to bundle them. She couldn’t wait for this day to be over. One of their best employees, Candace, had quit unexpectedly. “I hate it here,” she’d said to Martha. “You’re like a Nazi.”
It was completely inappropriate to invoke the Nazis to describe anyone, and Martha told Candace just that. She asked Candace if she even knew the horror that the Nazis had caused. “Because if you did,” she said, “you might think twice about calling me a Nazi and disrespecting all of the people that were murdered by them.”
Candace made a strange sort of strangled sound, and threw up her hands. “You’re a freak!” she said. And she gathered her things and walked out. Martha tried not to let it show that Candace had embarrassed her, but she knew that her face was red. The other employee working that day, skinny little Trevor, gave Martha a small smile and she knew that he was pitying her.
“Good riddance,” Martha had said to him. Then she went back to the employee bathroom and put a wet paper towel on her cheeks until they cooled down.
Martha was stacking the register drawers to take them to the back when a teenage girl came to the door and, finding it locked, banged on the glass with her palm. Martha smiled and shrugged, then pointed to her watch to indicate that the store was closed. The girl outside gave her the finger and walked away.
Martha didn’t deserve that. People felt like they could treat her however they wanted, just because she worked in the store. Customers were sometimes rude beyond belief, acting like she was their servant as they sent her to fetch them striped shirts and printed skirts. Martha muttered to herself as she finished up her closing duties. Maybe she would just leave J.Crew altogether. She was, after all, a registered nurse. Well, she wasn’t exactly registered anymore, since she hadn’t worked in so long, but she could be if she wanted to.
MARTHA HAD KNOWN THAT SHE wanted to be a nurse from the time she broke her wrist when she was twelve. It was the nurses who comforted her, with their matter-of-fact answers and soothing voices. She loved the uniforms they wore, how they all had matching scrubs, like they were part of some club. They looked so important, filling out charts and taking temperatures, and she knew that was what she wanted to be. Plus, she’d always had a mind for medicine, had always done the best in her science classes.
Nursing was not a major to be taken lightly. It wasn’t like the other majors at her liberal arts college—English or sociology or philosophy. Nursing was different. There were high expectations for the nursing students. You had to keep your GPA up, or you were out of the program. You did clinical work in addition to your classes. People’s lives depended on you, so you had to know your stuff. That was how Martha thought about it anyway.
The other girls in the program were different from Martha. They were sillier, flightier, than she was. But they all spent so much time together, studying for tests and carpooling to their clinicals, that Martha developed a fondness for them and even began to enjoy their company.
They used to drag her out with them sometimes, to bars or to a party to stand in a random kitchen in some off-campus apartment and drink out of red plastic cups. “Come on, Martha!” they used to say. “Blow off some steam.” They used to call her Serious Martha, like that was her full name. They used to think it was their duty to try to get her to have some fun.
Martha would let them pick out her clothes for going out, even sip some rum and Cokes with them while they were getting ready. They’d do her makeup and ignore her pleas not to put on too much. “Mar-tha,” they’d say, and roll their eyes. It was the same way Claire used to say her name when they were younger, when she would get so exasperated by Martha’s very being, saying her name like it hurt to get it out, dragging out each syllable—“Mar-tha.”
She’d go to these parties and stand there for a while. She had a feeling that she was supposed to be enjoying them. At the beginning of the night, the girls would stand next to her and include her in the conversations. But as the night went on, each of them would wander away,