Chapter 47 Iris
Iris
Iris sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a cotton bathrobe, rhythmically pulling a brush through her hair.
Through the window of her room in the staff house, she watched the blink of fireflies in the dark night sky.
She would usually be in bed before it had grown so late, but her mind felt battered by the waves of thought assailing it ever since Orla’s diagnosis by the doctor.
The notion of lying abed with nothing to distract her from them held no appeal.
And so she puttered, busying herself with tasks usually saved for the offseason, well past the hour she routinely stopped work for the day.
She crossed the room to return her brush to the top of the dresser and heard a rap on her door. Almost relieved at the excuse not to be alone with her thoughts, she clutched the gap at the top of her robe closed.
“Come in,” she said.
The door creaked open, and Calvin’s head appeared in the gap.
“Are you busy?”
“You know that I always have time for staff. That said, it is a bit late.”
“I wouldn’t have bothered you, except I wasn’t sure what else to do,” he said, pushing the door fully open to reveal Cynthia standing—albeit limply—beside him. Iris took one look at her and gave him a curt nod.
“You’d best be off to bed. Leave Cynthia to me.”
With that, she stepped forward and drew the girl inside the room, shooing Calvin out with her free hand. She pressed the door firmly into place and locked it behind him.
Cynthia looked up at her like a dog expecting to be spanked for leaving a puddle on the carpet.
“You look like you had an eventful evening.”
Cynthia opened her mouth as if to speak but instead doubled over and began to sob, clutching her arms around her waist as if her body might fly into bits if she loosened her grip.
Iris bent over her and stroked her back as Cynthia shook and cried.
When she quieted down and straightened, Iris pushed straggling strands of honey-colored hair away from her face.
“Should I call for the doctor?” Iris asked.
Cynthia shook her head and began to sob once more. She sagged to the floor as if all the life were seeping out of her.
“I won’t if you would rather I didn’t.”
Cynthia peered up through wet lashes and shook her head. Iris knelt beside her and pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her robe.
Cynthia reached out with a trembling hand and took it, dabbed her eyes before delicately blowing her nose. Iris felt a long-ignored gnawing on her own heart as she observed the miserable girl in front of her. She would have liked to have been a mother.
“There’s no need for the doctor. I’m fine,” Cynthia said.
“We had better get you out of these wet clothes and into a hot bath,” Iris said.
She got to her feet and offered Cynthia her hand, pulling the girl to stand. They crept down the hallway as quietly as possible. It was not the sort of situation that Iris thought best discussed with the rest of the staff.
She pulled the cord dangling from the bathroom ceiling, and the small room sprang into light.
Iris bent over the tub and pushed the rubber plug into the open drain hole.
She wrenched on the taps and checked the temperature, hoping there would be enough hot water at that time of night for a proper soak.
She added a measure of bath salts and swished it around.
Like Alice before her, she made a point to set aside any half-empty containers of beauty products to pass along to staff members.
Not only were the items luxurious and expensive, but like most New Englanders, she abhorred waste.
Iris made sure to save a few bottles of bath salts, dusting powders, body lotions, and hand creams for the women’s bathroom stockpiles.
Most of the girls who worked there would never have been able to try such things otherwise.
She turned back around to face Cynthia. “You wait here while I fetch your pajamas. I assume they’re in the dresser in your room?”
“I tuck them under my pillow. Dolores might be asleep, though, so I wouldn’t turn on the light,” Cynthia said.
Iris was surprised at Cynthia’s thoughtfulness, given the state of her. She wasn’t sure that everyone would have bothered to consider how her actions might affect her roommate under the circumstances.
“Believe it or not, I’ve been creeping around the staff house for more than twenty years. I even know which floorboards to avoid to keep them from squeaking. I’ll be back in a tick.”
She returned a moment later with Cynthia’s pajamas and a pair of warm socks she had fetched from her own room.
Outsiders never did think to bring warm socks when they traveled to Maine in the summer.
They simply could not be convinced that it could get cool enough to want them.
But if one spent enough time at the lake, eventually a chill would set in.
Fortunately, Orla knitted a steady stream of garments of all sorts, including pairs of cozy socks.
At least, she had thus far. Iris didn’t know if the disease would eventually rob her of those skills just as thoroughly as it seemed to be robbing her of her memories. She shook that thought away as she stepped into the warm bathroom filling with billowing steam.
Cynthia had already removed her clothing and left it in a heap on the floor. The shower curtain had been pulled around the freestanding claw-foot tub, but the back of Cynthia’s hair hung down over the lip of the tub, disclosing her presence.
Iris lowered the toilet lid and sat upon it. She suddenly wished she had not given up smoking. Her nerves felt jangled, and the nicotine would have been soothing.
“It’s only me. I thought we ought to talk about what happened before I get you tucked up in bed,” Iris said.
She held her breath, waiting for a response.
She wasn’t entirely sure one would be forthcoming.
It wasn’t as though the girl knew her well, and if Iris were to be completely honest, she had not been enthusiastic about fostering a closeness with a young woman so different from herself.
She had judged her harshly based on her expectations of how a girl from her background would perform in her role as a maid, rather than any actual understanding of her as a person.
She heard Cynthia let out a tremendous sigh, audible even over the splashing from the taps. She wondered if the girl was going to begin to cry again, but instead, she spoke in a remarkably clear voice.
“I was invited to a party at the house on the lake. The boy who asked me is an acquaintance of the Mayhews. He decided to try to become far more acquainted with me than I had any intention of allowing, and it all ended rather badly,” Cynthia said.
“‘Rather badly’ how?” Iris asked.
“I was foolish enough to believe he just wanted to talk when he offered to take me out for a moonlit boat ride. When he got me out far enough not be heard, he tried to force himself on me,” Cynthia said.
Iris considered what she should say next.
If Cynthia had indeed been pushed into something against her will, there were any number of difficulties that lay ahead.
Not only would she have a heartache that went with such violence, but she also ran the risk of being labeled as a hussy should the news get out.
If she became pregnant, it would be difficult to keep the secret.
“Was he successful in his attempt?” Iris asked, trying to keep her voice steady. She heard the water shift and slap the sides of the tub before Cynthia answered.
“He put his hands all over me in places that still make me feel like I might vomit, but I managed to hit him over the head and jump over the side of the boat before he could get any further than that,” Cynthia said. “I swam for the shore and ran back here before he could come after me.”
Iris sagged against the toilet tank, limp with relief. She had not realized exactly how tightly strung her body felt from the moment Calvin popped his head through her bedroom door.
“What did you hit him with?” Iris asked.
A giggle rose up from Cynthia. “A bottle of gin. He brought it with him hoping to get me well and truly plastered, I suppose thinking that would make it easier to do whatever he wanted. He had me pinned down onto the bottom of the boat, when I managed to feel it rolling around near my hand. I think I might have stunned him with it.”
“It would serve him right if you killed him,” Iris said. Her hand reached around the shower curtain and pulled it away from Cynthia’s face.
“You don’t think I badly injured him, do you?” Cynthia asked.
“No, I very much doubt it. In my experience, men who behave like that have the devil’s own luck. You’re very lucky yourself, you know. It could have ended much differently.”
“I suppose I was lucky, although it doesn’t much feel like it just now.”
“Trust me, you got off lightly. What were you thinking, going off to a party all on your own?” Iris could hear the chiding note in her voice, but she couldn’t restrain herself.
“I didn’t think I would be on my own. My friend from college was supposed to be there too. Given how little I’ve seen her recently, I didn’t feel I could refuse the invitation even though Calvin couldn’t go with me.”
The girl was full of surprises. Iris thought of Calvin as worthy of any young woman he chose, but she had not necessarily thought a college girl would feel the same.
If Dolores had confessed an interest in him, she would have expected it.
But surely Cynthia had a boyfriend back at college she was eager to get back to.
Wasn’t that the reason she was so eager to earn money for tuition?
Could it be that she really was only interested in her education?
Between her confession and her successful wielding of a gin bottle, Iris had to look at her with new eyes.
She had surprised her with the quality of her work too.
Iris had expected her to scrape by doing the bare minimum, but she had performed almost as well as girls who had worked at the resort for years.
Admittedly, she was still not as fast as many of them at some of the tasks, but she did have an eye for detail and took the initiative when it came to things that she noticed needed doing.
Iris had also worried there would be envy on the part of Dolores when Cynthia had been asked to serve as Mrs. Putnam’s maid, but there seemed to be no trouble there either.
She had turned out to be a surprisingly good hire.
Iris didn’t know what she would have done without her.
The idea that she might have been put out of commission by some spoilt good-for-nothing didn’t bear thinking about.
She heard the water in the tub move again, and Cynthia’s hair began to slide away from the lip and down into the water. As the girl emerged, she wiped her face with her palms and opened her eyes.
“Do you happen to have any shampoo?”
If her hair was what was on the top of her mind, it seemed to Iris that Cynthia was going to be just fine.