Marie cries in Dr. Nesbitt’s office. Neither of us can sleep, for the same reason. We aren’t home.
Marie’s clean blanket must smell funny to her, and I’m moving like a mummy in this corset of a bed. I can’t turn over. I can barely breathe.
I worm my way out, light the kerosene lantern, and kneel to examine the bedclothes. Dr. Nesbitt must have made this bed, the way the sheets and blanket are wrapped and tucked like a bandage for someone with a broken back.
Moths drawn to my lamp cast huge, fluttery shadows on the wallpaper. It is printed with barefoot goddesses floating around in togas and laurel wreaths. It is truly the strangest wallpaper I have ever seen. But the moths seem right at home in ancient Greece.
I need Hercules to unmake my bed! I yank the blanket and top sheet loose, wide awake now. I hear Marie whimpering and yowling, then footsteps and Dr. Nesbitt’s soothing voice.
So far, except for helping with the ether, I am useless here. Dr. Nesbitt has done everything I was hired to do. He did the dinner dishes, pulled the shades, pumped water for us to wash our teeth, and helped his mother get ready for bed. Maybe I’m supposed to hop up and just know what to do, but I don’t. They don’t need me. They’ll realize it soon enough.
I pull Rosie from my trunk and rub her lumpy paw over my lip. Right after Mama died I remember thinking how brave it was of Mrs. Andrews, our housekeeper even then, to take Mama’s blue velvet dress without asking Daddy and turn it into a cat. She filled her with stuffing and rose sachets. I named her Rosie and I tried to connect the scent to Mama, but it wasn’t true. Mama’s true smell got sucked away in the sanatorium.
My trunk is bigger than the dresser. I’ll never find places for everything I brought. The top drawer is already full of the necessities Mrs. Nesbitt got for me—safety matches, Pompeian Beauty Powder, a fountain pen, stamps, and… stationery.
Stationery…
I twirl my hair. My stomach drops.
I should write Daddy.
I fill the fountain pen, position a sheet of stationery on the trunk, and write the date on my first ever letter to him.
June 1, 1926
Dear Daddy,
The words are a cramped black smudge. My handwriting goes uphill, but worse is that “Dear” and “Daddy” aren’t right together.
On another sheet I scratch:
Dear Father,
I still don’t like “Dear,” but “Father” is okay. “Father” will fit better in the post office box in Kansas City he traded for our home.
Now what? The paper is huge and endlessly blank. I write:
Thought you’d like to know I made it safely to Wellsford.
Dr. Nesbitt and his mother have an interesting house out in the country. It is a farm, but a man named Cecil Deets does the field work.
We had pineapple upside-down cake for dessert tonight. Mrs. Nesbitt has stopped using her wheelchair, but no one will say why.
I stop, add a few more lines, stop again. This is stupid. I sound like a bull manure salesman. It feels like lying even though it’s true. It’s too… what? Friendly? Daughterly? Forgiving? I watch the moths flitter around the Grecian ruins. I picture my room at home—a pitch-black box with the ceiling for a lid. That’s the house of ghosts now, not this one.
A moth grazes my cheek. My letter falls facedown on the floor. When I pick it up, a tear drops right on “Dear Father,” turning it into a pale puddle. I wipe my face on the bath towel folded over my footboard, take another paper, and write:
Dear Father,
I made it to Wellsford.
Dr. Nesbitt’s house is a farm.
Your daughter,
Iris
I imagine my letter’s trip from the mailbox at the end of the driveway, to a train, to a truck, and into Daddy’s hand. He’ll read it in one gulp, hand it to Celeste. I hope they turn it over and over, looking for more. I hope he notices how much it doesn’t say. I can see Celeste, with lipstick smeared on her front tooth, gushing, “Oh, Charles, what a fabulous idea you had hiring Iris out, she sounds so happy!”
I put out the light, crawl back in bed, and stare out into endless farm fields washed in moonlight—feeling like no more than a speck in the middle of God’s dirty thumbprint.
“Avery, Marie requests a bath later this afternoon,” Mrs. Nesbitt says to her son at breakfast.
Marie gnaws a crust of toast under the kitchen table. Her fur is a dull, gritty mat, shaved bare in spots from her afternoon in the operating room.
Dr. Nesbitt glances at Henry hooked to the back of his mother’s chair, then back at her. “Oh, so now you’re Marie’s spokeswoman, her handmaiden,” he replies. He rubs his eyes and stretches. “Believe me, Mother, no one knows better than I the dismal status of Miss Marie’s toilette. I inhaled it all night. My diagnosis? A tawdry life of bathing in dry creek beds and stagnant swamps.”
We assess Marie. She assesses us right back. Her stray eye, which I had not noticed until now, makes it hard to look her in the face. She raises her leg to scratch her torn ear, but yelps and sinks to the floor.
Dr. Nesbitt rolls his eyes. “A bath can only improve so much, Mother.” He cracks her poached egg and spreads plum jam on her toast.
“I’ll do it,” I hear myself say.
Mrs. Nesbitt turns to me. “Iris?”
“I’ll give her a bath.” My offer sounds even more incredible the second time.
“Why, dear, that would be lovely. Do you have a dog at home?”
“No, ma’am. I just…” My hands get clammy. Why did I say that? I have no idea how to wash a dog.
“After wrestling with Marie, you’ll need a bath too, Iris!” Dr. Nesbitt remarks.
The fact that he used “bath” and “Iris” in the same sentence is so utterly embarrassing I could die. I stare at a pool of cold egg yolk. How could he say it without picturing it? “I… I didn’t mean I wanted a… I mean, I don’t need a bath, I mean, I probably do need a bath, but…”
Marie whines for more toast. We’ve switched places, I think—the smelly dog is so at home in here. I’m the one who should crawl out the door.
Dr. Nesbitt stands, clears his throat. “Thank you, Miss Baldwin. There’s a tub in the garage.” He says this with a tone of doctorly authority. I think he’s sorry he embarrassed me.
Outdoors, Dr. Nesbitt and I situate the tub near the windmill pump. “Keep a close eye on Mother, Iris. Until yesterday, I hadn’t seen her out of that wheelchair in… She’s been so…” He looks away. I sense a painful scene in his mind’s eye, maybe more than one. He turns to me. “Don’t say a word about her wheelchair. Might break the spell.”
After breakfast, when Dr. Nesbitt goes to his office in Wellsford, Mrs. Nesbitt invites me to her room to water her plants and dust.
She seems lost in her thoughts as she taps down the hall, her hair a fine gray stream flowing over the satin collar on her robe. In her room, she strikes a theatrical pose against apricot-colored wallpaper covered with jungle flowers. The room smells of jasmine perfume and mothballs.
I know I should say something—compliment the elaborate decor, or ask just the right questions while I’m watering her violets and dusting her collection of seashells. But I feel as misplaced as Cecil Deets would be in this leafy habitat of hers.
I try to be quick and efficient with my first official housekeeping chore. I make her bed easily enough. If I barely wave the feather duster over her things I have less possibility of breaking them. I swipe her mahogany headboard—a gorgeous carved swan, so graceful it could glide right out the window. I try to ignore Mrs. Nesbitt’s wheelchair, parked at the foot of her bed, with a worn-down pillow in the seat and a terrycloth bag attached to the armrest.
I dust silver frames on her nightstand with photos of men in uniform—her son, maybe, or Mr. Nesbitt—and then move along to an intricate pagoda on an ebony stand that spins.
Seated on her vanity chair, she watches my every move. I cannot wait to be finished. I turn to her. “Mrs. Nesbitt, I meant to thank you for the stationery and all. It was so nice. I already have a letter to post.”
“You’re very welcome. We’ve not had a houseguest, except Marsden, in so very long.”
A guest?
In no time I’ve gone over everything—perfume atomizers, a porcelain hatpin holder, even her gold slippers. She sighs, a sound more exasperated than satisfied. I lower the duster. Something’s wrong.
She looks out the window. I fear she’s blinking back tears.
What?
What?
She won’t look at me. She dabs her eyes with a hankie. Should I clean her glasses? Get on the next train? I just stand there—a feather duster in one hand, a flannel rag in the other.
After a terribly long moment she asks, “Iris, your mother has passed, hasn’t she?”
I look down. “Yes.”
“I’d love to see her picture. Did you look alike?”
“I didn’t bring one. I…”
She gives me a glance. “Brothers? Sisters?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Your father?”
“He’s gone… I mean, off… to Kansas City, and I…” I wouldn’t think of bringing a picture of him.
I look at the clutter around us, wondering why, if she hates dust, she has so much stuff to collect it. She sits, head bowed, when without warning these words come out of my mouth: “Mrs. Nesbitt, would you like me to dust… again?”
She nods, her bent hands crumpled in her lap. “Yes. Please.”
I raise the window shade. I carefully shake out the dust cloth and move it like a snail over everything I have already dusted. I polish her tortoiseshell hand mirror. I hold glass figurines for her inspection. “My husband’s mother gave those to me,” she says. “I never liked them, but I do now.” I tilt the photos to the light for her. She doesn’t want to hold them. “My hands are too lame. But please arrange them in a circle so we’re all facing each other.”
One by one, my hands and the rag cherish her things for her.
After a while she says, “I find that dusting brings out memories, Iris, the way rubbing a magic lamp releases the genie.”
I nod to be polite, but… but what if your genies are asleep, or dead? What if your memories never had a chance to get made?
“My mother has passed on too.” Mrs. Nesbitt looks heavenward, her eyes glistening. “We’ll need to dust together every day.”
“I’m bigger than you, Marie, and smarter, so get in here.”
“You forgot to mention that Marie’s teeth are bigger than yours,” Mrs. Nesbitt says. We’re behind the house. She sits on an overturned bucket, wearing a yellow sunhat, waving off the flies with a fan. There’s not another house in sight, just a skinny, lone telephone line linking us to the neighbors, wherever they are. I hear bugs and the drone of a tractor. I shudder, picturing fat, greasy Cecil sitting on it.
I hoist Marie into a giant tub full of soapy water.
She yips, but thankfully doesn’t scramble to get out. With one dog paddle, she’s out of my reach. I kneel with one knee on an anthill and the other in the mud. The strap of my smock slips off. Flies find us, because Marie, even underwater, smells like a pile of horse manure.
Mrs. Nesbitt and I decide Marie needs a long soak before any scrubbing. The thought of accidentally touching her bare stitches or her tail stub is disgusting. So is the muck already floating in the water. She seems perfectly happy to let us pamper her.
With bread and breakfast scraps as an incentive, she splatters us through two grubby washes and a rinse which Mrs. Nesbitt insists we scent with perfume. Wet, Marie looks like a drowned river rat, but she trots around like Venus before settling into a sunny puddle of driveway dirt.
I dump out the tub. My smock and hair are soaked. I’ve got grit under my fingernails and dog hair in my mouth. “I take that back about who’s smarter,” I tell Mrs. Nesbitt. “I’m the wet dog and she smells like jasmine.”