Rose Madder by Stephen King

P.”
    â€œCorrect.” Anna glanced at Rosie’s signature, then placed the paper on a shelf to her right, where, Rosie felt sure, it would disappear into the general clutter before another twenty-four hours had passed.
    â€œNow,” Anna said, speaking with the air of someone who has finished with the boring formalities and may now get down to what she really likes. “What can you do?”
    â€œDo?” Rosie echoed. She suddenly felt faint again. She knew what was coming.
    â€œYes, do, what can you do? Any shorthand skills, for instance?”
    â€œI . . .” She swallowed. She had taken Shorthand I and II back at Aubreyville High, and she had gotten A’s in both, but these days she wouldn’t know a pothook from a boat-hook. She shook her head. “No. No shorthand. Once, but no more.”
    â€œAny other secretarial skills?”
    She shook her head. Warm prickles stung at her eyes. She blinked them back savagely. The knuckles of her interlocked hands were gleaming white again.
    â€œClerical skills? Typing, maybe?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMath? Accounting? Banking?”
    â€œNo!”
    Anna Stevenson happened on a pencil amid the heaps of paper, extracted it, and tapped the eraser end against her clean white teeth. “Can you waitress?”
    Rosie desperately wanted to say yes, but she thought about the large trays waitresses had to balance all day long . . . and then she thought about her back and her kidneys.
    â€œNo,” she whispered. She was losing her battle with the tears; the little room and the woman on the other side of the desk began to blur and soften. “Not yet, anyway. Maybe in a month or two. My back . . . right now it’s not strong.” And oh, it sounded like a lie. It was the kind of thing that, when he heard someone say it on TV, made Norman laugh cynically and talk about welfare Cadillacs and foodstamp millionaires.
    Anna Stevenson did not seem particularly perturbed, however. “What skills do you have, Rose? Any at all?”
    â€œYes!” she said, appalled by the harsh, angry edge she heard in her voice but unable to make it go away or even mute it. “Yes indeed! I can dust, I can wash dishes, I can make beds, I can vacuum the floor, I can cook meals for two, I can sleep with my husband once a week. And I can take a punch. That’s another skill I have. Do you suppose any of the local gyms have openings for sparring partners?”
    Then she did burst into tears. She wept into her cupped hands as she had so often during the years since she had married him, wept and waited for Anna to tell her to get out,that they could fill that empty cot upstairs with someone who wasn’t a smartass.
    Something bumped the back of her left hand. She lowered it and saw a box of Kleenex. Anna Stevenson was holding it out to her. And, incredibly, Anna Stevenson was smiling.
    â€œI don’t think you’ll have to be anyone’s sparring partner,” she said. “Things are going to work out for you, I think—they almost always do. Here, dry your eyes.”
    And, as Rosie dried them, Anna explained about the Whitestone Hotel, with which Daughters and Sisters had had a long and useful relationship. The Whitestone was owned by a corporation on whose board Anna’s well-to-do father had once sat, and a great many women had relearned the satisfactions of working for pay there. Anna told Rosie that she would have to work only as hard as her back allowed her to work, and that if her overall physical condition didn’t begin to improve in twenty-one days, she would be hauled off the job and taken to a hospital for tests.
    â€œAlso, you’ll be paired with a woman who knows the ropes. A sort of counsellor who lives here full time. She’ll teach you, and she’ll be responsible for you. If you steal something, it’ll be her who gets in trouble, not you . . . but