Orphan Train (26 page)

“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.”

D
ESPITE
M
OLLY
’
S PROTESTS
, V
IVIAN INSISTS ON MAKING TEA
. S
HE
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?”