“Grace,” Malina Herze says, leaning across the aisle. “Are you okay, dear?” Malina cups the tight curl on the end of her dark bob.
Grace drops her bare hand to her lap. “I’m fine. It’s just this heat.”
Reaching out with her own white-gloved hand, Malina squeezes Grace’s wrist. Grace flinches but doesn’t pull away. Her wrists and arms are sore, still ache where one of them pinned her to the ground.
“Don’t be fooled by the bake sale’s new date, dear,” Malina says. One of her carefully tweezed eyebrows, the right one, lifts, her forehead crinkling when she notices Grace’s exposed hands. “You heard, didn’t you? It’s postponed only a few weeks. You know, of course, pierogi freeze quite nicely. No need to wait until the last minute.”
While Saturday brought news of the white sneaker found along the river, Sunday passed with no news at all. And today, Monday, the search will continue even though the men should be returning to work. Others at the factory will work evening shifts and over the next weekend if they have to, over as many weekends as it takes, so the men from Alder and its neighboring streets can continue to look for Elizabeth. These workers have pledged their overtime to the families of those who search.
Monday also brought news that the bake sale has been officially postponed and that Malina Herze has taken up the job of organizing the ladies. Just as she had a schedule and a list for the bake sale, she now has a schedule and a list for the search. This morning, Malina gave the wives of Alder Avenue the morning off to tend to their families and run their errands. From this day on, they’ll work in four-hour shifts, preparing food, cleaning up after the men, brewing fresh coffee. They must hope and pray every day brings news of Elizabeth’s safe homecoming, but must also brace themselves for a new kind of life, one that may include never knowing what became of the girl and a search that may never end.
Just past the thrift store, the bus stops, its door opens, and Julia appears. She must have had Bill drop her at the store this morning. Usually, she and Grace do their volunteering together. Many times over the years, they’ve sorted donations at the small shop under Malina’s watchful eye. Grace would scold Julia when she pulled the blouses inside out before slipping them on a hanger. Julia would hang them up anyway and when Malina asked why they were laughing, Grace would say it was nothing, just a silly joke she had told. Once Malina busied herself with another load of clothes, Grace would turn the next blouse inside out, slip it on a hanger, and give Julia a wink.
Knowing Julia will sit next to her, Grace slides toward the window to make room and rests her face against the glass. A sharp pain shoots through her cheek and up into her eye. She straightens in her seat and pulls a compact from her purse to check her lipstick. Across the aisle, two of the ladies smile at her with tilted heads. Grace, with her bulging stomach, is a reminder to them, to everyone who sees her, that life will go on. No matter how terrible the news of Elizabeth might be, those ladies see Grace and think she is sweet and beautiful and that she’ll give birth to a child who is the same.
“Didn’t expect to see you today,” Grace says when Julia drops onto the seat next to her.
Julia doesn’t answer and instead points toward the street. Two men walk out of the hardware store next to the thrift shop. One of the two carries a clipboard. He scribbles as they walk to the next store. Once there, he yanks on the door’s handle and both disappear inside. They are men looking for Elizabeth. The busload of ladies has paused to allow the men to pass.
There is talk this morning of the women on Willingham. No one has thought much about that dead woman in the days since Elizabeth disappeared. There’s been no news of the woman, no arrest. Now that they’re traveling back to Willingham, thoughts of her work their way back to the surface. The ladies are worried, too, though no one wants to say it aloud, that maybe the dead woman sheds some light on what became of Elizabeth. All around Grace, the ladies have been talking about the police they’ll most likely see on Willingham. It’s possible there is no more work to be done in the alley where that woman was killed, but they’ll definitely be searching the river because today is day four, the day the men say Elizabeth’s body would surely float to the surface if she had drowned.
“Bill dropped me on his way to the church,” Julia says once the bus has pulled away from the curb. “I’ve had the girls cleaning out closets. Gives them something to do while I’m gone.” Then she whispers, “Too many bags to tote on the bus. It’ll drive Malina wild to find out I dropped them off at the store myself.”
Grace lets out a short laugh but tries not to smile. Every smile causes the small cut to split again. Julia is the only one of the ladies Grace laughs with. The others make her altogether too aware of the length of her skirt, the curls in her hair, or the shade of lipstick she has chosen. She worries her choices are all wrong and that the ladies will later whisper about her. Julia is the friend who would tell Grace if a lipstick shade was unbecoming, but only so she could snag the tube for her own use.
“Did you hear?” Julia says, leaning in to whisper. This is how it starts. She’ll say something funny, something irresistible, even today, even knowing Elizabeth is still gone. Julia wants things to be normal again too. “About Malina’s flowers?”
Grace shakes her head.
“Someone urinated on them. Walked right down the middle of the street and there in front of God and Alder Avenue, urinated on them. More than once, it would appear.”
“That is not true.”
“Told me herself. She’s started spraying them at all hours. Poor things are already waterlogged. They’ll be wilting before you know it. Probably won’t last the month.” Julia tells the rest from behind the cover of one hand. “She actually thought the twins had done it. Cornered me at the church and accused them. So, of course, I asked her to explain the logistics of that. She agreed it would be rather difficult. And rather conspicuous.”
“Julia, stop,” Grace says, trying not to smile so her lip won’t swell up on her. “It’s not right to carry on like this.”
On past bus rides, Grace and Julia would sometimes laugh until Grace’s cheeks and stomach ached. And when, later in the day, Grace would return to an empty house, she could never recall what had made her laugh, but the memory of it always made her smile. Later still in the day, Grace would call. What are you fixing for supper, one would ask the other. Coffee? I’ll be right down. Usually Julia came to Grace’s house. And then after supper, one last call asking how that beefsteak turned out or what’s the best way to tackle a grease stain, to which Julia would reply… don’t throw out the shirt, throw out the husband. And again, they would laugh.
Julia gives Grace one last nudge. “But it feels good, doesn’t it, to laugh?”
The bus continues toward Willingham Avenue. The morning air, light and almost crisp, blows through the open windows. Outside the bus, cars drive past, most of them with their windows rolled down. The ladies in those cars hold the steering wheel at ten and two and wear sheer scarves-yellow, pink, or white-folded in half, draped over their hair and tied under their chins. At the stoplights, the men rest an elbow on the doorframe and hang their lit cigarettes out the window. As the bus nears downtown, the cars stack up deeper at each stoplight and the buildings rise higher on both sides of Woodward, narrowing the street. The smell of river water pushes aside the smell of freshly clipped grass and concrete just hosed down. At the intersection of Woodward and Willingham, the bus slows. The air settles.