VANESSA HOVERED AT THE door of the nursery and eavesdropped on her children as they listened to Isabelle’s stories, which she herself interpreted as lies. Vanessa wanted to march in and order Isabelle to take her fanciful fibs downstairs, far from her precious girls, to the lower floors where she belonged.
“It is true your ship sank?” Mae asked.
“Yes. Ship crash.”
“Tell us the story, Isabelle. Please!” said Junie.
“Okay, I tell. We were at sea long time. Boat shake and bob, many waves, couple shtorms. We cross Black Sea on ship, then Greek Sea on other ship, then wait and wait. We wait in Italy, city called Brindisi. Can you say Brindisi?”
They could, but not as well as Isabelle with an Italian roll of the tongue.
“They had good grapes in Italy,” she said. “Green and sweet. But then ship crash.”
“In Italy?”
“No. In sea near Boston. It was shtorm and dark and rain. Captain said not worry, but definitely time to worry. Ship go this way and that way.” With her hands and body she must have been making the motions of being thrown back and forth. “And then boom. Crash on big rocks. Turn over on side and sink.”
“And then what happened?”
Isabelle was quiet, as if gathering her voice to speak. “People go under, swallow water. Some people die.”
“Not you.”
“No. Not me. Terrible man named Nate save me. Can you say terrible?”
Vanessa jealously wished she had incredible stories to tell her children, so she could make them ooh and ahh.
Vanessa needed someone to talk to. She could never confide in her mother, or God forbid her sister. And confide what, exactly? When Vanessa had tried to express her reservations about hiring Isabelle, Finn’s mother shut her down, as if she weren’t being a good wife. As if she was dense and couldn’t understand why her husband felt obligated to bring home outcasts, and she, Vanessa Adams, was duty-bound to approve of it! Well, she did not approve of it, but she could never admit that. She could never reveal a hint of anything in her marriage that wasn’t perfect, wasn’t the very epitome of what marriage was supposed to be.
Her friend Dorothy had stopped coming around some months back. She said she was offended that she was always the one to call on Vanessa. Besides, what could Vanessa articulate even to Dorothy?
Isabelle was a hard worker; there was nothing wrong with that. She helped the cook, the housekeeper, the governess. Edith couldn’t be happier, because Isabelle was doing the things Edith didn’t want to do. Really, the person Vanessa should be upset with was Edith!
So what was it?
While Vanessa twisted and churned over the matter, she spent arduous weeks arranging and rearranging the towels and sheets in the house. She made the housekeeper launder them and Isabelle iron them, all thirty-five sets, five for each bedroom, and thirty-five sets of towels, too. Vanessa emptied out and cleaned the sideboards where the sheets resided—there was one in every bedroom—dusting every nook and cranny thoroughly. Vanessa emptied and cleaned out the shelves in every bathroom where the towels were kept.
The true source of Vanessa’s unyielding anxiety was this: she was afraid Finn had hired the woman because he sensed that Vanessa needed help, that she wasn’t managing. And the more industrious and diligent Isabelle was, the more anxious Vanessa became, not only that Finn suspected she wasn’t coping, but also that Finn was right.
But she was fine, had been fine, was going to be fine.
However, there was no question that the towels and sheets needed to be washed and ironed again. They had spent so long outside the cupboards that Vanessa was certain they had gotten quite dusty. And no one wanted to sleep on dusty sheets and dry themselves off with dusty towels. It was a kindness to everyone in the house to empty the shelves and launder the towels one more time, just in case, and to do it herself so it would be done right.
Finn couldn’t sleep. Quietly he went downstairs in the middle of the night as was his nocturnal habit and rummaged in the cupboards for something to eat and drink. He was barefoot, in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. After he found himself a scone and some cheese and washed it down with juice—cursing the absence of anything stronger—he remembered that he had left the quarterly asset and liability report he’d been working on in his study. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t sleep. Walter was coming into the bank tomorrow to go over it, and Finn didn’t want to forget it at home. Taking the stairs two at a time—for a little exercise at one in the morning—he ascended the rear staircase to the first floor and then the main staircase to the third floor where his study was located. He was out of breath and pleased with himself for keeping up a good pace when he turned the corner on the landing and crashed into Isabelle, who was dripping wet and naked.
They both gasped. She teetered as if about to lose her balance, voicing some choice words in Ukrainian. His hands flew out instinctively—to catch someone about to fall—never mind that he grabbed her by her wet slippery upper arms or that she had knocked into him with the full-frontal force of her soft hurrying body.
“Close eyes,” she said.
“Excuse me,” he said, stumbling away.
Her arm crossed over her breasts. The other hand lowered to cover her modesty.
Finn closed his eyes and grabbed on to the landing rail.
“Your wife wash towels,” Isabelle said. “No towel in tub room, not one. Zero. Nul.”
“My apologies.” Finn turned away from her. “Let me go grab you one.”
She waited at the top of the stairs while he raced down to the second-floor bathroom. There were no towels there either!
He found all the towels in the laundry room on the lower level. Carrying a stack of them in his arms like brides, he stopped at the foot of the third staircase, looking at his feet and averting his eyes. “Do you want me to throw—”
She had already descended the stairs and took them out of his hands.
“Thank you,” she said. “You can open eye.”
He opened his eyes but did not look at her standing in front of him damp and wrapped in an inadequate towel. What a muddle.
“Why didn’t you use the bath on the lower floor?” he said.
“Vanna gryazna downstairs,” Isabelle said. “How you say. . .?”
“Tub is disgusting?”
“Disgusting.” She used his voice to repeat it.
“Sorry.”
“Sorry too.” She used her own voice to say it.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
The next afternoon, after his successful meeting with Walter about the status of the bank’s business, Finn walked across the street to Jordan Marsh department store and bought a luxe, cream-colored, extra-long silk robe. Upon his return home, he left it on Isabelle’s narrow bed, still in the shopping bag with tissue paper around it, almost like a present. She didn’t mention it, and he most certainly never mentioned it. It was terrible manners for the man of the house to slam into a wet naked woman at night—any woman, really, but especially one who was not his wife—and then to ever ever ever remark on it. That it happened at all was awkward enough. Finn tried to put it out of his mind.
Except every once in a while, he wished he had caught one more glimpse of her glistening naked body before closing his eyes and never seeing it again.