The Velvet Room (16 page)

During most of the two weeks’ vacation, Gwen was busy with trips to Los Angeles and holiday parties; but Robin found plenty to do. She spent most of several days at Bridget’s cottage. She was making some new dish towels for Mama, and Bridget was teaching her how to embroider them. In between cross-stitching and making French knots, she played with Bridget’s animal family, and of course she made several visits to the Velvet Room. Except for one thing, it was a very satisfactory vacation. And that one thing seemed to cancel out everything else.

Dad was worse. It was unmistakable. He looked paler and thinner than ever, and at times he seemed almost too tired to talk. Mama didn’t notice, or at least she didn’t seem to. She certainly didn’t mention it, and all her plans were just as cheerful and hopeful as ever. But it was plain enough to Robin. She remembered how Dad had been just before he got so sick the last time. And there was something else she remembered, over and over and over. No matter how hard she tried to think about it, it kept coming back to her — the words she had overheard the doctor say to Mama in the hall of the county hospital: “Your husband must not have pneumonia again, Mrs. Williams. He won’t make it through another time.” That was just exactly what the doctor had said.

But there was nothing Robin could do, nothing at all. There was nothing anyone could do. So most of the time she just tried hard not to think about it. When school began again and she had to get ready for semester examinations, there wasn’t much time for either fun or worry, and she was almost glad.

There wasn’t even time for the Velvet Room. She did regret this. And then early one Saturday morning, late in January, she was on her way home from Bridget’s when she heard the thud of hoofs and Gwen’s voice calling her name.

She answered and ran toward the sound. Gwen, on Mirlo, appeared around an orange tree. “Hi,” Gwen said, “I was looking for you at your house, and your mother said you were at Bridget’s. Here, give me your hand.”

Robin put her foot in the stirrup, Gwen tugged, and in a moment they were galloping off through the orchard. “Where are we going?” Robin asked.

“To Palmeras House,” Gwen said. “Mrs. Criley and Carmela are going to clean it today. I thought you’d like to see it. You’re always talking about it and everything. I asked Dad, and he said it would be all right if we went in and looked around while they’re cleaning.”

Robin was horrified. Would she be able to pretend well enough? How could she “ooh” and “ahh” over everything as if she hadn’t seen it before? And besides, she didn’t want to see Mrs. Criley and Carmela in her Velvet Room. She didn’t even want to see Gwen there, really. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could share with anyone.

“My mother didn’t say I could go, did she?” Robin asked desperately. “She told me I had to hurry right home today to help her with the washing.”

“She said it was all right,” Gwen said. Robin had forgotten that Gwen was able to talk Mama into anything. There just didn’t seem to be any way out of it. There was nothing to do but pretend as best she could, and hope that Gwen didn’t notice anything.

When they reached Palmeras House, a truck was turning into the weed-grown drive. It stopped just opposite the entryway, and Mrs. Criley and Carmela got out. Then a terrible thing happened: Fred Criley got out of the driver’s seat. He went around to the back of the truck and unloaded a lot of brooms and mops and a vacuum cleaner. Then he unlocked the big double front doors, and the three of them went in, with a clatter of mops and pails. Robin started after them in dismay. As if things weren’t bad enough, to see Fred Criley in the Velvet Room would be just too awful.

Gwen had jumped down off Mirlo and was tying him to a railing. “Come on,” she said. “What’s the matter with you? You look funny.”

“Nothing,” Robin said, getting down off the horse. “It’s just that old Fred Criley. I don’t like him.”

Gwen nodded. “Me neither. He makes me sick.” She shrugged. “Come on. He won’t bother us. Let’s go in.”

Pretending wasn’t as hard as Robin had thought it would be. Right at first, when they stepped into the wide entry hall with its upward sweeping staircase, Robin’s, “Oh, isn’t it beautiful!” sounded stiff with pretense; but then she started imagining that she really hadn’t seen any of it before, and after that it was almost fun — like being an actress. She was sure Gwen didn’t suspect a thing.

They went through the downstairs and the Spanish wing first. When they were in the room with the built-in bookcases, Gwen didn’t say anything about the secret passage, so either she didn’t know about it or she wasn’t supposed to tell.

When they finally reached the Velvet Room, there was no one there but Carmela. She was down on her knees cleaning the woodwork, and when the girls walked in, she jumped as if she’d been stuck with a pin. “Oh!” she gasped. “
Madre mía!
You frighten me.”

Gwen smiled at Robin. “Carmela doesn’t like it here very much,” she whispered. “She’s always worrying about
La Fantasma”

As Carmela went back to her polishing, Robin thought gratefully that it was a good thing she had been too busy to visit the Velvet Room lately. Carmela would really be nervous if the room had been freshly dusted when she arrived that morning. As Gwen showed Robin all around the room, she concentrated on keeping up her pretense of surprise. The beautiful old books, the huge leather inlaid desk, even the velvet-draped alcove, all the things with which she was so intimately familiar had to be commented on and admired. Even though Robin was very busy keeping her mind on saying just the right thing, something kept bothering her. Something seemed to be missing. She actually looked around several times to see what it might be before she realized that what she was missing wasn’t anything she could see: it was a feeling. The room, with Gwen beside her and Carmela bustling around in the background, was only a beautiful room. The feeling was gone. The thing she’d been missing was the wonderful private promise of the Velvet Room.

It was a frightening thing to discover. If she went away as soon as possible, and then didn’t come back for a few days, would all be the same again? She tried to steer Gwen toward the door, but there were still a few more things to see. They were still standing in front of the whatnot case when the door opened and Fred Criley walked in. He swaggered over and stood looking over their shoulders.

“What’s all that stuff?” he demanded.

Gwen twisted her mouth in distaste. “Pictures and things,” she said shortly.

“Them real jewels?” Fred asked, pointing to the small stones in the frames of the miniatures.

Gwen shrugged. “I guess so,” she said. “Would you like to go now, Robin? We’ve seen just about everything.”

“All right,” Robin said, trying not to let her enormous relief show in her voice. “We might as well.”

For weeks and weeks Robin had put herself to sleep at night by thinking about the Velvet Room, but that night she couldn’t. The peace and comfort were gone. When she tried to picture it, Fred Criley’s cocky face kept drifting into the scene. Finally she just gave up and went to sleep feeling lost and lonely.

The next day she knew she couldn’t wait long to go back. She had to go that day. And finally she found a chance to slip away. She was almost afraid to go. On her way there —in the orchard, through the tunnel, even in Palmeras House itself — she felt tense and worried. What if it wasn’t the same? What if the magic was still missing? But the moment she opened the door and stepped inside the Velvet Room, she knew that everything was all right.

It looked the same of course, only cleaner; but that wasn’t what was important. The important part was that it felt the same, the same as ever. She closed the door behind her, ran into the middle of the room, and spun round and round until she landed in a heap on the floor, dizzy and giggling. Whatever else happened, no matter what else went wrong, there would always be the Velvet Room.

But the very next day the letter came that changed everything. Robin went to the mailbox herself. She noticed that there was a letter from Uncle Joe, but she didn’t feel particularly curious about it, even though it wasn’t like Uncle Joe to write a letter.

Uncle Joe Spaulding was really Dad’s uncle, and though he was Dad’s only relative, he had always seemed like a stranger to Robin. Even when the Williamses had seen him fairly often, before they left Fresno, he’d seemed like a stranger. Uncle Joe was just that kind of man.

Robin remembered that when they had visited him at his store, he would give each of the children one half of an apple. He never gave them a whole apple, and not even a piece of candy from the counter near the cash register. Uncle Joe ran a shabby little grocery store and souvenir shop a few miles outside Fresno, on the highway that led to the mountain resorts. Out behind the store was a row of motor cabins that hadn’t been used for years and years. Uncle Joe had closed them up when his wife died because he was too stingy to hire anyone to do the cleaning and make the beds. Spaulding’s Grocery and Souvenirs didn’t have any close neighbors, and Uncle Joe didn’t have any friends. Robin thought he liked it that way. She had heard him say once that the reason he liked the tourist trade was that you seldom had to meet the same customer twice.

Robin didn’t hear about what was in the letter from Uncle Joe until that night right after dinner. Mama was never very good at playacting, and there was something unnatural about her voice when she said, “Robin, I’m going out to get some wood now. You come along and help.” Robin was puzzled. The woodbox was almost full, and besides, the boys usually got the wood.

Mama didn’t look at Robin on the way to the woodpile, but when she started loading the wood on Robin’s outstretched arms she suddenly said, “Robin, we’re going to have to move.”

Robin almost dropped the stack of logs. “Move!” she cried. “When? Where?”

“
I haven’t time to tell you about it now. Dad’s going to tell all of you soon, but I wanted to talk to you first. Dad’s worried about moving for a lot of reasons, but because of
you
most of all.” Mama had forgotten about loading wood, and Robin stood there with her heart feeling just as her arms did under the heavy pile of logs. “It’ll be harder for you to leave than the rest of us — because of Bridget and Gwen and doing so well in school and all. But you’re just going to have to pretend that you don’t care much. This new job won’t be nearly so hard for your dad, and he’s just
got
to take it!”

Robin was so surprised at the fierceness in Mamas voice that for a moment she forgot the dreadfulness of what she had just heard. So Mama
had
known and worried about Dad all the time she had seemed so unnoticing. With a feeling of shock, Robin wondered what else Mama had been hiding beneath her cheerful chatter.

When they came back into the cabin, Robin tried to look natural, but Dad glanced at them sharply, as if he suspected something. He went back to his newspaper, however, and nothing more was said until Rudy and Theda had finished their homework. Robin had pretended to do hers, but her mind was in such a turmoil that she accomplished very little. Finally Dad put down his paper and said, “Well now, if you’ll all put your books dowrn, there’s something I want to talk over with you. You too, Cary. I think you’re old enough to vote in this election.”

Dad explained how it was. There had been a letter from Uncle Joe. It seemed his doctor had advised him to sell his store and spend most of his time resting. But Uncle Joe didn’t want to do that, so he had written to Dad. If Dad would come and run the store, Uncle Joe would pay him sixty dollars a month, and they could have one of the motor cabins to live in. Only one cabin though, because with Mama and the girls there to do the cleaning, he’d be opening up the rest for tourists again. Dad said that, as far as he was concerned, there were some pretty good reasons for accepting Uncle Joe’s offer and some other pretty good reasons for not accepting it. There wasn’t much difference in the pay, and a weather-beaten motor cabin wouldn’t be an improvement over the Village houses, except for a little more indoor plumbing. Accepting would mean, of course, a change of schools for everybody in the middle of the year, just when they’d all been counting on staying a whole term in the same school. They’d all made friends they would hate losing, and the green Santa Luisa Valley was certainly prettier than the flat dry country around Uncle Joe’s. However, the job at Uncle Joe’s would be permanent. And there was one other advantage: working with a pitchfork and shovel and hay hook all day seemed to be getting a little harder all the time, and the job at the grocery wouldn’t require lifting anything much heavier than a few cans of tomatoes.

Dad stopped talking and looked around at the silent, stricken faces of the family. “I’ve decided to leave it up to you,” he said. “Tomorrow morning we’ll take a vote. That gives you a night to sleep on it. And that’s just what I’m getting ready to do.”

After Dad left the room, everybody started talking at once — all except Robin, who, in the confusion, drifted out the door and into the orange grove. It was dark outside, with only a thin rind of moon in the black sky. Robin usually wasn’t too brave about darkness, but the need to get away was very strong.

A way into the orchard she stopped and just stood staring in the direction of Palmeras House. She wasn’t really thinking at all.

First, there was Uncle Joe’s. She could see it plainly: the shabby store building crouched beside a skinny sycamore tree, whose ravel of shadow offered the only shade in miles and miles of flat dry land. She could see details she hadn’t even known she remembered: the saggy screen door with the wide metal doorpull that said Coca-Cola in bright enameled letters, making the paintless door look even dingier in comparison; the glass tanks on the gas pumps in front of the store that filled themselves with a gurgling rush of amber liquid when a crank was turned; the deserted stuccoed cabins out in back, like a row of oversized ovens under the hot valley sun, forever broiling the same batch of dust and spiders and rusty bedsprings.