“Intimate details?” Vera had scoffed. “Where’d you even hear that? Did you read it in one of your magazines?”

As a matter of fact, yes, she’d read it in her Motion Picture magazine in either the Bebe Daniels story or the Carole Lombard story. She knew Vera had read it, too, but pretended she hadn’t. Vera thought she was the only one in the family doing anything worth talking about, which may or may not have had something to do with one of the Brinkerhoffs’ lodgers. Vivian overheard Mrs. Brinkerhoff talking about it with Mrs. Kessler.

The glass-pressed-on-wall trick wasn’t practical for eavesdropping in all situations, but when Mrs. Kessler and Mrs. Brinkerhoff sat out in the sturdy wooden rockers on the Brinkerhoffs’ front porch in the mornings, she didn’t need it. Their voices carried up to the open window of Vivian’s bedroom. Sometimes it was dull, but Vivian would still pull a chair up and just sit and listen. Boy, did those old ladies like to talk about their neighbors. Vivian was real interested in hearing about Geraldine Sigler, who lived across the street, and apparently suffered from the same troubling condition as Apple Creek’s own Sylvia Emerich.

That’d been it. The other reason Sylvia Emerich had to leave high school. Having to leave school because you were carrying some farm boy’s bastard was sure different than having to leave school because the country’s economy collapsed and you had to go to work to help keep food on the table. It was enough to drive a person to curse.

As time wore on, Vivian grew to hate that goddamned Sylvia Emerich for what she represented. Vivian’s lost opportunities, that’s what. If Sylvia hadn’t gotten herself into trouble, she could’ve finished high school, couldn’t she? And maybe even gone to Wooster College to get a degree in something?

It wasn’t Vivian’s fault the country had collapsed into some great big depression, and she resented having school yanked out from under her, like all the other common folk who had to give up their dreams to scrape around for crummy jobs just to get by. What really burned her up was that Vera and Cousin Ruby got to go through all four years of high school before ever having to worry that Pawpy or Uncle Frank might need some help feeding their families. And they didn’t even seem to care.

Cousin Opal made it through her sophomore year before she had to quit to work on the farm in Apple Creek, but Opal’d never been too smart anyway. Vivian once caught her French-kissing a honey jar that had a bee caught in it. Opal would only say that she’d been “practicing.” The bee, probably scared out of its wits, had stung Opal’s tongue and Opal spent a week whining for everyone to “gob gaffing” at her because the sting “iggy urg.” She was lucky Alonzo Halstead married her, so she didn’t have to do too much of her own thinking anymore. Or any more practicing. She had a baby the next year.