Cutler 02 - Secrets of the Morning

Then she nodded to herself as if to confirm a thought. "I suppose you're Dawn," she said.
    "Yes, ma'am," I replied.
    "I am Agnes, Agnes Morris," she declared.
    I nodded. That was the name on my instruction sheet, but she looked like she expected a bigger reaction from me.
    "Well, pick up your luggage and come on in," she said. "We have no servants for that sort of thing here. This isn't a hotel."
    "Yes, ma'am," I repeated. She stood back to let me pass, and as I did so, I got a whiff of her strong, almost overpowering cologne. It smelled like a combination of jasmine and roses, as if she had sprayed one scent on, forgot, and then sprayed another.
    I paused in the entryway. It had a cherry wood floor and a long, rather worn looking oval rug. The Oriental pattern was almost faded. As soon as we stepped in and I had closed the second set of doors behind me, a grandfather clock on my right chimed.
    "Mr. Fairbanks is introducing himself," she said, turning to the tall clock encased in a rich mahogany wood. It had Roman numerals for numbers and thick, black hands with ends that looked more like tiny fingers pointing to the hour.
    "Mr. Fairbanks?" I asked, confused.
    "The grandfather clock," she said as if I should have known. "I have given most of my possessions names, the names of famous actors with whom I once worked. It makes the house more . . . more . . ." She looked about as if the words were somewhere in the air to be plucked. "More personal. Why?" she asked quickly, "do you disapprove?" Her eyes grew small and she pulled her lips so tight the corners became white.
    "Oh, no," I replied.
    "I hate people who disapprove of something just because they didn't think of it first." She ran the palm of her hand up the side of the grandfather clock cabinet and smiled as if it were indeed a person standing there. "Oh Romeo, Romeo," she whispered. I shifted my feet. The suitcases were heavy and I was standing with them in my hands. It was as if she had forgotten I was there.
    "Ma'am?" I said. She snapped her head around and glared at me as if to say "Who was I to interrupt?"
    "Continue," she said, waving toward the hallway.
    Directly ahead of us was a stairway with a thick, hand-carved brown balustrade. The gray carpet on the steps looked as worn as the entryway carpet. The walls were covered with old pictures of actors and actresses, singers and dancers, framed clippings of theater reviews and pictures of performers with accompanying articles. The house itself had a pleasant musty scent to it. It looked clean and neat and a great deal nicer than most of the places Daddy and Momma Longchamp had taken Jimmy and me and Fern to live in. But that seemed ages and ages ago now, as though it all happened in another life.
    Agnes stopped at the entrance to a room on our right.
    "This is our sitting room," she said, "where we entertain our guests. Go in and sit down," she directed. "We'll have our first talk immediately so there are no misunderstandings." She paused and pursed her lips. "I suppose you're hungry."
    "Yes," I said. "I came right from the airport and I didn't have anything on the plane."
    "It's past the lunch hour and I don't like Mrs. Liddy having to work around the students' whims, eating and not eating when they feel like it. She's nobody's slave," she added.
    "I'm sorry. I really don't mean to put anyone out." I didn't know what to say. She had been the one to suggest eating and now she was making me feel terrible for confessing I was hungry.
    "Go on in," she commanded.
    "Thank you," I said and turned to enter. She seized my shoulder and stopped me.
    "No, no. Always hold your head high, like this, when you enter a room," she said, demonstrating. "That way everyone will notice you and sense your stage presence. You might as well learn the correct things right away," she said and sauntered off down the corridor.
    As soon as she was gone, I turned back to the room. The sunlight through the pale ivory sheers was misted and frail and gave the sitting room a dreamlike quality. The chintz sofa and matching side chair with its high back and cushioned arms were both worn and comfortable looking. On the coffee table were copies of theater magazines and an old rocking chair sat across from the sofa.
    In the corner to my right, next to a beautiful desk, was a table of dark oak with an old-fashioned record player just like the one in the RCA logo, and a pile of old records beside it. The top record was the aria from the opera Madame