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A Novel
by Myla Goldberg
On very hot days there was no need to confer in advance. The lot of them
would be playing ball in Commonwealth Park, or ambling toward the beach
at City Point, or playing marbles or Kick the Wicket on the street.
Without a word Michael would turn to Lydia, or she toward him, and with
a whoop they would preempt the day's pursuit and set out for ice. At
the sight of Dan Kilkenny's brood, the iceman would toss out an extra
block, the surplus ice arcing toward the street in a dream of captured
light before exploding into frozen bliss on the cobbles. Decorum was
traded for the fleeting comfort of ice pressed into the perfect place.
Frozen shatterings found their way into mouths, inside shirts and
dresses, ears, shoes and underwear, under chins, and atop closed eyes.
Ice was nestled into the hollows of throats and hammocked by the webbing
between fingers and toes. Ice bent the iron rule of summer for a few
precious moments before the heat clamped down again.
For ten years, this was enough. Then in fifth grade, Lydia saw a city
map and realized her entire world was a mitten dangling from Boston's
sleeve. The hazy destination of the morning drays acquired focus. Across
the bridge lay Boston Common and the swan boats of the Public Garden.
Across the bridge lay Washington Street--the longest street in all New
England--which began like any other but then continued south, a single,
determined thread of cobblestone that wove itself through every town
from Boston to Providence. Once Lydia saw Washington Street she knew she
could not allow it to exist without her.
She had imagined Washington wide like West Broadway but instead it was
narrower, its buildings taller. On Washington, men in blazers and
boaters strutted three and four abreast and bustled women drifted
cloudlike between shopwindows. The air on Washington smelled neither of
factories nor piers but of occasional cigar smoke and wafting perfume.
The buildings--with their marble façades and grand entranceways and
their seemingly endless layers of arched windows--resembled fancy
wedding cakes. On Washington Street there was not a clothesline in
sight, not a single vegetable or fish man. Striped awnings stretched
proudly above showcase displays of objects Southie had never seen: a
silk opera gown with black glass buttons, a set of tortoiseshell combs,
a rocking horse with a mane of real hair. Lydia turned toward
Michael--whose trolley fare she had provided from a cache of saved
pennies, their passage across the Broadway bridge her eleventh birthday
present to herself--and announced this was her future.
On graduating eighth grade, when her girlfriends found jobs behind
sewing machines, Lydia rode to Washington Street alone and procured a
position in the stockroom of Gilchrist's department store. Now every
morning she had to wake before the drays in order to be waiting for the
streetcar. During dreary hours of inventory and reshelving, her resolve
to work on the far side of the bridge would falter, but her doubts
vanished whenever she was called onto the gleaming sales floor. Walking
among the wonders of the display rooms, she would calculate the weeks of
salary required to purchase a beaded French chapeau or the impossible
amount of roast ham that could be eaten in lieu of one opal earring.
Rather than discouraging her, these extreme calculations bred optimism.
Once she was promoted to sales, she hoped eventually to save enough so
that she too could point to one of those fantastical objects and have it
delivered into her outstretched hand.
Excerpted from Wickett's Remedy by Myla Goldberg Copyright © 2005 by Myla Goldberg. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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