Becoming the Butlers (13 page)

“Is that you, Rachel?” my father called out.

I stepped forward, my head bowed, feeling bashful and a little bit lost in my own home.

“Sorry to interrupt...” I began.

“Where were you? We waited until the food almost got cold. I told you to be home by dinner. Sit down now and have some of Isabel’s excellent Paella.”

Isabel? Were the two on such familiar terms already? Mrs. Vasquez (she could never be Isabel to me) wore a red nylon dress that shimmered in the light and big colorful earrings that looked like grape bunches. No place had been set for me, and a stepladder, which I often used as a stool, had to be brought in from the kitchen. I sat at a sharp corner of the table and picked at the cold rice.

“Aren’t you hungry?” my father asked me.

“Not really.”

“She was the same way in Madrid,” he went on, “didn’t eat a thing.”

“Didn’t you like the food, Rachel?” Pilar asked.

“Can I be excused?” I asked my father. “I don’t feel very well.”

“Not until we have the birthday cake.”

“Who has a birthday?” I felt tired and cranky and not in any mood for celebrations.

“Why, me!” James cried.

“You?” I sat up in my seat. “Your birthday’s June eleventh.”

“Maybe. And maybe not.”

“This is ridiculous. You can’t just make up your birthday. Who do you think you’re fooling?”

Mrs. Vasquez was no longer smiling. Pilar looked down at her plate and the baby, drooling over her bib, started whimpering.

“You promised a birthday cake,” George Jr. grumbled to his sister.

“Don’t worry, George, we’ll have cake. At my age,” my father declared, “you should be able to choose your own date, and I think I deserve a birthday.”

Mrs. Vasquez rose and with a wink went through the door and into the kitchen. Pilar stood up and dimmed the lights. Luisa began to sing “Happy Birthday” and George Jr. told her to shut up, it wasn’t time. Then the kitchen doors swung open and Mrs. Vasquez nearly toppled under the weight of an enormous cake ablaze with candles. She practically dropped the thing in front of my father. I leaned over and read the inscription in pink icing:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY! CHAU-PING WONG!
followed by three Chinese symbols. James saw my expression, shrugged, and said, “Mrs. Chau-Ping forgot to pick up the cake, so they gave it to me for five bucks.”

Mrs. Vasquez and Pilar sang
“Feliz Cumpleaños.”
My father’s face basked in the light of the candles, and as
he was about to blow them out the back doorbell suddenly rang. Everyone stopped talking and glanced nervously at each other. The landlord, I thought gleefully.

“I’ll get it,” I announced, jumping up and running to the door.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Mrs. Rosen cried as she stumbled into the kitchen, “but I must speak to your father.” The old woman stamped her wet boots and flung her scarf across her shoulder as if she were about to weather a storm. Her bright red hair—a wig, my father insisted—was speckled with bits of glittery snow. I realized I should offer to take our neighbor’s coat, but I didn’t want her to stay.

“Mrs. Rosen, why didn’t you come through the front door?”

“I didn’t want
them
to see me,” she whispered.

“Well he’s busy,” I told her. “Can’t this wait?”

“No. Just tell your father it’s a special delivery,” Mrs. Rosen ordered. “I’ll wait here and make myself some tea.” She took the kettle off the burner as familiarly as if she were at her own stove. “Your mother and I spent many an afternoon over a cup, discussing her problems. I hope you realize I was the first to know about George.”

“Did my mother really tell you about George?” I asked in disbelief. I knew the two were friends, but I didn’t think they were confidantes. My mother was the only one allowed to call Mrs. Rosen by her first name, Marta, and had heard all about her supposedly steamy past as a cabaret singer in Berlin. According to my mother, Mrs. Rosen was a Marlene Dietrich look-alike, with American boyfriends and black-market stockings. Mrs. Rosen’s stockings now sagged at her ankles, and her legs were streaked with varicose veins, but her voice still had a commanding lyricism, and even I could imagine her crooning to lovesick soldiers beneath the purple spotlight of a cellar café.

“Of course,” she cried, turning on the faucet. “Elizabeth told me everything. She valued my experience and advice. She asked me what to do.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“I said, does your husband know? She said your father had no idea. I asked her how long she and George were carrying on. A year, she said.”

“A year!”

“I told her if any husband couldn’t tell, after twelve months, that his wife had been sleeping with another man, then he wasn’t a real husband. The only one holding her back was you, Rachel.”

“Don’t tell him that,” I begged Mrs. Rosen. “He’s still in love with her.”

“Then you must save your father.”

“Me?” I whined. “What can I do?”

“You’re his daughter.”

“Not anymore,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s got a whole new family there in the dining room.”

“Good evening, Mrs. Rosen.” My father, pale and frowning, securely closed the door behind him.

“Professor Harris!” Mrs. Rosen stood erect and tried to make her four-foot-eleven frame as imposing as possible. “I must talk to you. In private.”

“As far as I’m concerned, Rachel can hear anything that has to do with me. Now what’s this all about?” James asked, casting a suspicious look in my direction.

“All right then. But I’m not sparing any words.”

“Please don’t, Mrs. Rosen,” James said with mock sincerity. “I’d hate to force you to spare anything.”

“What,” Mrs. Rosen began, ignoring the still running water, “is going on? Just who, Professor Harris, do you think you are? You can’t
do
this!”

“Do what?” my father asked, looking mystified.

“You are taking advantage of them. Tell me, will she cook for you?”

“Are you referring to Mrs. Vasquez?”

“Of course.”

“Then yes.”

“And clean the house?”

“Yes.”

“And the marketing?”

“Why, she might volunteer.”

“And do the laundry?”

“What does this have to do…”

“And sleep with you?” Mrs. Rosen asked.

“No! I mean of course not,” my father stuttered.

“Do you give her money?”

“Why should I…”

“Then she is an unpaid maid and an unpaid cook.”

“You’re not being fair,” my father said weakly. The water ran on and on as cups and plates bobbed up and down in the flooded sink. My father reached back and almost savagely turned off the spigot.

“Well, she certainly keeps house better than Elizabeth ever did,” Mrs. Rosen added dryly, running a finger over the top of the kitchen table. “Maybe you can recommend her to me. At least I’ll pay wages.”

“I’m only helping the Vasquez family, Mrs. Rosen. This apartment’s too big for just Rachel and me. If they didn’t want to stay here they could leave. No one is forcing them to do anything.”

“That’s what you think. She feels indebted to you. Her husband left with your wife. She must compensate for the gaps. Let them go,” Mrs. Rosen pleaded. “They’ll lead a new life, somewhere else.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Rosen, for this essential information. Now please get the hell out of this kitchen!”

Mrs. Rosen wobbled a little, and then clutched the refrigerator handle for support.

“Sometimes you are very stupid, Professor Harris. Don’t you see who you are trying to be?”

My father, now speechless, shook his head.

“George, of course. You want to be George.”

That night I locked my bedroom door and did what I do best: I cried. I was the only person in New York dumb enough to lose a mother and a father and still not technically be an orphan. My father didn’t need me anymore, he had the Vasquezes. At one point I heard knocking on the door, and hoped to hear, “Melody, what’s wrong?” But it was only Pilar asking me if I wanted the last slice of birthday cake. I shouted something about being poisoned by the Paella, and I heard Pilar scurrying away. A half hour later I unlocked the door to go to the bathroom, and when I returned Pilar was already turning down her sheets.

“What time is it anyway?” I asked her.

“Nine o’clock,” Pilar answered. “Do you mind if we go to bed now? We get up for church very early.”

“Sure,” I told her. I had nowhere else to go. I certainly wasn’t going to join my father and Mrs. Vasquez in their celebration. Pilar, apparently shy, said she was going to the bathroom to change into her nightgown. I took off my clothes and slid into an old T-shirt. Pilar noisily brushed her teeth for at least fifteen minutes, protecting herself against dreaded gingivitis. After a cycle of vigorous gargling, Pilar returned in one of my mother’s nightgowns.

“What are you wearing?” I cried.

“A nightgown.”

It was supposed to have been a joint Christmas gift to my mother. My father and I bought our present from Victoria’s Secret, a sachet-filled shop on Madison Avenue. The peach silk gown had been one of the more conservative items in the shop. My father said my mother would look like a rose in the outfit. She never even saw our gift. By Christmas my mother was in Madrid.

“Who gave that to you?” I demanded.

“James. That’s what your father told me to call him,” she quickly added.

“Did
James
say anything special about the nightgown?”

“Not really. He just told me it was on its way to the incinerator, and I might as well use it. Is anything wrong, Rachel?” The nightgown was too small for Pilar and she looked more like a weed than a rose.

“No,” I said after a moment. I leaned over and turned off the light. “Well, good night.”

Canned laughter filtered through the wall: a commercial for Ford; a snow update. Outside my door George Jr. tearfully pleaded to stay up till nine-thirty so he could watch Mr. T. Pilar was so quiet that for a moment I thought she had stopped breathing. Then I heard her tossing and turning, throwing her blanket off, then pulling it back, fluffing up her pillows, rearranging her sheets. Paradoxically, she cried: “This bed’s so much more comfortable than my old one; I could stay here forever.”

I put my sheet over my head and groaned. Forever. I knew then that Pilar would never leave, that the Vasquezes would stay on and on, the children growing older, getting married, having their own children, who would also move in. Our apartment would be overrun by hundreds of Vasquezes. Relatives too would visit and stay and Paella would be served every night.

“Rachel, do you ever wonder how it happened?”

“What happened?” I asked, rolling over.

“My father and your mother.” Pilar spoke slowly, patiently, and could have been explaining an easy equation.

“Why?”

“I think about it all the time. I never had a boyfriend
so I really don’t know how these things work. Maybe they were meant for each other all along.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well you know, the stars.”

“You don’t believe that crap!”

“Why not?” Pilar asked defensively. “The stars have to be up there for some reason. Maybe they had to fall in love. Couldn’t help it. I bet it happened at the Hanukkah party two years ago.”

“What happened?”

“My father and your mom! Aren’t you listening? Mrs. Cohen in 7D was the hostess. I remember your mother with my dad in a corner.”

“She was probably complaining about the radiator.”

“Maybe not. I bet they were already planning things. Come on Rachel, don’t you think about it too?”

“No. And I don’t care.”

“Not once…,” Pilar pressed on.

“No,” I repeated, the lie making my skin break out in hives. “Not even once.”

That morning the Vasquezes went to a six
A.M.
Mass. I feigned sleep while Pilar quietly dressed. After her departure I pretended that the Vasquezes had only been a dream, and when I awoke, the room would be mine again. But Pilar remained in spirit if not in body: a steady presence that pushed against me like a wall of hot air. My room smelled like Listerine. I had to admit that she didn’t take up much space, except for her books and that pathetic small pile of clothes. Pilar had neatly made her bed and kept all her toiletries on a bathroom shelf in a plastic traveling case, as if she were checking out the next morning. If I were in boarding school, she would be considered a perfect roommate, unobtrusive, clean, even willing to rewrite your papers. She let me sleep with both windows wide open, even though snow blew in all over
her pillow. But Pilar made me nervous.
Very nervous.
I was terrified she’d ask about George. I looked at her and remembered I wasn’t a very nice person. I lied to her, I lied to my father, and would probably keep weaving my web of lies until I became stuck.