Orphan Train(72)

As business grows, we push the shelves closer together, erect special displays at the ends of the aisles, crowd the lotions. When the shop next door, a jeweler’s called Rich’s, goes out of business, I convince Mr. Nielsen to remodel and expand. Inventory will be in the basement instead of in the back, and the store will be organized into departments.

We keep prices low, and lower them even more with sales every week and coupons in the paper. We institute a layaway plan so people can buy more expensive items in installments. And we put in a soda fountain as a place people can linger. Before long the store is thriving. It seems as though we are the only business doing well in this terrible economy.


“DID YOU KNOW YOUR EYES ARE YOUR BEST FEATURE?” TOM PRICE tells me in math class senior year, leaning across my desk to look at them, first one and then the other. “Brown, green, even a little gold in there. I’ve never seen so many colors in a pair of eyes.” I squirm under his gaze, but when I get home that afternoon, I lean in close to the bathroom mirror and stare at my eyes for a long time.

My hair isn’t as brassy as it used to be. Over the years it has turned a deep russet, the color of dead leaves. I’ve had it cut in the fashionable style—fashionable for our town, at least—right above my shoulders. And when I begin to wear makeup, I have a revelation. I’ve viewed my life until now as a series of unrelated adaptations, from Irish Niamh to American Dorothy to the reincarnated Vivian. Each identity has been projected onto me and fits oddly at first, like a pair of shoes you have to break in before they’re comfortable. But with red lipstick I can fashion a whole new—and temporary—persona. I can determine my own next incarnation.

I attend the homecoming dance with Tom. He shows up at the door with a wrist corsage, a fat white carnation and two tiny roses; I’ve sewn my own dress, a pink chiffon version of one Ginger Rogers wore in Swing Time, and Mrs. Nielsen loans me her pearl necklace and matching earrings. Tom is affable and good-natured right up until the moment the whiskey he’s tippling from a flask in the pocket of his father’s too-big suit coat makes him drunk. Then he gets into a scuffle with another senior on the dance floor and manages to get himself, and me, ejected from the dance.

The next Monday, my twelfth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Fry, takes me aside after class. “Why are you wasting time with a boy like that?” she scolds. She urges me to apply to colleges out of state—Smith College in Massachusetts, for one, her alma mater. “You’ll have a bigger life,” she says. “Don’t you want that, Vivian?” But though I’m flattered by her interest, I know I’ll never go that far. I can’t leave the Nielsens, who’ve come to depend on me for so much. Besides, Tom Price notwithstanding, the life I’m living is big enough for me.


AS SOON AS I GRADUATE, I BEGIN TO MANAGE THE STORE. I FIND that I am suited to the task, and that I enjoy it. (I’m taking a class in accounting and business administration at St. Olaf College, but my classes meet in the evenings.) I hire the workers—nine in all, now—and order much of the merchandise. At night, with Mr. Nielsen, I go over the ledgers. Together we manage employees’ problems, placate customers, massage vendors. I’m constantly angling for the best price, the most attractive bundle of goods, the newest option. Nielsen’s is the first place in the county to carry upright electric vacuum cleaners, blenders, freeze-dried coffee. We’ve never been busier.

Girls from my graduating class come into the store brandishing solitaire diamonds like Legion of Honor medals, as if they’ve accomplished something significant—which I guess they think they have, though all I can see is a future of washing some man’s clothes stretching ahead of them. I want nothing to do with marriage. Mrs. Nielsen agrees. “You’re young. There’ll be time for that,” she says.





Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011


“Buying all these fancy vegetables is eating up my whole salary,” Dina grumbles. “I don’t know if we can keep doing this.”

Dina’s talking about a stir-fry that Molly has thrown together for the three of them after returning from the library in Bar Harbor: tofu, red and green peppers, black beans, and zucchini. Molly has been cooking quite a bit lately, reasoning that if Dina tries some dishes that don’t have animal protein front and center, she’ll see how many more options are available. So in the past week Molly has made cheese and mushroom quesadillas, vegetarian chili, and eggplant lasagna. Still Dina complains: it’s not filling enough, it’s weird. (She’d never tried eggplant in her life before Molly roasted one in the oven.) And now she complains that it costs too much.