Then Cap set aside her comb and worked her fingers through my hair, massaging my head and neck and shoulders. “That’s it,” she said. “Close your peepers and make dreamy.”
I did just that, there on the floor of the kitchen, with Cap’s knees holding me snug and her strong, knowing hands working the knots out of me.
“At last, at last,” Valentine said. “Capability, you could pour love into that child from Sunday to Christmas and it wouldn’t be done.”
“Shush your mouth and let her be,” Cap replied. She dabbed her finger to the inside of her wrist, where she kept a patch of Lucky Brown Pressing Oil, and set to work making sense of my newly combed hair. Coiling the strands around her finger, she fixed each section in a modest-hooker do, while I kept my eyes closed and the talk swirled around me. Idle talk, it seemed, that touched everywhere but the one place where it was required to go—upstairs.
At last Valentine said quietly, “We can’t put it off into forever. We gotta go up, pay our respects.”
When they talked of Rose, they pointed at the ceiling.
“Honey V?” Valentine mused. “Has she, you know, inquired after us?”
They turned as one, with the faces of scared, naughty children. “Not directly,” I said.
“Well, then, maybe we don’t need to be in such a lather,” Mercy suggested. Nods and murmurs and the room fell quiet.
I decided to ask them about the duke.
“The duke! Oh my,” Cap hooted. “Baby, we don’t talk about the duke.”
“Ferme la bouche,” Sophia burst, slapping the table with her hand. “Ferme that door.”
“Why?” I pressed. “Was he trouble? Did he come often?”
“Not often e-nough,” Valentine declared. “Honey, let me put it this way: when the duke showed his ugly face, Madam was all bells and giggles. We loved us some duke.” Valentine looked round the table and chuckled. “ ’Course, we all did love us some duke, didn’t we, now.”
They laughed and slapped knees again.
“Say, what’s that chittering? Listen.” Capability cupped her hand over her ear. “Hear that?”
They cocked their heads and listened to the strange noises coming from the room above.
“Lifang,” I grumbled. “That’s her laughing. She’s always with Rose now.”
“So, she’s taken with Tan’s little girl?” Cap asked. “That little slip of a thing?”
It took all afternoon for them to get ready to see Rose. They had to paint their faces and prettify their hair and nails. Then they had to try on their best dresses, which they decided didn’t look right in the mirror. Then they had to eat, so they wouldn’t feel faint. Then they had to finish themselves with a dousing of toilet water.
When at last Capability knocked on Rose’s bedroom door, it was nearly suppertime.
“Come,” shouted Rose.
Lifang was sitting cross-legged on the bed next to Rose, her lap full of scarves; she was using little scissors to cut them into head wraps and matching eye patches.
The women filed in, like schoolgirls at inspection, to stand in a row at the foot of the bed. I lingered by the door to see what would happen.
They were actresses, all of them, but they couldn’t hide their horreur at the change in their madam. Rose had been convalescing in the house for two, maybe three weeks. Lifang had done her best to cover Rose’s wounded head with a turban fashioned from a silk shawl. She’d removed Rose’s stitches too, with those sharp little scissors, and applied a foul-smelling medicated oil to Rose’s wounds—my God, the stink in that room. With the lamp lit, Rose’s skin shimmered with a greasy glow.
Even so, there was only so much Lifang could do. Where the eye and cheekbone had been crushed there was a pocket. Rose’s lips, tweaked and stiffened, hardly moved when she talked. Then, of course, there was the fact of the missing eye. Below the sheets, Rose’s fractured leg required her to be constantly, painfully turned.
“Ça va bien, Rose?” Sophia ventured. As the senior girl, she was allowed to use Rose’s name, so long as she did it in French and not very often.
“That patch looks nice,” Valentine said.
“Très chouette,” Sophia replied.
Rose looked them over. “I wondered when you all would decide to show your faces. And here you are.”
“Here we be,” Capability echoed. “You gettin’ on okay?”
“Ah, girls, as bad as this looks, it’s worse below. I can’t walk,” Rose said. “I’m all crooked down there.”
“Shame, shame,” they murmured. “Ma’am, what can we do?”
“Nothing, babies,” Rose said. “Nothing to do. Lifang’s taking good care of me.”
That stung. Cap met my gaze and nodded knowingly. The rest of them fixed their eyes on Lifang’s rapid scissors and the little bowl of nuts she had beside her, which she sucked on, one at a time.
“I heard it was Hank who saved you, ma’am,” Cap said. “But Vera was the one to get you home. What a fine girl she’s turned out, ma’am. She does you proud.”
“Hmm,” Rose said. “Where is she?”
I stepped away from the door, so her good eye could find me.
“How you getting on?” she asked. “Taking it easy?”
“Easy!” Cap exclaimed. “Why, Vera’s running the joint, ma’am, runnin’, tradin’, cleanin’, fixin’, solving every-which-way worry—”
“Mother Rose, you want your soup now,” Lifang said in a too-sweet, baby voice. She set aside her scissors and helped Rose to some broth.
“Ah, girls,” Rose said after a bit of fuss with a napkin and some spill on the silk coverlet. “I don’t remember anything about the quake, or the fire, or how I got to this bed. I don’t remember.”
“Well, I do,” Valentine said. “Let’s see. You came back straight on after Caruso. You and the Duke, all blush. He asked you to give him a tour—remember that, ma’am? He was pushing, that’s what, for the private show. I heard him pestering you and you said, ‘Val, what am I going to do with this man?’ And I said, ‘Ma’am Rose, there’s only one thing a gal can do with a duke.’ And
