Delphine Marsh left Corinne’s board in the fall.
She joined ours in January.
She brought four donors with her and an apology I told her she didn’t owe me, and she said, “I don’t owe it to you, Danielle, I owe it to a woman who cleaned a building I’ve been drinking in for three years,” and I let her give it.
Prescott comes to the Fund’s annual breakfast.
Alone.
He sits in the back.
He has never asked me to tell Garrett he came, and I never have, and I’ve decided that’s the deal.
Blythe writes at Christmas.
Short notes.
Last year’s said: “Mom still says ‘careful.’ I’ve stopped. — B.”
That’s more than I expected.
And Everett Pruitt does not carry trays anymore.
That’s the thing I did.
When the events company’s facilities director retired in the fall, I asked Everett whether he wanted it, and he said he’d never managed anybody, and I said he’d managed a service elevator for thirty-one years better than most people manage a department, and he took it.
He runs the building.
All of it.
Floors four through seven included.
There’s a plaque now.
Small, brass, on the wall of the service corridor behind the ballroom — not in the lobby; I was firm about that, and Everett agreed, because the people who need to see it walk through the back.
It says:
THOMASINA ROURKE
CLEANED THESE FLOORS, 1994–2011
HER DAUGHTER OWNS THEM NOW
TAKE THE ELEVATOR
The last line is Everett’s.
He wanted it.
He says the night crew reads it on their way in, and that once, in February, he found a young woman standing in front of it at two in the morning with her cart, just reading it, and that she asked him whether it was true.
