When I thought of Chicago, I could picture only its gleam—the glare of the sun on the water, and the thousands of windows in the skyscrapers, nothing but brilliant glass, reflecting and refracting the light back in an infinite loop. It seemed white in my memory, its brilliance blinding.
The seasons were short there, except for winter. It always seemed to be cold, to be frozen, so far north it might as well have been a city of ice, rather than glass and steel. It was the ice I remembered more than the snow. Fall came and went in a moment, the trees turning brilliant overnight, a hopeful blast of color, spring in reverse, and then, just as rapidly, winter would come, and ice would cover the city, nature adding its own glimmer to those shining silos of glass lining the streets. The ice coated the pavement in thick sheets, alluring and dangerous, before the leaves had been swept away, so walking down the street you were likely to see them frozen there, the burgundy and gold of fall overlaid with the cold blue of winter, like an insect trapped in amber, a curiosity from a foreign and forgotten time.
And it was winter for so long. When I got into bed at night, I piled blankets and quilts on myself, the weight as comforting as the warmth. The thermostat might have claimed the temperature was just fine, but the cold sat deep in my bones, where I could feel it even if I was sweating. And then spring came in a burst, overnight the ice melting, giving way to a damp chill that the buds of trees fought through nonetheless, revealing their hopeful promise, white-green and palest yellow clearing away the coating of frost on the branches. Water ran in the gutters, the river’s banks bloomed high and full, and the city’s residents emerged, blinking and shaken, eyes wide open to the miracle of spring. But spring, like fall, does not last. Summer would come in a brief gasp, as though the other seasons had been holding it underwater, and it could raise its head only long enough to exhale the delicious heat, the pressure of the sun, the long, luxurious hours of daylight, before it gasped and went under again.
And even though Magnolia has a winter of its own, I could only imagine its summer. In the depths of winter, when I pictured Magnolia, I could only remember wet, humid days, the air lying on my skin, a soft, damp caress. I thought of how the underside of my hair was always damp, my face always flushed and pink. I thought of my mother’s gardens, an explosion of greenery in soft fronds, long spikes, the pale undersides of leaves, the seductive petals of flowers, coyly hiding their hearts until the sun coaxed them open—roses of butter yellow, peonies pink like ballet slippers, stalks of gladiolus in royal purple, marching up the back fence, dahlia and amaryllis in violent, brazen red. I thought of ice cream cones melting onto my hands, and long, lazy sunsets, and the smell of chlorine and the way the light lay, as though it had been filtered through a golden sieve, on everyone and everything, making the world seem bright and vulnerable and just a little bit more perfect.
And though it wasn’t summer in Magnolia yet, I felt something awakening in me very much like it, the fingers of the sun finding their way into the parts of my heart that had frozen solid, the slow drip of melting in my belly. I stayed up late with my grandmother’s journals, reading about her fear of facing Paris alone, her embrace of it, and Evelyn’s betrayal. It made me think of the pain of not being beautiful, and the wonder of a kiss, and the excitement of discovery, and it made me cry a little for the girls we had been. I wished I had known her.
My own debut had been a disappointment. I had waited for it for years, sat through endless hours of cotillion and deportment classes, thinking the ball would be the brass ring at the end of it all. I’d be a caterpillar turned into a butterfly, an ugly duckling turned into a swan. I’d been part of that existence since I was born, but I had never felt I belonged. My friends and classmates had never gone through an awkward stage. Their hair was smooth and straight, while mine was wavy and disobedient. They were slender and delicate, while I was thick and swimmer-shouldered.