East Into Upper East (31 page)

PARASITES

Paul opened the door of the brownstone, and Dora asked, “How is she?”

“Stella's fine! Great!” Stella called in a stentorian voice from the stairs.

Actually—she knew it, everyone knew it—she was dying. The doctors had said six months. So when she claimed to be fine and great, Dora, her niece, looked wry. She went into the drawing room, and in the few moments before Stella could get down the stairs, Paul said to Dora, “She really has been all right—not bad at all!”

“Guess who's here, upstairs,” Stella said to Dora, smiling to herself with pleasure.

Dora couldn't guess who it was, and Paul didn't give her any help. He was very busy dusting some of Stella's treasures—her Mogul box, her Wedgwood bowl—doing it carefully and with pursed mouth, like a dutiful servant. He tended to turn himself into a servant whenever he wanted no part in something, and no one could object to that, because, as a matter of fact, he
was
paid for his services.

“It's Annette,” Stella said finally. She stretched out one stout leg to the small fire in the fireplace and smiled down at it, still with that same mysterious pleasure.

Paul continued dusting, giving no help to Dora, nor did he look up when Annette herself came in.

“Dora, darling!” cried Annette, in a rather high, shrieky voice. “All grown up! A real big grown-up lovely girl!” She seized both of Dora's hands and looked up into her face with dancing black eyes.

Annette was small, smart, and animated; Dora rather stringy, somewhat dowdy. When Annette called her a lovely grown-up girl
and looked at her with those amused eyes, Dora knew that she was really thinking something quite different. She disengaged her hands from Annette's tiny, plump, warm ones as soon as she could.

But Stella was so obviously pleased at this meeting, at having her favorite niece and her favorite friend (not to mention dear Paul) under her roof at the same time, that they all knew they would have to make the best of it.

Annette, in any case, did not have to pretend to be pleased to be there; she really was. She loved Stella's house. It was a heavy, five-story brownstone in Murray Hill, with a broad, old-fashioned front stoop, and brass railings that ran up the stone banisters. Although in recent years the neighborhood had grown shabby and decayed, Stella's house had retained its well-kept appearance. Inside as well as outside, it was as polished, as prosperous, as comfortable as it had ever been. Stella did not stint on her living arrangements, and Annette knew how to enjoy them to the brim. Nor did Annette hesitate to make full use of Paul's services, since these happened to be available. After all, she might have argued, that was what he was being paid for—to cook and clean and look after Stella and her guests.

Dora had an apartment of her own, and also a job to go to, in the conservation department of a small museum, but she came every day to see her aunt. And every day she saw that Annette had dug herself in a little deeper. Paul and Dora realized that Annette had come to stay till the end—till Stella's end.

Dora's mother had phoned often from the Vineyard, where she now lived year-round, to ask about her sister Stella. “Should I come?” she asked. “Does she want me?”

“Not yet,” Dora kept saying.

Dora's mother was much disturbed by Annette's presence in the house. It had been enough, she felt, with just Paul there, but now this other one as well . . . The whole family, all Stella's relatives, were upset. The only counterbalance was the presence of Dora, and for the first time the family really appreciated her and no longer thought of her (in contrast to her successful, married cousins) as poor Dora.

Apart from Dora, Stella had never cared for her family. She had gone her own way and made her own friends. These had always included one special friend—usually someone like Annette, many
years younger than herself. Before Annette, there had been a German woman called Lisa, and before Lisa various other women, almost all of them Europeans of assorted nationalities (though once there was an Indian girl, a great beauty). But after Annette left her, eight years ago—walked out on her, actually—Stella did not make any more special friends. Perhaps she felt too old by then, perhaps she had been disappointed too many times. Also, her illness (though at that time undiagnosed—indeed, unsuspected) may have begun secretly to undermine her. In those years, the person she drew closest to was Paul, who had been a waiter in an expensive and fashionable hotel restaurant that she frequented. He left that job when she invited him to come and live with her. Although he was quite a young man—about Dora's age—Paul was extremely responsible and took good care of her, and of her house and possessions, which he loved passionately. Between him and Dora, she had all the company she needed in these last years, and she had seemed more contented than she had ever been before.

Nevertheless, she had sent word for Annette to come back again. “As soon as I got the letter,” Annette told Dora, “I gave up everything and came at once. At once,” she added, satisfied at her own behavior. She did not specify what it was she had given up. She had been living in London, and she also didn't specify what she had been doing there. But that was typical of Annette—the details of her life were always left vague, a subject for the speculations of anyone who cared to speculate. But she herself was a very definite little person.

She told Paul, “I came because she needed me.” Paul didn't ask why Stella should have needed Annette, when he himself was there. Paul was a disciplined young man, and he did not allow himself to ask questions that people might not wish to answer. Instead, he tightened his face and busied himself with household tasks; there was always something to do around the house, and he did it. His discipline was partly that of a conscientious servant and partly of a military officer—not that he had been in the army, but he was German, and it must have been something in his blood. Though of humble origin, he looked like a German officer. He held himself very erect and had brushed-back fair hair and clear eyes and thin lips.

Never would he allow any word of complaint to escape through those lips. He did not like Annette—he could not stand her—but since she was there, a guest in the house, he was prepared to serve
her. He cooked her meals and cleaned up after her and cleaned out her bathtub, silently, uncomplainingly, and very thoroughly. Annette took all this for granted—or, rather, she didn't even notice it; she was the sort of person who ate and drank and dressed herself, and walked away and let someone else clean up after her. If there was no one, then she lived in such disorder, such squalor, that sooner or later she had to abandon that place and start again somewhere else.

Dora didn't like to see Paul do so much for Annette. But when she told him this, one afternoon, he said it was all right, he didn't mind doing his duty. Dora bridled at that last word, but before she could say anything more he said, “Sh-h-h,
she's
coming.” Although they were in Paul's own room at the top of the house, where they might have thought themselves private, Annette had not hesitated to follow them up there, and she walked straight in.

She began at once to question them about Stella. She was always doing that, wanting to know exactly what the doctors had said, what was wrong with her, and was it really true that she had only a few months to live. This last Annette would not believe at all; she pooh-poohed it as one of those doctors' things—doctors trying to make themselves important and then sending in fat bills. And anyway, she suggested, everything was changed now that she had come. There wouldn't be any more nonsense—she would see to that. And she looked at Paul and Dora as if they were part of the nonsense. It was no use their giving her medical details about Stella; she wouldn't listen to them. “Well, we'll see” was all she said. She seemed to be mentally rolling up her sleeves, ready to clear up this mess that they had managed to create during her absence. Then she looked around Paul's room, which was very comfortable, with some of Stella's excellent pieces of furniture in it, and she said, “So this is your room,” as if it were one more thing that might have to be looked into and changed.

It really was true that with Annette there Stella's condition seemed to improve. Annette certainly kept her very cheerful, from early morning on. In the few weeks since she had arrived, Stella had spent a large part of each day in bed, and in the morning Paul would come in with her breakfast tray and open the curtains and tidy the room. Annette was a late riser by nature, but from the day she came she made a point of being up at Stella's breakfast hour and going down to her room and slipping in next to her in the big double bed.
So now Paul had to bring in two breakfast trays every morning, and while he worked he had to hear the cheering chatter that Annette made to amuse her sick friend. And there was no doubt about it, Stella
was
amused. She just loved every moment of it, having Annette next to her, being so wonderfully loving and entertaining. Most of Annette's chatter pertained to their past together—“Yes, and what about Saratoga?” “Annette!
No
, please!”—and the fun they had had together; and Stella bloomed and thrived in living it over again. Paul listened, too, grimly dusting, except when Annette said, “Darling Paul, I think we need some more toast, thank you, darling”—holding out the empty toast rack to him by dangling it from her finger like bait. He would take it from her without a word and go down to the kitchen, his special domain, and make the toast, and more coffee, too, and when he came back Stella would often be blushing and smiling like some big, heavy girl, and she would say, “Annette, Ann
ette
”—half reproving, half approving—and Annette would toss her head, bold and unrepentant, and say, “That's the way it was, and I'd do the same tomorrow.”

Dora's mother telephoned. “Is she still there?” she said to Dora.

“Of course she is,” Dora said, challenging the distressed silence at the other end. “You don't think she'd come all this way and then go off again tomorrow? She's here to stay. Anyway, what's wrong with her?”

“What's
wrong
with her!” Dora's mother repeated incredulously.

So then Dora had nothing to say, until her mother went on, “And he? I suppose
he's
still there?”

“Paul? Things would be in a fine mess if he weren't.” Dora hung up indignantly.

Annette had the idea, which she shared with Stella, that Dora was in love with Paul. Stella liked this idea and made Annette give her more details. And then Stella asked, “And he?”

Annette gave a little laugh at that. “Naturally, he's pleased. He likes it.”

“Yes, but does he feel the same way?” Stella asked.

“Goodness, Stella, if you're in Paul's position, you don't ask yourself such questions. You take what falls down from heaven and keep
quiet. Thank you, darling. Just what we needed,” she said as Paul returned with more toast, and she began to butter it at once.

Stella watched Paul and Dora together, but it was difficult for her to see what Annette saw. Paul was always reserved, and as for Dora—Stella knew that she was, like herself, a person of deep feeling; but everything in Dora's training, her nature, even in her physical presence, was calculated to hide this. “Poor thing, what do you expect, she's so dreadfully repressed,” Annette said when Stella complained she couldn't see anything of what Annette had described. “Probably she doesn't even know it herself. What she needs is opening up—the way I opened you up,” she said to Stella, who then blushed and smiled again in that big-schoolgirl way.