Beneath the Attic Read online

  But not the biggest in Charlottesville, I thought, probably the size of a few closets put together in Foxworth Hall.

  Nevertheless, I decided to take advantage of my father’s buoyant mood and brought up the subject of my wardrobe.

  “You introduced me to society, but I still have the everyday clothing of a little girl.”

  “Yes, you do need new clothes,” he said.

  At the moment, I thought I could ask for the moon and he would buy the ladder to reach it.

  My mother turned from me to my father and shook her head. She looked like she was going to burst into tears. “All these changes coming so fast. I am losing my breath. It makes my heart palpitate.”

  “Now, now, Rosemary, nothing is happening overnight. It seems like Corrine has become a young woman in a matter of hours, but we both know it’s been happening for some time. I’ll set aside some money for a charge account at Hester’s. They’re one of our best bank customers. I think maybe all of us could use some new everyday things. I can’t have my girls looking ordinary with all this on the horizon. Appearances when we step up to this level are very important, as the Wexlers have shown us.”

  “I was thinking of having some private art lessons this summer, Daddy,” I said, deciding to push my advantage. “I’d like to do something sensible with my time.”

  “Sensible?” my mother said. “You call wasting money on some passing fancy like art sensible? We’ve been discussing you while you were away on this fruitless, wasteful trip to Charlottesville. Your father has a better suggestion when it comes to your time.” She looked to him and nodded, giving him the floor.

  I turned to my father. Somehow his talking about me seemed like a betrayal. I was the one with whom he kept secrets, not my mother.

  “Which is more reason for you to have an improved wardrobe, Corrine,” he said quickly, to lessen the impact of whatever boulder they were launching in my direction.

  “What?” I asked, now the one who was taking deep breaths.

  “I’d like you to come work at the bank. I have an opening for a receptionist. You’ll greet customers looking to open accounts and get loans. My secretary will educate you in the basic information, and you’ll direct the prospective customer to the right person. You’ll make some money to continue buying yourself some nice things and on the way learn about financial matters. More women are getting involved in the business world today. You might take to it.”

  “And you’ll meet young men who have established themselves,” my mother added. “What clearer way to judge than a fat bank account?”

  I could feel the blood rising up my neck to my face. This was her true purpose. She, they, would arrange my future after all. My mind raked through the images and memories of young men my father thought were up-and-coming businessmen, sons of well-to-do ones as well. If boring was a color, they’d be dressed in it.

  “I don’t think I’ll like that,” I said.

  “Of course you will,” my mother insisted. “It’s your father’s livelihood, and from what he’s telling us, even more so. Why wouldn’t you want to learn more about it?”

  I looked at him. She was forcing me into a corner. If I refused to do it, I could hurt my father’s feelings. He obviously liked the idea of my being the first face his prospective customers would meet. That was very pleasing to him, especially if he really was in the running to be the new bank board chairman. How could I be so selfish as to not share my natural beauty, use it to his advantage, and thus make a real contribution toward our family?

  “You heard him,” my mother pressed. “He’s building us a new house, and he said he was willing to get you new, more attractive clothes, clothes suited to a young woman with some stature. Are you still a child, or are you ready to do something very adult? Does it scare you, despite how much you claim you’ve matured, Corrine?”

  “I’m not saying I’m afraid,” I said. “I just don’t know if I’m going to be good enough. I don’t want to embarrass Daddy.”

  “Not possible,” he said, beaming.

  “I’m horrible at math.”

  “You don’t have to add or subtract a thing, Corrine. You’ll just learn the descriptions and the simple information to start the process and pass the customer on. It has nothing to do with running numbers. If someone asks you more detailed questions, you’ll simply tell him all his questions will be answered by the officer of the bank he’ll meet. I’ll take you to work with me every morning and bring you home.”

  “When?”

  “Shall we say in two weeks? You can do your shopping within that time. Your mother will help you again, because she herself will be looking for new things. Rosemary?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

  Probably none of the new fashion I had envisioned for myself would meet her standards, but the new shirtwaists with high collars and a waist tailored more like a man’s shirt were being worn by working women. I had no tight bodice or a skirt gathered at the waist, either. I wanted those clothes, but I didn’t want the work that accompanied them.

  “I don’t understand any of your hesitation. You never stop badgering that you want us to treat you more like a young woman than a young girl,” my mother said, sitting in her pool of self-satisfaction. For once, she believed she had successfully manipulated me. “Well, now you will have your wish. Your childhood friends who you always complain are too juvenile will peel away.”

  She folded her arms across her breasts and sat back. I was losing any resistance, and she knew it.

  “Both your father and I were quite impressed with how you handled your short visit with Aunt Nettie. You traveled on your own and managed what you saw as difficulties. We have new confidence in you,” she added. It felt like she was throwing me a bone.

  Managed? If she only knew, I thought, but I thanked her. To do otherwise would have raised new questions.

  “I can’t say I’m not saddened to see my little girl fade away. We wish, as you will someday, that children could remain innocent and without the trials and tribulations of adult life, all especially difficult for a woman today with the added baggage of being a good wife and managing a home. But time is a great thief, probably the greatest,” she said sadly.

  My father looked close to tears himself.

  There was no doubt in my mind from where I had inherited my dramatic powers. I was convinced she had been rehearsing this speech in her mind many times for years and probably dreamed of delivering it just like this every night. I looked at my father again. Now he was smiling and nodding. I felt like someone falling with nothing to reach out to and grab to break my descent. At least I would get in some defiance, I thought.

  “I’m not going to wear clothes that make me look like some old hag.”

  “You’d better not,” my father said, still smiling. “It’s not whom I want new customers to see when they enter my bank.”

  I glanced at my mother.

  The battle was set, at least. I’d make the best of it.

  Nevertheless, after dinner, I went up to my room to pout. I started on my diary again. I had so much to tell it, from my visit to my great-aunt to Garland to this. Never did I write with such frenzy. Finally, the words came easily.

  When I looked at what I had written, I realized I had mentioned Garland or something about him on almost every page. What, I wondered, would my rendezvous with him at Foxworth Hall have been like if I hadn’t drunk much or almost none of that limoncello? Would I have been more coy, fought harder to preserve my innocence? Would he have had more respect for me at the end of the evening? Wouldn’t he surely have appeared the following day to continue his courting? Now I felt like nothing more than another one of his romantic castaways adrift on a sea of her own regrets. And look at the future my parents were spreading before me.

  I closed my diary and put it in the bottom drawer of my dresser. Why, I wondered, was I bothering with it? Was it because I had no one to confide in but myself? Somehow, as was maybe true for most youn
g women my age, a diary did become the ears of someone else. After a while, it was no longer like talking to yourself. The one thing I remembered my paternal grandfather telling me before he died was “If you talk to yourself, you’ll never be lonely.”

  It was true. The diary took on a life of its own. Every night when I thought about it or looked at the drawer, I imagined it was pondering my words, my confessions, and my dreams. One day I would take it out and there would be pages and pages automatically filled in, all with advice and wisdom. It would tell me things my mother never had and never would. It would be my magic mother.

  It would eventually answer the biggest question I had: how do you separate the fantasy wishes of a young girl from the realistic and possible plans of a young woman? Night after night, I tossed and turned, struggling with the answer. I hated the way I looked in the morning. I hated the windows into a troubled mind that my eyes had become. Neither my father nor my mother appeared to notice any difference, however. My father thought I was worried about starting this new job in his bank, and my mother surely thought I was hating the thought of it. She looked so satisfied, which made me feel sicker.

  Maybe because of my heavy, joyless demeanor, she didn’t argue very much about my choice of everyday clothes. The salesladies reassured her and supported my choices, which obviously helped. I built my new wardrobe with the purpose being that I’d have something new and fresh to wear every workday. I bought new shoes and a fancy new hat to wear to and from work as well. The following week, my father surprised me at dinner with a new watch. It was a Waltham jeweled pocket watch in a gold case. My mother was far more stunned at the sight of it than I was. Watches weren’t exactly at the top of my wish list.

  “Harrington, what was the cost of such a thing?”

  “The cost is a business investment, Rosemary. When Corrine takes out her timepiece to tell a customer the time, I want him to be impressed even more with the quality of our employees. Take good care of it, Corrine,” he said, pushing it toward me. “Mark the time. In two days, you’ll be opening the bank with me at nine a.m.”

  “Thank you, Daddy,” I said, but not with the enthusiasm my mother wanted to see.

  She grimaced, grunted, and rose from the table. “I do hope all this investment in clothes, shoes, and now an expensive watch has the results we expect,” she muttered.

  “I’m sure it all will,” my father said, smiling at me.

  I smiled back, but he would have had to be an oaf not to see how empty it was.

  Despite what my mother had thought and how I had behaved toward the idea, I wasn’t at all afraid of working at the bank. From the way my father had described my duties and reinforced that description in the morning on the way in, I saw myself as nothing more than window dressing. If my father wasn’t the president of the bank and a potential candidate for board chairman, this position for me surely wouldn’t exist. Actually, as we rode into Alexandria and I sat back in my new clothes with my new and very fashionable small blue bonnet, I grew more excited about my being the prettiest female in the bank. My father said I would sit at a desk quite prominent to anyone entering.

  Even those men who had no need to speak to me would find a way to do so, I thought. It would be difficult, but I would try very hard to be modest and sound as if I had been working in banks and similar institutions for years.

  Every female employee stopped what she was doing to look at me when we entered. My father’s secretary, one of my mother’s widowed friends, Mrs. Emma Stone, rushed to greet us, pouring her saccharine welcome over me with embarrassing exaggeration.

  “Oh, how nice you look and so grown-up. I confess I couldn’t believe it when your father told me his plans for you. I’ve made sure to have one of our nicest desks brought out for you and, as you can see, placed in a perfect part of our lobby. I’ll go over all the options you can suggest and offer new customers with the proper referrals clearly delineated,” she said, her eyes moving off me to my father on almost every other word. “You mustn’t be afraid to ask me anything. Nothing is too small.”

  She paused to take a deep breath. I thought she reeked of some heavy rosewater scent. How could my father tolerate it? I wondered. She tried to take my hand to lead me to my desk, but I recoiled so sharply she could only widen her smile, nod at my father, and lead the way.

  My nameplate was on the desk, with the words Bank Receptionist and Information printed below my name. There were small piles of paper describing different types of loans, savings accounts, and checking accounts. She asked me to sit first. I suspected she was testing to see how I would do so. Would I, like some young girl, slump in my chair or sit up with dignity? I didn’t need any lessons. I sat quietly while she reviewed the information. When I didn’t ask a question, she asked if she was going too fast.

  “Not at all,” I said.

  I gave her my best false smile, and she continued. She ended just as the bank’s doors were opening.

  “Good luck,” she said, and hurried away. I sat back, aware that everyone in the bank was still looking at me. Some other girl would be intimidated, I thought, but having eyes drawn to my face magnetically was something I was quite accustomed to experiencing.

  My only fear was utter boredom.

  As it turned out, I had no reason to be afraid of long, empty moments. There was hardly a single male customer who didn’t stop by to greet me and be greeted. When I glanced over to my right to where my father sat, I saw his proud smile. Wouldn’t it be something, I thought, if Garland Foxworth entered this bank unaware that I would be the first person upon whom he would set sight? Just imagining it brought a softer, happier smile to my face. Many other young men, many who were already married, misinterpreted it as showing romantic interest in them. Those men stopped to talk on the way out as well.

  But as good-looking and as obviously established and successful as some were, none caused my heart to flutter the way Garland Foxworth first had that night at the Wexler gala. I guessed what I feared was coming true. I was doomed to judge and compare him to anyone I met forever and maybe never find a man who would satisfy me. Garland would surely think so and be the first to express it with that arrogant smile invading his eyes and his lips. Try as I might, it was a smile I simply could not forget.

  Sometimes, as the days went by, I thought my mother was actually upset that I was doing so well. My father never stopped talking about me at dinner, and suddenly, he and I had more to discuss. When he talked about some redesigning for the bank lobby, I could offer an opinion. If he ruminated about things he wanted to change to make the everyday business more efficient when and if he became board chairman, I could explain why I thought this suggestion or that might work out well. It was funny how I never considered the impact my working at my father’s bank would have on our father-daughter relationship.

  I put it all in my diary.

  Any of the girls or boys my age or a little older who saw me working were impressed, too. Daisy came to the bank with her father just to see me at work, and Arthur Raymond came in when he was back for a long weekend and had heard about me. He tried so hard to get me to pay more attention to him, but older, far more sophisticated young businessmen drew my eyes and ears away from him even while he was standing there and talking. Finally, he left the bank like some puppy with its tail between its legs, glancing back at me with disappointment dripping like tears from his eyes. I almost felt sorry for him, but then I thought that years from now, he would thank me for getting him to grow up faster.

  I was actually enjoying myself at the bank these days and loved how surprised I was about it. I took more care with my appearance, did just what my father suggested, and spent my earnings on things that would enhance my looks. I bought new handbags, a parasol for almost no reason at all, and another pair of shoes for work, even though I spent very little time on my feet.

  With my father, I attended some business lunches, met some interesting men, but no one yet who captured more than some passing interest. Every on
ce in a while, I would think about Garland and expect some letter, an apology, something, but nothing came for the next seven weeks. One day, my father made a reference to him when he talked about the bank’s investors planning on a quarterly meeting, a meeting that would lead to the election of a new board chairman. I tried to act disinterested, but I saw the way he was looking at me out of the corners of his eyes and then nodding to himself.

  If he only knew it all, I thought, perhaps he wouldn’t be so excited every time he mentioned Garland Foxworth, but it wasn’t something I would willingly tell him, ever.

  Ever is a small word. It doesn’t have the strength to be what it claims when it is overshadowed by the events of the day.

  At the beginning of my eighth week at the bank, it suddenly occurred to me that something was wrong. I woke at night with the realization that I had not had my monthly. It was well over two weeks since my due date. Being so occupied had kept me from thinking about it. When I realized it, a rush of blood flowed up my neck. My face became so hot I had to get up and get a cool washcloth to pat my cheeks. While I stood there gazing at myself in the mirror, I felt the way my nightie was making the nipples of my breasts tingle. Maybe it was the way I woke up, with fear slithering up my legs to the small of my stomach and then on into my heart.

  Nurse Grace Rose’s warning gonged like fire-alarm bells. This can’t be, I thought. I’d been a virgin. There had been too much blood, surely. The blood would have drowned any of Garland Foxworth’s sperm. I was just having some sort of summer cold or something, and that had upset my body clock. I worked on convincing myself, but it never was enough to permit me to fall asleep again.

  My parents noticed how quiet I was at breakfast, but both thought it was because I did not have a good night’s sleep and was tired. My mother even suggested that I stay home from work this morning.

  “You could do that,” my father seconded. “You’ve done swell, Corrine. You’ve earned yourself a day.”

  “Are you sure, Daddy? I don’t want to look like I’m taking advantage of the bank because you are the president and possibly the new chairman of the board.”