The Silent Boy (11 page)

Back home on Orchard Street, the house was very quiet. I took my kitten into the kitchen, poured him a small bowl of milk, and watched him lap it with his tiny pink tongue. He sneezed, after.

Peggy put away the food that her mother had sent. Then she found me a box as a home for the kitten, and I placed him there atop a pile of rags, and he fell asleep again.

"Now let ' s go see what your mama has been up to, and your Gram," she said. "They must be upstairs."

To my surprise, my mother was in her bed, propped up against the pillows. She was smiling. Gram sat nearby in a rocker, doing her embroidery, and, between them, in the bassinet, was the new baby.

"A little sister," Mama said, for I wouldn't have known from just looking. The baby had only a bit of hair, and her eyes were closed tight. She was wrapped in blankets.

I reached in and touched her nose with the tip of my finger, but she didn ' t stir.

"Where's Father? Does he know?"

"Of course. He was right here when she arrived. He's over at the hospital now, to check on some of his patients. But he'll be back and we'll all have supper together, up here in my room. Won't that be an adventure?"

"I ' ll set a table up," Peggy said. "And I can bring
the supper up on trays. My ma sent you a pot of vegetable soup, and some pie."

I was still examining what I could see of the baby. She was surprisingly pink. "When you unwrap her, can I see the rest?" I asked.

"Of course," Mother said, laughing.

"Does she have a name yet?"

Mother nodded. "Her name is Mary," she said.

Then I knew at once what the kitten's name was to be. It had to do with the girl who died in the factory, and the fact that I would not need to say my special prayer anymore. "Dear Mary Goldstein, please be happy," I said to myself for the final time. A new Mary was alive. And so was Goldstein, though he was sleeping in his box, with milk still wet on his whiskers.

I sat at the kitchen table after supper one evening with a pencil and paper. Naomi had just left, and Peggy was finishing the dishes. Upstairs, Mother was nursing the baby. Mary was a month old now, but still she seemed to want to eat many times each day. Mother didn't mind. She said it was a nice relaxing time, there in the rocker with the baby in her arms.

"Look here, Peggy," I said to her, and she leaned over my shoulder to see where I pointed. I had printed two names, one below the other.

KATHARINE THATCHER
AUSTIN BISHOP

"Now, I cross out all the letters that match. See, first the A, because there ' s an A in Austin. I put a line through both of them. Then the two Ts."

Peggy watched as I crossed out all the matching letters. "Now you say this to all the letters that are left: 'Love, Hate, Friendship, Marriage. Love, Hate, Friendship, Marriage—"

I examined the results. "Friendship. Good. At first I did it using Katy instead of Katharine, but that way it came out to be Hate.

"Now I ' ll do you," I told her. "What is his name? Floyd Lehman? You ' ll have to tell me how to spell it."

"No, I never." But she was laughing, and I knew she wanted me to.

PEGGY STOLTZ
FLOYD LEHMAN

"This is just foolish," Peggy said, but she helped me strike through the matching letters. "
Hate?
" She looked surprised at the outcome. "Maybe we should do like you did with your name, Katy. My real name is Margaret Ann."

This time, using Margaret Ann, it turned out
better and made Peggy blush. "Marriage," I teased her. She crumpled the paper and threw it away.

"Now we could do Nellie. I know who
she's
sweet on." I put my pencil to a fresh sheet of paper.

"Who?" Peggy looked genuinely puzzled.

"Paul Bishop," I told her slyly.

"No!" She was shocked, I could tell. "Don ' t say that, Katy."

"It's true."

I had thought that I would tell her what I had seen. But it was clear that she was truly troubled by the thought. So I stayed silent, and put my paper away.

 

I had never really paid much attention to Peggy's sister. She was always busy. Nell had come to work for the Bishops when Laura Paisley was born, and there was so much washing when you had a little one in the house. I knew that from my own house, now, where Peggy was busy every day with Mary's diapers and little gowns.

Austin called Nell "Nellie-Nellie-Jelly-Belly," just to torment her, and she swatted him lightly with her hand when he did; but you could tell she didn't really mind. She knew she was pretty and had a nice shape.

She was a hard worker, as Peggy was. But she had a different attitude to her, something I could
sense, even though I was so young. You always felt that Nell had other things on her mind, things beyond the Bishops house, things beyond Orchard Street, even beyond our town.

Watching Peggy, at our house, hanging the laundry on the line or washing up the breakfast dishes, you saw that she was always admiring the little things—the flowered dishes, Mother ' s lace-trimmed shirtwaists, Father's monogrammed handkerchiefs—that she hadn't had at her own home. She snapped the corners on the wet pillow slips before she pinned them to the line, and when she straightened them in the sun she sometimes ran her finger over the embroidered edges. She was careful, too: not from nervousness but from admiration. "I always do the little cream pitcher separate," she said to me once, as she washed the dishes. "See the gold on its edge? You don't want to chip that against something. It's too pretty, too precious."

(I had whispered it to Mother once, that Peggy loved the cream pitcher especially, and could we maybe get her one for Christmas. But Mother smiled and said that Peggy had no need of a cream pitcher, not until she got married. For Christmas we gave her warm gloves.)

But Nell, next door, though she did her work energetically and in good spirits, had no real interest in babies, dishes, or embroidery. She was
simply biding her time. She was saving. Waiting. Her mind was on the future. Her heart was set on becoming Evangeline Emerson of the pictures.

On her Thursdays off, she never went to the library as Peggy did. She went off to town, swinging her purse, and Peggy had told me that sometimes she put paint on her face and met fellows.

"Maybe there will be a wedding," I suggested to Peggy, "and you can be bridesmaid. Sisters always are. What color bridesmaid dress would you like to have? I'd choose pink."

But Peggy shook her head. "No wedding," she said. "She only lets them take her to the pictures."

I didn't tell Peggy, but I was a little shocked by Nellie's interests. The nickelodeon was new in our town, and though I had heard about it from friends at school, I had never known anyone who went there. Mother said it was low-class, probably a little dangerous, and certainly not for children. Peggy had told me her sister wanted to look like Mary Pickford. Though I had heard the name, I had no idea, really, who Mary Pickford was until on Main Street, one day, I saw that the nickelodeon was showing a picture called
The Message in the Bottle.
With Mary Pickford, America ' s Sweetheart, the poster said, and displayed a picture of a pretty girl with long curls. She looked just Nellie's age. But girls that age, I thought,
should be in school, learning geography and elocution. Not in pictures.

And certainly not in a burning shirtwaist factory like the other Mary,
I found myself thinking as I stared at the pretty face in the poster and thought about the ways the lives of girls might go. Father had already explained to me that not many women became doctors, and those who did might have a hard time of it. He had known a girl in medical school, he said, and the other students—even Father, though he was ashamed of it now—had played some cruel tricks on her, to see whether she had the stuff for medicine. And she did. She ignored their pranks and became a doctor. But she never married, Father said, and never had children, which was a loss, he felt, to a woman.

I decided I could do it all, and would. I would go to college. Then I become a doctor and I would marry Austin Bishop and have children one day, and maybe would travel, too. I thought I might go to Africa and China and all the places we studied in school.

 

Austin's father, Mr. Bishop, had a new camera, much fancier than the one that Jessie's father had, and probably very expensive, my mother had told me. Austin's mother said it was foolishness.
But his father was fascinated with anything mechanical. He was the one who had built Austin's driving machine, the thing that I had once called the mazing, being little then, and foolish. The driving machine was gone now, for Austin was older and had a real bicycle, which he used to deliver papers up and down our street.

Mr. Bishop had been the first to have a writing machine, called a typewriter, in his office. His secretary had taken lessons and learned to operate it. So when he bought a Delmar folding camera and all the equipment to make pictures, Mrs. Bishop pretended to be astonished and exasperated, but we all knew she wasn't, really. She was used to Mr. Bishop and his fondness for machines.

One Sunday afternoon in May, when the sun was shining, he brought the camera out to the backyard and attached it to its tripod so that it stood there like some strange three-legged creature.

"My land," Nell said, and began smoothing her red hair with her hand. She was sitting on the steps holding Laura Paisley, but Laura Paisley, who was almost three years old, wiggled from Nell's lap and scampered toward the camera.

"Don't let that child touch anything!" Mr. Bishop ordered. But by then Laura Paisley had spotted Pepper, my dog, whom she loved, so she chased after him instead.

"I don't suppose it takes moving pictures, does
it?" Nell asked, watching Mr. Bishop set things up.

Paul was there. He often wasn't. Paul liked to be off with his friends, and sometimes his mother complained that she had no idea what that boy was doing, or who his companions were, and she feared for him. He was already enrolled for Princeton, where his father had gone, but if he didn't do well in his high school studies, Mrs. Bishop said, Princeton wouldn't want him for a nickel.

Now, teasing Nell, Paul knelt and pretended to be an actor, waving his arms around in a dramatic way before the camera. He made as if he were proposing to her. "Marry me and come to Paris!" he said in a dramatic voice.

I noticed Peggy watching Paul and her sister. She had been standing quietly with me, beside the flower garden, both of us interested but a little shy. Laura Paisley was frolicking with the dog, and Austin was chasing them both, carrying a ball he wanted to throw for Pepper to fetch. Baby Mary, bundled in blankets, was sleeping in her carriage, parked in the corner of the yard under a tree. Our mothers were on the porch, talking to each other, not really listening as Mr. Bishop gave out important information about the camera: "Now this Delmar has a ground glass focusing screen, and a Bausch and Lomb lens. That's the very best." If my father had been there, he would have paid
attention. But Father had been called to tend a patient.

I could see Peggy bite her lip when Paul did the acting in front of Nell. I could see she was embarrassed and hoped that her sister wouldn't encourage it.

I knew it was true, though, what I had told Peggy, that Paul and Nell were sweet on each other. I knew it for a fact. I had come on them—this had been some months before—in the early evening, in our stable, which could be reached from the Bishops yard by a break in the hedge. I had heard the horses stir and stamp, and I thought perhaps Jacob might be there, as he so often was.

But when I slipped through the partly opened door, I saw it wasn't Jacob at all, but Paul and Nellie standing close together. I thought they were holding hands, but when I entered they pulled apart. Paul explained quickly that they had come over to borrow some harness oil. It looked like rain, he said, and they wanted to waterproof some old harness so it wouldn't crack. He turned and picked up the can from the shelf. Nellie didn't say anything. She looked flushed and nervous.

At first I thought it quite romantic and was glad I was part of their sweet secret now. From time to time I saw the two of them together, sometimes simply talking on the porch, and once on the
corner near the grocery store, as if Paul had happened by as Nellie was starting home.

But my knowledge of their romance turned uncomfortable after I came on them in the Bishops barn one afternoon when I was looking for Austin and thought he might be hiding from me. When I opened the barn door I could see right away that Austin wasn't tthere.But I heard a sudden frantic whispering from the corner where the hay was kept, so I went there without thinking, to see who it was and why they were hiding. They drew apart quickly, and Paul stood up. Nellie turned her back to me as if to fix her clothes. Paul was angry and told me to get lost. Nellie just looked away. There was hay caught in her red hair. Her apron was untied and her shirtwaist had come loose from her skirt.

My feelings changed then, though I wasn't sure why. It no longer felt romantic. Now it felt wrong and dangerous.