Louise's Blunder Read Online Free Page A

parts, her milk chocolate face damp from the steam.
    ‘Welcome home, Miss Louise,’ she said. ‘How was work?’
    ‘Same as always,’ I said. ‘You?’
    ‘Me too.’
    She drew a letter from her apron pocket and handed it to me. ‘Here’s a letter for you, from Mr Joe, I sneaked it just as soon as the mailman came. I figured you wouldn’t want Mr Henry or Miss Ada to see it so soon after you got the last one.’
    I wrapped my arms around her skinny body and hugged her hard.
    ‘You’re an angel and a pearl above price,’ I said to her.
    ‘Get away, silly girl, I got work to do and you are in my way.’ She gave me a friendly push and went into her pantry looking for flour for her dumplings.
    I headed outside, but not before pulling off my socks and saddle shoes so I could walk barefoot in the grass. I slipped down the back stairs and under the dark staircase before I ripped open the letter.
    Joe, who was Czech, though he had a British passport, wrote English rather formally.
    He began ‘My Dear Louise’, and finished with ‘Most Sincerely Yours’. It wasn’t a love letter at first. He wrote as though to a friend, newsy paragraphs about meeting new people and exploring New York City. From his borrowed flat he could see the Williamsburg Bridge over the East River and walk to Broadway. But his last sentence was personal. ‘Louise, my love, please save me from my misery and tell me that you are coming to visit me soon.’
    Joe and I had come very close to becoming lovers while he lived here. But we were afraid Phoebe would discover us and be so shocked she’d send me away and I couldn’t afford an apartment on my own. Washington was just too crowded. And I was worried about my job.
    Having an affair with a foreign refugee was not a good way for an OSS employee to keep her Top Secret clearance and her job.
    So Joe’s transfer was at first a relief to both of us. But when we discovered that an old friend could lend Joe his flat in Williamsburg we realized that I could travel to New York for weekends and could enjoy our affair in anonymity. Of course I had agreed. I just didn’t know when I could go. I felt a hot flush spread from my groin upward until my face burned. Misery, indeed!
    I shoved the letter into my pocket just in time.
    ‘Louise,’ Ada said. ‘What on earth are you doing standing under the staircase? And in your bare feet! It’s so damp. You’ll catch a cold.’ Ada had just come home from playing clarinet for a tea dance at the Willard. She was still wearing a silk dress and heels.
    ‘Don’t be silly, city girl!’ I said, wiggling my toes in the cool earth. ‘It feels good! And I am going into the basement to check on the baby chicks.’
    ‘You can get into the basement from the kitchen.’
    ‘I went to look at the garden first.’
    Henry, our male boarder, and I had dug up every last bit of the back yard that got enough sun to grow vegetables. We’d already eaten spring greens from it – early lettuce and spinach – and the tomatoes, corn, squash and potatoes were coming along nicely.
    ‘Come see the chicks with me, they’re so sweet,’ I said to Ada.
    The previous winter had been too severe for last year’s flock of chickens to survive outside in their coop. We’d had no choice but to sacrifice them to Dellaphine’s cast-iron skillet. This spring Phoebe and I had bought twenty baby Plymouth Rock chicks to replace them. I loved the adult Plymouth Rocks’ black and white stripes. Right now they were just soft fuzzy black babies.
    As soon as Ada and I went into the basement I heard the chicks peeping. We were raising them in a cage near the boiler until they were large enough to go outside into the chicken coop. They had plenty of food and water. Henry had rigged up a light bulb to keep them warm.
    ‘God, do they ever stop peeping?’ Ada asked.
    ‘Not until they’re grown,’ I said. I scooped a tiny bit of chirping fluff up into my hand. Its peeping ratcheted up a couple