A City Tossed and Broken Read Online Free Page B

people who complain and the people who make the best of it. You get to smell the perspiration and the bad breath so why not the bad character, too?
    When Mrs. Sump falls asleep for her nap, Lily tells me she’s going to get some fresh air so she walks to the back of the train to stand on the platform. She is always back by the time Mrs. Sump wakes up. No doubt she just wants to be alone. I know how she feels.
    I just realized that Sump rhymes with grump . Ha!
    Midnight
    What a big country this is!
    I’m used to the rocking now. We all are. And I’m almost used to sleeping sitting up. I try to stay awake to write this. We’re well past the Mississippi River now. The sky is the biggest thing I’ve ever seen. Stars tossed across it. Prairie out the window, miles of it. And every once in a while, the stars fall and gather in a tiny twinkling heap, and that’s a town.
    April 14, 1906
    We’ll be going over the mountains today. I have to say I’m looking forward to that. I can’t help it. Everyone is excited to see California.
    Is this why Papa left us all the time? Just to go somewhere else? Just to see something new, just to breathe new air? I’m wondering about that. Because there is something exhilarating about it.
    California is a place to start over. Maybe I’ll never go home.
    I struck up a conversation with a man traveling with his family. I know he was a stranger, and you’re not supposed to speak to strangers, but boundaries tend to fall away on a train. He was telling his son about San Francisco and I couldn’t help but listen. I really don’t know much about it, and Bridget’s warnings didn’t help.
    But he told me that it’s a grand city. With a great big park that sweeps out to the ocean, and a bustling downtown and a busy port with ships sailing to Japan and all through the Pacific. He said that it is a city of hills and valleys, and almost everyplace you walk there is a view. The hills are so steep they have to use streetcars that are pulled up on cables. There are nickelodeons and vaudeville theatres and grand hotels and a dish called a Hangtown fry, which is scrambled eggs and oysters, and he said it was the best dish he ever ate. There are two opera houses in San Francisco! Enrico Caruso, the most famous opera singer in the world, is scheduled to perform the very night we arrive. I have heard Mr. Caruso singing from the phonograph. I can’t imagine hearing that glorious voice in person.
    Lily said a funny thing today. I was washing out her mother’s stockings in the sink. The water is so cold. My hands were red and I rubbed them on the thin towel, then rolled the stockings in it to dry them. And Lily said this:
    “Doesn’t it make you think, traveling by train?”
    I looked over at her. She was watching the landscape blur outside the window, flat and dry.
    “You pass so many towns. And you can’t help but think there are so many ways to live. You can’t help seeing what a different life could be like.”
    Then she looked at me. “You could do that. You could just get off at a stop and start over.”
    “I hardly think so, miss,” I said, all proper. I just kept wringing out the stockings.
    “You don’t know what it’s like to feel trapped.”
    I kept my head down, because I couldn’t believe she was saying that to me. To me.
    I don’t know if rich folk can really see anyone but themselves, I truly don’t.
    “All she wants to do is marry me off to someone richer than we are,” Lily said.
    I got the nerve to look up then, and I think she was crying.
    Before I could muster up a word she turned and went down the aisle toward the back of the train. After a minute or two I followed her, my conscience pricking me because I hadn’t comforted her, even with a word or two. Maybe I could ask if she’d care for tea. So I went to the back of the train and there she was, standing outside on the platform, her back to me. I started forward but I saw then that someone else was out there, a