and Mommy, too. These are my children,” he said to the woman. “Mae and Junie.”
“How many ages,” Isabelle said in stilted English.
“How old they are? Mae is seven and Junie six.”
Isabelle stood looking at them. “They babies,” she whispered.
“We’re not a baby, you a baby,” said Junie.
“Junie! Your manners!” said Finn.
“Sorry, Daddy.”
“Not to me.”
“Sorry, Isabelle.”
She said something in Ukrainian that sounded like sonechka.
The girls began peppering Isabelle with questions. Finn had to explain about the language barrier. “But maybe when she takes you to the park, you can teach her some English?”
“We can be her teachers!” said Mae with delight.
“Precisely.” And to Isabelle, Finn said, “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.”
Isabelle blinked, her haunted eyes deepening. “Don’t worry,” Isabelle repeated. “Everything is going to be okay.”
With his girls tagging along, Finn took Isabelle downstairs to the kitchen and asked Wicker to give her something to eat, and Martha the housekeeper to prepare a room for her in the servants’ quarters.
“I’ve never heard of this Lavelle,” Finn said to Isabelle as he was leaving to rejoin his family. “I know all the islands in the harbor.”
“Lavelle,” Isabelle said. “Two lights same.”
“Twin lights . . .” Finn almost smiled. “You mean Lovell’s Island.”
“No, Lavelle,” Isabelle said. “I know where I crash.”
“It’s pronounced LUV-el,” Finn corrected her.
“It’s pronounced Luh-VELLE,” said the woman.
Outside, a bombardment of questions awaited him.
“What’s going on, Esmond?” Lucy said. “Vanessa tells me you brought some woman home.”
“Not a woman . . .”
“She’s not a woman?” Vanessa said.
“Technically, but . . . I didn’t bring a woman home. I brought home a worker.”
“You don’t need her,” Lucy said. “Vanessa keeps a beautiful home.”
“Absolutely,” Finn said. “But even perfect wives need help once in a while.” Finn didn’t look at Vanessa, and Vanessa didn’t move a muscle on her face.
“But she speaks no English?” Walter said.
Finn shrugged, feigning nonchalance.
“She’s from Ukraine?” Lucy said. “How in the world did she get here? Does she have family with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wonder if I can ask her a few questions,” said Walter. “National Shawmut keeps lending tens of millions of dollars to the Soviet Union. I’d love to find out how it’s going over there.”
“Walter, I doubt she’ll be able to help you with that level of geopolitical information,” said Finn. “Unless you know Ukrainian.”
“Does she know how to read and write?”
“Did she even go to school?”
“Where in Ukraine is she from?” Walter asked. “The region is mostly agricultural. Is she from a city, from Kiev, maybe?”
Finn opened his hands to the questions.
“Well, bring her out here so we can ask her.”
“You know what,” Finn said mildly, “we’re going to let her get settled before we inquisition her.”
“Not an inquisition.” Walter was huffy. “We’re just curious.”
“We certainly are, Daddy,” said Vanessa. “For example, I am curious how a mute thing who doesn’t speak English or understand simple instructions is going to help me around the house and with our children.”
“I don’t know,” said Finn, sounding testy because he was getting testy. “Can mute things peel potatoes? Slice onions? Clean floors? Weed a garden? Take children to the park? We have a large home and much to do. I’m sure we can occupy her somehow.” For once, Finn didn’t care to hide his irritation. “If you really feel she can’t help you here, I’ll take her to the bank and have her help me there.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Walter.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Vanessa echoed, but with a tremble in her voice.
It was Finn’s mother who intervened. “Leave Finn alone,” Olivia said. “A good man who’s been his tailor for a decade asked him for a favor. My son was in the fortunate position to be able to say yes. A friend was in need, this woman is in need, and Finn answered the call. Only good is being done, no harm. Why are you acting as if he started a war?”
“Olivia, you are so right,” Earl said. “It’s good to help people in need if you’re able to. It’s an act of charity.”
“Thank you, darling,” Olivia said. “But really, it’s a spiritual lift to both sides—the giver and the given.”
Why did Finn feel that the support from his parents came with a dull blade between the words? Were those remarks pointed at him? And if so, why?
“When she gets more comfortable, son,” Earl said, “we would like to meet her. Not to interrogate her, merely to welcome her to the family.”
“With all due respect, Earl,” Vanessa said to her father-in-law, “if we are paying her, which I assume we will be, she is a servant. She is not family.”
“We show common courtesy to the people we share our home with,” Olivia said, and even Lucy had to make a grudging noise of agreement with her counterpart. The Bostonians living on Beacon Hill treated their staff with utmost respect. “And darling,” Finn’s mother added, “tell Isabelle to listen to the radio and read the newspapers. It’s a marvelous way to learn a new language.”
“He’ll have to find another way to communicate this to her, Olivia,” said Vanessa, “because right now she doesn’t understand a lick of English.”
They found the woman wandering the rooms of their house, touching the toggle switches, the marble hearths and the mirrors, running her fingertips over the fresh flowers, the ceramic vases, the polished silver, gliding her hands across the smooth parquet floors, opening and closing the lid of the washing machine, bending over to peer into the drum. And in every movement she was shadowed by Mae and Junie, who followed in their bare feet, imitating her. She touched, they touched. She glided, they glided. She opened the cabinets, they opened the cabinets.
“Light switch,” they would say, as she flipped it on and off.
“Light switch,” she would repeat. “Chandelier.” “Ice box.”
She picked up Junie and put her inside the washing machine, right into the empty drum. “Washing Junie,” she said.
“Oh, yes, please!” said Junie.
And Mae, who was usually the more cautious of the two, jumped up and down next to them, squealing, “Me next, me next!”
And Isabelle said, “You next. Washing Mae.”
“Why was she rubbing my children’s heads with her palms the same way she was touching the washing machine?” Vanessa said gruffly. “They don’t have children where she came from?”
They took Isabelle with them to Cape Cod for the weekend, to Truro. Finn drove in his brand new Packard Eight sedan, bought just a month earlier, a spacious, plush, meticulously designed automobile. Isabelle, who sat with the girls in the back, spent the three-hour ride staring out the window and occasionally repeating the words Mae and June barraged her with.
Nestled in the expansive dunes near the tip of the Outermost Harbor, Truro was a laid-back coastal town of clapboard houses with cedar shingled roofs. Finn’s weekend retreat was a large white cottage landscaped with verdant greens and bright flowers. It sat on a knoll that overlooked miles of unspoiled beach and marshes on Cape Cod Bay. A private pathway with wooden steps led to the water. Finn had bought the house as a present for his family when Mae was born in 1922, and it was everyone’s favorite place to spend summer weekends and breaks, except maybe Vanessa’s, because she was a city girl at heart. Truro had no pace. It just was. That’s what Finn liked most about it.
There was plenty of room for everyone, even a new arrival. Isabelle stayed in the cook’s room. Adder and Eleanor arrived later in the afternoon with their obnoxious son Monty. Adder, a small man with a large head, kept calling Isabelle over to ask her things. Her silence in response would divert him briefly, but then he was right back at it, wanting to know how she got to Boston, how long it took, where she had sailed from, if she had any family, and where they were. Isabelle stood like a pillar with no expression as she repeated, “I not understand,” over and over.
“Do you have a mother, father, husband, children?” Adder persisted, pointing to the children, the husbands, the mothers.
“I not understand,” said Isabelle, not blinking.
The girls asked Isabelle to go to the water with them. Vanessa said she probably didn’t know how to swim. “Isn’t Ukraine landlocked?”
Isabelle responded by walking down to the waterline, taking off her leather boots, which she wore even on the sandy beach, wading into the sea in her dress and head scarf and diving in.
“Maybe they have rivers in landlocked Ukraine,” said Finn. “Also the Black Sea.”
“Maybe she understands more than she lets on,” said Adder.
“Maybe she wants you to leave her alone, Adder,” said Finn.
She swam back and forth for a long time, with Mae and Junie shouting at her from the shore.
“How does she plan to dry herself?” Adder said as the couples sat on the veranda, drinking peach soda and watching.
“Please get her a towel, Vanessa,” said Finn. “I would do it myself, but how is that going to look?”
“Oh, it’s warm,” said Eleanor. “She’s fine, she’ll dry without one.”
Good old Eleanor, always coming to the rescue. As soon as her sister told her not to, Vanessa rushed off to fetch two towels for Isabelle.
“Does she have other clothes?” asked Adder. “She should probably change into something dry.”
When Isabelle finally came out of the water, her head scarf had fallen off, and Finn saw that she was indeed bald. They must have shaved her head when she was processed through immigration. She sat on a log near the water while Mae and Junie oohed and aahed over her hairless scalp, rubbing it like they were polishing the furniture.
“Poor woman,” Adder said. “She is soaked in that long thing that’s clinging to her. Vanessa, give her a bathing suit. She’ll be more comfortable in one.”
“Nothing I have will fit her. She’s too tall.”
“They don’t make bathing suits for tall people?” Finn asked. “And you’re not swimming.”
“I’m planning to, darling,” she said. “Maybe later if it’s still hot.”
It remained hot, but Vanessa did not go swimming.
Vanessa never went swimming. She talked about the water and the heat, but she never went in, not with Finn, or her children, or her sister.
On Sunday afternoon, Finn watched Isabelle standing near the water, her now dry, ankle-length purple dress waving, her scarf tied around her head. She stood for a long time, her arms crossed in front of her chest in a guarded position, staring at the glass-like sea. Both she and the sea were motionless. Finn watched her in puzzlement, in bafflement. Junie ran up to her, and he almost wanted to shout, No, no, don’t disturb her, let her be. Let her be where she wants to be. But Isabelle came out of her reverie, bent to Junie and smiled, reaching out to place a tender hand on the child’s shoulder. Junie showed her a seashell and led Isabelle away to find more treasures.
It was an unsettling though mostly uneventful weekend, marred by Adder’s inexplicable injury, sustained sometime before breakfast on Sunday, when he arrived at the table sporting a swollen nose and an impressive black eye. His lip was cut. He barely ate. He said he had walked into a door, had been careless and wasn’t looking. Eleanor was horrified. She wanted to know which door and whether it was a danger to “my darling Monty.” She demanded to know why Vanessa had doors that could injure an adult man. Adder told Eleanor she was making a fuss and to forget about it. He didn’t talk during the meal, didn’t ask Isabelle any more questions, didn’t even look at the woman, and after breakfast he and Eleanor packed up and left immediately.
It was a serene beautiful Sunday, and no one else wanted to leave. Finn and Vanessa finally set out for Boston well after nightfall. The exhausted children were asleep in the back of their Packard, while in the front, Finn and Vanessa talked quietly about Adder’s injury. They could not figure out how a man could walk into a door so hard as to cause himself a split lip, a black eye, and a nearly broken nose.
From the rear seat, Isabelle spoke. “That man no good,” she said.
Finn didn’t wait until the following Friday to see Schumann. He brought the repairs to him on Tuesday and took Isabelle. Schumann had mentioned he might have some clothes for her. Finn also really needed Schumann to translate between them.
Isabelle’s work boots were irking Vanessa. She wanted the new hire to have decent shoes to wear to take her girls to the park. Because in addition to wanting to shave their heads “just like Isabelle,” Mae and Junie started requesting leather boots like Isabelle’s, for Christmas. Schumann told Finn the boots were a treasured possession. They were well made and expensive.
“I get it,” said Finn, “I’m not telling her to throw them out. But maybe you can find her a pair of regular shoes, Schumann. To help her assimilate.”
He told Schumann about a small misunderstanding he’d had with Isabelle and asked for clarification. At the Cape, he had come up behind her sitting by the window and asked if she wanted some dinner. She didn’t react, as if she hadn’t heard him. Only when he called her name did she acknowledge his presence. “Isabelle,” he said. And then she turned around. He apologized for startling her. “For a moment, I thought you were deaf,” he said.
“What?” she said.
“I thought you were deaf,” Finn had repeated, louder and slower.
“What?” she said.
He pointed to his ears, then to her ears, and said, “I thought you couldn’t hear!”
“What?” said Isabelle.
Finn waited while Schumann explained this to her.
“She says to tell you she is not deaf,” said the tailor.
“Then why did she keep repeating the word what over and over?”
Schumann and Isabelle had another brief exchange. “She says she was joking.”
After the briefest of pauses, Finn blinked and said, “What?”
“Tochno,” Isabelle said in Ukrainian. She didn’t smile.
“She said exactly.” Schumann didn’t smile either.
“Okay, Schumann,” said Finn, “I need you to tell her that the language barrier between us at the moment is too great for her to make jokes.”
“You want me to tell her she cannot joke?” Schumann said.
“Tochno,” Finn said. “I want you to tell her she cannot joke.”
Isabelle lifted her hand to stop Schumann from translating further. “I understand what you say. The barrier between us is too great to make jokes.” She didn’t say this in her alto voice, with her usual accent. She said it in Finn’s baritone, with his Boston inflection, and no Ukrainian accent. She simply repeated his own words back to him, like a recording.
“I thought I made it clear there is to be no joking,” Finn said.
“You made it clear there is to be no joking,” said Isabelle.
Finn turned to Schumann. “How does she do that?”
Schumann shrugged. “She’s always been a remarkable mimic. Humans, horses, birds, you name it. Frankly, I’d rather she sewed.”
Finn was thoughtful. “Schumann, ask her about Adder, my brother-in-law. I want to know if something happened between them.”
By the time Schumann turned to Isabelle, she was already speaking in rapid-fire Ukrainian as if she had understood Finn’s question.
Schumann cleared his throat and said, “I wouldn’t ask her a question you don’t want an answer to, Finn. She won’t mince words.”
“I want an answer to my question.”
Isabelle said something.
Schumann sighed. “She said no one touches her unless she wants to be touched. And the man tried to touch her.”
Finn shook his head, disgusted. The snake! “Maybe it was a misunderstanding?”
“Ni,” said Isabelle.
“So she gave him a black eye?”
“Trust me,” said Schumann, “he got away lucky.”
Finn whistled. He couldn’t hide that he was a little bit impressed. Isabelle stood next to Schumann impassive, leaf-thin, most unintimidating.
“Finn, can you give me and her a few minutes?” Schumann said, reaching into his cabinet for something. “But no more than a few—the customers are circling. Do you hear them banging? They’re going to break down my door like it’s a run on the banks back in 1921.”