It is late September of my nineteenth year and two new friends, Lillian Bart and Emily Reece, want me to go with them to see a new picture that’s playing at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, The Wizard of Oz. It’s so long it has an intermission, and we’ve made plans to stay the night. Lillian’s fiancé lives there, and she goes almost every weekend, staying in a hotel for women. It’s a safe, clean place, she assures us, that doesn’t cost much money, and she has booked three single rooms. I’ve only been to the Twin Cities on day trips with the Nielsens—for a special birthday dinner, a shopping expedition, one afternoon at the art museum—but never with friends, and never overnight.
I’m not sure I want to go. For one thing, I haven’t known these girls for long—they’re both in my night class at St. Olaf. They live together in an apartment near the college. When they talk about drinks parties, I’m not even sure what they mean. Parties where you have only drinks? The only party the Nielsens host is an annual open-house buffet lunch on New Year’s Day for their vendors.
Lillian, with her friendly expression and golden blond hair, is easier to like than the arch and circumspect Emily, who has a funny half smile and severe dark bangs and is always making jokes I don’t get. Their racy humor, raucous laughter, and breezy, unearned intimacy with me make me a little nervous.
For another thing, a big shipment of fall fashions is coming into the store today or tomorrow, and I don’t want to return to find all of it in the wrong places. Mr. Nielsen has arthritis, and though he still comes in early every morning, he usually leaves around two to take an afternoon nap. Mrs. Nielsen is in and out; much of her time these days is taken up with bridge club and volunteering at the church.
But she encourages me to go with Lillian and Emily, saying, “A girl your age should get out now and then. There’s more to life than the store and your studies, Vivian. Sometimes I worry you forget that.”
When I graduated from high school, Mr. Nielsen bought me a car, a white Buick convertible, which I mainly drive to the store and St. Olaf in the evenings, and Mr. Nielsen says it’ll be good for the car to run it a little. “I’ll pay for parking,” he says.
As we drive out of town, the sky is the saccharine blue of a baby blanket, filled with puffy cottonball clouds. It’s clear before we’re ten miles down the road that Emily and Lillian’s plans are more ambitious than they’ve let on. Yes, we’ll go to The Wizard of Oz, but not the evening show that was the excuse for staying over. There’s a matinee at three o’clock that will leave plenty of time to return to our rooms and dress to go out.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “What do you mean, go out?”
Lillian, sitting beside me in the passenger seat, gives my knee a squeeze. “Come on, you didn’t think we’d drive all this way just to go to a silly picture show, did you?”
From the backseat, where she’s thumbing through Silver Screen magazine, Emily says, “So serious, Viv. You need to lighten up. Hey, d’you girls know that Judy Garland was born in Grand Rapids? Named Frances Ethel Gumm. Guess that wasn’t Hollywood enough.”
Lillian smiles over at me. “You’ve never been to a nightclub, have you?”
I don’t answer, but of course she’s right.
She tilts the rearview mirror away from me and starts to apply lipstick. “That’s what I thought. We are going to have some real fun for a change.” Then she smiles, her glossy pink lips framing small white teeth. “Starting with cocktails.”
The women’s hotel on a Minneapolis side street is just as Lillian described it, with a clean but sparsely furnished lobby and a bored clerk who barely looks up when he hands us our keys. Standing at the elevator with our bags, we plan to meet for the picture show in fifteen minutes. “Don’t be late,” Emily admonishes. “We have to get popcorn. There’s always a line.”
After dropping my bag in the closet of my narrow room on the fourth floor, I sit on the bed and bounce a few times. The mattress is thin, with creaky springs. But I feel a thrill of pleasure. My trips with the Nielsens are controlled, unambitious outings—a silent car ride, a specific destination, a sleepy ride home in the dark, Mr. Nielsen sitting erect in the front seat, Mrs. Nielsen beside him keeping a watchful eye on the center line.
Emily is standing alone in the lobby when I come downstairs. When I ask where Lillian is, she gives me a wink. “She’s not feeling so well. She’ll meet us after.”
As we make our way to the theater, five blocks away, it occurs to me that Lillian never had any intention of going to the picture with us.
The Wizard of Oz is magical and strange. Black-and-white farmland gives way to a Technicolor dreamscape, as vivid and unpredictable as Dorothy Gale’s real life is ordinary and familiar. When she returns to Kansas—her heartfelt wish granted—the world is black and white again. “It’s good to be home,” she says. Back on the farm, her life stretches ahead to the flat horizon line, already populated with the only characters she’ll ever know.
When Emily and I leave the theater, it is early evening. I was so absorbed in the movie that real life feels slightly unreal; I have the uncanny sense of having stepped out of the screen and onto the street. The evening light is soft and pink, the air as mild as bathwater.
Emily yawns. “Well, that was long.”
I don’t want to ask, but manners compel me. “What did you think?”
She shrugs. “Those flying monkeys were creepy. But other than that, I don’t know, I thought it was kind of boring.”
We walk along in silence, past darkened department store windows. “What about you?” she says after a few minutes. “Did you like it?”
I loved the movie so much that I don’t trust myself to respond without sounding foolish. “Yes,” I say, unable to translate into speech the emotions swirling through me.
Back in my room, I change into my other outfit, a chiffon skirt and floral blouse with butterfly sleeves. I brush my hair over my head and toss it back, then shape it with my fingers and spray it with lacquer. Standing on my toes, I look at my reflection in a small mirror above the bed. In the late afternoon light I look scrubbed and serious. Every freckle on my nose is visible. Taking out a small zippered bag, I spread butter-soft moisturizer on my face, then foundation. A smear of rouge, a pat of powder. I slide a brown pencil along my upper eyelids and feather my lashes, apply Terra Coral lipstick, then blot my lips, apply it again, and tuck the gold vial in my purse. I scrutinize myself in the mirror. I’m still me, but I feel braver somehow.
Down in the lobby, Lillian is holding hands with a guy I recognize as her fiancé, Richard, from the photograph she keeps in her purse. He’s shorter than I expected, shorter than Lillian. Acne scars pock his cheeks. Lillian’s wearing a sleeveless emerald shift dress, hemmed just above the knee (which is three inches shorter than anyone wears in Hemingford), and black kitten heels.
Richard yanks her close, whispers in her ear, and her eyes go wide. She covers her mouth and giggles, then sees me. “Vivie!” she says, tearing herself away. “Look at you! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with makeup. You clean up nice.”
“You too,” I say, though actually I’ve never seen her without.
“How was the movie?”
“It was good. Where were you?”
She glances at Richard. “I got waylaid.” They both start to giggle again.
“That’s one way to put it,” he says.
“You must be Richard,” I say.
“How’d you guess?” He claps me on the shoulder to show he’s kidding around. “You ready for some fun tonight, Vivie?”
“Well, I sure am!” Emily’s voice comes from over my shoulder, and I smell jasmine and roses—Joy, I recognize from the perfume counter at Nielsen’s. Turning to greet her, I’m startled by her low-cut white blouse and tight striped skirt, her teetering heels and crimson nail polish.
“Hello, Em.” Richard grins. “The fellas are sure going to be happy to see you.”
I am suddenly self-conscious in my prim blouse and modest skirt, my sensible shoes and churchy earrings. I feel like exactly what I am: a small-town girl in the big city.
Richard has his arms around both girls now, pinching them on the waist, laughing as they squirm. I glance at the desk clerk, the same one who was here when we checked in. It’s been a long day for him, I think. He’s leafing through a newspaper and only looks up when there’s a raucous burst of laughter. I can see the headline from here: “Germans and Soviets Parade in Poland.”
“I’m getting thirsty, girls. Let’s find a watering hole,” Richard says.
My stomach is rumbling. “Should we get dinner first?”
“If you insist, Miss Vivie. Though bar nuts would do it for me. What about you girls?” he asks the other two.
“Now, Richard, this is Viv’s first time in the city. She’s not used to your decadent ways. Let’s get some food,” Lillian says. “Besides, it might be risky for us lightweights to start drinking on an empty stomach.”
“Risky how?” He pulls her closer and Lillian smirks, then pushes him away, making her point. “All right, all right,” he says, making a show of his acquiescence. “At the Grand Hotel there’s a piano bar that serves chow. I seem to remember a pretty good T-bone. And I know they got a nice martini.”
We make our way out onto the street, now humming with people. It’s a perfect evening; the air is warm, the trees along the avenue are swathed in deep green leaves. Flowers spill out of planters, slightly overgrown and a bit wild, here at the furthest edge of summer. As we stroll along my spirits lift. Mingling in this wide swath of strangers shifts my attention from myself, that tedious subject, to the world around me. I might as well be in a foreign country for all its similarities to my sober real life, with its predictable routines and rhythms—a day in the store, supper at six, a quiet evening of studying or quilting or bridge. Richard, with his carnival-barker slickness, seems to have given up on even trying to include me. But I don’t mind. It is marvelous to be young on a big-city street.
AS WE APPROACH THE HEAVY GLASS-AND-BRASS FRONT DOOR OF the Grand Hotel, a liveried doorman opens it wide. Richard sails in with Lil and Em, as he calls them, on his arms, and I scurry behind in their wake. The doorman tips his cap as I thank him. “Bar’s on the left just through the foyer,” he says, making it clear he knows we’re not hotel guests. I’ve never been in a space this majestic—except maybe the Chicago train station all those years ago—and it’s all I can do not to gape at the starburst chandelier glittering over our heads, the glossy mahogany table with an oversized ceramic urn filled with exotic flowers in the center of the room.
The people in the foyer are equally striking. A woman wearing a flat black hat with a net that covers half her face stands at the reception desk with a pile of red leather suitcases, pulling off one long black satin glove and then the other. A white-haired matron carries a fluffy white dog with black button eyes. A man in a morning coat talks on the telephone at the front desk; an older gentleman wearing a monocle, sitting alone on a green love seat, holds a small brown book open in front of his nose. These people look bored, amused, impatient, self-satisfied—but most of all, they look rich. Now I am glad not to be wearing the gaudy, provocative clothing that seems to be drawing stares and whispers to Lil and Em.
Ahead of me, the three of them saunter across the lobby, shrieking with laughter, one of Richard’s arms around Lil’s shoulder and the other cinching Em’s waist. “Hey, Vivie,” Lil calls, glancing back as if suddenly remembering I’m here, “this way!” Richard pulls open the double doors to the bar, throws his hands into the air with a flourish, and ushers Lil and Em, giggling and whispering, inside. He follows, and the doors close slowly behind him.
I slow to a stop in front of the green couches. I’m in no hurry to go in there to be a fifth wheel, treated like I’m hopelessly out of it, old-fashioned and humorless, by the freewheeling Richard. Maybe, I think, I should just walk around for a while and then go back to the rooming house. Since the matinee nothing has felt quite real anyway; it’s been enough of a day for me—much more, certainly, than I’m used to.
I perch on one of the couches, watching people come and go. At the door, now, is a woman in a purple satin dress with cascading brown hair, elegantly nonchalant, waving at the porter with a bejeweled hand as she glides into the foyer. Absorbed in watching her as she floats past me toward the concierge desk, I don’t notice the tall, thin man with blond hair until he is standing in front of me.
His eyes are a piercing blue. “Excuse me, miss,” he says. I wonder if maybe he is going to say something about how I am so obviously out of place, or ask if I need help. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
I look at his golden-blond hair, short in the back but longer in front—nothing like the small-town boys I’m used to, with their hair shorn like sheep. He’s wearing gray pants, a crisp white shirt, and a black tie and carrying a slim attaché case. His fingers are long and tapered.
“I don’t think so.”
“Something about you is . . . very familiar.” He’s staring at me so intently that it makes me blush.
“I—” I stammer. “I really don’t know.”
And then, with a smile playing around his lips, he says, “Forgive me if I’m wrong. But are you—were you—did you come here on a train from New York about ten years ago?”
What? My heart jumps. How does he know that?
“Are you—Niamh?” he asks.
And then I know. “Oh my God—Dutchy, it’s you.”