Zach’s stubbornness paid off in the end, and he brought me a chair from the back to sit on while I worked. I went through the books a stack at a time before finding their places on the shelves. William watched me like the hawks back home as I put each book in its place, but he didn’t say a word.
Customers drifted in and out, some buying books and others not. Zach chatted with the potential buyers, asking what kind of read they were looking for and making suggestions.
I noticed that William looked at me differently than he did Saturday. He certainly wasn’t any friendlier, but there was a little less disdain in his eyes. I filed that observation away as I finished out my workday.
I spent the next week reading my driver’s manual. Levi offered to take me to the DMV on Tuesday morning to take the written test. Monday afternoon, I approached William, feeling a little nervous.
“I need to come late tomorrow,” I said, reading his response.
His brows furrowed. “Why?”
“I have to go to the DMV.”
“You don’t drive.”
“I want to.”
“You mean you can’t drive?”
“Without a license? Not legally. That’s why I need to go tomorrow.”
“You don’t have your license?”
Was he deaf? “No.”
My statement seemed to surprise him. “Oh. Late tomorrow is fine.”
Thin beams of late-morning light speckled the sidewalk as we exited the DMV Tuesday morning. I studied my temporary permit as we walked. “So much work for such a plain piece of paper,” I remarked.
“You’ll feel better about it when you see the shiny one.” Levi reached for his wallet and retrieved his license. “See?”
I held it up to the light and watched as the imprinted images turned colors. “Maybe I will feel better.”
“You won’t have your permit for long. I’ll be teaching you how to drive.”
“I hope I learn fast.”
“You will.” He shook his head. “You’ve picked everything else up with surprising speed.”
“You think so?”
“Definitely.”
Joely was visiting the apartment when I returned home from work. “Nice going, Ethel. Heard you got your permit today.”
I couldn’t stop my smile. “Levi’s going to take me out to a parking lot later tonight.” I smiled at Jayne. “Thanks for letting me learn in your car.”
“No problem.” Jayne slung her arm around my shoulders. “It is stick shift, but I’ve heard it’s best to learn on stick anyway.”
“Wait—Levi?” Joely made a face. “No offense to your brother, or”—she turned to Jayne—“your boyfriend, but he’s a civilian driver.”
My heart sank. “Is that bad?”
Jayne thumped Joely on the arm. “Don’t scare her, Jo. That’s just mean-spirited.”
Joely put her hands in the air. “I wasn’t trying to scare her, I was just trying to point out that you’ve got someone who drives for a living available for lessons.”
I frowned. “Who?”
“Come on, me!” Joely shook her head. I can teach you performance driving.”
“But I thought you were a police officer.”
“I am. In a patrol car. It’s my job to drive with impressive accuracy, and I’m willing to teach you.”
“Wow, a little eager, are we?” Jayne teased.
“If she’s going to learn to drive, she should do it right. There are enough bad drivers out there. You know, like the entire state of Washington.”
“Talk about profiling.”
Joely rolled her eyes. “I know. I feel horrible. If I tell you that Oregonians don’t know how to merge, does that make you feel better?”
“Yes, actually.” Jayne crossed her arms. “So, Sara, you’ve got your pick of driving instructors. Just be aware that one of them is armed.”
“The gas pedal is your friend,” Joely said, tucking her arms behind her head two nights later. “If you press it down, we may go faster than five miles an hour.”
I depressed the brake, maybe a bit too fast. We both lurched forward. “You want me to go faster?”
“Um, yes. Once we leave this parking lot, the suggested speed is thirty-five.”
I sighed. “Oh.”
“Think you can do it?”
“Until last spring, I rode in a car only a few times a year. Learning to drive one…it’s difficult.”
Joely patted my arm. “I know it may seem difficult. Driving is something you should take seriously. But it’s not, like, heart surgery. Or nuclear engineering. There are idiots licensed to drive every day. You’re not an idiot. That’s how I know you can do this. I believe in your ability to drive the speed limit.”
“Okay,” I said, putting the car back in first gear. “I’ll try again.”
“Good girl. Just remember—clutch goes out smoothly.”
After we drove for another forty minutes, Joely decided we could call it a night. In the dark and the rain, she agreed to be the one to drive us back. I was relieved. I truly wanted to learn to drive, but the process was more difficult than I’d anticipated.
To add to that stress, there was work, with Zach’s grins and Will’s grunts, and the tiny little fact that I needed to apply to the Art Institute.
I could hear Jayne puttering in the kitchen. While she was occupied, I sat down with the laptop Levi gave me shortly after I moved in with Jayne. I looked up the Institute’s website—it was beautiful, with pictures of people my age drawing things, images of designs…my heart beat faster just taking them in.
I looked to the top of the screen—there was a place to click that would open a live chat window. If I wanted, I could ask my questions about the program and admissions. I moved the cursor to hover over the chat button… and then moved it away.
Not yet. I couldn’t bear it if I had come this far, leaving my family and my home, only to discover that I really wasn’t good enough to design the clothes I’d dreamed of, to have the life I wanted. In the Amish world, everything revolved around hard work. Skill wasn’t all that necessary—how much talent did it take to slop pigs? To tend a garden? To cook well enough to sustain a family?
But making clothes, that was different. I knew it was competitive. I knew there were girls who wanted to have that future, girls who grew up practicing, girls who were encouraged by their parents. If I came all this way to discover I had no talent—well, it would be difficult.
I closed my laptop and pushed away from my desk. Worrying about the Art Institute wouldn’t help anything. I pulled out my sketchbook and began to think about fabrics and design. Maybe I didn’t have the advantage of growing up English, but no one would be able to say I didn’t work hard.
I had nearly finished my shelving stack when Richard entered the store.
He hadn’t been in for nearly a week, and the last time had only been to ask William a few questions.
Richard carried a leather bag over his shoulder. A grin stretched across his face, and his breath was heavy from exertion. “Will!” he called as he entered. “I got it! Come see.”
Richard saw me shelving and motioned for me to follow. “Kim said you liked clothes, right?”
I nodded, knowing I must have looked like an idiot. What did my taste for fashion matter?
“You’ll want to see this too. Put the books down. They’re not going anywhere.”
I saw William open his mouth to protest, but he changed his mind as we followed Richard into the back workroom. I hadn’t actually been in the room yet thanks to Zach’s insistence that I work from behind the counter.
A small machine whirred in the corner, but I didn’t want to ask what it was. There was a desk with a row of lights shining down on it. A cabinet full of large and small drawers filled the wall opposite the door. I looked around and took everything in, knowing that this would be the last time I’d be here if William had his way.
Richard reached into his bag and gently removed a wooden box. “I found this at an estate sale. I don’t think the owner knew what he had—not really.” He opened the lid to the box. Inside lay an old, leather-bound volume.
“This,” he said, “is a collection of Godey’s Lady’s Book periodicals from 1834, bound together. And if you look at the January issue…”
“No. Really?” William’s eyebrows rose. His eyes—did they sparkle? Was that possible?
“Look for yourself.”
“Page 40?” Will reached into one of the desk drawers and removed two latex gloves. As he wriggled his hands into them without looking, his eyes never left the pages. With greatest care, he lifted the cover. “Overall text seems to be in good condition. Gilt stamped half burgundy leather. Brown cloth over boards—left board chipped. Some foxing at the edges. Pages are age toned, but not more than you’d expect for a text of this age.” He stopped, with a sharp intake of breath. “There it is. ‘The Visionary.’”
“What’s special about it?” I asked, hoping my question didn’t spark a tirade.
“‘The Visionary’ was later renamed ‘The Assignation,’” William began.
“Not a change for the best, I’d say,” Richard commented.
“I agree,” William’s eyes searched the page. “But regardless of the title and the fact that it was initially anonymous, it’s the first published short story by Edgar Allan Poe.”
“Really?” I peered over his shoulder. In truth, I hadn’t read any of Poe’s work. Jayne had a volume of his short stories, but his words were too frightening for my taste.
“He was friends with the editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, who, incidentally, also wrote ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ and convinced President Lincoln to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.” William looked up at Richard. “How much did you pay for it?”
“Five hundred.”
“No!”
“The guy had no idea what he had.”
“So it’s a collection of women’s magazines?” I was still trying to wrap my head around the concept.
“Yes, but not women’s magazines like we know them today. This edition is before Louis Godey purchased it, but historians often lump the two publications together. Godey’s Lady’s Book was part literary journal, part fashion magazine—that’s what it’s best known for. But it also had crafts, patterns, piano music, occasional medical advice…Nathaniel Hawthorne also published in Godey’s.”
“Now,” Richard held up a finger. “This wasn’t my only find.”
William froze. “You have more? What else do you have in there?”
Richard patted his bag. “Its value is lower—at least to Poe enthusiasts—but to the right literature-reading bra-burner, it’s worth quite a lot.”
William waited in anticipation. I wondered about the sort of person who would burn bras.
Richard reached into his satchel again, this time retrieving a large yellow envelope. Inside the envelope was a clear plastic bag, the kind that fastened across the top. I could read the title of the magazine through the bag—it was a Godey’s. A later issue, by my guess.
“Another issue? You’ll have to tell me the significance of this one.”
“January 1850—one of three issues written entirely by female contributors.”
William tilted his head. “Huh.”
Richard pulled the fragile magazine out and placed it onto the work desk with great care. “This copy is also completely intact.” Richard turned to me. “This is why I thought you might be interested. Each issue included a hand-tinted illustration of women’s dress near the front. Godey didn’t tell his employees what colors to use—I could buy a dozen copies of the same issue, and they’d all look slightly different. People often rip out those illustrated pages. That’s why it’s so pleasing to find ones that are still all in one piece.” He turned the pages until he reached the illustrated spread.
I stood on my tiptoes to see. The women pictured had round faces and tiny waists. Their dresses rounded out their shoulders and puffed at the sleeve. The skirts belled out from their waists and scraped the floor.
“I wonder how they walked through doors,” I mused.
“Maybe they turned sideways,” William suggested.
I looked at him in shock. Had cranky William just made a joke?
If he had, he recovered quickly. His expression turned serious again as he evaluated the manuscript. “Overall, good condition. Good finds.”
“The 1834 volume, obviously, could use some gentle repair. What’s your workload like this week?”
William shrugged. “About normal. I can have it ready to list shortly—unless you’re wanting to keep it for your collection.”
“Tempting, but I’m not a Poe fan. We’ll list it. Have you shown Sara how to do the website inventory?”
William’s usual sour expression returned. “No. I can do that this week.”
I tucked my hair behind my ears casually. “Website inventory?”
“We list our rare books and manuscripts online. Collectors from all over the country order from us.”
“Really.” I could hardly believe people would buy things over the internet like that, even though Jayne did it herself from time to time. To have so many items available—and to not see them physically before buying—still seemed a little crazy to me.
I returned to work a few moments later, thinking again of the women in the magazine illustration. I knew what women wore today, but the idea of hundreds of years of fashion—that too astounded me. Amish women looked about the same now as they did when they arrived in the United States from Switzerland. There was so little change. But all around us, the world had transformed.
I only hoped I could somehow catch up.