Becoming the Butlers (21 page)

When I started seeing this, I knew I had to get out of the apartment. I grabbed my coat and didn’t even wait for the elevator, but flew down the stairs, barely breathing until I reached the security of the street. I walked up to Columbia University, sat on the steps of Low Library, and then, when my feet began to freeze, walked over to Amsterdam Avenue, all the way to Teachers College, and back to Riverside Drive. As I wandered I kept going over everything that had happened, trying to find someone else to blame. I couldn’t; the only guilty one was me.

If only I had told James about my mother in Madrid. If only I had confided in Pilar. If only I hadn’t broken into Olivia’s locker. I remember my father saying that “if only” were the two most terrible words in the language, and I knew he was right. I heard the words at night, a long steady howl like the wind. I woke up to the phrase, ominous as the fire sirens outside my window, as real to me as the ghost. I knew the only way to get rid of them was to do something drastic. It was too late to apologize to my father and the Vasquezes, but the Butlers were still here. I could redeem myself by apologizing to Edwin and
Olivia: I’d tell them I was very sorry for meddling in their lives. My wish to become a Butler was not only stupid but harmful. I’d leave the Winfield Academy and go to another school, maybe I’d even leave New York; and the Butlers would never have to see or hear from me again.

At first I decided to write the two a letter. But Olivia or Edwin would probably rip the envelope to shreds if they saw my name on the back flap. They would hang up on me if I tried to phone. I decided I must go to their apartment and ring their doorbell. I hoped Olivia would be alone; with Edwin, I’d be a wreck. He’d gaze at me coldly, indifferent again. One nasty word would send me running out the door.

Saturday morning I found myself in front of the Butlers’ apartment building. The same little man was sweeping the sidewalk, the tall doorman still whistling for taxis. To my surprise no one stopped me as I walked hesitatingly into the lobby and toward the elevators. Maybe I actually looked like I belonged here. A uniformed man with a face like a basset hound sat on a chair by the elevator. He stood up so slowly that I could hear the joints in his knees creak. I walked into the car and stood for several minutes. The old man eventually shuffled in and grabbed the lever with a white-gloved hand. He turned to me and said: “Out the door, please.”

The faithful building employee knew who belonged here and who couldn’t pass muster. He would call for the doorman, who would throw me out on my heels.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I said, what floor, please?” he repeated, and I chided myself for my fearfulness. I said I was visiting the Butler family. Praying for courage, I stared at the back of the elevator man’s pink neck. He closed the door and we started off.

“Good day, Madam,” he told me a moment later, opening the metal gate. I found myself in a long narrow hallway. Two framed pictures, Metropolitan Museum reproductions of Degas dancers, hung opposite on the cream-colored walls, and two unmarked doors stood left and right of me. The elevator man would be suspicious if I asked him which was the Butlers’. I waited for him to leave, and walked over to the door on the right. A messy pile of uncollected mail had been dumped on top of the welcome mat. Wondering if what I was about to do was illegal, I knelt down and began sorting through the envelopes.

Everything was addressed to Mrs. Oliver Butler. There was nothing for Olivia, Edwin, or Dr. Oliver Butler. Had they already picked up their own mail, or did the mother receive everything? I discovered what I expected; bills from Bergdorf Goodman and Bonwit Teller;
Vogue
,
Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country.
But other items confounded me: esoteric publications like
Esperanto Today,
a brochure for the Romanian Tourist Board printed on badly mimeographed paper, and a weathered envelope—already opened—which I discovered contained a menacing chain letter. Didn’t people know that the Butlers were above this kind of trash? I felt the same thrill as when I examined the items in Olivia’s locker. Everything, however mundane or odd, was a clue.

“Thank you so much, dear, for bringing in the mail.”

The soft husky voice sounded familiar. Still crouched down, I was eye level with a wheel spoke. I slowly raised my head and saw a middle-aged woman staring at me from a wheelchair.

“Oh, of course,” I stammered, standing up as several letters slipped through my arms. The woman sighed as I stooped down to pick them up again. I always felt uncomfortable looking at the legs of people in wheelchairs; I think I even expected the useless limbs to do something insulting. People in wheelchairs never looked fat or thin to me, but just lumpy and gnarled. Although the woman was sitting upright with her chin held high, her arms seemed too short, like withering stems, her chest nearly concave in its flatness.

“Careful now,” she chided. “We can’t forget the bills. Bonwit’s in particular gets nasty if you’re late.”

This woman didn’t seem the type to frequent Bonwit Teller. Her round plain face, weathered by the sun, didn’t bear any makeup, and she wore no rings or necklaces or even a watch. She wore a simple light blue cotton dress, and if she hadn’t been in a wheelchair, I would have assumed she was a housekeeper.

“Well, come in,” she told me, pressing a button on a box atop the left arm that made the chair’s rubber tires start to move. My grandmother had a broken-down contraption with stained canvas webbing and rusting arms; this machine seemed more like a remote-controlled toy car. The motor made a quiet humming sound, and the wheels moved soundlessly, only clicking when they stopped. I followed her in and placed the mail on a long marble table. To my surprise the apartment looked very much like our own; big, dark, and drafty, with stained wooden floors scuffed up with heel marks. Paint on the walls was peeling in places, and framed pictures hung at crooked angles. I could tell the furniture had once been elegant, but it was now worn and looked a bit like the chintz sofas and upholstered chairs you see in department-store ladies’ rooms. The only distinctive touch I could see was an old framed portrait of a stern-faced Colonial sort of man with a high collar and peaked triangular hat. His pale face, sharp cheekbones, and thin lips reminded me of Edwin.

“Excuse me,” I asked the woman, “are Olivia and Edwin in?”

“No, I’m afraid they’re not. But may I help you?”

I hesitated, not sure I should confide in someone outside the family.

“Have we met before?” she asked. “Olivia and Edwin so rarely bring their friends to the apartment.”

“No,” I said. “Do you know when they’ll be back?”

“I’m not sure. They never tell me their plans.”

Maybe I should leave a message with their mother, I thought. She couldn’t be as intimidating as her children. I imagined her to be that type of society lady very involved with various philanthropies; knocking on Park Avenue doors for UNICEF, collecting old ball gowns and mink stoles for neighborhood thrift shops. Surely she would listen and accept my apology.

“Is Mrs. Butler in?” I asked.

The woman stared hard at me and blinked. Maybe this woman was a kooky relative—lots of rich families were chock-full of them.

“I’m Mrs. Butler. Who are you?”

This time I was the one who stared hard and blinked. The Butlers were supposed to be perfect; this woman in the wheelchair couldn’t be their mother. Where was the snappy Chanel blonde who lunched at Le Cirque? Still, Mrs. Butler’s infirmity filled me with the same relief as when I saw Edwin sweating: it took the shine off the family’s gloss, made them less exclusive, more attainable, within grasp. No one knew about Mrs. Butler. Like me, they had a secret about their mother.

I looked around for a photograph of their father, hoping to see a remarkably handsome man. Those two couldn’t just pop out of nowhere. But there were no photographs to be found of either the father or the children. I looked at Mrs. Butler again. Her straight short hair was streaked with silver. Even my mother, who shunned cosmetics, refused to go gray. “Wrinkles you can’t do anything about, but this,” my mother would say, plucking a white hair with a tweezer, “is curable.” Mrs. Butler seemed comfortable with aging and I doubted she ever used any sort of skin cream. Laugh lines marked her eyes and mouth, and the skin of her chin was slack. I noticed that her two front teeth were a little crooked, but somehow they looked just right in her mouth. Her plainness comforted me. Maybe I had been intimidated too long by my father’s good looks. You could stare at this woman without hating yourself.

“My name is Rachel Harris,” I began, looking down at my clenched hands, which were slowly turning white. “I broke into your daughter’s locker, and I’ve come to apologize.”

“Well,” Mrs. Butler took a deep breath. “I certainly do know who you are.”

“I’d like to explain why I did it.”

Mrs. Butler didn’t answer, and for a moment I expected her to ring a bell which would summon a servant who would escort me to the elevator. I was about to walk to the front door when Mrs. Butler turned, swung around, and zipped down the hall. “Come, let’s have some tea,” she called, disappearing through a door.

I followed her into the kitchen, a warm sunny room filled with hanging plants and at least five different wall calendars. The rectangular table held remnants of breakfast, and I guessed that the bowl of soggy Cheerios belonged to Edwin, and the half-eaten muffin with raspberry jam was Olivia’s.

“This was brewed only an hour ago,” Mrs. Butler told me, lifting a kettle from the stove, “so it shouldn’t be
too terrible.” She swiftly poured the brown liquid into two mugs and added two lumps of sugar. Her handicap didn’t seem to hinder her too much. I thanked Mrs. Butler and took a sip. The cold tea tasted vaguely metallic, and I tried hard not to wince.

“Aren’t you hot in that hat and coat?”

I unbuttoned my jacket and slowly slid off my beret. Mrs. Butler didn’t say anything when my hair tumbled over my shoulders, but I did notice she stirred her tea a little more briskly.

“I see you’re staring at my wheelchair.”

“Oh, not at all,” I said, hiding my flushed face behind the mug.

“I believe it’s best to be up front with people in case they’re imagining awful things. A crippling childhood disease, for example. A car accident with a drunken driver. The explanation is very simple. I tripped on a rope on a dock in Nantucket, and landed the wrong way in the ocean. If it wasn’t for a nearby fishing boat, I would have drowned. It’s not that I don’t know how to swim…what’s wrong? Don’t you like tea?”

“I shouldn’t be here,” I said miserably, putting my mug down. “Thank you, Mrs. Butler. I swear I won’t bother your family again.”

“You’re not bothering me at all,” Mrs. Butler said, reaching over the table to touch my hand. “And I know you didn’t come all the way just to have tea with me, and pretty mediocre tea at that. I’m very curious to know why you broke into Olivia’s locker. She also told me you followed her into church one day, pretending to be her friend Monica. Olivia’s very angry with you, and Edwin was absolutely livid. I’ve never seen those two so overwrought. For a while there I thought nothing could faze them. I really should thank you. But enough from me. Please go on, I’m a good listener.”

“Well,” I said hesitatingly, “I wanted to join your family.”

“Join my family? But don’t you have your own?”

“Yes. I mean no.” I took a deep breath and told Mrs. Butler everything: how my mother ran away with our super, the trip to Madrid and my meeting with George, my father’s drinking, and the arrival of the Vasquezes. Mrs. Butler didn’t say a word until I mentioned my vision at the skating rink.

“But why Wollman?” she asked. “Olivia and Edwin only go skating at Rockefeller Center.”

“See? I can’t do anything right,” I told her.

“Yes you can.” Mrs. Butler’s cool dry hand rested gently on my wrist. “You came to see me, didn’t you? I just don’t understand why you had to break into Olivia’s locker in order to be her friend. There must have been an easier way.”

“No, not with Olivia.”

“It’s not easy being her mother, if that’s any consolation. And I have no idea how to become a Butler. When you find out, please let me know.”

Mrs. Butler leaned over and pulled open a kitchen drawer. “I hope you don’t mind if I smoke,” she said, taking out a pack of Marlboros.

“The same brand as my dad,” I told her. “I never thought you’d be a smoker too.”

“I guess you didn’t think I’d be in a wheelchair either. Or look the way I do. I know I’m not what you expected.” Mrs. Butler struck a kitchen match against the table and lit her cigarette. “I’m not what my children expected. Sometimes I think the nurses switched both babies at the hospital. My husband’s no movie star either. I’ve gone through all the family photographs and there’s not one relative who could even be called cute. It’s as if those two fell off Mount Olympus.” Mrs. Butler inhaled
so strongly that the red cigarette tip crackled and smoldered. She looked over her shoulder as she smoked, protectively cupping the cigarette with a palm. Her guilty and ashamed expression made her look years younger. Like Nicole, she turned her head to exhale. “I still feel like I’m a victim of a practical joke. One day a very ordinary-looking boy and girl will walk through the door and inform me that they’re my true children. Harris…” Mrs. Butler said thoughtfully, tapping the cigarette against her mug. “Your father wouldn’t happen to be a rather striking math teacher?”