Orphan Train

and circumspect Emily, who has a funny half smile and severe dark bangs and
     is always making jokes I don’t get. Their racy humor, raucous laughter, and breezy,
     unearned intimacy with me make me a little nervous.
    For another thing, a big shipment of fall fashions is coming into the store today
     or tomorrow, and I don’t want to return to find all of it in the wrong places. Mr.
     Nielsen has arthritis, and though he still comes in early every morning, he usually
     leaves around two to take an afternoon nap. Mrs. Nielsen is in and out; much of her
     time these days is taken up with bridge club and volunteering at the church.
    But she encourages me to go with Lillian and Emily, saying, “A girl your age should
     get out now and then. There’s more to life than the store and your studies, Vivian.
     Sometimes I worry you forget that.”
    When I graduated from high school, Mr. Nielsen bought me a car, a white Buick convertible,
     which I mainly drive to the store and St. Olaf in the evenings, and Mr. Nielsen says
     it’ll be good for the car to run it a little. “I’ll pay for parking,” he says.
    As we drive out of town, the sky is the saccharine blue of a baby blanket, filled
     with puffy cottonball clouds. It’s clear before we’re ten miles down the road that
     Emily and Lillian’s plans are more ambitious than they’ve let on. Yes, we’ll go to The Wizard of Oz, but not the evening show that was the excuse for staying over. There’s a matinee
     at three o’clock that will leave plenty of time to return to our rooms and dress to
     go out.
    “Wait a minute,” I say. “What do you mean, go out?”
    Lillian, sitting beside me in the passenger seat, gives my knee a squeeze. “Come on,
     you didn’t think we’d drive all this way just to go to a silly picture show, did you?”
    From the backseat, where she’s thumbing through Silver Screen magazine, Emily says, “So serious, Viv. You need to lighten up. Hey, d’you girls
     know that Judy Garland was born in Grand Rapids? Named Frances Ethel Gumm. Guess that
     wasn’t Hollywood enough.”
    Lillian smiles over at me. “You’ve never been to a nightclub, have you?”
    I don’t answer, but of course she’s right.
    She tilts the rearview mirror away from me and starts to apply lipstick. “That’s what
     I thought. We are going to have some real fun for a change.” Then she smiles, her
     glossy pink lips framing small white teeth. “Starting with cocktails.”
    The women’s hotel on a Minneapolis side street is just as Lillian described it, with
     a clean but sparsely furnished lobby and a bored clerk who barely looks up when he
     hands us our keys. Standing at the elevator with our bags, we plan to meet for the
     picture show in fifteen minutes. “Don’t be late,” Emily admonishes. “We have to get
     popcorn. There’s always a line.”
    After dropping my bag in the closet of my narrow room on the fourth floor, I sit on
     the bed and bounce a few times. The mattress is thin, with creaky springs. But I feel
     a thrill of pleasure. My trips with the Nielsens are controlled, unambitious outings—a
     silent car ride, a specific destination, a sleepy ride home in the dark, Mr. Nielsen
     sitting erect in the front seat, Mrs. Nielsen beside him keeping a watchful eye on
     the center line.
    Emily is standing alone in the lobby when I come downstairs. When I ask where Lillian
     is, she gives me a wink. “She’s not feeling so well. She’ll meet us after.”
    As we make our way to the theater, five blocks away, it occurs to me that Lillian
     never had any intention of going to the picture with us.
    The Wizard of Oz is magical and strange. Black-and-white farmland gives way to a Technicolor dreamscape,
     as vivid and unpredictable as Dorothy Gale’s real life is ordinary and familiar. When
     she returns to Kansas—her heartfelt wish granted—the world is black and white again.
     “It’s good to be home,” she says. Back on the farm, her life stretches ahead to the
     flat horizon line, already populated with the only characters she’ll ever know.
    When Emily and I leave the theater, it is early evening. I was so absorbed in the
     movie that real life feels slightly unreal; I have the uncanny sense of having stepped
     out of the screen and onto the street. The evening light is soft and pink, the air
     as mild as bathwater.
    Emily yawns. “Well, that was long.”
    I don’t want to ask, but manners compel me. “What did you