Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri [77]
"Some of the boys run screaming. But I think she likes you. You're the first boarder she's ever referred to as a gentleman."
"Not at all, madame."
She looked at me, noticing my bare feet (I still felt strange wearing shoes indoors, and always removed them before entering my room), "Are you new to Boston?"
"New to America, madame."
"From?" She raised her eyebrows.
"I am from Calcutta, India."
"Is that right? We had a Brazilian fellow, about a year ago. You'll find Cambridge a very international city." I nodded, and began to wonder how long our conversation would last. But at that moment we heard Mrs. Croft's electrifying voice rising up the stairs. When we stepped into the hallway we heard her hollering:
"You are to come downstairs immediately!"
"What is it?" Helen hollered back.
"Immediately!"
I put on my shoes at once. Helen sighed.
We walked down the staircase. It was too narrow for us to descend side by side, so I followed Helen, who seemed to be in no hurry, and complained at one point that she had a bad knee. "Have you been walking without your cane?" Helen called out. "You know you're not supposed to walk without that cane." She paused, resting her hand on the banister, and looked back at me. "She slips sometimes."
For The first time Mrs. Croft seemed vulnerable. I pictured her on the floor in front of the bench, flat on her back, staring at the ceiling, her feet pointing in opposite directions. But when we reached the bottom of the staircase she was sitting there as usual, her hands folded together in her lap. Two grocery bags were at her feet. When we stood before her she did not slap the bench, or ask us to sit down. She glared.
"What is it, Mother?"
"It's improper!"
"What's improper?"
"It is improper for a lady and gentleman who are not married to one another to hold a private conversation without a chaperone!"
Helen said she was sixty-eight years old, old enough to be my mother, but Mrs. Croft insisted that Helen and I speak to each other downstairs, in the parlor. She added that it was also improper for a lady of Helen's station to reveal her age, and to wear a dress so high above the ankle.
"For your information. Mother, it's 1969. What would you do if you actually left the house one day and saw a girl in a miniskirt?"
Mrs. Croft sniffed. "I'd have her arrested."
Helen shook her head and picked up one of the grocery bags. I picked up the other one, and followed her through the parlor and into the kitchen. The bags were filled with cans of soup, which Helen opened up one by one with a few cranks of a can opener. She tossed the old soup in the saucepans into the sink, rinsed the pans under the tap, filled them with soup from the newly opened cans, and put them back in the refrigerator. "A few years ago she could still open the cans herself," Helen said. "She hates that I do it for her now. But the piano killed her hands." She put on her spectacles, glanced at the cupboards, and spotted my tea bags. "Shall we have a cup?"
I filled the kettle on the stove. "I beg your pardon, madame. The piano?"
"She used to give lessons. For forty years. It was how she raised us after my father died." Helen put her hands on her hips, staring at the open refrigerator. She reached into the back, pulled out a wrapped stick of butter, frowned, and tossed it into the garbage. "That ought to do it," she said, and put the unopened cans of soup in the cupboard. I sat at the table and watched as Helen washed the dirty dishes, tied up the garbage bag, watered a spider plant over the sink, and poured boiling water into two cups. She handed one to me without milk, the string of the tea bag trailing over the side, and sat down at the table.
"Excuse me madam, but is it enough?" Helen took a sip of her tea. Her lipstick left a smiling pink stain on the inside rim of the cup. "Is what enough?"
"The soup in the pans. Is it enough food for Mrs.
Croft?"
"She won't eat anything else. She stopped eating solid after she turned one hundred.