She had spent more than six months there, but in January she had moved out, convinced that her vocation, her destiny, lay elsewhere; she still believed – though some might have mocked such pretensions – that she had a destiny. Someday she would look back on her life and see the reason for it all, shining through it like a golden thread that would draw her, in the end, headlong toward some brave and wonderful purpose.
Her first steps in this direction, though, had been hesitant ones and had ended in a rent-controlled two- bedroom apartment on West End Avenue and Ninety-third Street, where, fresh from St Agnes's, she'd found work, of a sort, as live-in housekeeper and attendant to a tiny eighty-two-year-old Polish woman named Mrs Slavinsky. Carol's expenses, along with $120 a week, had been provided by the woman's divorced daughter, who lived on the East Side and appeared delighted to have found, in this day and age, a well-bred young white girl to look after her mother. The arrangement had been, at the time, equally convenient for Carol, since it had spared her the necessity of finding a place of her own. Less agreeable was the fact that, though the job had been advertised as that of 'companion,' the old woman was in no shape to appreciate companionship, having but slight command of English. Worse, her hearing was failing, and seemingly with it, her mind.
Thus had begun four months of preparing kosher food and washing two sets of dishes (an observance Carol still found exotic), of vacuuming the worn Persian carpets and dusting the soot from the Venetian blinds, of walking the old woman to the supermarket or the park or the toilet and remaining nearby while, through the winter and spring afternoons, she mumbled to herself or snored or squinted vaguely at the TV. The days had been monotonous. At least, Carol reflected, she'd had a bedroom and a TV of her own, luxuries she hadn't had at the convent; and two nights a week she had thrown herself into her modern dance class at a school twelve blocks south on Broadway, returning stiff and elated to the brightly lit apartment, usually to find Mrs Slavinsky and her daughter, who came to sit with her those nights, engaged in some fierce and incomprehensible argument in Yiddish. The daughter also visited on weekends, allowing Carol to take the days off; but with few acquaintances outside her dance class and no other place to call home, Carol often found herself remaining near the apartment. She searched the want ads for interesting prospects, wondering where her talents lay, and resolved, come summer, to look into a course or two in dance therapy.
The second week of May, however, she had received an unexpected phone call. It was Sister Cecilia, one of the administrators from St Agnes's; she had just heard about a job opening, assistant librarian at someplace downtown called the Voorhis Foundation, and, remembering how Carol had shown such a fondness for literature, always burying her head in a book, she had wondered if Carol might be tempted to apply. ..
Carol had been grateful, though somewhat puzzled; the sister had never shown this sort of interest in her back at St Agnes's. The next day, leaving the house shortly after noon as if to go shopping – it was understood that, from time to time, the old woman might be left alone for an hour| or two – Carol had taken the subway down to Voorhis.
The balding little desk clerk had raised his eyebrows with surprise. Why, yes, there was a job open m the circulation department, though it was rather strange to find someone already here inquiring about it, seeing as the officers of the library hadn't even agreed yet upon the wording of the ad they'd be sending to the Times.
'I heard about it from a friend,' said Carol.
'Hmmm.' The clerk had pursed his lips and eyed her skeptically. At last he'd given a little shrug and admitted that, since Carol had taken the trouble to come all the way down here, perhaps there were some people she might talk to. It was, he added, absolutely perfect timing on Carol's part; the boy who'd held the job till recently had simply not shown up one day last week, and even seemed to have disappeared from his apartment. All very mysterious. 'And a shame,' the clerk said wistfully. 'He was a very sweet boy.' He sighed; probably now he had no one to look nice for. 'But Mrs Tait seems to prefer a girl this time… ' With a pout he had sent Carol upstairs.
Mrs Tait was the circulation manager, and only one of the people who interviewed Carol that day; junior assistants were expected to fill in for any number of departments. Carol also talked to Mrs Schumann, the children's librarian, Mr Brown in acquisitions, and a sleepy-looking man in charge of maintenance. None of them seemed particularly curious about her background, or in making more than a few polite inquiries into her skills, and as the afternoon wore on it occurred to Carol that the job was hers if she wanted it; it was so lowly – only thirty hours a week, for the present, and paying even less than she made now – that the staff was obviously not inclined to waste time evaluating applicants. Besides, if they hired Carol, they wouldn't have to pay for an ad in the Times.
With all its drawbacks, Carol had felt inclined to take the job (surely it would lead to something better), and after the round of interviews it had, as expected, been offered. She'd realized, from the casualness with which the offer was made, that anyone who'd applied that day would probably have been hired; she'd simply had the luck to get there first. Once again she congratulated herself on her charmed life. But no sooner had Mrs Tait invited her to start work the following Monday than Carol had had second thoughts -doubts about the salary, the sudden necessity of finding an apartment of her own, but also misgivings, now that the decision was hers, about her eagerness to abandon old Mrs Slavinsky. She had requested, and been allowed, 'a day or two to think things over.'
The hour had been later than she realized; it was nearly five by the time she'd reached home. She had noticed an ambulance parked outside the building, and an empty police car, but her thoughts had been on other things. Upstairs, when the elevator opened, she'd heard men's voices; they were coming from the old woman's apartment. Suddenly fearful, she had unlocked the door. A policeman was standing in the front room, talking to Mrs Slavinsky's daughter, while another spoke softly on the phone. Two black ambulance attendants were unrolling something near the entrance to the old woman's bedroom. All turned to look at Carol when she came in, but the only one who spoke to her was the daughter, who explained to her quite calmly, with little apparent grief and without a trace of accusation in her voice, how, sometime after Carol had gone out, she had phoned her mother, gotten no answer, tried again an hour later, still without success, and how at last she'd hurried over to find that the old woman, no doubt having returned to bed for an afternoon's nap, had somehow contrived to wind the blanket around her face…
She didn't seem to blame Carol. Later, after the men had left, bearing with them the shapeless thing in the bag, she had even offered to let Carol stay on in the apartment, at least until she was able to find a suitable place of her own. But Carol was in no mood to remain there; she was too horrified by the voices in her head, the guilty one that insisted it wasn't her fault, she'd done nothing wrong, and the one that reminded her how remarkably convenient the old woman's death had been. For now she was free to take the job at Voorhis; would have to take it, in fact. Absolutely perfect timing…
She reported for work at the library the following Monday and spent part of the first week in the Chelsea Hotel just up the block. But despite the place's legendary glamour and the furtive fascination with which Carol regarded the tenants and visitors who strolled its echoing yellow halls, the hotel was far too expensive. A roommate service in a shabby second-floor office on Fourteenth Street had connected her with Rochelle, whose previous roommate had moved out. Carol was more than willing to take the tiny bedroom; it was private, at least. Rochelle, who slept on a sofa bed in the living room, had the run of the apartment. She was not the sort of person Carol would have chosen to live with, and in the month they'd been together they had not become real friends; but (Carol reminded herself) the girl could be quite good-hearted at times, and besides, with the situation as it was, Carol knew she couldn't be choosy. She was grateful for the roof over her head, grateful she could remain in the city. For a while she'd been haunted by visions of returning home to Pennsylvania a failure, to throw herself, like a child, back on the support of her family. Now, at least, she had a job; she could survive here after all.
At two fifteen today she'd been summoned to the first-floor office by the assistant supervisor, Miss Elms, a greying, harried-looking woman whose desk, opposite Carol's, was piled high with correspondence.
'You look as though you could use a change of scene,' she said, regarding Carol dourly over the top of her glasses. 'When you come back off your break, I'm sending you upstairs. Mrs Schumann's got a four o'clock story hour – and since it's the last day of school, those kids may get a bit rambunctious.'
Carol would have much preferred working downstairs, but told herself that, with the weather grown so warm these days, most of the children would probably be staying outside.
'Remember,' the supervisor added, 'you're not up there to read, and you're not up there to daydream. You're there to give Mrs Schumann a helping hand.'
Climbing the stairs, Carol wondered if Mrs Schumann had been complaining about her to the supervisor. If so, it seemed unfair; she worked just as hard as anyone else. There simply wasn't very much to do on the second floor, short of helping fledgling readers with the harder words and keeping an eye out for the occasional fight. Yet she knew there'd been truth in what the supervisor had said; she had recently discovered that she preferred children's books to the children themselves.
