I ride past South High School, my alma mater. Its bell tower rises above the houses and trees, the clocks on each side displaying the eight o’clock hour. There is a low buzz of students making their way into the building, starting their school day. They seem unusually subdued for so early an hour—a time, at least in my memory of high school, when everyone and everything was overflowing with noisy anticipation of the day ahead.
Deep in thought, I watch the students as I cycle past. As a student here—with characteristic teenage angst—I thought of the school as something like a torture chamber, designed specifically to heighten my suffering. Nothing ever goes my way, I would say to myself, more morose and downtrodden than any Dickensian character had ever been. Few boys noticed me, and I did not have a gaggle of girlfriends, the way so many of my female classmates seemed to. Even some of my teachers barely knew who I was. I remember one particularly embarrassing incident in which my algebra teacher, Miss Parker, mistakenly called on me in class using the name of the most unpopular girl in our grade, Melvina Jones, who was not even in the room at the time. Melvina was slovenly, overweight, wore glasses; add to those strikes a name like Melvina, and the poor girl was doomed to social failure. Unfortunately for me, Melvina also had curly strawberry blond hair, similar to my own. There was no mistaking it when the teacher looked directly at me and called Melvina’s name. “Oh!” Miss Parker said quickly, realizing her error. “You’re not Melvina. I meant Kitty . . . I’m sorry, Kitty. Would you answer question twelve on page ninety-eight? Come up to the board and show your work, please.” When I did so, my face flushed with embarrassment, Miss Parker smiled apologetically; I nodded submissively. But—as my classmates’ mirth made all too clear—the damage had been done.
If not for Frieda, those years would have been unbearable. I think about what Frieda was like back then, how that confidence of hers rubbed off on me, like so much magical dust on the proverbial timid girl in a fairy tale. I was certain that my friendship with Frieda was the only thing that separated me, at least a little, from the Melvina Joneses of the world.
At one point during those years, I remember reading a passage in the psychology section of my health textbook that said as long as a person has just one good friend, he is not abnormal. I finished the passage with a satisfied sigh; I had Frieda, and as long as I held on to her, I was going to be all right.
Thinking about these times makes me wistful. I wish I could go back and tell my fifteen-year-old self that the passage was right. All would be well. I would grow up to be happy. Someday, I would have everything I wanted.
But do I? I am not so sure anymore about this “everything” business. Yes, I am content. I’ve had to face some heartache, some loss, but what I have—the shop, Frieda, my parents, Aslan, my uncomplicated life—it feels like enough.
And in the other life? What of that?
I shake my head and set my right foot firmly down on the bicycle pedal, speeding up my journey. I am eager to get to my parents’ house, eager to get dirty and sweaty. I need to focus on the concrete, real world in front of me. I need to stop all of this idle speculation.
Inside the house, everything feels closed and heavy, casketlike. The gloom disturbs me, and I open all the curtains and window sashes.
The windows look dirty, so I mix warm water, vinegar, and lemon juice in a bucket and start rubbing them with an old cloth. The late-fall weather is cool and dank, so my efforts don’t show much, but I continue working nonetheless. A slight breeze, combined with the lemon scent from the bucket, gives the house a sweet smell, like a baby after a bath. I smile at this random thought. What do I know about how a baby smells after a bath? I have never in my life bathed a baby.
As I’m working, I see Frieda walking up the street toward the house. She’s arriving unannounced, but this doesn’t surprise me. She knew I’d be cleaning over here today, and even on our days off, we are often together for at least part of the day. I lean out the window and call her name when she gets closer; she waves and her gait accelerates as she steps from the sidewalk up the walkway to the house. I leave my post to greet her.
“How are you, sister?” I reach up to give her a tight squeeze around the shoulders.
“Swell,” she says, returning my hug, then releasing me after a moment. “I’m enjoying the clouds, actually. Isn’t it funny how that’s a nice change of pace after so many sunny days?” With nary a pause, she says, “Look, I bought the most perfect apples in the world.” She fishes in her large, gray leather handbag and draws out two red-green apples. “Did you ever see anything so divine?”
I shake my head. “Gorgeous.” She hands one to me, and we sit side by side on the sofa to enjoy them.
“All ready for the big homecoming?” Frieda asks.
I smile. “How pitiful is that?” I ask. “I’m thirty-eight years old, and I’m excited that my parents are finally coming home from vacation.”
She shrugs. “I don’t think it’s pitiful. I think it’s rather nice, actually.”
Frieda is not as close to her parents as I am to mine. It’s not that she’s had any sort of falling-out with Margie and Lou; it’s more that she doesn’t have a good deal in common with them. Margie never understood Frieda’s drive to be a businesswoman. She was disappointed that Frieda never made a “proper marriage” with some eligible, well-heeled young man in Denver society; many have asked Frieda out over the years, and Frieda’s parents would have welcomed any of those fellows into their family. “It’s not right,” Margie has said on more than one occasion. “A pretty girl like you, a girl with everything going for her, wasting away in a little shop like that.” She never says it directly, Margie, but you can tell she thinks it’s all right for me.
As for Lou, he’s much more interested in his sons and their families, especially the grandsons, than in Frieda’s bookish world. Lou played football in college and was even second string for the Bears, Denver’s first professional football team, before quitting professional sports and becoming a businessman. At family gatherings, you’ll most likely find him out in the yard, throwing a ball with the boys. Frieda’s life, which centers mostly on the shop, books, and me, makes little sense to him. Frieda has on more than one occasion attempted to merge these two worlds by bringing him books about sports, fishing, or hunting; these, he politely thanks her for and promptly casts aside. Frieda has told me she later finds them carefully arranged on the bookshelf in her parents’ den, gathering dust.