Page 13 of One of Them

Anne turned to a box of scarves, drawn by their colors.

She still didn’t think she would want a dress or blouse that had belonged to someone else, but she would consider a scarf—it seemed less intimate somehow.

She extracted a silk square from the tangle; a brownish stain—blood?

—bordered an edge, and she hastily put it back.

Then her eye was caught by a bit of something black, and when she pulled it out, she was rewarded with a lavish pattern of red poppies interspersed with green leaves and slender green stems that wound their way through the blossoms.

“You should get that.”

Anne turned to see Delia right behind her.

“I don’t know...”

“You’ll wear it with a black cashmere sweater and skirt. It’ll be smashing.”

“But it was someone else’s.... You don’t mind wearing clothes that belonged to another woman?”

“Not at all. In fact, I like that they were worn by someone else.”

“You do?”

“I like to imagine their lives before they ended up here.” She gestured to the racks and bins. “I feel that I’m rescuing them.”

“Rescuing clothes?”

“I’m giving them new life.”

Anne didn’t know what to make of this. Delia was the most unusual—and original—girl she’d ever met. She realized she was still holding the scarf.

“Let me buy it for you,” Delia said. “And if you decide you really can’t wear it, give it to me.”

“Thank you.” Anne was astonished. Why was Delia being so nice to her?

All the bad things she’d said about her started echoing loudly in her head; Delia didn’t hear them, but Anne did, and her complicity made her feel awful.

She forced herself to focus on the scarf.

Of course Delia would wear it. Wear it and look, as she said, smashing .

They left the shop, and now Anne was intrigued enough to follow Delia to another, and yet another such place; there were so many.

Each time, she was struck by how Delia seemed to move right past the dross to find a treasure: a single crystal candlestick for her dorm room desk, a real leopard collar that she planned to stitch onto a sweater, white net gloves still in their satin-shirred box.

And afterward it seemed only natural to go with her into a diner where they sat at the counter and ordered cream of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

As they waited for their food to arrive, Delia handed the scarf to Anne. “I hope you wear it.”

“I will. Or at least I think I will.” Anne found the big, splashy flowers a bit daring, but she yearned, oh how she yearned, to be the sort of girl who could carry off a pattern like that.

“Let me show you how to tie it.” Delia reached over to loop the scarf around Anne’s neck.

Anne couldn’t see herself, but the colors seemed to warm her face. “You really know how to shop in these places.”

“My mother shopped in flea markets in Paris and near Vence too. She was so good at finding things. My father said it was because she was an artist.”

“An artist?”

“A sculptor. Her name was Sophie Rossner. She used her maiden name professionally.”

A mother who lived in Paris. And who was a sculptor. To Anne, this seemed remarkable. “What are her sculptures like? Could I see one? And is she still living in Paris?”

“She was killed during the war.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Anne was mortified she’d asked.

“I wasn’t there when it happened, and that made it even worse. One of her friends wrote to tell me about it. Even though I’ve imagined it hundreds of times, I’ll never really know.” Delia’s eyes shone brightly.

“That must have been terrible.” Suddenly it felt like the place had gone silent, and everyone could hear their conversation.

“It was.”

Their food came, and Anne was quiet as she picked up her sandwich and began to eat.

Then she said, “I never knew my mother, so I’ve never missed her.

She died when I was a baby. But my father died when I was in high school.

I still miss him so much.” She hadn’t spoken of this to anyone at Vassar yet; the loss still existed in a tightly locked place inside her.

“How?” Delia asked.

“Excuse me?”

“How did your father die? Suddenly? Or had he been sick?”

Anne wouldn’t have dared to ask such a thing. But she admired Delia for having done so, and she found that she wanted to talk about it. “Heart attack,” she said. “Quite sudden.”

“And you were close?”

“Very.” It was only a single word, and yet Anne’s eyes brimmed.

“That must have been nice... being close to your father.” Delia sounded wistful.

“It was.” Anne blinked the tears away. “You and your father... aren’t close?” She was taking a risk, but she sensed that being friends with Delia would allow for such risks.

“No... not exactly. I love him, but it’s hard to get his attention.”

“What about your mother? You must have been close to her—the trips to the flea markets and all?”

“It was hard to get her attention too.”

Anne found this sad; Delia seemed sad as she said it. Then Delia added, “So you know.”

“Know what?”

“How when someone you love dies like that, you can’t believe it’s real—you keep thinking it’s a bad dream.”

“Yes,” Anne said. “I do know.” After a moment she asked, “Does that change after a while?”

“No. It doesn’t.”

Something about Delia’s quiet certainty was reassuring, even comforting. She seemed like a girl who was not afraid to face the most difficult truths, and Anne could see how facing them would make them easier to bear.

They started eating again. Anne’s sandwich and soup had cooled, but she finished both quickly. She had not realized how hungry she was; it was no wonder, she hadn’t eaten anything all day.

Fortified by the meal, Anne was willing—no, ready—to be more actively engaged when they went into the next store, and after pawing through a big basket of lingerie, she showed Delia what she had found: a white cotton nightgown, collar, cuffs, and hem dense with lace.

“Oh, that’s been done by hand!” Delia fingered the lace. “My mother loved those old white nightgowns. Bloomers and petticoats too. She had a whole drawerful.”

“Do you have any of them?” Anne asked.

“No,” said Delia. “Though I wish I did. But we were in such a rush when we had to leave Paris. Things got left behind. Most of my mother’s sculpture is still there... we couldn’t possibly take it with us. We were lucky to get out at all.”

So now they were back to the war. Anne thought they had moved past it, but evidently they hadn’t.

And of course, this too had to do with their both being Jews, even if Delia didn’t realize that she and Anne shared that.

Though Anne was aware of what had happened to Jews during the war, she hadn’t actually talked to anyone who had lived through it.

“It was frightening,” Delia said. “And confusing. Before the occupation my parents had lots of friends, we got along with our neighbors. My father ran a successful gallery, my mother’s work was well-known. Well-regarded. People liked them. They liked us . And then all of a sudden, they didn’t.”

Anne wished she could say, I know just how that must have felt—to be pushed out not because of anything you’d done, but just because of who you are , but that might lead to a revelation she wasn’t ready to make.

Instead she said, “Please take this.” She handed the nightgown to Delia.

“And you have to let me buy it for you.” Delia looked as if she might protest, but in the end she accepted the gift.

On the way home, Anne had trouble paying attention to what Delia was saying, not because she wasn’t interested but because she kept thinking about what Delia had told her about leaving Paris.

Anne had pouted over not being allowed to go to the Colony Club; Delia and her family had faced deportation, imprisonment, or death.

Yet Delia did nothing to disguise her Jewish background, and Anne had yet to acknowledge her own.

Luckily, Delia didn’t seem to be bothered by Anne’s silence. By the time they reached the campus, it was late; tea would be over. They said goodbye, and Delia went upstairs while Anne went straight to the dining room, where she found herself in line behind Peggy.

“Where have you been all day?” Peggy asked. “I didn’t see you at tea.”

“I didn’t go.” Anne did not offer any other details, and since the line was moving quickly, she was able to take her plate and busy herself with arranging it on her tray. Then she followed Peggy to a table where their group was already gathered.

“Nice scarf!” Carol said.

“Thank you,” Anne said as she sat down.

“Wherever did you find it? You didn’t get it in Poughkeepsie, did you?”

“The pattern is unusual.” Now Virginia had noticed.

“And the colors too—they’re really bright.

Really bold.” She seemed to be trying to decide whether this was a good thing or not.

“Carol’s right about it not looking like anything you’d find in this dump of a town.

Is it from a store in the city? Lord their conversation earlier that day had been both a balm and a tonic.

But Anne was already sitting down with her little group of friends, even if they were starting to grate on her; it would be so awkward to get up at this point.

And as for inviting Delia to join them, well, that wouldn’t work at all.

Anne was just going to have to let the moment pass, even though she could feel the prickle of guilt.

She touched the scarf, a barrier against Virginia’s little abrasions.

But when the meal was over and she went back up to her room, she saw Elizabeth’s letter—incriminating and possibly dangerous—right where she’d left it.

No scarf could protect her against that .

Anne held the letter in her hands one more time before crumpling it into a wad and depositing it in her wastebasket.

That letter was not going to come back to haunt her—she refused to let it.

And if that meant keeping her distance from Delia, that’s what she would have to do.