Page 12 of One of Them

A nne reached into her mail cubby and pulled out an envelope. The return address was unfamiliar, but that didn’t matter; she would have recognized Elizabeth Hunnewell’s handwriting anywhere. As she stared down at it, her heart began an unpleasant erratic thudding.

“On your way to breakfast?”

Anne looked up to see Peggy. “Uh, no, I’m not hungry,” she said. “I’ll just get an early lunch.” In fact, she had been on her way to the dining room, but now, with the letter held tightly in her hand, she changed her mind.

“All right,” Peggy said. “Maybe I’ll see you at tea.”

“Maybe.” As soon as Peggy had turned away, Anne hurried back upstairs to her room, fumbled with the key and slammed the door behind her. Then she tore the letter free from its envelope.

Dear Mimi,

I was at the Yale dance and met someone from your class at Vassar but she didn’t seem to know you, yet she knew someone named Anne Bishop.

Anne is your middle name, right? Do you have a cousin named Anne?

I thought I knew all your cousins but maybe not.

Or maybe you’re using it now that you’re in college?

Anyway, none of that matters. What matters is that we no longer seem to be friends.

Even our last spring at Nightingale I could feel that things were different, but I didn’t bring it up.

I thought that if I didn’t talk about it, it would just go away and that the feeling would go away.

I guess that was pretty naive of me. It was that thing about the Colony, right?

Of course it was. I don’t even need to ask because I know how hurt you were.

I understand that. I do. Maybe I should have listened to you and not gone either.

But it would have disappointed my mother so much, and the other girls too.

So whatever I did, someone was going to be hurt.

Anyway, I am sorry about what happened, and I hope you can forgive me.

I want for us to be friends and to be close again. I miss you, Mimi, I really do.

With love,

Elizabeth

Anne put the letter down. She was transported back to Elizabeth’s—Lizzie’s—bedroom, with its pair of twin beds and its violet-sprigged wallpaper.

All the hours she had spent in that room, eating oatmeal raisin cookies and breaking off bits for Lady, who waited patiently for a treat, poring over comic books and, later, copies of Calling All Girls they’d filched from her older sisters, experimenting with lipstick, eyebrow pencil, and rouge, also filched; she could still remember the two of them staring into the mirror above Lizzie’s dresser, startled by the vividly colored and wholly unfamiliar faces staring back at them.

Yes, she missed Elizabeth too, and wished she could ease the hurt that was still knotted inside her.

Wished that they could, as Elizabeth had said, be close again.

It had been easy to avoid her, to avoid all her old friends.

Along with three other girls from their class, Elizabeth had gone to Smith.

Astrid had gone to Wellesley, and Willa to Mount Holyoke.

There were two scholarship girls, Maureen McAndrews and Nora Cribbs; both of them went to Barnard, where they could live at home and not have to pay for a dorm.

Cornelia Travis, the class valedictorian, had gone to Radcliffe.

No one else had opted for Vassar, so Anne didn’t have to face anyone she knew from Nightingale here. She was glad about that.

And she didn’t spend time in the old neighborhood.

The apartment on East Eighty-Third Street that she had shared with her father was gone now; she spent summers and holidays with Aunt Betty’s family in Skaneateles or with Barney and his family.

But even if she’d wanted to see Elizabeth, the facade she had carefully constructed here at Vassar made it impossible.

She could just imagine the reaction if her new friends found out that she had deceived them about who she was.

Virginia and the rest of them would turn on her, of course they would.

She could imagine the chatter, the rumors.

.. Anne Bishop? Oh, she’s the girl who tried to hide the fact that she was Jewish.

And she thought she’d actually get away with it.

Can you believe it? It’s just like them, though.

Pushy. Deceitful. Dishonest through and through.

Panic swelled. Anne grabbed her coat and left her room.

But she wasn’t heading to her nine o’clock philosophy class; she was going to skip it.

The truth was, she didn’t like the class at all.

The readings confused or bored her; everything they talked about seemed so abstract.

Not like art history, where you communed directly with a painting or a statue and tried to tease out its meanings.

Still, she was a person who never missed a class unless she was sick.

Well, today she did feel sick, just not physically, but in some bone-deep way.

Her past was like an octopus, its strong tentacles extending outward to grab and crush her present.

And maybe her future too. The thought propelled her out the door, down the stairs, and away from the dorm.

It was only when she passed through Main Gate and followed Main Street in the direction of the train station that the panic subsided.

The day was cold, and at first she walked quickly, trying to generate some warmth.

She’d only ever taken this route in a taxi, so this was the first time she’d had the opportunity to absorb the gritty texture of the city, to notice what it was really like.

Despite the chill, she found herself slowing down.

Navigating the cracked sidewalks and sidestepping the liberally strewn litter, she became aware of how the street rose and dipped; sometimes a bit of the Hudson River was briefly visible, a winding thread that seemed to give her journey both a shape and a direction.

The sight of it helped calm the awful, frantic feeling inside, the knowledge that she was an impostor, and she began to look more closely in the windows of the stores that she was passing.

Unlike those on Raymond, which catered to students, the shops here had a sad look, evidence of lives far less privileged than her own.

But something about them spoke to her, and she stopped to peer at the jumble of things—a dented tricycle, a three-bladed desk fan, ice skates, a basket of what appeared to be socks—behind the grime-smeared window of one of them, April’s Attic.

“Anne?”

She turned, and to her surprise, there stood Delia Goldhush. She wore her mink—of course—and a dark-red beret that matched her shoes. “So you’re a secret shopper too?” she asked.

“What?”

“This store—” Delia gestured to the grimy window. “Are you a regular?”

“No, no.” Anne had no intention of actually going into such a place. Looking in from the street was enough.

“Too bad,” Delia said. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“You mean you shop here?” Anne could not align this idea with her image of Delia’s Parisian-inflected elegance. Only poor people bought used clothing, and she knew Delia was far from poor.

“Of course I do,” Delia said. “You can’t imagine what you might find!” She pushed open the door. “Come on.”

Anne followed her into the shop and watched as Delia made her way methodically through jammed racks and overstuffed baskets. It was musty in here; Anne didn’t like the smell.

She had no desire to touch or examine any of these castoffs and was rather amazed that Delia did both with such intention and purpose. Also no apparent fear. What if there were vermin in these clothes—lice? Bedbugs? Fleas? Anne shuddered.

Not Delia. “Look at this!” From the tightly packed rack, she had extracted a floor-length black velvet coat with velvet-covered buttons.

A glimpse of the lavender lining was visible near the collar.

Tentatively, Anne touched the front of the coat—so plushy, so soft.

“That’s silk velvet,” Delia said. “And the lining is silk too. I’m going to try it on. ”

Anne watched as Delia slipped into the coat and then did a small twirl; the velvet rippled around her ankles. “Perfect,” Delia said and, taking off the coat, walked up to the counter, where an older woman sat working a crossword puzzle. “Would you hold this for me? I want to keep shopping.”

“Of course.” The woman set aside her pencil and began to fold the coat. “Glad you found something today, Miss Delia.”

So they knew her here. Anne had to admit the coat was exceptional.

It also had to be at least fifty years old, something her grandmother might have worn.

And yet it didn’t look outmoded at all. In fact it seemed very chic, much more so than something that came from one of the nicer shops on Raymond Avenue, or even one of her beloved New York City department stores.

Meanwhile, Delia had continued her hunt. She held up a black crepe de chine dress with a dropped waist and bodice adorned with jet bugle beads. This too was from a bygone era; Anne remembered seeing a photograph of her mother wearing a similar style.

“Such fine workmanship.” Delia touched the constellation of glittering beads. There was no fitting room, but she was not deterred; she slipped the dress right over what she was wearing.

“What if it doesn’t fit right when you’re not wearing anything under it?”

“That’s what seamstresses are for.” Delia took off the dress and brought it to the counter, where she placed it beside the coat.