The two took their time getting out of bed, little chuckles for all the effort it required—the twinge of muscles still asleep; the memory of a time those creaks didn’t fill the room or the bones. Min paused at the dresser crammed with treasures—perfumes and lotion decanted in ornate crystal bottles, a jewelry box filled with little value except for the pair of sapphire rings they had exchanged years ago—to glance in the mirror and pat down the cropped downy hair framing her smooth brown face. Gussie—apt to catch a chill no matter the season (for thirty-two years she had complained their stately Greek Revival had never been “wired right”; she blamed Min for insisting they buy an historic home, which had made foreign travel nearly impossible)—tied the belt of a mint-green robe around her thick waist. From the doorway they went separate ways: Min to the kitchen, Gussie to the bathroom.
Second on the list of life’s most important things, after welcoming each new day with Gussie, was brewing coffee. Min dumped three scoops of Brasileiro Cerrado—how anybody in Providence could buy coffee sold anywhere other than the Coffee Exchange was lost on her—into the filter, added water, and turned on the radio. After starting her bath, Gussie joined Min in the kitchen to set the table, then poured herself a cup and returned to the bathroom. She placed her mug on the corner of the tub then gripped the long chrome handle recently installed on the tiled wall. She leaned back in a bergamot-scented bath, closed her eyes, and listened as the radio announcer finished the harrowing report. Yesterday’s news was today’s blues—that made two black boys taken in a couple of months by two white cops and no indictments. The ticking of the stove top went on too long because Min either liked to annoy her or needed reminding to gauge the fire under the skillet. Soon after, though, Min started to hum because breakfast could not come together without a song.
Min sang “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” with such feeling it made up for all of the missed notes. “Now in a cottage filled with lilacs and laughter. I know the meaning of the words ever after. And I’ll always see polka dots and moonbeams. When I kiss my pug-nosed dream.”
Gussie liked to recall the day she first heard that song.
*
After graduating from Rhode Island College, she had filled a post at Moses Brown, the Quaker school. In her apartment that August, the mercury climbed to 103 while one oscillating fan took on a job for a 5,000-Btu air conditioner. Too hot to think, let alone read, she had laid her book aside and reached for the envelope on the table to fan herself. She reread the Women’s Auxiliary Mission’s invitation given to her by a student’s mother, which promised “a break from the heat and plenty to eat” that day. Later, as Willadeene Rutherford, proud Tennessee transplant, ushered her through the air-conditioned foyer straight to the patio, it was hard to hide her disappointment.
“Miss Hewett, I want you to know I don’t blame you the teensiest bit for giving up my Robert Calvin to that remedial program. The head of the school himself explained it to me. It just seems to me they should’ve let R.C. finish the year out. But what do I know? Now don’t you be shy, Miss Hewett. Go on. You’ll fit right in. Sure hope you’ll want to join the church and WAM one of these days. If you need anything, tap on the kitchen window and I’ll run out,” the happy hostess said, leaving her in the middle of the garden. Gussie had dabbed at the corners of her forehead with a handkerchief, listening as a woman came to Willadeene’s defense.
“You know with Willadeene everything has to be just so. She wants to keep the house nice and fresh for Reverend Porter. I imagine we’ll be allowed back inside once he arrives,” she said to a gaggle of women standing between the hollyhock and New England Aster.
Nearby, Min stood with both hands fastened on the strap of the 35mm range finder suspended from her neck. Gussie walked over.
“Willadeene called the Journal and insisted someone come out. Made such a fuss over Reverend Porter funding the new day care at the church,” Min explained. In dungarees and a crisp white oxford shirt, she was the only woman there not dressed to impress.
“At least you’re getting paid to be here.”
Twenty minutes later Gussie tried to unpuzzle why it felt she had known Min all of her life. “I taught Willadeene’s son, R.C. I didn’t want to disappoint her by not showing up,” she said. Min looked dubious so she drew in closer and twisted her mouth to the side and whispered, “I don’t have air-conditioning. And I hate to cook.”
“The truth shall set you free,” Min replied, offering a sly smile and, after they’d eaten plenty, a ride home.
The scent of violas had wafted into Min’s light-green Polara as they coasted along Memorial Boulevard, Gussie tapping her feet against the car floor to Tommy Dorsey’s band, Sinatra crooning “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.”
“What a storybook evening,” Gussie began, leaning her head out the window. “I betcha the temperature hasn’t dropped on account of all these stars. I mean it’s nothing out here but stars; the sky’s just full of them!”
All except the two in your eyes, Min wanted to say, but then she thought, Too much, too soon.
Min pulled along the curb trying to figure out how to start a friendship. “I don’t know if you’re planning to take a vacation this summer, but I’m heading west—through the Black Hills, on down to Colorado, winding up in the Sierra Nevada,” she said, pleased at how free and easy the plans for her dream vacation had come together on the spot. She patted the dash of the Dodge. “She’s brand new, and I’ve always wanted to shoot Yosemite”—a truth she had never said aloud before.