Chapter Twenty-One #2
“I am sure you don’t mean because she was so worried about me,” Julia said dryly.
“You know this was a big story, but being in the hospital all those weeks, I’m not sure you know how big. It was in the papers all over the world.”
“And she couldn’t stand not being close to it,” Julia said.
“Not just close to it.” Michael nodded at the paper still in Julia’s hands. “Part of it.”
When Julia returned home on Sunday, she felt a brief surge of joy at being in her lovely apartment, among her own things.
But fairly soon, she found herself yearning to return to the cocoon of Margaret’s studio, to the months-long pause in her life.
If not for her eagerness to see her students, she might have fled back there again.
Julia knew the children would be curious, but reading the papers had given her a better sense of just how intense and consuming the interest had been in Washington, especially in her neighborhood. Many Morgan School students walked by the wreckage of the theater every day.
Bess had said the children’s curiosity was morbid. Julia understood, and had no wish to moralize or make the children feel ashamed, even for any perverse pleasure they might have experienced, having such a big, interesting thing happen so near them.
That said, she thought she might be able to direct their thoughts in a less macabre direction, and she put her mind toward preparing to do so.
On her first morning back, the children greeted her with hugs and kind words, and their sweet welcome was a tonic. When they were all seated, she stood and told them how glad she was to see them, and thanked them for all the dear cards and pictures they sent.
“I know you probably have many questions. I thought I might just tell you my story. Would you like that?” The nearly forty sets of eager eyes gave her the answer.
In a matter-of-fact tone, she told them where she sat in the theater, and about the sound she heard from above, soon after the film began.
“The cracks on the ceiling looked very much like cracks on the surface of a pond when it is about to break. I was very lucky to have seen such a thing before. It made me realize the ceiling might fall, so I got under a seat and curled myself into a tight ball.
“My lower legs could not fit, which is why my ankle was broken when something fell on it, but the rest of me was protected.” (Not wanting the children to focus on the horrifying aspects of her experience, she skipped over the terrible period during which she had not been at all confident that was the case.)
“I called for help until someone heard me, and because of the debris, it took a long time to get me out, but eventually, they did.”
She gestured out the window, at the green grass, the leaves on the trees, the flowers in bloom. “I know it’s hard to picture, looking outside on a day like today, but does anyone remember how much snow there was on the ground?”
As she expected, many hands went up, and children excitedly recalled snow-covered motorcars, fathers who shoveled walks only to realize an hour later that they had to be shoveled again. When one of the children mentioned how difficult it had been to get around, it gave Julia the opening she sought.
“Yet despite how hard it was, people came from everywhere to help, some from miles and miles away. Would you like to hear about some of them?”
Julia, whose childhood love of sensational tales was equaled only by her love of heroic ones, knew they would say yes.
She relayed story after story of bravery, benevolence, and sacrifice that she had culled from the press accounts.
She told them about the quick-thinking telephone operator who got the first call from the theater and assigned other operators to call every doctor in the area, so that in minutes, seventy-two doctors had been phoned.
And about mechanics who appeared with tools and torches, and men with shovels who cleared snow for fire trucks and ambulances.
She spoke of the Red Cross nurses and volunteers who brought warm blankets and socks, and administered first aid.
She shared the story of the hotel manager who ordered everyone on his staff, no matter their job, to make sandwiches for the injured and the rescue workers, and somehow got them to the theater, along with urns of hot coffee.
She spoke of the many neighbors who opened their homes late that night to give refuge to the wounded and their families, like the two elderly women who lived above their hat shop across the street and saw what happened out their window.
They raced down to their shop, cleared the counters, and opened the doors so injured people could be treated there.
She recounted the story of the woman beneath the rubble, singing songs to cheer people up, and the little boy who was rescued but would not leave for the hospital until his younger sister was rescued, too.
And about policemen and firemen, soldiers and marines who brought equipment and helped free Julia and many others.
“It was a horrible thing that happened that night, but it reminded me that the world is full of people who are good and brave, and who are willing to help each other.”
Julia went to the chalkboard and asked her students to think of all the jobs they could. She soon had a long list. Doctor, police officer, fireman, nurse, banker, librarian, reporter, baker, mayor, soldier, hotelier, janitor, pharmacist …
Then she asked them to imagine something like the theater disaster happening, and went through the various occupations. “If you had this job, how might you help?”
For the next half hour, with their youthful creativity and boundless sense of possibility, thirty-seven children imagined themselves as librarians bringing books to hospitals to entertain injured patients, bankers giving money to orphans, policemen clearing the road for ambulances, and so much more.
One warm, rainy afternoon in early June, Julia returned to her apartment to find a letter from Mother. It opened with the usual inquiries about her ankle and her return to work, and updates on how her nephews were getting along in school, but she closed it with a request that surprised her.
I would very much appreciate your coming to Haven Point as soon as possible after the school year has ended. Both your father and I would like you to be here, particularly as you did not visit last summer.
Julia had given little thought to her summer plans, besides a vague idea of accepting the Seabornes’ open invitation to Gibson Island.
Her first instinct was to decline the summons.
Mother’s tone was oddly peremptory (really not like Mother at all), and the mention of Father struck her as faintly retrograde.
The paterfamilias commands your presence …
She could only imagine how Pelham or Mina would laugh at the letter. Luring you back to the lost tribe, to the land that time has not touched!
The immediate decision—go, don’t go?—was small, but it felt like a concrete version of an existential question she had, in some way, been asking herself ever since she got out from under the rubble in the theater: Where do I go from here?
Or even one she had been asking for much longer: Where do I belong?
For so long, she had wanted to escape the constraints of Boston Brahmin society, but she’d flung herself into another world that was, in its way, just as constraining.
Worse, it was one she had never truly been part of.
Her only connections were Mina and Pelham, and both those threads felt thin and frayed.
In the end, she decided to go, but not because of Mother’s command or her guilt about Father. It was because looking ahead, and asking herself what came next, had naturally made her look back—to when she had felt most content, most free to be completely herself.
And her mind kept returning to Liberty Island.
A week before the end of the school term, as Julia made her way home from school, she ran into Emmeline, the servant from Mrs. Palmer’s, where Mina had lived.
“So good to see you, Emmeline,” Julia said warmly.
“Why, it’s good to see you, too, Miss Demarest. And up and walking! I was so worried when I heard you’d been in that theater.”
Emmeline asked a few questions about Julia’s condition; then she looked off, a thoughtful expression on her face. Her eyes returned to Julia, and she opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, but then closed it again.
“What is it, Emmeline?”
She hesitated, then said, “I been wanting to talk to you about something, Miss Demarest. The day after the accident, I went over to the theater to see if I could do anything. When I came back, I saw your friend Miss Ellis coming out of Mrs. Palmer’s house…”
“And?” Julia braced herself.
“And she had that fellow of yours with her.”
“Mr. Stewart, you mean?” Julia had introduced Pelham to Emmeline once when they saw each other on the street, but there was still a faint hope that Emmeline could be referring to someone else.
“Yes, him that I’d seen you with before,” Emmeline said. She frowned sadly. “I wondered if maybe he was s’posed to be there or something?”
Julia smiled ruefully and shook her head.
“That’s what I thought somehow. I don’t know what it was, but something about it looked…”
“Clandestine?”
“I think that’s it, yes. I’m sorry if this comes as a shock, but I thought you should know.”
“It’s all right, Emmeline,” Julia said, not wishing to make the woman feel worse. “And did they see you?”
Emmeline barked out a wry laugh. “That Miss Ellis never really saw me.”
Julia knew Emmeline had not been confused about what she saw. In a way, it affirmed the vague mistrust she had been harboring toward both Pelham and Mina.