Each time it rang, we all stopped talking, and counted. "One-three," Mrs. Stoltz said. "That ' s the Fosters." And later: "Two-two. That ' s for Mr. Ledbetter at the feed store. He won ' t be there on a Sunday."
Then, suddenly, while we were eating a dessert of apple brown Betty with cream poured over, the telephone rang four-two. At home I always answered and said, "Dr. Thatcher ' s residence," politely, but of course this was their home, not mine.
Mrs. Stoltz, looking a little nervous, picked up the earpiece from the box on the wall. "Stoltz," she said loudly, leaning over to speak into the box.
"Oh my, yes," she said, after a minute. "Yes, she ' s right here." She glanced over at me. "We ' ve had a lovely time with her. Yes, I'll tell her that."
She began to hang the earpiece back on its hook, then looked confused, listened again, and finally said "Goodbye" uncertainly into the telephone. "My land," she said to us, laughing. "I ' m not used to it yet."
She sat back down. "That was your pa, Katy. He said it's time for Peg to take you home."
Back home on Orchard Street, the house was very quiet. I took my kitten into the kitchen, poured him a small bowl of milk, and watched him lap it with his tiny pink tongue. He sneezed, after.
Peggy put away the food that her mother had sent. Then she found me a box as a home for the kitten, and I placed him there atop a pile of rags, and he fell asleep again.
"Now let ' s go see what your mama has been up to, and your Gram," she said. "They must be upstairs."
To my surprise, my mother was in her bed, propped up against the pillows. She was smiling. Gram sat nearby in a rocker, doing her embroidery, and, between them, in the bassinet, was the new baby.
"A little sister," Mama said, for I wouldn't have known from just looking. The baby had only a bit of hair, and her eyes were closed tight. She was wrapped in blankets.
I reached in and touched her nose with the tip of my finger, but she didn ' t stir.
"Where's Father? Does he know?"
"Of course. He was right here when she arrived. He's over at the hospital now, to check on some of his patients. But he'll be back and we'll all have supper together, up here in my room. Won't that be an adventure?"
"I ' ll set a table up," Peggy said. "And I can bring the supper up on trays. My ma sent you a pot of vegetable soup, and some pie."
I was still examining what I could see of the baby. She was surprisingly pink. "When you unwrap her, can I see the rest?" I asked.
"Of course," Mother said, laughing.
"Does she have a name yet?"
Mother nodded. "Her name is Mary," she said.
Then I knew at once what the kitten's name was to be. It had to do with the girl who died in the factory, and the fact that I would not need to say my special prayer anymore. "Dear Mary Goldstein, please be happy," I said to myself for the final time. A new Mary was alive. And so was Goldstein, though he was sleeping in his box, with milk still wet on his whiskers.
11. MAY 1911
I sat at the kitchen table after supper one evening with a pencil and paper. Naomi had just left, and Peggy was finishing the dishes. Upstairs, Mother was nursing the baby. Mary was a month old now, but still she seemed to want to eat many times each day. Mother didn't mind. She said it was a nice relaxing time, there in the rocker with the baby in her arms.
"Look here, Peggy," I said to her, and she leaned over my shoulder to see where I pointed. I had printed two names, one below the other.
KATHARINE THATCHER
AUSTIN BISHOP
"Now, I cross out all the letters that match. See, first the A, because there ' s an A in Austin. I put a line through both of them. Then the two Ts."
Peggy watched as I crossed out all the matching letters. "Now you say this to all the letters that are left: 'Love, Hate, Friendship, Marriage. Love, Hate, Friendship, Marriage—"
I examined the results. "Friendship. Good. At first I did it using Katy instead of Katharine, but that way it came out to be Hate.
"Now I ' ll do you," I told her. "What is his name? Floyd Lehman? You ' ll have to tell me how to spell it."
"No, I never." But she was laughing, and I knew she wanted me to.
PEGGY STOLTZ
FLOYD LEHMAN
"This is just foolish," Peggy said, but she helped me strike through the matching letters. "Hate?" She looked surprised at the outcome. "Maybe we should do like you did with your name, Katy. My real name is Margaret Ann."
This time, using Margaret Ann, it turned out better and made Peggy blush. "Marriage," I teased her. She crumpled the paper and threw it away.
"Now we could do Nellie. I know who she's sweet on." I put my pencil to a fresh sheet of paper.
"Who?" Peggy looked genuinely puzzled.
"Paul Bishop," I told her slyly.
"No!" She was shocked, I could tell. "Don ' t say that, Katy."
"It's true."
I had thought that I would tell her what I had seen. But it was clear that she was truly troubled by the thought. So I stayed silent, and put my paper away.
I had never really paid much attention to Peggy's sister. She was always busy. Nell had come to work for the Bishops when Laura Paisley was born, and there was so much washing when you had a little one in the house. I knew that from my own house, now, where Peggy was busy every day with Mary's diapers and little gowns.
Austin called Nell "Nellie-Nellie-Jelly-Belly," just to torment her, and she swatted him lightly with her hand when he did; but you could tell she didn't really mind. She knew she was pretty and had a nice shape.
She was a hard worker, as Peggy was. But she had a different attitude to her, something I could sense, even though I was so young. You always felt that Nell had other things on her mind, things beyond the Bishops house, things beyond Orchard Street, even beyond our town.
Watching Peggy, at our house, hanging the laundry on the line or washing up the breakfast dishes, you saw that she was always admiring the little things—the flowered dishes, Mother ' s lace-trimmed shirtwaists, Father's monogrammed handkerchiefs—that she hadn't had at her own home. She snapped the corners on the wet pillow slips before she pinned them to the line, and when she straightened them in the sun she sometimes ran her finger over the embroidered edges. She was careful, too: not from nervousness but from admiration. "I always do the little cream pitcher separate," she said to me once, as she washed the dishes. "See the gold on its edge? You don't want to chip that against something. It's too pretty, too precious."