dander was officially up like a post in the newest-plowed field, and so she made no reply. She pressed her lips tightly against each other to keep hot words from bursting out. She dropped her gaze and made herself busy as a whirlwind, tossing the apron aside and taking perverse pleasure in slamming down the mugs and crocks in their transport to another work surface, making enough noise to prevent Miss Lizzie from adding more egregious words to the ones already spoken.
She examined the smoking furnace of her feelings as she did so. Somehow Miss Lizzie had adjusted from an object of no small terror in the night, to the annoyance of bigotry and contrary opinions. Bridget hardly knew which was worse.
One was a subject she knew well. She was used to the cold shoulders for those of her race, identifiable by the thick and sweet timbre of their voices. At market, others might smile at you and extend a greeting, withdrawn when she opened her mouth and spoilt the charade of being a decent American. She’d even laughingly practiced with others, flattening her round, fruit-filled vowel basket until the hard, native tones of Massachusetts filled the ear, sounding as if the speaker was perpetually unpleased.
There were ill feelings against the Irish. They were second-class citizens only fit for the trades or the mills. Bridget herself especially hoped to avoid a station at one of the roaring machines she heard as she passed by. She’d never set foot in one of Mr. Borden’s several textile mills, but even upon a walk past, the very walls seemed to tremble with the clack-clacking of the mechanical shuttles going to and fro on the same task a woman could render in silence, if not as rapidly.
One heard tales, too, of the bosses who took pretty girls aside and abused them, for the girls desperate to keep their jobs would never dare register a complaint.
And of course the machines themselves enjoyed tugging at a girl’s skirts like an unwanted lover, crooking her backward for an insistent kiss, unraveling her threads until the others noticed and cut the power to liberate her. Fingers were lost to the machines’ ardent courtship. Hair was scalped as if the Wampanoags were still fitfully trying to preserve their impossible holdings. Girls died in the mills if the pulled fabric wrapped around their necks and suffocated them. Hair was so very carefully pinned up, but pins failed. Machines loved braids, adored apron strings, swooned for the fringe upon shawls.
A place even in an unpleasant home like this suited Bridget far better . . . especially given she was not worked so hard with the bedrooms being cleaned by the occupants. She had the luxury to lie down and let the sun plaster the window and her counterpane until she slept. She could stand by the fence and bandy words with Mary Doolan. There was a fair amount of freedom in this household, despite its cold and haughty nature.
And really—what servant finds warmth from her masters anyway? Surely none ever sit and eat together, nor engage in more than the most cursory of conversations. She was fine here, so long as she didn’t let Miss Lizzie bully her by lurking in the stairs to make sure she came home at a decent hour and not reeling with drink.
“The dancing keeps us trim, I find,” Bridget finally managed to say, a carefully crafted reply that answered insult with insult, for Miss Lizzie was beginning to drift into the jowled regions of middle age, her waist thickening. In fact, she was to have a dressmaker come in the next week to prepare new gowns for her and Emma, purportedly to be in mode but also because the present gowns were too tight on her broadening midsection.
She turned her head to see the effect of this sly affront, but Lizzie was already gone. How long had she been thumping around the plates and flatware, when she had no audience to madden?
She looked through the window and saw her enter the barn, going to care for her pet pigeons. Best that she have that task, thought Bridget, for with her spiteful personality she’ll never have children of her own.
JULY 12, 2016
Back at the apartment, Brooke logs on to check in with Miguel.
Went on a date. Got a little freaked out and told him I had a headache so I could leave.
I get it, he typed back. It spoke volumes. She and Miguel seemed incapable of romance. Their childhoods had screwed them up, stolen from them the possibility of healthy conversation with another, the easy-going flirtations she saw going on at a hundred tables in a hundred cafés, theaters, clubs, restaurants. She couldn’t pull it off.
I robbed myself of a night of passion. He was cute, too.
Should’ve rolled the dice, chica. If nothing else, you blow off steam.
Like you do?
Now and then.
It would’ve been good to spend the night with Anthony. But he seemed too interested in her. When she stuck around long enough for men to start asking questions, then it was all over: “A group home? Were your parents abusing drugs? Abusing you? You don’t know who your dad is?”
Occasionally she would find someone as messed up as she was, but she would always get scared. Their stories upset her, plunged her into despair that their joined life could never be normal. Her longest relationship had been ten months, with a man whose wrists bore scars. It had taken her a long time to ask about those, knowing how much she hated fielding questions herself. She assumed they were the marks of a long-ago suicide attempt. Instead, she learned his stepmother had held him down while his father used the knife on him to make it appear like a suicide.
He’d spent weeks in the hospital fighting for his life, and as his sobs choked through her apartment (six moves ago), she wasn’t sure he was glad he’d survived. She was willing to keep the relationship going, but it seemed he resented having told her. He picked fights, stood her up a few times, forced her to conclude it wouldn’t work. Like him, she had become very good at engineering the ends of relationships so that it appeared to be the other person’s idea.
What would’ve happened if you’d gone home with him?
Miguel knows she can’t invite a man to her home (the wrist-knifed man having been the exception, due to his longevity). Anthony’s place, an attorney’s home: what would it have been like? As lavish as the Carrs’ lakeside home?
Well, duh, Miguel. What do you think would’ve happened?
Crap. You saw through my attempt to picture you in action.
You dog.
She sees the ellipsis appear that indicates he’s typing. Then it disappears. He’s deleted whatever he’d written.
What? she prods.
The ellipsis appears . . . and disappears.
We should try harder. Both of us, he types.
For a second, she thinks he means “try to be a couple,” but then realizes he means both of them with other people.
Why?
