was he doing right now? Helping in his father’s office, probably. Or maybe running an errand for his mother—he’d take any excuse to drive the family car. Maybe he was making plans for a trip to the movies tonight with friends. With Alice—oh, how I suddenly missed Alice—and her beau, Adam.
Teddy and I had been going out together for almost a year. On Friday nights we’d go for burgers with Alice and Adam, and then to the pictures or the bowling alley or a baseball game. He opened doors for me and bought me milkshakes and let me wear his jacket when it got cold. I was allowed to ride in Teddy’s car if all four of us went, and it was more fun together anyway. I liked the feel of his arm around my shoulders—his pitching arm, strong and steady, squeezing me tight. Sometimes, when Alice slipped off with Adam for a while, I let Teddy kiss me. It wasn’t magic, not like they say, but his lips were warm and it felt nice.
Before I knew what I was doing, I had snipped the pink thread and switched to blue. In no time the brown branches and pink crabapple blossoms in the corner of the handkerchief in my lap played host to a perched blue jay. My tiny reproduction of this large, sturdy songbird was unskilled at best, but he carried the sky on his wings and the color cheered me up in spite of myself.
The waiter cleared his throat; I looked up in surprise. He handed me a letter—a letter! A small neat envelope covered in curly writing that I’d know anywhere: Alice’s. It was as if thinking of her had conjured the letter out of thin air. I thanked the waiter sincerely, thrilled to have a distraction, and tore into the envelope.
Dear Garnet,
Is it marvelous there at the lake or horrid with all this rain? I am thanking heaven that I finally found a job for the summer or I’d be bored senseless without you here. I’m just working in the ladies’ department at Dayton’s, but it’s good fun. The other girls are a hoot and I get to try on all the new fashions. I even got my hair bobbed so I’d fit in. I love it short, especially in this heat. Anyhow, Mother’s all for the job, but Grandma just mutters about “shop girls in this family?” all the time. I know once I’m married I’ll leave the money earning to Adam, but it’s too good to pass up while I’m still single, you know? Ooo, Adam. He’s been taking me driving a lot in his dad’s new car. I keep putting the brakes on, if you know what I mean. I have a year of school left! But he’s so gorgeous, it’s hard to resist. We’ve gone to the pictures with Teddy a few times. He misses you a lot. But no one misses you like I do! Write soon.
Love, Alice
P.S. Have you been to the amusement park yet?
I read the letter three times and then stowed it securely in my pocket. But even without the paper in my hands, my mind kept turning the idea over and over: a job. That was it, the answer. With a job I could get out on my own, I could escape the Harringtons, I could do something. Maybe this inert existence was enough for Hannah, but I was going crazy. I needed real employment.
“From a friend?” Mrs. Harrington asked.
“Yes, a girlfriend at home.”
She went back to her magazine and didn’t ask more about it.
After another moment of stifling stillness, I’d had enough. I couldn’t wait another minute. If I needed a job, I first needed permission to look for one, and that was where I had to start. I gathered my things, brushed bits of sky blue thread off my lap, and stood up.
“I’m going to my room,” I said, “to write to Mother.”
Double-Crested Cormorant
(Phalacrocorax auritus)
I went to sleep that night pleased with the letter I’d written. I reminded Mother that she herself had worked as a secretary during the war, and told her that Alice’s mother had allowed Alice to get a job in a department store. I trusted that she’d ask Aunt Rachel for advice, and that advice would certainly be in my favor. So many young, unmarried women were working outside the home now that it seemed pretty old fashioned to resist the trend. I placed my faith in the belief that no modern woman could deny her daughter this opportunity, and though my mother was conservative, she was not so Victorian as the Harringtons. She prided herself on being fashionable—reading Freud and following scandals in the paper and hemming her skirts to just the right length. She would say yes. She had to. I put the letter into the hands of the bellboy, who would post it in the morning, and went to bed hopeful.
Three hours later I woke to an awful racket. The sound of steady rain that I’d gotten so used to sleeping with had changed to a clamor. Uneven cracks and thumps and thuds sounded outside my partly open window, and occasional muffled clunks came right into my room. I stumbled out of bed and over to the window. My toes burned with a shocking cold and I looked down.
Button-sized balls of ice lay on the carpet like sparrow eggs.
Hail.
I looked out. The dark sky had torn open completely and ice chunks thundered down to earth. They bounced off the roof of the veranda outside my window in syncopated rhythms. They littered the grass below. With faint sloshing they pelted the lake, and though I couldn’t see it in the dark, an image of the bay popped into my head as an enormous glass of tea with ice bobbing from shore to shore.
The sound was deafening, but it was a relief to my ears after days of monotonous rain. I laughed and picked up an ice ball from the carpet. The cold burned my skin. I dropped the hailstone into my mouth and let it melt there, cool and clean and almost sweet.
Thunder crashed and a blinding flash of lightening followed just a moment later. The wind picked up to a fierce gale, and outside my north-facing window the maple tree swayed in the gusts. My joy turned to fear in a heartbeat. I slammed both windows shut and backed away from them, in case the hailstones blew into the glass.
Muffled sounds of alarm came through my door. The Harringtons were awake.
“Come, dear,” said a voice at my door after a forceful knock. “We have to go down to the lobby now.”
I threw a long dressing gown over my nightgown and slid my bare feet into shoes. I opened my door to find Mrs. Harrington and Hannah waiting for me, fully dressed but only half awake. “Come, it’s dangerous up here,” Mrs. Harrington said, ushering us out the door and down the stairs to the lobby like a mother hen.
The other guests, in varying degrees of undress, gathered in a hodgepodge around the front desk. The bellboy, fully awake and still neatly clothed in his clean uniform, was just addressing the group as we joined it. An air of panic circulated among the crowd, but the bellboy was calm. Professional. In charge. Stately and dignified as a cormorant, that large, dark water bird I’d seen on sandbars by the Mississippi.
“I’m going to lead you down the kitchen stairs and into the basement,” he was saying. “It’ll be safer there if the wind blows a tree over, or if this storm whips up a tornado. We’ve got some lanterns and candles to take in case the electric goes out. Grab one and follow me. Please be careful with the fire—these old buildings can catch so easily.”
He set off for the kitchen and the group followed, picking up lit lanterns and candles from the desk on the way. Mrs. Harrington didn’t budge.
“I’m not accustomed to taking orders from a colored boy,” she whispered to us, “and I’m certainly not spending the night in
