Becoming the Butlers Read online

  “Okay,” I told Pilar, badly shaken by this discovery. “My father’s passport’s gone. I don’t know where he went, or when he’s coming back. But we had a huge fight today, and I think he needs to be alone for a while.”

  “What happened?” Pilar asked.

  I didn’t care about the letter, or the Butlers, or my mother and George and my father. I was too tired to lie anymore.

  “A lot. I got caught breaking into someone’s locker.”

  “What?”

  “Instead of expulsion the principal’s only going to suspend me for a few weeks. Then my father got two letters from Madrid. One from my mother, the other was from my mother’s lawyer.”

  Pilar stood very still for several minutes, her glasses silver in the dim light. When she finally spoke, her lips barely moved, like a ventriloquist’s.

  “What did the letters say?”

  “The lawyer’s letter informed my father about divorce proceedings. My mother’s letter told him about how I met your father in Madrid.”

  “You saw my father in Madrid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he ask about me?” Pilar asked breathlessly.

  I couldn’t avoid hurting her without lying, so I remained silent.

  “Not once?” she implored. “Wasn’t he just a little curious? I am his daughter.”

  “I’m sorry, Pilar.”

  “Oh Rachel,” she whimpered, shaking her head so hard that her hair whipped across her face and stung my eyes. “You could have told me. I’m your friend.”

  “How could I? My father didn’t even know.”

  “But you should have trusted me. I can keep a secret.”

  “That’s not all, Pilar. My mother is going to have a baby.”

  “A baby!” she exclaimed in wonder. “Of course. That’s why they had to leave so fast.” Pilar’s eyes were brilliant yet dry. She was beyond crying now. “I’ll have to tell my mother,” she declared. “I’m not like you, Rachel. I can’t lie. I’m just so mad. I told you everything…and you slept in the next bed night after night, knowing the whole time…”

  She fled out the door as a fire engine raced down Riverside Drive, filling the room with the red pulsing glow of its lights. Pilar’s voice reverberated outside the door, and moments later I heard her mother’s wails.

  That night Pilar slept on the couch in the living room, as if we were a married couple having a fight. I slept on my father’s bare mattress, my only blanket the old comforter we always used for picnics in Central Park. When I shook it out a small brown leaf fell to the floor, and the fabric was badly stained by spilled grape juice.

  Our last picnic had been a July evening long ago when we went to see the New York Philharmonic play on the Great Lawn. My mother made fried chicken, coleslaw, and potato salad, and James brought a large thermos of lemonade. Our old neighbors, the Tylers, who had since moved out, joined us with their baby, Molly. Molly wore a bright yellow bib, and on her head was a crown of daisies my mother wove for her. She smelled like baby powder and applesauce and I couldn’t stop kissing her hair, which was soft as corn silk. Judy Tyler sat in her husband’s lap while my mother and father lay flat on the blanket, their arms entwined. Fireworks exploded at the end of the concert, great bursts of dazzling red and white. Molly raised her tiny hands as if to grab the stars, as the crowd collectively sighed in pleasure. My mother, still in my father’s arms, reached for my hand and held it to her cheek. My father held my other hand and I thought nothing would ever break our bond.

  So what went wrong? George claimed my mother never really loved James, but I know that on that balmy summer night she did, if only for an hour. I was beginning to understand that love and happiness weren’t things handed out democratically to everyone, like the right to vote. You had to struggle for both, hollering and kicking. Maybe my father hadn’t fought hard enough to keep my mother’s love, and then, when it was too late, armed himself for a battle already lost. I had stopped fighting for my father, gave him up to his booze and the Vasquezes with little protest. He was worth so much more than that acquiescence.

  The Vasquezes were already packing by the time I woke up.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Pilar, still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

  “My mother wants to go,” Pilar answered as she struggled to unhook the portrait of Nancy and Ronald Reagan from the wall.

  “But where will you live?” I asked, envisioning the whole family sleeping in a back alley.

  “One of my mother’s third cousins has a floor to let in Queens. We’ll be better off there. Say good-bye to your father from us. We’ll miss him.”

  “How about me?” I asked.

  She turned her head and finally managed to pry the picture off the wall. “Rachel, you lied to me. We’re sorry to leave you all alone like this but I’m sure your father will be home tonight. Luisa… No!” she yelled at her sister, who was upsetting a pile of pans that crashed to the floor.

  Mrs. Vasquez seemed to have aged overnight, her legs creaking as she paced about her packed belongings, shouting hoarse orders to the confused elevator man who had agreed to help her. George Jr. hovered over the Sony, his small stubby arms barely embracing the width of the set. He knew the next place he was sent to wouldn’t have his beloved MTV.

  The Vasquezes’ departure was as messy as their arrival. Clothes were flung everywhere: a diaper in the planter, George Jr.’s baseball cap perched up high on the TV antenna, Pilar’s red rubber boots, like bookends, on either end of my father’s set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Luisa couldn’t find her white bear and a massive search ensued, encouraging the Vasquezes to ransack the apartment anew. Pilar finally discovered the stuffed animal crammed flat as a pancake beneath a pile of my father’s records. Luisa howled as she tried to plump the bear back to its original girth, but it lay limp and defeated in her cradling arms. The Vasquezes’ bags looked like overstuffed pillows: sleeves and trouser legs spilling out from the burst seams. One box exploded in midair as the elevator man carried it out the door. Odd things I had never seen before rolled about the floor: an autographed basketball, pink plastic hair curlers, yo-yos, and a lumpy papier-mâché globe that was George Jr.’s Geography project. The Vasquezes may have wanted to leave, but their possessions insisted on remaining.

  Toward noon I went down to the lobby to collect the mail. Somehow I expected some sort of message from my father. The slot was empty except for another notice from the telephone company threatening to disconnect our service. I was gone only ten minutes, yet when I returned the apartment was empty of any box or suitcase, and also of any Vasquez.

  “Hey, Pilar!” I shouted into the stillness. “Where are you guys? You can’t be gone…no one even said good-bye.”

  They must have taken the back elevator. Across the room a leaky radiator pipe hissed and moaned. Clouds of dust swirled from the floor; Mrs. Vasquez had not vacuumed, and never would again. The Vasquezes were in such a hurry that they left one of Luisa’s slippers behind. This slipper, which had rolling beads that looked like eyes, fit perfectly over my cupped hand. The eyes moved right and left, as if searching for its lost owner. The Vasquezes couldn’t leave this behind; surely they would be back. I would give them the keys to the apartment and move out immediately. Maybe I’d occasionally slip in just to take a shower, but that was all.

  I sat down and leaned on the door and waited and waited. The light grew dimmer as my limbs stiffened and ached. My hand, still inside Luisa’s slipper, began to itch, but I wouldn’t let go. If I held on to that slipper, I still had a chance. My stomach growled and I knew I should go out and get something to eat. But I couldn’t miss the Vasquezes, or my father, if he decided to return. At one point I heard the elevator door open, but it was only Mrs. Rosen, yelling at the delivery boy for letting the ice cream melt. Even she would declare me hopeless after hearing how I managed to lose, in the last forty-eight hours, two different families. “That’s quite a feat,” I said out loud, hoping to cheer myself up. �
��A contender for the Guinness Book of World Records.” Instead I burst out sobbing. No one, I was certain, had ever been abandoned as often as me.

  TWELVE

  My father didn’t return that night or the next day. Although I had no idea where he might be staying, I found out where he was heading.

  “Hello, is Mr. James Harris in?” a bright voice twittered over the phone.

  “No, he’s not,” I said cautiously. “Can I take a message?”

  “Yes. This is Iberia Airlines. We want him to know that his flight to Madrid has been delayed and will be departing at seven P.M. instead of six.”

  “Madrid?” I gasped.

  “Is there a problem, Miss?”

  “No…wait a minute…” But the reservationist had disconnected the line. I flipped through the telephone book and called Iberia Airlines.

  “You should speak to his travel agent,” another reservationist told me after I explained about my confusion.

  “Can’t you even tell the date or time of his flight?”

  “We can’t give out that information,” the woman snapped, “and I can’t go looking through every single day for the rest of the year. Why didn’t your father tell you his plans?”

  “Because he’s gone. Everyone’s gone. And you’re a stuck-up bitch!” I slammed the phone down and was astounded that it immediately rang again. Ashamed of my outburst, I answered with an apology.

  “I’m sorry,” I began. “I didn’t mean…”

  “Sorry! You’ll have to get on your knees and kiss my Bass Weejuns before I talk to you again. How could you do it, Harris? How could you steal my stunt?”

  “Oh,” I said slowly. “Hi, Nicole.”

  “And you couldn’t even pull it off! Christ, Rachel, if you’re going to make a fool of yourself, at least be original!”

  She slammed the phone down so hard that the noise stung in my ear. Ten seconds later the bell buzzed again.

  “I just feel so guilty,” she explained in a still tense, but quieter voice. “If I didn’t tell you that stupid story in the first place you wouldn’t have gotten in trouble.”

  “I’d have thought of something else,” I told Nicole. “And probably would have been caught too. How did you know?”

  “Everyone knows. Edwin and Olivia are furious that you didn’t get expelled. How come Gregory was so nice?”

  “He’s going to change his tune once he knows my dad skipped out of town.”

  “What? Where did Parallel Lines go?”

  “Madrid, Spain.”

  “Does your mom know?”

  “No. But she’ll soon find out. She’s there too.”

  “You mean they’re both in Spain?”

  “She was always in Spain.”

  “But I thought…,” Nicole said.

  “The Vasquezes are gone too.”

  “The who!”

  “George’s family. George was our building super. He ran away with my mother.”

  “Rachel, you’re going too fast. Have you been swallowing any funny pills?”

  “No, I’m perfectly straight. The point is I’m all alone here, and I don’t really know what I’m going to do.”

  “But I don’t understand any of this,” Nicole whined.

  “Neither do I,” I told her, hanging up the phone. The bell rang again but this time I ignored it. Nicole couldn’t bring back James. And I couldn’t stop him from going to Madrid.

  Mr. Gregory never phoned about my father. Maybe James had made previous arrangements with him for a substitute teacher. I had believed that the school principal was on my side and felt betrayed. Since I didn’t have to go to school anymore, I didn’t bother getting dressed and traipsed about in a bathrobe more tattered than my father’s old smoking Jacket. My hair probably resembled Pilar’s own stringy mess. But I didn’t look at mirrors and mirrors didn’t look at me.

  Financially I was in a very bad way. I had found only fifty dollars in my father’s back drawer, and was careful to economize every last cent. Since I couldn’t count on school cafeteria lunches anymore, I had to carefully ration what was left in the kitchen cabinets. Luckily there was enough tuna fish to last me through next Christmas, and several jars of peanut butter. If I really got desperate, I could dip into my father’s wine cabinet. I had once read about a man living on a case of Cabernet Sauvignon for two months. He said he was too drunk to ever get hungry.

  I felt as if I was there for a week, but it was probably only a few days. The clock in the kitchen was broken, I lost my watch, and last year’s calendar still was taped to the wall. Someone rang the doorbell, and I was sure I heard Nicole shouting, but I didn’t move. I unplugged all the telephones. Although I mostly moped about in my room, the apartment seemed to grow messy of its own accord. Mold, as aggressive as an invading army, attacked every perishable in the refrigerator, sprouted on the bathroom faucet, and even showed up in the dark recesses of my closet. Dust would settle like accumulating snow, enveloping the furniture, floors, and even me in a thin white coat. I was growing used to constantly sneezing and rubbing my eyes, and wouldn’t have been too surprised to discover cobwebs growing over my limbs. Sometimes at night, when the wind howled against the window panes, the lights flickered, and the walls seemed to shine with dew, I began to see the ghost of the previous tenant, the French teacher, now surely dead of cancer. His face was like a rotten green apple, and he walked with a limp that sounded like the thud of fruit falling to the ground.

  When I started seeing this, I knew I had to get out of the apartment. I grabbed my coat and didn’t even wait for the elevator, but flew down the stairs, barely breathing until I reached the security of the street. I walked up to Columbia University, sat on the steps of Low Library, and then, when my feet began to freeze, walked over to Amsterdam Avenue, all the way to Teachers College, and back to Riverside Drive. As I wandered I kept going over everything that had happened, trying to find someone else to blame. I couldn’t; the only guilty one was me.

  If only I had told James about my mother in Madrid. If only I had confided in Pilar. If only I hadn’t broken into Olivia’s locker. I remember my father saying that “if only” were the two most terrible words in the language, and I knew he was right. I heard the words at night, a long steady howl like the wind. I woke up to the phrase, ominous as the fire sirens outside my window, as real to me as the ghost. I knew the only way to get rid of them was to do something drastic. It was too late to apologize to my father and the Vasquezes, but the Butlers were still here. I could redeem myself by apologizing to Edwin and Olivia: I’d tell them I was very sorry for meddling in their lives. My wish to become a Butler was not only stupid but harmful. I’d leave the Winfield Academy and go to another school, maybe I’d even leave New York; and the Butlers would never have to see or hear from me again.

  At first I decided to write the two a letter. But Olivia or Edwin would probably rip the envelope to shreds if they saw my name on the back flap. They would hang up on me if I tried to phone. I decided I must go to their apartment and ring their doorbell. I hoped Olivia would be alone; with Edwin, I’d be a wreck. He’d gaze at me coldly, indifferent again. One nasty word would send me running out the door.

  Saturday morning I found myself in front of the Butlers’ apartment building. The same little man was sweeping the sidewalk, the tall doorman still whistling for taxis. To my surprise no one stopped me as I walked hesitatingly into the lobby and toward the elevators. Maybe I actually looked like I belonged here. A uniformed man with a face like a basset hound sat on a chair by the elevator. He stood up so slowly that I could hear the joints in his knees creak. I walked into the car and stood for several minutes. The old man eventually shuffled in and grabbed the lever with a white-gloved hand. He turned to me and said: “Out the door, please.”

  The faithful building employee knew who belonged here and who couldn’t pass muster. He would call for the doorman, who would throw me out on my heels.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

 
“I said, what floor, please?” he repeated, and I chided myself for my fearfulness. I said I was visiting the Butler family. Praying for courage, I stared at the back of the elevator man’s pink neck. He closed the door and we started off.

  “Good day, Madam,” he told me a moment later, opening the metal gate. I found myself in a long narrow hallway. Two framed pictures, Metropolitan Museum reproductions of Degas dancers, hung opposite on the cream-colored walls, and two unmarked doors stood left and right of me. The elevator man would be suspicious if I asked him which was the Butlers’. I waited for him to leave, and walked over to the door on the right. A messy pile of uncollected mail had been dumped on top of the welcome mat. Wondering if what I was about to do was illegal, I knelt down and began sorting through the envelopes.

  Everything was addressed to Mrs. Oliver Butler. There was nothing for Olivia, Edwin, or Dr. Oliver Butler. Had they already picked up their own mail, or did the mother receive everything? I discovered what I expected; bills from Bergdorf Goodman and Bonwit Teller; Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country. But other items confounded me: esoteric publications like Esperanto Today, a brochure for the Romanian Tourist Board printed on badly mimeographed paper, and a weathered envelope—already opened—which I discovered contained a menacing chain letter. Didn’t people know that the Butlers were above this kind of trash? I felt the same thrill as when I examined the items in Olivia’s locker. Everything, however mundane or odd, was a clue.

  “Thank you so much, dear, for bringing in the mail.”

  The soft husky voice sounded familiar. Still crouched down, I was eye level with a wheel spoke. I slowly raised my head and saw a middle-aged woman staring at me from a wheelchair.