I looked to the door again. Did she put this here on purpose? Or was my mother the last person to stay in this room? Turning back to the image, I studied it more closely, spinning a story in my head about the circumstances that could have led to her arriving in this room. And how on earth did she look so happy with Ada? Had the fun been sucked out of my great-aunt in the preceding twenty-eight years by age or some tragedy?
No, Mama said Ada was strict. So none of it made sense. And my mother would have been nineteen when the photograph was taken. A year before she married my father. Three years before Harold was born. Did Ada arrange their marriage?
I left the clothes on top of the dresser and dug through my trunk for pen and paper. There was a small chair at the dressing table, and I sat down, already composing the letter.
Mama,
Why didn’t you tell me why you spent a summer here? What did you do? Was it scandalous?
I stared at the page. She would never answer that question, especially not in writing. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t ask it.
Ada is strict, as you said. And she’s said I’m not to borrow any of her things—can you send my radio and some books? I’m afraid I’ll die of boredom otherwise. And while Daddy might be okay with that, I know you’ll take pity on your only daughter.
Love,
Marilyn
PS: She stole my lipstick! Would you please run into Saks and get me another? I’m not sure they actually have real stores here . . .
I folded the monogrammed paper and slipped it into the matching envelope, licked and sealed it, scribbled the address, and placed a stamp in the corner. But then I realized I didn’t know the address here. So, being flippant, I wrote my name in the return address corner, and under it, “Ada’s house of horrors.”
Then I returned to unpacking.
CHAPTER SIX
Dinner was less the quiet affair than I imagined, Ada peppering me with so many questions that I was hardly able to take a bite before I needed to answer the next one. Though the food was excellent because she employed a cook. But she wanted to know absolutely everything from my dress size to my favorite books to what happened with Daniel.
And much to my surprise, when I told her what I’d said as my father dragged me out of the sanctuary, she laughed. “No, I don’t suppose Walter would have handled that well at all. Though how your mother managed to keep a straight face, I will never know.”
“Why did my mother come stay here?”
She waved a hand at me. “That’s her story to tell, not mine. I don’t meddle.”
“You’re a matchmaker. Isn’t that professional meddling?”
That elicited a small smile. “I didn’t matchmake her. She found that fuddy-duddy all on her own.” She leveled a gaze at me. “But apparently you can’t breed out exuberance.”
I tried to imagine the word exuberance being used to describe my mother. Sure, she was more fun than my father, but exuberant? Then again, she certainly looked so in the picture in my room.
But Ada wasn’t done. “And you refused to marry the boy?”
“It’s not the Dark Ages. And it wasn’t like I was going to—” I stopped myself. If my mother had fainted at me saying I wasn’t pregnant, I didn’t want to kill Ada.
“Find yourself in a fix,” she finished. “No, I agree.”
“You do?” She nodded. “Mama fainted when I said that in front of the rabbi.”
Ada threw her head back in a deep belly laugh. “Oh my goodness. Yes, we have our hands full, don’t we?” She pushed her plate away and blotted at her mouth delicately with her napkin. “Go get ready for our walk. I think you’ll be good at this part of the business.”
“Business?”
She winked at me.
I didn’t think I needed to get ready specifically, but Ada rejected my first three outfits. “Aren’t we just going for a walk?”
“A working walk.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
She pulled a dress from the armoire and held it out at me, closing one eye. “This one.”
“Can I have my lipstick back?”
“No.” And with that, she left the room so I could change.
Once I was dressed suitably enough for a walk down Fifth Avenue back home, Ada adjusted my hair and neckline.
“You’re not trying to fix me up with someone, are you?” I asked warily.
“You?” She laughed. “Goodness no. You’d be the end of my business.”
“Then what—？”
“Come on. Let’s see how good you are.”
“Good at what exactly?” She smiled, and I put my hands on my hips. “I’m not leaving this house until you tell me where we’re going.”
“To the park, darling. Honestly, do you think your parents would send you down here to do something sinister?”
I didn’t tell her that I had tried the doors upstairs. They were all locked other than mine and the bathroom. And mine didn’t lock.
We started down the block, Ada’s heels clacking loudly along the sidewalk, her pace betraying her New York roots as she zigzagged around slower walkers and narrowly avoided the careening trolley cars.
“Do you get used to the trolleys?” I asked.
“I never got un-used to them.”
After four blocks, we came to a park—large by New York standards if you didn’t count Central Park. Tiny compared to that. There were several paths, and Ada chose one to the right. Rounding a grove of trees, we came upon a tennis court, where a group of young men played, a half dozen others watching.
“This is where I leave you,” Ada said, handing me a small pad of paper and a pen.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Get names, phone numbers, and ages. Get their heights too. Some girls are picky about that.”
“Of who?”
She gestured toward the court. “As many of them as you can.”
“Ada, I’m confused.”
She turned to me, hands on hips. “Good grief, girl. You go, you bat your eyelashes a little, and you get their information so I have young men to set girls up with. It’s not complicated.”
“But how do you know they’ll make good matches?”
“That’s where we see how good you are. Rate them. One through ten. Ten means marriage material.” She looked me over again. “One means someone you’d sneak out of synagogue with.”
“And you won’t do this yourself because . . . ?”
“Because I already have. But when they see you, they’ll see the kind of girl I’m offering.” She gave me a little push. “Now go. I want at least six men.”
Well, if I wanted to go home, a single letter to my father detailing this part of my stay would do it. He would have me packed and back in my childhood bedroom in no time flat. But this definitely sounded better than going home. So I sauntered toward the court, swaying my hips and waiting for them to notice me.
Which would have been a lot smoother if I hadn’t tripped over an errant rock in the path and tumbled into a bush with a yelp.
As I tried to disentangle my hair from the branch it had gotten stuck in, a pair of hands reached in and helped. “Allow me,” a male voice said. I became distinctly aware that my dress had ridden up significantly.