|
Page 9.
 Not long after the theater night, Lizzie and her mother, Elizabeth Wyllie, and her sister May were in their kitchen at home. Late summer sunshine poured in through the one small window with its gray sheer curtains. It was humble, but cozy—it was all the home the three women knew, and a loving one at that.
May sat in her corner, rattling away at her sewing machine while her foot pumped underneath. Lizzie lay curled up with a book on the sofa. She wore eyeglasses and read her novel with a serious expression.
Mrs. Wyllie carefully took a hot baking sheet from the oven. “Here you go, girls, for your day off. Fudge brownies with powder sugar.” She regarded Lizzie and chided lovingly: “Now she is wearing her glasses for a change. What vanity—only when she reads her fantasies.”
May said: “Nose stuck in a book as usual. What are you reading, bookworm sister?”
Lizzie looked up from her book as if in a great trance. “What?”
May said: “What tragedy of love and death are you devouring?”
Lizzie said: “The newest novel by the English author Thomas Hardy. It was published last year. It’s about this beautiful maiden, and titled Tess D’Urberville, A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, who started out pure, but was brought low by a careless man, and the evil world in general.” Lizzie sighed, shuddered, and hugged her book. “I’m almost done. What a dreamy feeling. I could just die with Tess, or I could cry all day.”
May said: “I know what you mean. What is it about love sorrow that makes us weepy and we can’t get enough of all that sentiment?”
Mrs. Wyllie served cookies with a pleased look, though she pretended to be grumpy. “Two young girls looking for the loves of your lives. Beautiful flowers, waiting for just the right butterfly. Watch that you don’t land some handsome moth in a cheap suit, singing you lines written in heaven with the devil’s own pen.”
Lizzie laughed. “You mean, wearing cheap wings.” She and May laughed, and even their mother cracked a reluctant grin. May said to Lizzie: “I don’t read like you do, but I adore those theater plays. Like Dickens’ tragic Little Nell—a fallen angel.”
Mrs. Willey said: “You girls have your heads in the clouds. You’re a bright girl, Lizzie, and with all your reading you could have gone to teacher’s school.”
May said: “Must you bring that up again, Mom?”
Lizzie said: “At my age, it’s too late now. What a terrible thing that was. I would still never let a man see me with eyeglasses!” She closed her eyes and reflected back on that day of anguish.
It had happened a few years ago at the teachers’ college entrance exam. A young, bookish Lizzie, wearing glasses, stood among ninety other girls awaiting admission to the test hall. The corridor had that forbidding shine, and a severe wax smell, that always reminded Lizzie of those dreadful tests she rarely ever passed. Her mother had made her come here, and she was sure she would fail. Just because she was bookish didn’t mean she was teacher material—Lizzie knew that, but her mother needed to have it demonstrated. Nearby stood a hundred or more boys waiting to be admitted by another door. Beyond was a single large room, with the girls’ exam desks on one side, and the boys’ exam desks on the other side, separated by a wide aisle.
Seeing the boys outside—as the boys and girls exchanged shy, interested looks—Lizzie furtively put her glasses away and fluffed her hair.
A bell shrilled. The doors burst open.
The exam candidates poured into the room and took their seats.
On the blackboard were the rules, clearly written, among them: No satchels, books, or notes of any kind.
All the other students left their satchels on the floor by the back wall.
Lizzie, who couldn’t read the board, walked in and sat down, putting her satchel under her chair. Soon, the exams began.
Students were bent over their test booklets in deep and stressful concentration. Stern and scary proctors marched about like police detectives in black suits.
Lizzie was working hard on her exam.
Suddenly, a proctor pointed from a distance—at Lizzie’s satchel under the chair. She was reaching down for a hankie to blow her nose. Several proctors hurried to her desk. They took her exam book away, and escorted a shocked and tearful Lizzie from the exam hall. She never did try to take the exam again, but found work, along with her sister, at Winn and Hammond Bookbinders.
In the kitchen today with Lizzie and May, a few years later, Mrs. Wyllie said: “We all make mistakes. Life goes on. Vanity is one of the deadly sins or is it? We will be okay, we three, if we stick together, work hard, and stay out of trouble.”
Mrs. Wyllie left the room with a load of wash.
Lizzie said: “I heard that our American Stephen Crane is working on a book titled Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. I can’t wait to read it.”
May said: “I just love those tragedies. Let me know if you hear of a good play. “
Lizzie said: “I have a gentleman friend who has good taste in theater, and he’ll take me. Maybe he’ll bring you too.”
May said: “Do I know this gentleman friend?”
Lizzie shrugged her shoulders and smiled secretively. “I can’t tell.”
May said: “Oh no, Lizzie, I know who it is. Don’t go with him. He’s bad news.”
TOP
|
