The Bird’s Nest (15 page)

The most important thing she had learned so far—and it was something to know, after only twelve hours—was that she need not pretend, always, to be competent or at home in a strange atmosphere. Other people, she had learned, were frequently uneasy and uncertain, lost their way or their money, were nervous at being approached by strangers or wary of officials; this made it considerably easier for Betsy to manage, since she could go up to the clerk at the hotel desk and ask her way to the dining room without seeming odd or unwell, and she relied strongly upon getting through a meal upon the same principle; so long as she did not try to order anything with a French name, and observed carefully to see what other people did by way of sitting down, and moving plates, and summoning service, she thought that she would do nicely. She was not awed by the size or the whiteness of the dining room, after having seen the satin bedspreads upstairs, and all tables not Aunt Morgen's were equally strange to her. She sat down, thinking with humor that if she stepped on the waiter's foot, or dropped her pocketbook, or perhaps missed the chair altogether, sitting down, she could always slip off and leave Lizzie to cope. She unfolded her napkin and looked around, and sat back in the soft chair with satisfaction. Each thing, she thought pleasurably, is nicer than the last; everything gets better and better.

With an enormous feeling of delighted wickedness she ordered an Aunt-Morgen-ish glass of sherry, and did not notice the waiter's hesitation over whether she was as old as she looked, and entitled to be served, or as old as she acted, and must necessarily be refused; the waiter, however, was in the last analysis philosophical, and concluded that a woman was more likely to look her age than to act it, so that Betsy was served with sherry and she sipped it gracefully, quite as professionally as Aunt Morgen might. Because it was not possible, in this most charming of worlds, for anything to be either mistaken or out of sorts, when Betsy desired company she looked up at the first person passing her table and said “Hello.”

“Hello,” he said, surprised, and hesitating by the table.

“Sit down, please,” Betsy said politely.

He opened his eyes wide, glanced beyond her at the empty table which had been his objective, and then laughed. “All right,” he said.

“I feel funny sitting here alone,” Betsy explained. “No one to talk to, or anything. At home there was always Aunt Morgen there and even when she didn't talk I could have someone to look at. Someone I knew, that is,” she said.

“Of course,” he said, sitting down. “Have you been here long?” he asked, taking up his napkin.

“I just got here this morning, and the bus driver told me to be careful, so of course I am, but I thought you looked all right to talk to.” He seemed a very civil man, not so old as Doctor Wrong, but older than Robin, and not at all uncomfortable at talking like this to someone he had not met before. “You weren't outside my window a little while ago?” she asked him suddenly, “climbing across a ledge?”

He shook his head, surprised. “I'm not spry enough,” he said.

“
I
could if I wanted to. Lizzie gets faint, but of course I never do.”

“Who is Lizzie?”

“Lizzie Richmond. I brought her with me, and she wants to get out, but she can't.” She stopped and looked at him suspiciously. “I wasn't going to tell anyone about Lizzie,” she said.

“It doesn't matter,” he said. “I won't tell.”

“Anyway, my mother's going to get rid of Lizzie—we're not going to have
her
around all the time, after the trouble we've already had, getting rid of Robin and all.”

“Are you having lunch?” He took the menu from the waiter, smiling at her, and Betsy said, “This is the first time I've ever been in a restaurant,” and wriggled happily. “And I'm
extremely
hungry,” she added.

“Then we had better make this a special lunch,” he said. “Shall I choose for you?” He held the menu toward her, and said, “Or would you rather order something for yourself?”

Betsy took the menu and glanced at it briefly and then handed it back. “Lizzie speaks French,” she said, “but of course
I
never bothered to take it up much, so you'd better choose. Only lots of things, please. Everything exciting.” She hesitated. “Nothing,” she said, “nothing like . . . macaroni, or pickles, or sandwiches, or things like that. Things Aunt Morgen makes.”

“Well,” he said profoundly. He regarded the menu in deep thought. “No pickles,” he said, debating, “no sandwiches.” Finally, with the waiter standing by, and both of them nodding reassuringly at Betsy, he ordered smoothly and quite as though he very frequently had occasion to order lunches for young ladies who wanted everything exciting, and no pickles. While she listened to the lovely words which meant foods so exciting she did not even know the order in which they would be served, and listened to music coming distantly from some upper corner of the room, and listened to the fine harmonious sound of forks touching knives, and cups touching saucers, Betsy told herself, this is what it is going to be like all the time, now.

“There,” he said at last, handing the menu to the waiter. “I think you're going to like everything. Now, tell me—I don't even know your name.”

“I'm Betsy. Betsy Richmond. My mother's name is Elizabeth Richmond, Elizabeth Jones before she was married. I was born in New York.”

“How long ago?”

“I forget,” she said vaguely. “Is that for me?” The waiter set a fruit cup before her, and she took the cherry from the top with her fingers and put it into her mouth. “My mother left me with Aunt Morgen,” she went on indistinctly, “but she didn't go with Robin.”

“The one you had such trouble getting rid of?”

Betsy nodded violently, swallowed, and said, “But I don't have to remember that part, I decided in the bus. One bad thing about Robin ought to be enough, don't you think?”

“I should think so,” he said. “Seeing as you got rid of him, anyway.”

She giggled, lifting her spoon. “
And
I got rid of Aunt Morgen,
and
I got rid of Doctor Wrong,
and
I'm going to get rid of Lizzie, and I'm the gingerbread boy, I am.”

“I wonder if Aunt Morgen will be worried about you,” he said carefully.

She shook her head again. “I wrote her a postcard with a picture on it and I said I wasn't coming back, and anyway they'll be looking for Lizzie, not me. Can I have some more fruit?”

“He'll be bringing you something else in a minute.”

“I can pay for it—I have plenty of money.” When she saw that he was smiling she thought, and then said acutely, “That was wrong, wasn't it? That was wrong to say—why?”

“I invited you to lunch, sort of,” he said. “That means that I am going to pay, so you mustn't say anything about paying. You must wait, and then be very gracious about my paying.”

“Gracious,” she said. “You mean ‘Thank you
so
much'? Like Aunt Morgen?”

“Exactly like Aunt Morgen,” he said. “Where is your mother now?”

“I don't know just where it is. I'm still finding out. Like the man down on the ledge. They're going to have to tell me because I'll just keep asking and looking and looking and asking and asking and looking and looking and—” She stopped abruptly, and there was a silence. When she looked up, he was placidly finishing his fruit. “Sometimes,” she said with great caution, “I get mixed up. You'll just have to excuse it.”

“Of course,” he said, without surprise.

“So you see,” Betsy said, looking with deep satisfaction into a bowl of clear soup in which, far down, small strange shapes moved, and stirred, and stared, and strode.

“Who are you?” asked Elizabeth, blankly.

“How do you do?” he said. “I'm a friend of yours.”

Betsy looked up, gasping, and moved far back in her chair, and scowled at him. “Don't you listen to her,” she said. “She tells lies.”

“All right,” he said, and moved his spoon in his soup.

“I don't want any soup,” Betsy said sullenly.

“All right,” he said. “It's good, though, I always like soup.”

“Aunt Morgen likes soup,” Betsy said. “All the time.”

“And pickles?”

Betsy giggled, in spite of her annoyance. “Old Aunt Pickle,” she said.

“Old Doctor Pickle,” he said.

“Old Lizzie Pickle.”

“Elizabeth Jones that was?”

“What?” said Betsy.

“Elizabeth Pickle before she was married,” he said.

“You stop that right now,” Betsy said furiously. “You just stop talking like that. I'll tell my mother.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “It was a joke.”

“My mother doesn't like jokes. Not mean jokes, and when Robin made mean jokes my mother told him to stop and when you make mean jokes you sound like Robin.”

“And you'll get rid of me?”

She laughed. “That was smart, how I got rid of Robin,” she said, and then, breathlessly, “Oh!” turning to look at a tray of pastries being wheeled past her chair. “Can I have one?”

“First eat your lunch. Your nice soup.”

“I want cake,” said Betsy.

“Your mother wouldn't want you to have dessert first.”

Betsy was quiet suddenly. “How do you know?” she said. “How do you know what my mother would want?”

“She
certainly
wouldn't want you to be sick. That would be silly.”

“That's right,” Betsy said joyfully, “Mother's Betsy can't be sick, Betsy is Mother's baby and she mustn't cry, and Aunt Morgen said stop spoiling the child.”

“I think,” he said slowly, “that we don't like Aunt Morgen, do we, you and I? I don't think Aunt Morgen is so much.”

“Aunt Morgen says to make the child stop fawning on Robin all the time. Aunt Morgen says the child is too old to scramble around with Robin like that. Aunt Morgen says the child knows more than is good for her.”

“Old Aunt Pickle,” he said.

“I want cake,” Betsy said, and he laughed, and gestured to the waiter with the dessert wagon. “Only one,” he said, “and then you eat the rest of your lunch I ordered for you. We're not going to have you sick, remember.”

“Not
me,
” said Betsy, bending lovingly over the tiny rich cakes, her eyes sparkling with the reflections of whipped cream and chocolate and strawberries; “it's Lizzie who gets sick,” she said; one had bananas and one had chopped nuts and one had cherries; Betsy sighed.

“And you say they'll be looking for Lizzie?”

“Maybe the little square one,” Betsy said. “Just to start. I choose the little square one,” she said to the waiter. “Because then later I can try another kind and if any of them are very very good I can come back and have them again, after I've tried them all. Because I live right upstairs,” she said parenthetically to the waiter, “so I can keep coming back and coming back. So I choose—”

She broke off as the headwaiter came to their table. “Telephone for you, Doctor,” he said.

“Doctor?” said Betsy, rising. “Doctor?” She snatched at her pocketbook, and said in anger, “You're just Doctor Wrong in another face and you tried to fool me—”

“Wait a minute, please,” he said, putting out a hand to stop her, but she brushed past him, her lips trembling and her hands shaking with anger. “It was mean of you,” she said, “and I'll tell my mother you pretended to be friends, and now I can't have the little square one.” She started off, and then remembered. “Thank you
so
much for paying,” she said, bowing her head graciously, and then, almost running, left the restaurant and went through the hotel lobby into the street. A bus, she was thinking, always take a bus to get away, and she turned to her right and hurried down the street. She could see a bus coming to the corner to stop, and she ran and got onto it and sat down with relief, next to a woman in green silk, who looked at her briefly.

When she caught her breath, she leaned forward to look out of the window past the woman and said, “I wonder where
this
bus goes.”

“Downtown, of course,” the woman said stiffly, as though Betsy had somehow impugned the honor of the bus, or, worse, the discrimination of the woman in green silk; “this bus goes downtown.”

“Thank you,” Betsy said. “I hope I can find the place I'm looking for. It's not very likely, just starting out like this, but I can try, anyway.”

“Some people,” said the woman, consideringly, “think it's harder to find places downtown. Myself, I always have a
good
deal more trouble uptown. Are you going far?”

“Well, of course I can't be sure,” Betsy said. “I'm just looking. Lots of stairs. And pink walls,” she went on, remembering, “and there's a view of the river from the window.”

“That would be the west side, then,” the woman said. “They've all got stairs, there.” She sighed. “I live east, myself,” she said, “but of course we're moving in the fall.”

“West of what?”

“West of the bus, of course,” the woman said. “To your right as you get off.”

“Then I turn right, and just anywhere might do?”

“Just anywhere?” said the woman, with a delicate inflection, and she turned emphatically and looked out of the window.

People keep getting so mixed up, Betsy thought helplessly, and she said, “It's because I'm looking for my mother, and I don't know exactly where she lives because I haven't been there in so long.”

“Really?” said the woman, looking out of the window.

Oh, dear, Betsy thought, and she put her hand timidly on the woman's arm. “Please,” she said, “if you don't mind, can I just ask you?”

The woman turned, hesitating as though half-convinced Betsy might have in mind an improper question—whether she had always lived east, perhaps, or did her building have an elevator?—and then nodded briefly. “Naturally,” the woman said, “I can't answer
every
thing.”