Orphan Train(17)

Molly knows all about Terry’s work routine. “You’re like me at the gym, hey, Ma?” Jack says, teasing her about it. “One day biceps, next day quads.” Terry rarely deviates from her self-imposed schedule; with a house this size, she says, you have to tackle a different section every day: bedrooms and laundry on Monday, bathrooms and plants on Tuesday, kitchen and shopping on Wednesday, other main rooms on Thursday, cooking for the weekend on Friday.

Molly wades through stacks of boxes sealed with shiny beige tape to get to the window, which she opens a crack. Even up here, at the top of this big old house, she can smell the salty air. “They’re not in any particular order, are they?” she asks Vivian, turning back around. “How long have they been here?”

“I haven’t touched them since we moved in. So that must be—”

“Twenty years.”

Vivian gives her a flinty smile. “You were listening.”

“Were you ever tempted to just toss it all in a Dumpster?”

Vivian purses her lips.

“I didn’t mean—sorry.” Molly winces, realizing she’s pushed a little far.

All right, it’s official, she needs an attitude adjustment. Why is she so hostile? Vivian hasn’t done anything to her. She should be grateful. Without Vivian she’d be sliding down a dark path toward nowhere good. But it kind of feels nice to nurture her resentment, to foster it. It’s something she can savor and control, this feeling of having been wronged by the world. That she has fulfilled her role as a thieving member of the underclass, now indentured to this genteel midwestern white lady, is too perfect for words.

Deep breath. Smile. As Lori, the court-ordered social worker she meets with biweekly always tells her to do, Molly decides to make a mental list of all the positive things about her situation. Let’s see. One, if she can stick it out, this whole incident will be stricken from her record. Two, she has a place—however tense and tenuous at the moment—to live. Three, if you must spend fifty hours in an uninsulated attic in Maine, spring is probably the best time of year to do it. Four, Vivian is ancient, but she doesn’t appear to be senile.

Five—who knows? Maybe there actually will be something interesting in these boxes.

Bending down, Molly scans the labels around her. “I think we should go through them in chronological order. Let’s see—this one says ‘WWII.’ Is there anything before that?”

“Yes.” Vivian squeezes between two stacks and makes her way toward the cedar chests. “The earliest stuff I have is over here, I think. These crates are too heavy to move, though. So we’ll have to start in this corner. Is that okay with you?”

Molly nods. Downstairs, Terry handed her a cheap serrated knife with a plastic handle, a slippery stack of white plastic garbage bags, and a wire-bound notebook with a pen clipped to it to keep track of “inventory,” as she called it. Now Molly takes the knife and pokes it through the tape of the box Vivian has chosen: 1929–1930. Vivian, sitting on a wooden chest, waits patiently. After opening the flaps, Molly lifts out a mustard-colored coat, and Vivian scowls. “Mercy sake,” she says. “I can’t believe I saved that coat. I always hated it.”

Molly holds the coat up, inspecting it. It’s interesting, actually, sort of a military style with bold black buttons. The gray silk lining is disintegrating. Going through the pockets, she fishes out a folded piece of lined paper, almost worn away at the creases. She unfolds it to reveal a child’s careful cursive in faint pencil, practicing the same sentence over and over again: Upright and do right make all right. Upright and do right make all right. Upright and do right . . .

Vivian takes it from her and spreads the paper open on her knee. “I remember this. Miss Larsen had the most beautiful penmanship.”

“Your teacher?”

Vivian nods. “Try as I might, I could never form my letters like hers.”

Molly looks at the perfect swoops hitting the broken line in exactly the same spot. “Looks pretty good to me. You should see my scrawl.”

“They barely teach it anymore, I hear.”

“Yeah, everything’s on computer.” Molly is suddenly struck by the fact that Vivian wrote these words on this sheet of paper more than eighty years ago. Upright and do right make all right. “Things have changed a lot since you were my age, huh?”

Vivian cocks her head. “I suppose. Most of it doesn’t affect me much. I still sleep in a bed. Sit in a chair. Wash dishes in a sink.”

Or Terry washes dishes in a sink, to be accurate, Molly thinks.

“I don’t watch much television. You know I don’t have a computer. In a lot of ways my life is just as it was twenty or even forty years ago.”

“That’s kind of sad,” Molly blurts, then immediately regrets it. But Vivian doesn’t seem offended. Making a “who cares?” face, she says, “I don’t think I’ve missed much.”

“Wireless Internet, digital photographs, smartphones, Facebook, YouTube . . .” Molly taps the fingers of one hand. “The entire world has changed in the past decade.”

“Not my world.”

“But you’re missing out on so much.”

Vivian laughs. “I hardly think FaceTube—whatever that is—would improve my quality of life.”