Orphan Train(15)

By the time we leave Chicago, it is evening. Carmine sits on my lap with his hands on the window, face pressed against the glass, gazing out at the streets and buildings, all lit up. “Yite,” he says softly as the city recedes into the distance. I look out the window with him. Soon all is dark; it’s impossible to tell where land ends and the sky begins.

“Get a good night’s rest,” Mrs. Scatcherd calls from the front of the car. “In the morning you will need to be at your very best. It is vital that you make a good impression. Your drowsiness might well be construed as laziness.”

“What if nobody wants me?” one boy asks, and the entire car seems to hold its breath. It is the question on everyone’s mind, the question none of us are sure we want the answer to.

Mrs. Scatcherd looks down at Mr. Curran as if she’s been waiting for this. “If it happens that you are not chosen at the first stop, you will have several additional opportunities. I cannot think of an instance . . .” She pauses and purses her lips. “It is uncommon for a child to be with us on the return trip to New York.”

“Pardon me, ma’am,” a girl near the front says. “What if I don’t want to go with the people who choose me?”

“What if they beat us?” a boy cries out.

“Children!” Mrs. Scatcherd’s small glasses flash as she turns her head from side to side. “I will not have you interrupting!” She seems poised to sit down without addressing these questions, but then changes her mind. “I will say this: There is no accounting for taste and personalities. Some parents are looking for a healthy boy to work on the farm—as we all know, hard work is good for children, and you would be lucky to be placed with a God-fearing farm family, all you boys—and some people want babies. People sometimes think they want one thing, but later change their minds. Though we dearly hope all of you will find the right homes at the first stop, it doesn’t always work that way. So in addition to being respectable and polite, you must also keep your faith in God to guide you forward if the way is not clear. Whether your journey is long or short, He will help you as long as you place your trust in Him.”

I look over at Dutchy, and he looks back at me. Mrs. Scatcherd knows as little as we do about whether we’ll be chosen by people who will treat us with kindness. We are headed toward the unknown, and we have no choice but to sit quietly in our hard seats and let ourselves be taken there.





Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011


Walking back to the car, Molly sees Jack through the windshield, eyes closed, grooving out to a song she can’t hear.

“Hey,” she says loudly, opening the passenger door.

He opens his eyes and yanks the buds out of his ears. “How’d it go?”

She shakes her head and climbs in. Hard to believe she was only in there for twenty minutes. “Vivian’s an odd one. Fifty hours! My God.”

“But it’s going to work out?”

“I guess so. We made a plan to start on Monday.”

Jack pats her leg. “Awesome. You’ll knock out those hours in no time.”

“Let’s not count our chickens.”

She’s always doing this, crabbily countering his enthusiasm, but it’s become something of a routine. She’ll tell him, “I’m nothing like you, Jack. I’m bitchy and spiteful,” but is secretly relieved when he laughs it off. He has an optimistic certainty that she’s a good person at her core. And if he has this faith in her, then she must be all right, right?

“Just keep telling yourself—better than juvie,” he says.

“Are you sure about that? It’d probably be easier to serve my time and get it over with.”

“Except for that small problem of having a record.”

She shrugs. “That’d be kind of badass, though, don’t you think?”

“Really, Moll?” he says with a sigh, turning the ignition key.

She smiles to let him know she’s kidding. Sort of. “‘Better than juvie.’ That would make a good tattoo.” She points to her arm. “Right here across my bicep, in twenty-point script.”

“Don’t even joke,” he says.


DINA PLUNKS THE SKILLET OF HAMBURGER HELPER ON THE TRIVET in the middle of the table and sits heavily in her chair. “Oof. I’m exhausted.”

“Tough day at work, huh, babe?” Ralph says, as he always does, though Dina never asks him about his day. Maybe plumbing isn’t as exciting as being a police dispatcher in thrill-a-minute Spruce Harbor. “Molly, hand me your plate.”

“My back is killing me from that crappy chair they make me sit in,” Dina says. “I swear if I went to a chiropractor, I’d have a lawsuit.”

Molly gives her plate to Ralph and he drops some casserole on it. Molly has learned to pick around the meat—even in a dish like this, where you can hardly tell what’s what and it’s all mixed together—because Dina refuses to acknowledge that she’s a vegetarian.

Dina listens to conservative talk radio, belongs to a fundamentalist Christian church, and has a “Guns don’t kill people—abortion clinics do” bumper sticker on her car. She and Molly are about as opposite as it is possible to be, which would be fine if Dina didn’t take Molly’s choices as a personal affront. Dina is constantly rolling her eyes, muttering under her breath about Molly’s various infractions—didn’t put away her laundry, left a bowl in the sink, can’t be bothered to make her bed—all of which are part and parcel of the liberal agenda that’s ruining this country. Molly knows she should ignore these comments—“water off a duck’s back,” Ralph says—but they irk her. She’s overly sensitive to them, like a tuning fork pitched too high. It’s all part of Dina’s unwavering message: Be grateful. Dress like a normal person. Don’t have opinions. Eat the food that’s put in front of you.