Roxy’s Story (24 page)

In the days that followed, with Mrs. Brittany’s blessing, Sheena and I did draw as
close as sisters. Just about every novel Professor Marx insisted I read, she had read
and was ready to discuss. That also included plays. She was really a very bright student
and expressed so much joy in sharing her knowledge that I couldn’t help but want to
learn and understand. What a student I might have been if I had been friends with
her while I was going to school, I thought.

We had been permitted to go out to dinner, and Mrs. Brittany promised her we would
be able to go to a movie together very soon. Although it was true that because of
my companionship, she took on a new glow and
joie de vivre
, I was getting almost as much out of it as she was. For the first time in my life,
I had a real friend.

Our shopping sprees with Mrs. Brittany were probably our happiest times together.
After the first trip to Manhattan, when I was overwhelmed with the money Mrs. Brittany
laid out to start my wardrobe, the planning of another shopping trip always brought
great excitement and anticipation. It wasn’t just what she would buy for me and for
Sheena, but also the places she would take us to for our shopping.

We’d be flown in a private jet to Palm Beach to shop on Worth Avenue, or taken to
Boston or Chicago because of some designer Mrs. Brittany had heard about. Sometimes
she was sent a photograph, even whole portfolios of new fashions. There was always
something she wanted to try on me. She took us to runway shows and many private showings
in New York. People she admired or trusted brought back pictures of fashions being
designed in Europe and the Far East.

One of her favorite fashion designers, Pierre Beaumont, came from Paris to stay at
the mansion for a weekend and arranged for models to come and demonstrate some of
his creations. Mrs. Brittany wanted me to listen to him and learn what made clothing
exciting. He was very knowledgeable about the history of fashion. I learned a great
deal from him at our lunches and dinners together.

It seemed to me that she had the whole world at her beck and call. Sheena was right
to describe her as being like a queen. She could pick up the phone and call so many
important people directly or reach any
famous person who had anything to do with what was glamorous.

Sometimes at night, after a full day of training and exposure to something cultural,
I would feel as if I had been lifted onto another level on our planet, a level far
above the ordinary world, where people like my father and my mother lived. I began
to sense what Camelia and Portia were trying to tell me, why they felt so special
and were so special.

“If you think poorly of yourself, you will get others to think the same,” Mrs. Brittany
told me. “You don’t want to be so arrogant that you make others feel inferior, even
if they are,” she added with a smile. “You want them to admire you for your self-confidence,
but also for the respect you give them. They won’t say it, but they’ll feel blessed
to have you treat them well, and you won’t even have to look or act superior to have
them do it. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

She gave me that look that told me she believed me. I couldn’t help feeling that now
she not only had confidence in my becoming one of her girls, but had also developed
a genuine and sincere affection for me. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but it
helped me to keep going, study harder, read more, master every task I was given, and
win the admiration of every instructor or gentleman to whom I was introduced. It was
all going so well that I couldn’t imagine anything that might stop me from becoming
as successful as she had promised.

Perhaps that was because I was a little too arrogant now. That was something she had
always warned me about, too. She described it as someone walking a tightrope way above
the ground.

“As long as she keeps her eyes forward, she’s fine, but when she looks down to celebrate
how high up she is, she loses her balance. I’d like you to remember that.”

I could blame only myself for forgetting.

Mrs. Pratt stepped into the library and interrupted my lesson on current events to
tell me Mrs. Brittany had to see me immediately. There was no way to tell from her
expression what this crisis was about, but it was clear that whatever it was, it was
something serious. I raked through my recent memories to find something I had done
wrong, something I might have said to one of the staff, or, worse, something I had
told Sheena and Sheena had told her. Perhaps I had been wrong to be so revealing about
myself and the things I had done. That first fear I had when Sheena and I started
hanging out together reared its ugly head. I had been too R when I should have been
PG. Mrs. Brittany had warned me about this. Would she just end my relationship with
Sheena, or would it be even more devastating for me?

Life here over the past months had been so all-consuming that I’d had little time
lately to think about my family and from where and what I had come. Sometimes thoughts
about Mama and Emmie would sneak into my head just before I fell asleep, but I usually
lost them under the dark vision of Papa’s face the
day he pointed to our front door and said, “Get out.” The possibility of returning
to them and having to explain where I had been and what I had been doing was too much
to even consider.

I excused myself and rose from the table. Professor Marx said nothing, but he looked
genuinely afraid for me. I knew that all his initial impressions of me had been wiped
away and he was sincerely enjoying our tutorial sessions now. Sheena continued to
help me in the evenings, but I had taken more control myself, using my free time wisely
to read the books and articles Professor Marx assigned and suggested.

Recently, I had occasion to discuss current events and some other subjects with some
of Mrs. Brittany’s guests, and I could see from the expressions on her face and theirs
that I was coming off well. One man, a hedge-fund CEO, blurted out that I had brains
and beauty, the unbeatable combination. He was so excited about me, in fact, that
he asked Mrs. Brittany what name I was going under.

“We’re not quite there,” she told him. “Close, but no gold ring just yet.”

“I think I can be of some help when the time does come,” he told her, looking mostly
at me.

“Of course, you can, Gerard,” she said. “You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

He laughed at how easily Mrs. Brittany could make someone feel used but not insulted
about it. Even I had to smile at her brutal honesty. She gave me an appreciative look,
and for the first time, I felt as if we were working as a team. Wasn’t that enough?
Didn’t she feel that, too? Couldn’t I have that gold ring now?

As I left the library to walk with Mrs. Pratt to Mrs. Brittany’s office, I could feel
the trembling start in my legs and reverberate up my spine and around my heart. Could
it be that I had come all this way and now would be asked to leave, my kill fee in
hand? What would I do? Where would I go?

I called upon that raging, defiant spirit I had brought along with me that first day.
If I was thrown out, I wouldn’t return home, and I wouldn’t go to any roach hotel,
either. I’d find my way. I’d make them sorry they’d dismissed me.

Mrs. Pratt opened the office door for me and stepped in with me. Mrs. Brittany had
her back to us. She was looking out the window. Her office had a view of the small
pond on her property and some of the wooded area that separated her land from the
closest neighbor’s. About a half dozen grounds people were cutting the grass and trimming
hedges and the bushes around the pond. The dull hum of engines was just barely audible.
I saw what looked like a flock of ducks lift off the surface of the pond when something
frightened or disturbed them. She waited for them to disappear before turning to us.

“Sorry to interrupt your work with Professor Marx,” she began. She nodded at the red
bullet leather chair in front of her desk. Mrs. Pratt sat on the settee. Whatever
this meeting was about, her advice was obviously going to be appreciated. I had been
in meetings she had attended before, and I realized that Mrs. Pratt
wasn’t just an echo. Her opinions carried weight. I hoped I hadn’t done anything that
had offended her.

I sat and waited. The pause and the silence could be just another test of my nerves,
I thought. I was always under glass here.

Mrs. Brittany opened a folder on her desk.

“I have a copy of your birth certificate. You didn’t lie about your age. It was one
of the first things I checked, of course. Even though you began here underage, we
thought we could slip under the wire, so to speak.”

She glanced at Mrs. Pratt, who nodded.

“When your parents didn’t follow up on your disappearance, I, like you, thought you
had a father who was so headstrong and cold that he was able to write you out of the
family without any regret. It’s not that unusual. Blood isn’t always thicker than
water. It gets thinned out for various reasons,” she said.

“We know that for a fact,” Mrs. Pratt said.

“Yes, we’ve had some interesting examples of it during our journey. For example, there
are parents who disown their children because they show homosexual tendencies and
those who disinherit children because they marry the wrong people, people from other
races, cultures. There is no shortage of reasons or examples of blood losing its adhesive
qualities. Ruth—Mrs. Pratt—was disowned when she refused to marry someone her father
had chosen.”

I looked at Mrs. Pratt. During all the time I had been there, my interest in her was
so small I never asked any questions about her. In my mind, she was
almost a piece of the furniture, something that came with the whole picture. I never
thought of her as someone with a past, with pleasures and disappointments separate
from Mrs. Brittany’s. I saw now that I had underestimated her importance.

“Anyway,” Mrs. Brittany continued, “we were cautious about you. Mr. Bob and I anticipated
the possibility of starting you out and having to abort because of your age and your
family or your father regretting his actions. We didn’t want to get in the middle
of that, and we were prepared to send you on your way every day until your eighteenth
birthday. When that came and went, we were more confident and willing to invest more
in you.”

“What’s happened to change that?” I asked, unable to balance myself much longer on
my roly-poly anxieties and fear.

Mrs. Brittany’s response was to lift a page from a newspaper out of my folder and
pass it to me.

There was my picture just under the headline on the page describing my disappearance.
My mother had apparently finally gotten her way and initiated a search by the authorities.
Some ambitious young reporter had tracked down some of my history of bad behavior,
Papa’s work and firm, and went on to describe the halfhearted effort to find “a girl
neither her school nor her father is that keen on seeing return.” That take on it
had obviously initiated a bigger discussion about lost children, especially teenagers.
There were references to upcoming radio and television talk shows that would have
it as the main topic.

Mrs. Brittany passed me another article from
another city newspaper that had picked up on the story and revisited the Pulitzer
Prize–winning narration about “America’s Forgotten Children” living on the fringes,
young people who were ripe fruit for drugs, crime, and prostitution. My picture was
reprinted there, too. And in another article, there were two different but relatively
recent pictures of me.

“We understand,” Mrs. Brittany continued, “that the
New York Crier
magazine is going to do a five-page article on all this, highlighting your disappearance.
These pictures and a few others will appear. Your mother is turning over whatever
she has to build it up. Your picture won’t be on milk cartons, but it could turn up
on the sides of city buses and taxis advertising the magazine article.”

“I never thought . . . I mean, I never expected . . .”

She reached for the articles, and I handed them back to her. She placed them in the
folder and closed it. I glanced at Mrs. Pratt. She mirrored Mrs. Brittany’s look of
deep concern. My heart began to thump. What was coming next?

“We’re not blaming you for anything. Our taking you in is totally our responsibility,”
Mrs. Brittany said. “Obviously, however, if anyone managed to connect the dots, it
would bring some serious negative attention to us.”

“No one knows I’m here. I haven’t violated your rule about contacting anyone. I had
no one to contact. I’ve never even tried to speak with my mother since I’ve been here,
and you know I wouldn’t try to speak with my father.”

“Yes. And I’m not concerned about anyone who has come here and met you,” she began,
sounding more like someone thinking aloud. “The places I’ve taken you, shops and so
on, should be fine. However, no one can predict if someone who saw you and read these
articles would make the connections. We can only hope not. And we would hope, or assume,
that anyone working here who saw you, even if he or she could make any connection,
would simply not do so.