The Letter. Elizabeth Blackwell
include home delivery. It was up to each family to appear up at Mrs. Glover’s to claim their boxes and envelopes—when she felt like retrieving them.
“Thank you!” Lydia called as she ran down the steps. She couldn’t wait until she got home to open it. Instead, she walked quickly to the porch swings at the Knox Junction Hotel, sat down and tore open the packaging. Nestled inside the box was the latest selection from the Book-of-the-Month Club. The subscription had been a gift from Father on her last birthday. Since Knox Junction had no public library, it was her one connection to the outside world. Each new delivery felt like Christmas.
She was about to pull the book out of the box when she noticed a shadow hovering over her. She glanced up and locked eyes with Henry Armstrong.
For a moment, they stared at each other in silence. His hair had been flattened with pomade, and he was wearing a stiffly pressed white shirt. His fingers twitched as they moved in and out of his pockets.
“Uh, is the, uh, social over, then?”
“I’m not sure,” Lydia said. “I left early.”
Henry looked down at his shoes, while Lydia smoothed the paper wrapped around her book. Those two sentences were more words than they’d exchanged during the entire school year. And that could’ve been the end of it—Henry might have said thank you, and turned toward the school, and Lydia might have walked home and delved into her book and never given Henry another thought.
But something about the package in Lydia’s lap caught Henry’s attention.
“Book-of-the-Month Club?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Lydia, surprised.
“My mother used to get those.”
“Oh?”
“Well, she hasn’t for a while now. But she kept all her old ones. I read them when I get the chance.”
Somehow, in that moment, with hardly anything being said, everything was said. Henry read books, and his mother used to read books, but something had happened and there was no money for indulgences such as Book-of-the-Month Club, so Henry had to work as hard as everyone else, but sometimes, at night when he wasn’t too exhausted, he would read and escape into other worlds. Just like Lydia.
“What’s your favorite?” Lydia asked.
Henry shrugged and shifted his weight from side to side. “I dunno,” he said. “There was one I read not too long ago—Lost Horizon. That was good.”
Lydia smiled. “I read that one, too. Shangri-La. I love books that make you feel you’ve gone somewhere else.”
“Away from Knox Junction?”
“I don’t mean—It’s not that I don’t like it here…” She watched as Henry’s face was transformed by a smile, his clear blue eyes twinkling at her. He looked like a little boy, delighted by a new discovery. Lydia couldn’t help smiling back.
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “Nothing interesting ever happens around here.”
“Well, there’s the social.” Lydia glanced up at him. “I don’t want to keep you, if you were going over there.”
Henry shook his head. “I’m not much of a dancer,” he said. “How ’bout you?”
Lydia laughed. “I’m terrible.”
And then Lydia was no longer conscious of talking to a boy—a boy who might actually have some kind of interest in her, no less. She just knew that she wanted the conversation to continue, because there was something about him that made her comfortable. When Lydia offered to show Henry her new book, she knew he’d sit down next to her.
“You know, if you like to read, we’ve got heaps of books,” Lydia said as Henry settled on the swing. “I’d be happy to lend you some.”
“Thank you.” His obvious delight at her offer was enough to start a warm rush in Lydia’s stomach. Years later, she realized it was the first hint of the feeling that would one day turn to love.
The war affected Knox Junction only gradually at first. A few local boys joined up, including Henry’s older brother, Timothy. Lydia’s mother had to bring a ration book whenever she wanted to buy sugar or coffee. For Lydia’s family, however, the war brought redemption. A few doctors from neighboring towns signed up with the medical corps, leaving her father as the sole physician for miles around. Now, rather than struggling to build a practice, he found that demand for his services had soared. Before the family’s abrupt departure from Chicago, Lydia had overheard snippets of her parents’ conversations, the contemptuous accusations her mother had flung at him regarding “that poor Miller woman.” Lydia knew that one of Father’s patients had died, and that death had something to do with their disgrace. She’d wondered if Father would ever practice medicine again.
Now that the war had tripled his business, Lydia watched her father revert to the confident physician he had once been. The more patients he treated, the more his shoulders straightened, and the more Lydia heard the sound of whistling in the morning. He made fewer trips to the liquor cabinet after dinner. No longer was Lydia awakened by the sound of harsh voices from her parents’ room.
After school let out for the summer, Mother took Lydia and Nell north to Wisconsin, to Grandmother’s vacation house on Lake Geneva. Mother claimed it would be good for the girls’ health—“The air here is oppressive. I can’t bear it”—but Father’s health seemed less of a concern, as he stayed behind.
To one of Grandmother’s elderly neighbors, Mother explained the move to Knox Junction as a patriotic duty. “We all must make our sacrifices,” she said. “They don’t have nearly enough doctors there, and with the war on, David is needed more than ever.
“It’s a simpler life,” Mother told one of her childhood friends, who lived in a three-story mansion on Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. “So much better for the children.”
Whether these polite society ladies believed Mother’s explanations or merely pitied her, the result was the same. She was welcomed back into the world where she’d grown up, a world of garden parties and croquet matches and leisurely rides on family sailboats. A world Lydia had once believed she was part of. But now she saw it as a brief, idyllic escape. Come September, she’d be back in Knox Junction. That had become her real life.
Lydia had given Henry the address in Lake Geneva on their last day of school, not expecting anything to come of it. But to her great surprise, he did write. And although his letters were short, to the point and distinctly lacking in poetry, she ripped each one open eagerly.
Dear Lydia,
How are things up there? Have you gone swimming in the lake? The only place I’ve ever gone swimming was the water hole behind our barn. It’s all dried up now. It’s scorching hot here. How’s the weather?
Her letters back were chattier, but similarly superficial:
The women here go to great lengths to track down nylons. They all whisper about who can get them as if they’re planning a bank robbery. But I don’t imagine you’re too interested in ladies’ fashions. Sorry I don’t have anything more interesting to write about—it’s a rather dull routine here. A morning walk, lunch out, afternoon swim, tea with friends of my grandmother’s, followed by dinner with someone even more boring. There doesn’t seem to be anyone here younger than forty. It actually makes me look forward to high school. Although, I still can’t quite believe it—high school! What do you think it will be like?
Knox Junction was too small to support a high school, so students took a half-hour bus ride to nearby Fentonville. During the first few weeks of school, the bus seating settled into a pattern that remained for the rest of the school year. Lydia and Melanie would board the bus first, in town. Later along the route, Henry would get on and sit in the row in front of them. He’d stretch his long legs out along the seat and turn sideways toward the girls, nodding his head