“A drip sounds terrible. Get me what you’re having.” I rubbed at my neck but complied, then paid and half dragged my grandmother to the side to wait for our order.
I looked down at my phone and began composing a text to my mother.
But when I finished, I realized my grandmother was far too quiet and looked up to see she had wandered to the milk station. I took three steps toward her, then stopped as I watched her open her purse and dump the entire container of artificial sweeteners into her bag. I rushed over. “What are you doing?” I hissed.
She looked at me in surprise. “What? They’re free.”
“You’re not supposed to take all of them!”
“Why not? They have more.” Raising a hand, she called to the closest barista. “Miss! You’re out of Sweet’N Low.”
“I will buy you some Sweet’N Low. Just put it back.”
“I’ll do no such thing. You never know if they’ll have it when you’re traveling.” The barista brought over a box of sweeteners and began restocking the station. “Thank you, dear.” My grandmother waited until the barista had walked away, then looked at me triumphantly and dumped the new packets into her bag as well.
I heard my name, grabbed the tray with our coffees and the scone, and took my grandmother’s arm, dragging her toward the door. “I cannot believe you just did that.”
“You have a lot to learn.” She plucked the smaller of the two coffees from the tray and took a sip. “I love when they put the caramel on top of the foam.”
“I thought you didn’t know what kind of coffee you wanted.”
My grandmother just smiled.
CHAPTER SEVEN
April 1950
Hereford, Massachusetts
As her vivacious second-to-last child kissed her father goodbye and practically floated out the door, Miriam watched with the trained eyes of a mother who has already raised three older daughters, then she sighed heavily. Evelyn might have said she was going to the carnival with Ruthie, but it was obvious, both from the fact that Vivie was not accompanying her and from her demeanor, that she was lying. Evelyn had a boyfriend.
Drying her hands on her apron, Miriam walked to the door of the living room and cleared her throat so Joseph would look up from his newspaper. “She goes out a lot lately,” Miriam said, nodding at the door.
“She’s a happy girl. With many friends.”
Miriam didn’t reply. He had been so quick to assume wrongdoing with their older children, and yet, when it came to Evelyn, he was blind. So instead, she turned her attentions to Vivie, who was draped across the armchair in the corner of the living room, her nose in a book. “Why aren’t you at the carnival?”
Vivie looked up guiltily, confirming Miriam’s suspicions. “I . . . didn’t want to go.” Lying might come easily to Evelyn, but Vivie had yet to master that skill. Especially to their mother.
Turning a quarter of the way back to Joseph and speaking louder, so he couldn’t pretend not to hear her, she spoke, ostensibly to Vivie. “She has to bring you next time. She can’t go with Ruthie and not you.”
“She said she didn’t want to go,” Joseph said in his heavily accented English from behind his newspaper. Miriam sighed again, returning to the kitchen and the seemingly unending stack of dishes, even with five of her seven children grown and out of the house.
It’ll be a relief when the sixth goes, she thought, leaning heavily against the counter. Her back ached lately, and she felt every moment of her almost fifty-six years. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her headstrong, obstinate daughter—quite the opposite. But Evelyn was the most work of her children. The most worry. And always the most trouble.
So it was no surprise that she would be the one to fall in love while still in high school. Miriam thought Joseph was a fool for insisting their five daughters go to college. Bernie and Sam could use those degrees and make something of themselves instead of being shopkeepers. Not that she begrudged Joseph his store. He had made a comfortable life for them. They were respected in town and wanted for nothing. It was a much better life than she ever expected. But her sons—she kvelled thinking of them—they deserved so much more.
Daughters—what could they do, really, other than marry well? Yes, Helen and Gertie worked in the factories during the war, while first Bernie and then Sam went off to fight, but an actual career would be secondary. Yet Miriam did not argue, because she felt they would find better husbands in college than in town, which both Helen and Gertie had done.