Free The Maid's Quarters by Holly Bush Page B

cause me concern!”
she shouted angrily. “He is always the perfect gentleman, something you would
know nothing about!”
    “Alice!” her ma chided.
    Gerald Porterman tilted his head and stared up at her, at
her clenched fists and red face. “Then why won’t you see him, Alice? If he is
such a perfect gent.”
    Alice burst into tears and ran from the kitchen to the
safety of her room. She slid the latch on her door and lay across her bed to
have a long cry.

 
    * * *

 
    The following morning, Alice heard
furniture legs scrapping against wood and her ma’s and Mrs. McKinnell’s
laughter. She opened her bedroom door to see Bert McKinnell and her da pushing
and pulling the feather-stuffed mattress from Jimmy’s bed up the narrow steps.
    “Which way, Alice?” Mr. McKinnell asked.
    Alice hurried ahead to the small room and opened the door.
“Prop it there against the dresser until you’ve brought the frame up.”
    Her da was huffing each breath but smiled at her as he went
by. “Good morning, Alice.”
    She nodded. “Good morning.”
    The men returned with the planks of wood that made the
bedframe and Ma and Mrs. McKinnell followed, carrying sheets and pillows. Her
mother stopped in front of her and kissed her cheek.
    “You’ve got to be half starved seeing how you skipped the
evening meal last night. There’s milk on the stoop and fresh bread on the table,
and the room’s still nice and warm from me baking.”
    Jimmy came up the steps, one at a time, stopping to rest and
hold the railing. “I will do this . . . every . . . day, Alice. I will be . . .
stronger.”
    “Yes, you will, Jimmy. Ma and I are so proud of you,” she
said.
    “Get in here, boy,” Mrs. McKinnell called to him. “You must
help your ma put away your things.”
    Jimmy was smiling and edging along with small steps toward
his room. Maeve was wringing her hands.
    “I’ll bring your meals to you until you’re stronger,” she
said to her son.
    Jimmy shook his head and coughed a little. “No, Ma.”
    “But it’s so hard . . .”
    Gerald interrupted. “Let the boy try on his own, Maeve.”
    Alice watched as her ma and da stood quietly talking while
Jimmy went into his new bedroom with Mrs. McKinnell. There was something
different about her ma, a happiness in her eyes that Alice did not believe
she’d ever seen before, and her da looked back at her with desperation and
longing. When the moving was done and Jimmy was lying down for a nap, Alice
found her mother in the kitchen washing dishes. Maeve was humming a tune and
stepping to its rhythm. Alice sat down at the table.
    “Oh, Alice,” Maeve said. “I didn’t hear you come in. I
thought you were going to the butcher’s.”
    “I’m going to the Lending Library first, and then to the
butcher’s,” she replied.
    “Ah, that’s fine, dear.”
    “Ma? Would you like to have Da live here with us?”
    Maeve turned with a start, hurriedly drying her hands on her
apron. “Did you ask me if I’d like your da to live here?”
    “Yes. That is what I asked. It seems silly to send him to
the boardinghouse across town, and then to his work, and then here again to see
Jimmy and have a meal, does it not?”
    Maeve dropped down into a chair and wiped her eyes on her
apron. She clutched Alice’s hands. “Yes. Yes, I would like to spend whatever
time he has remaining together as a family. He done wasted all those years on
liquor and he knows it, and I put you and Jimmy above what my heart wanted and
threw him out all those years ago. But it would make me very happy to live
together with him. I love him, you see, through the good and the bad, and now
that he’s trying, really trying to be some kind of father to Jimmy, I want to
give him the chance. But I’d never, ever do something you were against. You and
Jimmy have always come first. You and your brother always will.”
    “I know,” Alice said. “It would be good for Jimmy. Tell Da
tonight when he comes by.”
    Maeve squeezed her