The Point of Vanishing by Maryka Biaggio (best e ink reader for manga .TXT) 📕

CHAPTER FIFTY

BARBARA AT TWENTY-FIVE

Boston, June 1939

June 16, 1939

Dear Alice,

Such news I have! You know how enthralled I am with interpretive dance. Well, my instructor invited me to join her troupe, and I couldn’t say no. That’s how I met Renée, who plays the piano for us. She and I just signed up for a dance workshop at Mills College. We’ll be leaving on June 25 and driving straight across the old U.S. of A. The workshop runs from July 1 to August 11. And then we’ll ramble on down to Los Angeles, where Renée has a friend she’d like to visit.

Can I descend on your lovely family? It’d be smashing to knock around with the Russells again, just like old times. We can bask in your garden or sit on the porch and confer and commune about books and dancing and, well, anything and everything that matters in this whacky world.

Of course, Nick isn’t thrilled about me taking this trip. We just moved to a new apartment (note the new address), which is a bit roomier than our old place, and he wants us to scrub it down over the summer. But I do love dancing. It unites me, body and soul, and renders me utterly free and soaring. The workshop is led by Martha Hill, who’s moving her dance school from Bennington to Mills for the summer. She’s quite well known in dance circles, so I couldn’t resist following her to Oakland. And the prospect of visiting you sealed it for me.

As for the family, I managed a weekend visit with Helen and Sabra last month. I don’t have especially good news, except about Sabra, who’s quite the corker. I wish I’d had such a crowd of friends when I was sixteen. But Helen’s arthritis is bothering her, though she pretends it isn’t. Adding to her misery is the fact that Jewish booksellers in New York are boycotting Third Class Ticket to Heaven, simply because it shows the pleasant aspects of the German countryside. So, she’s struggling again, which seems a perpetual state for her. She says she’ll be taking on an office job. That’s Helen for you—managing one way or another. And my father’s money troubles continue. He and Margaret nearly lost their home when they couldn’t pay the rent for a few months. Nick’s about the only person I know with a regular job and prospects of earning a steady income. So, I think I’ll be okay if I can hang onto him, which remains to be seen. We bickered endlessly this past winter, and I’m afraid I made a mess of things, so I’m trying to patch it up with him. He’s a gentle soul, and I think he understands me, even if my ways sometimes annoy him.

Well, I just wanted to dash off a note and let you in on the plan. I’ll write you along the way, but (if the timing works for you) expect me on August 13 or 14.

I can hardly wait!

Much love,

Barbara

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

BARBARA AT TWENTY-FIVE

Pasadena to Boston, August 1939

“Alice, I’ve terrible news,” Barbara called from the Russells’ back door. She hurried across the lawn to Alice, who sat on a concrete bench, arranging a bouquet of dahlias. “Nick says he wants out of the marriage.”

“My God.” Alice whisked the vase off the bench and patted the space beside her. “Why?”

Barbara sat, ran her trembling finger down a page, and read. “‘This can’t come as a surprise. You know I’ve not been happy for some time. I hate all the fighting. I can’t seem to make peace with you. You see, we’re simply too different. We don’t want the same things out of life. I think we’d both be happier apart.’”

“Dear Lord,” said Alice. “Can he mean it?”

Barbara worked her clacking-dry mouth, trying to moisten it. “We had a terrible row before I left. About having children. I told him I wasn’t ready.”

“That’s the difference he refers to?”

“That, and he doesn’t like me wandering so much.”

“But you said he works all the time. So is that fair?”

“He complained about my Canada trip last summer, and this one, too.” Barbara slapped the letter down on the bench. “Only he knows I need adventure. That’s how we fell in love—tramping the Appalachian Trail. He’s the one who changed, not me.”

“Do you still want him?”

Barbara sighed and collapsed over her torso. “I don’t know what I’d do without him. He’s my mainstay.”

Alice patted Barbara’s knee. “Then, you must fight for him, my dear.”

A sickening panic washed over Barbara. She erupted into savage sobs. She gasped, “Alice, I’m scared.”

“Go to him,” said Alice, looping an arm around her shoulder and rocking her. “Show him you love him.”

✭

The next day, drained and red-eyed, Barbara boarded a Greyhound bus, wondering how she could possibly endure all the days and hours it’d take to wend her way home to Nick.

She chafed at the bus’s slow progress over the West’s long miles: by day past bleak deserts or prosaic plains; and at night along straight roads and through towns with patches of blinking neon signs. Fear—of losing Nick, of being abandoned—dulled her hunger and numbed her body to the bump and swerve of the bus. She slunk into her seat, avoiding eye contact with the ever-changing passengers trudging on and off at each bothersome stop. Sleep, unbidden and sodden, overtook her afternoons but evaded her at night when the throb of desperation droned in her mind like an unstoppable machine.

By the time they reached Ohio, the distances between stops had lessened, and she summoned a glimmer of hope: She’d fight for her marriage, as Alice had suggested. She’d tell Nick she’d been wrong not to give him the family he wanted. She’d vow to stay by his side.

When her bus pulled into Boston on Wednesday at half-past five, she rushed to the telephone in the bus station lobby to call him, to tell him