Chapter 4 Fliss

Dear Kitty, Fliss Orton’s baby is shrieking again; I doubt anyone in Briarwood House slept a wink! Definitely a case of the Terrible Twos, but Fliss sails above it all serene as a sailboat, if a sailboat wore a pink sweater set and an Alice band.

I wish you were here. —Grace

Bad mother , Fliss thought, tying a satin ribbon around a packet of ginger biscuits. This one for Bea Verretti, who roomed upstairs on the third floor. Bad mother. She wrapped another stack of biscuits in fluffy pink netting, this one for Reka across the hall... It was Valentine’s Day, and Fliss had baked ginger biscuits for each of the women at Briarwood House who didn’t have someone taking her out to a romantic dinner. ( Cookies , Fliss reminded herself. Biscuits were called cookies here; you’d think she’d remember that by now.) Every MissLonelyhearts deserved something nice on Valentine’s Day. February fourteenth was not only for lovebirds.

On the floor, Angela sat in her ruffled romper bashing two blocks together and roaring. The pitch of her roars changed octaves abruptly, jerking Fliss across the room like a fishhook. “You fancy a bottle?”

she asked, bending down with a determined smile. Smile, smile, always smile. “A biscuit?”

But Angela just screamed, scarlet as a London telephone box. “Maybe a nap,”

Fliss said, trying to scoop her daughter up, but Angela resisted being scooped, arms and legs stuck out rigid as a starfish. She was a collection of stiff limbs surrounding an open howling mouth, and no, she did not want a bottle or a biscuit or a nap. Bad mother , Fliss thought: the chant that yammered day and night, never stopping, never letting up, whether she was brushing her teeth or rolling out cookies or shining Angela’s little shoes. Bad mother. A good mother would know what her child wanted. A good mother would have figured it out by now.

“All right,”

she said wearily, “you feel like roaring, go ahead and roar.”

She pushed a curl under the blue Alice band in her hair and went back to the biscuits. Seven packs wrapped in pink netting, with pink ribbons. Mechanically Fliss fluffed the bows, made sure the ends hung exactly even. Fluff, fluff. There was no excuse for it not to be perfect. She didn’t have to work, after all. She was so lucky. Fluff, fluff.

A knock at the door brought her startling upright as if she’d been electrocuted. Had she lost time again? She kept doing that, settling herself determinedly to some task, then looking up and realizing somehow she’d lost fifteen minutes, thirty, an hour. How long had she been standing here fluffing the ribbons on a packet of ginger biscuits? What if Angela had toddled over to the dresser and pulled a drawer out onto herself? Bad mother , the inner voice howled, sending Fliss stumbling away from the table toward her daughter, but Angela was still bashing blocks around the floor and yowling. Another knock sounded, and Fliss knew exactly who it was.

“Mrs.Nilsson!”

she said brightly, smiling wide as she swung the door open. “What can I do for you?”

“That baby’s been crying all afternoon,”

her landlady said crossly, folding skinny arms across her bilious housecoat. “Don’t you know she needs a nap?”

“I’m afraid she’s refusing a lie-down.”

Fliss managed to sound rueful. “She’s at a difficult age.”

“Nonsense, my two always dropped right off when I put them down for a nap. You said when you moved in, the baby wouldn’t be any trouble—”

I didn’t think I’d still be in this bloody flat when Angela was about to hit two years old , Fliss thought. It had all gone wrong, so very wrong. “I’ll get her calmed down, I promise.”

“Hmph.”

Mrs.Nilsson’s eyes darted over Fliss’s room, looking for something to criticize. There wasn’t anything, Fliss knew. During the day she could hardly keep her eyes open, but at night she couldn’t sleep, so as soon as Angela dropped off, Fliss got up and cleaned. Last night she’d scrubbed the bathroom tiles with an old toothbrush, getting between each and every one, moving on to the kitchenette and falling asleep around four a.m. with her head against the icebox. “I must say you keep things neat,”

Mrs.Nilsson allowed, as her eyes landed on the pink-wrapped packets. “Cookies? Did you use my oven?”

Pete had given Fliss the heads-up when his mother went shopping, waving the smell out with a towel as she whisked baking sheets in and out of the oven. Fliss sighed internally, picked up one of the beribboned packages, and pressed it into her landlady’s hands. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Mrs.Nilsson.”

She lost some more time after closing the door, coming back to herself maybe ten minutes later when Angela’s howl changed key again. “Sorry, sorry,”

she said, absently wiping away the tears that were somehow falling, coming to pick her daughter up. This time Angela allowed herself to be lifted, though she held her little body stiff, fists braced against Fliss’s shoulder. “There you go,”

Fliss mumbled as Angela’s roars died off to hiccups, maneuvering one-handed to blot a handkerchief under her eyes. The tears always seemed to stop as easily as they started; she just never knew when they were coming. “There you go. Shall we deliver some biscuits?”

“Cookies?”

said Claire, stubborn red curls of just-washed hair springing out from a towel turban. “Sure. I don’t like Valentine’s Day, but I’ll take cookies. Thanks.”

And shut the door again just as Fliss was chirping “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

“Cookies?”

said Bea, back on crutches again after a whole winter off them. “You’re a real MVP, Mrs.O.”

And crammed two into her mouth at once with a grin, while Fliss wondered what on earth an MVP was. (Mad Vicious Parent?) “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

she cried instead, smiling even wider.

“Cookies?”

said Nora, still dressed in one of her slim National Archives suits when she answered the door. “Ah, you’re a saint, Fliss.”

Fliss expected to see Duke put his regal head round the door as he usually did, but there was no sign of the Great Dane in Nora’s little room. “He’s gone back where he came from,”

Nora said when Fliss asked. “His owner’s out of— Well, he’s home, that’s all.”

Fliss didn’t ask who he was. Nora didn’t look like she’d welcome the question. Her eyes slid to one side, and Fliss saw a stunning bunch of flame-orange roses upended in the bin, unopened card on top. She didn’t ask about those, either.

“I do miss having a dog around the place, even though Duke took up half the room,”

Nora said, smiling a little too brightly. “I’ll have to make do with cuddling Grace’s cat on Thursday nights.”

Red wasn’t in evidence when Fliss went across the hall to knock on the door of 4B. But someone else was certainly in evidence behind Grace’s half-opened door: Fliss smelled a man’s cigar, and Grace’s loosely knotted dragon-embroidered wrapper told its own story. “Cookies,”

she said warmly, taking the package. “Just the thing to nibble in bed on a cold night.”

I doubt you’ll eat them alone , Fliss thought. When Dan was in medical school, he and Fliss used to spend entire afternoons in bed with plates of buttered toast and mugs of tea, Fliss unabashedly tearing through some Hollywood scandal rag, Danny head down in some medical tome like Gray’s Anatomy. “The plantaris is placed between the gastrocnemius and soleus,”

he would read aloud in a Mickey Mouse voice, face perfectly grave. “It arises from the lower part of the lateral prolongation of the linea aspera, and from the oblique popliteal ligament of the knee joint.”

Gee whillikers, Minnie, this is fascinating stuff.

Stuff it, Dr. Dan , Fliss would giggle, hitting him with a pillow, and generally Gray’s Anatomy ended up on the floor along with the leftover toast crusts. They’d created Angela on one of those long lazy afternoons...

“Grace, chère —”

A man’s bass sounded from the other side of 4B, lazily accented with a Louisiana drawl. “You comin’ back to bed?”

Grace put a conspiratorial finger to her lips, and Fliss made a zipping gesture. How Grace never got caught was beyond her—two years at Briarwood House and she whisked men in and out past Mrs.Nilsson’s curfew like a sorceress. “Happy Valentine’s Day,”

Fliss said, managing to leave off the exclamation point. She knew she exclaimed! Too! Much! And smiled too much—Reka had once asked if her molars had fused. Fliss wondered sometimes if they had. Coming to the States, she’d made a special effort to be bubbly because otherwise people thought she was cold, reserved, English. Now she wondered how she could turn it off.

“Cookies? Aren’t you just the sweetest thing!”

cooed Arlene, waltzing past on the landing as Fliss left a pink package on Reka’s doorstep. The old woman was definitely in there; Fliss could hear the sound of footsteps and smell linseed oil, but she was on one of her painting binges again and wouldn’t hear the roof come down much less a knock at her door. “Oh, none for me, I’m on a new regime—no desserts, no butter, no cream in my coffee. Careful, you’ve got just a bit of baby spit right there—”

Arlene’s sharp nail flicked Fliss’s collar. “ So nice of you to do something on Valentine’s Day for all the old maids.”

“Reka’s a widow,”

Fliss pointed out, juggling Angela, who was reaching for Arlene’s jangly rhinestone earring.

“Well, she says she’s a widow. Awfully convenient that she never had to actually produce a husband, isn’t it? Who’d ever want to marry that?”

Arlene wrinkled her perfectly powdered nose, dressed to the nines in a bubblegum halter cocktail frock under her winter coat, hair drilled into perfect waves. “My Harland is picking me up,”

she purred, swishing the crinoline under her skirts. “He got us a table at Longchamps, you know. I really think tonight might be the night. He has been gearing up to ask a certain question , if you know what I mean—”

“Good luck!”

Fliss said, not sure what else to say, then “Angela, no—”

as her daughter made another swipe at Arlene’s earring. Bad mother, bad mother.

“Want,”

Angela said. It was the only word she said with any regularity lately, aside from no.

“Aren’t you precious?”

Arlene cooed, even though Fliss didn’t think Arlene liked Angela all that much. Fliss wasn’t sure Arlene even liked her , for all the smiles and the cozy us-girls confidences. What she likes is your ring , Grace had said once, smiling that sleepy, amused smile. You got a handsome young doctor to give you a diamond—the Huppmobile wants to know what you’ve got, and if some of it can rub off on her. And sometimes Fliss saw Arlene’s beady gaze land on the wedding band under Dan’s diamond, sharp as a hungry magpie: How’d you do it? How’d you do it ?

“Maybe when your Dan comes home, Harland and I can double-date with you two,”

Arlene said now, flitting down the stairs. “Must be off!”

When Dan came home. When would that be? He was in Japan; he’d been there nearly since Angela was born. “It’s just a police action, not a war,”

he’d said over the telephone from San Diego, when he’d gotten the news his reservist status was being activated, that he was going to the hospital base in Tokyo. “Hopefully there won’t be that many grunts from Korea for me to patch up.”

“It’s not fair,”

Fliss had erupted, bursting into tears. She winced every time she thought of that—it had only been two months after Angela’s birth; even a toothpaste commercial on the radio could reduce her to bawling. But she’d wailed without thinking, clutching the phone to her ear: “It’s not fair !”

“It is fair, honey. They paid my way through med school—they call me up, I’ve got to go.”

It’s not fair to me, Fliss had wanted to howl. Taking a man away from a wife and a two-month-old daughter? What was fair about that?

But—

“Oh, Fliss, I’m sorry,”

her husband had repeated, sounding so helpless over the crackling phone line that her tears had dried up at once. Was this any way to send a man to war? At least he wasn’t going to the front lines; his orders would keep him at one of the big army hospitals far from danger. She should be counting her blessings, not racketing on about what was fair . “You’re right,”

she’d managed to say, forcing that note of cheer into her voice that she’d gotten just! So! Good! At! In the two years since. “It won’t be long, and think of the money we’ll save, Ange and me renting here till you’re back. Enough to afford a house by the time it’s all over!”

Only here they were, nearly two years later. His tour should have been up, but he’d gone in for another one. They’re so short on doctors , he’d written despairingly, even as they were both counting down the days till he was supposed to be done. I’d be leaving everyone in such a lurch if I go. It’s killing me to be away from you and Ange, but my guys are drowning here. He’d asked three separate times if Fliss was really sure about the second tour, if it was really all right, and what could she reply to that except “Of course! I’m sure it’ll be just a few more months! Time will fly!”

Time wasn’t flying, not at all. But still: We’re lucky , Fliss reminded herself, hauling Angela back to their two rooms on the second floor. We’re so lucky. A healthy daughter; a savings account tidily accumulating; a husband serving his country but not in danger. Lucky!

She sat down at the tiny card table she’d turned into a desk, spread with a yellow-checked cloth she’d ironed last night at three in the morning when she couldn’t sleep, and one-handedly fished out a fresh sheet of pale blue stationery. “Put a kiss into the letter for Daddy?”

she asked Angela, but her daughter was thrashing to be set down, so Fliss let her toddle back toward the blocks. Dear Dan , she penned determinedly in the pretty looping penmanship that started lurching downward like a drunk when she was tired. Angela sends you a kiss, and I have a new picture of her—enclosed. Huckstop’s Photography gets half their business from us, I swear! Tears started falling again; Fliss absently wiped them away before they could blot her letter. She wrote about the funeral of King George VI, which would be taking place tomorrow in London, and how Princess Elizabeth had decided to take the name ElizabethII. I know I’m more of an American now, but Princess Elizabeth still feels more mine than President Truman. She certainly has better hats! Angela was fully toilet-trained; not a single accident for two months! Fliss would be sending a care package soon...

Angela’s roar changed to a howl, and Fliss’s head jerked up to see her trying to climb her way up the front of the dresser. “No, no—”Running across the room, plucking her off. Angela tangled her little fists angrily in Fliss’s hair, dislodging the Alice band. Her face looked like a pomegranate, red and furious—Fliss found herself staring at it dispassionately, even as she crooned and joggled. Bad mother , she thought, settling Angela down with her blocks again. She dragged herself back to her writing table, picking up the pen, but after a line or two about the weather she realized she was just scrawling badmotherbadmotherbadmother , lines listing drunkenly down across the page. She stared at her ruined letter, and for a moment wondered if she should just mail it. Let him see. Didn’t a man have a right to know when his wife was such a failure?

Bad mother.

Feel it , Fliss thought, training her eyes on Angela. Pretty Angela in her pink ruffles and lace-trimmed ankle socks, that pomegranate rage already drained away into her usual rosy cherub’s face. Feel it.

But there was no rush of maternal love, no sweep of adoration. Fliss remembered what it had felt like, that tidal wave of exhausted joy that had swamped her when they laid Angela in her arms, a howling slimy frog of a newborn. The happiness . She could remember it; she just couldn’t feel it now . All she could feel, gazing at her adorable daughter, was a desperate gray fog of nothing.

She looked down at her spoiled letter, crumpled it up, reached for a fresh sheet. Tears again. Blot, blot, blot. Dear Dan, don’t you worry about your girls! We’re all just fine !

Fliss had been skipping church lately, but today she had business after the service so she spent fifteen minutes wrangling Angela into her frilly Sunday frock. Angela submitted to the frock agreeably enough but balked at the precious patent-leather Mary Janes that Fliss’s mother had sent in her Christmas package from Buckinghamshire. Fliss had written her that Angela would not wear shoes lately, absolutely would not , but her mother wrote back You just have to be firm with her and Fliss did her firm, smiling best for another ten minutes. At that point, with the service beginning in a quarter hour and a tiny Mary Jane whizzing past her ear, Fliss gave up on the shoes, shoveled Angela into her pram, and flew down Wood Street toward Trinity Presbyterian.

Mrs.Sutherland was already there, causing a stir as usual as she settled into her front pew with her little boy. “ The Sutherland family,”

a woman on Fliss’s right whispered. “They say she’s from Bermuda — looks a bit dusky , doesn’t she—but she modeled in London before Senator Sutherland’s son came along and swept her up. Did you know her over there, you being English too?”

Fliss wanted to point out that England wasn’t that small an island, and it wasn’t precisely close to Bermuda, either—but knew she’d only get a blank look. “No, I didn’t.”

“My, I wish I had a Lanvin coat like that...”

Fliss didn’t go up to Mrs.Sutherland after the service. Later was better, over the cake and coffee in the church hall. She’d munched her way through a gelid slice of banana cake and smiled her way through two admonishing church matrons (“Why isn’t that child in shoes?”) by the time Reverend Poolstock released Mrs.Sutherland’s hand from his big paws (he was angling for a new stained-glass window for the nave) and Fliss could slide her pram through the throng of gossiping parishioners. “Mrs.Orton,”

the senator’s daughter-in-law greeted her. Nearly a head taller than Fliss in her plum shawl coat, head crowned by a black pillbox hat pinned with an amethyst brooch. The picture of a young Washington society wife, today absent her handsome husband with his square jaw, his pin-striped suit, his red tie, his assured future as the third Sutherland to serve the state of Virginia in the Senate. At least Fliss thought it was Virginia. Nearly ten years in the States and she still couldn’t name all of them.

“How nice to see you,”