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Authors: Suzanne Rindell
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patterns. I also learned the great virtue of frugality from Mrs. Lebrun, who was something of a master at it. I believe she felt she was doing me a great service, and perhaps she was. According to her, my generation had gone and made the world disposable—we had filled the world up with cheap, ephemeral things and had neglected to learn the art of how to make anything last. In teaching me to extend the life of this or that feathered hat or silk ball-gown, Mrs. Lebrun had set herself the task of correcting my generation’s flaws.
The nuns were quite pleased with the positive reviews I received in my stint as a maid, and considered perhaps even more could be done to help me. During the summer of my twelfth birthday they took up a collection, and it was decided when the school year resumed they would send me daily down the road to the Bedford Academy for Girls. This was so I might get a better education than the farcical one that was meted out in the single schoolroom at the orphanage by Sister Mildred, who was unfortunately eighty-nine years old and mostly deaf in both ears. I still remember how, at the time, the nuns were quite impressed by the education I was getting at the Bedford Academy and frequently expressed as much.
Oh, Rose, but how well you mind your p
’
s and q
’
s! They are making a perfect little lady out of you!
I don’t know if it made me into a perfect little lady, but I suppose the Bedford Academy led to the Astoria Stenographers College for Ladies, and in this way I suppose the Bedford Academy had a hand in making a perfect little
typist
out of me (if I may be so bold as to use the word
perfect
to describe my impeccable typing skills). I may have mentioned already: I’m both extremely fast and extremely accurate in my typing. I believe this precision may simply be the result of my innate curiosity and my sharp eyes.
And so it was only natural that I trained these sharp eyes on the new typist. I watched Odalie carefully from the very first moment she began working at the precinct, but it was not until two weeks into her tenure that I started keeping a written record of her movements. It began very innocently; I jotted down simple notes about her comings and goings around the office and recorded the details of our limited conversations in the pages of a little notepad I kept tucked in the back of my desk drawer—right next to the brooch that still gave me a bit of a cold fright (and perhaps a simultaneous thrill) whenever I glimpsed it glinting at me from within the drawer, still nestled there. My notes on Odalie’s activities were straightforward. Nothing terribly ambitious, just a road map, I suppose; a constellation of little landmarks I thought might lead me closer to figuring out the nature of Odalie’s character. A sampling of extracts from these notes might read as follows:
Today when O came in she threw off the little capelet she was wearing like a magician and the satin interior flashed like silvery lightning. A clumsy kind of grace, but quite pretty. Entrances are always full of drama. Am beginning to look forward to her arrivals in the mornings, if only to see the show.
O inquired where I like to take my lunches. Could be she is simply after gastronomical advice, but I doubt it. Think she is trying to work up the nerve to ask me to join her for lunch someday. Responds to me differently than to Iris or Marie or any of the patrolmen. She is clearly intelligent and perhaps she has figured out we two are different from most of the others in the precinct. Not that I’m lonely, but it might be nice to have some clever conversations. I might welcome a lunch invitation after all.
Vaguely disappointed in O’s typing skills—O botched two reports today. In six instances typed an “s” where an “a” should have appeared. When I pointed out her mistakes she blamed the typewriter and claimed the two keys have a habit of sticking together. Switched typewriters with her. Typewriter appears to
The nuns were quite pleased with the positive reviews I received in my stint as a maid, and considered perhaps even more could be done to help me. During the summer of my twelfth birthday they took up a collection, and it was decided when the school year resumed they would send me daily down the road to the Bedford Academy for Girls. This was so I might get a better education than the farcical one that was meted out in the single schoolroom at the orphanage by Sister Mildred, who was unfortunately eighty-nine years old and mostly deaf in both ears. I still remember how, at the time, the nuns were quite impressed by the education I was getting at the Bedford Academy and frequently expressed as much.
Oh, Rose, but how well you mind your p
’
s and q
’
s! They are making a perfect little lady out of you!
I don’t know if it made me into a perfect little lady, but I suppose the Bedford Academy led to the Astoria Stenographers College for Ladies, and in this way I suppose the Bedford Academy had a hand in making a perfect little
typist
out of me (if I may be so bold as to use the word
perfect
to describe my impeccable typing skills). I may have mentioned already: I’m both extremely fast and extremely accurate in my typing. I believe this precision may simply be the result of my innate curiosity and my sharp eyes.
And so it was only natural that I trained these sharp eyes on the new typist. I watched Odalie carefully from the very first moment she began working at the precinct, but it was not until two weeks into her tenure that I started keeping a written record of her movements. It began very innocently; I jotted down simple notes about her comings and goings around the office and recorded the details of our limited conversations in the pages of a little notepad I kept tucked in the back of my desk drawer—right next to the brooch that still gave me a bit of a cold fright (and perhaps a simultaneous thrill) whenever I glimpsed it glinting at me from within the drawer, still nestled there. My notes on Odalie’s activities were straightforward. Nothing terribly ambitious, just a road map, I suppose; a constellation of little landmarks I thought might lead me closer to figuring out the nature of Odalie’s character. A sampling of extracts from these notes might read as follows:
Today when O came in she threw off the little capelet she was wearing like a magician and the satin interior flashed like silvery lightning. A clumsy kind of grace, but quite pretty. Entrances are always full of drama. Am beginning to look forward to her arrivals in the mornings, if only to see the show.
O inquired where I like to take my lunches. Could be she is simply after gastronomical advice, but I doubt it. Think she is trying to work up the nerve to ask me to join her for lunch someday. Responds to me differently than to Iris or Marie or any of the patrolmen. She is clearly intelligent and perhaps she has figured out we two are different from most of the others in the precinct. Not that I’m lonely, but it might be nice to have some clever conversations. I might welcome a lunch invitation after all.
Vaguely disappointed in O’s typing skills—O botched two reports today. In six instances typed an “s” where an “a” should have appeared. When I pointed out her mistakes she blamed the typewriter and claimed the two keys have a habit of sticking together. Switched typewriters with her. Typewriter appears to
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