Vivian is waiting by the front door when Molly arrives. “Ready?” she says, turning to head up the stairs as soon as Molly crosses the threshold.
“Hang on.” Molly shrugs off her army jacket and hangs it on the black iron coatrack in the corner. “What about that cup of tea?”
“No time,” Vivian calls over her shoulder. “I’m old, you know. Could drop dead any minute. We’ve got to get going!”
“Really? No tea?” Molly grumbles, following behind her.
A curious thing is happening. The stories that Vivian began to tell only with prodding, in dutiful answer to specific questions, are spilling forth unprompted, one after another, so many that even Vivian seems surprised. “ ‘Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’” she said after one session. “Macbeth, dear. Look it up.”
Vivian has never really talked about her experience on the train with anyone. It was shameful, she says. Too much to explain, too hard to believe. All those children sent on trains to the Midwest—collected off the streets of New York like refuse, garbage on a barge, to be sent as far away as possible, out of sight.
And anyway, how do you talk about losing everything?
“But what about your husband?” Molly asks. “You must have told him.”
“I told him some things,” Vivian says. “But so much of my experience was painful, and I didn’t want to burden him. Sometimes it’s easier to try to forget.”
Aspects of Vivian’s memory are triggered with each box they open. The sewing kit wrapped in cheesecloth evokes the Byrnes’ grim home. The mustard-colored coat with military buttons, the felt-lined knit gloves, the brown dress with pearl buttons, a carefully packed set of cabbage-rose china. Soon enough Molly is able to keep the cast of characters straight in her head: Niamh, Gram, Maisie, Mrs. Scatcherd, Dorothy, Mr. Sorenson, Miss Larsen. . . . One story circles back to another. Upright and do right make all right. As if joining scraps of fabric to make a quilt, Molly puts them in the right sequence and stitches them together, creating a pattern that was impossible to see when each piece was separate.
When Vivian describes how it felt to be at the mercy of strangers, Molly nods. She knows full well what it’s like to tamp down your natural inclinations, to force a smile when you feel numb. After a while you don’t know what your own needs are anymore. You’re grateful for the slightest hint of kindness, and then, as you get older, suspicious. Why would anyone do anything for you without expecting something in return? And anyway—most of the time they don’t. More often than not, you see the worst of people. You learn that most adults lie. That most people only look out for themselves. That you are only as interesting as you are useful to someone.
And so your personality is shaped. You know too much, and this knowledge makes you wary. You grow fearful and mistrustful. The expression of emotion does not come naturally, so you learn to fake it. To pretend. To display an empathy you don’t actually feel. And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you’re lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you’re broken inside.
“EH, I DON’T KNOW,” TYLER BALDWIN SAYS ONE DAY IN AMERICAN History after they watch a film about the Wabanakis. “What’s that saying again—‘to the victor go the spoils’?” I mean, it happens all the time, all over the world, right? One group wins, another loses.”
“Well, it’s true that humans have been dominating and oppressing each other since time began,” Mr. Reed says. “Do you think the oppressed groups should just stop their complaining?”
“Yeah. You lost. I kind of feel like saying ‘Deal with it,’” Tyler says.
The rage Molly feels is so overwhelming she sees spots before her eyes. For more than four hundred years Indians were deceived, corralled, forced onto small pieces of land and discriminated against, called dirty Indians, injuns, redskins, savages. They couldn’t get jobs or buy homes. Would it compromise her probationary status to strangle this imbecile? She takes a deep breath and tries to calm down. Then she raises her hand.
Mr. Reed looks at her with surprise. Molly rarely raises her hand. “Yes?”
“I’m an Indian.” She’s never told anyone this except Jack. To Tyler she knows she’s just . . . Goth, if he thinks of her at all. “Penobscot. I was born on Indian Island. And I just want to say that what happened to the Indians is exactly like what happened to the Irish under British rule. It wasn’t a fair fight. Their land was stolen, their religion was forbidden, they were forced to bend to foreign domination. It wasn’t okay for the Irish, and it’s not okay for the Indians.”
“Jeez, soapbox much?” Tyler mutters.
Megan McDonald, one seat ahead of Molly, raises her hand, and Mr. Reed nods. “She has a point,” she says. “My grandpa’s from Dublin. He’s always talking about what the Brits did.”
“Well, my granddad’s parents lost everything in the Great Depression. You don’t see me crying for handouts. Shit happens, excuse my French,” Tyler says.
“Tyler’s French aside,” Mr. Reed says, raising his eyebrows at the class as if to say he doesn’t approve but will deal with it later, “is that what they’re doing? Asking for handouts?”
“They just want to be treated fairly,” a kid in the back says.
“But what does that mean? And where does it end?” another kid asks.
As others join the conversation, Megan turns in her seat and squints at Molly, as if noticing her for the first time. “An Indian, huh. That’s cool,” she whispers. “Like Molly Molasses, right?”
WEEKDAYS, NOW, MOLLY DOESN’T WAIT FOR JACK TO TAKE HER TO Vivian’s house. Outside of school she picks up the Island Explorer.
“You have other things to do,” she tells him. “I know it’s a pain for you to wait on me.” But in truth, taking the bus gives her the freedom to stay as long as Vivian will have her without Jack’s questions.
Molly hasn’t told Jack about the portage project. She knows he’d say it’s a bad idea—that she’s getting overinvolved in Vivian’s life, asking too much of her. Even so, Jack has had an edge in his voice recently. “So hey, you’re getting to the end of your hours soon, huh?” he says, and, “Making any progress up there?”
These days Molly slips into Vivian’s house, ducks her head with a quick hello to Terry, sidles up the stairs. It seems both too hard to explain her growing relationship with Vivian and beside the point. What does it matter what anyone else thinks?
“Here’s my theory,” Jack says one day as they’re sitting outside on the lawn at school during lunch period.
It’s a beautiful morning, and the air is fresh and mild. Dandelions dance like sparklers in the grass.
“Vivian is like a mother figure to you. Grandmother, great-grandmother—whatever. She listens to you, she tells you stories, lets you help her out. She makes you feel needed.”
“No,” Molly says with irritation. “It’s not like that. I have hours to do; she has work that needs to be done. Simple.”
“Not really so simple, Moll,” he says with exaggerated reasonableness. “Ma tells me there’s not a helluva lot going on up there.” He pops open a big can of iced tea and takes a long swallow.
“We’re making progress. It’s just hard to see.”
“Hard to see?” He laughs, unwrapping a Subway Italian sandwich. “I thought the whole point was to get rid of the boxes. That seems fairly straightforward. No?”
Molly snaps a carrot stick in half. “We’re organizing things. So they’ll be easier to find.”
“By who? Estate sale people? Because that’s who it’s going to be, you know. Vivian will probably never set foot up there again.”
Is this really any of his business? “Then we’re making it easier for the estate sale people.” In truth, though she hasn’t admitted it out loud until now, Molly has virtually given up on the idea of disposing of anything. After all, what does it matter? Why shouldn’t Vivian’s attic be filled with things that are meaningful to her? The stark truth is that she will die sooner than later. And then professionals will descend on the house, neatly and efficiently separating the valuable from the sentimental, lingering only over items of indeterminate origin or worth. So yes—Molly has begun to view her work at Vivian’s in a different light. Maybe it doesn’t matter how much gets done. Maybe the value is in the process—in touching each item, in naming and identifying, in acknowledging the significance of a cardigan, a pair of children’s boots.
“It’s her stuff,” Molly says. “She doesn’t want to get rid of it. I can’t force her, can I?”
Taking a bite of his sandwich, its fillings spilling out onto the waxy paper below his chin, Jack shrugs. “I don’t know. I think it’s more the”—he chews and swallows and Molly looks away, annoyed at his passive aggression—“appearance of it, y’know?”
“What do you mean?”
“To Ma it might look a little like you’re taking advantage of the situation.”
Molly looks down at her own sandwich.
“I just know you’ll like it if you give it a chance,” Dina said breezily when Molly asked her to stop putting bologna sandwiches in her lunch bag, adding, “or you can make your own damn lunch.” So now Molly does—she swallowed her pride, asked Ralph for money, and bought almond butter, organic honey, and nutty bread in the health food store in Bar Harbor. And it’s fine, though her little stash is about as welcome in the pantry as a fresh-killed mouse brought in by the cat—or perhaps, being vegetarian, less so—and is quarantined on a shelf in the mudroom “so no one gets confused,” as Dina says.
Molly feels anger rising in her chest—at Dina’s unwillingness to accept her for who she is, at Terry’s judgments and Jack’s need to placate her. At all of them. “The thing is—it’s not really your mother’s business, is it?”
The moment she says this she regrets it.
Jack gives her a sharp look. “Are you kidding me?”
He balls up the Subway wrapper and stuffs it in the plastic bag it came in. Molly has never seen him like this, his jaw tight, his eyes hard and angry. “My mother went out on a limb for you,” he says. “She brought you into that house. And do I need to remind you that she lied to Vivian? If anything happens, she could lose her job. Like that.” He snaps his fingers hard.
“Jack, you’re right. I’m sorry,” she says, but he is already on his feet and walking away.