Cambridge, Massachusetts April 19, 1943
She skipped down the steps. The exam was over. No more integrals, no more abstractions of sums, no more divination of slopes and areas with complex formulas. Or at least no more for another week until another short session started where differential equations would be the challenge in front of her. Half a dozen girls from the radar lab were steps behind her while an older woman from the acoustics lab had reached the landing and was lighting a cigarette before she walked through the rain to the T station.
Elaine did not care about the rain. She was done and she had done well. Cambridge was only an hour from Lowell but it was a lifetime of possibility. She was in college, well not really college as she had not been accepted anyway, but she now had completed nine college credits and would be taking another six over the summer. That was an absurd statement only three years ago. If the war had not come, she would be in a small apartment a few blocks from the mill bundling up at least one, if not two toddlers for the walk to her mother’s house before a shift at the mill. Her Patrick would be with her at the mill gate and they would have a full day of hearing looms slam into each other. Now she would never go back to the mill floor.
He was half a world away and his letters were full of pride as he was responding from Australia three or four months later than her news. He was proud of her work in college geometry and introductory literature from January. He was proud of her moving to the university labs instead of a ship yard. He was proud of her. And she was proud of him. There were secrets he did not need to know, but she was proud of him. As the rain ran down her face, she placed another letter, the third of the week, into the mailbox. A part of her life was now in the hands of the post office.