Pam lifted her narrow shoulders. “I’d suggested that earlier, before she decided to season him. But Concepta didn’t want her niño anywhere near Ricky Mendozo, and Ricky was in the children’s room that morning. ‘Might catch it,’ Concepta said.”
Ricky Mendozo’s mother had AIDS. Ricky himself was a sickly child, often hospitalized. Donna and Pam and Beth understood Concepta’s reluctance to let her grandchild play with the runny-nosed, frequently soiled Ricky. As far as the staff knew, Ricky did not have AIDS. But the staff didn’t know very much.
Some things they did know. They knew that the little kids who came in liked stuffed animals and trucks and toys you could ride and toys you could climb into. They liked crayons and paint. They didn’t like to put things away. They liked to hurl things around, and to hurl themselves around, and to sit on laps. They enjoyed ice cream, though they were fearful of getting themselves dirty. They were loud and possessive and self-centered, but they had learned somewhere that when you grabbed a toy from another child you had to shout “Share!”
But when their mothers or aunts or grandmothers or father’s girlfriends retrieved them after lunch, something frightened un-coiled within certain of these stained, smelly little persons. The children did their part in the rough ceremony of reunion—“Where the fuck’s your cap?” “Did you make a mess like always?”—by producing an article of clothing or feinting at mopping some milk. But the staff felt their hearts sink, and the Maeves claimed that theirs broke in two, at the premonition of outrage that might follow, back in the welfare motel, or the dirty apartment, or the room grudgingly loaned by a sister-in-law, places where even the bare-bones rules of Donna’s Ladle did not prevail. “He had such a nice morning,” a Maeve moaned to Josie one mild November afternoon, as the voice of Nathaniel’s mother shot through an open basement window from the sidewalk: “You do what I say, hear? Or else!”
“ ‘Or else’ may mean no more than a slap,” Josie said to the worried girl. “And he did have a nice morning. That’s important.”
It was important to keep the children’s room open, even though maintaining the play area meant that there were fewer hands making lunch in the kitchen. Some children had become regulars — Nathaniel, Cassandra, Africa, Elijah. Others visited from time to time. These days — because of the Helping Hands clothing drive — the Ladle’s youngest guests wore outfits that had originated in Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale’s.
But the erect and solemn girl of about seven who appeared one December morning was not wearing the castoffs of a Godolphin child — not of a twentieth-century child, anyway. Her long dress of gray flannel might have belonged to an early citizen of Massachusetts Bay, if it had not had a back zipper. The woman who accompanied the child was garbed also in a long plain home-sewn dress. They wore identical brown capes. Each had a single braid, thick and fair. The child’s straight-browed smoky eyes resembled her mother’s. But the girl lacked the scar that ran down the left side of the woman’s face, from the lower lid to the middle of the cheek.
When they arrived, Beth was circulating through the large basement dining room with a tray of knishes. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Beth.”
A silence followed. “Yes,” the woman said at last.
At Donna’s Ladle the staff restricted its questions to matters of food and comfort. And so: “Would you like a meat pastry?” Beth said, bending down to the child. “Take two.” But the child, with murmured thanks, took only one. Beth straightened up. “We’re glad to have you with us,” she said. “Please feel at home. We serve lunch at noon. Sit at any table. Breakfast fixings are on the buffet against the wall. The quiet room is behind you,” she said, pointing with her free hand to a narrow room with three cots. “The children’s room is next to it.” She backed away. “Feel at home,” she repeated weakly, realizing that this couple would not feel at home anywhere.
Beth reported her encounter to Donna, who was concocting a sweet-and-sour sauce in the kitchen. Donna handed the wooden spoon to a volunteer and moved to the pass-through, from which vantage she could see the entire dining room.
“On the right,” Beth said.
Donna was distracted by the sight of twenty-year-old Bitsy crooning to a stuffed animal. “Off her meds?”
“Yes. Says they addle her.”
Donna shifted her gaze to the next table and saw the new guests. They were seated side by side. The child’s hands, clasped, rested on the table. The mother’s hands lay in her lap. Each was attentive to the space in front of her eyes … to the vision of some New Jerusalem, Donna suspected.
“Adventuresses, do you think?” Beth said. “I’ll go have a chat with poor Bitsy.”
“Actresses on their lunch break,” suggested Pam, at Donna’s other shoulder. “What’s that Arthur Miller play?”
“The Crucible,” Donna said. Pam moved off.
“They’re like from another world,” said a Maeve who had replaced Beth.
And Josie had replaced Pam. “Weirdos.”
Donna didn’t reply. These newcomers were not the poor she had always with her. She was used to cheats and crazies, drunks and dealers. She was fond of little retired chambermaids whose voices still shivered with brogues; they relied on the Ladle to augment their pitiful pensions. She liked hot-tempered sisters from the South and the South Bronx; she viewed with puzzled respect magic-mongers from the islands; and she was even accustomed to certain outspoken religious zealots — shrews of Christ, Josie called them. But plain-living puritans — what were they doing in her facility?
The pair didn’t look needy. But the Ladle’s policy must hold: no prying. Among the guests were a few batty gentlewomen who might well possess million-dollar trust funds, who probably lunched at the Ritz on the days that the Ladle was closed. They were served without question. So, too, would this mother and daughter be served. It was the rule.
IN THE MONTHS THAT FOLLOWED, Donna and Beth and Pam learned a few facts about the mother and daughter, facts which they shared at the weekly staff meetings. The woman’s name was Signe. The child’s was Rhea. Signe was separated from Rhea’s father, a clergyman. Mother and daughter lived in two basement rooms just over the line in Boston. They received a monthly check from the clergyman. It met their wants. “But only barely,” Signe said to Donna. It was after lunch. The dining room was emptying out; the three were alone at a table. “We are grateful to the Ladle for our breakfasts and lunches.”
“I’m so glad. But there are other sources you could tap, too,” Donna responded. “The state government supplements inadequate incomes, and the city itself—”
“No.”
After a few minutes Donna said idly, “We sometimes hear of jobs. Tailoring work.”
“Rhea is my work.”
Donna looked at the severe little girl, who was reading a thick book. The Bible? Donna wondered. She squinted at the title.
“It was Grimm’s,” she reported later that week. “In the Modern Library edition. No pictures. Impressive.”
“Signe teaches her at home,” Beth said.
“Isn’t that against the law?”
“No,” Pam said, and then looked down at her hiking boots. She was terrified of seeming to show off.
“Tell us,” Donna said, and laughed.
Pam ran both hands through her curls. “There’s a law that even provides for home schooling, sets down regulations. But the person who teaches has to take a test, and a curriculum has to be followed, and materials … Signe would probably meet the requirements, but I doubt she’s deigned to apply.”