Vanished

Patrick, the driver, took Marielle home, driving north up Fifth Avenue, but she didn't see Charles there. And finally, they drove east on Sixty-fourth Street, to the house where she had lived for six years with Malcolm. The house was between Madison and Fifth, just around the corner from the park, and it was a beautiful home, but it had never been hers. It was Malcolm's. She had felt ill at ease there from the first. It was an awesome establishment, with a huge staff, and it had once belonged to Malcolm's parents. He had maintained it almost as a memorial to them, with priceless collections everywhere, added to only by the rare objects he collected on his travels, or sometimes by curators of museums. Sometimes Marielle felt like a precious object there, something to be displayed, but never played with. A doll to be admired on a shelf and never handled. His servants treated her politely, for the most part, but they had always made it clear that they worked not for her, but for her husband. Many of them had been there for years, and after six years, she still felt she scarcely knew them. Malcolm always urged her to keep her distance. She had, and so had they. There was no warmth in their exchanges with her. And from the first, Malcolm had let her make no changes. It was still his home, everything was done his way, and if her orders differed from his at all, they were politely ignored, and the matter never mentioned. He hired the staff himself, and most of them were Irish or English or German. Malcolm had an enormous fondness for all things German. He had gone to Heidelberg University in his youth, and he spoke the language to perfection.

Marielle wondered sometimes if the reason the staff resented her, albeit secretly, was because she had worked for Malcolm. It had been impossible for her to get a job when she came back from Europe in 1932. The Depression was in full swing, even men with college degrees were unemployed, and she had absolutely no training. She had never worked for anyone before, and her parents had left her nothing. Her father lost everything in the crash of '29, which basically had killed him. He'd been too old to survive the strain, to start over again. In the end, his heart had given out, but before it, his spirit. And there was nothing left but a few hundred dollars when his wife died six months later. Marielle had still been in Europe then, and Charles had arranged for their house to be sold in order to pay their debts. She'd been too ill to take care of it herself, and when she went back to New York eventually, she was left with nothing and had no home to go to. She stayed in a hotel on the East Side, and started looking for a job the week she'd arrived. She had two thousand dollars she'd borrowed from Charles. It was all she'd let him give her. She was totally alone. And in many ways, Malcolm had saved her. She was grateful to him for that still, and she always would be.

She had appeared in his office on a wintry February day, and the face that smiled at her across the desk was like a ray of sunshine. She had gone to him because she knew he was one of her father's friends, and she hoped that somehow he might know of a job, or someone who needed a companion who spoke French. It was all she knew other than her graceful drawings, but she hadn't drawn now in years. She had no secretarial skills at all, but after speaking to her for an hour, he hired her, and until she found a place of her own, he even paid for her hotel bill. She had tried to repay him afterward, but he wouldn't hear of it. He knew what dire straits she was in, and he was happy to help her.