A fat woman dressed in head-to-toe Victorian whites stood on the platform, leaning on a silver-topped cane. A slender girl of about fourteen stood in the shadow of the woman’s bulk, dripping in outdated lace. Behind them cowered a colored girl dressed in simple servant garb. I waited for the crowd to disembark, looking at the trio and beyond them—to the whiz and whir of the gigantic amusement park.
Oh, how it called to me! My heart skipped around in my chest for a moment as I gazed out at the glittering spectacle that dangled before my eyes. The tiny broken-down rides at the state fair in St. Paul had never held much appeal for me, so I hadn’t expected the amusement park to draw me in this way. The bright, quick beauty of the place sparked a yearning in me—for what, exactly? I will go, I promised myself. I must.
Beyond the hubbub of the park the lake sparkled. The serene expanse of water calmed me, reined in my wild heart, slowed my breath. Finally, I retied the ribbons on my sun hat, rose from my seat, and collected my luggage. Clutching my bags in a firm grip, I marched down the aisle of the streetcar and descended the stairs, stepping into the heat of the day and the buttery smell of popcorn. It was time to meet my summer guardian.
Ruffed Grouse
(Bonasa umbellus)
She presided over the streetcar platform like a grouse stuffed into an albino peacock costume.
I opened my mouth to address her—
“You are Garnet, then?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, dipping a quick curtsy that seemed expected of me.
“I am Mrs. Harrington, your father’s cousin on his mother’s side. This is my daughter, Hannah.” At her name, the thin girl whose angular limbs seemed to be drowning in their lace and ribbons nodded her pointed chin to me in terse politeness. The haughtiness of the greeting made me dislike her immediately.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am, miss.”
“Take her bags up to the Galpin House and unpack them, Charlotte,” Mrs. Harrington said to her maid. “Have the dresses pressed. We’ll be up shortly.” The young woman dropped a deep curtsy and took my trunk and traveling case. She paused a moment, her dark eyes laughing with obvious surprise and relief at the lightness of my luggage, and then hurried away. I would’ve preferred to unpack my own things, but I was not about to argue. Mrs. Harrington whipped open her fan and fluttered it at her damp face. “Dreadfully hot,” she murmured.
“Have you already settled in, then?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. We take the train up from St. Louis the moment Hannah’s tutor stops lessons for the summer.” She said tutor with emphasis, and her meaning wasn’t lost on me; Mrs. Harrington’s exceptional children did not bother with something so common as a regular school—like the one I’d attended all my life. “Mr. Harrington and my boys care for the estate while we come up here and make our home at the Galpin in the summertime,” she continued. “The summers are simply unbearable down there if you ask me. We’ve been coming up for years, since well before they built that horrid amusement park last spring and the riffraff started arriving. Shall we make our way up to the hotel now? I’m afraid it’s a bit of a walk.”
Without waiting for an answer she snapped her fan shut and set off at a leisurely waddle down the walkway. I stifled a giggle, thinking of the ruffed grouse as Hannah turned to follow and I started to do the same.
But then something caught my eye. “Mrs. Harrington, what is that enormous building?” I pointed to a huge structure off to my right as we moved in the opposite direction. Hannah shook her head as if to stop me from asking, but the question was already out.
Mrs. Harrington stopped abruptly and turned back to me. “That, my dear, is the dance hall,” she said, biting the words off and brandishing her closed fan like a weapon. “That is where nice young ladies and gentlemen go to corrupt themselves with drink and dancing.” And that was all she had to say on the subject.
The dance hall tugged at me as if by a strand of fishing line anchored beneath my ribs. Something in there seemed to be calling to me, and I was surprised to discover that I longed to go see what it was. I’d always been fascinated by the one near my house in Minneapolis, perhaps because it was off-limits and my best friend, Alice, was always scheming ways to get in. Mrs. Harrington moved off away from the offending structure and I had no choice but to follow. The dance hall, like the amusement park, would have to wait.
While we walked, I sized up Hannah. Although Father had visited these cousins a few times before the war, I had not met them. They came into the city briefly on one of their summer trips, but I was too young to remember the visit, and Hannah must’ve been a baby in the arms of her nurse then. Now, although she was younger than me and smaller than me, she tried hard to look grown-up. Not only had she dressed in expensive white lace, but she’d also twisted her hair back in an elaborate style that exactly matched her mother’s. Or maybe her mother had done the dressing and the hair twisting, using her daughter as a turn-of-the-century doll. I couldn’t help but dislike Hannah for her vanity and arrogance, but I pitied her too. She looked so uncomfortable in that outfit, and it didn’t suit her a bit. If I sewed her a proper dress, I wondered, a simpler one, a looser one, a sundress or a summer suit—would her mother let her wear it? I doubted it, and I was sure the offer would offend them both. The Harringtons may have been family, but our families were far from close. They didn’t even know about Father’s condition. I needed to tread carefully.
With no idea how to befriend such a companion as Hannah Harrington (and little desire to try), I walked in silence beside her and kept a bit of distance between us. She cast her eyes down. Mine took in the sights as Mrs. Harrington led the walking tour.
“This is the entrance to the amusement park,” she said, her voice betraying an edge of malice as she gestured to the arched gates. The park swelled with joyous shouting and threatened to burst out of its fence. Later, I thought. Later I tore my gaze away and hurried along in the fat woman’s wake.
Mrs. Harrington lumbered down a path that led us past the park and around the western shore of the bay.
“The docks are here,” she said, “but the grand old steamers don’t run anymore thanks to this silly new obsession with speedboats. A few of the smaller steamers, the streetcar boats, still make tours of the lake. We do enjoy a ride on the Minnehaha now and then, don’t we, Hannah?” The pile of ribbons nodded her answer. “Perhaps we’ll take you on it, Garnet.”
“Yes, I’d like that,” I said, imagining myself in the midst of an expanse of water—a fresh lake breeze against my face and the swell of the waves rocking me.
A strip of grass and trees ran along the western shore in front of us. “What’s up there?” I asked.
“They call this park the Commons, after the Boston Commons. It’s all public land. I’d like to build a little summerhouse in that cove up there, but the city won’t sell. Pity. We’re buying in Florida instead. That’s the new promised land, you know, and it’s very reasonable to buy at the moment. There’s wonderful money to be made in real estate, even when you buy on credit.”
I narrowed my eyes critically, but then I felt Hannah’s gaze on me and worked to change my expression to a neutral one until she looked away. Mother had often cautioned me against ever spending money I didn’t have. I snuck a look at Hannah and wondered if she was dressed that way because her family was rich, or just because they wanted to look rich.
“In any case, there are public beaches up there and lots of pretty little inlets,” Mrs. Harrington continued.