Читать книгу Silhouette of a Sparrow - Molly Beth Griffin - Страница 9

Ruffed Grouse

(Bonasa umbellus)

She presided over the streetcar platform like a grouse stuffed into an albino peacock costume.

I opened my mouth to address her—

“You are Garnet, then?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, dipping a quick curtsy that seemed expected of me.

“I am Mrs. Harrington, your father’s cousin on his mother’s side. This is my daughter, Hannah.” At her name, the thin girl whose angular limbs seemed to be drowning in their lace and ribbons nodded her pointed chin to me in terse politeness. The haughtiness of the greeting made me dislike her immediately.

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am, miss.”

“Take her bags up to the Galpin House and unpack them, Charlotte,” Mrs. Harrington said to her maid. “Have the dresses pressed. We’ll be up shortly.” The young woman dropped a deep curtsy and took my trunk and traveling case. She paused a moment, her dark eyes laughing with obvious surprise and relief at the lightness of my luggage, and then hurried away. I would’ve preferred to unpack my own things, but I was not about to argue. Mrs. Harrington whipped open her fan and fluttered it at her damp face. “Dreadfully hot,” she murmured.

“Have you already settled in, then?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. We take the train up from St. Louis the moment Hannah’s tutor stops lessons for the summer.” She said tutor with emphasis, and her meaning wasn’t lost on me; Mrs. Harrington’s exceptional children did not bother with something so common as a regular school—like the one I’d attended all my life. “Mr. Harrington and my boys care for the estate while we come up here and make our home at the Galpin in the summertime,” she continued. “The summers are simply unbearable down there if you ask me. We’ve been coming up for years, since well before they built that horrid amusement park last spring and the riffraff started arriving. Shall we make our way up to the hotel now? I’m afraid it’s a bit of a walk.”

Without waiting for an answer she snapped her fan shut and set off at a leisurely waddle down the walkway. I stifled a giggle, thinking of the ruffed grouse as Hannah turned to follow and I started to do the same.

But then something caught my eye. “Mrs. Harrington, what is that enormous building?” I pointed to a huge structure off to my right as we moved in the opposite direction. Hannah shook her head as if to stop me from asking, but the question was already out.

Mrs. Harrington stopped abruptly and turned back to me. “That, my dear, is the dance hall,” she said, biting the words off and brandishing her closed fan like a weapon. “That is where nice young ladies and gentlemen go to corrupt themselves with drink and dancing.” And that was all she had to say on the subject.

The dance hall tugged at me as if by a strand of fishing line anchored beneath my ribs. Something in there seemed to be calling to me, and I was surprised to discover that I longed to go see what it was. I’d always been fascinated by the one near my house in Minneapolis, perhaps because it was off-limits and my best friend, Alice, was always scheming ways to get in. Mrs. Harrington moved off away from the offending structure and I had no choice but to follow. The dance hall, like the amusement park, would have to wait.

While we walked, I sized up Hannah. Although Father had visited these cousins a few times before the war, I had not met them. They came into the city briefly on one of their summer trips, but I was too young to remember the visit, and Hannah must’ve been a baby in the arms of her nurse then. Now, although she was younger than me and smaller than me, she tried hard to look grown-up. Not only had she dressed in expensive white lace, but she’d also twisted her hair back in an elaborate style that exactly matched her mother’s. Or maybe her mother had done the dressing and the hair twisting, using her daughter as a turn-of-the-century doll. I couldn’t help but dislike Hannah for her vanity and arrogance, but I pitied her too. She looked so uncomfortable in that outfit, and it didn’t suit her a bit. If I sewed her a proper dress, I wondered, a simpler one, a looser one, a sundress or a summer suit—would her mother let her wear it? I doubted it, and I was sure the offer would offend them both. The Harringtons may have been family, but our families were far from close. They didn’t even know about Father’s condition. I needed to tread carefully.

With no idea how to befriend such a companion as Hannah Harrington (and little desire to try), I walked in silence beside her and kept a bit of distance between us. She cast her eyes down. Mine took in the sights as Mrs. Harrington led the walking tour.

“This is the entrance to the amusement park,” she said, her voice betraying an edge of malice as she gestured to the arched gates. The park swelled with joyous shouting and threatened to burst out of its fence. Later, I thought. Later I tore my gaze away and hurried along in the fat woman’s wake.

Mrs. Harrington lumbered down a path that led us past the park and around the western shore of the bay.

“The docks are here,” she said, “but the grand old steamers don’t run anymore thanks to this silly new obsession with speedboats. A few of the smaller steamers, the streetcar boats, still make tours of the lake. We do enjoy a ride on the Minnehaha now and then, don’t we, Hannah?” The pile of ribbons nodded her answer. “Perhaps we’ll take you on it, Garnet.”

“Yes, I’d like that,” I said, imagining myself in the midst of an expanse of water—a fresh lake breeze against my face and the swell of the waves rocking me.

A strip of grass and trees ran along the western shore in front of us. “What’s up there?” I asked.

“They call this park the Commons, after the Boston Commons. It’s all public land. I’d like to build a little summerhouse in that cove up there, but the city won’t sell. Pity. We’re buying in Florida instead. That’s the new promised land, you know, and it’s very reasonable to buy at the moment. There’s wonderful money to be made in real estate, even when you buy on credit.”

I narrowed my eyes critically, but then I felt Hannah’s gaze on me and worked to change my expression to a neutral one until she looked away. Mother had often cautioned me against ever spending money I didn’t have. I snuck a look at Hannah and wondered if she was dressed that way because her family was rich, or just because they wanted to look rich.

“In any case, there are public beaches up there and lots of pretty little inlets,” Mrs. Harrington continued. “Nice clean, clear water—not like those dirty city lakes—perfectly safe for swimming if you’re inclined that way and if you’ve brought a proper bathing costume. You don’t want to seem indiscrete. So many of the young people these days . . .” Her voice trailed off for a moment. Clean, clear water. I could hardly wait to feel it cool against my skin.

“Off to our left here is the town proper,” she continued, gesturing widely with her fan. “Lovely little shops up there—all the necessities. It’s very quaint, makes a pleasant stroll. Ah, we’re nearly there.” She nodded toward a gleaming white building up ahead, set back from the park on a bit of a hill and across a narrow street, overlooking the lake.

“Oh, it’s perfect,” I said. A grand double-wide staircase led up to a veranda that stretched the length of the building. Two more stories rested above the first, with windows looking east, over the Commons and the bay.

At last we reached the front steps. They rose gently, not steeply like in a normal house, and it was easy to climb them with grace. A bellboy bowed to Mrs. Harrington and opened the main doors at the top. The lobby was large and richly carpeted, with a huge polished wooden counter for a front desk. An ornate radio stood in the corner with pretty little sofas and cushioned chairs clustered around it, their flowered upholstery clean and bright. Electric lamps nested on shiny end tables next to glossy copies of Ladies’ Home Journal and the daily paper.

Mrs. Harrington led the way to our suite on the second floor. We had a modern bathroom, a small sitting room, and three bedrooms. Mrs. Harrington had already settled into the large bedroom with the bay window in the very center of the building, and Hannah’s little room nestled next to hers. Mrs. Harrington showed me to the tiny room in the northeast corner that looked out over the roof of the veranda toward the lake. It wasn’t much but it was all mine, and I could tell after just half an hour with the Harringtons that the privacy it afforded would be a relief. The maid had already unpacked my things into the dresser drawers and the closet, and the empty luggage sat on the top shelf of the cupboard like it had always lived there.

“Meals are served in the dining room three times a day,” Mrs. Harrington said as I pulled back the heavy drapes, opened the window wide, and looked out at the lake. “The dining room is on the south side of the first floor, off of the lobby. Hannah and I will be down on the veranda when you’re ready to join us. We’ll leave you now so you can settle in.”

I stood there awhile at the east window. Maybe I’ll be able to see cranes fishing along the shoreline from here, I thought. Then I pulled away to investigate the second window on the north wall of the building. It looked out on a huge silver maple tree. And that must be a heaven for songbirds. I’ll never, never close these drapes.

“You have no modesty,” I said aloud to myself in my mother’s voice.

“I need to wake up to blue sky in the mornings,” I replied in my own as I fastened the sashes firmly. “And you, Mother, are not here to chide me.”

As my own words sunk in, I felt a great weight lifted from me. Without the confines of Mother’s anxious hovering and Father’s persistent gloominess pressing in on me, I felt light. I filled my lungs with fresh, country air and thought that there might in fact be some real health benefits to “taking the lake air” after all, even for me.

I left the window and searched for my sewing kit. The maid had tucked it into the top drawer of the dresser, next to my stockings. I fished out a pin and took the chickadee silhouette out of my pocket. I tacked the little bird carefully over my narrow bed—the beginning of a new flock. I resolved to look for a grouse in the underbrush by the lake as soon as I could get out for a walk, so I could cut its image in honor of Mrs. Harrington.

Then I changed into fresh stockings and made my way down to the veranda, ready for the Harringtons, ready for lunch, and ready for my glorious summer to begin.