And Abruptly Left Me

The first time we spoke, I was halfway through a crossword severed from The Seattle Times.

The year was 1931, an early afternoon in early April that found me curled against the mohair velvet arm of my favorite chaise. Before me, the Warren's empty ballroom caverned. Dust filmed the parquet dance floor, the Axminster-carpeted perimeter. Chandeliers cooled under corniced ceilings. French windows paneled plastered walls, beyond which spanned Puget Sound's pewtered waters to the east, Kitsap's cedared hills to the west.

Every year, Puget Sound Warren closed in September and reopened in May. Every year, it repopulated with seasonal chambermaids in April. Our “spring girls”—a name I coined and Philip indulged, never mind that most were no younger than I. For six weeks, our spring girls opened swollen windows to spring breezes and tempted winter from dimmed guest suites. Meanwhile, I haunted drowsy hotel rooms with my crosswords and my romance novels, installing myself wherever I found a chair and a spring girl inclined to chatter.

That particular April afternoon, you were one of four spring girls in the ballroom with me, tasked with its revival by the end of the week. The other three tossed remarks my way as they dragged coverlets off dormant upholstery, dished teasing admonishment for my hindrance, demanded my judgment on disputes I had not heard the beginnings of. You, newest among them, kept to the perimeter, armed with bucket and rag and a scarred wooden ladder you trawled from window to window. It seems impossible, now, that there was ever a time my attention did not bend toward you. But as you and the spring girls settled into work, I became so engrossed in my crossword that I did not notice your ladder scrape by my chaise.

I'd been stuck on 1929 Shearer picture, last word for nearly a quarter hour when came your voice, the first word between us: “Desire.”

I looked up. You stood above me, tiptoed on the second-highest ladder rung, facing away from me so I only saw your profile. Thick, straight brows; clean jaw; slight nose. A mouth that softened your boyish neatness. Dark hair chignoned with pins, heather uniform sleeves rolled twice to your forearms, black lace-ups tugged over cream stockings.

“Excuse me?”

“The film,” you said. “Their Own Desire.”

I penciled in the letters. They fit.

“You like that movie?” I asked.

You shrugged. “I liked her.”

“Norma Shearer?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

When you next bent to soap your rag, one of your shoes slipped halfway off the rung. I did not think before I stood, braced one hand against the ladder wood and clasped the other right above your ankle. I could not tell whether the warmth belonged to my hand or to your skin beneath the stocking.

“Careful, Teresa!” another spring girl called. I folded your name and pocketed it.

You surveyed me. You did not smile, but you did say, “I'm okay, Mrs. Warren. Thank you.”

“Right.” I returned to the chaise.

For the rest of the afternoon, I glanced at you every time your ladder scuffed the hardwood, but you did not slip again.

Apparently, Philip had hired the previous Friday. Mabel Price, one of our usual spring girls, had taken a year-round housekeeping position with the Whitcombs, leaving Philip to find her replacement. He told me, over the evening's filet mignon and buttered asparagus, that he hired you because you did not beg for employment.

“I asked, ‘Can you clean? Can you type?’ and she said she could,” Philip said. “Then I asked, ‘Can you cook? Can you drive?’ and she said she couldn't. See, that's how a person ought to answer a question. Everyone comes in claiming he can do everything these days.”

“No one can do everything,” I agreed. We thus met the quota of daily dinner conversation necessary to constitute a marriage.

I was twenty-six that spring, with chestnut hair hewn to my jaw and coaxed into soft finger waves, same as all the young wives. I had deep-set hazel eyes, a pointed chin, full cheeks. Neither I nor Philip thought me gorgeous, but I did think myself pretty in a useful way. Unthreatening. Approachable. The kind of face you could share a side-eye with over a rude dinner guest.

Philip tore the crossword from the Times and slid it toward my unbuttered toast.

For the first year of our marriage, we read the news together over breakfast. Or rather, Philip read the news. I heeded his verdicts on Hoover and Smith, on tariffs, on Prohibition, on aeroplanes. I inspected the headlines and extrapolated the stories from there. Lately, there had been little I cared to hear about. Banks suspended payment, factories idled, mortgages defaulted. Philip continued perusing the stock market for his own purposes. I retreated to the crossword.

In bed that night, I parsed your references as Philip dozed over The Maltese Falcon at the other end of the bed.

Your name was Teresa Manalo; you were twenty-four years old; you had moved to Seattle seven years earlier from a place called Ilocos Norte. Over the past year, you cleaned houses in winter, sorted apples in Wenatchee in autumn, plucked strawberries just outside Seattle in summer. A Mr. and Mrs. Mercer said you spoke wonderful English, that guests found you charming. A Mr. Nakamura said you could toil until the sun set, that his wife found you pleasant company.

I had never been anything but Beatrice Bell and then Beatrice Warren. I thought there was something romantic in how many different Teresas you had already managed to be.

For the rest of that week, I fished for your attention whenever you neared. This was ostensibly for your help with the crossword, though of course, I just wanted to exchange whatever words I could contrive.

As a matter of fact, your crossword abilities barely exceeded mine. Between us, we managed films, novels, geography, religion; we were hopeless at college athletics, opera, financiers, statesmen. I delighted in our sameness.

I began following you around the ballroom with the day's crossword bookmarking my copy of Persuasion. When you moved from the windows to the wall sconces, I took the nearest exiled settee. While you polished the stage rail, I perched upon the piano bench. You asked why I'd abandoned my chaise. I said I was seeking better lighting.

By Friday afternoon, the ballroom was alive if not awake—right on schedule. The lounge chairs resumed their circles around card tables. The mirrors shone, fingerprintless.

“I've been assigned the east wing next. Floors three and four,” you said. “The lighting's probably better.”

So to the Warren's east wing I went. We did not do anything of note, those first few suites. You turned mattresses, washed glass, aired curtains. I occupied furniture until you ordered me off it, which you never did. You just watched until your gaze scorched, and I flounced to my feet for fear of sparking.

I finished what I could of my crosswords—sometimes with your assistance, sometimes not. You made beds, you rehung curtains, you beat rugs. Sometimes, I even helped. Mostly, you waved me off, so I read Persuasion instead. We spent another week like this, wherein you restored half the third-floor suites to their summer luxury.

You liked me tucked out of the way while you worked, which I could not protest, for it allowed me a view of you over the top edge of my book. Once, you passed behind my sofa, and I had to refrain from turning after you. A moment later, the cushion dipped behind my shoulders. Your breath tickled my jaw. I flinched and clutched the book to my chest. You folded over the back of the sofa, cheek pillowed on your crossed forearms.

“I want to know what happens,” you said.

“Don't you have work to do?” Heat itched my nape. I regretted sounding like I did not want you near, or worse, that I was embracing my role as your employer's wife.

You were unbothered. The corner of your mouth quirked, and you pushed yourself off the couch. “Fine. You should read out loud, though. Don't hoard the entertainment.”

“From the beginning?”

“No. Just start from where you are.”

So I read to you. You punched pillows into shape and accused Anne of making herself miserable on purpose. You polished mirrors and faulted Wentworth for his sulking. I argued against your opinions so you'd speak more, even when I didn't particularly disagree. We finished Persuasion in the last suite of the east wing's third floor. I came to the fourth with Jane Eyre.

Our conversations digressed. I collected the facts your references had not divulged—that I would not, either, should I ever have to write one. Your brother spent summers in Alaska canneries. You took anatomy and chemistry at the University of Washington. You wanted to go back and get a nursing degree, when the money was there. You didn't know if you would, because the money was never there.

“Did you go to college, Mrs. Warren?” you asked once.

We were in one of the corner suites, and I grasped the edges of a bedsheet as you smoothed it over the mattress. It was one of the rare days you permitted my assistance, and only because I'd complained I felt decorative reading while you worked. In truth, I could no longer read without losing my place every few pages. Moreover, I could no longer sit still around you. I abandoned sofas for desk chairs for mattresses for sofas again.

“I studied art history,” I said. “And literature.”

“Of course you did,” you said, and smiled with both eyes and mouth, this time.

I tugged my gaze from your face in stages. A loose thread at the hem of your skirt. Jane Eyre on the coffee table, its softened edges. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. It suits you,” you said. “What did you do with your degree?”

“Nothing,” I echoed. “I married Philip. I help run the Warren. I pick out the paintings in the lobby.”

You sat beside me. The mattress dipped. “I see.”

What did you see? You were less than a hand's breadth away. My gaze skittered.

“Mrs.—”

“Bea.”

You quirked a grin. “Mrs. Bea?”

“Just Bea.”

“Bea.” You tipped your chin down. “Bea Warren.”

You kissed me, and you tasted like mint and black tea. You held my face with both hands. I clutched the placket of your uniform dress like it was a necktie, threaded my fingers through the base of your chignon. My wrist molded to the hollow of your jaw, pulse to pulse.

I had spent most of my life assuming appetite would find me eventually. Other girls seemed to acquire it with womanhood: the boy who worked the drugstore soda fountain, a Cadillac convertible coupe, a view of the Parisian skyline. I thought I had, too, because I liked bias-cut dresses and Shalimar smudged on my wrists. I liked boys with Hollywood hair and roadsters, boys who lent me their tweeds when evenings cooled. But these things were like hors d’oeuvres on passing trays. I never thought to prepare for the moment I finally hungered.

Your thighs bracketed my hips. You branded one palm to my sternum. My skirt contoured my legs. You had to hike yours up. Now I knew and could not unknow: the small of my back sweated to fresh linen, your hair unpinned, its waves curtaining one shoulder until half my periphery disappeared—the half of the room without windows. I did not know where in my life to put a wanting like this. I had never had to.

Our breaths shuddered in and out of rhythm. I tried to match mine to yours, but you must have had larger lungs than I, because I could not manage it for long. But for that moment, at least, I did not need to manage anything. You came closer. I kissed you again.

You had two weeks left at the Warren. I refused to think of this, and yet I thought of little else.

We made the most of the abundant empty rooms. Guest suites, linen closets, once even the little sitting room off the east stair. The Warren woke around us. Spring girls accrued assignments outside their assigned floors and wings, for rooms had to be double-checked, linens restocked, summer furniture nudged into final positions. We progressed slowly through Jane Eyre, for I found myself nearly constantly restless, and it made reading difficult. I bit down grins over my morning chamomile. I curled away from Philip in bed so he would not see me weep.

“Will you stay?” I asked you, just once. I sat on the writing desk with you fitted between my knees. You had just made the double bed, and in that final week had refused to disturb fresh linen.

“What do you mean?”

“For the summer,” I said. “Philip could hire you. I could convince him.”

“Oh.” You worried one of my silver hoops between your fingers. “I'm sorry, Bea. I already have a job lined up.”

“You don't want to stay?”

“I was never going to stay.”

I only did not protest because it felt too childish to. In my mind, you had already fused with the Warren’s machinery: my spring girls, my books, my endless free hours. Why not extend the season? Why not convince Philip we needed another hire?

“Teresa?” another spring girl called, and you shoved me into the room's linen closet as she knocked. “I think you locked the door by accident. Have you got extra pillow slips?”

Through the door slats, I watched you swirl, then pin, your bun.

“Ask Nora,” you said. “I'm out, too. I was going to distribute them later.”

You relocked the door when the spring girl's footsteps receded. By the time you turned back to me, I had already emerged, shoulder and hip braced against the closet door.

We looked at one another. We laughed. You said, “Where were we?” and flicked your eyes toward Jane Eyre. We did not speak of your staying again.

We spent our last day as we'd spent all our previous days, and maybe a part of me believed that if I did not treat this like an ending then it would not become one. I read you another chapter of Jane Eyre. We were nowhere near done. You lay with your head in my lap; I combed my fingers through your hair until you complained I was worsening the knots. When the chapter ended, you did not prompt another.

“Will you see me off?” you asked. Your train would leave King Street at nine the next morning.

I traced the ridge of your shoulder through the sheet. Your hair fanned across the pillow. “Of course.”

“You don't have to.”

“I will.”

Saturday morning dawned, an unseasonable bright spell after weeks of gray spring. I overdressed: cap-sleeved white blouse, seafoam skirt, black pumps, silk gloves I brought but did not wear. On impulse, I folded a wool-crepe coat over one arm before I descended the stairs and regretted it when I reached the lobby—even more so once I stepped outside. There, humidity clung beneath my collar and the backs of my knees.

“Mrs. Warren—” A departing spring girl asked where she should leave the linen-room key.

“Mrs. Warren—” A bellman didn't know where the new luggage room labels belonged.

“Mrs. Warren—” A chef needed Philip and found me instead.

I let every inquiry snag me. I retreated into the unsunned lobby and steadied myself upon the walnut banister of the grand staircase and imagined you and I at King Street Station. Your valise at your feet, your coat buttoned because you'd rather be hot than have to carry extra. Steam would pall the platform awning. Porters would shout. Strangers would grumble at our stillness, tickets clutched around suitcase handles.

I could not imagine myself there as your employer nor your friend. I could not be your lover there.

At the Warren, I knew how to arrange us. I could be Philip's and I could be yours. I could keep everything balanced, separate, have each facet of my life intersect only where fitting, like crossword answers. The rest of the world offered no such geometry.

I told myself I would leave once I had cooled down, and I did not. I told myself I would leave when the lobby cleared, and it did not. Twenty minutes passed in this way, and then it was eight-thirty, and I would not have made the ferry even if I'd sprinted for it.

Philip found me like this—my gloves balled in one fist, my coat abandoned to the banister.

“Didn't you have somewhere to be?” he asked.

“Nowhere.” I removed my hat. I hefted my coat back onto my arm.

“In that case, enjoy the last day of quiet.” Philip produced the day's crossword from his suit's inside pocket, folded twice into halves. “Though to tell you the truth, it'll be quiet all summer. Everyone's scrimping. I was even thinking of closing the east wing.”

I took the crossword. “That's a thought.”

He kissed my temple. We parted ways.

I returned to the fourth-floor suite at the very end of the east wing—the last bed we'd shared. It was newly made, the counterpane drawn smooth. I threw my coat over the closet door and tossed my gloves and hat to the coffee table. I took the sofa, unfolded the crossword, let it wilt over my skirt. The cushions had been righted from where we'd knocked them askew. Your doing, sometime between my leaving the bed and you leaving the Warren.

Sunlight bladed over floral rugs through windows wreathed in damask. A vase waited empty on the dresser. The nightstand stood polished and vacant, and my copy of Jane Eyre was nowhere to be found.