Chapter 6 - Claire, You Are Fired
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I should have known Vanessa would come for me before she came for anyone else.
Patricia had left the mansion after midnight with a bandaged hand and a promise that the eviction would not happen on Monday.
Margaret O'Connell had cried on the telephone when Patricia told her someone was finally listening.
Carmen Ortiz had agreed to bring the contract Derek Lawson had made her sign.
Alessandro had suspended the engagement before twenty-eight guests and told Thomas Reed to freeze every transaction made in the name of Vitale Property Holdings.
And I had been the maid who spoke out loud in the dining room.
Vanessa Sterling did not forgive people who made her look small in public.
She waited until Alessandro left for his office downtown on Saturday morning.
She waited until Mrs. Carter was in the laundry wing.
She waited until the house was quiet.
Then she called me into the small study off the kitchen.
A single sheet of paper lay on the desk.
My name was printed at the top.
Claire Morgan.
Below it were three words I had to read twice.
Termination for insubordination.
Vanessa sat behind the desk in a cream sweater and dark trousers, as if she already lived in a house that was not yet hers.
Her red gown from the night before was gone.
Her smile was not.
"You embarrassed this household in front of our guests," she said.
"I helped a woman who was bleeding," I said.
"You contradicted me at my engagement dinner."
"You told a lie at your engagement dinner."
Her eyes went cold.
"Read the form and sign the acknowledgment."
"I will not sign something that is not true."
"You do not have to agree for it to be effective."
She turned the paper toward me.
At the bottom was a signature I recognized.
It was Alessandro's.
Or it looked like Alessandro's.
My stomach dropped.
"Mr. Vitale signed this months ago," Vanessa said.
"It is a standing staff authorization."
"It allows the lady of the house to dismiss any domestic employee who disrupts a formal event."
"You are not the lady of this house," I said quietly.
Her hand tightened around her pen.
"I am his fiancée."
"He suspended the engagement last night."
"He was angry last night."
"He will be reasonable today."
She stood up slowly.
"Pack your things, Claire."
"You have one hour to leave the staff quarters."
For a moment I could not move.
Eight months of work were in that little room upstairs.
Eight months of early mornings and pressed linens and trays carried without a sound.
Eight months of paychecks sent home to Pittsburgh.
My father Robert Morgan had called me only three days earlier about the mortgage letter on his kitchen table.
His hours at the warehouse had been cut again.
He had tried to sound cheerful.
He had failed.
If I lost this job, there would be no check next Friday.
If there was no check next Friday, the bank would send another letter.
Vanessa knew exactly what she was doing.
She had always known.
"You can still fix this," she said.
I looked up.
"How?"
"Tell Alessandro you exaggerated."
"Tell him Patricia pressured you to speak."
"Tell him you misunderstood the conversation about lunch."
"I did not misunderstand anything."
"You paid for a sandwich with your own money because she told the kitchen not to feed a working woman."
"That is what happened."
Vanessa stepped closer.
"Then you will leave with nothing but a bad reference."
"No other household in Philadelphia will hire a maid who attacks her employer at dinner."
My throat burned.
"Is Patricia worth your father's house, Claire?"
That was the question she wanted me to carry upstairs.
I carried it all the way to the staff quarters.
My room was small and plain and always cold near the window.
I had one suitcase.
I had two uniforms hanging in the narrow closet.
I had a framed photograph of my father standing in front of his little house outside Pittsburgh, proud of a porch he had built himself.
I put my clothes in the suitcase first because my hands needed something simple to do.
Then I sat on the edge of the bed and called him.
He answered on the second ring.
"Claire, honey, is everything all right?"
"No, Dad."
I told him about the paper.
I told him about the hour Vanessa had given me.
I told him I might be on a bus by evening.
He was silent for a long time.
"Claire, listen to me."
"I am listening."
"These are rich people with lawyers and names in the newspaper."
"You are a maid who sends half her pay to an old man who could not keep his own hours."
"You are not old," I said.
"Do not lose everything for strangers."
His voice cracked on the last word.
"I know you want to help that woman."
"I know what she said about those other ladies hurt you."
"But, honey, we have a house payment due."
"I know."
"If you come home with no job, we will figure it out."
"I am not asking you to be selfish."
"I am asking you not to be destroyed by people who will forget your name in a month."
I closed my eyes.
Patricia had not forgotten my name.
She had held my hand while I cleaned her bleeding finger.
She had called me sweetheart because she could see I was shaking more than she was.
Ruth Parker was sixty-four and still sewed to pay for her husband's medicine.
Betty Hart was sixty-six and had worked beside Patricia for years without ever being called worthless to her face.
Emma Walsh was twenty-four and had found the website selling copies of their work while she was supposed to be learning a trade.
They were not strangers anymore.
"Dad, if I walk away now, Vanessa will say I lied and ran."
"Then Patricia loses her shop on Monday in every way that matters."
"Even if the building stays open, no one will believe her."
He sighed.
"Your mother would have said the exact same thing."
"She would have packed a bag for the woman too."
I smiled through tears I had not noticed.
"Tell me you will be okay for one more week."
"I will be okay for one more week."
"Do not say it just to make me brave."
"I am saying it because my daughter is trying to do right."
"That has to count for something in this family."
When I hung up, I did not finish packing right away.
I went down the back stairs to the sewing room Patricia had used for fittings.
Eleven women were waiting there because Alessandro had asked them to give written statements to Thomas Reed.
Ruth Parker sat with a notebook on her lap and reading glasses low on her nose.
Helen Brooks kept smoothing the same page as if neatness could make the words safer.
Carol Simmons had brought pay stubs in a plastic sleeve.
June Ellis had brought a list of dates she had written from memory.
Betty Hart looked furious enough to sew through steel.
Diane Foster kept asking whether signing would cost them the factory offers Vanessa had dangled.
Maria Delgado translated a hard sentence for Gloria Lane and then wrote her own.
Nancy Cole cried quietly and kept writing anyway.
Susan Miles brought the rent book for the shop.
Emma Walsh sat beside Patricia with the photograph of all eleven women outside the little brick storefront on Walnut Street.
Patricia looked up when she saw my suitcase by the door.
"Claire, what has she done?"
"She fired me."
The room went completely silent.
Patricia stood up too fast and had to catch the table.
"Because of me."
"Because of herself," I said.
"I will not leave until your statements are finished."
"You have one hour," Ruth said gently.
"Then we will write fast and clear."
They made room for me at the table.
For the next forty minutes, I wrote what tired hands could not write neatly.
I wrote Ruth's account of the fourteen-hour days.
I wrote Helen's account of the final alterations demanded two hours before dinner.
I wrote Carol's account of being promised Christmas wages that Patricia had paid from savings.
I wrote Betty's account of Vanessa saying women their age should be grateful anybody still wanted their work.
Every sentence felt heavier than the one before.
Every woman signed her own name.
No one was coached.
No one was paid to remember.
They remembered because it had happened to them.
When the last page was signed, Mrs. Carter appeared in the doorway.
She was holding a brown folder against her apron like a shield.
"Claire, come with me to the pantry."
Patricia frowned.
"Is something wrong?"
"Something is finally right," Mrs. Carter said.
In the pantry, among jars and folded linens, she opened the folder.
Inside was the kitchen log for the week.
It was the plain household book where orders, meals, and refusals were recorded in Mrs. Carter's careful hand.
She turned to Friday.
There, in black ink, was an entry I read three times.
"Lunch request for Mrs. Bennett and assistants."
"Declined by Miss Sterling."
"Not to be charged to household."
"Staff notified."
Below it was a second line.
"Sandwich and tea purchased by Claire Morgan, personal funds."
My eyes filled so fast I had to look away.
"You kept this," I whispered.
"I keep everything," Mrs. Carter said.
"Vanessa thinks servants do not read what they write down."
"She is wrong."
She closed the folder and put it in my hands.
"Thomas Reed needs this."
"It proves she denied that woman food while she worked her half to death."
"It proves you told the truth at that table."
I hugged her before I could ask permission.
She patted my back once, brisk and embarrassed and kind.
"Now go and finish packing before she sends security to make a show of it."
I was folding my second uniform when footsteps sounded on the stairs.
Alessandro stood in the doorway of the staff quarters with Thomas Reed behind him.
He looked at the open suitcase.
He looked at the photograph already wrapped in a sweater.
He looked at me.
"Who told you to pack?"
"Vanessa gave me a termination form."
"She said it carried your standing authorization."
He took the form from my hand.
He read it once.
His jaw tightened.
Thomas leaned in and studied the signature.
"This is the same copied signature pattern, sir."
"It is on a staffing template from the spring."
"It was never meant for a dismissal after an engagement suspension."
Alessandro looked up.
"After I suspended the engagement last night, Vanessa Sterling lost every household authority she was borrowing from my name."
"She could not fire a gardener."
"She certainly could not fire you."
I should have felt relief.
Instead, I felt the weight of eleven signed statements in the folder under my arm.
"Mr. Vitale, I need to say something before I unpack anything."
"Say it."
"If I stay because you say Vanessa had no right, that protects me for today."
"It does not protect Ruth or Helen or Betty when someone comes to their doors next week."
"It does not protect Patricia if your company name is used again."
He did not interrupt.
"I will come back to work if you want me back."
"But I want Patricia's women protected in writing first."
"Not a promise at a dinner table."
"A written instruction to Thomas, to your property managers, and to building security."
"No eviction."
"No contact from Derek Lawson."
"No offers made to her employees behind her back."
"No use of Vitale Property Holdings to pressure any of them."
Thomas actually smiled a little.
"That is a very clear list, Miss Morgan."
"Good," I said.
"Then write it clearly."
Alessandro nodded slowly.
"Thomas, draft it now."
"Claire returns to duty tonight with written protection against retaliation from Vanessa Sterling or anyone acting for her."
"Her pay is doubled for the week she was threatened, and that comes from my personal account."
"You do not have to do that," I said.
"I know."
He looked at the suitcase again.
"I am not buying your courage, Claire."
"I am acknowledging that this house failed to protect it."
Before I could answer, the front bell rang through the mansion.
Mrs. Carter appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
Her face was pale.
"Mr. Vitale, there is a gentleman at the front door."
"He says it cannot wait."
Alessandro frowned.
"Who is it?"
Mrs. Carter looked toward me, then back at him.
"Gregory Sterling, sir."
May you like
"He says Vanessa did not act alone."
"And he says he needs to tell you who did before Derek Lawson makes it disappear."
