Silhouette of a Sparrow

“Tell me about your family, Isabella,” I said once we were settled under the picnic pavilion with our ice creams. Isabella had taken me there the long way, through the streets behind the hotel, so we wouldn’t have to pass in front of it on our way to the park. We hadn’t seen any other hotel guests yet, but I didn’t want to push my luck. My eyes skimmed right and left around the pavilion—no one I recognized. I was safe for the moment and determined to enjoy my ice cream.

I’d chosen strawberry. She’d picked chocolate mint.

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” I asked.

“Brothers,” she said. “Plenty of them.” Then she stopped herself.

“Just tell me what you want to,” I said. “I don’t mean to pry. I just . . . I want to know you.”

“I’ll tell you anything. Everything, if you want to hear it. I just wasn’t sure how to start. Let’s see.” She paused a moment, gathered her thoughts, and continued. “I ran away from home when I turned fifteen,” she said. She ran away! I stared at her, wide eyed, and gestured for her to continue. “My parents live up on the Iron Range; my dad works in the mines. My mom is Lutheran, very Lutheran. She’s also very controlling. And very unhappy. I have four brothers, all younger than me. David, John, Andrew, and Michael—well, Mitch.”

I wanted to ask about running away. What was it like? How did she do it? Was she scared? But instead, I let her continue the thread she’d started. “What are they like, your brothers?” I asked.

“Well, the older ones are all pretty much the same: tough, bossy, stupid. They’re just going to end up in the mines and they don’t even care. But little Mitch—he’s different.”

Her face changed then. The carefree air about her had settled into a deep thoughtfulness. She loved this brother, that was easy enough to tell, but there was something else there too.

“He wants to be a boxer, like Jack Dempsey. I’m sure it’s partly because he wants to be stronger and tougher than he is with all those big brothers always pushing him around. But I think it’s mostly because he wants to go out into the world and do big things.” She smiled to herself, remembering him. “He loves the radio, and maps, and he wants his mother to be proud of him. He wants—wanted—me to be proud of him.”

Then I had to ask: “Do you regret it?”

“What?”

“Running away.”

“No! Heavens, no. I love the freedom. And I’m doing pretty well for myself with the dancing. At least, this is a really good gig. There were other places that, well, that weren’t so nice as this.” Her body stiffened, then with a deep breath she relaxed again. “Now things are better. I’m happy I left. But Mitch—I regret leaving him behind. I just don’t know if he’ll ever make it out of there like I did.”

She went to work on her ice cream then; it had been melting while she talked. “I’m babbling,” she said through a bite of chocolate mint. “Tell me about you.”

“Nothing to tell, really. Nothing exciting.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute. What are you doing out here for the summer, for instance? With this crazy aunt of yours, or whoever she is?”

So I told her everything. About Mother and Father and the war; about Alice and Adam; about Teddy and the hope chest; and finally about Mrs. Harrington and Hannah and the hat shop. When I stopped to finish off the tip of my ice cream cone Isabella said, “What about the birds? I mean, you’re passionate about them, right?”

“Well, yes. In some other life, I’d maybe go to college and study science. Keep the Miss Maples of the world from allowing beautiful creatures to be killed off in the name of fashion.” I laughed.

“Some other life, huh?” She wasn’t laughing.

“Oh, my mother would never let me. I’m supposed to get married and have babies and run a steady middle-class household like a good girl.” I told her about the note from my biology teacher, and she stared at me in disbelief.

“Why don’t you run away?” she said. She was serious.

I licked strawberry from my fingers and thought about it.

“I suppose because I love them, you know? My family I want to do right by them. I want them to think well of me. I want to make decisions that will make them happy too.”

And there I felt the conversation, and possibly our friendship, grind to a halt.

Her face turned blank and stony; her eyes hardened.

“I don’t mean . . . Oh, Isabella, I’m sorry. I’m not criticizing you. I’m sure you made the right decision for you. I admire you for doing what you love—I really do. You’re a beautiful dancer.” She just looked at me and looked at me. I withered.

A long moment passed as a little girl chased her brother in circles around the picnic tables. The roller coaster clattered by overhead. A streetcar boat sounded its deafening whistle down at the docks. Isabella just looked at me with those hard, dark eyes.

Finally, I got up from the table. “I’ll go,” I said. I got four whole miserable steps away before she called out to me in a small, sad voice I could hardly tell was hers.

“Do you really think . . .” I turned, with a heavy sigh of relief still mixed with worry. But the stone face had crumbled around the edges and the eyes were glossy with tears behind them. “Do you really think that I’m a—a—beautiful dancer?”

“Of course,” I said. “You’re like. . . fireworks.”

And the tension broke into a hundred pieces at our feet.

“Can I see you again?” she said, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with the napkin from her ice cream cone.

“Anytime you want. Just come by the shop, or have Avery give me a note.”

“I will. Soon.”

“Okay.” Then I turned to go because I was grinning so hard I thought my face would crack. I knew I probably looked like a fool and I had to get out of there before I embarrassed myself further.

“And Garnet?” she said. I composed my face as well as I could and turned back. “What is that?” She pointed to a little brown bird that hopped around under the picnic table, feasting on crumbs.

“Just a chipping sparrow,” I said without hesitation. “Why?”

She smiled. “Just wondering.” She laughed that chattering laugh as I headed off toward the hotel with a sparrow’s quick steps and a light heart.

Halfway back to the hotel I saw Mrs. Granger from room 304 with her small son. I smiled and waved hello, relieved that the sighting I’d been nervous about all day had happened after I’d said good-bye to Isabella. My luck had held.

Isabella was true to her word. The very next afternoon as I sat with the Harringtons on the veranda, Avery brought me a note on a little silver tray.

I’m out back. I want to take you flying. We’ll only be gone an hour. Please come?

Flying?

“The librarian has a new book for me,” I told Mrs. Harrington. “I’m going to go pick it up. I’ll only be out for a bit.”

“Fine, fine,” she mumbled, and she returned to the crossword puzzle in the daily paper. She’d been at the thing for an hour and seemed to be making little progress.

“Would you pick up some yellow thread for me in town?” Hannah asked. “I’ve run out.”

“Of course.” I flashed her an innocent smile, and within two minutes I was out the front door and headed around to the back of the hotel to meet Isabella.

She took me on the carousel. Exactly one week earlier, when I’d snuck off to the park on my own, I’d looked longingly at the carousel but decided against it. I felt too silly to ride it alone. Climbing aboard with Isabella the following Friday felt perfect.

It was a drab, cloudy day, but the painted horses shone under the ride’s thousand lights as we climbed on. I tried to sit in a carriage seat, but she insisted I ride the over-and-under horse next to hers—a white horse with a red bridle and a swept-back mane that made it look to be in motion even when it stood still. I rode sidesaddle, both appalled by and jealous of my pants-wearing companion, who rode her horse like a man. The ticket taker started at the single red lightbulb fixed into the ceiling among all the clear bulbs and worked his way around to us. My change purse was on the bureau in my room at the hotel. “No free rides,” he said in a gruff voice.

Thankfully, Isabella had the fare for us both. “I’m taking you flying, remember?” she said. Then the Sousa march started up and the horses came alive.

We flew.

“My thread?” Hannah asked when I returned to the veranda.

I’d forgotten. I remembered to pick up a library book only because Isabella asked on our way to the hotel what excuse I’d come up with. But I’d completely forgotten about Hannah’s yellow thread.

She saw me falter.

She glanced around. We were alone—her mother had gone into the lobby to listen to the radio. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’re up to something,” she said quietly with her thin lips in a sneer.

“Nonsense. I just left my purse,” I said, shocked that it was the truth that saved me. “I’ll go get it now and fetch you some thread, Hannah. I’m sorry.”

I dodged her pointed glare and scurried off to grab my purse and run the errand, my mind buzzing the whole way into town. Hannah was suspicious. Mrs. Harrington, I could tell, had given me up for a lost cause and didn’t care what I did as long as I went to work in the mornings, stayed out of trouble in the afternoons, found my way back to the hotel by dinner, and went to bed at a “Christian” hour. In fact, she seemed to like that I was out of her hair most of the time and away from her impressionable daughter, who I could do nothing to improve and who could not, therefore, benefit from my company in the least. She would never have approved of what I was doing, so I simply didn’t tell her. She lived under the happy assumption that I spent my afternoons walking at the lake or holed up at the library, and she didn’t bother herself about it much. Hannah was not so easily fooled. Though until she knew what to tell on me for, I didn’t think she would say anything to her mother.

But if I snuck out every day and constantly risked being seen by other hotel guests and confused my own mind with constant lying, Hannah would be sure to find out what I was doing and whom I was doing it with. So I would need to be more careful. I would need to wait awhile before seeing Isabella again.

The thought set off a pang inside me—Isabella was joy and excitement and adventure and everything else seemed dull in comparison—but there was no way around it.

After I delivered the thread I excused myself to my room. I wrote a note telling Isabella that I was sorry but I needed a little time to let Hannah’s suspicion subside before we went out together again. I rang for Avery, our willing messenger, and asked him to deliver it.

He noticed my long face when he took the note from me at the door of the suite.

“Does the girl know?” he asked, his voice hesitant to address me so informally.

But formality at this point seemed ridiculous. He was a friend now, at least when the Harringtons weren’t watching.

“Not yet. I want to keep it that way.”

“Right, right. Well, let me know when you think it’s safe. I’ll fetch her for you.”

I smiled.

“She’s a gem, isn’t she,” he said. “Our Bella?”

“The best.”

He turned to go.

“Avery?” I said. He turned in the hallway. “Thank you.”

“No problem, Miss.”

I swallowed hard and then corrected him. “Garnet.”

He paused, then looked right and left. The hall was empty. His eyes came up to meet mine and he nodded once. Then he said, in a low voice, “Right, Garnet.”

I closed the door slowly and then leaned back on it. After a moment of pouting I went back to my room and set myself up at the writing desk, vowing to stay occupied for a few days or maybe even a week. I’d catch up on my reading, I decided, and my correspondence. There was so much trouble going on at home and I’d hardly thought to worry myself with any of it since meeting Isabella. Now it rushed back to me and I felt compelled to send reassuring and distracting letters to my parents, to Aunt Rachel, to Alice, to Teddy. I started with my parents, composing for them a happy letter about the lake and the weather and my harmless little job and the progress of my needlepoint. It seemed like fiction. Like writing about another life. Another girl.

I’d just have to pretend to be that other girl for a while, until Hannah stopped looking at me with questions in her eyes every time I set foot outside the hotel. And even though that other girl was the girl I’d been for years, being her now was like acting a part in a play.

Actually, I thought, it was always like acting a part in a play. I just didn’t realize it.