“I suppose.” She managed to grunt out the words.

She didn’t even like to admit it to herself, but maybe, just once, Vera would’ve liked to hear that she was pretty.

“I wonder if she was the one he was so crazy about. There was one of those girls he was just head over heels for, just plumb nuts about, and when she threw him over, he was pretty sore about it.” Zella squinted at a squirrel jumping across the road. “Yep. He was sore, but Betty took it even harder. She was fit to be tied.”

Vera hadn’t paid too much attention to Vivian’s beaux, but she remembered John Reed because he was one of the north siders. A four-flusher. Once, Vera’d tried to tell Wally that “four-flusher” meant a richie, when he’d been saying it had to do with card playing, but he hadn’t been in the mood to argue and Vera hadn’t been in the mood for another bruised arm.

People always said Vivian was pretty, but Vera’d thought Vivian was just pretty stupid not to marry John Reed. She could’ve had as many Beulah Bechtel dresses as she wanted; clothes were so damned important to her.

Vera felt herself getting all worked up again over Vivian being the goddamned belle of the ball. Everything went Vivian’s way, and she didn’t even notice it. She was always feeling sorry for herself. Maybe it was about time somebody gave her something to really feel sorry about.

Vera’d heard it from the mouth of Marvin Taggart, one of Wally’s buddies “from the old days.” The old days, right after that lousy Wally’d left the Brinkerhoffs’ boardinghouse, leaving a smitten Vera high and dry and stuck in Spinster City for eight years. He’d taken the Brinkerhoffs’ other boarder, Ralph Eberly, with him and Vera’d shouted after them that she hoped Ralph would keep him warm at night.

The men had hitched on the railroad around Galion, and the New York Central line took them to Cleveland, then Buffalo, then Syracuse, then Albany, and back to Wooster. While most everyone else was heading west after the Depression, Wally and Ralph thought they’d be smart and head in the opposite direction, picking up jobs where they could. One of the jobs had been construction, in Syracuse, New York, in ’33. Some big shot relocating his baseball franchise to Syracuse had to have the stadium finished in three months. The rushed deadline meant the pay was good; Wally loved to tell Vera all about when “the pay was good.” Because those were the days, he’d say. Wally, Ralph Eberly, Forest Sadler, Marvin Taggart. They’d all been there, and though they’d gone their separate ways afterward, they reconnected now and again in Akron to drink and play poker at Wally and Vera’s place. Marvin had gone his separate way straight to the prison at Auburn after he’d been caught stealing a car near Syracuse.

“Betty’s a big ‘society gal’ now,” Zella said, swirling the ice cubes around and around in her drink. “You know, ‘la-di-da.’ But when we were kids, we sure had fun. Betty had a little too much fun herself, you know.” Zella held her cigarette while pointing her index finger in Vera’s direction. Her eyelids had lowered to half-mast, and her drink was even lower than that.