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“darling” and they would tell me stories of the old days in Sparta, when people had jobs, when all the mills andthe cement plants along the river were running. When the place was a real town, with churches not abandoned, and Sunday worshipers strolling the streets on a spring morning full of hope because there was a future, with possibilities, for the young.
    My supervisor at the Home was Terry Kluge. Terry was tall, a couple years ahead of me in school, gangly like a colt. Terry did nothing with herself, wore her slate brown hair straight, wore thick, froggy glasses with flesh-colored frames. Yet I found Terry beautiful, her hazel eyes, her clear skin devoid of makeup, even her big nose, which was always red from the cold. Terry had high full breasts, and she stooped a little to make herself seem less tall. She wore thick-soled shoes, and granny cardigans.
    Terry fascinated me. I was in some way deeply curious about her. I found Terry beautiful because she was so pure and so straight and so honorable. But sometimes I hated her too, for being so responsible. I resented her because she could tell me what to do, give me orders, even though she was close to me in age. If I were just a couple of minutes late, Terry would reprimand me. She was always watching me, making me do my job, follow the rules. Once when I had my coworker B.J. punch in for me because I had a hangover and wanted to sleep late, Terry yelled at me and told me that next time she’d tell Mr. Hanley and we would both get fired. “That’s stealing, Chrissie,” she said. “That’s theft. You took money from the Home.”
    â€œWhat do you mean ‘stealing’?”
    â€œYou took money that wasn’t yours.” When she said the words I could feel it in the back of my head, my hair seemed to rise up. She made me so ashamed that day I felt the tears sting my eyes. I hated the rightness of her words, the truth.
    *  *  *
    One morning in November, Terry said, “Chrissie, I need to ask you a favor. My dad had to use my car today to take Bobby to the doctor, and I wonder if you could give me a ride home.”
    I knew Terry hated to ask me for a favor because she was myboss—Terry was very proper. But I said yes, I could help her out. I explained that my roommate Dean was picking me up because my car was in for inspection, but I thought he’d drive her home.
    At noon I called Dean, and since he was in the mood for doing favors, he said yes, he would.
    At four-ten promptly, Terry was waiting for me outside on the white-columned porch. There was a raw, wet wind sweeping in from the river. She was all bundled up in her navy wool coat, the sleeves too short for her long arms, and her gray scarf tied around her head as if she didn’t care whether she looked old-fashioned or not, or like somebody’s grandmother.
    Terry was raising her child by herself. The father was Eddie Lasko, Coach Lasko’s son. Eddie was a big football star when we were in high school and Terry and Eddie’d been together since ninth grade. They never married.
    Then, last summer, when the baby was only two years old, Eddie left her. Couldn’t take the responsibility, he said. The boy had asthma, and Terry’s dad took care of him during the day while she worked. They lived way out in the countryside, in West Taponac.
    Now, in the shelter of the porch, Terry and I waited side by side for Dean, Terry sniffing in the cold, her prominent nose bright red, both of us stomping our feet to keep warm, not talking because it was too freezing. Because she was my boss, she was holding herself a little away from me.
    The Nightingale Home looked out across the river, and you could see on the other shore the tall towers of the cement plant spewing thin columns of steam, which thickened into a permanent cloud in the sky. It was the last working cement plant in the region. And the sound of it was with you always, wherever you went