13 Little Blue Envelopes

Ginny feels large and cumbersome wearing her new, 30-pound backpack on the New York Subway. It is June, and she is headed to the Chinese restaurant called 4th Noodle, which shares a building with Aunt Peg’s old apartment. Ginny hasn’t been there since her aunt left two years prior, but Ginny remembers the food, smells, and proprietor of the restaurant fondly.

When the proprietor of 4th Noodle, Alice, sees Ginny, she hands her an envelope postmarked from London and asks Ginny to say hello to Peg. Ginny hesitates, wondering if she should tell Alice “what happened” to Peg (9), but she decides against it. It will be revealed in Chapter 2 that Peg is dead.

Ginny gets in a taxi and heads to the airport to catch her flight to London.

Chapter 2 summarizes Aunt Peg’s life. When Peg was 17 and just about to start college on a scholarship, she ran away, spending a week in Maine without telling anyone where she was. During that week, she decided to move to Philadelphia and work for a year rather than starting college as planned.

After a year, Peg went to college in Vermont, where she studied painting and performance art.

Peg moved to New York after graduating and lived in the apartment above 4th Noodle. She bounced around from job to job. Ginny thinks fondly about the “magical experiences” she had while staying with her aunt in the city (12); Peg’s life felt spontaneous and varied in contrast to the stable, suburban life that Ginny’s mother (Peg’s older sister) maintained for her family in New Jersey. Being with Peg made Ginny feel more confident and “more interesting” (13). Peg promised to be there to support her through the challenges of high school and college.

During Ginny’s sophomore year of high school (two years before the events of the novel), Aunt Peg’s phone stopped working. The family wasn’t very alarmed because Peg often failed to pay bills or went on spontaneous trips. Still, Ginny and her mother drove to Peg’s apartment in New York, where they found a note: “Something I just have to do. Be in touch soon” (13). After a few months, they finally received postcards from Peg. The postcards didn’t say much and were postmarked from different locations in Europe.

After Aunt Peg had been gone for almost two years, Ginny’s family received a call from London informing them that Peg had died from cancer. This news came as a shock, especially since Peg was only 35 years old.

On the plane, Ginny reflects on Aunt Peg’s life and recalls the difficult process of persuading her parents to allow her to go on the trip. She is uncomfortable in the tight quarters on the plane and nervous to be traveling internationally; she’s never been out of the country. While everyone else around her is sleeping, she opens the package that Alice gave her at 4th Noodle.

Inside the package are 12 matching envelopes. Each has a number on the outside as well as a drawing or small watercolor painting. The envelope labeled #2 also has instructions written on it, telling Ginny to open that envelope on the plane. She opens it.

In her second letter, Aunt Peg tells Ginny about her decision to leave New York two years prior. She describes heading to a temporary job at an office in the Empire State Building, a building that she views as a romantic icon. She couldn’t bring herself to do a boring office job in the beautiful building; something felt wrong about it to her. She identifies that moment as the moment when she realized that she needed a big change in her life.

Aunt Peg decided to go to Europe because many of the artists she admired live and work there. She describes wanting to call Ginny but not knowing what to say because she didn’t have any solid plans. She describes not knowing where she would go or how long she would be away; this is the feeling, she explains, that she wants to create for Ginny through her travel game with the envelopes. She instructs Ginny to open the envelopes only one at a time. Ginny should open the next envelope only after she’s completed whatever “task” is described in the previous one (21).

Aunt Peg enclosed money (a £10 bill) in the envelope along with a debit card for Barclays Bank. She instructs Ginny to take the subway from the airport to a stop called Angel and to then go to a specific address. This address is Richard Murphy’s house at 54a Pennington Street. Peg tells Ginny to ask the person who answers the door what they sold to the queen, and the answer will be the PIN for her debit card.

Ginny is disoriented when she gets off the plane in London. Copying other travelers, she manages to buy a ticket for the subway and to get through gates and onto the train. Unknowingly, she fails to take her ticket back from the machine upon entry; when she attempts to leave Angel Station, an employee has to help her exit.

Ginny is amazed by the sights on the London roads when she emerges from the subway: double-decker buses and narrow streets lined with ancient-looking houses.

Ginny finds 54a Pennington Street. The man who answers the door is Richard. Ginny is surprised to see him wearing a suit, given how unconventional many of Aunt Peg’s friends were. Their first interaction is awkward; Richard seems to have been expecting Ginny but didn’t know when (or if) she’d ever show. Ginny feels shy and uncomfortable.

Richard invites Ginny in and gives her a tour of his small, simply decorated home. Then he shows her Aunt Peg’s bedroom. Ginny recognizes it immediately; Peg has decorated the room with her signature collage-style art that combines found objects—like “labels, bits of old magazines, candy bar wrappers” (29)—with brightly colored paint and drawings. Ginny notices that Peg had also hung a print of a painting that was in her New York apartment as well: A Bar at the Folies-Bergere by Manet.

Richard works at the famous London department store Harrods. He is just about to leave for work, so he invites Ginny along.

Ginny and Richard ride the subway to Harrods. The train is crowded with morning commuters. Feeling jetlagged, Ginny listens half-heartedly as Richard makes conversation about the London landmarks at each of the subway stops they pass. She perks up when Richard tells her that she looks like her aunt. Ginny doubts the truth of his comment, mentally comparing her aunt’s slender gracefulness to what she calls her “taller, curvier […] less delicate” frame (32).

They arrive at the employee entrance to Harrods. Richard encourages Ginny to look around the store while he works. He asks her to meet him in an hour. On her own, Ginny soon becomes overwhelmed by the crowds, the opulence, and the size of the building. In Harrods’s massive food court, she approaches an employee at a chocolate shop and asks the employee to use the store directory to call Richard.

Richard calls a taxi and sends Ginny home to rest. She falls asleep in her clothes and doesn’t wake until the next morning. Richard is in the kitchen when she wakes up. He points her toward the bathroom. Much to her chagrin, Ginny discovers that there is no shower, only a bath. Conscious of every splash she makes, she bathes and dresses.

Ginny’s shyness continues when Richard offers her a British drink, Ribena, a concentrated fruit juice that is meant to be mixed with water. Unknowingly, Ginny sips it straight, without adding water. Both are embarrassed by her mistake. Shortly after, Richard leaves for work but invites Ginny to meet him for lunch at an American-style diner inside Harrods.

After Richard leaves, Ginny looks around his apartment. She concludes that he’s single because the fridge doesn’t have much in it and there is laundry piled on a chair. She also concludes that Aunt Peg must have lived with him for months, if not more, because he had let her decorate her room and she had had time to do it.

Ginny studies the next envelope from her aunt. It has directions on it that say, “To be opened the morning after the successful completion of envelope #2” (42). She heads out to meet Richard at Harrods.

After nearly getting hit by a car because she forgets which direction traffic will be coming from, Ginny rides one of London’s iconic red, double-decker buses to Harrods. On the bus, Ginny reflects on how tight money always was for Aunt Peg; she wonders if there really is any money waiting for her in the Barclays bank account.

Over lunch, Ginny asks Richard the question from Aunt Peg. Richard tells Ginny the story of the time he sold the Queen of England pants in his role with Harrods. After telling the story, Richard tells Ginny that she’s welcome to stay as long as she’d like. He also reveals that he’s the one who mailed the package containing all the envelopes to 4th Noodle. Richard tells Ginny that he and Peg were “good mates” (46). It is not until Ginny returns to London in Chapter 33 that Richard will confide that he was married to Peg. For now, he speaks of her as a close friend and encourages Ginny to talk to him about Peg’s death if she wants to. Ginny does not want to. Richard’s kindness and the reminder of Peg’s death make her feel anxious. She cuts the conversation short, asking for help finding an ATM.

The PIN “pants” works at the ATM, and Ginny withdraws some cash, seeing that the account holds almost £2,000.