not be coming home to Boston. Instead Annette and I would be moving to New York City, and Rex would be moving to Chicago—wherever that was. He would come to New York to visit me at least once a month.
Annette’s latest “friend,” the one with the spats whom I called MR (short for “Mr.”), was finding us an apartment, she wrote. Everything had been arranged for my safe travel to Rutland and for my flying unaccompanied to New York—my first time in an airplane. I would be starting at the Brearley School myself in September, and wasn’t it great that I already knew so many people who would be in my class?
A new start and my mother all to myself, even if MR was hanging around? He was so old, he couldn’t last forever. And my father once a month all to myself as well? I hardly saw more of him in Boston so that was OK too. I had no shame about my parents’ separation. I didn’t know better. After supper, campfire, and songs, I announced to my fellow campers from Brearley that we’d be going to school together in the fall. And they started in again: No, I wouldn’t be with them, I was too young, too much of a sissy, anyone could tell by my clothes.
I’d have to repeat second grade. They were sure of it.
* * *
The heat was blistering when I stepped out of the plane with my array of tags identifying me as an unaccompanied minor. A stewardess ushered me to the terminal, where Annette was waving at me from behind a metal barrier. She looked radiant in a bright-yellow, linen dress and matching linen wedgie shoes. I ran to her open arms.
“Welcome to New York and to our new life!” she said as she embraced me. We took a taxi into the city to our new home at 145 East 62nd Street. The city streets were throbbing from the heat. Many of the windows in the buildings we passed were shaded by awnings of every color and condition. Our street was then in a working-class, Italo-Irish neighborhood. Large plane trees on either side provided a welcome respite from the heat.
26