The Orphan and the Mouse (5 page)

With the scouts' report complete, the directors approved preparations for settlement, and spies were dispatched to assess the human inhabitants' conversation, foragers to begin stocking the larders, builders to develop nests and pathways, garbage managers to identify sites for refuse, auditors to learn where stories were told, and, of course, an art thief to locate the source of pictures.

The thief, young and untried, had previously served as a scout. He had the agility required for the job, and no one doubted his intelligence, but his temperament was an open question. For his part, he would have liked to interview the colony's only living thief, Mary Mouse, to learn from her experience. But this Randolph forbade absolutely.

On Sunday night another resident of the Cherry Street Children's Home—this one human—tossed and turned in her bed. This resident had lately learned there were mice sharing her roof, but that wasn't what disturbed her. Rather, Mrs. Helen George was apprehensive about the visitor expected in the morning.

It took a lot to impress Helen George. In her role as headmistress of an institution founded by prominent members of Philadelphia society, she was accustomed to meeting well-to-do people. But tomorrow's visitor was special, a bona fide movie star under contract to Paramount and featured only five months before on the cover of
Silver Screen
magazine.

Joanna Grahame was a hometown girl, born Gianna Garibaldi in South Philly, where she graduated from Catholic schools and then—to her parents' consternation—moved to New York City to become an actress. When a Hollywood director happened to see her in a bit part on Broadway, her career took off. That had been fifteen years before. Since then, she had starred in two dozen movies, had been linked romantically to multiple leading men, and had been married and divorced twice—once to a screenwriter (he drank) and once to a war hero (he drank, too).

Ordinarily, a celebrity's visit to the Cherry Street Home was exploited by both parties for its publicity value. After all, what
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editor could resist the combination of cute orphans and glamor? But this visit was being kept quiet, at least for the time being. Both Miss Grahame and Mrs. George had their reasons. It might be that, if everything went well, there would be some future opportunity for mutually beneficial flashbulbs and mentions in the gossip column.

Helen George was beautiful but no longer young. At her dressing table early Monday morning, she concealed the effects of her insomnia with a deft application of face powder, fixed her silver hair into a French twist, aimed an aerosol can of hairspray, closed her eyes, and depressed the button.

Napping on the pink satin bedspread, her tabby cat heard the
sssss
, awoke, and swiped his paw across his nose, annoyed by the nasty smell.

Mrs. George caught sight of the cat's reflection, which reminded her of another responsibility. She needed to telephone the exterminator.

“What kind of cat doesn't kill mice?” she said to the tabby. “I brought you indoors because you're pretty, but that doesn't let you off the hook. You're lazy, is what you are.”

The cat yawned, which seemed to confirm her assessment.

Mrs. George sighed. She didn't like calling the exterminator. When he came to do his dirty work, the staff and the children would have to leave the premises, and where were they to go? If mice had come to light the year before, the children
could have gone to a municipal swimming pool, but not this summer, not when the rumor of polio was everywhere. Mrs. George couldn't afford to have a child get sick. That kind of publicity would be ruinous.

The headmistress's private apartment was on the third floor of the Cherry Street Home. Now, dressed in a pale-blue linen suit, Mrs. George locked her door, descended two flights of stairs, and turned left into the kitchen. There Mrs. Spinelli was preparing eggs, toast, and milk for the children.

Two of the intermediate girls, Barbara and Ginny, were helping and curtsied when they saw Mrs. George. “Morning, ma'am.”

“Good morning, girls. Mrs. Spinelli?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Unsmiling, Mrs. Spinelli presented Mrs. George with her coffee in a china cup on a saucer.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. George.

“Mmph,” said Mrs. Spinelli.

Mrs. George left the kitchen through the dining room, crossed the foyer, and entered her office, a large room on the same corridor as the girls' dormitories. On her desk, she found—as always—the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. Vaguely aware of the sounds coming from down the corridor, sounds made by girls arising, washing their faces, and dressing, Mrs. George sat down, arranged the newspaper in front of her, sipped her coffee, and read.

A worrisome front-page story about city politics caught her eye. A reformist candidate was trying to unseat the longtime Philadelphia sheriff, a powerful man who had done favors for
Mrs. George and her good friend Judge Jonathan Mewhinney. This push from the reformers might in turn cause her to hasten completion of her latest plan. If she expected to succeed, she would need perfect execution and a bit of luck.

Mrs. George drank the last of the now-tepid coffee, folded the newspaper . . . and then did something strange: looked around to be sure no one was watching. No one was. No one could have been, given the situation of her office in the west wing of the building. But what she was about to do required so much secrecy that she was superstitious in her caution.

Satisfied she was alone, Mrs. George removed two fifty-dollar bills from an inside pocket of her jacket and put each in a business envelope. Then she picked up the ivory-inlaid box on her desk, pulled open a hidden compartment, removed a tiny silver key, and used it to open a file drawer. From that drawer she took out an accounts ledger. It was not the one she shared with the Cherry Street Home's board of directors, but a second kept for her own use.

In the ledger, she noted the two fifty-dollar expenses but left blank the spaces for the dates they were incurred. Then she returned the book to the drawer, locked it, and put the key away. The envelopes she placed in her pocketbook in case she needed them on short notice.

It was eight-thirty, time to make her daily announcements at the children's breakfast table. The newspapers could be kept in the dark about the morning's visitor, but the children and the staff would have to be told.

All the children were delighted by Mrs. George's announcement, none more so than thirteen-year-old Melissa: “Joanna Grahame's coming here?
Good golly!
”

What would the movie star be wearing? Was she as beautiful in real life as she was on-screen? Would she bring along a handsome beau?

Melissa, who was tall, skinny, blond, and blue-eyed, rolled her eyes at that last question. “Don't be silly, Ginny. The whole world knows Joanna Grahame hasn't got a beau. She is done with romance. Her heart has been through the wringer once too often.”

Betty, an intermediate like Ginny, tsked and shook her head. “You talk like one of those movie magazines.”

“Of course she does, that's all she reads,” said Ginny.

“That and comic books,” said Bert.

“Don't make fun,” said Caro.

“Yeah, Bert, 'cause you don't read at all,” said Melissa.

Next to Caro at the table was four-year-old Annabelle. She had never seen a motion picture or till now heard the word
glamour
, but still she felt the excitement.

“Is Joanna Grahame a princess?” she whispered to Caro.

“Sort of,” Caro said. “Only her mother isn't a queen.”

“My mother isn't a queen,” said Annabelle thoughtfully. “So can I be a princess?”

Across the table, Ricky heard her and snorted. “You haven't got a mother, or a father, either.” At fifteen, Ricky had been at Cherry Street longer than any of the other children present. On his sixteenth birthday, he'd be released for good to make his way in the world.

“Have, too, got a mother,” said Annabelle stoutly. “She's dead. But I've still got her. There's a picture in a frame.”

This flummoxed Ricky, and Caro jumped in. “You can playact you're a princess,” she told Annabelle. “That's what movie stars do. They pretend to be other people and get paid lots of money.”

Jimmy Levine's seat was next to Ricky's. “It's a good racket, all right,” he said. “Excuse me, ma'am. Mrs. George?”

“What is it, Jimmy?” Mrs. George had let the children chatter longer than usual.

“I presume our chores are canceled? Under the circumstances, I mean?”

“On the contrary,” said Mrs. George. “Miss Grahame is arriving in her automobile at eleven. We'll want our home looking its best, and you have plenty of time to do chores. Annabelle—there's jam on your nose.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Annabelle touched her tongue to the spot without effect.

“Carolyn?” said Mrs. George.

“Yes, ma'am.” Caro took the tip of her napkin and wiped Annabelle's nose.

“Can I ask a question, ma'am?” said Louisa, who was six. “Will the movie star make a movie about us?”

“She doesn't make the movies, she just acts in them,” said Angela, another of the older girls.

“That's correct,” said Mrs. George. “But you never know, Louisa. A movie about a nice home like ours, a home with happy children, would be refreshing.”

Mrs. George never called the Cherry Street Home an orphanage. To her, the word denoted sickly children with hollow eyes who were beaten and fed gruel. Cherry Street was nothing like that. Rather, it had been established by Mr. and Mrs. C. Philips-Bodbetter in 1936 to model the most progressive methods for rearing abandoned children of all races, creeds, and backgrounds.

A kind couple who had made their fortune manufacturing baby powder, the Philips-Bodbetters were much too busy to run the home themselves. For advice on management, they turned to a lawyer friend, who suggested an attractive widow to serve as headmistress. At the interview, the widow showed herself to be so self-possessed, so well-spoken, and so obviously capable that they hired her after only the most cursory check into her background.

Similarly impressed, the newly constituted board of directors left it to Mrs. George—for she was the widow—to hire the staff.

The girls' matron, Polly Merkel, was an old acquaintance of Mrs. George's who had been on the job from the beginning. Over the years, half a dozen boys' supervisors had come and gone. The current one, Donald Cleary, had been employed since shortly after his army discharge.

Pleasant though it was, the Cherry Street Home was still an orphanage. The food was sufficient and nourishing but not delicious—canned vegetables; canned fruit; meat on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays; margarine in place of butter; and lots of potatoes, bread, noodles, and rice.

The children wore donated shoes and clothes, mostly secondhand, and slept four or six to a room. Each child had a single cupboard in which to store possessions, the most prized of which—for those lucky enough to have them—were photographs, tangible signs that once they had been like other children, once they had had a family.

In the summer of 1949, there were twenty boys and eighteen girls in residence, with Ricky the oldest and Annabelle the youngest. Besides the dormitories, there was a baby nursery at the west end of the second-floor corridor, but it was rarely occupied. The Cherry Street Home was not staffed for full-time care of children under age three, and babies stayed only briefly en route to more permanent situations.

Now, morning announcements over, the younger boys got up to clear the dishes. After that, the children dispersed—first to visit the washrooms, then to begin their chores.

By this time both the excitement and the noise level
had subsided. If anything, the children were more thoughtful than usual, all wondering the same thing: What if Joanna Grahame was visiting for a particular reason that Mrs. George didn't mention? What if she wanted to adopt one of them for her own?