Chapter Five #4
So Columbus became the place she thought about when she saw the exciting hustle and bustle of the city—any city—in the pictures.
Columbus was the opposite of Doyle, it was the opposite of Open Arms and her little room that she was happy to have but was ready never to see again.
Columbus was where the handsome young men were, where she might work at a nightclub and meet the person who would dance her into another world, another life.
Columbus was where she could become sophisticated—which, to her, meant go to museums and eat in restaurants and wear nice things and laugh ha ha ha in a soft, low voice when something funny was said and speak an occasional phrase in another language.
Columbus was the place where she could become someone other than the girl no one wanted.
She decided, walking home from the pictures one Saturday, that she would move there when she turned eighteen. The very thought of it made her heart quicken.
“We’ll have to talk about that,” Lydia said brightly the first time Margaret mentioned it. But they didn’t talk about it.
Six months went by, and when Margaret brought up wanting to move to Columbus again, Lydia had the same response.
Two months from their shared birthday, Margaret brought up the move a third time.
“This topic again!” Lydia groaned. She said she wished they hadn’t gone.
She said whatever Margaret thought Columbus was, it wasn’t.
It wasn’t filled with benefactors, or guardian angels, or tap-dancing, or any of the snaz Margaret might have seen in the pictures.
She pointed out that Margaret didn’t have to go anywhere.
No one was kicking her out. She was welcome to just—stay.
Was it unreasonable for Lydia to suggest that this suddenly grown-up person remain fixed to the spot she was in?
Yes. But Margaret wasn’t just any girl. She wasn’t just the sole infant orphan Open Arms had ever received anonymously.
She was also the only girl to spend the majority of her childhood within its walls.
What was Lydia supposed to do without her?
“Just know, it’s an option if you want it,” she said.
Then, alone in her room, she broke down sobbing.
But in the coming weeks, she set about doing everything she could think to do for a na?ve, city-bound, beautiful young woman in 1936.
For Margaret had grown into a true beauty, with flowing red hair and bright-green eyes, good cheekbones and a wry smile.
She had a fox’s coloring and a fox’s face, that beautiful.
Her parents, Lydia thought, must have been lookers.
She wished Margaret were less of one, though.
The world was hard enough on women with average looks, like her; she could only imagine how it must come down on the beauties.
She checked to see if any of Margaret’s clothes needed mending, culled the donation box.
She made a few phone calls to Columbus and secured a room for Margaret at a women’s lodging house she knew about through social services.
She gave Margaret the name and address of a large cafeteria on East Long Street owned by a Mr. Anton, where someone named Delores, a friend of a friend of Lydia’s, worked and said they were often hiring.
She insisted Margaret take enough money from her for three months’ rent, and some extra just to get on her feet.
More times than Margaret could count, Lydia reminded her that she was going to have to be careful.
The day of Margaret’s fifth and final departure from Open Arms, the sky was gray and heavy with the look and smell of rain, but it didn’t rain.
Wendell drove, and this time Lydia claimed the rumble seat, thinking she would be able to cry the whole way without being noticed.
In front of the women’s lodging house at the edge of Weinland Park, she pushed her handkerchief into her face and gave Margaret fifty extra dollars she said was from Wendell, who’d wandered down to the corner to smoke and give the two of them some privacy.
“Use good judgment,” Lydia said, holding both of Margaret’s hands, looking her right in the eye.
“I will.”
“Don’t talk to anyone who doesn’t seem nice. Don’t talk to any man who has his pants hiked up and his business shoved over to one side, on display.”
“I won’t.”
“Oh, Firefly!” Lydia let go—only to throw her arms around Margaret and hug her tight and cry into her neck.
Margaret was crying too. Into Lydia’s ear, she said, “Thank you.”
Lydia made her promise to call her collect in three days, and then once a week for the first month, reverse-charge, just to let her know she was okay. And she made Margaret promise to write.
In Wendell’s car, with Columbus receding behind them, Lydia cried and cried, feeling as if she were one more person to abandon that redheaded child.
Wendell talked to her, tried to comfort her, and what he said made sense.
Wendell always made sense. But it also made sense that Lydia felt gutted and irresponsible and unbearably sad, and what did he know about that?
Gradually, the thought of all she had to do that evening washed over and settled her some—which girl needed cough syrup before going to bed, which two had been fighting that morning and might need to be checked on after dinner.
She pulled Wendell’s arm around her shoulder.
He kept it there all the way back to Doyle.