Chicago, Autumn, 1936
"Charlie was awful," Gail said, "but I might have been even more frightened by No Face! Do you know who he was?"
"I've never been able to find that out," Barbara replied.
"But I've seen him at other times in my life and sometimes think maybe I know who he is. Or was. He may be dead by now."
"Who could you know that looks like that?"
"My father's old drinking buddy. Jimmy O'Reilly. My mother said she read that he had been in an auto accident and went through the windshield. That could have disfigured his face."
"It gives me the shivers, just imagining a man with only half a face."
"That's why I try not to think about him, and hope I never see him again."
"It must have been hard, growing up without a father," Gail said after hearing more about Barbara's girlhood. "I love mine so much."
"And your mother?"
"I don't feel as close to her as I do to Dad. I guess it's because I don't share her passions. Her life revolves totally around social engagements like teas and parties. Even charities she's only in because she can buy a new hat or dress and be admired as one of the 'queens of society' and get her picture in the newspapers. I love her, but I just wish she didn't want to be admired so much. Dad just goes along to escort her and talk business with the other men."
Barbara thought that maybe being a rich girl wasn't all it might seem cracked up to be. She decided she didn't mind being a poor girl after all. If that was what she was.
What was important to her then was that she never felt as happy or content as she did when she and Gail talked together in her new best friend's room, sharing their hopes, their frustrations, their dreams, their aspirations for life and a husband.
Gail soon became like a sister to Barbara; the one she always wanted but never had.
Some nights in Gail's room, when they weren't studying together or after studying, they asked a Ouija board to answer questions about their future husbands. They never learned much and were disappointed, so they talked about it instead.
"I just want a good, honest guy who will love me, and in the best way," Gail said one night as they sat on the bed in her room smoking cigarettes, which was forbidden in the sorority house. "Not like one of my uncles. He was a fireman, and my aunt divorced him because of his hours. She said he was on her for twenty-four hours, then off her for twenty-four hours!"