They walked into a spacious bedroom, and even though it appeared that Miss Myrtle’s daughter had cleared any personal possessions from the room, the wallpaper with its big magnolia flowers and the white feminine furniture made Anna feel as if she were trespassing.
“Won’t Pauline mind having a stranger staying in her room?” she asked.
“Not at all,” Miss Myrtle said. “I spoke to her about it yesterday evening and she was right pleased to know I’d have someone else here with me for when Freda goes home at night.” She smoothed a wrinkle from the pink chenille bedspread. “I had Pauline late in life. I was forty when she was born. I’d given up on ever having a child, and then suddenly, there she was! So now I’m sixty-two years old—an old lady with rheumatism to boot—and she worries I’m going to fall or whatever and rot on the floor.” She chuckled again. “When I told her about you, she came right over and packed up the last of her things to clear the room for you.”
“Well, please thank her for me,” Anna said
“Oh, you’ll have a chance to thank her yourself,” she said. “She stops over all the time. Still a mama’s girl, that one.”
Anna forced a smile. People had called her a “mama’s girl,” too. She guessed she’d never hear those words in reference to herself again.
Miss Myrtle gave her some pink sachets she’d made herself to put in the dresser drawers for when Anna’s clothes arrived. Aunt Alice had responded with worry when Anna called to ask her to send her some of her clothes and art supplies.
“I don’t like the idea of you being so far from home for so long,” she’d said. “You’re too young and you’ve just been through such a terrible loss.” Her words made Anna wince. Aunt Alice had never come right out and said she blamed Anna for her mother’s death, but how could she not? Anna certainly blamed herself.
“I’ll be fine,” Anna had promised her aunt, her voice filled with more certainty than she’d felt at that moment. The unknown stretched ahead of her, but she had a job and a place to stay. What more could she need? She told Aunt Alice which dresses to pack, which pants, which blouses, which shoes and stockings, which underthings, which jewelry, and finally, which art supplies, including her easel. She knew she was creating a good deal of work for her aunt, packing all that up, but Aunt Alice didn’t utter a single complaint.
“As long as you’re safe, Anna,” she said. “That’s all that matters. Do you have enough money?” As if her aunt had money to spare.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said. At least she was fine for the time being. She didn’t know what she would do if her sketch wasn’t accepted—how humiliating that would be—but she’d worry about that when and if it happened.
“Now tell me all about you,” Miss Myrtle said once they were back in her living room, sipping tea again and eating more slivers of the pineapple upside-down cake. Anna watched Miss Myrtle put teaspoon after teaspoon of sugar in her tea until she thought the teaspoon would stand upright on its own in the cup.
She told Miss Myrtle about losing her father to pneumonia even before she’d had a chance to know him, and that she’d recently lost her mother after a brief illness. The “brief illness” was a lie, but she wasn’t ready to go into detail about her mother with anyone.
“Why, you’re all alone in the world!” Miss Myrtle exclaimed, her graying eyebrows pinched together above her kind eyes. “No gentleman in your life yet? You’re so lovely.”
Anna shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “I do have an aunt. And a couple of cousins. But I’m twenty-two, and it’s time for me to make my own way.”
“You must be very strong,” Miss Myrtle said.
“Thank you,” Anna said. She didn’t feel very strong, but she was trying. She responded to more of Miss Myrtle’s questions, letting the story of her life trickle from her. She talked about her mother’s work as a seamstress—making the occupation sound grander and more lucrative than it had been. She described her happy childhood in Plainfield and how much she’d adored going to art school. She talked about how amazing it had been to grow up a short bus ride from New York City, and how she and her friends would spend Saturday afternoons in museums. She talked for so long that she began to feel embarrassed. Did she simply need to recite her life story out loud or was Miss Myrtle one of those people who magically drew the words from you? The term “Southern hospitality” began to make sense. Anna felt happy and content sitting there with her new landlady. Perhaps things were beginning to go her way.
They decided on rent of five dollars a month, and that would include most of her meals. They’d share the upstairs bathroom, and for ten cents, Anna could use Miss Myrtle’s wringer-washer once a week.
“Now I do have some rules,” Miss Myrtle said.
“Of course.” Anna smiled.
“You may have lady friends over to visit in your room or the parlor, but no gentlemen in the house without my permission,” she said.
“I’m not here to socialize,” Anna said, “so you don’t need to worry about that.”
“No drinking,” Miss Myrtle said. “Are you a smoker?”
Anna nodded. “Occasionally.”
The older woman sighed. “So is Pauline. I find it very nasty, but you may smoke in her—in your—room if you like. Just not downstairs and certainly not in the kitchen. Freda will have your head!”
“That’s fine.”
She told Anna about the idiosyncrasies of the plumbing and the light switches, then asked her about the mural.
“I haven’t decided what to paint yet,” Anna said. “It has to be something that truly represents Edenton, so I’m looking into—”
“The Tea Party, of course,” Miss Myrtle said.
Anna laughed. “Well, that’s what I thought, but the men I had lunch with didn’t like the idea at all.”
“That’s because they’re men, and women were behind the Tea Party,” Miss Myrtle said. “I really think you must have it in any representation of Edenton. It’s what we’re known for.” She stood up and crossed the room to a tall narrow bookcase. Pulling down a slim volume, she sat next to Anna on the settee. She paged through the book until she found a political cartoon from England that mocked the “tea party” protest, precisely because it was a movement led by women. The women looked hideous and foolish in the sketch. “And men are still mocking it,” Miss Myrtle said. “We haven’t come very far in some ways, I’m afraid. But it was important. It started a whole movement throughout the colonies.”
Miss Myrtle’s passion for the subject made Anna like her even more, but she did wish she hadn’t shown her the cartoon. Now it was stuck in her head and she wasn’t sure how to illustrate the Tea Party with the image of those hideous-looking women in her mind.
Miss Myrtle had a large library full of books and Anna learned that she was a college graduate. Her accent wasn’t at all off-putting, although Anna wondered how her own accent sounded to her new landlady. “You don’t have to tell people where you’re from now, do you?” Miss Myrtle had teased after Anna’s first few sentences. “All you have to do is open your mouth.” But Anna liked the soft charm of Miss Myrtle’s accent. Her grammar was quite perfect, and she told her how taken aback she had been while meeting with the men at lunch the day before.