Warning: Brief mention of minor character death
There is a bit of Della's backstory in this chapter…I don't ever remember her mentioning her parents or immediate family (other than her aunt) in the TV series, and so I dreamed this up as the reason why. (I know she has more of a backstory in the books, but I have not read those).
Please bear with me…I know this might not be the most exciting chapter…but I need it in order to set the scene and explain the relationship between Della and her parents.
After changing her clothes and putting the contents of her suitcase away in the closet, Della sat down on her worn bedspread and gazed around the small bedroom with sad eyes. For the entirety of her teenage years, she had plotted how to leave her life on the family farm behind, and now, after a small taste of freedom, she was back. Permanently.
Her parents had never understood her. They had always been as proud as punch about their 400-acre holdings and of being the third generation to farm them, and had fully expected their five children to follow suit. Except for Della, their eldest, their offspring had gladly complied. Two of Della's brothers had married, built small houses on the property, and helped with the dairy cows and the fields. Her youngest brother, Robert, was only sixteen and still lived at home, but with his penchant for discussing tractors and chickens, it was very unlikely that he would disappoint their parents like she had. And as far as Della knew, Maggie, the baby of the family, had a love for horseback riding, and would likely grow up into a fine farm girl.
It had been the sweet, shy, awkward and underestimated Della who had been the unexpected rebel. Since the time that she had gotten a glimpse of San Francisco during a family vacation when she was six years old, her dreams had differed from her family's. While they discussed harvest seasons and the wholesale price of milk, she was thinking about skirt suits, bustling city streets, office buildings, and jobs where a person could work as hard with their head as with their hands.
When she finally mentioned to her parents her wish of making a life for herself in a Californian city such as San Francisco or Los Angeles, they had reacted with bewilderment and concern. She wanted to be a city girl?! Did she not know that burglars, thugs, and murderers lurked around every corner in the large cities? Despite that fact, the price of living in them was outrageous. And to make ends meet, a person did not get to work for a nice small family business which treated their employees like people – they slaved for huge corporations, without respite!
None of these protestations were malicious or selfishly calculated, Della knew. Three young, strong sons were more than enough to run the family farm. No, her parents and siblings were truly afraid for her safety and concerned for her future. They had witnessed a long line of maidens from their hometown going off to San Francisco and Los Angeles, hoping to catch the eye of a Hollywood producer or a wealthy, single businessman. Invariably, those girls had drifted back home, heartbroken, penniless, or worse. The entire rural community of Treeland still regularly talked about Francine Atwood, the beautiful blond cheerleader who had been unanimously voted homecoming queen her senior year of high school. Instead of staying in town and deciding which of twenty marriage proposals to accept after graduation, she had scampered off to Los Angeles, hoping to make the right connections and 'make it big' on the silver screen. But Los Angeles was a much bigger pond than Treeland, and Francine soon found herself drowning – literally. She was never offered a single movie audition. Instead, she had been forced to take a job pouring drinks in a shabby tavern. One night, as she walked along the shadowy, treacherous docks after work trying to reach her lodgings, she had slipped and fallen into the ocean, and had been unable to navigate the waves. By the time Francine had been lifted out of the water, she was lifeless. Her family had brought her home to lay her to rest, and the shrill screams of Mr. and Mrs. Atwood as their daughter's casket was carried out of the church to the cemetery were forever imprinted in the memories of all the residents of Treeland.
Despite such tragedies, Della could not quell her dreams. And so, a few days before her twenty-third birthday, she announced her intention of moving to Los Angeles.
Anxiety was written all over their faces, and their voices were far too quiet, but the Streets told Della that she was of age, and that they had no way of stopping her. She knew exactly what her family was thinking – if Francine Atwood, the prima donna of Treeland, had failed, how could bumbling Della Street ever succeed? However, sticking to her purpose, she left home with a few dollars and boarded the bus for the eight-hour journey.
At first, it seemed like all the horror stories she had heard about the big city were completely true. Della was crammed into a tiny basement apartment with three roommates. She worked as a waitress at a fish-and-chips place. And having just started secretarial night school, she barely had time to sleep and a cent to her name.
Six months into her Los Angeles sojourn, her parents had come to visit her, and had observed her living under those pitiful conditions. Shaking their heads, they had sorrowfully told their daughter that they did not care to discuss her poor choices any further, but that their door would always be open for her, and she was welcome to walk through it whenever she came to her senses. Unwilling to break their hearts further by seeing any more, they never visited her again.
But Della hung on. After a year, things began to slowly improve – Della graduated her night school with honors, made some wonderful girlfriends, and got a job in the temporary secretarial pool. She felt herself blossoming out of her shell, and in the place of the clumsy schoolgirl she had once been, there stood a woman who walked with grace and poise and worked with extraordinary efficiency. And yet, whenever she attempted to communicate these positive changes in her life to her family by either letter or telephone call, it was clear that they thought she was exaggerating her success in order to ease their minds. She had at last stopped trying, and allowed their conversations to focus on the news from Treeland. She had not even attempted to tell them when Mr. Perry Mason had hired her. If they could not believe that she was doing a decent job as a substitute typist, they would never believe that she actually had managed to land a permanent job in a prestigious lawyer's office, or that she regularly went out to expensive French restaurants with her boss and rubbed elbows with some of the most famous people in Los Angeles.
It had once been a point of some pain to her that her family were ignorant of this wonderful part of her life and thus could not share her joy, but she could now see that it had been a blessing in disguise. Her career was over, and she was desperate to forget it. It was a relief to know that her family was just as eager as her to forget her Los Angeles escapade and would ask no questions, and had already made their own presumptions about why she had come back.
It was a whole lot easier than telling them the truth: that she had quit her job because her boss, Perry Mason, had been planning to fire her, and had broken her heart into the bargain.
I promise there will be more mentions of Perry coming up soon. Next chapter will begin to explain what Della is doing back at a remote farmhouse rather than working at Perry's office.