Chapter 43 Cynthia
Cynthia
Was it only yesterday when had she agreed to go to Glenn’s party?
She never liked parties, not even ones held on the college campus with people she knew.
What had possessed her to agree to attend one with strangers?
It wasn’t as though she had turned into a completely new person just by heading to Mount Vernon for the summer and actually managing to get a job.
She had to admit, the work at the resort had been harder than she would have anticipated when she’d applied for the job.
She looked down at the palms of her hands, which certainly did not look as though she were the sort of young lady who would attend parties with the social elite of the summer community.
Her knuckles appeared red and raw as she turned her palms towards the floor and evaluated the backs of her hands.
Not to mention the state of her fingernails.
As a student, she had occasionally felt a bit embarrassed by the number of ink stains coloring her fingertips, but she had never seen her hands look quite as rough and unattractive as they appeared at that particular moment. She even smelled faintly of Lysol and lemon furniture polish.
A sudden surge of shyness welled up within her, and she wished she had a friend there beside her who would know just what to do when it came to attending a party.
She wished she knew someone who would have all sorts of ideas on how she ought to dress her hair, how to do her makeup, and how to make flirtatious small talk with strangers.
Cynthia had never been an easygoing or flirtatious life of the party.
She wished more than anything that she could back out of attending, but that seemed rude beyond bearing.
If she happened to come across Glenn on a day off, as she knew that she might, she would not be able to look him in the eye.
It would be far easier to simply show up for an hour and then slip out with some sort of excuse.
As she stood staring at the contents of her wardrobe, the door creaked open behind her. When she looked over her shoulder, Dolores stood smiling at her.
“What are you doing in here? Shouldn’t you be off tending to your artist?” she asked.
“We finished early so I could get ready for a party.” She flipped through the paltry number of garments.
Dolores’s eyebrows arched upward. “What kind of party? I haven’t heard about a staff party.”
Cynthia shook her head. “No, it’s not a staff party. I got invited to one by a boy whose family owns a house on the lake.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? Staff at the resort don’t mix with the summer people.
It’s just one of those things,” she said.
She shrugged her slim shoulders and stared at a spot on the floor near Cynthia’s feet.
Then she raised her gaze. Cynthia thought she saw a flicker of resignation and embarrassment in Dolores’s eyes.
From what little she had said about her life away from the Maine Chance, Cynthia guessed that her family was about as economically removed from Glenn’s as she herself was from Miss Arden.
Because of their easy camaraderie, she had given no credence to the notion that Dolores was not in the same social position as Pauline.
She wished her new friend wouldn’t give that sort of thing a thought either.
In her opinion, Dolores was worth any number of people like Glenn.
The fact that her father worked in a nearby sawmill and her mother picked berries to sell to the tourists made no difference to Cynthia.
She knew that Dolores handed over most of her pay packet to her parents to help make ends meet, and that only raised her opinion of her further.
On payday, she felt a twinge of guilt that her biggest concern about her money was whether or not she would earn her tuition.
Dolores had confessed one night, after the staff house had grown still and it was just the two of them alone in their room, that her wages made it possible to keep her family in their home.
“Is that some sort of rule that Iris has?” Cynthia asked.
She couldn’t remember Iris saying anything about not fraternizing with people in town.
She had been very clear about keeping the line between staff and guests at the Maine Chance blurred, but she had not said any such protocol extended to the community outside of the resort.
She certainly didn’t want to lose her job over accepting an invitation she didn’t want in the first place.
“No, it’s not a rule, exactly—at least, not one like wear your uniform and don’t use the front staircase. It’s more of a cultural rule. Locals don’t tend to like to mix with the summer folk.”
Dolores crossed the room and perched on the windowsill. She stuck her hand into the pocket of her work apron and pulled out a fresh packet of cigarettes. Once again, she slid open the screen and leaned slightly out of the room.
“Why don’t locals like to mix with the summer people?” Cynthia asked.
“Where do I start? We don’t have a whole lot in common with them, and no one particularly likes it when people look down on them,” Dolores said. “The guests here at the resort aren’t the only ones who think they’re better than the year-round residents.”
Cynthia had not grown up in a resort community.
However, she could see how there might be some tension between the people who earned the better part of their year’s salary from the tourist industry and those who spent more than they earned on motorboats and meals out at local restaurants over the course of only a few weeks’ time every year.
Yes, she could see how perhaps they would not have a great deal in common.
“What about someone like me, who isn’t a local?” she asked.
Dolores took a drag on her cigarette, then waved the smoke out the window.
“Well, I’m not sure about someone like you.
You don’t fit in all that well with the locals, but since you needed a job, you may not quite meet the summer-people standards either.
Does the person who invited you know that you’re working here as a maid? ” she asked.
“He does.”
Dolores arched her eyebrow up once more. “Did you come right out and tell the guy that asked you?”
Guilt sat in Cynthia’s stomach like a lead sinker. She didn’t want Dolores to think she was ashamed of her job. If anything, she was desperately proud of herself. But she wasn’t sure the other girl would believe her.
“No, I didn’t mention it, but a mutual acquaintance went ahead and told him. He let me know that he knew when I saw him at the pharmacy when I was picking up a prescription for one of the guests.”
“Were you planning to tell him yourself, if someone hadn’t beaten you to it?” Dolores asked.
“I suppose I would not have made any great effort to bring it up.”
Dolores crossed her slim arms over her chest, keeping the cigarette tipped carefully towards the open window. “So, you are aware that there is a difference between those who serve and those who are served.”
As much as Cynthia didn’t wish to seem like a snob, Dolores did have a good point.
She was not likely to be able to hide her background even if she wanted to.
Dolores had an accent that marked her as someone from Mount Vernon, and she certainly had a wardrobe to match.
Cynthia enjoyed her company and the time she had spent with her after hours talking and laughing about shared experiences on the job, but she could not quite imagine her discussing homecoming dances or volatility in the stock market and how that impacted trust funds.
No, Dolores would laugh in their faces about such silly things and point out that she preferred men who knew how to field dress a deer or split a cord of wood with a dull axe.
“I suppose there are some differences,” Cynthia said. “I would rather stay here with you, but I already agreed.”
“If you didn’t want to go, why did you say yes when he asked you?”
“I guess I was just so surprised I didn’t have a good excuse ready. Besides, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”
“You be careful how you go, then. It never does to be too nice.” Dolores crossed the room, retrieved her mason jar lid from her dresser drawer, and stubbed out her cigarette.
She turned back towards Cynthia with a sparkle in her eyes. “You should ask Calvin to go with you. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”
Cynthia’s heart quickened like it did every time his name was mentioned. If she were being honest, Calvin was the real reason she wasn’t interested in attending a party thrown by Glenn—or any other boy, for that matter.
“I already asked him, but he’s driving Mrs. Putnam and a couple of other guests to a nightclub in Augusta this evening.”
“That’s all right. It won’t hurt for Calvin to know that you have options. So, what are you going to wear?”
“I have a sundress that I thought might work. And I have a matching sweater in case the temperature dips, as it is so inclined to do in the evening, especially with the wind coming off the lake.”
“What about makeup?”
“I have a powder compact and a lipstick, but I’m not sure either is right for a party. They seem more like daywear.”
Dolores pulled open the top drawer and pulled out several boxes, pots, and bottles all bearing the Elizabeth Arden logo. “It’s a good thing I have all of this, then, isn’t it?”
Cynthia’s eyes widened. There was a fortune in products spread across the top of the dresser.
How could a girl working as a maid possibly afford all that?
Knowing what had happened to Velda, she couldn’t imagine Dolores helping herself to anything from the guests’ rooms. Maybe the staff was given some sort of deep discount she hadn’t heard about.
Even if the makeup hadn’t cost as much as the guests were charged, it couldn’t have been cheap.
“You’re too generous. I couldn’t use your expensive things,” she said.