BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS.
by ANNA G.o.dBERSEN.
PROLOGUE
IT IS EASY TO FORGET NOW, HOW EFFERVESCENT AND free we all felt that summer. Everything fades: the shimmer of gold over White Cove; the laughter in the night air; the lavender early morning light on the faces of skysc.r.a.pers, which had suddenly become so heroically tall. Every dawn seemed to promise fresh miracles, among other joys that are in short supply these days. And so I will try to tell you, while I still remember, how it was then, before everything changed-that final season of an era that roared.
By the summer of 1929, when the weather was just getting warm enough that girls could exhibit exactly how high hemlines had risen, Prohibition had been in effect for so long it had ceased to bother anyone much. The city had a speakeasy per every fifty souls, or so the preachers liked to exclaim on Sundays, and sweet-faced girls from the hinterlands were no longer blinded by wood alcohol, for the real stuff had become plenty easy to get. The Eighteenth Amendment had converted us all to grateful outlaws.
We did whatever we liked and dressed in whatever we thought smart and broke rules for the sport of it-diving into public fountains, mixing social cla.s.ses as casually as we mixed c.o.c.ktails. There were no longer exclusive b.a.l.l.s given for a few people with old money and good names, and even if there were, no one would have cared to go. Nice girls wore the kind of makeup that thirty years before would only have been seen on actresses, and actresses were escorted publicly by the scions of shipping fortunes, and some of them did not even bother to disguise their Bronx accents. Girls took to dressing like boys, and though women had obtained the vote, we had swiftly moved on to pursuing flashier freedoms: necking in cars and smoking cigarettes and walking down city streets in flesh-colored stockings.
New York was the capital of commerce and joy, and young people sought us from every direction. They came in droves, to join the kind of party only a great metropolis can host. They came from wealthy families and farming families, from the north and south and west. They came to avoid kitchens and marriages, to a place where they could reasonably claim to be eighteen forever. Or for the foreseeable future, anyway, which seemed to us the same thing. They came, mostly, for the fun-especially the young things, especially the girls.
I can"t remember very many now-although there are three, from that last incandescent summer, whom I resist forgetting. They were all marching toward their own secret fates, and long before the next decade rolled around, each would escape in her own way-one would be famous, one would be married, and one would be dead.
That is what I want to tell you about: the girls with their short skirts and bright eyes and big-city dreams.
The girls of 1929.
1
THE HANDFUL OF WEDDING GUESTS WERE ALREADY a.s.sembled in the clapboard Lutheran church on Main Street, and though they had been waiting for a quarter hour, any stray pa.s.serby might have noticed a lone girl still loitering outside. It was past four o"clock on that sleepy Union, Ohio, Sunday, and the dappled afternoon sun played on her high, fine cheekbones and on the strands of her loosely braided honey-and-bark-colored hair. The girl was just eighteen, and had graduated from Union"s one-room high school two weeks earlier. If that pa.s.serby had bothered to ponder her eyes-which were the sweet, translucent brown of Coca-Cola in a gla.s.s-he might have recognized in them a brewing agitation.
She let those eyes drift to the glaze of sun between the tree branches overhead; her lips parted, and she let out a breath. The homemade dress she wore was of simple white cotton, and though the style was not entirely appropriate for the event-she had tried, but mostly failed, to sew it in the shorter, sportier fashion now worn in cities-the color marked her as the bride.
Through the narrow windows she could see the guests in their pews and the tall figure of the only boy in Union who had ever paid her any attention, standing patiently at the altar. He was wearing his father"s black suit, and his sand-colored hair was a little overgrown and rough around his face, which was big and pleasing but not yet a man"s. The sight of him made her agitation worse, and she drew back a little and closed her eyes. Everything had happened so quickly. She hadn"t really believed there would be a wedding until that morning, when she woke up and it suddenly dawned on her that her situation was quite real.
"Cordelia!"
She turned at the sound of her name and saw her best friend, Letty Haubstadt, whose eyes stood out like two pure blue planets against the white oval of her face. Her dark hair was parted down the middle and pinned back, and her pet.i.te body was clothed in the same black dress and black tights and black shoes her father always insisted she wear. The sight of Letty rea.s.sured Cordelia some, even if her garb was a little funereal for a wedding, and she managed to almost smile.
"I"m sorry it took me so long," Letty told her, smiling more broadly. Then she untucked the folded yards of mosquito netting that she"d been carrying under her arm, shook it out, and stood on her tiptoes to arrange it over the taller girl"s head. "I know your aunt says you don"t deserve one, but I just think it wouldn"t be a wedding if the bride wasn"t wearing a veil."
There was a sharp rapping on the windowpane, and both girls looked up to see Cordelia"s aunt Ida, her thin lips set in a hard grimace, looking down at them expectantly. Cordelia gave her aunt a curt nod and turned back to her friend.
Letty handed her a bouquet of yellow wildflowers, which she must have picked on the way there, and then asked, "Are you ready?"
Cordelia glanced up to make sure her aunt had returned to her seat, and then pulled the netting away from her face so that she could look directly at her friend. She swallowed hard, and said, "Let"s go tonight."
Letty"s smile fell, and her face grew pale. "Tonight?"
"You"ll never be a star if you stay here." Cordelia fixed her friend with an intense gaze. She was merely saying out loud what they both knew to be true. "The train leaves at six fifty-two from the Defiance Station."
There was only one train a day in that part of the state that would carry you all the way to New York City-a fact Cordelia had known for years. She knew the timetable by heart, for running away was an obsessive fantasy that had carried no special urgency until the dawning hours of that particular day, when the notion that she was to be married had ceased to seem absurd and faraway, and she had begun to apprehend it with a kind of dread. By the time she"d risen to help her aunt with breakfast, the plot to leave had taken on a decided shape, and though her mind had pulsed with it all morning, Cordelia had not imagined she might be brave enough to go until she said it out loud to Letty.
There was no discussion. Letty repeated the train"s departure time and nodded. Then Cordelia replaced the netting over her face and followed her friend up the creaking wooden steps to the church. She glanced back once, at the little gabled structures-houses and storefronts and churches-that const.i.tuted Union, where she knew everyone by name, and everyone knew her as the parentless girl with the perpetually sc.r.a.ped knees. In a few hours she would be on a train, and all this would be lost to her. By then the dusk would have settled in and the darkness would be soon to follow-and in that part of the world the darkness could go on and on forever, as though there would never be light again. She hadn"t ever been able to tolerate that very well.
Moving up the aisle, toward the head of the church, she could barely feel her own feet. It was almost as though she were floating; her movements had become automatic, beyond her control. A greenish light filtered in through the narrow windows along the sidewalls, beneath the high, peaked ceiling with its unfinished wood beams. John"s parents and younger brothers were situated on one side of the aisle, and on the other sat her aunt, with that same grimace, in an old flowered dress with a large white lace collar, and Uncle Jeb, in his overalls, with her cousin, Michael, between them. In the pew behind her aunt and uncle sat Letty"s two sisters, Louisa and Laura, wearing the same tight, old-fashioned bun.
In Union, the Haubstadt family was known for their dairy farm, for their austerity and religious reverence, and for having worn all black since the death of Mrs. Haubstadt, during the birth of Letty"s youngest sister, six years ago. She was remembered by her children as a saint, and Cordelia couldn"t argue: Any woman who withstood the tempers and severe expectations of old man Haubstadt deserved some kind of deification, although it seemed to Cordelia like a dubious achievement, not to mention a questionable use of one"s time on this Earth. In the family photographs, Mrs. Haubstadt appeared almost comically small when situated beside her husband. Of the five siblings, only Letty was pet.i.te like her mother. "The little one," the others called her, and they treated her as though her size made her invisible.
The faces of each guest turned toward the bride, and though some of them tried to smile, their eyes seemed to say, I know what you"ve done. I know what you"ve done.
Lest their looks cut her, Cordelia reminded herself that she was only half one of them. While her mother had been raised in Union, the other half of Cordelia came from some glittering, far-off place, and like Letty, she was too big for the town she"d grown up in. Letty was right, Cordelia now realized with some relief, to have insisted on a veil. Not only to protect her from the guests" stares and the judgment in their expressions, but also because of John, who was now reaching for her hands. His eyes were shining, but she could not meet them. She didn"t want any memory of the happy, expectant way he was gazing at her.
She wanted to remember John Field the way he had been on the day after graduation, when they"d gone down to the place where the creek gets deep, and she had declared she wasn"t going to ruin a perfectly good slip by swimming in it, and that if she went naked, he was going to have to, too. John had swallowed hard and watched her as he pulled his own clothes over his head and followed her lead into the swimming hole, running in to the knees, diving headfirst after that. Later they had crawled onto the pebbly bank, shivering and breathless from the cold. In the sunshine it had been so hot, you might have burned the bottoms of your feet, but in the shadows there was a chill. Then she"d kissed him, burrowing against him for warmth, and when she"d gotten bored of that, she had told him not to hold back the way they usually did. At first he"d insisted they shouldn"t, but eventually he couldn"t resist her. His eyes were green, and they had gazed into hers, impressed, a little fearful, full of wonder. What he"d done hurt at first, but then it was over, too quickly, and she"d wanted to go on feeling that new sweet, searing pain all over again.
And she might have too, without any real consequence, had her cousin Michael not been peeping and run all the way home to tell Aunt Ida. When Cordelia had returned to help prepare the evening meal, there was blood on her slip and her hair was a mess, so it was impossible to lie about what she"d done. Not that she wanted to.
"Just like your mother," Aunt Ida had said, pressing her furious lips together so that the deep, vertical wrinkles below her nose emerged.
Just like your mother was what Aunt Ida always said, even when Cordelia was a little girl, whenever she was late for church or slow fetching water from the well, or when she became too happy or too sullen. was what Aunt Ida always said, even when Cordelia was a little girl, whenever she was late for church or slow fetching water from the well, or when she became too happy or too sullen. Just like your mother, Just like your mother, until young Cordelia began to wear the admonishment like a badge of pride. until young Cordelia began to wear the admonishment like a badge of pride. Just like your mother, Just like your mother, Aunt Ida had repeated over and again as she bullied John, and Dr. and Mrs. Field, and Cordelia herself into agreeing to a private ceremony in the Lutheran church on Main, on the next convenient Sunday afternoon. Thus Aunt Ida secured two things she had always wanted in one fell swoop: her trouble-seeking niece out of her hair forever and the whole transaction sanctified in her favorite place, G.o.d"s house. Aunt Ida had repeated over and again as she bullied John, and Dr. and Mrs. Field, and Cordelia herself into agreeing to a private ceremony in the Lutheran church on Main, on the next convenient Sunday afternoon. Thus Aunt Ida secured two things she had always wanted in one fell swoop: her trouble-seeking niece out of her hair forever and the whole transaction sanctified in her favorite place, G.o.d"s house.
Even standing with John now, at the front of the mostly empty church, all Cordelia could think of was escape. For though he was handsome and good, he would never be enough for her, and she could not help but antic.i.p.ate the next fifty years of bleak winters and church picnics and screaming babies as no more than dreary distractions on the way to the grave. Not when she had that burning curiosity to see what lay beyond the straight-laid streets of Union, with its church spires and few lone telephone wires and its surrounding farms. Not when she knew for sure that her curiosity would scorch her if she didn"t heed it. No, she wanted to see the world, and even as she promised to be John"s forever, in her head she was planning how to steal away long enough to grab her case-already packed with the few things she would be taking to the Fields"-and slip out the back window onto the alley, and make her way to the station for the 6:52 train that went all night to New York City, where she had been born.
When she heard her aunt clearing her throat, Cordelia realized that she had missed everything Father Andersen had said, including his prompting to her one and only line.
"I do," she said, closing her eyes so John wouldn"t see the dishonesty in them, and hoping he"d forgive her someday.
Then Father Andersen p.r.o.nounced them man and wife, and John moved toward her and folded the netting back over the crown of her head. She was almost shocked to look at him straight on, with no barrier between them, but when he put his mouth to hers, it was in the same soft, intentional way he"d always kissed her before. Someone-probably her aunt-let out an audible sigh of relief. It was not until the newly married couple had turned to walk back down the aisle that Cordelia realized it was the last kiss John would ever give her.
2
THEY HEARD THE TRAIN A WHILE BEFORE THEY SAW IT, just as they pa.s.sed out of the woods that separated Union, Ohio, from the next town over, and it was about that time that both girls broke into a run. Letty was shocked by how rapidly the train"s noise approached, the screech of steel wheels against steel tracks. She looked over her shoulder to see how it towered over them, but Cordelia, her long legs moving as fast as possible, did not turn her head once. The cars shot by them, rearranging the sun-touched strands around Cordelia"s face. Letty"s bun was too firmly in place for that, but her old peacoat flapped open as she tried to keep up.
Cordelia was a year ahead of her in school and always spoke with an enviable sureness. As long as they"d been friends, she"d told Letty that they were both too good for Union, that someday they"d find a way out. But Letty had always known it. She"d known since she was a little girl that there was something special about her. The way she moved, the purity of her voice-she had an attention-drawing quality that her mother used to call her "magic." And Mother had been a true beauty who"d danced with the Cleveland ballet when she was young, before she"d met Father. She used to whisper that Letty was her favorite, the most gifted of her children, when they"d had their dance lessons on the first-floor parlor of the big house on Main Street-back when they were a happy family, before Mother was taken from them and Father decreed that dancing was one of the devil"s tricks and that there would be no nicknames in the Haubstadt clan and began calling her Let.i.tia, her given name.
Up ahead, at the Defiance Station, the waiting pa.s.sengers stepped forward across the platform in antic.i.p.ation. There was a flurry of activity-everyone shouting, luggage being thrust upward, boys who"d been raised on farms saying good-bye to their mothers for a long time. They probably wore new coats over humble denim, which would of course give them away. But then, the dour quality of Letty"s own dress and her straitlaced bun also gave her away, too, as the product of a very backward place. In the city, she used to like to tell herself before she fell asleep, all her most brilliant qualities would be instantly recognized and celebrated. For years, she had dreamed of going there-only, she could scarcely believe that dream was now about to become real, on this summer evening in mid-May of the year 1929.
That is, if she could keep her pace up. She had become breathless, and her legs were tired, and the duffel she carried over her narrow shoulders must have grown in size since they"d left Union. It seemed to weigh almost as much as her younger sister Laura, who still demanded piggyback rides even though she was tall for her age, and even though their father frowned upon that sort of thing.
Up ahead the conductor yelled, "All aboard!"
"Wait!" Cordelia tried to yell, but her lungs were working hard already.
The porters had finished loading the crates of red berries and milk onto the freight car down the line, and all the pa.s.sengers had disappeared behind the high gla.s.s windows. The family and friends who had come from miles around to wish them good-bye had stepped back. Beyond the station, the land stretched out, revealing cl.u.s.ters of clapboard houses and farms.
"All aboard!" the conductor bellowed, and then turned and took hold of the iron handle to pull himself up.
The girls were still a good way down the tracks, and in a moment of horror, Letty saw that they were going to miss the train. Then she would have no place to go home to. For once Father realized she was gone, he would never permit her to return. Father did not tolerate disloyalty or what he would deem frivolous daydreams. Summoning all the power her voice was capable of, Letty lifted her free arm and sang out, "Wait! Wait for us!"
The conductor paused, holding on to the side of the train, and squinted in their direction.
"Please, wait!" Letty"s voice rang out.
"All aboard!" the conductor yelled.
They kept up their pace as they climbed the steps at the edge of the platform, and by the time they reached the conductor, their cheeks were rosy with exertion.
"Two more," Cordelia managed once they were just in front of him.
"I can see that." The conductor jumped down so the girls could go ahead of him into the car. Cordelia reached back for Letty"s hand, and they ascended the ladder together. Letty barely noticed the rungs-they were only moving up into the train, and then down the car, along the aisle between green felt-covered seats. The bells began to clang, and the doors slammed shut, sealing the pa.s.sengers in.
"I can"t believe it." Letty"s voice was musical with wonder. "I can"t believe we"re really leaving!"
"I thought we wouldn"t make it," Cordelia returned in the same awestruck tone, as her breath slowed to normal.
Letty nodded in agreement. The terror of having to go back to the Haubstadt home ebbed, and in her relief she began to laugh. The laughter became contagious as they located their seats and fell into them. Cordelia went first, sitting close to the window, and Letty followed, slumping against her shoulder in giggles.
"Tickets?"
It had not occurred to Letty, in all the furious excitement of leaving, that it would cost anything to ride a train. But before she could reply, Cordelia had taken a worn notebook from the inside pocket of the old trench she wore, and from the middle pages she removed an envelope stuffed with bills.
"Names?" the conductor demanded, as he positioned his pencil over two soft red booklets.
"Cordelia Grey and Let.i.tia Haubstadt," Cordelia announced, handing over the fare.
"Actually, it"s just Letty now," she corrected brightly, twisting to face the conductor. She plucked the ticket back from his hand, and then taking his pencil, carefully began to rewrite the name he"d entered for her. "Letty Larkspur."
There was a touch of knowing disdain in the way he punched their tickets, but Letty decided to ignore the contortion at the corner of his mouth. "To the end of the line?" he concluded.
"Yes," said Cordelia. "To New York City."
"We"ll get there sometime tomorrow afternoon."
"Yes, I know," she replied, in that crisp voice that brushed aside any criticism or doubt. That voice had been used over the years to protect herself and Letty both-from cruel cla.s.smates and bullying siblings and Letty"s own doubts. Even now, Letty shuddered at the idea of bearing Union alone, without her friend"s protection.
As the conductor moved down the aisle, greeting the other pa.s.sengers, Cordelia put her feet up against the back of the next row of seats, stretching her long legs, turning the scuffed, narrow toes of her boots in toward each other. She slouched into her seat, sinking until they were the same height; when she turned her face to her left, her eyes just met Letty"s.
"So what do you think?" Letty whispered, almost afraid to hear the opinion she nonetheless badly wanted.
"What do I think of what?"
"My new name." She paused and widened her eyes. "Letty Larkspur!"
"I like like it." it."
"You do?" Letty whispered, relieved, even though she"d known in her heart that the name she had chosen was incomparably pretty. She"d been turning over those four syllables in her mind for a long time now, to make herself feel better during a long workday, or almost humming them just before she went to sleep, telling herself that everything would be different once she was known by them. That then, finally, her life would be buoyant and shiny and worthy of notice.
Cordelia pressed the back of her head into the seat and smiled wide. "I think it"s perfect for you."
"Isn"t it?" Letty squeezed her eyes closed. "Doesn"t it sound like the kind of girl who steps off the train into a big city and stumbles into a series of lucky breaks, each new one more glorious than the last, until she is known all around town and her name is up in lights?" The sun outside was fading, but what was left of it was playing in Letty"s blue eyes. Cordelia reached over and drew the pins from Letty"s hair so that it fell in straight, dark strands around her shoulders. "Doesn"t it sound like the kind of name that almost guarantees I"ll be a famous singer? Doesn"t it sound like me?" me?"
"Yes, it sounds just like you. Except-you in the big city, far away from drab parlors and the small-minded people who occupy them, and their itsy-bitsy idea of the world."
"The version of me wearing fur coats, with a puppy under my arm, and a retinue."
"A retinue?"
"Yes, a retinue. retinue. A chauffeur and a maid and a cook-" A chauffeur and a maid and a cook-"
"-a chef."
"Yes!" Letty sighed and shook her hair loose around the prim collar of her black dress.
Besides the three Haubstadt girls, there were two boys who wore their hair with military brevity and the same black trousers and shirts every day, even in the late-summer heat, even when they worked twelve-hour days on the family dairy farm. It hadn"t always been like that-her father had been a joyful person once, but that was a long time ago, when Mother was still there to show him how. He must have been happy when they were married, because people were always happy when they got married.
But then Letty remembered the events of the day, and realized that was perhaps not always true. "How John must be crying," she said softly, thinking what a tender person was at the core of that tall, strong boy and how sincere he had sounded when he"d said, I do. I do. There was to have been a celebration at the Fields" that evening, and Letty thought of all those uneaten pies with pity, for surely no one in their house was in a festive mood now. John had been a worse one than Letty for following Cordelia around, hanging on her words, trusting in whatever she thought was interesting or correct, and it pained her to imagine him alone back in Union and yearning terribly. But that pain gave way to another melancholy realization: Letty"s own flesh and blood probably had not heeded her absence with even half so much woe. There was to have been a celebration at the Fields" that evening, and Letty thought of all those uneaten pies with pity, for surely no one in their house was in a festive mood now. John had been a worse one than Letty for following Cordelia around, hanging on her words, trusting in whatever she thought was interesting or correct, and it pained her to imagine him alone back in Union and yearning terribly. But that pain gave way to another melancholy realization: Letty"s own flesh and blood probably had not heeded her absence with even half so much woe.
"John isn"t the kind to cry." Cordelia spoke with a sad certainty as she pulled the skirt of her dress down over her knees.
"I can"t believe we made it," Letty marveled again, because she could see her friend didn"t want to pursue the topic. But some of the glitter had gone out of her voice now, and there was a tightness in her throat.
"Well, we haven"t made it yet," Cordelia corrected.
But as if in response, the train lurched into motion. And though Letty was afraid of what she had done, she was relieved, too, that she wouldn"t have to sit around that sad, silent dinner table anymore, always doing as her father told her, and her tender ears would no longer be exposed to his shouting when he was in one of his foul moods. She leaned forward and began to undo the tight lacing of her boots. Once she had shucked them, she folded her black stockinged feet under her thighs and put her head against her friend"s shoulder.
"We haven"t made it yet, but we did make it out of Union." Letty closed her eyes and tried to dwell only on the audaciousness, and not the sadness, of their feat.
"Yes!" Cordelia replied, and then she turned to gaze a final time at the only world she"d ever known. It was a landscape Cordelia felt no love for: Dull and repet.i.tive, any beauty in the greenery only reminding her how bare and brown everything would soon enough become, before the harsh winter. That monotonous and familiar brown that infused everything as seasons stacked up into years. And yet as Cordelia placed a palm against the window, what she saw outside did cause her to feel something like surprise.
The tallest boy in Union High School"s cla.s.s of "29 sat on a pile of railroad ties east of the station, watching her. His legs too long, bent upwards, elbows rested on knees, the boyishness of his features suddenly effaced by sorrow. The cuffs of the white dress shirt he had worn to the ceremony were rolled up, and his tie had been removed, so that his Adam"s apple created a poignant shadow in the dying light. His feet were too large for his lean limbs, and they looked especially ridiculous in the fancy borrowed shoes he wore. As the train went past, Cordelia"s eyes met his, but he didn"t raise a hand to make even the slightest wave. It was as though he had been sitting there a while, waiting to see her pa.s.s. He must have realized she had left some time before, and then guessed where she"d be going.
But a train travels faster than she could ever have imagined, and with cruel concision, he was gone.