by Sofia Grant
“It’s not just for me, you know,” she said in exasperation. “After I’m there a while, I can get things for you two. Returns, like these, that we could never afford.”
“Peggy.” Thelma folded her dishtowel and laid it on the counter. “Jeanne and I are going to work for your uncle Frank. He’s opening the mill up again.”
“Uncle Frank?” Tommie echoed.
Uncle Frank? The name rang in Peggy’s mind. When had this all happened—and when exactly were they going to tell her? “The mill?” she echoed stupidly. “Dad’s mill?”
“Thelma just found out,” Jeanne said defensively.
“When?”
Thelma hesitated. “I talked to him last week. He asked me to come back and do the books. But it’s more work than one person could do—there used to be a full-time accounts manager back when your father was in charge—and he—we, Jeanne and I, thought it made sense for her to work with me, rather than in the city.”
“It’s more money,” Jeanne said. Neither of them would look her in the eye. “More than they pay at Harris, even the senior stenographers.”
“With what he’s paying Jeanne and me, you won’t have to work anymore,” Thelma said. “You can stay home with Tommie. In a year or two, when she’s in school full-time, maybe you can do something during the day, at Fyfe’s, or—”
“Wherever you want,” Jeanne said. “Once Tommie starts first grade, you’ll have six hours every day for yourself. You can help in the classroom, or down at the rectory, or get a little job.”
“A little job?” Peggy said, rage choking her words as she rounded on her sister. “You want me to give this up—the best job I’ve ever had, something I’m really good at—somewhere they actually appreciate me, they believe in me—just so you don’t have to go to the city every day?”
“That’s not why—”
“That’s enough, Peggy,” Thelma snapped, raising her voice. “Up to your room, Thomasina.”
Tommie began to cry, and Jeanne automatically bent to comfort her. Peggy pushed past her and grabbed Tommie, lifting her into her arms. Her face was hot and teary against her neck. She was heavy—so heavy. “I love my daughter,” she said, her own face wet with tears. “My job—I want her to be proud of me. I want her to know I’m somebody.”
“You are somebody, you don’t have to—Peggy, please,” Jeanne implored, as Peggy backed out of the kitchen.
“Let her go,” Thelma said darkly, not bothering to lower her voice. “She’s going to have to get used to taking care of that child sometime.”
Peggy rushed up the stairs, Tommie jouncing in her arms. Safely in her room, she leaned against the door, letting Tommie slide from her arms to the floor, where she promptly threw her arms around Peggy’s legs and hugged her tightly. “Don’t be mad,” she sobbed against Peggy’s skirt. “I hate it when you and Aunt Jeanne fight.”
But Peggy hadn’t started the fight, and certainly not with Jeanne, who was just parroting Thelma. Maybe Thelma even pushed her into taking the job.
But if only they would listen to Peggy—she was finally doing something she was good at. She had a future at Fyfe’s, she was sure of it. The rumor was that Miss Perkins earned nearly one hundred dollars a week in her new position, more than Thelma or Jeanne could ever hope to earn in the mill, and while it was true that Peggy had a long way to go to catch up with her, she had already advanced further than any of her peers.
And instead of recognizing that she’d done something impressive—that she’d earned a position the other girls would give their eye teeth for—Thelma and Jeanne had gone behind her back to come up with a scheme that completely turned her world upside down, that took away every hope of ever building a life of her own. She might as well simply cut the Balmain dress to ribbons and put on a washday dress and put her hair up in a rag.
“Mommy, are you all right?” Tommie asked, peering up at her with her tearstained face.
Peggy took a deep breath and patted her cheeks, angrily brushing the tears from her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Mommy’s fine.”
She wasn’t fine, not just at the moment. But she would be. Resolve took shape inside Peggy: she wouldn’t accept this without a fight. She wouldn’t let them steal this chance from her.
Jeanne
Jeanne couldn’t sleep: dread roiled inside her every night now, the knowledge of what she must do weighing heavily on her heart. It had to be done soon, before she started her new job, before it could grow into a problem that could not be solved. “It”—always it. To indulge what-ifs would be as dangerous as walking along the tracks by the river in the dark with a train bearing down on her.
In the wee hours, when there was nothing to do but wait for dawn, something surprising happened. She heard the squeak of the stairs that signaled someone trying to tread quietly, and a moment later someone slipped through her door and stood silhouetted in the dim glow of the streetlamps through her narrow window.
“Peggy?” she whispered.
“Can I come in?”
Jeanne moved over on the bed and pushed back the covers, and Peggy—still warm from her own bed, her nightgown bunched around her knees under Thomas’s ancient river shirt that she wore in winter—slid in next to her. She wriggled her back up against the iron headboard and sighed. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me either,” Jeanne said. Her anger at her sister was too big a burden to pick up now, in the silent hours.
For a while neither spoke, but Jeanne could sense her sister thinking next to her. She imagined the flutter of Peggy’s long eyelashes against her cheek, the way her corn silk waves curled against her neck. She knew the contours of her arms—still plump, as they had been in adolescence—and the sweet, slightly curdled smell of her sleep.
What would it be like, to tell? To confide the thing that was so unthinkable that Jeanne had not allowed herself to name it, even in her own mind? She remembered a night like this, years ago, when Peggy had come into her bed on Placer Avenue, before she’d moved out, before their mother had died. Jeanne’s bedroom in the old house was much larger, the walls papered in a beautiful soft green with a print of floppy pink camellias, the floors covered in a carpet that had been a gift from her godmother, her mother’s sister. It had been the same bed, however, that Peggy had clambered into that night, after announcing her elopement.
“What was it like?” Jeanne had asked then, and Peggy had sighed happily and stretched her legs luxuriously under the quilts. Fine, she had said. It didn’t hurt at all. And he was so happy after.
If Jeanne was to confess now, she would have to say that it did hurt, though not a lot; it was like getting your fingertip pinched in the wringer’s rubber rollers. But that night Peggy had radiated happiness, an almost smug contentment. Jeanne, on the other hand . . . when Ralph rolled off of her, already apologizing, she’d felt little more than a detached sort of disappointment. That, and relief that it was done, like the feeling she had after a vaccination; that something unpleasant had been gotten over with, a necessary task checked off a list.
“Peggy,” she said carefully, and then didn’t know how to proceed. How to explain, for instance, that it truly hadn’t occurred to her that this disaster could result. For something so momentous to happen, Jeanne felt as though she would have had to be more engaged, more deliberate. More . . . participatory. How could it be that while she lay there—attuned to Ralph’s every breath and sigh and grunt, but as still as a stone in the nave of St. Katherine’s—her body could have been silently betraying her, gleefully acquiescing?
“I need this job, Jeannie,” Peggy whispered, turning her face against Jeanne’s shoulder so that her words were muffled by her flannel sleeve. “I can’t have it taken away. Can you understand? . . . Please?”
“I did something,” Jeanne said. But instead of unburdening herself of what she had done the night of her peculiar date, she confessed to Peggy about Mrs. Harris and the fashion show.
“I tore your drawing out of the b
ook,” she said. “The romper with the piped trim.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Peggy said, yawning. Jeanne was surprised—she’d expected her sister to be furious.
“But don’t you get it? I pretended I designed it. Mrs. Harris loved it—she wants a gown now. When I gave my notice, she thought—I mean, I didn’t tell her I’m going to work for Uncle Frank. I let her think I wanted to design and sew full-time. She wants to help me; she says she can get her friends to come to me.”
“Like before?” Peggy rolled her eyes. “Like Nancy Cosgrove in the living room?”
“Peggy, you don’t understand. I stole your drawing. And based on that one outfit, Mrs. Harris—who has more money and influence than everyone I’ve ever sewn for put together—is ready to make me her personal designer.” She took a breath, praying that Peggy would understand just how significant this was. “If I tell her, if I can find a way to explain it was you—you could do that for her. You can get your designs seen.”
“I can’t sew like you,” Peggy said. “It’ll never work.”
“I can help you at night, after work,” Jeanne said. She’d thought of this already—Peggy could do much of it on her own: the cutting and joining, pinning in zippers and darts, gathering the fabric for a waistband or a cuff. Jeanne could do the difficult parts, like attaching a collar or easing in trousers’ crotch seams, and then Peggy could finish stitching down facings and hemming and sewing on buttons. She would teach Peggy to fit and tailor; she’d teach her everything, in time.
“Mmm.” Peggy wriggled farther down under the quilts, pressing her face against Jeanne’s side, burrowing under her arm like a cat. Jeanne realized she’d stopped listening.
It wasn’t the best plan, maybe, but it was something. Peggy could sew for Mrs. Harris; she could draw to her heart’s content, and still care for Tommie. It wasn’t a fancy position in the Crystal Salon, perhaps, but Mrs. Harris was every bit as rich and important as any lady who shopped at Fyfe’s. Maybe she would introduce Peggy to some people. Maybe she would invite her to parties.
It wasn’t exactly what Peggy wanted, but then who got to choose anymore? Peggy would have to do as Jeanne had done, and seize the imperfect opportunities that offered themselves. They weren’t children; it was time to let go of childish dreams.
Jeanne lay awake in the darkness, her eyes wide, while the rhythm of her sister’s breathing evened and slowed and eventually turned to gentle snores. Jeanne ought to push her out, she knew that. They were much too old for Peggy to be getting away with her spoiled baby-of-the-family routine. Theirs were real problems, with real consequences, not like their childhood squabbles over a pretty ribbon or a piece of pie.
But there was something so comforting about having someone next to her in the night, about matching her breathing to Peggy’s without even being aware of trying, about the way she mumbled in her sleep and pressed even closer against Jeanne’s body. A hundred nights, a thousand, they had clung to each other like this, and as Peggy’s fine hair fluttered against her neck, Jeanne drifted into deep, dreamless sleep.
But when she woke in the morning, there was no evidence that Peggy had been there at all.
Thelma
In the morning, Thelma was tired and cross from not getting enough sleep; she’d heard the footfalls on the stairs late in the night and lain awake wondering what the two were talking about. She’d never had a girl; she’d only had Thomas. And her own sisters had died before they were old enough for girlish confidences.
Thelma had stumbled upon the two before, crammed into Jeanne’s narrow bed like sardines in a can to stay warm, as if they were seven and nine, rather than twenty-seven and twenty-nine. The volatility of the sisterly bond was, frankly, incomprehensible to Thelma. Only yesterday, they’d been at each other’s throats. Now, it seemed, all was forgiven, as Jeanne poured coffee and Peggy nestled a sleepy Tommie in her lap.
“I have an appointment with the doctor,” Thelma said stiffly. “I’ll be gone much of the afternoon. So you’ll need to pick Tommie up at school, Peggy.”
“Fine,” Peggy responded shortly.
The girls never questioned Thelma’s visits to the doctor for her sciatica. Thank middle age for giving her the excuse, at least—she had suffered annoying pains in her hips for years, which no amount of stretching and resting seemed to help.
Peggy herself had no trouble inventing maladies of her own so she could leave early when she wanted to. “Mysterious female troubles,” she had once confided with a knowing laugh. “Lavinia is too well bred to pry, and the other girls are barely speaking to me.”
Thelma marveled that Peggy wore this exile like a badge of honor. She’d never coveted the attention of other girls—since moving in with Thelma she’d had only a handful of outings with friends. Even before she took the job at Fyfe’s, Peggy didn’t seek out other mothers, neighbor girls with broods of their own. She was aloof with them in the street; she showed more interest in the man who came door to door selling knives than she did the new family down the street who had twins a year younger than Tommie.
Once or twice Thelma had tried to talk to Peggy about building a new social life, comparing her situation to her own, the inevitable shrinking of a woman’s circle as she aged, but of course Peggy couldn’t see the parallels. It was like that with the young—Thelma herself remembered all too well what it was like to believe your life stretched endlessly ahead of you, to believe that you’d never find silver in your hair and pain in your joints in the morning.
Thelma hadn’t been entirely dishonest when she said she was visiting the doctor, of course, but when on the way home she developed an ache in her heel, she accepted that it was her due. Ordinarily the hours after she left Jack were pleasant ones, the aches under her clothes a delicious souvenir. But today, even Jack couldn’t distract her entirely from her preoccupation. Her mind was a mass of conflicting thoughts and fears. What if they couldn’t convince Peggy to quit her job? Who was to care for Tommie then? The child’s growing unhappiness at St. Katherine’s made Thelma even keener to find the money for Miss Kittering’s, a bigger expense than any of their others combined. And Jeanne deserved something for herself, didn’t she?
Thelma was limping by the time she reached the house. She let herself in the front door, hoping for one more hour of solitude before they all came home. But there, on the kitchen table, was Jeanne’s purse.
It wasn’t surprising that Jeanne had come home early; she had already given notice at Harris, and this was her last week. But her presence meant a possible witness to the outfit that Thelma had worn to her “doctor’s appointment”: a dress that hadn’t been out of her closet in years, a slim, fitted style that was now out of fashion but that accentuated her still-lush curves. A dress whose shade of blue, in better days, had been compared to a turbulent sea by a man who was desperate to get it off her.
It was hardly an appropriate dress for day, and Thelma would have to get to her room, slip off the shawl she’d worn as camouflage, and change into something more appropriate before Jeanne saw her. Luckily, the bathroom door was closed, so she had a few minutes.
She hurried to her bedroom, but in the short hall, she paused at the bathroom door. A strange sound issued from behind it, a low moan followed by the sound of something thumping dully on the tile.
“Jeanne?” Thelma asked. “Are you all right?”
When the moaning continued, she pushed open the door, all thoughts of her dress forgotten. The door had no lock—hadn’t since it broke years ago—but the door opened only a few inches before hitting an obstruction. Frightened now, Thelma pushed harder, and the obstacle yielded enough for her to be able to squeeze inside.
Jeanne lay on the floor, her skirt pushed up her painfully thin legs, a seeping pool of deep red beneath her. Her skin was frighteningly pale, her lips colorless, her eyelids fluttering.
“Jeanne? Jeanne!” Thelma knelt, the hem of the blue dress in the blood, and reached for her wrist. Jeanne didn’t resist; her arm f
lopped uselessly, like a sawdust-stuffed cloth doll.
Thelma found a pulse, a faint and irregular one. “What have you done,” she whispered, as blood continued to trickle from her.
“I didn’t . . . I don’t . . .” Jeanne mumbled as her head lolled on her neck like a tulip past its prime.
Oh, these stupid, stupid girls. Didn’t they know that it didn’t have to be like this, that there were precautions one could take, precautions Thelma still took, even now? And in the same instant Thelma wondered, When—who—how? Had she really been so mistaken in her judgment of Jeanne; had she known the girl at all? For years they’d shared a house, a table, this very bathroom; had they both shielded their real lives from each other? Had they merely gone through the motions of living, like actors in two separate plays taking place on a single stage?
If Thelma didn’t move fast, Jeanne could bleed out on this cold tile floor. She’d heard the stories; she knew about the places one could go, the alleys and windowless rooms. As Thelma felt the helpless ebb of Jeanne’s veins beneath her skin, she knew she alone could save her; and instantly it was as if Thomas himself were in the room. It wasn’t a hallucination; his ghostly form didn’t appear and there was no voice whispering in her ear. But Thelma was suddenly certain that he would expect better from his mother. If Thomas were here he would insist that she act. There would be time for reflection later.
“Up we go, then,” Thelma said briskly. Jeanne could not be allowed to think she had a choice, that she could be allowed to exit this world, or even this house. She could not be allowed to leave Tommie, who, God knew, was going to need every one of them to have a chance in this life.
Thank God Jeanne was so thin; Thelma couldn’t have managed this with Peggy. Though Peggy would never get herself into such a fix.
Peggy was a survivor. Just like her.
That was a thought for later, and not a welcome one. Thelma pushed it from her mind. She knew how to handle crisis. She’d been handling crisis for years. One didn’t view one’s husband’s crushed body at the morgue, didn’t receive the telegram from the army, didn’t decide between paying the mortgage and paying for medicine, without developing a certain strength.