Chapter Five. Grace
CHAPTER FIVE
Grace
“Grace! Ma’s coming!” Cooper sings out a warning.
I swear, that boy has ears like a bat.
I extricate myself from Stanley, whose octopus hands are everywhere, and plop down on the lounge chair at Ella’s feet. She seems a little shocked by our necking. Maybe her boarding school isn’t a hotbed of sin after all.
But I haven’t kept Stanley from straying with chaste, close-mouthed kisses good night.
Ma bustles down the path in her navy loafers, pausing to yank a stray weed from the marigolds.
Her brown hair frizzes around her face, and she’s wearing an old Hooverette wrap dress she’s had as long as I can remember.
Possibly since Hoover was actually president!
I feel a stab of embarrassment. Rose’s aunt is a dead ringer for Hedy Lamarr, and she went to Bryn Mawr.
Ma left school in eighth grade to keep house for her dad (an oysterman down in Queenstown) and raise her brothers after their ma died.
“Hello, Miss Thorpe.” Ma smiles at Rose. “I’m Martha Harrow. I’ll be taking care of you this summer, cooking and cleaning and anything else you need. If there are any ingredients you don’t care for—or any you’d especially like—just let me know.”
“How do you do. Please, call me Rose. These are my sisters, Ella and Lou. Girls, say hello to Mrs. Harrow.” Even standing waist-deep in the pool, the bottom of her curls dripping wet, there’s something queenly about Rose.
I guess rich girls are used to giving orders.
But I admit (grudgingly), there’s something warm about her, too.
“Lou is allergic to nuts. And Ella doesn’t care for mushrooms. Otherwise, we aren’t picky. ”
Ma smiles and gestures at me. “Well, that will be a nice change from this one.”
“I am not picky because I refuse to eat scrapple!” I scowl.
“What’s scrapple?” Ella asks.
“It’s better if you don’t know,” I say darkly.
Rose peers up at Ma. What have those keen eyes of hers caught? I bristle, afraid she’ll point out a loose thread or a missing button.
“Your pockets have little cornflowers stitched on them!” she says, delighted. “How cunning! They’re one of my favorite flowers.”
“Mine, too. We used to call them bachelor’s buttons.” Ma traces the blue cornflowers on the frilly white pockets of her skirt. “I made this back when the twins were babies.”
Ma’s a deft hand with a needle or her Singer. She’s made most of my dresses.
I bet Rose has never worn anything homespun in her life.
“You made it yourself? It’s lovely. The blue suits you. It brings out your eyes,” Rose says.
Ma blushes. “Thank you, Miss Rose.”
“Just Rose. Really.”
When Ma smiles like that, she looks almost pretty. Rose is right; the blue does favor her coloring and bring out her eyes. I never noticed it before.
Is it really so rare for blue-eyed parents to have brown-eyed children?
Ella probably isn’t remembering the lesson right.
“Grace, it’s almost time for Maggie’s checkup with Nurse Mackey,” Ma says. “I’ve got to go and get supper started up at the hotel. Could you sit with her, please? And then put that tuna noodle casserole in the oven?”
“Do I have to?” It’s always me who has to hang the laundry out to dry, or snap the green beans, or can the tomatoes, or wash the dishes, or iron Dad’s trousers, or mind the babies at church.
Never Cooper. Of course he couldn’t sit with Magnolia during her checkup, but he’s perfectly capable of putting a casserole in the oven!
“It would be a big help,” Ma says. “Stanley, will you be staying for supper?”
“No, ma’am. My mother’s expecting me,” he says. “I’ll pick you up at seven, Gracie.”
“What picture are you seeing? Mr. Harrow will want to know,” Ma says. As though the little movie theater in Greeley is in the business of showing blue pictures.
“High Barbaree, with June there.” Stanley gestures to the Photoplay magazine in Ella’s hands. The headline trumpets How June Allyson Is Learning to Be Happy.
I bet being happy is easy for an MGM starlet.
She probably doesn’t have to worry about what her boyfriend will get up to in the dark of the theater.
I tighten my ponytail, and Stan’s class ring catches in my wet hair. I usually take it off for swimming, but I forgot in all the hustle and bustle of the Thorpes.
Ella watches as I slide it back on my finger, envy plain on her face, but Rose doesn’t seem impressed. Not like Kitty and Barb and the other girls. They’re all jealous that my future is settled.
(Everyone thinks my future is settled.)
As I head toward the cottage, my temper starts to rise. My chest feels tight.
Rose can afford to be choosy. We don’t all have the luxury of a rich father. A fella with wandering eyes and wandering hands might be my best shot at getting out of this house.
And I have to get out. I can’t stay here. I can’t.
I slip through the back door, wincing as my shoulder bumps the frame. The spot where Dad grabbed me earlier is sore. Probably already purpling into a bruise.
I hate him. I hate being the scapegoat for his anger. I hate wondering, every time I snap at Ma or my brother, if I get that from him. If I was born with his mean streak. His proclivity for violence.
I don’t care if Cooper thinks I’m a hard-hearted ingrate, I do wish we were adopted.
What if Magnolia (nitwit that she is) was onto something?
Cooper and I don’t resemble our parents.
Ma and Dad are older than most of our friends’ folks; they were married for eleven years before we came along.
Granddad had passed and Dad was running the Harrow Home by then.
If they wanted a baby—well, they had plenty of babies right here for the taking.
Dad’s proud. He would never admit he and Ma couldn’t have kids of their own. He scoffs about the milksop men who can’t father a child. Calls them soft, and sissies, even though he makes his money off them.
My imagination is probably running away with me.
But what if it isn’t?
I can’t ask Ma; I’m not that mean. Asking Dad is out of the question. Maybe I could track down some of the old Harrow Home staff? I’d have to be careful, though. If Dad heard that I was poking my nose where it doesn’t belong …
It would go poorly.
There’s a knock at the seldom-used front door. Nurse Mackey.
“Good afternoon, Grace. How’s our patient?” she asks.
“Doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose, but otherwise all right.”
She laughs and runs a hand over her chin-length blond bob. It doesn’t do her long, horsey face any favors.
“Let me change out of my swimsuit quick, and then you can come back,” I say.
“Sure. Take your time.” The nurse glances around the cramped parlor, probably contemplating our reduced circumstances: all five of us stuffed into the six-room cottage that used to house the cook and groundskeeper.
It sat empty for a decade. Stan and I snuck in once, looking for privacy, but it was full of cobwebs and mice. Hardly romantic.
(That was back when I wanted to be romantic with him.)
I march into my (our) bedroom. Magnolia sits on her twin bed, chewing on her bottom lip. She gets real anxious about these appointments. I guess if I were carrying a cantaloupe under my dress, I wouldn’t want to step on a scale, either.
“Thanks for sitting with me,” she says. As though I had a choice in it.
I shrug. “I’ve got to do my hair for the movies anyhow.”
Maybe I can use this appointment to my advantage.
Magnolia turns her back while I change into a pink shirtwaist dress. (She’s awfully modest for a girl who’s been naked with a boy at least once.) Then I fetch Mrs. Mackey.
“How have you been feeling, Maggie?”
“Enormous,” Magnolia complains. “And hungry all the time.”
“Well, you’re eating for two, but don’t overdo it,” the nurse warns. “You don’t want to make it hard to get your nice figure back.”
I tune out their chatter and sit at my vanity, twisting my damp hair into curls and pinning them to my scalp. It takes me a lot of work to get the plump ringlets Rose was born with. Some girls have all the luck. She and Ella are already rich, why couldn’t they have greasy hair or acne?
By the time I’ve finished a dozen pin curls, Nurse Mackey has weighed Magnolia, taken her blood pressure, and listened to the baby’s heartbeat with her stethoscope. Now she’s getting her tape out to measure Magnolia’s belly.
“Oh, that was quite a kick!” She chuckles.
“He does that all the time now,” Magnolia says proudly.
“An active baby is a healthy baby.” Mrs. Mackey rolls up her tape and makes a note in her file. “The head is toward your ribs, but the baby has plenty of time to turn.”
“I think he’s a boy,” Magnolia declares.
“Do you now?” the nurse says absently, putting her instruments back in her bag.
Magnolia nods, her white-blond curls bobbing. “I have a feeling. Mothers just know, don’t they?”
Magnolia and her infernal feelings.
It’s the first time I’ve heard her refer to herself as a mother, though. I assumed she thought of the baby as a nuisance, a temporary inconvenience.
“Boy or girl, what’s important is that the baby is healthy.
That’s why I’m here. To make sure you’re taking care of yourself, getting some exercise, and eating well.
” Nurse Mackey pats Magnolia’s shoulder.
“Only three more months to go! We’ll start biweekly visits now.
Before you know it, you’ll be back home with your family. Back at school.”
Magnolia swings her bare feet to the floor. “Do you know the couple who’s going to adopt him?”
Mrs. Mackey frowns. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Harrow will choose the very best home for baby.
You’re doing the right thing, Maggie. A girl your age, with no husband …
You aren’t ready to be a mother. It’s hard work.
Important work. The most important work you’ll ever do.
Someday, when you’re older, when you’re married …
then you’ll have beautiful children of your own. ”
Magnolia’s lip quivers. It’s the perfect time for me to ask. I’m only redirecting the conversation away from any unpleasantness. “You must have delivered a lot of babies.”
“Hundreds,” the nurse says. “But every single one is a miracle.”
I don’t roll my eyes, tempting as it is.
“Did you deliver us?” I adjust a hairpin in the mirror, pretending I don’t know the answer. “Me and Coop?”
Nurse Mackey laughs good-naturedly. “I know I must seem ancient to you, Grace, but I was still in high school when you were born. I didn’t start working for your dad until ’42, when Birdie O’Neill joined the Army Nurse Corps.
She was the one who delivered you. She worked at the Harrow Home for twenty-five years. ”
I wait a beat. “Oh, I remember her. Irish, wasn’t she?
A redhead? She was always chasing us outside.
‘Children need fresh air and lots of it,’ she said.
” I purse my lips as though I’m trying to think.
“She was always arguing with one of the maids. A Black girl who used to tell us ghost stories. Scared me silly.”
“That would’ve been either Maisie or Florence,” Mrs. Mackey says. Thank the Lord for small towns. “Sounds like Maisie. She would’ve been just a kid herself back then. Maisie Mitchell. She works over at the inn now.”
I snap my fingers. “Maisie! That’s right.” Dad used to get after Maisie about running her mouth. Maybe I can pay her a visit, see if she remembers anything about the summer we were born. “Whatever happened to Mrs. O’Neill? Was she killed in the war?”
“Killed? Heavens, no,” Nurse Mackey says. “She lives out on Razor Creek Road with her daughter, Dot. Dot’s husband lost a leg in France. And the poor girl has four boys, can you imagine? Dot went to work for the telephone company, and her mother minds the boys.”
“Hmm.” I make a sympathetic noise.
After I have a chat with Maisie, maybe I’ll pay that old battle-axe Birdie O’Neill a visit.
If Birdie’s the one who delivered us, surely she’ll remember it.
Twins don’t come along that often.
Twins given straight to the boss’s wife and passed off as her own?
That ought to be pretty memorable.