“Mrs. Wharton?”
“Yes, the novelist! She prints her address in the paper. She expects Americans to come to her. She’s begging us to.”
“Just—go to Paris? But I haven’t the money to stay once I’m there.”
“Mrs. Wharton will find the money. Or someone like her. It isn’t as hard as all that.”
Minnie edged a little closer. Ruby looked over at her.
“Plenty of other girls already paid for their passage, too,” she said to Minnie. “I’m sure at least one of them can keep a secret from their father.”
THAT NIGHT, EDNA and Minnie walked home under a deep purple sky and a half-moon that hung low on the horizon. They meandered along, too lost in conversation to bother with the most direct path to Mrs. Turnbull’s.
“I have some money,” Minnie said. “Or rather, I have a few trinkets hidden away. I’ve been meaning to go and collect them. They’re just little things, but I can sell them.”
“You’re only sixteen,” Edna said, “and, anyway, I don’t think Deputy Kopp would allow it.”
“She won’t have a thing to say about it, once we’re on the boat.” Just picturing it—Minnie on the deck of a ship, looking out over the rail at the receding skyline of New York—thrilled her like nothing she’d ever imagined before.
“But it’s going to be awfully hard work,” Edna said, “and dangerous. You mustn’t go just to have a gay time in Paris. I want to do my duty as an American, and that means I’m going to the front.”
“I want?—” Minnie stopped herself. What she started to say was: I want to go wherever you’re going. But what would Edna think of her if she said a thing like that?
In the short time she’d known Edna, Minnie had come to see her for the extraordinary creature that she was. Edna was singularly focused on the war and her duty to it. Edna would dress wounds and hold the hands of soldiers while they screamed in surgery. Edna would peel potatoes and carry dinner through the fields, under cover of darkness. She would learn to drive an ambulance and work the semaphore flags and whatever else needed doing in service of a call that she heard more clearly than anyone Minnie had ever met.
But she needed someone by her side. Edna had an endless reservoir of determination, and all the high ideals in the world, but she didn’t know how to bluff, or play a trick, or talk her way into a room where she wasn’t invited. She was constitutionally unable to lie or cheat or hide anything—money, jewels, the truth. Minnie could do all of that, and while she didn’t know much about war, she was fairly certain that something in that line might be called for.
Minnie would get them to Paris. She would find Mrs. Wharton. She would get them on a train, or in a soldier’s auto heading to the front. She would see to it that they were fed and housed. They would go through the war together. They needed each other. She was sure of it.
Minnie reached out to stop Edna, and they turned to look at each other.
She couldn’t bring herself to tell Edna that she’d never understood what it meant to put her life to a purpose outside herself, until now.
And she couldn’t say that something had always been missing, and she’d always wondered who or what it might be, until now.
That something, improbably enough, was Edna.
Minnie had never felt protective of anyone before, but she was prepared to stand up for Edna, and defend her, and watch out for her. She couldn’t say any of that either.
What she said, at last, was “I’m an American, too, aren’t I?”
61
SHE CAME BACK TO THEM on a Sunday.
The horse’s water trough had rusted through and Norma’s attempt to patch it with a sheet of metal failed. She hated to buy a new trough, owing to the expense. Constance had to take her through the previous year’s ledger-books to show her that repairs took their financial toll in the spring, and it was to be expected. That led to grumbling over the inadequacy of the Sinking Fund that Norma had established, and the need to further trim their sails to replenish it. Constance told Norma she had every confidence in her ability to make the numbers come out right. Norma did not find that reassuring.
The trough sat on a rather complicated wooden stand of Norma’s own invention. It took both of them to wrestle the old one out of the stand and get the new one, which was of a slightly different size, properly situated.
Constance was in a foul mood owing to the fact that Norma had dragged her out of bed at six o’clock for a day of chores, when she’d come home prepared to do nothing more than sleep and read a book in the bath. She hated to be mucking about in the barn before noon, when the cold leached out of the floor boards and the frost clung to the roof.
They did what they could for the trough. The horse seemed satisfied enough with it. Constance was relieved to see Carolyn Borus drive up before Norma could inflict some other domestic tedium on her. Carolyn came running out of her motor car, waving a letter at them.
“We’re sending a message to the White House!” she called. “There’s a nationwide effort underway to deliver letters to President Wilson by messenger pigeon. Twenty pigeon-keepers in Washington have signed on. We’re to write a letter, and the birds will be sent here by train for us to release back to the capital. What shall we say to the President?”
Norma pulled off her gloves and took the letter. Constance read it over her shoulder.
“Only a few dozen pigeon societies have been chosen to receive the birds, and ours is one of them,” Carolyn said.
“Let me make sure I understand,” Constance said. “To send a letter by pigeon to the White House, it must be raised in Washington and transported here by train, because of course they can only fly home to the place they were born.”
Norma looked up at Carolyn with an expression of apology for her slow-witted sister.
“Of course,” Norma said irritably. “How else would we do it?”
“And then you will attach the letter and it will fly back to its loft near the White House.”
“Exactly.”
“Whereupon the letter will be removed and delivered to the President.”
“It’s a simple-enough plan and I don’t know why you pretend not to be able to follow it.”
One of the chickens kicked up a great fuss, and Constance looked over in time to see her raise herself slightly out of the straw and lay an egg. The Leghorns always complained the loudest. After she settled down again, Constance said, “I follow it just fine, but if you’re trying to demonstrate some efficiency in transmitting messages, I’m afraid the post office has you beat.”
“We aren’t doing it for the sake of efficiency,” Norma said.