“It’ll be okay, Daise,” Jordie said softly. She twirled a strand of my hair around her delicate finger the way she always did, leaned back against my pillow, and sighed. “Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to. You’ll see.”
“You’ll look after Rose when I’m in New York, won’t you, Jordie?” It occurred to me now I was asking Jordan to care for Rose the way Rose had asked me to care for her lettuce. Oh! Her lettuce. Had I even remembered to water it once since Jay had left? Rose had asked me for one simple thing. One good thing. And I couldn’t even manage that.
There was a knock on my bedroom door, and Fredda called my name. She sounded frantic, which wasn’t that unusual for her. Our longtime housekeeper had a flair for the dramatic. “Daisy!” she yelled again. I rolled my eyes at Jordan, got off my bed, and went and opened the door.
Fredda stood there in the hallway, her face ashen.
“Did you see another rat in the kitchen? I can go get Daddy’s gun.” I was only half joking.
She held out her shaking hands—she was holding a telegram. “Daisy,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “Oh, Daisy. There’s been a train accident.”
Catherine 1917
NEW YORK CITY
“I HAD TERRIBLE TROUBLE WITH the train,” I said to my sister, Myrtle, first thing, before I hugged her even, at Grand Central. “There was an accident with another line heading out of Chicago, and they closed the tracks for four days. I must look a mess.” I tried to fluff my bangs with my fingers, but it was no use. My hair was a limp, rotting strawberry. The station in Chicago, where I’d been waiting for the tracks to reopen, had been freezing, but the train had been hot. I felt covered in dried sweat and grime.
“Well, you made it, at least,” Myrtle said, smiling wanly. “George read me the paper—sixty deaths in that crash. It was so bad, half the bodies weren’t even recognizable. Imagine. Those poor souls. Torn apart, just like that.” Myrtle grabbed me in a hug and held on tightly, fiercely. She smelled of an odd mix of flowers and diesel, nothing at all the way I remembered her smelling when she still lived in Rockvale, on the farm with me and Mother and Father. But Myrtle had left Rockvale to marry George, six years ago. Mother died a year later. Myrtle had been begging me to follow her to New York ever since, and finally I’d saved up enough money—and gumption—to join her.
But the rocky start to the trip made me wonder if I’d made a mistake, if I shouldn’t have come here, after all. The trouble with the train had caused me to well up with dread, and here I was now in New York City, days later than I should’ve been. I already felt a pit of homesickness in my chest. Rockvale was quiet, snow covered and serene. Father longed for me to stay there and marry Harold Bloom, who owned a respectable dairy farm and who had been sweet on me for years. But I didn’t want to marry anyone… yet. Much less a dairy farmer. New York was so much more modern—that’s what had gotten me to finally step on the train in the first place. As of last month, women could even vote here. I could be someone in New York. Not someone’s wife. Someone.
“Come on,” Myrtle was saying now. She’d picked up my suitcase with one hand and she took my arm with her other. “Let’s get out of the mess, Cath.”
Grand Central was a mess. It was so crowded, we could hardly make it through the giant lobby out onto the street. All around us there were hordes of soldiers getting off trains. I looked at them for a moment before allowing Myrtle to drag me along. It was almost Christmas, and here all these men were, away from their families, getting ready to go halfway around the world to fight.
“It makes me so sad,” I said to Myrtle, as we stepped out onto Forty-Second Street. The street was even more crowded than the station, and as we pushed through a wall of people to move forward, it was hard to breathe.
“What makes you sad?” Myrtle asked, once we’d reached a clearing, and stopped to wait to cross the street.
“All those men, those soldiers. They’re off to war, aren’t they? How many of them do you think will make it back here alive?”
“Come on, let’s not think bad thoughts,” Myrtle said, as we walked across the street. “You’re here now. We’re finally together again. I’m going to stay in the city with you for a few days, help you get settled. Let’s go get freshened up at your hotel now and enjoy a night out on the town.” Her normally steady voice crackled with excitement.
“What about George?” I asked. George and Myrtle had fallen in love in a whirlwind in Chicago in 1911. Myrtle had gone for a week to visit our aunt, and George had been in town for an auto show; they’d bumped into each other on the street, literally. Myrtle fell—he’d helped her up. Myrtle liked to say he’d swept her off her feet, and as she’d always dreamed of a divine, rich life in the big city she was more than happy to marry him, leave Rockvale, and move to New York.
I’d met Myrtle’s husband only once, the weekend of their wedding. But in the six years since, I felt I knew him from the stories about him and his garage in Myrtle’s letters. From what I could tell, he was a hardworking man, a decent man, even if not the most romantic, and even if his garage in Queens wasn’t exactly what Myrtle had dreamed of when she’d longed for the big city. He’d bought Myrtle a yard chicken for her birthday last summer. But Myrtle did like eggs, so I told her I thought it was sweet, even though, at the time, she was livid. What kind of husband buys a birthday chicken?!
I always had a feeling that Myrtle was a little bored, a little restless, that she was waiting for something else, someone else. I hoped that someone would be me. That both of us would be happier now that I was finally here in New York.
* * *
“WHAT DO I have to do to get a drink around here?” Myrtle cried out. A few hours later, I’d changed, and washed my face, and now we were at an underground saloon in Midtown that Myrtle said was frequented by all the people I’d want to meet. Young, fashionable people, she’d said, lowering her voice, as if the clientele were famous.
But inside, the small saloon was packed, and the floor pulsed with loud music. Despite the chilly December air up on the street, it was too hot in here. And looking around, all I saw were soldiers. More soldiers. Soldiers everywhere. The city felt overrun with them. In Rockvale, there weren’t any soldiers. The war was only something distant we read about in the paper. Here it was palpable. The city seemed to pulse with green-clad men awaiting grim futures.