Chapter 13
Thirteen
Room after room delighted me, but when I saw the kitchen, I was thunderstruck, marveling at its size and the number of appliances.
Two complete O’Keefe and Merritt ranges, each with three ovens and two broilers and six gas burners, handsome works of white porcelain and stainless steel.
Most amazing were the Frigidaires. In those days, maybe one in ten houses had a Frigidaire, if even that many.
Here were three lined up side by side. Loretta explained that the kitchen could serve more than a hundred guests at a party, when a catering company would be hired to cook under the stern direction of Luigi Lattuada, their cook, who was still out shopping.
The beauty and scale of the Bram were humbling and the grounds enchanting, but it was a shadowland compared to the brightness of the children.
I was anxious about meeting them, but I need not have been.
Toward the back of the ten-acre estate, in the shade of lacy California pepper trees, stood a two-story bungalow in the same style as the main house.
The upper floor provided an apartment for Mr. and Mrs. Symington.
Half the lower level was devoted to the two rooms and bath where Mr. Lattuada lived.
Only those three staff members resided on the property.
A schoolroom occupied the other half of the ground floor, where the nanny and teacher, Miss Imogene Blackthorn, watched after and instructed the children five days a week.
How Miss Blackthorn knew we were approaching I can’t say, but she stood waiting in front of the building.
A tall, willowy woman with auburn hair and sharp but attractive features, she was dressed rather severely in a long black dress with no decoration other than a simple white-ribbon bow gathered at the collar and trailing down the bodice.
Her personality belied the austere image created by her clothing.
She at once favored me with a warm smile and took my hands in hers as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a girl of seventeen to be wearing black gloves on a mild September day.
“I’m pleased to meet you, Alida. What do you think of Bramley Hall, these grounds?
Could there be any park anywhere lovelier than this? ”
“I don’t have much experience of parks, Miss Blackthorn. But this seems more than that, like another world and time, where tree nymphs and fairies are everywhere, keeping just out of sight.”
“Now that you’ve put it that way,” she said, “I will never be able to think of it otherwise. You like stories about fairies and such, do you?”
“Oh, I like stories of all kinds, ma’am. Stories are the best thing we have.”
“You’ll get along well with the children. Their imagination gets more exercise than they do. They live in stories of their own invention as much as they live in Bramley Hall.”
Loretta said, “If we’re not careful, they’ll end up telling stories in the movie business.”
“God forbid,” said Franklin. “We haven’t coddled the little dears only to throw them into that cauldron.”
“You mean because of the humorless sharks?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
Miss Blackthorn said, “They’re very excited about meeting you, Alida. I’ve warned them to be on their best behavior, but don’t be surprised if they ricochet around the room a little bit.”
Looking past her, I saw three faces crowding one another at a schoolroom window. The moment they realized they had been seen, the children seemed not merely to retreat but to fling themselves away from the glass.
As the teacher led us inside, I was nervous and self-conscious about facing this small but important class of students.
Many years had passed since being displayed onstage had affected me this way.
Captain and the slack-mouthed marks had not withered my sense of modesty.
I still shrank from anything indelicate and from being observed too eagerly.
In the Museum of the Strange and in the speakeasies, I resisted becoming as bold and decadent as the audience by developing a strong sense of reserve, holding myself aloof from my surroundings, holding back feelings from expression, refusing to communicate.
I retreated into my novels, which were more real to me than the tawdry place in which I actually existed.
Now I found it curious that, having had respectability bestowed on me by my new guardians, I felt less self-assured than I did as a freak-show exhibit, at least during this early stage of my new life.
When you have hope, everything is so much more important and meaningful than when you don’t.
The classroom was spacious, with a wall of cupboards that no doubt contained instructional materials, a large blackboard, and a cork bulletin board on which were pinned drawings and poems by the students for the admiration of all.
Three desks were lined up side by side, and the children sat there, facing the teacher’s larger desk, in a posture that denied they had been at the window only a moment earlier.
Each of them had been tasked with writing a special greeting in rhyme.
As she was the eldest, twelve-year-old Isadora went first. A pretty girl in the image of her mother, she had flaxen-blond hair lighter than mine and lovely striated eyes neither entirely blue nor entirely green.
She stood up and said, “My dear Alida, welcome to the Bram. May you be as happy here as I am. I have but one request to make. Please always let me have the last slice of cake.”
Evidently, they had composed their salutations without sharing them until now, for Gertrude and Harry giggled and clapped approval.
Gertrude rose to her feet when Isadora sat down.
As she would make clear at dinner that evening, she was not a child of ten, but ten and a half.
Gertrude had flaxen hair, and her eyes were so blue they appeared to be lit from within.
Although she, too, resembled her mother, her features were elfin, whereas Loretta’s were as classical as those of a goddess in Greek mythology.
Throughout her life, Gertrude would more often be called “cute” and “adorable” rather than beautiful, though she was no less attractive than her sister.
Anyway, being regarded as cute and adorable is often a more winning look than great beauty, which can be intimidating.
Gertrude read her greeting from an index card, which she held in both hands.
It was then, as she was about to speak, that I realized her left hand was incomplete.
The little finger and ring finger were missing.
That might have been the consequence of an accident if not for the fact that half her palm was gone as well.
Although the heel of her hand joined her wrist in a sudden swell of flesh, her thumb and remaining two fingers appeared to have full function.
There was no obvious scar tissue. Indeed, in spite of what it lacked, the hand looked well formed, strangely natural.
I knew in my heart that this was how little Gertrude had come into the world.
In that moment, I better understood Loretta and Franklin Fairchild—the kind of people they were, as well as one reason why they were that way.
Beginning in the dressing room at Blue Mood, they had inspired my love, and my love had grown, but now it began to mature into something more.
At that moment there began to be devotion in it, though I am unable to properly articulate what I mean.
Recognition of their journey with their daughter somehow consecrated them in my affections, made hallow my intense and tender feelings for them.
Gertrude glanced shyly at me and cleared her throat and read her composition.
“Dear Alida, I’m so happy to have a second sister.
My little brother can be quite a blister.
Now with three of us in the Bram, we can gang up on the little lamb.
” This received the reaction you might expect—laughter and enthusiastic approval from Isadora, playful booing from Harry.
I clapped, grateful that, though my hands needed to be gloved, they were complete in their own way.
Nine-year-old Harry thrust to his feet and shook his fist at Gertrude and waved at me.
He was dark-haired and dark-eyed like his father, but with an impish quality that suggested he might be less inclined to take seriously much of what other people considered to be important.
Somewhat small for his age, he nevertheless had a presence bigger than his height and weight.
He’d memorized his welcoming words. “Dear Alida, violets are blue, roses are red. Be careful of my sisters. They aren’t right in the head.
” With that outrage, it became the girls’ turn to boo, and Harry replied to their disapproval with a long, wet raspberry.
“I will tolerate your rudeness to one another,” Miss Blackthorn said, “because it was mildly amusing, but none of you is close to being the next Will Rogers.” She pointed at Harry. “Don’t you dare direct a Bronx cheer at me, young man.”
With greetings completed, the children left their desks and gathered around me, unraveling questions at me far faster than I could answer them.
“What do you think of the Bram?” “Do you like your rooms?” “Did you like my rhyme? I was going to call Harry a ‘little ham,’ because he hams it up all the time, but I thought ‘little lamb’ was nicely ironic. Don’t you think it’s nicely ironic?
We just learned about irony last week.” “Did you see the fountain with the stone dolphins? I adore that fountain, the way the spouting dolphins seem to be frolicking with such delight.” “Did you know we have a dog?” “Do you like cats? We like cats, but Mother is crazy allergic to them and would positively stop breathing and die if we had a cat in the house.”