Molly

How the lens of age transforms the vision. I am speaking not of the reading glasses to which I long ago surrendered, but of the quality of light that suffuses my days, lingering on each bronze expanse of wheat, the broad, blue reach of sky, illuminating the air itself till I am charged at once with contentment and expectation. The young are deluded in the belief that they alone possess life's essence, that all else around them is mere husk. I know, for I was young once, too. Growing up in the 1940s, I felt only the blandness of things. Charleston was like so many other Midwestern towns. Elms and oaks shaded sleeping summer streets, disturbed only by the shriek of children, the shrill r-i-i-n-g, r-i-i-n-g of bicycle bells, the slap of jump ropes on sidewalks. Even downtown, despite the allure of the sweet-shop soda fountain and Will Rogers Theater, held little enchantment. I loved to visit my father's law office on the east side of Sixth Street, to gaze at the shelves of gilt-edged books and pivot in my father's leather chair, but I grew bored by the succession of grocery stores and clothing shops and waited on one aching leg, then the other, while my mother selected a roast at the Piggly Wiggly, a Sunday hat with roses and netting at the Dress Well Shop next to Wolff's Drug Store. The land itself seemed to ache for more. In summer, cicadas droned in the trees, as if the leaves themselves were chanting some green and humid prayer for release. Other days, roiling clouds blotted out the sun, the air sparked and cracked, and lightning shattered the sky into desperate fragments. Then the rain cascaded down, pelting wheat and corn and soy, relentless and insistent, drowning out everything but the doleful boom of thunder, rolling, tolling its despair. In winter, when the sun rose late and low, snow blanketed the fields with silence, and the wind scoured the streets, whistling a discordant hymn that fueled my discontent. But there was more. The pain of the Depression and the shadow of Hitler had stripped the town of life and men -- which then, I thought, were one and the same -- and I shrank from a future of sewing circles, church suppers, and the mending, ironing, and canning that filled the days of so many of the women I knew. Even their gossip was a thin and flavorless broth like that our mothers made in the lean years when we often went without meat. It did not nourish; indeed, it brought on a wasting disease that ate away the spirit as well as the flesh. Molly Liddell felt the same as I. Together, we devoured every morsel from the outside world -- magazines, newsreels, radio programs, films -- savoring Elizabeth Taylor's triumph as National Velvet, Marlene Dietrich's victorious return from the front lines, Tom Mix's adventures in the Wild, Wild West. Our own lives, we knew, would unfold, petal by lustrous petal, somewhere far beyond the horizon. How could I have known our youthful longing, so strong at times it singed our skin, would lead to Molly's ruin -- and my own transformation? In fifth grade, Molly and I began a ritual. Every day after school, we traced the same route, from the college to town square, then to the park, or, sometimes, for variety, the reverse. As we walked, we plotted our escape, to California or Paris or New York. With the money we coaxed from our parents in return for dusting knickknacks, we swilled down cherry Cokes and daydreams at the Corner Confectionery on the square. Mimicking the high-school kids who huddled in the turquoise vinyl booths and fed the jukebox, we jitterbugged across the red linoleum tiles to the big band sound of Tommy Dorsey, convinced that if we twirled fast enough, we might, like Dorothy, not be in Kansas anymore. But I never dreamed that we might whirl apart. When we danced, we melted into a luminous being that outshone the sun. The floor beneath us vibrated, and I could feel the molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide careenNancy J. Jones is the author of 'Molly', published 2000 under ISBN 9780609604625 and ISBN 0609604627.