Callie
“Look at those leaves, Callie. I’m going to have to get some strong men in here to rake them, oh yes. That’s the best thing about deep autumn, if you ask me. It gives an old woman a chance to have a sneaky peek at some ripe young men. Oh, don’t look at me like that. What’s the problem with having a sneaky peek at some young men, preferably with big arms and troubled faces? My husband had small arms and a bland face, so you see the issue. But he left me a great deal of money, so I suppose a lady cannot complain.”
Gertrude sits by the window of what I think is called the drawing-room, looking out at her large tree-lined garden, brown leaves cascading down onto the grass. Gertrude is a seventy-eight year old widower with a full head of silver hair which flows down to her shoulders, a kind wrinkled face and angry stark blue eyes. Her tongue is quick, and her temper can be quick, too. I was told the moment I walked through the door to apply for the position that she would not hesitate to fire me. “I’ve already been through ten housekeepers in so many months,” she’d said. “So you better be on your toes.”
I am on my toes; since I started here three weeks ago, having moved from Missouri to Lawrence by way of bus and rodent-skills which include stealing and lying, I have been on my toes.
Gertrude turns to me as I place her lunch—or luncheon, as she calls it—on the table. “Oh, what is this?” she says, holding a knife to the window. I study it, and it looks clean. Gertrude holds it to the autumn light for a long time, and then tucks into her meal. “I like to get preemptively angry sometimes, you understand,” she explains, dabbing her mouth with an embroidered napkin. “It saves me the trouble of deciding whether or not I need to be angry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
When Gertrude eats her lunch, she likes me to stand near the door, but not to leave unless she gives me the signal. She’s the sort of woman who likes to talk just to hear the sound of her own voice, but I don’t mind that. For somebody like me, who prefers silence and nods to sharing parts of myself, an overtalkative boss works just fine.
I look past her out into the garden, Lawrence in the background, a short drive to the inner city. “A perfect position,” Gertrude often says. “Close enough to entertain but far enough for leisure.” I look at the leaves, piled up high, and I think about how when I was sitting at Damien’s window, the leaves were just starting to turn. I try not to think of him, but often my mind returns to him, especially at night when I’m alone and images of his thorn-tattooed`, muscled back are clear in my mind, the sensation of him inside of me between my legs, his phantom breath on my neck. His hands, roaming . . .
“You are in the clouds, Callie,” Gertrude says. “You are either thinking of a man or thinking of multiple men. Now, are you love-struck or are you a hussy?”
“Neither, ma’am,” I say, making sure to keep my voice neutral.
“Please repeat back to me what I just said.”
The first time I daydreamed whilst Gertrude was talking, I failed this test. Since then, I’ve made sure to listen even whilst daydreaming, listen without hearing for the sole purpose of repeating her: “You said: ‘In this life even an older woman needs a man to gawk at. Yes, gawk, and when I say gawk—’”
“You worry me, child, with that impression. Do I really sound so condescending?”
“No, ma’am.”
Gertrude waves at her plate of food, empty now. “I am done.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I collect the tray and make for the door.
“I have a good feeling about you, Callie,” Gertrude says.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Gertrude Cecilia Abbot née Norwood’s house is massive. As I walk with the tray from the drawing room to the kitchen, I walk down long, wide, high-ceilinged hallways, the sort of hallways where each sound is reproduced in the shadowy spaces above my head as an echo. I walk past old pictures and even past a suit of armor owned by Gertrude’s late husband. It is like walking back in time. I take the tray to the kitchen, wash up, and then return to my cleaning routine.
As I go around the house—more of a mansion, really, but Gertrude doesn’t like calling it a mansion because it sounds “gauche”—my mind returns over and over to Damien, as it has almost constantly this past month. I keep thinking about the way he would kiss me, hard, as though he was drowning and I was his only source of air. I keep thinking about his hands gripping my shoulders and lifting me up as though I was weightless. I think about looking into his face and seeing his black eyes go wide as he entered me, surprise in his face, surprise that we were sharing such pleasure.
I go from room to room, and then it is time for my break.
I leave the house and go to the above-garage apartment, one of the perks of working for Gertrude. I haven’t made the apartment mine yet; I have never made any place mine, not really. As I walk through the front door, a wave of queasiness comes over me and I rush to the bathroom. I’m not sick. It’s been the same these past two weeks. Queasiness will come over me, but I will not vomit. I need to go to the doctor, but I don’t have health insurance and I fear that if I go to the doctor it will end up being something which costs more than I can pay. Plus, what if one of the Movement folks hears about me somehow?
I eat my lunch sat at the window overlooking the garden, watching the leaves and thinking of Damien. My lunch is a simple ham and cheese sandwich with a glass of water to wash it down, and an apple for afterwards. I eat all this, and I think about the men at the club, wolfing down their burgers and fries. At least I don’t have to deal with Ogre anymore, I suppose. But still, not dealing with Ogre also means I don’t have to deal with Damien, either. I often wonder what he’s doing, if he’s looking for me. I doubt it, somehow. That last month, we were already drifting apart. He was probably relieved that I left; he’d become tired of his fuck-toy. He probably has a new woman.
As I take my plate to the sink to wash up, that thought makes me shiver. I am over him. I have told myself this countless times. I was over him the second I climbed out of the window with a bag of clothes and enough stolen cash for bus tickets. But when I picture him lying in bed with another woman, perhaps telling the same stories about the orphanage and his mother, Alice, that he told me, I shiver. Maybe she tears her hands down his back, just like I did. Maybe they kiss as deeply as we did. Maybe all the things I thought were new and fresh for him just because they were new and fresh for me—the closeness, emotionally and physically, the sharing—are just routine for him.
“He was using me,” I mutter, firmly, to make myself believe it. “He never wanted me.”
I wash the plate, and then get back to my duties.
I clean until dinnertime, and then cook Gertrude a light meal of boiled potatoes and braised rabbit leg (an internet video helps me along with the recipe, which is far fancier than anything I’ve made before). I bring it into the dining room, where she sits at the end of a long table, looking woefully alone in such a large room. A chandelier hangs from the ceiling and long, gold-framed mirrors reflect the light which shines from ornate lamps in the corners.
Gertrude waves a hand at the chair next to her. “Sit with me,” she says.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I sit down as Gertrude tucks into her food.
After a sip of sparkling water, she says, “Do you know the difference between men and women, Callie?”
She is not expecting an answer, so I do not give one.
“The difference,” she goes on, “is not all that difficult to devise, once one has made the correct observations. Firstly, one must assess what drives them sexually. Women are driven by safety, emotional and physical safety, where men are driven by naught more than animal desires. Secondly, we must ascertain their wildest dreams. A woman’s wildest dream is absolute comfort and safety, whereas a man’s wildest dream is to be absolutely free. Thirdly, what do they do in a crisis? Ah, here we have something in common. A woman will protect her own; a man will protect his own.”
She talks absentmindedly without paying much attention to what she says. I sit with my hands in my lap, patiently.
“Or maybe none of that has nothing to do with it,” Gertrude says, offering a wicked smile, her blue eyes glinting. “Maybe men are just dogs and women bitches, and that’s all there is to it. What are your thoughts?”
“My thoughts, ma’am?”
“Yes, your thoughts. You have thoughts, don’t you, girl? What are they?”
I think, knowing by the way she looks at me she will not let me dodge the question, and then say: “I think that both men and women can be very cold or very warm depending on who and where they are, ma’am. I do not believe that what is between your legs has much of a say-so when it comes to that.”
Gertrude smiles at me, a respectful smile, and then says: “You will take your dinner with me from now on, Callie. I will hire a chef for dinner and we will dine together. No, no, I won’t hear another word on it.”
I nod. “Yes, ma’am.”
Gertrude eats for a while longer, and then pushes her tray away. “Ten housekeepers in ten months, but I think the eleventh will be the last.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Oh, call me Gertrude,” she says. “I’m not that old!”