Leave Well Enough Alone Read online

  Leave Well Enough Alone

  Rosemary Wells

  For Ginny

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  A Biography of Rosemary Wells

  Chapter One

  FOR FEAR OF APPEARING terribly stupid, Dorothy had not asked Mrs. Hoade any questions about the directions. She hoped they were right. Mrs. Hoade had written them on the back of a supermarket register tape.

  Once you get on the spur line in Philadelphia, remember it’s the main Philadelphia station, not the Thirtieth Street one, ask the man for the train to Llewellyn. If you get an express, you’ll know because it won’t stop at Wayne or any of those other places, but it will stop at Llewellyn. If you catch the local, get off at the Monastery stop, which is one station farther down the line from Llewellyn but closer for us to pick you up. If you get a local-express, get off at Monastery if it stops there—I can’t remember, you’ll have to ask the man. And if it doesn’t, get off at Llewellyn and call us from the station. I can’t tell you which one you’re likely to get since they change the schedules every month, it seems, and your train from New York might be late anyway, since they usually are depending on the weather.

  If it had been Kate on the phone instead of me, Dorothy told herself, she would have said, “Do you mind going over it once more please, Mrs. Hoade?” As it was, Mrs. Hoade had said, “Were the directions I sent you clear enough, dear?” And Dorothy had answered, “Yes, Mrs. Hoade.” And Mrs. Hoade had said, “Well, you have a better head than I do, dear. See you at the Monastery Station.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hoade.”

  “Or the Llewellyn station, as the case may be.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hoade.”

  Dorothy read the instructions again as the Pennsylvania Railroad lumbered unambitiously over the Delaware River bridge. This was her first real summer job. She was to make four hundred dollars for the eight weeks of babysitting. She checked her hair in the window’s reflection. The carefully set pageboy she’d combed out that morning had fallen in the heavy July heat. She piled her hair on top of her head for a moment. This emphasized her cheekbones and gave her the look, she liked to think, of Julie Andrews in the new hit musical My Fair Lady, or perhaps of one of those long-suffering nineteenth-century heroines who threw themselves into the river for love. Making sure no one was observing her, she smiled broadly at her reflection. Then she let down her hair. She was not about to throw herself into the Delaware River. Besides, the fallen pageboy gave her a more dutiful, hardworking look. Her nails were clipped and clean, her penny loafers were, as yet, un-scuffed. Her Junior Life Saver badge was sewn to her tank suit, safely placed on top of everything else in her suitcase, so that she could check that it was still there if she wanted.

  Mrs. Hoade had shown no familiarity with junior life saving. “Whose life did you save, dear?” she had asked Dorothy with interest, looking at the badge, which was then in Dorothy’s wallet.

  “Nobody’s...I mean my best friend Kate’s, in practice, but she wasn’t really drowning....

  “And they gave you the badge anyway?”

  “Well, if someone was drowning, I think I could rescue them. I mean I hope I could,” said Dorothy hopelessly. “I can manage thirty laps in an Olympic-size...

  “I’m sure you would never let Jenny or Lisa drown,” said Mrs. Hoade gravely.

  Dorothy cast her mind back to that day. The two months that had passed had not quelled her amazement at her good fortune. Sister Margaret McKay had caught her gazing abstractedly at the fig leaf on a statue of Adonis in the foyer of the Frick museum. Sister’s glance had been belligerent. Dorothy had dropped her eyes immediately. In dropping them she had noticed something metallic winking at her from behind the pedestal of the statue. She’d waited until Sister busied herself again, purchasing tickets for those students who’d chosen to attend a chamber-music concert instead of sketching one of the paintings. Then she went over and picked the thing up. It was a woman’s wallet. It was fat and made of the softest leather she had ever felt. The clasp was large, in the shape of an initial. She wondered if it was solid gold. Inside were five twenty-dollar bills.

  “Where’d you get that?” Mary Cudahy, who had been watching Dorothy, asked.

  “It was on the floor.”

  “Better give it to Sister.”

  “Sister’s busy.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” Mary asked suspiciously, eyeing the money. “Give it to me.”

  “No. I’m going out to drop it in a mailbox!”

  “A mailbox?”

  “That’s what the law says you’re supposed to do with found wallets,” Dorothy said. “We had a movie on that. The postman returns it. It’s the law.”

  “It is not the law,” said Mary, her pale round face reddening righteously under her splotchy freckles. “You’re only supposed to drop wallets in mailboxes if you’re being pursued by a pickpocket and can’t get away.” Mary was taller by a head, and surer that she was going to give her life to God than anyone in the class. She looked down her little turned-up nose at everybody. “Give it to me and I’ll give it to the guard,” she said, reaching for the wallet.

  “The guard!” said Dorothy desperately. “You can’t give it to the guard. Look at his hands! They’re all hairy. I’ll bet he has hair all over his body. I wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw him! I’m going out and put it in a mailbox.”

  “Pardon me!” interrupted a very sleek-looking gentleman in a creamy suit. “My name is Doctor Zuckerman. I happened to be passing by. Can I do anything to help?”

  “We found a wallet,” Mary began.

  “I found it,” said Dorothy.

  “This girl found it,” amended Mary, her attention on the gentleman. Dorothy took discreet leave of them.

  “Dorothy, where are you going?” little Sister Angelica asked, trying to count out quarters from a black silk change purse.

  “Out to the mailbox. I won’t be a second.”

  “The concert starts in two and a half minutes!”

  “I’m going to sketch instead,” said Dorothy.

  “Don’t get lost!” said Sister Angelica, half hidden by this time in a surging line of students. “Come right back. Don’t linger. Remember we’re all meeting here at three!” Sister’s voice squeaked.

  Dorothy found herself out on the street in the early May sunshine. The driver’s license and the many charge-account cards listed the wallet’s owner, M. Hoade, as living at 143 East Seventy-First Street. Dorothy examined the five crisp twenty-dollar bills. She turned left and walked toward Madison Avenue to find a mailbox. She felt wonderful. The day was as warm and soft as a day could be. Her egg-salad sandwich had withstood the trip from Newburgh, New York, that morning, intact. She had purchased a lovely pin at the United Nations Gift Shop for only three dollars and still had two dollars left. More than anything else, Dorothy felt a surge of pleasure at doing something as plainly honorable as this. On the corner of East Seventy-First and Madison, she found a mailbox. She paused just before she placed the wallet in its iron maw. What if the mailman was not as honest as she? If she walked just a little way farther up the block, she could be sure. M. Hoade would get all the money back. Carefully she fanned out the bills so that the corners just peeked out, in case M. Hoade wanted to give her a spontaneous reward. She bit her lip. That was no way. Doing right was its own reward.

  One forty-three was a town house, with a sculpted granite shield over the door. The tiny garden out front was immacul
ately kept. The brass doorknob and letter slot were polished to such perfection, Dorothy hated to touch the metal. There were two apartments. She rang the bell under the name J. Hoade. The door buzzed and she let herself in.

  “Who is it?” called a voice from high up the stairway.

  “I found your wallet,” Dorothy called back, unable to think of anything else to say.

  “Take the elevator,” the voice instructed. Then it said, “Oh, dear! I didn’t know I’d lost it!”

  Dorothy entered the elevator. It was constructed of open brass grillwork and had been made in France in 1910, the little plaque said. She pushed the button and it rose silently, like a birdcage being lifted from a table. What am I doing here? she asked herself suddenly, fearing strangers, remembering her mother’s warnings about not talking to anyone in New York City. I don’t think you’ll be murdered here, Dorothy, she reassured herself as the elevator passed the second floor, which was as richly hung with paintings as the Frick itself. I don’t think anyone will steal my two dollars, either. Not in a place like this. Not in broad daylight. Not in 1956.

  “How sweet of you!” an apologetic voice said as Dorothy alighted on the third floor. Dorothy found herself face to face with a pleasant-looking woman with widely spaced blue eyes and unkempt brown hair. Her chunky stature was not enhanced by an enormous pregnant stomach.

  “I found it in the Frick museum,” Dorothy said, handing over the wallet, “behind a statue.”

  “I must have lost it sitting on a bench this morning,” the woman said. “I didn’t even notice it was gone. I have so much stuff in my purse, it’s always heavy, with or without a wallet.” She sighed. “I go to the Frick for rest,” she said. “The fountains are so restful. Come in a minute, dear. By the way, I’m Maria Hoade.”

  Dorothy hesitated. Should I take a chance on something awful happening to me in a stranger’s apartment, she asked herself, just because I hope she’s going to give me twenty dollars, or even five dollars? She knew dreadful things happened to trusting young girls. Every day of the week innocent young ladies were whisked away and put into the White Slave Market. Dorothy heard an inner voice whisper, Get out, Dorothy, get out while you can.

  “Don’t worry, please,” said Mrs. Hoade, so genuinely that Dorothy paid the inner voice no heed. It would be an insult not to accept just a moment’s hospitality. “I’m not going to have the baby now, if you’re worried,” said Mrs. Hoade with a chuckle.

  Once inside, Mrs. Hoade sat down heavily on a seven-foot-long tapestry-covered settee. “I’ll get you a Coke,” she said, “in a minute. I just want to put my feet up. I thought when you rang the bell you were the maid I’d sent for this morning. I tell you what. The kitchen’s over behind there. Help yourself to a Coke by all means. I’m so tired. All I need now is varicose veins.”

  Dorothy went into the kitchen. “Can I bring you something?” she asked.

  “No, dear,” said Mrs. Hoade. “Nothing at all.... Well, actually you could get me a little glass of sherry. The bottle’s in the cabinet over the sink. The glasses are to the right.”

  Dorothy examined the Coke bottle carefully. Of course it was silly to think someone might have tampered with it, not knowing that she was coming. Still, accepting food or drink from strangers was dangerous. The bottle looked virginal. She came back with the two drinks.

  “It’s so awful. Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Hoade said. “These people are so undependable. They say they’re coming and they never come. I’m just here for the day from Llewellyn. Pennsylvania, that is. I’ve been down there for most of six months. Before that we’ve spent nine years in Buenos Aires, can you imagine? John didn’t want me to be pregnant in South America. John’s my husband, John L. Hoade. So I came back early. We got the girls, Jenny and Lisa, into Miss Parker’s School in the city last September. They’re boarders and I didn’t want to take them out and put them in that awful school in Llewellyn, but I didn’t want to be up here all alone pregnant either so I stayed down there. I mean, it would have been the same for them anyway if I’d stayed in Buenos Aires. I’ve just come up to do the packing. We’re going to Llewellyn for the summer and I hired someone to come and help me do the heavy stuff and now they’re three hours late and I know they’re not coming at all.”

  Dorothy nodded, wide-eyed, at Mrs. Hoade’s rambling account and stared at the splendid furniture, paintings, and rugs in the apartment. She tried to drink her Coke as noiselessly as she could. She sat with her back erect and kept her feet together. Unfortunately, Mrs. Hoade seemed to have forgotten about the wallet. She hadn’t even counted the money.

  “Dear,” said Mrs. Hoade, her eyes fastened on the gold cross that hung against the front of Dorothy’s navy-blue uniform jumper. “You would be an absolute saint if you’d get up on a chair and take down the two valises in the bedroom closet. I’m afraid to do it. I’m eight and a half months.”

  At two o’clock, after an hour and a half had passed, Dorothy was exhausted. She’d helped herself to another Coke. She had retrieved the suitcases, plus three other large ones from under the bed. She’d sorted two huge piles of clothes and hung twenty-two little-girls’ dresses in the cedar closet. She’d made two beds and packed three huge cartons full of toys and books. Mrs. Hoade, to her dismay, had not once mentioned the wallet or gone over to where it lay on the coffee table. Instead she’d twittered on about taking care of the girls’ sick great-grandmother in Llewellyn, the difficulties in getting reliable household help, and the awfulness of pregnancy. Dorothy had the distinct impression that Mr. Hoade was going to leave Mrs. Hoade if the baby was not a boy.

  “Look at that!” Mrs. Hoade said, coming to a dead stop in the midst of sorting great numbers of mismatched socks into senselessly arranged groupings and then dropping them all in a forlorn heap in the middle of the bed.

  “What?” asked Dorothy.

  “It kicked. It doesn’t kick very much, I’m afraid. Put your hand right there!” With excruciating loathing, Dorothy touched Mrs. Hoade’s stomach lightly. She felt a small movement under the maternity smock and withdrew her hand instantly. “See!” said Mrs. Hoade. “I think that was an elbow. It only kicks once in a great while. I’m worried. Both girls kicked horribly. I’m sure something’s wrong but the doctors never tell you anything. I go to Marnie Eisenhower’s gynecologist, but I’m sure he looks after Marnie better than he does me.”

  “Have you ever seen her in the waiting room?” Dorothy asked, hoping to steer Mrs. Hoade away from the topic of babies.

  “Mrs. Eisenhower doesn’t wait in waiting rooms,” Mrs. Hoade said sadly. “I’m sure they fly the doctor right down to the White House and do the whole thing in the Lincoln Bedroom.”

  Dorothy cleared her throat. “I’ll have to be going,” she said. “I have to get back to my class trip before they find out I’m gone.” She thought regretfully about the wallet. Try as she might, she had not been able to introduce that topic back into conversation. I know it’s retribution, she thought, for being greedy and wanting a reward instead of letting God reward me with His love and approval.

  “Dear,” said Mrs. Hoade suddenly, “how would you like a job?”

  “A job! But I live in Newburgh, New York.”

  “I mean for the summer.”

  “The summer?”

  “I had a girl lined up months ago. A mother’s helper. You know, from the Anne Carpenter people? A college girl. She was lovely. A week ago I got a letter from her saying she was going to Europe instead. The little ... In any case, I’m stuck, as you can see. The agency can’t promise me anyone at this late date and I hate to take a chance on another debutante anyway. Can you swim?”

  The figure of four hundred dollars now nickered briefly in Dorothy’s imagination. She thought, perhaps, come next Labor Day she would stand in the middle of her room and throw all four hundred dollar bills into the air and shout Wahoo! Of course it all had to go into the bank. She might have been able to keep a hundred of it if it hadn’t been for Stanley Ingl
ewasser and her sister, Maureen.

  “May you burn in hell, Stanley!” Dorothy allowed herself this wish for the fiftieth time since “it” had happened. “It” had happened smack in the middle of Reverend Mother’s opening prayer at the Senior Awards Assembly. Dorothy’s older brother, Terrance, had been about to receive the Boys’ Good Citizenship Medal. It would be announced, also, that he had won an athletic scholarship to Holy Cross. A beaming, fidgeting Terrance sat upon the stage with the other award winners, flanked by the Boys’ Glee Club and the Girls’ Choir, behind formidable, six-foot-three Mother Superior, whose vast white flowing habit and hawklike eyes gave the impression of a terrifying, magic bird.

  Stanley had passed her the note at the beginning of the assembly. Dorothy hadn’t looked at it until she was sure Reverend Mother’s eyes were tightly closed in prayer, but when the opening prayer was over, Reverend Mother had inclined her head slightly, and like a bullfrog snapping up a fly on a remote leaf, she’d said, “Dorothy Coughlin!” in a tone that could have shattered marble. “You will read to the assembly whatever that note contains since it takes such precedence over our prayers.”

  Dorothy could remember her Latin book sliding off her lap, hitting the floor with a slap that made several people giggle in nervous appreciation. She could remember wishing she could go into a six-hour faint so that everyone would think she was near death, but she only managed to shake. Her hands, particularly. Looking at the quivering paper, she’d nearly whispered, “Meet...meet me after school at the bus stop.” There were snickers.

  “No one can hear you,” Reverend Mother responded. “Please come up and read it from the podium, Dorothy.”

  Hundreds of faces watched Dorothy. Open-mouthed and unsmiling they rose before her and then receded like an ocean wave. She wondered if they’d all heard her say “Excuse me, excuse me,” at least a dozen times as she’d made her way from her seat to the stage. She wondered how many heard her say “I’ll meet you after school at the bus stop,” in almost as soft a voice as she’d used before. The titters were general.