Текст книги "Orphan Train"

Автор книги: Christina Baker Kline

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011

“Buying all these fancy vegetables is eating up my whole salary,” Dina grumbles. “I don’t know if we can keep doing this.”

Dina’s talking about a stir-fry that Molly has thrown together for the three of them after returning from the library in Bar Harbor: tofu, red and green peppers, black beans, and zucchini. Molly has been cooking quite a bit lately, reasoning that if Dina tries some dishes that don’t have animal protein front and center, she’ll see how many more options are available. So in the past week Molly has made cheese and mushroom quesadillas, vegetarian chili, and eggplant lasagna. Still Dina complains: it’s not filling enough, it’s weird. (She’d never tried eggplant in her life before Molly roasted one in the oven.) And now she complains that it costs too much.

“I don’t think it’s that much more,” Ralph says.

“Plus the extra cost in general,” Dina says under her breath.

Let it go, Molly tells herself, but . . . fuck it. “Wait a minute. You get paid for having me, right?”

Dina looks up in surprise, her fork in midair. Ralph raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know what that has to do with anything,” Dina says.

“Doesn’t that money cover the cost of having an extra person?” Molly asks. “More than covers it, right? Honestly, isn’t that the reason you take in foster kids at all?”

Dina stands abruptly. “Are you kidding me?” She turns to Ralph. “Is she really talking to me like this?”

“Now, you two—” Ralph begins with a tremulous smile.

“It’s not us two. Don’t you dare group me with her,” Dina says.

“Well, okay, let’s just—”

“No, Ralph, I’ve had it. Community service, my ass. If you ask me, this girl should be in juvie right now. She’s a thief, plain and simple. She steals from the library, who knows what she steals from us. Or from that old lady.” Dina marches over to Molly’s bedroom, opens the door, and disappears inside.

“Hey,” Molly says, getting up.

A moment later Dina emerges with a book in her hand. She holds it up like a protest sign. Anne of Green Gables. “Where’d you get this?” she demands.

“You can’t just—”

“Where’d you get this book?”

Molly sits back in her chair. “Vivian gave it to me.”

“Like hell.” Dina flips it open, jabs her finger at the inside cover. “Says right here it belongs to Dorothy Power. Who’s that?”

Molly turns to Ralph and says slowly, “I did not steal that book.”

“Yeah, I’m sure she just ‘borrowed’ it.” Dina points a long pink talon at her. “Listen, young lady. We have had nothing but trouble since you came into this house, and I am so over it. I mean it. I am so. Over. It.” She stands with her legs apart, breathing shallowly, tossing her blond frosted mane like a nervous pony.

“Okay, okay, Dina, look.” Ralph has his hands out, patting the air like a conductor. “I think this has gone a little far. Can we just take a deep breath and calm down?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dina practically spits.

Ralph looks at Molly, and in his expression she sees something new. He looks weary. He looks over it.

“I want her out,” Dina says.

“Deen—”

“OUT.”

Later that evening Ralph knocks on Molly’s bedroom door. “Hey, what’re you doing?” he says, looking around. The L.L.Bean duffel bags are splayed wide, and Molly’s small collection of books, including Anne of Green Gables, is piled on the floor.

Stuffing socks into a plastic Food Mart bag, Molly says, “What does it look like I’m doing?” She’s not usually rude to Ralph, but now she figures, who cares? He wasn’t exactly watching her back out there.

“You can’t leave yet. We have to contact Social Services and all that. It’ll be a couple of days, probably.”

Molly crams the bag o’ socks into one end of a duffel, rounding it nicely. Then she starts lining up shoes: the Doc Martens she picked up at a Salvation Army store, black flip-flops, a dog-chewed pair of Birkenstocks that a previous foster mother tossed in the trash and Molly rescued, black Walmart sneakers.

“They’ll find you someplace better suited,” Ralph says.

She looks up at him, brushes the bangs out of her eyes. “Oh yeah? I won’t hold my breath.”

“Come on, Moll. Give me a break.”

“You give me a break. And don’t call me Moll.” It’s all she can do to restrain herself from flying at his face with her claws out like a feral cat. Fuck him. Fuck him and the bitch he rode in on.

She’s too old for this—too old to wait around to be placed with another foster family. Too old to switch schools, move to a new town, submit herself to yet another foster parent’s whims. She is so white-hot furious she can barely see. She stokes the fire of her hatred, feeding it tidbits about bigoted idiot Dina and spineless mushmouth Ralph, because she knows that just beyond the rage is a sorrow so enervating it could render her immobile. She needs to keep moving, flickering around the room. She needs to fill her bags and get the hell out of here.

Ralph hovers, uncertain. As always. She knows he’s caught between her and Dina, and utterly unequipped to handle either of them. She almost feels sorry for him, the pusillanimous wretch.

“I have somewhere to go, so don’t worry about it,” she says.

“To Jack’s, you mean?”

“Maybe.”

Actually, no. She could no more go to Jack’s than she could get a room at the Bar Harbor Inn. (Yes, I’d prefer a water view. And send up a mango smoothie, thanks!) Things between them are still strained. But even if things were fine, Terry would never allow her to stay overnight.

Ralph sighs. “Well, I get why you don’t want to stay here.”

She gives him a look. No shit, Sherlock.

“Let me know if I can drive you anyplace.”

“I’ll be fine,” she says, dropping a pile of black T-shirts in the bag and standing there with folded arms until he slinks out.

So where the hell can she go?

There’s $213 left in Molly’s savings account from the minimum-wage job she had last summer scooping ice cream in Bar Harbor. She could take a bus to Bangor or Portland, or maybe even Boston. But what then?

She wonders, not for the first time, about her mother. Maybe she’s better. Maybe she’s clean and sober now, with some kind of steady job. Molly’s always resisted the urge to look for her, dreading what she might find. But desperate times . . . and who knows? The state loves it when biological parents get their shit together. This could be an opportunity for both of them.

Before she can change her mind, she crawls over to her sleeping laptop, propped open on her bed, and taps the keyboard to nudge it awake. She googles “Donna Ayer Maine.”

The first listing is an invitation to view Donna Ayer’s professional profile on LinkedIn. (Unlikely.) Next is a PDF of Yarmouth city council members that includes a Donna Ayer. (Even more unlikely.) Third down is a wedding announcement: a Donna Halsey married Rob Ayer, an air force pilot, in Mattawamkeag in March. (Um, no.) And finally, yep, here she is—Molly’s mother, in a small item in the Bangor Daily News. Clicking through to the article, Molly finds herself staring at her mother’s mug shot. There’s no question it’s her, though she’s wan, squinty, and decidedly worse for wear. Arrested three months ago for stealing OxyContin from a pharmacy in Old Town with a guy named Dwayne Bordick, twenty-three, Ayer is being held in lieu of bond, the article says, at the Penobscot County Jail in Bangor.

Well, that was easy enough.

Can’t go there.

What now? Looking up homeless shelters online, Molly finds one in Ellsworth, but it says that patrons have to be eighteen or older “unless with a parent.” The Sea Coast Mission in Bar Harbor has a food pantry, though no overnight accommodations.

So what about . . . Vivian? That house has fourteen rooms. Vivian lives in about three of them. She’s almost certainly home—after all, she never goes anywhere. Molly glances at the time on her phone: 6:45 P.M. That’s not too late to call her, is it? But . . . now that she thinks about it, she’s never actually seen Vivian talking on the phone. Maybe it would be better to take the Island Explorer over there to talk with her in person. And if she says no, well, maybe Molly could just sleep in her garage tonight. Tomorrow, with a clear head, she’ll figure out what to do.

Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011

Molly trudges up the road toward Vivian’s from the bus stop, her laptop in her backpack, red Braden slung over one shoulder and Hawaiian Ashley on the other. The duffels are knocking into each other like rowdy patrons at a bar, with Molly stuck between. It’s slow going.

Before the blowup with Dina, Molly had planned to go to Vivian’s tomorrow, to tell her what she found at the library. Well, plans change.

Leaving was anticlimactic. Dina stayed behind her shut bedroom door with the TV blaring while Ralph lamely offered to help Molly with her bags, loan her a twenty, drive her somewhere. Molly almost said thank you, almost gave him a hug, but in the end she just barked, “No, I’m fine, see ya,” and propelled herself forward by thinking: This is already over, I am already gone . . .

Occasionally a car lumbers past—this being the off-season, most cars on the road are sensible Subarus, ten-ton trucks, or clunkers. Molly is wearing her heavy winter coat because, though it’s May, this is, after all, Maine. (And who knows, she might end up sleeping in it.) She left behind heaps of stuff for Ralph and Dina to deal with, including a few hideous synthetic sweaters Dina had tossed her way at Christmas. Good riddance.

Molly counts her steps: left, right, left, right. Left right. Left right. Her left shoulder hurts, strap digging into bone. She jumps in place, shifting the straps. Now it’s sliding down. Shit. Jump again. She’s a turtle carrying its shell. Jane Eyre, staggering across the heath. A Penobscot under the weight of a canoe. Of course her load is heavy; these bags contain everything she possesses in the world.

What do you carry with you? What do you leave behind?

Gazing ahead at the dark blue sky striated with clouds, Molly reaches up and touches the charms around her neck. Raven. Bear. Fish.

The turtle on her hip.

She doesn’t need much.

And even if she loses the charms, she thinks, they’ll always be a part of her. The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin. People get tattoos to have a permanent reminder of things they love or believe or fear, but though she’ll never regret the turtle, she has no need to ink her flesh again to remember the past.

She had not known the markings would be etched so deep.

APPROACHING VIVIAN’S HOUSE, MOLLY LOOKS AT HER PHONE. IT’S later than she thought it would be—8:54.

The fluorescent overhead bulb on the porch gives off a dim pink light. The rest of the house is dark. Molly heaves her bags onto the porch, rubs her shoulders for a minute, then walks around to the back, the bay side, peering up at the windows for any sign of life. And there it is: on the second floor of the far right side, two windows glow. Vivian’s bedroom.

Molly isn’t sure what to do. She doesn’t want to scare Vivian, and now that she’s here she realizes that even ringing the doorbell would startle her at this hour.

So she decides to call. Gazing up at Vivian’s window, she dials her number.

“Hello? Who is it?” Vivian answers after four rings in a strained, too-loud voice, as if communicating with someone far out at sea.

“Hi, Vivian, it’s Molly.”

“Molly? Is that you?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice cracking. She takes a deep breath. Steady, stay calm. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

Vivian comes into view in the window, pulling a burgundy robe over her nightgown. “What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

“Yes, I—”

“Goodness, do you know what hour it is?” Vivian says, fussing with the cord.

“I’m so sorry to call this late. I just—I didn’t know what else to do.”

There’s silence on the other end as Vivian absorbs this. “Where are you?” she says finally, perching on the arm of a chair.

“I’m downstairs. Outside, I mean. I was afraid it would alarm you if I rang the bell.”

“You’re where?”

“Here. I’m here. At your house.”

“Here? Now?” Vivian stands up.

“I’m sorry.” And then Molly can’t help it, she starts to cry. It’s cold on the grass and her shoulders ache and Vivian is freaked out and the Island Explorer is done for the night and the garage is dark and creepy and there’s nowhere else in the world she can think of to go.

“Don’t cry, dear. Don’t cry. I’ll be right down.”

“Okay.” Molly heaves in a breath. Pull yourself together!

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Okay.” Through her tears, Molly watches Vivian replace the receiver on the hook, wrap her robe tighter and tie it, pat the silver hair at the nape of her neck. As Vivian leaves the bedroom Molly runs back to the front porch. She shakes her head to clear it, pulls her bags into a neat heap, wipes her eyes and nose with a corner of her T-shirt.

A moment later Vivian opens the door. She looks with alarm from Molly (who realizes that, despite wiping her eyes, she must have mascara smeared all over her face) to the bulky duffel bags to the overstuffed backpack. “For goodness’ sake, come in!” she says, holding the door wide. “Come in this minute and tell me what happened.”

DESPITE MOLLY’S PROTESTS, VIVIAN INSISTS ON MAKING TEA. SHE takes down a cabbage-rose teapot and cups—a wedding gift from Mrs. Murphy that’s been in a box for decades—along with some recently recovered spoons from Mrs. Nielsen’s silver service. They wait in the kitchen for the water to boil, and then Molly pours water in the teapot and carries the tea service to the living room on a tray, with some cheese and crackers Vivian has found in the pantry.

Vivian turns on two lamps and settles Molly in a red wingback. Then she goes over to the closet and takes out a quilt.

“The wedding ring!” Molly says.

Vivian holds the quilt by two corners and shakes it out, then carries it over and drapes it across Molly’s lap. It is stained and ripped in places, thinned from use. Many of the small rectangles of fabric sewn by hand into interlocking circles have dissolved altogether, the ghostly remains of stitches holding snippets of colored cloth. “If I can’t bear to give this stuff away, I might as well use it.”

As Vivian tucks the quilt around her legs, Molly says, “Sorry for barging in like this.”

Vivian flaps her hand. “Don’t be silly. I could use the excitement. Gets my heart rate up.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

The news about Maisie sits in Molly’s stomach like a stone. She doesn’t want to spring it on Vivian just yet—too many surprises at once.

After Vivian has poured tea in two cups, handed one to Molly, taken one for herself, added and stirred in two lumps of sugar, and arranged the cheese and crackers on the plate, she settles into the other chair and folds her hands on her lap. “All right,” she says. “Now tell me.”

So Molly talks. She tells Vivian about living in the trailer on Indian Island, the car crash that killed her father, her mother’s struggle with drugs. She shows her Shelly the turtle. She tells her about the dozen foster homes and the nose ring and the argument with Dina and finding out on the Internet that her mother’s in jail.

The tea grows tepid, then cold, in their cups.

And then, because she is determined to be completely honest, Molly takes a deep breath and says, “There’s something I should’ve told you a long time ago. The community service requirement wasn’t for school—it was because I stole a book from the Spruce Harbor library.”

Vivian pulls her burgundy fleece robe tighter around her. “I see.”

“It was a stupid thing to do.”

“What book was it?”

“Jane Eyre.”

“Why did you steal it?”

Molly thinks back to that moment: pulling each copy of the novel off the shelf, turning them over in her hands, returning the hardcover and the newer paperback, tucking the other one under her shirt. “Well, it’s my favorite book. And there were three copies. I thought nobody would miss the crappiest one.” She shrugs. “I just—wanted to own it.”

Vivian taps her bottom lip with her thumb. “Terry knew?”

Molly shrugs. She doesn’t want to get Terry in trouble. “Jack vouched for me, and you know how she feels about Jack.”

“That I do.”

The night is still, quiet except for their voices. The drapes are shut against the dark. “I’m sorry I came into your house this way. Under false pretenses,” Molly says.

“Ah, well,” Vivian says. “I suppose we all come under false pretenses one way or another, don’t we? It was best not to tell me. I probably wouldn’t have let you in.” Clasping her hands together, she says, “If you’re going to steal a book, though, you should at least take the nicest one. Otherwise what’s the point?”

Molly is so nervous she barely smiles.

But Vivian does. “Stealing Jane Eyre!” She laughs. “They should’ve given you a gold star. Bumped you up a grade.”

“You’re not disappointed in me?”

Vivian lifts her shoulders. “Eh.”

“Really?” Relief washes over her.

“You’ve certainly paid your dues, in any case, putting in all these hours with me.”

“It hasn’t felt like punishment.” Once upon a time—fairly recently, in fact—Molly would’ve gagged over these words, both because they’re blatantly sycophantic and cringingly sentimental. But not today. For one thing, she means them. For another, she’s so focused on the next part of the story that she can barely think of anything else. She plunges ahead. “Listen, Vivian,” she says. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”

“Oh Lord.” Vivian takes a sip of cold tea and sets her cup down. “What have you done now?”

Molly takes a deep breath. “It’s not about me. It’s about Maisie.”

Vivian gazes at her steadily, her hazel eyes clear and unblinking.

“I went online. I just wanted to see if I could find anything, and it was surprisingly easy; I found records from Ellis Island—”

“The Agnes Pauline?”

“Yeah, exactly. I found your parents’ names on the roster—and from there I got the death notices of your father and brothers. But not hers, not Maisie’s. And then I had the idea to try to find the Schatzmans. Well, there happened to be a family reunion blog . . . and . . . anyway, it said that they adopted a baby, Margaret, in 1929.”

Vivian is perfectly still. “Margaret.”

Molly nods.

“Maisie.”

“It has to be, right?”

“But—he told me she didn’t make it.”

“I know.”

Vivian seems to gather herself up, to grow taller in her chair. “He lied to me.” For a moment she looks off in the middle distance, somewhere above the bookcase. Then she says, “And they adopted her?”

“Apparently so. I don’t know anything else about them, though I’m sure there are ways to find out. But she lived a long time. In upstate New York. She only died six months ago. There’s a photo . . . She seemed really happy—children and grandchildren and all that.” God, I’m an idiot, Molly thinks. Why did I say that?

“How do you know she died?”

“There’s an obituary. I’ll show you. And—do you want to see the photo?” Without waiting for an answer, Molly gets up and retrieves her laptop from her backpack. She turns it on and brings it over to where Vivian is sitting. She opens the family reunion photos and the obituary, saved on her desktop, and places the laptop in Vivian’s lap.

Vivian peers at the picture on the screen. “That’s her.” Looking up at Molly, she says, “I can tell by the eyes. They’re exactly the same.”

“She looks like you,” Molly says, and they both stare silently for a moment at the beaming elderly woman with sharp blue eyes, surrounded by her family.

Vivian reaches out and touches the screen. “Look at how white her hair is. It used to be blond. Ringlets.” She twirls her index finger next to her own silver head. “All these years . . . she was alive,” she murmurs. “Maisie was alive. All these years, there were two of them.”

Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1939

It is late September of my nineteenth year and two new friends, Lillian Bart and Emily Reece, want me to go with them to see a new picture that’s playing at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, The Wizard of Oz. It’s so long it has an intermission, and we’ve made plans to stay the night. Lillian’s fiancé lives there, and she goes almost every weekend, staying in a hotel for women. It’s a safe, clean place, she assures us, that doesn’t cost much money, and she has booked three single rooms. I’ve only been to the Twin Cities on day trips with the Nielsens—for a special birthday dinner, a shopping expedition, one afternoon at the art museum—but never with friends, and never overnight.

I’m not sure I want to go. For one thing, I haven’t known these girls for long—they’re both in my night class at St. Olaf. They live together in an apartment near the college. When they talk about drinks parties, I’m not even sure what they mean. Parties where you have only drinks? The only party the Nielsens host is an annual open-house buffet lunch on New Year’s Day for their vendors.

Lillian, with her friendly expression and golden blond hair, is easier to like than the arch and circumspect Emily, who has a funny half smile and severe dark bangs and is always making jokes I don’t get. Their racy humor, raucous laughter, and breezy, unearned intimacy with me make me a little nervous.

For another thing, a big shipment of fall fashions is coming into the store today or tomorrow, and I don’t want to return to find all of it in the wrong places. Mr. Nielsen has arthritis, and though he still comes in early every morning, he usually leaves around two to take an afternoon nap. Mrs. Nielsen is in and out; much of her time these days is taken up with bridge club and volunteering at the church.

But she encourages me to go with Lillian and Emily, saying, “A girl your age should get out now and then. There’s more to life than the store and your studies, Vivian. Sometimes I worry you forget that.”

When I graduated from high school, Mr. Nielsen bought me a car, a white Buick convertible, which I mainly drive to the store and St. Olaf in the evenings, and Mr. Nielsen says it’ll be good for the car to run it a little. “I’ll pay for parking,” he says.

As we drive out of town, the sky is the saccharine blue of a baby blanket, filled with puffy cottonball clouds. It’s clear before we’re ten miles down the road that Emily and Lillian’s plans are more ambitious than they’ve let on. Yes, we’ll go to The Wizard of Oz, but not the evening show that was the excuse for staying over. There’s a matinee at three o’clock that will leave plenty of time to return to our rooms and dress to go out.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “What do you mean, go out?”

Lillian, sitting beside me in the passenger seat, gives my knee a squeeze. “Come on, you didn’t think we’d drive all this way just to go to a silly picture show, did you?”

From the backseat, where she’s thumbing through Silver Screen magazine, Emily says, “So serious, Viv. You need to lighten up. Hey, d’you girls know that Judy Garland was born in Grand Rapids? Named Frances Ethel Gumm. Guess that wasn’t Hollywood enough.”

Lillian smiles over at me. “You’ve never been to a nightclub, have you?”

I don’t answer, but of course she’s right.

She tilts the rearview mirror away from me and starts to apply lipstick. “That’s what I thought. We are going to have some real fun for a change.” Then she smiles, her glossy pink lips framing small white teeth. “Starting with cocktails.”

The women’s hotel on a Minneapolis side street is just as Lillian described it, with a clean but sparsely furnished lobby and a bored clerk who barely looks up when he hands us our keys. Standing at the elevator with our bags, we plan to meet for the picture show in fifteen minutes. “Don’t be late,” Emily admonishes. “We have to get popcorn. There’s always a line.”

After dropping my bag in the closet of my narrow room on the fourth floor, I sit on the bed and bounce a few times. The mattress is thin, with creaky springs. But I feel a thrill of pleasure. My trips with the Nielsens are controlled, unambitious outings—a silent car ride, a specific destination, a sleepy ride home in the dark, Mr. Nielsen sitting erect in the front seat, Mrs. Nielsen beside him keeping a watchful eye on the center line.

Emily is standing alone in the lobby when I come downstairs. When I ask where Lillian is, she gives me a wink. “She’s not feeling so well. She’ll meet us after.”

As we make our way to the theater, five blocks away, it occurs to me that Lillian never had any intention of going to the picture with us.

The Wizard of Oz is magical and strange. Black-and-white farmland gives way to a Technicolor dreamscape, as vivid and unpredictable as Dorothy Gale’s real life is ordinary and familiar. When she returns to Kansas—her heartfelt wish granted—the world is black and white again. “It’s good to be home,” she says. Back on the farm, her life stretches ahead to the flat horizon line, already populated with the only characters she’ll ever know.

When Emily and I leave the theater, it is early evening. I was so absorbed in the movie that real life feels slightly unreal; I have the uncanny sense of having stepped out of the screen and onto the street. The evening light is soft and pink, the air as mild as bathwater.

Emily yawns. “Well, that was long.”

I don’t want to ask, but manners compel me. “What did you think?”

She shrugs. “Those flying monkeys were creepy. But other than that, I don’t know, I thought it was kind of boring.”

We walk along in silence, past darkened department store windows. “What about you?” she says after a few minutes. “Did you like it?”

I loved the movie so much that I don’t trust myself to respond without sounding foolish. “Yes,” I say, unable to translate into speech the emotions swirling through me.

Back in my room, I change into my other outfit, a chiffon skirt and floral blouse with butterfly sleeves. I brush my hair over my head and toss it back, then shape it with my fingers and spray it with lacquer. Standing on my toes, I look at my reflection in a small mirror above the bed. In the late afternoon light I look scrubbed and serious. Every freckle on my nose is visible. Taking out a small zippered bag, I spread butter-soft moisturizer on my face, then foundation. A smear of rouge, a pat of powder. I slide a brown pencil along my upper eyelids and feather my lashes, apply Terra Coral lipstick, then blot my lips, apply it again, and tuck the gold vial in my purse. I scrutinize myself in the mirror. I’m still me, but I feel braver somehow.

Down in the lobby, Lillian is holding hands with a guy I recognize as her fiancé, Richard, from the photograph she keeps in her purse. He’s shorter than I expected, shorter than Lillian. Acne scars pock his cheeks. Lillian’s wearing a sleeveless emerald shift dress, hemmed just above the knee (which is three inches shorter than anyone wears in Hemingford), and black kitten heels.

Richard yanks her close, whispers in her ear, and her eyes go wide. She covers her mouth and giggles, then sees me. “Vivie!” she says, tearing herself away. “Look at you! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with makeup. You clean up nice.”

“You too,” I say, though actually I’ve never seen her without.

“How was the movie?”

“It was good. Where were you?”

She glances at Richard. “I got waylaid.” They both start to giggle again.

“That’s one way to put it,” he says.

“You must be Richard,” I say.

“How’d you guess?” He claps me on the shoulder to show he’s kidding around. “You ready for some fun tonight, Vivie?”

“Well, I sure am!” Emily’s voice comes from over my shoulder, and I smell jasmine and roses—Joy, I recognize from the perfume counter at Nielsen’s. Turning to greet her, I’m startled by her low-cut white blouse and tight striped skirt, her teetering heels and crimson nail polish.

“Hello, Em.” Richard grins. “The fellas are sure going to be happy to see you.”

I am suddenly self-conscious in my prim blouse and modest skirt, my sensible shoes and churchy earrings. I feel like exactly what I am: a small-town girl in the big city.

Richard has his arms around both girls now, pinching them on the waist, laughing as they squirm. I glance at the desk clerk, the same one who was here when we checked in. It’s been a long day for him, I think. He’s leafing through a newspaper and only looks up when there’s a raucous burst of laughter. I can see the headline from here: “Germans and Soviets Parade in Poland.”

“I’m getting thirsty, girls. Let’s find a watering hole,” Richard says.

My stomach is rumbling. “Should we get dinner first?”

“If you insist, Miss Vivie. Though bar nuts would do it for me. What about you girls?” he asks the other two.

“Now, Richard, this is Viv’s first time in the city. She’s not used to your decadent ways. Let’s get some food,” Lillian says. “Besides, it might be risky for us lightweights to start drinking on an empty stomach.”

“Risky how?” He pulls her closer and Lillian smirks, then pushes him away, making her point. “All right, all right,” he says, making a show of his acquiescence. “At the Grand Hotel there’s a piano bar that serves chow. I seem to remember a pretty good T-bone. And I know they got a nice martini.”

We make our way out onto the street, now humming with people. It’s a perfect evening; the air is warm, the trees along the avenue are swathed in deep green leaves. Flowers spill out of planters, slightly overgrown and a bit wild, here at the furthest edge of summer. As we stroll along my spirits lift. Mingling in this wide swath of strangers shifts my attention from myself, that tedious subject, to the world around me. I might as well be in a foreign country for all its similarities to my sober real life, with its predictable routines and rhythms—a day in the store, supper at six, a quiet evening of studying or quilting or bridge. Richard, with his carnival-barker slickness, seems to have given up on even trying to include me. But I don’t mind. It is marvelous to be young on a big-city street.

AS WE APPROACH THE HEAVY GLASS-AND-BRASS FRONT DOOR OF the Grand Hotel, a liveried doorman opens it wide. Richard sails in with Lil and Em, as he calls them, on his arms, and I scurry behind in their wake. The doorman tips his cap as I thank him. “Bar’s on the left just through the foyer,” he says, making it clear he knows we’re not hotel guests. I’ve never been in a space this majestic—except maybe the Chicago train station all those years ago—and it’s all I can do not to gape at the starburst chandelier glittering over our heads, the glossy mahogany table with an oversized ceramic urn filled with exotic flowers in the center of the room.