Chapter 16

"I think you're in a unique position," Dr. Wayland said. She tilted her head and looked at Danielle. "Other people have studied how the ordinary person lives, but you're the first one who's wanted to do so in a multi-faceted way."

"Multi-faceted? Danielle asked. "What do you mean?"

It was a week after the trip to Westport, and Danielle had been struck by two things: the amount of seafood that was in the restaurants, there wasn't nearly as much as she'd expected for a fishing port, and how the clothes she saw were completely different. Women wore skirts and dresses, but not if their jobs took them outside during bad weather. There'd been a lot of jeans and slacks in sight when they were outside. The dresses only appeared when people were inside, and then tights were common.

"We have good books about diet, and more about chores, but usually they focus on a peasant's life. You're after the city and town dweller. That's different. And you're after other things as well: clothing and food combined. Plus other things. I'm not sure very many people have put those together."

"You mean... ?"

"I would suggest you pick one place and time that we have a lot of information about and work there, first, and then expand your study after you've developed some methodologies and parameters."

"So it is a good idea."

"Quite good, dear, and one that I'm sure will keep you busy for a long time."

Danielle felt some relief. It had seemed such an obvious field of study, and she was surprised that nobody had already done it.

"That's because people focus on what they think are the big items, like the way the nobility lives." Dr. Wayland grinned. "Frankly, I think that's because they secretly wish that they were the nobility."

"I had noticed how many people claim they were a famous person in a previous life."

"Somebody I went to school with has suggested that maybe they were that person, but in an alternate timeline." Dr. Wayland shrugged slightly. "I won't say one way or the other, but it might explain why so many people think they were Cleopatra or someone like that."

Danielle dismissed that. She'd never been a big believer in "past lives". "So you think this would be a legitimate research path?"

"I think it would fly," Dr. Wayland said. "And if it doesn't pan out completely, say you don't get the grades you needed to become a researcher, there are other things that you could be doing that would give you a lot of what you're after. Before I went into medicine I worked as a support for a study team. The best paper to come out of it was from a young man who was looking at how they did basic carpentry work. He wasn't on the actual team, but was a general maintenance man who collected a lot of reports, videos, pictures and so on. He stole a bit of time here and there, and produced some really good stuff."

"And the researchers didn't mind it?"

"It didn't affect his duties, so they didn't have a problem. For example, one of his requests was that someone just take a picture of a carpentry shop. That told him the tools that were available, and what could be done with them. As I recall, the meat of his study came when he replicated a carpentry shop and had a woodworker he knew see what he could do. Then he looked at furniture and sort of deconstructed how it was built."

"So... ?"

"Let's see what you need to study to get into a position where you could do this."

Danielle left the interview with Dr. Wayland feeling good about her future. She looked at the brochures again. There was no way she wanted to do something Victorian. She'd heard too many stories about Victorian times. But doing something at the start of the Industrial Revolution, say Colonial America, or its equivalent elsewhere ... She wondered how much was known about Spain's colonies. They had existed, so why not study them? She didn't mean the peasants, either, but the ones in the middle, below the upper nobility who had servants, and above the ones who had to struggle to scratch out a day-to-day existence.

"You look chipper," Aunt Jessica said when she got home.

"Dr. Wayland liked my idea of seeing how people in the middle lived," Danielle said. "Especially in the Spanish colonies, not just the English ones."

Aunt Jessica's eyebrows went up. "I don't think anyone ever thought about the Spanish colonies. You'll have to learn Spanish, and not the modern version."

"I realize that. I was looking at something at school. The Spanish had an official way of pronouncing things, a Royal Academy. The English never did. So if I learned the officially accepted way of speaking..."

"You'd probably have to learn the slang as well."

Danielle nodded. "And if I don't, I'm sure there are other things I could be doing for any study team that was in the area." She smiled softly. "The Spanish had a huge colonial empire, and that's got to help."

"I'm sure it does." She sighed. "There are a lot of things you'll have to learn, sewing, cooking, and so on."

"I know. Some of it I already do, but I think I'll have to learn the old-fashioned way, doing it by hand, not just with a sewing machine."

"Do you know how to use a sewing machine?"

"Not really."

"Then it's time you learned. I honestly thought you knew."

"They don't teach it in school in Tiburon, not even as an elective. It's considered sexist to have courses like that or cooking."

"I ... see." Her aunt shook her head. "I suppose there are a lot of things that women have traditionally been very good at that they don't teach."

"I wouldn't know."

"Follow me." Aunt Jessica led her down the hall to a little nook where she had her sewing machine. "We have plenty of time before dinner since you didn't have a tutoring session today, and we can get started with just how a sewing machine works, and what it is you do when operating it."

"Should I even bother to learn one of these?"

"If nothing else, you could get a job making the garments study teams would wear when they're in the field."

"Oh. Well, that makes sense."

They spent the next half hour with the sewing machine, and at the end of it Danielle didn't feel as lost as she had when she first saw it. It was a lot more complex, and yet a lot simpler, than she had thought. Sewing a seam wasn't as hard the third time she tried it, it just took a lot of concentration.

She went up to her room with a book of patterns. These were simple ones that produced things you used around the house, not complex clothes. In the back, though, were lots and lots of things on the different kinds of cloth. That was interesting. Different cloths could be combined like different foods, depending on what you were trying to do. Some cloth was better for one thing than another, and if you sewed the cloth into little pockets you could put stuff inside and make quilts. Since people had to rely upon fires for heat, not central furnaces, that was important. Besides, the different cloths could be used as decoration.

She finally, reluctantly, turned back to her homework. She needed to do this quite well in order to be able to do what she was really interested in. She was getting biter at the essay composition, and her math was better than average, but she needed to improve her other things, and that would take time.

It didn't help that Jenny's boyfriend was back from a week away and he and Jenny were getting acquainted, or maybe re-acquainted, in her room. She could hear the occasional low moan, but at least her cousin had moved the bed away from the wall so the rhythmic noise didn't disturb her.

Jenny hadn't said much about what she wanted to do. Maybe she wanted to be a housewife and a mother. She was certainly working on the latter. Guys, she'd and her friends in Tiburon had decided, expected their wives to be gourmet cooks, or be able to hire one, and to be acrobats in bed. Or if not acrobatic, act like they were enjoying themselves. She didn't think Jenny was putting on an act.

She put her cousin's sex life out of her mind. She'd been there, she'd done that, and now she was using the other end of her body, her mind. And that felt good.

Two days later Cathy showed up at school in a new dress. "I love the stores here," she said.

"Better than what you were used to?"

"Much better. A log of things we had to order out of catalogs, and then tailor after it arrived." She plucked at the waist. "And I didn't have to alter it at all."

Danielle didn't ask. If Cathy had lived in that small of a town, she wasn't surprised that her friend had had to do that. "The color of the dress suits you."

"Think so? I still feel a little uncomfortable wearing it."

"You'll get used to it. Back where I come from its common to wear jeans, and I'm used to skirts and dresses now."

Cathy nodded. "That's what my mother said." The rain had ceased, and the sun was trying to come out. "At least it isn't snowing."

"Most of the people here don't believe in snow."

Cathy smiled. "Snow isn't bad, blizzards are. Last year we were confined to our house for a week. Then they opened the tunnels, and we could get out."

"Tunnels? Underground?"

Cathy shook her head. "They dig tunnels beneath the snow. We're just a couple of miles from the ice sheet so we get a lot of snow. In Center they measure it in inches. Where we were you measured it in feet. They'd dig tunnels, and you could get out." She laughed briefly. "You had to."

"I couldn't imagine being confined to one place for that long."

"What we'd usually do is gather in the Community Center. Every family had a room there, but it was warm and you could get out and interact with people. To show you how deep the snow got, there was a door to the outside on the second floor."

"And here you can wear a light jacket year round."

"Seems strange." Fiona walked past, waving. "And then there's Fie. Robin told me she's a nudist."

"She's from Seaside," Danielle said. "I think we've told you about them."

"Is it true she doesn't wear any undies?"

"Yeah, and it can be a problem. She doesn't know how to be modest."

Cathy laughed. "She should try living where you have to be modest, or they find you frozen."

"Ever do anything like that?"

Cathy shook her head. "The closest I've come has been in the sauna. You're wearing a towel or robe, but that's it. Of course it's really hot in one, but after you've been outside, it feels really good. I miss that."