Steve Erickson - Rubicon Beach

In the other room Richard made his call. “Maddy?”

“Hello, Richard,” she said on the other end, and added, without a moment’s pause, “he’s not home now, he’s at the studio.” She was decidedly cool.

“Maddy, I have an astounding surprise,” said Richard, “I am not calling to talk to your husband. I am calling to talk to you .” She was surprised at that. “Still without a housekeeper since the last one quit?”

“No housekeeper,” answered Maddy, “the house is a shambles and Janey’s home from school sick. Care to work for a living, Richard?”

Richard laughed theatrically. “That’s extremely amusing, Maddy. In fact I have a solution to your troubles.”

“Such as.”

“Such as a housekeeper of course,” he said, peering around the door. Catherine was sitting at the table staring out the window. “A girl I just found in front of the hotel, with no shoes and, far as I can tell, not a syllable of English in her—”

“How can I resist.”

“And,” he added emphatically, “nowhere to be and probably here very illegally. Which means, as hired help goes, rather in your price range.” He had to twist the knife a little; there was silence on the other end. “Since you’ve had problems financing your housekeepers lately, I thought this might be just the ticket. How much sign language does it take to get a dish washed?”

“This is very thoughtful of you, Richard,” Maddy replied acidly.

“I freely admit self-interest in the matter. Domestic bliss in the Edgar household means Mr. Edgar gets down to business a little sooner, which means I get down to business a little sooner.”

Maddy said, “Do you ever think what happens if he doesn’t get down to business soon? If he doesn’t get down to business ever?” Said in a way that betrayed worry; said very quietly.

Richard answered, just as quietly, just as worried, “No, I don’t think of that.”

He heard her sigh deeply on the other end of the line. “I don’t either.”

“Bad news for me, Maddy, if he doesn’t get down to business soon, let alone ever. I’m counting on it.”

“So am I.” She said, “Send the girl over, Richard. Has she a name?”

“I haven’t the faintest.”

Down in front of the hotel, Richard had trouble getting Catherine into the cab. “I’ve had enough of navigators,” she told him, standing away from its open rear door. “l transport myself from here on.” Richard got in and out of the cab several times trying to show her it was all right. “See,” he said to her, “I’m in the cab now. Nothing happens. It doesn’t eat me.” He thinks, Catherine told herself, that I’m afraid of the machine. “I’m not afraid of the machine,” she said to him. I’ve been in one before.” All this conversation, of course, took place between them with complete incomprehension.

Richard wound up taking the cab with her, finally determining it was the only way he’d get her in it. He was nervous anyway since his discussion with Maddy, and when he got nervous he always went somewhere. He had gone to Beverly Hills to see his agent when he feIt like this, but lately his agent had made him more nervous, not less. “Hancock Park,” he said to the driver. ‘The cab cruised down the long Ambassador drive onto Wilshire Boulevard and west on Wilshire to Rossmore, where it turned right. During this trip Catherine didn’t watch out the window but stared straight ahead of her; she was keeping the city at bay. Since the river had deposited her on the northern banks of Peru months earlier, she had switched off her capacity to be overwhelmed. She had never been in a place like this before and she was concentrating on retaining her facuIties of self-possession. She acknowledged what was around her while refusing to submit her consciousness to it. I’ve been falling, she thought, and until I land there’s no use watching the scenery. She absorbed each new shock as one absorbs the light of the sun without staring at it.

In Hancock Park she was surrounded by homes so large she assumed they housed whole tribes. I’m in a forest of Crowds, she was thinking, at the center of this monstrous village erected on borders no one sees but everyone knows are there. The trees sheItered the street and the taxi sailed beneath them as though on the rivers of her home. Richard gave the driver the address. The house was red brick with a white door, near a corner at the edge of the park; it was one of the smaller houses in the neighborhood. The driver seemed a little disappointed when he saw it. “Right here,” Richard said. They parked on the street; Richard got out and ran up the lawn to get Maddy, trying to think of a way to get her to pay the fare.

Madeline Edgar was an athletic-looking red head in her early thirties. On this day, beset by circumstances, she answered the door with even more impatience than usual. Catherine was inside the house about twenty seconds when Maddy whisked her to the back. “Richard, are you sure about this?” she said to him; actually he didn’t look all that sure. “What are you doing here anyway, does the girl need an escort?” Richard explained he couldn’t get her to take the cab alone. Maddy gave him five dollars for the cab and another twenty, which she called a “finder’s fee” She cracked, “If she doesn’t work out you can give it back.” Richard handled the twenty as though it were soiled.

A service area was behind the kitchen, and there was a room behind the service area: very bare, with a single bed and a chest of drawers, a sink and a tub. “This is where you’ll live,” Maddy told Catherine, “I’d rather you ate your meals here as well. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Catherine gazed at the room around her; Maddy was already on her way out to the kitchen, beckoning Catherine to follow. She explained everything to the girl and then found herself miming as well; she knew little Spanish and was not used to dealing with Latins. The last housegirl had been British. Her name had been Catherine. Within five minutes Maddy was calling the new girl Catherine. Catherine had no idea why she was being called Catherine but didn’t contest it.

That night the two women had their first breakthrough in communication. Both understood the word “leche,” on which Maddy produced for the girl a glass of milk. When the mistress was gone, Catherine gave the milk to the kitten, who now lived in the bottom drawer of the chest.

The Work Catherine did in the Edgar house wasn’t unlike the work she had done in the governor’s hacienda at Guadalajara, except on a smaller scale. She cleaned the kitchen and handled the laundry, and on her second night she helped Maddy prepare a meal. She met the Edgar child the first morning, a six-year-old recovering from the chicken pox who came into the kitchen and gurgled, “Hello: orange juice,” at the new housekeeper. Maddy came in and said, “You don’t need Catherine to get your orange juice, Jane. It’s where it always is.” Jane said to her mother, “Catherine? Is everyone in the universe named Catherine?” When Jane was gone, Catherine noticed Maddy looking at her the way other people had looked at her; she was seized by dread.

Maddy realized with some annoyance that she’d passed some twenty-four hours with this girl under her roof and hadn’t really looked at her. She could be anybody, Maddy thought; she’s a complete stranger and I’ve brought her into my house where my six-year-old sleeps. The other thing that annoyed Maddy, as a thought that didn’t coalesce until later when she was driving Jane to the doctor, was that for the first time ever, in the midst of a thousand girls in Hollywood with whom her husband came into contact all the time, Maddy was intimidated by a woman’s beauty. She may be the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, Maddy realized: how could I not have noticed that yesterday? I must have been distracted. It was as though her face weren’t there, as though it became part of the house as soon as she stepped into it. All Maddy had seen were her bare feet. Maybe it’s an attitude I have about servants, she thought, maybe Lew is right: growing up in Pasadena made me a rich bitch whether we had money or not.