the shop

on

wickenden

street

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Shop

on Wickenden Street

 

By Donna Montalbano

 

 

 

 

 

The Shop on Wickenden Street

All Rights Reserved c2008 by Donna Montalbano

 

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission by the publisher.

 

The Shop on Wickenden Street is a work of fiction. It is entirely coincidental if the characters resemble any real persons, living or dead. Events in this novel occurred only in the author’s imagination. There is no “Lost and Found” antique shop on Wickenden Street, on the East Side of Providence, and no WRI radio station in Rhode Island. The hotel which is venue to the wedding described herein does not exist in Massachusetts or anywhere else to the author’s knowledge. Some of the locations mentioned in this book are real. However, no endorsement of them by the author, either implied or specific, should be construed…and these locations did not enter into any agreement with the author to promote their businesses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Dedicated to my parents:
Victoria Frances Jackson Montalbano and Joseph Ignatius Montalbano...
wish you were here

 

 

“I never can be tied to raw, new things,
For I first saw the light in an old town
Where from my window huddled roofs sloped down
To a quaint harbor rich with visionings.
Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beams
Flooded old fanlights and small window panes,
And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes--
These were the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.”

Sonnet XXX, Background, of Fungi from Yuggoth,
By Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Memorial Plaque, John Hay Library
Providence, Rhode Island

 “The place...was one of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town and to hide their musty treasures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust. There were suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour here and there, fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters, rusty weapons of various kinds, distorted figures in china and wood and iron and ivory: tapestry and strange furniture that might have been designed in dreams.”

From The Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles Dickens

“Let’s pretend there’s a way of getting through into it, somehow…let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through.”

From Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll

 

          

Fox Point, between two rivers, is the birthplace of Providence. In 1636, Roger Williams set down his foot on a muddy shore off the Seekonk River, at the intersection of what is today Power and Gano Streets. He claimed the property he had purchased from his Indian friends, Chiefs Manicomus and Nanticut, and named it “Providence” because he believed God had sent him here; delivering him from his Puritan enemies in the north so he could begin his grand experiment in democracy and separation of Church and State, the first the world had ever known.

 Here between the rivers, Providence’s first port was established. In the late 1600’s, a man named Pardon Elder Tillinghast built a wharf at the edge of Transit Street in Fox Point. He is called the father of Providence shipping. In time, more than fifty wharves would line the waterfront.       
            Hundreds of years before the manufacturing mills made Providence rich, the triangle trade put Providence on the map. Ships left Fox Point for Africa with holds full of rum. Slaves replaced rum as cargo and the same ships sailed back across the ocean to the West Indies, to sell the slaves for molasses. Then back to Providence to distill more rum. So it went; round and round for seventy five years or more. Rum, slaves, molasses…slaves, molasses, rum.

            India Point, the waterfront region of Fox Point, took its name from the “Indiamen” who sailed those ships. Go to India Point Park today and gaze out onto the water at pilings that look like broken black teeth. They are the last vestiges of the India trade.

            Wickenden Street was named after William Wickenden, who succeeded Roger Williams as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Providence, Rhode Island...the oldest Baptist Church in America. William Wickenden is most famous for being one of the co-signers of the first document in the Americas which enshrined religious tolerance and the separation of Church and State, into the Constitution of Rhode Island.  William Wickenden died on February 23, 1671 in Providence.
            
            Fox Point has few fancy mansions. The poor emigrated here. The shipping trade attracted the Portuguese, the sea already in their blood: white Portuguese from Portugal and the Azores; black Portuguese from Cape Verde. The Irish settled in Fox Point, too, but were mostly displaced by an urban renewal project in the mid 1800’s. The bluff nicknamed “Corky Hill” was razed to fill in part of the Seekonk River. As a result, the landing place of Roger Williams is now at least a hundred yards inshore. 
            In Fox Point, at the present site of the Boys and Girls Club, George M. Cohan was born: not on the 4th of July as he later boasted; but according to church records, on the 3rd of July, 1878, at home at 576 Wickenden Street.

            Today the hillside enclave of Fox Point, surrounded on three sides by water, is called the Pro-ho of the city. Coffeeshops, art galleries and antique stores line the street. Tattered posters and playbills flutter from lamp posts in the stiff river breezes. Masters of graffiti have transformed featureless underpasses into urban frescoes. The view from the highway is a crowded tumble of pastel tenements, sitting cheek by jowl up against the narrow sidewalks. Most homes in Fox Point are at least fifty years old; many, two hundred years old or more. Family histories are etched into the grain of old wood and stamped in stone and brick, waiting patiently to be retold.

 

Chapter One.

          
            On a very windy, cold, and overcast Saturday in February, Angie Russo was walking down Wickenden Street, which ran perpendicularly from the very southern end of Benefit Street, on the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island. She had her chin down and her collar up, eyes squinted against the wind as she scanned the storefronts for a certain gift shop which had been recommended to her, which was renowned for its fabulously creative themed gift baskets. Angie needed something fabulous for a bridal shower for someone who meant very much to her.

            So where was it? It was supposed to be right around here, near a futon shop and a Thai restaurant. There was the Thai restaurant, delicious aromas emanating, which reminded Angie that she had skipped breakfast and now it was already half past lunch.

            She stopped in front of a narrow, faded gray clapboard building. Could this be the gift shop? Surely not. Its tattered black and white awning flapped in the stiff breeze off the river. The windows on either side of the door were so grimy that the objects behind the glass took on a sepia quality, as in an old daguerreotype.

            The window display had no obvious theme or organizing principle. A bust of Caesar sat on a threadbare needlepoint footstool...a moth eaten mink coat, with enormous shawl collar and cuffs, straight out of a Doris Day movie, swung from a brass coat rack. Leaning against a handsome walnut secretary was a depressing still life depicting half-dead flowers strewn over a crumpled pair of white kid gloves.

            Angie read the lettering etched upon the glass.

            Lost and Found
            Antiques and Collectibles

            The wind gusted suddenly and delivered a sharp, unfriendly push that felt personal. To escape it, Angie pushed open the door to the shop, and stumbled in.
            The bell over the front door tinkled as Angie entered. She shut the door hurriedly behind her as if the wind might decide to give chase. 
            The shop was one long, gloomy room with a central aisle; crammed with stuff from end to end. With no other light source but the dingy display windows and a few shaded table lamps here and there, the interior ought to have been dark as a cave. Yet the room had a kind of sullen glow. Angie immediately realized why: the long side walls of the shop were covered, floor to ceiling, with antique mirrors in every conceivable shape and size. The mirrors were framed in tarnished metal or fragile wood variously painted, gilded, enameled or polished. The old glass within was convex, beveled, fisheyed or etched; but deteriorating. To Angie, the mirrors looked like a gallery of elderly eyes, half blind; milky with cataracts.
            On a bright day, Angie imagined, this shop would be filled with light as sunbeams bounced from mirror to mirror. But on this gray day, the mirrors were overcast as the skies outside. The glass flickered and mimicked the movement on the street; the dark shadows of pedestrians hurrying along in the cold; cars flowing slowly by and branches on the stunted city trees whipping in the wind.
            Angie’s eye caught on one mirror in particular: an oval boudoir mirror in a gilt frame carved to look like a loop of thick satin ribbon. She fancied that if she gazed into it, she would see not her own reflection but her grandmother’s, who everyone claimed Angie took after.
            “Good afternoon, madam,” a voice said. “May I help you find something?”
            Angie looked around to see who was speaking. All she saw was a jumble of old furniture. Then behind her, just near the door, a silver-haired gentleman materialized. 
            “I was...actually looking for a gift shop? It specializes in custom gift baskets? I don’t know the name…”
            “You must mean ‘The Basket Case,’” he said, coming up to her. He was a distinguished looking older man, perhaps in his mid 70’s, perhaps, dressed in a tweedy jacket over a fine knit turtleneck sweater. 
            “I believe it is on the other side of the incense shop, now what’s that called?” he sighed to himself. 
            “Of course it’s really a head shop, I don’t know who they imagine they’re fooling. Filled with hookahs and pipes and that kind of paraphernalia…what is the name…? Something like ‘Inhale”… These new shops have such clever names.”
            “Your shop has a clever name,” Angie said. "Lost and Found; I like that.”
            “Thank you. I thought it a very appropriate name at the time.
            “How long have you been here? Angie asked.
            “Hmmm, the shop opened in…1951. I bought the building, well, it was a private home, then. The owner died.. well...sad story.” 
            He looked away for a moment.
            “I bought and sold a number of properties here on Wickenden Street over the years…that house with the little grocery store downstairs, painted in all the odd colors? That’s still mine.”
            “The Shagadeli?” Angie asked. “I noticed it as I came down the street.”
            “Yes, that’s the one. Those tenants have been in there a few years now, very successful from what I gather. All I know is that they are prompt with their rent.”
            “Well,” Angie said. “Guess I better go try to find that shop, ‘The Basket Case,’ it’s called? I am going to a bridal shower at five o’clock today, and I’m going to be a basket case if I don’t find something.”
             “Oh my. Five o’clock! Doesn’t give you much time.”
            “No, and it has to be something really wonderful.”
            “Gift baskets are always welcome.”
            “Yes,” Angie said, doubtfully. “I hope so.”
             “What were you thinking of putting in it?”
             “Oh. I don’t know! I was hoping the gift basket people could suggest something...candles, bath oils, I guess? This is a bride who really has everything already.”
            He held out his hand. “I am Paul Tillinghast, by the way.”
            “I’m Angie Russo,” Angie said, taking his hand and giving it a warm shake.          
            “Are you related to the famous Tillinghast family from Benefit Street? Near the Athenaeum?”
            “Let’s just say I’m perched on one of the low hanging branches of the family tree,” he said, with a little smile. “Tillinghast is a very old New England surname; lots of us scattered around these parts.
            “Do you live around here, Ms. Russo?”
            “Angie. Yes, actually I live on Benefit Street.”
            “Ah, lucky for you. Providence’s ‘Mile of History.’”
             “I am very happy there.”
             “That’s wonderful. I live over on Blackstone Boulevard myself.”
            “That is very lovely too.”
            “Yes it is. So...Angie...this bride who has everything...she intrigues me. No one has everything, of course.”
            “Oh, no, of course not. I just meant that she already has a gorgeous home, and beautiful jewelry and clothes...”
            “And of course, a wonderful man who loves her and wishes to marry her...”
            “Uh...well, it is a perfect match,” Angie said.
            “I bet I have something your bride to be doesn’t have,” Mr. Tillinghast said. “It is one-of-a-kind, nothing like it in all the world.”
            “It sounds like something I can’t afford,” Angie said.
            “You might be pleasantly surprised! I’ll get it...give me a moment to find it...” and he disappeared into an alley between lines of heavy, dark wood armoires and dressers.
            He was gone quite a while. For the first few moments Angie waited courteously in the same spot; then as the minutes dragged on she began to make cautious forays into the dense forest of objects, never venturing in too far for fear of getting lost in the maze.
            She had her nose up against a crystal ball set in an ornate brass stand, trying to see into the future, when he turned up beside her.
            “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, and held out on the palm of his hand a flat muslin bag. “Take a look inside.”
            Angie took it from him, opened the bag and drew out a piece of cloth.
            “It’s a...handkerchief!” She looked at it more closely. “A very lovely lace handkerchief.”
            “Not just any lace handkerchief,” he said. “It is antique, French in origin, vintage about 1880’s, I should say, silk bordered in blonde lace. A work of art, absolutely unique.” 
            “Blonde lace?” Angie said. “I have never heard of it.”
            Paul Tillinghast tenderly took the handkerchief from her hand.
            “Oh yes...blonde lace was a bobbin lace made in France in the 18th century, around the time of the French Revolution...usually made from unbleached pale beige Chinese silk...beige being the true color of natural silk,” he explained. 
            “This handkerchief, however, does not date back to the 1700’s, I wish! but rather from the nineteenth century, when there was a revival of the light flower motifs worked in blonde lace. See this amazingly complex floral design?”
He slid his hand underneath the lace so Angie could better appreciate the intricate petal shapes of roses and irises and lilies. 
            “This is actually known as ‘white blonde’ lace, as it was created from bleached silk,” he told her. “The depth of the lace increases its value; the border looks to be about four inches deep.”
            Angie could not take her eyes off it. “It’s exquisite...”
            “And here, do you see?” He unfolded the handkerchief and showed her. “In this corner, on the fabric itself, whitework embroidery: white on white. Can you read the words?”
            Angie recollected at least that much from her high school French. “It says...does it say, ‘I love you’?”
            “Yes...‘Je t’adore’...this is a wedding handkerchief. A bride would carry it for luck, for sentiment...do brides today still carry ‘something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue?” he asked her.  “I am a little out of touch with such things.”
            “Oh yes,” Angie said.
            “Well, this could be her ‘Something Old’; to carry in her sleeve on her wedding day.”
            “Is it very expensive?” Angie asked him. 
            “This is absolutely pristine; Angie. Museum quality; I do not exaggerate. It would have taken many, many months to create...”
            “Yes, I’m sure it costs more than I can pay,” Angie said regretfully.
            “And did you know,” Tillinghast went on, “that often, in those bygone days, a bride would later refashion her wedding handkerchief into a baby cap?”
            “Oh. Probably not this bride, though,” Angie said.
            “Seventy-five dollars? Could you pay that?”
            “Seventy-five?” Angie made a quick calculation: the gift basket would probably have cost her at least fifty and maybe as much as sixty. Still, seventy-five dollars for a shower gift was a lot, for her. Too much. She still had to buy a wedding gift. 
            Still... 
            “Oh dear. I don’t know...” she said, her eyes still on the handkerchief. 
            “Sixty, then,” he said. “which is a steal, I assure you. And I tell you what: I’ll sweeten the deal by substituting this utilitarian bag for a lovely satin handkerchief keeper, the one I have in mind is circa about 1930...vintage fabric should never be stored in a box, by the way.”
            Angie hesitated. She watched as he refolded the handkerchief and slid it back inside the cotton drawstring bag.
            “Will you accept a check?” she asked.

 

 

Chapter Two. 

 

            Marian’s bridal shower was being held at the Westin Hotel in downtown Providence. Angie parked in the Providence Place Mall garage and raced up the escalators to the Hallmark store to get just the right color bow for Marian’s gift, then rode the escalator back down again, to the sky bridge that connected the mall with the Westin. 
            A smallish banquet room on the second floor had been transformed by the bridal decorators into what one might fantasize the throne room of an ice palace would look like: all gleaming platinum and opalescent white... frozen rose and tanzanite purple and the silvery blue of a winter solstice sky.             
            She was about twenty minutes late, and there were at least forty women already milling around, sipping champagne, laughing and chatting. A young Asian woman, dressed in a long, ivory gown, was playing light operettas on a white baby grand in a far corner; Angie recognized an obscure ditty from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado…popular way before her time, but it had been a favorite of her mother’s. Angie had a flash of memory: she and her mother sitting together on the living room couch, singing, 
            “Two little maids from school are we….pert as a school-girl well can be…”
            At first Angie could see no one she knew. She felt suddenly shy and out of place, considered how she could quickly add her gift to the mountain of exquisitely wrapped presents on the long, satin-draped table and make a speedy but discreet getaway. 
            Too late! Marian had spotted her and was on her way over to greet her.
            If this was an ice palace, then surely Marian was the Ice Princess.    
            She was dressed in a silk sheath of glacial pink, the color of ice at sunset. Her pale hair was parted at the side, falling simple and straight down to her shoulder blades, and caught behind one ear with a sparkling barrette. Knowing Marian, those were not rhinestones! She was as gorgeous and impossibly perfect as a 40’s movie star.
            “Marian, you look so beautiful,” Angie exclaimed, as they hugged.
            “Angie, you look beautiful,” Marian said. "It means so much to Beatrice and me that you're here."

            Marian’s shower invitation had seemed to Angie too elegant to be merely mailed...it was worthy of hand-delivery by a liveried footman. It had specified “winter-color dress.”
            When Angie phoned her to say that she had put her acceptance in the mail, Marian said: “I realize I’m flouting tradition by throwing my own bridal shower! But let's face it, Beatrice and I have been flouting tradition for ten years! And you know me, Angie! I want what I want just the way I want it!”

Angie, who really could not afford to go out and buy something new; ransacked her closet and found an off-white wool boucle suit, dress with matching jacket; shot with metallic thread. An obscure designer item she had found many years ago at a clearance rack at Syms and never worn: originally tagged at $750, Angie’s for only $99.
            “Where is Beatrice?” Angie asked. Beatrice Newman was Marian’s highly significant other; and Angie’s closest friend and old college roommate. 
            Marian laughed. “Angie, you know Beatrice; this is not her thing at all. She's at her office, as usual. She'll put in an appearance at the last minute.”
            She took Angie’s hand. “Come on, put that box on the pile and come with me.” 
            Marian caught the eye of a server in white and gestured him over.  All the staff, Angie realized now, were dressed in white.
            “Have some champagne, darling Angie.” Marian took a bubbling crystal flute from a cut crystal tray and handed it to her. “Are you starving?” 
            Marian beckoned over another server who was circulating with an eclectic assortment of smoked canapés on a silver platter. Angie hitched her pocketbook over one shoulder and took one; then accepted a cocktail napkin imprinted with a silvery “M&B” She tried to juggle napkin, champagne and canape all at once. Finally she popped the morsel in her mouth whole just to get rid of it (smoked salmon in port wine cream cheese, according to the server) and nearly choked.
            Marian took Angie’s free hand.
            “C’mon, there is someone here I want you to meet. She is thinking of buying a house on the East Side and I told her you could tell her all about life in Providence...”

 

            Angie spoke quite a while to the lady who was thinking of buying a home in Providence. Angie was careful to put the happiest, sunniest spin on her own experience, leaving out the unsettling parts of her first year in Providence; when, after she lost her husband Tom to cancer, she moved into an old house on Benefit Street and unpleasant things began to happen.
            The young woman’s name was Callie Price. She had matte black hair with bright red ends, cut in a kind of Jane Fonda vintage shag. Callie had gone to RISD but hadn’t graduated; she was a clothes designer and she’d recently got divorced. She and Marian had become friends after Marian spotted one of her designs in the front window of a shop in Wayland Square.
            Callie explained her fashion vision.
            “I’m into the primary colors but combined with those really demure feminine silhouettes of the 50’s; you know, the tiny waists and bateau necklines and skirts below the knee? Think Ava Gardner. Or Kim Novak, you know who Kim Novak was?"
            Probably better than you do, Angie thought ruefully, looking at Callie, who couldn’t be older than thirty.
            Marian owned a clothing boutique in downtown Newport called “Maybe” (a combination of hers and Beatrice’s names; linked by an existential “Y.) 
            According to Callie, Marian had tracked her down. Since then, a “Callie” creation was always center stage in Marian’s shop window.
            “Marian opened so many doors for me,” Callie said earnestly. In fact, she told Angie, the governor’s wife, was recently photographed by Rhode Island Monthly magazine, wearing a “Callie” from “Maybe.”
            “Marian is MY Kim Novak,” Callie said. “She’s my muse.”
            Angie wondered what Beatrice thought about Marian being Callie’s muse. Hopefully, she hadn’t heard. 
            Callie’s divorce had been protracted and rancorous. “No children, thank God!” she said to Angie.
            But they’d fought over every other asset from a Williams and Sonoma omelet pan to a ten-year-old cockatiel. Together they’d owned an apartment in Paris; for her work Callie needed, well, wanted, anyway, to be in Europe a couple of times a year at least. She said she'd done all she could to keep the flat; was more than willing to pay her ex his share of its value; but the harder she fought, the more he realized how much she wanted it and the more determined he was that she wouldn’t get it. 
            It took forever to sell because it turned out Parisians weren’t standing in line to buy a two bedroom flat in such a remote arrondissement. Finally it sold, and Callie thought it wise to invest her share of the proceeds in a place of her own in Providence, of which she had fond memories from her RISD years; and which now, had become her home base. At first, Callie told Angie, she thought she could afford a house, but after several weeks of trudging through the fixer uppers and dowdy bungalows on the fringes of the East Side that were within her price range, Callie had recalibrated her expectations and was now considering buying a loft.
            “Providence is a beautiful, livable city,” Angie told her with true sincerity. “The restaurants are fabulous. You can really walk anywhere, or take a trolley. And it’s a college town, which keeps it young and lively...” 
            “Expensive, though,” Callie said.
            “Well, it’s still affordable...not like New York or Boston...yet,” Angie said. “But yes. Expensive.”
            As the ladies chattered, sipped and nibbled, became more and more flushed and giggly; the staff arranged a ring of white chairs around a...throne; that’s what it was: a high-backed cushioned silver armchair swathed in a nearly transparent voile that had the iridescent sheen of mother of pearl.
            Suddenly the lights came up; the music, which had been subtly building in tempo in the last fifteen minutes, crescendoed. The white-clad servers, sans their trays, suggested tactfully to each knot of ladies that they drain their glasses, perhaps visit the ladies lounge, and then take a seat for the gift opening ceremony.
            
            Marian certainly got some very luxe gifts. In the aftermath, pastel tissue paper exploded out of topless gift boxes of all shapes and sizes. Sensuous piles of silk negligees and satin teddies, flacons of designer perfume, scented candles and imported bed linens lay all about. There was not a toaster or blender in sight. A quaint nod to custom was the rainbow-colored ribbon bouquet which Marian’s mother concocted from the gift bows of all the presents. 
            Marian’s mother had modeled for Collier’s magazine in the 50’s. She could have gotten modeling work tomorrow. She was thin, still straight and tall in her 70’s and effortlessly elegant, with a spiked cap of white hair and pale green eyes. She was what Marian would become, fortunate Marian. It occurred to Angie that Marian’s mother and Paul Tillinghast would make a striking couple.
            The piano serenade resumed but this time the repertoire was old show tunes. The guests were directed to the long draped tables which had been magically reset with platters of fresh fruit, rounds of brie and camembert...heaping towers of truffles, tarts and petit fours. There was coffee in silver coffee urns, tea in porcelain pots and a capucchino station. Trays reappeared; this time around bearing snifters of Courvoisier and Grand Marnier.
            Despite the quantities of lavish food and drink the guests had already consumed, many were making plans to meet up later with spouses or friends for dinner, across the street to the Capital Grille; over to McCormick & Schmidts at the Biltmore, or across the bridge to the East Side, to XO XO or Mill Tavern. 
            Callie invited Angie to join her group going to Olives on North Main, which was known for great martinis and good jazz on Saturday nights. Angie begged off. She had to go home to her dog.

            Marian, radiant, kissed her friends and family goodbye at the end of the evening, clutching her streaming ribbon bouquet in one hand, looking like the blissed-out bride she already was, in her heart.
            Somehow Angie had missed the moment when Marian opened her gift. Callie had been chattering in her ear the whole time. Or perhaps she had forgotten to put the gift card in? As Marian opened her gifts she'd made a point of calling out the name of the giver and, and thanking them personally in front of the company.
            But as Angie came up to say goodnight, Marian hugged her close, then held her at arm’s length and said:
            “That is the loveliest handkerchief I have ever seen.”
            “It’s antique,” Angie told her gratefully. “A blonde lace handkerchief from the late 1800’s...”
            “I know a bit about vintage lace,” Marian said. “Yours was the most special gift I received tonight, and that is saying something!”
            
            Beatrice came up to them at that moment. She hugged Angie hello, then turned her attention to Marian. Beatrice raised her eyebrows quizzically; Marian smiled softly; and Angie was transfixed; for the first time in all the years she had known them as a couple, Angie “got” the passionate love that defined this relationship. 
            It rocked her a little. Her heart twisted. The glance that had passed between Beatrice and Marian was like so many that she and Tom had exchanged, in those golden living years.
            A look that said, “I missed you. How have you been without me? I’m here now. Let’s go home.”

 

 

Chapter Three.

           
            Winter nights, especially, when the trees were bare, you could see the lights of Downcity from the windows of Angie’s house, and to the right, the glorious glowing dome of the Capitol. The East Side of Providence was so-called because it lay on the east side of the two narrow veins of river which ran through the heart of the city. It was a place where the land rose in gentle tiers, from Water Street to Main Street to Benefit Street and all the way up to narrow lanes, such as Congdon and Prospect Street.       

              Prospect Park was a favorite haunt of H.P. Lovecraft, horror writer and one of Providence's favorite sons. He described the view that burned in his mind’s eye, wherever he roamed:

            “The child’s first memories were of the great westward sea of hazy roofs and domes and steeples and far hills which he saw one winter afternoon from that great railed embankment, all violet and mystic against a fevered and apocalyptic sunset of reds and golds and purples and curious greens.”

             Angie turned her key in the front door lock and pushed in. Immediately she heard a guilty thump (on the couch again!) and a clatter of nails against wood floor as her golden retriever Westerly bounded in from the parlor, crowding her in the narrow hall as he welcomed her home.
            “How is my smoochie poochie?” Angie said, and bent down to give Westerly a kiss on his head. Then she gently nudged him aside as she put her pocketbook down on the foyer table, disarmed the alarm, and walked into the kitchen at the back of the house.         
            It was only 9 o’clock at night, but Angie felt exhausted, and dispirited, somehow, despite how she’d enjoyed Marian’s party. She considered making a cup of hot chocolate, then realized no, she wasn’t thirsty or hungry. She didn’t feel like watching TV either, or getting on the computer, or finishing her library book. Duty called, anyway: and she took Westerly for his last constitutional of the evening. 
            She came back in, unclipped his leash, turned off the lights, turned on the alarm, and went, with Wes, up to bed.

            Angie was 56 years old. Tom, her husband, had died of cancer six years before. At some point in the last few years she had slipped over into that buffer zone between middle age and old age. A gentle gray area, no pun intended; anteroom to the next stage: the dreaded decades that can't be finessed: the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s…
            But wasn't 60 the new 40? And 70 the new 50, etc, etc? Sometimes her reflection in the vanity mirror in the downstairs bathroom (most flattering lighting in the whole house) looked so fresh and young she could almost believe it.   
            Angie hadn’t thought about sex, not really, in all the time Tom had been gone. She was menopausal, oh, face it! she was way past menopause now. She sometimes felt as if everything below her waist was dead, disappeared; as gender-neutral as a doll.
            For the most part, she told herself, I don’t care. All things considered, it was a mercy, a good thing.
            But on this night of Marian’s bridal shower Angie had an erotic dream. It was a kissing dream...and it wasn’t Tom she was kissing but a certain young movie star, somebody she had heard of but never realized she was attracted to.

            They were in a car; one of those '60's "muscle cars" like a GTO or a Buick Grandsport. He was driving and she was sitting next to him, her hand on his thigh, as close to him as she could be without being literally in his lap. (It occurred to her later, when she recollected the dream, that there were really few things in life as sexy as sitting in a young man‘s lap.) 
            They rode; leg pressed against leg, the way lovers could only do in the automobiles of her youth, with their wide leather benches. Before bucket seats were invented and killed off the art of making out in the front seat of a car.
            It was dark outside, in the dream place. The breeze blowing through the car was warm and soft and smelled faintly of the ocean. In the light from the dashboard she watched his hand on the wheel, steering expertly, his left arm bent and resting on the open window. He smelled so good! He smelled of youth and health; of a fresh haircut and a summer tan.
            They stopped in a brightly-lit parking lot for some reason; perhaps because they couldn’t bear to wait a moment longer to be in each other’s arms. Desire arced between them like an electric current; he twined his fingers into her hair, she cupped her hand to the warm curve of his neck, and they could not resist, why should they? So they began to kiss. Nothing more, nothing less: than deep, clean, sweet, single-minded kissing that left them both breathless. Seeming to last forever and ever.

            Until, of course, she woke up.

            Angie’s dreams, in the years since Tom’s death, had become so vivid, complex and marvelous, it was like going to the movies every single night, except that she never knew in advance what she was going to see. 
            The dialogue was so clever, the plots so involving! She felt as if she were sitting in the front row of a movie theater so close to the screen that she was obliged to swivel her head up and down, back and forth, to take it all in. She could feel her eyes darting around in excitement beneath her lids. 
            For a long while now, Angie looked forward to sleep, when she could get it, and to her dreams unreeling. This was her looking glass life: fantastically softened, colored and distorted, by her hopes and fears. 
            More and more frequently, it seemed, her dream life bled into her real life. Did this thing or that, actually happen? Had, for instance, a little girl in a black and white polka dot dress ever waved sadly to her from the back seat of an accelerating car? Or was that just another dream masquerading as a memory?                 
            And what would happen to her when her dream life finally took over and usurped every waking hour until there was no more reality left?
            Dreaming was often the most exciting part of her day. The night before Marian’s shower, for instance, she’d had a dream that still reverberated, and which maybe accounted for the residual sadness she was feeling. 
            In this dream, her mother was showing her photographs Angie had never seen before; of Angie as a young woman. In the pictures Angie was smiling and happy, a mane of shining black hair cascading to her waist, hair much longer than she could ever remember having in real life. 
            “I always regret you never added on to the house,” she said to her mother, in the dream. The next morning, Angie, an only child, interpreted that statement as an unconscious yearning for a brother or sister. 
            Even nightmares had a cathartic effect. Angie had always been prone to nightmares; maybe night terrors was a more accurate way to describe them. All her life, somebody had been there to soothe her when she woke up shaking, heart pounding, moaning softly in fear: her parents, Beatrice in the college years, and then, of course, Tom.
            Now she had only Wes. But Wes was her braveheart! Her sentinel and protector. He slept every night by the side of her bed on a cedar-filled black watch plaid oversized dog cushion, specially ordered from an upscale pet catalog. When Angie woke up in a panic, he appeared at the side of her bed instantly, nuzzling her face and softly licking her hand.
            In a perverse way the night terrors stimulated her emotions; made her feel more alive. 
            Mostly, though, each new day reared up before her in the morning and ebbed away behind her every night; predictably, monotonously, without really mattering much at all.

_________________________________________________      

             Beatrice phoned Angie at work the next morning.
            Angie was a receptionist at a Rhode Island talk radio station.
           “WRI Radio, 1330 AM, Providence...the Little Station with the Big Voice...this is Angie, how may I direct your call?” 
            “Have you got a minute?”
            “Beatrice?”
            “I need to discuss something with you.”
            “Is something wrong?” Angie asked anxiously.
            “That’s what I was going to ask you.”
            “Beezie, don’t be enigmatic. I beg you,” Angie said.
            “Well, it has come to my attention that you are almost two weeks late paying your mortgage. And that you are a couple of weeks late, on average, paying your mortgage every month.”
            Beatrice was a very successful Rhode Island accountant with an impressive roster of rich clients that included Greenfields Development: private real estate investors who Beatrice had somehow schmoozed into funding the mortgage on Angie’s house on Benefit Street in Providence. 
            Angie was so humiliated she was dumbstruck.
            Finally she said, “Beeze, it’s under control. I always make sure I am still in my grace period. I’ve never had to pay one late fee! What, did they call you and complain about me? That’s unethical, or something. It’s my problem, not yours.”
            “So you admit there is a problem.”
            “Beatrice,” Angie said, “there is no problem. I’ve just had some unexpected expenses lately, and so I got a little out of sync with the mortgage. But I...I will make the payment when I get my paycheck at the end of the week.”
            “By Friday, you will be past your grace period, and you will owe a late fee, Angie,” Beatrice said, sternly. “And a report could conceivably go to the credit bureaus. You don’t want that.”
            “No, Beatrice, of course I don’t. I...well, actually, I was thinking of maybe cashing in a CD, just to tide me over...”
            “That is a terrible idea! I won't let you do it. You’ll have to pay a penalty, but above all, you certainly can’t afford to touch any of your investments! You are barely surviving as it is. Remember, you can’t hide from me, I do your damn taxes.”
            Beatrice sighed her “I guess you’re just my cross to bear” sigh, and after a painful moment, said, very ungraciously, even for her: 
            “Look, do you need a loan? I will be glad--well, ‘glad’ is overstating it; but I will extend a loan to you if you need it. However, first I have to know what kind of financial bind you’ve put yourself in! What, have you loaned money to Michael again?” 
            That stung. Michael was Angie’s son. He lived with his wife and baby daughter in Chicago, and they were trying to buy a house. Even with both of them working and the baby in daycare, they just couldn’t afford it. It broke Angie’s heart. If Tom were alive…
            Angie bit her tongue. Beatrice was her oldest, dearest friend. She and Marian had done so much to help her since Tom died. 
            “Let’s face it,” Beatrice continued, oblivious and anyway, on a roll. “You are at a stage in your life where things are never going to get better, just worse.”
            “Oh thanks, Beeze. It’s always a joy to chat with you. I’ll make the mortgage payment tomorrow. Don’t worry about it. Tell Greenfields Development to chill.”
            “Angie, what the hell has come over you?”
            “Nothing, Beeze. I’m fine. It’s all fine. Thanks for the heads-up. You’re a peach. Gotta go.” 
            “Angie, this is nothing to be flippant about. I want to help you. Come to my office after work today so we can discuss this.”
            “No can do, Beeze. I have a prior engagement. Talk to you soon. Calls are stacking up. Have a great day!”
            “Angie!”

            Angie’s prior engagement was really just her regularly scheduled after-work walk with Westerly, when, weather permitting, they strolled down Benefit to Steeple Street and back again. Later, she fixed dinner for both of them. Whatever Angie had, Westerly always shared, mixed with his dry dog food, of course. Tonight it was salmon and green beans.
            After dinner, and after another walk with Westerly, Angie went into her den and turned on her computer, and logged on to her online bank account.
            She had seventeen hundred dollars in her checking account. Not enough to pay the mortgage yet, which was two thousand five hundred and six dollars and 63 cents because it included her homeowners insurance and her property taxes, which were sky-high in the City of Providence. She had only a couple of hundred dollars in her savings account.
            One month she’d called Greenfields Development to see if she could pay by credit card. The young woman who answered had actually laughed at her. 
            “No, we can’t do that! I’ve never heard of that, ma’am!”
            Ma’am.
            So Angie saw no other way to pay her mortgage before Friday except to go to the bank and get a cash advance on her credit card.
            The phone rang.
            “Angie?”
            “Marian, hi! I was going to call you and thank you for inviting me to your lovely party...”
            “Angie, is everything all right?”
            “Beatrice put you up to this, didn’t she?” Angie said, suspiciously.
            “Sweetie, she’s worried about you.”
            “She’s just worried that if I don’t pay, Greenfields Development will put cement blocks on her feet and throw her into Narragansett Bay.”
            “Angie! Now you’re being mean. Beatrice loves you and worries about you, and you know it,” Marian said.
            Angie immediately hated herself. 
            "Oh, Marian. I’m sorry. Beatrice and you, too, you're both so good to me. It’s just…I’m getting a little overwhelmed here lately. I had to upgrade the whole electrical system last month, it was like Doctor Mike and I couldn’t put a lamp on at the same time! It just had to be done. And now the boiler is on its last legs...I am going through twice as much oil this winter as last…the house desperately needs painting…” she trailed off, depressing herself by even talking about it.
            “Oh, honey,” Marian said, “it’s nothing that can’t be worked out. You know Beatrice is a genius, she’ll figure a way to make everything all right. Come to dinner Friday night, and talk to her.
            “She’ll just yell at me.”
            “No. She won’t. I won’t let her,” Marian promised. “Come on, say yes. I’ll make gnocchi...you love my gnocchi.”
            Angie did love Marian’s gnocchi. 
            “With porcini mushrooms?”
            “Need you ask?” Marian replied. “Sun-dried tomatoes, too, and I’ll put out a big dish of those garlic stuffed olives you love...and make a butterscotch flan for dessert...”

            After Tom died (How many chapters in the narrative of her new life were preceded by that simple phrase?) everybody expected her to sell the suburban house in Westerly, Rhode Island where she and Tom had raised their only child, Michael. 
            Angie got the impression from her friends and family that as a widow, she was expected to grow old gracefully (bury herself alive, was the way Angie thought of it) in some cinderblock condo development somewhere.  
            Instead, Angie did a most unexpected thing: she sold her house and sunk nearly all her net worth into a historic old house on Benefit Street, on the East Side of Providence. 
            Beatrice, her old college roommate and now a pillar of the Rhode Island professional community, was vehemently against the move. 
            “Angie, buying this house, at this point in your life, is pure folly!”
            But finally Beatrice relented in time to help Angie find a private investor, Greenfields Development, to fund her mortgage.
            Tom had left Angie some money, but not nearly enough, it was turning out, to see her through the next thirty years. Beatrice had taken charge: helped Angie settle the estate and invest Tom’s insurance money. There was a small pension, too. Very small. 
            Angie got a job. She earned about $25,000 a year. 
            Her house on Benefit Street had a one-bedroom basement apartment, which she rented to a doctor, Mike Hakkim, who had become a good friend, a second son. The rent supplemented her income. But there still wasn’t enough money, some months. 
            Her son, Michael, was living in Chicago now with his wife Colby and their daughter, Shea, whose full name was Shea Sommers Russo. Shea was Colby’s maiden name. Sommers was Colby’s mother’s maiden name. 
            Angie lavished her granddaughter with all the gifts and attention as was possible to do long-distance and on a budget.
            The little girl was just two years old, but Angie wanted to buy her the world: starting with a closetful of taffeta dresses and black patent leather mary janes; pink ribboned ballet shoes and frothy white tutus. A leather-bound  library of children’s classics. A case of collector dolls and a fat nest egg for Wellesley College.  
            “Wes, old boy, you got any money you can loan me?” Angie turned off her computer and turned to Westerly, who was sprawled out on his special faux sheepskin rug in front of the TV. He opened his eyes at the sound of his name, but was too enervated to do anything more than twitch an ear in her direction. 
            “Come on, help Mommy out here, Westy! I bet you’ve got a few bucks buried out in the backyard.”
            Angie dreaded Friday night dinner with Beatrice. She had a sick feeling about how that meeting would go. If Beatrice realized the true state of Angie‘s finances, she would try to force Angie to do what Angie most adamantly did not want to do:
            Sell her house on Benefit Street.
            Angie went upstairs to the bedroom adjoining her own, which she had converted into a dressing room/closet. She pushed aside some plastic dress bags at the far end of her hanging clothes, and plucked out an old beach tote from the back of the closet. Out of the tote she pulled a balding velvet jewelry box. 
            Not the cleverest of hiding places, she had to admit. She could imagine her mother shaking her head and saying,
            “Angie, that is the first place a robber would look!”
            She went to her bedroom, and sat on her bed, opened the box and turned it over and spilled out the contents.
            She picked out a few pieces, one by one, and laid them in a row.
            A diamond tennis bracelet. Diamond studs, perhaps a carat each. Long ago wedding anniversary gifts from Tom. 
            A sapphire ring set in platinum: her mother’s. A cameo pin: her great-grandmother‘s, originally; passed down with reverence to her grandmother, then her mother, and then to Angie. One day it would be Shea’s. It should be Shea’s.
            There was her gold Citizen dress watch with the diamond bezel; and her strand of good pearls, a gift from her parents on her graduation from college.
            Angie looked at them all for a moment and then she got up and went over to the fireplace mantel. She took down a tiny white leather baby shoe, one of Michael’s first pair of baby shoes. Where the other shoe went was a mystery. 
            She sat back down on the bed, loosened the laces of the shoe, lifted up the tongue, and drew out a small satin bag. 
Inside the bag was her engagement ring: a two carat heart shaped diamond in a simple white gold setting. No side stones; this stone needed no enhancement. She knew for a fact it was practically flawless. It had belonged to Tom’s mother.
Angie had stopped wearing it even while Tom was still alive. She had become, increasingly, irrationally convinced  that if she wore it, she would lose it. It would slip off her finger somehow, or else the stone would fall out one day. She would look casually down at her ring and find just four empty prongs.
            When Tom was alive, he would gently scoff at her fears. “Wear it, honey, don’t be silly. It’s insured.”         
            Thinking of that, Angie slipped it on her ring finger next to her wedding ring. Then she remembered that it wasn’t insured anymore; she couldn’t afford the rider on her insurance policy.  She pulled the ring off and laid it carefully on the bedspread with the rest of her accumulated treasures. She would get them all appraised, and then make a decision.
            But wait: was this her decision to make? Wasn’t she cheating Michael or Colby or little Shea by selling them? Well, Michael did have all his father’s jewelry, except for Tom’s wedding band, which Angie always wore on a gold chain around her neck. And Colby, an only daughter, would surely inherit her own mother’s jewelry one day. And in its turn, Colby’s jewelry would pass to Shea. 
            Nevertheless, Angie wanted her granddaughter to have something from her; passed down through the generations of her own family. She took the cameo brooch and put it back into the jewelry box.
            Then something else occurred to her: what if Michael and Colby had more children? She picked up the sapphire ring, put it briefly on her finger, held her hand out to admire it, then slipped it off and put that back in the jewelry box, too.
            She picked up Michael’s baby shoe. How utterly amazing that her six foot tall son had once had such a tiny foot! She turned the shoe over and looked at the sole. It was barely scuffed. Michael had worn these shoes before he was even walking. The high topped Buster Brown baby shoes were more symbolic than practical. And even when he was walking Angie still picked him up and propped him on her hip, even when she cleaned house. Michael loved the noise of the vacuum; he would open his mouth wide and imitate the sound, “AAAAHHHH.”
            “Angie,” Tom would say to her. “If you keep carrying him everywhere, he’ll forget how to walk!”
            Angie put her engagement ring back into its silk pouch, and then tucked it back into the toe of Michael’s baby shoe, and put it back on the mantel. 
            She looked at herself in the mirror over the mantel. She nearly put her hand out to wipe the mirror; then she realized her image was blurry because her eyes had filled with tears. She blinked hard; but two tears escaped anyway and rolled down her cheeks.

Chapter Four.

            
            At work the next morning, Gene James, Rhode Island’s combative, obnoxious, radio talk show host from hell, blew past Angie’s desk wearing, of all things, a Yankee baseball cap.
            What is up with that? Angie wondered. For a New Englander to wear a Yankees baseball cap was tantamount to treason. Was he cruisin’ for a bruisin’ or was this just some loco Gene James publicity stunt? He better not wear that on the air (WRI now streamed live on the internet with video) or the Red Sox Nation would rise as one and annihilate him.
            Over lunch in the break room, Angie consulted Carol, her best friend at the station; the sweetest woman on the planet; who had showed her the ropes in those first rocky days on the job and pretty much saved Angie from getting fired. 
            “I saw it too,” Carol whispered. “And I have a hunch.”
            “What? He’s leaving Rhode Island to go work in New York?” Angie asked hopefully.
            “Nope. He joined an exclusive club,” Carol said.
            “What club?”
            “The Hair Club for Men.”
            “No! You think?”

            The wearing of the hated Yankee cap continued throughout the week and the whole station was buzzing about it. Ed Mack, WRI’s sportscaster, wanted to jump Gene after his airshift and work him over. 
            “Men have been hanged for less,” Mack said grimly.
            “You can’t kill him though,” Wayne, their Harvard-educated Program Director, told him. Wayne, formerly known as Igor, had been Gene James’ producer and whipping boy before his promotion.
            “Why can’t I kill him?” Ed demanded. “Oh, I suppose you want to kill him first?”
            “No,” Wayne said. “I meant,  he can’t be killed. He’s not human.”
            Everyone in the break room sighed in dejection. Wayne was right.
            Finally, on Friday afternoon, it all came to a head. Angie wasn’t present, she was out front manning the phones as usual, but she heard all the gory details.

            During the staff meeting, without any real provocation except that he just plain hated the Yankees and Gene James, Ed Mack reached over and ripped the offending Yanks cap right off James’ head.
            There was a collective gasp. Underneath the cap, approximately where Gene James’ hairline used to be back in 1970, were rows of fat, regularly spaced plugs of bristly black hair.
            Gene James turned in fury to Ed Mack and screamed “Shut up!“ even though Mack hadn’t said a word, just gawked, like everybody else, in openmouthed amazement. Then James spun around and yelled in the face of a perfectly innocuous and innocent nerd from Human Resources. 
            “You shut up!” 
            He turned to Wayne, his face and scalp mottled red with rage. 
            “And you shut up, too, you overeducated elitist little bedwetter!” 
            He stabbed his finger randomly at this person and that. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”  Then James fled.
            After his departure,  the room went quiet. Most everybody felt a little bad. 
            But not real bad. 
            It started with a snicker, which led to a giggle, that produced a guffaw, and pretty soon the whole room was pounding on the table and screaming with laughter. Joe Bradley, the station manager, tried in vain to restore order, but he was laughing as hard as the rest of them.

            From that moment on, Gene James would inevitably and for perpetuity, be referred to behind his back as “Chia James.”

            Angie left work just a few minutes after five and instead of taking 95 northbound to Providence, she headed south to Beatrice and Marian’s house in Westerly. Angie had lived in Westerly herself for many years so she knew the territory; she stopped off at the little liquor store near her old neighborhood, and bought a bottle of wine to bring with her. A bottle of hemlock would have suited her better; that’s how much she dreaded her confrontation with Beatrice.
            Her tenant, Dr. Michael Hakkim, had promised to feed Westerly and take him out when he got home. Now that Mike was in private practice, his hours were more civilized and he often used his key to Angie’s kitchen door to feed, water and walk Westerly when she wasn’t home.
            Mike was her surrogate son, he even had the same name as her own son, and it was such a comfort to know, especially in the wee, small hours of the morning, that she was not alone in that big, labyrinthine house of hers. 
            Angie fretted about everything, the big stuff and the trivialities. She dreaded the day when Mike came to her to say he was getting married (and of course he would, such a handsome doctor!) and had to move out. In fact, Angie was sure she had seen the same pretty dark-haired woman knocking on Mike’s apartment door at least twice in the last two weeks.  
            Losing Mike was right up there on the worry checklist Angie obsessively inventoried before she went to sleep. She made sure she worried sufficiently about each item before moving on to the next. 

            This week’s list:
            Will Michael, Colby and Shea always be healthy and safe?
            Suppose Mike Hakkim moves away?
            If Mike Hakkim does move away, what if Angie unwittingly rents the apartment to a serial killer?
            Will Angie always have a job at WRI?
            Do the occasional pains in her chest mean there is something wrong with her heart?

             And now something new had bumped up the top five to the top six: 
            Can she really afford to keep her house on Benefit Street?

             No, there was no gnocchi.
             Marian apologized so profusely that Angie had to hug  her to make her stop. Beatrice was on an important call in the den, and would be out, hopefully, soon, Marian promised. Beatrice would take Angie out to dinner.
            “What?” Angie asked. “You’re not coming?”
            “Oh Angie, honey, I can’t. I’m on a flight to Paris in two hours and I am hardly packed.”
            “Paris! France?”
            “Yes, I am going with Callie, you met Callie, at my shower? The designer who wants to move to the East Side? Well, there’s a very special show in Paris, not at all mainstream, very, very off-Broadway, so to speak, by this incredibly talented young designer who just came out of nowhere...he’s Romanian, I think...and he doesn't work in fabric, he works in paper! Paper! Can you imagine?
            Angie tried. All she could think of was paper doll clothes with those little tabs to hold them on.
            "Callie predicts he will be big, huge," Marian went on. "By next year everybody will know his name!"
            “What’s his name?” Angie asked
            Marian puckered her lovely brow. “I forget. Anyway, Callie thinks I just have to see his stuff, she thinks I can scoop everybody in Providence and Boston...maybe everybody in New York! It all kind of came up at the last minute, I was lucky to get a plane ticket. I really gotta hurry, Angie dear...have fun with Beatrice...and listen, I made her promise she would not be mean...” 
            Marian sat Angie down at the kitchen table with a glass of Italian mineral water with a lime slice in it, to wait for Beatrice.           

            Ten minutes later, Angie was still waiting for Beatrice, reading a copy of Gourmet magazine and shaking her head in amazement over the glossy photographs of tiny stacks of food stuck in the middle of big plates painted with sauce graffiti. These folks could make a ham sandwich look exotic. And charge fifty bucks for it.
            She heard Marian wheeling something noisily into the foyer, opening the front door and calling out: “Be right there!” 
            Marian had her coat on: a gorgeous three-quarter Persian lamb with wide sleeves, high upturned collar and big black buttons. She was pulling on her gloves and leaned over to kiss Angie goodbye. She smelled deliciously of Jasmin by Bulgari, her signature scent.
            “Beatrice says she will be right out, honey. Good luck with everything, and don’t worry. I’ll be back in a couple of days. Bye!”
            “Safe trip!" Angie called as Marian rushed out.

            Another ten minutes and Beatrice finally emerged from her den. She did not look happy at all.       
            “I am not hungry in the least, I’m warning you,” she said.
            “Howdy to you too, Beeze.”
            Beatrice eyed the wine bottle on the table. "Did you bring that? You might as well take it back.”
            “Why don’t I open it instead, and we’ll have a friendly glass?" Angie suggested. 
            Beatrice suddenly sat down at the table and said moodily, “Whatever.”

             One glass each of chenin blanc later, Angie said, 
 “Beeze, remember when that English professor in sophomore year at URI—what was his name, Slagler, Flagler, Satyr?”
            “Slater.”
            “…asked you out? And you told him: ‘I’d much rather date your wife. Sir.’”
            Beatrice cracked a smile in spite of herself.  “I will never forget the look on his face.”
            “Have you seen the new sports center at URI, Beeze? It takes up half the state.” 
            “I never saw the old sports center,” Beatrice said.     
            Angie laughed. How true. You would never catch Beatrice at a sporting event, then or now.
            She conjured up an image of eighteen year old Beatrice. They’d first met on moving in day at University of Rhode Island, September, 1969...

            When Angie and her parents finally found the Coddington dorm and located her room, it was obvious that her as yet unmet roommate had gotten there first, thoroughly unpacked without leaving so much as a bag or a box or a suitcase behind; and taken off. 
            Following the time honored rule of first-come, first-dibs, Angie’s phantom roommate had also taken possession of the nicest desk and the biggest dresser.       
            Angie’s desk-by-default had no drawers. They looked at each other in dismay
            “Good thing we bought that bookcase,” her father commented mildly.
            While he assembled said bookcase, Angie and her mother unpacked her clothes and put shirts, pants and underwear away in the remaining dresser and hung her skirts and dresses in the mostly empty communal closet. 
            Her new roommate didn’t seem to have much in the way of clothes, but she had a calculator and brand new IBM Selectric typewriter on her desk; and sitting next to the typewriter, a camera.
            Her father went over to look at it, keeping his hands behind his back as if he couldn’t trust himself not to grab it and run.
            “Holy Jehosephat!” he said reverently, “a Nikon F…”
            “She shouldn’t leave such a nice camera out in the open,” Angie’s mother disapprovingly.
            Angie, who had always been fascinated by the books people collected, was scanning the titles in her roommate’s bookcase. There was a full set of encyclopedias (Brittanica black, not World Book red!) along with hardcover copies of The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, Nausea by Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.
            Angie’s mother came over to look, too.
            “Good heavens!” she exclaimed, and put a protective arm around her daughter’s shoulders. Angie had the distinct feeling her mother would have liked to clap her hands over Angie's eyes.
            As for Angie, she had brought her dictionary, her thesaurus, her one volume picture encyclopedia, plus her entire set of Nancy Drew and Dana Girls mystery books. She told herself that they were there just for comfort; and she would open them only in the case of extreme homesickness. She hoped the childish books wouldn’t invite ridicule from her obviously way more intellectual and worldly new roommate. Then again: why would her childhood books look any sillier than the teddy bears and Raggedy Ann dolls propped up on beds in some other dorm rooms? 
            Angie’s mom had made up her bed and was beginning to unpack Angie’s books. Her dad, in the meantime, kept sneaking peeks at his watch. 
            “The traffic going south is going to be a doozy,” he said,  apparently to his Timex. “Labor Day weekend…everybody coming home from the beach. Maybe we should take the Tappan Zee…”
            Angie went over and gave him a hug. “Daddy, you guys can go home now. I’ll be fine.”
            The truth was that Angie could hardly wait for them to leave. She intended to take down all the clothes her mother had hung in her closet and somehow shove her dresser in there to give her more room. Then, alongside her Beatles posters, she would hang up the “Reefer Madness” poster her parents didn’t even know she had.
            “No, no,” her mother said. “We want to take you to dinner first. And we want to meet your roommate.”   
            “Mom, we had lunch two hours ago. And you can meet my roommate on Parents Weekend. Go on. I’ll call you tomorrow, I promise!”
            “Remember the plan,” Angie’s mother cautioned. “Call person to person and ask for yourself. Then we’ll say you’re not home, which will be the truth so we’re not really being dishonest! Then we’ll call you right back.”
            She turned to her husband. “Frank, remind me to get the number on that pay phone in the hall.”    
            “Okay, Mom, I’ll remember the plan,” Angie said. Her father packed up his hammer and screwdrivers and put them back into his battered metal toolbox. Her mother gave the lilac chenille bedspread one last quick smooth and tug. 
            When she turned to give her daughter a hug, Angie could see her eyes were wet.
            "Mommie-mia!"  Angie went over and held her close. “Don’t cry! I will be perfectly fine. And look on the bright side: now you can turn my bedroom into a sewing room like you’ve always wanted!”
            “I was only kidding when I said that!” her mother protested, stepping away and wiping her eyes. “Frank, tell her!” 
            Angie’s father was looking around the room still trying to spot something he could hammer down or screw tight before he left. 
            He obediently recited "Angie-your-mother-was-only-kidding." 
            Angie’s mom hugged her one more time, then stepped back at looked at her critically. 
            “I wish you wouldn’t wear so much mascara, Angie. You will give boys the wrong idea.”
            “Mom…”
            “And then it smudges, and you look dissipated.” 
            “I am dissipated.”
            Her mother laughed. “No, you’re not. You are just a sweet little girl from New Jersey, and you always will be.”

            The three of them stopped at the phone in the hall so Angie’s mother could write down the number in her little address book. They walked down the stairs, out of the dorm building and to the car. She hugged and kissed them both one more time, and waited until their old Buick station wagon wound its way around the maze of parked cars. She saw her father looking at all the open and still stuffed trunks and shaking his head in pity.

            On her way back to her room she passed dozens of girls and she wondered if one of them was her new roommate. 
            Her new roommate, however, was already in residence. She was standing over on Angie’s side of the tiny room, her arms folded, shaking her head at the Beatles posters tacked up over Angie’s bed. She turned around when Angie walked in.
            They sized each other up. Angie thought Beatrice looked just like the songwriter Carole King. She was tall and thin, wore round rimless glasses and was dressed in long baggy cotton pants and a man’s oxford shirt.
            It wasn’t until many years later that Angie found out what Beatrice’s first impression of her was.
            “The first thing I thought when I saw you was: ‘Oh shit! I’m living with ‘That Girl’! I took one look at your little plaid pleated skirt and your matching headband, and your tiny turned up nose and I said to myself, ‘Either me or this shiksa have got to go!’”
            Angie pretended to be hurt. 
            “I never matched my headbands to my outfits!” she said.          
            Beatrice gave her a look.
            “Well, maybe sometimes,” Angie admitted. “But hey, I liked you! Oh, sure, maybe I thought you were a little…eccentric…and that afro you had…yikes!”
            “I did not have an afro,” Beatrice said indignantly.
            “Oh girl you so did have a "fro"! Angie wagged her finger in Beatrice’s face. “Your ‘fro’ was bigger than Angela Davis’s!”              
            “Well, in any case I was not eccentric,” Beatrice retorted. “I was an activist committed to bringing about political change using non-violent means.” 
            “Beeze, you were a flag burning, no bra wearing, Marx spouting, establishment hating, card carrying commie.”
            Beatrice shrugged. They regarded each other fondly.
            “And now look at you,” Angie said. “You’re a filthy rich accountant.”
            “Capitalism happens,” Beatrice said, with a wolfish grin.

            Finally Angie, who hadn’t eaten since lunch, took it upon herself to order a pizza.
            “What do you want on it, Beeze? How about sausage and mushrooms?”
            “Please don’t order it on my account,” Beatrice said sourly, taking a hefty swallow from her glass, her mood dark again.
            "I'm ordering it on account of that I'm starving, " Angie said. She called up and ordered a medium thin crust with sausage and mushrooms.
            Later, as Angie was nibbling on her third slice of pizza, her low carb regimen temporarily suspended, she said, 
            “So, Beeze, you want to talk about my sorry finances, or what? Believe me, I am fine with putting off that discussion.” 
            Truth be told, she was secretly relieved that Beatrice seemed so distracted by Marian’s impulsive departure. Although she felt bad that Beatrice was obviously depressed and very likely jealous that Marian was off to Paris in the company of Callie. Of course she would never dare say that to Beatrice; she'd get her head bitten off.
            Beatrice had yet to have even one slice of pizza, but she refilled her wine glass and moved to top off Angie’s glass.
            Angie put her hand over her wineglass. “No, better not. I’ve got to drive back.” She looked at her watch. “Truthfully, I should go. Wes will be worried about me.”
            She lightly touched Beatrice‘s hand. “Beeze, why don’t you come home with me and sleep over? Just like old times in our dear old dorm at URI.”
            “Hang out with you and the mangy mutt of yours and watch the House and Garden channel all night? No thanks.”
            “I guess I’ll go, then. We’ll talk about money matters another day. Don't worry; I’ll still be broke next week!” Angie said brightly.
            Beatrice was so preoccupied she didn’t even rise to the bait, so Angie grabbed her pocketbook, fumbled inside and brought out her car keys. She stood up and went over and kissed Beatrice on the cheek.
            “I’ll call you in the morning. Maybe we can do something together, what do you say? How about a movie?”
            “I doubt it. I’ll probably spend tomorrow at the office. By the way, Angie..."
            “Yeah?”
            “Did you make that mortgage payment yet?”
            Angie sighed self righteously. “Yes, Beeze, jeeze! I mailed it out Fed Ex on Tuesday.”
            “Did your check clear yet, do you know?”
            “I don’t know.”
            “Well, when you get home, go online and see. If it hasn’t, put a stop on it.”
            Angie was alarmed. “Why should I do that? Am I in trouble or something?”
            “No,” Beatrice said. “You now have a new mortgage company.”
            “What? Who?”
            “Me,” Beatrice said. 
            “How can you be a mortgage company?”
            “I bought your mortgage from Greenfields."
            “Oh, Beeze, you shouldn’t have done that!" Angie was upset. "You didn’t have to do that; I really wasn’t that far gone! My god, Beatrice, that is like saying you just loaned me $200,000!”
            “I just did.”
            Angie sat back down again, flabbergasted. She wasn’t even sure she was grateful.
            “The way I saw it," Beatrice said in that maddening matter of fact manner of hers, "it was the only way for you to keep your house."

 

 _________________________________________________
 
 

            Beatrice had formed a new corporation, B. Newman Enterprises, for the sole purpose of privately funding and carrying Angie’s mortgage. She told Angie that at first she’d tried to get Greenfields Development to refinance Angie’s loan at a lower rate. They weren’t interested. So, since there wasn’t a prepayment penalty clause, but was a clause allowing the mortgagor to sell the loan to another party, Beatrice told them she’d buy out the loan. 
            “Does Marian know about this? Angie asked in concern. 
            “Marian suggested it.”
            Angie’s interest rate went down almost two points. She would save more than two thousand dollars each year.
            Without asking, Beatrice had also arranged for Angie to get $10,000 cash out, taking advantage of the fact that the market value of 140 Benefit Street had appreciated since Angie acquired it, even in this tough market. And thanks to a large initial down payment, there was a lot of equity. 
            The cash and the lower monthly payments would keep the wolf from the door for awhile. 
            “This could be a cure or just a band aid on the problem, Angie,” Beatrice said sternly, “When I do your taxes I’ll take a look at everything and see what’s what.”

            What was what, Angie thought, was that 140 Benefit Street was falling down around her ears.
She needed a new boiler and she needed it now. All the estimates were in the five thousand dollar range. 
            The supports under the back porch were rotten and she had to make a decision to either rebuild the porch or tear it down. Lots of money, either way. 
            She need a new roof. The old fashioned wooden gutters were decayed; now nothing but artifacts from the 1900's.
            Some windows wouldn't go up, and some wouldn't go down. 
            The house needed painting, badly. The first estimate to do the job was $15,000. She actually laughed in the man’s face, thinking he was pulling her leg.   
            He wasn’t. The next estimate was $5000 higher.
            The floor of the second floor bathroom was soft and decaying. The toilet wobbled. Angie had terrible visions of  the commode crashing down into the middle of her kitchen, with her on top of it. 
            Yes, she could continue, and did continue, to live with the inconveniences that were not emergencies. The lacks: lack of dishwasher, lack of central air conditioning; lack of a proper shower in the downstairs bathroom and no water pressure in the upstairs shower. 
            The lack of sufficient electrical outlets, or outdoor plugs for the electric barbeque grill from her old house.
            Lack of outdoor spigots for watering the plants; not that there were plants to water. The path that wound its way through the little “garden” was lined with bald arborvitae, so moribund they’d gone beyond brown to orange.
            Every spring Angie was inspired to plant dozens of colorful annuals. She liked to sit out on the lone garden bench and admire her brave little blooms; doomed to perish by July, at the latest. Yet in her mind’s eye she saw the garden of her dreams: a simple yet elegant boxwood parterre, a variation of an English knot garden. She had been planning this garden since the day she moved in. 
            Knot gardens were meant to be viewed from above, and Angie’s Benefit Street house was three and a half stories high with long back windows on the upper floors and a glass enclosed raised rear porch off the kitchen.
            The views were beautiful: down the hillside were the historic buildings of North Main and in the distance, the stunning domed Capitol.
            The houses on either side of hers had high, solid, side fences, so Angie’s little patch of earth was both sunny and secluded. It was a perfect site for a secret garden. 
            Angie had done her research; she resolved that the garden design would be a tarquetra, a three-cornered Celtic knot. In its center, Angie imagined a weeping cherry tree. She always pictured it in full bloom; with fat pink blossoms clustered along its drooping branches. Underneath: a little koi pond, perhaps, or a splashing fountain. The pathway would be set with brick; she would reuse the beautiful old brick that was there now, half buried in the earth and bleached pink by time and weather.
            Angie would lay out the borders with a hardy boxwood or yew that wasn’t bothered by harsh New England winters. She would plant hostra and impatiens along the hedgepaths. Maybe she’d devote one loop of the knot garden to herbs. Wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to dash out to her garden for fresh rosemary or thyme for her sauce? (Although Angie couldn’t remember the last time she’d made a sauce from scratch.)
            Spring was just around the corner, but there was no hope of finding the money to construct her English garden this year. Or money to fix the crumbling concrete on the front steps; or replace all the missing roof shingles.
            Angie couldn’t even afford a tree service to cut down the dead limbs on the big oaks in her front yard. She couldn’t pay a handyman to put in and take out the window air conditioning units, so they stayed in the windows all year round. 
            The house was shabby, down at the heel, compared to its well-heeled neighbors. And something unexpected always seemed to come up that wasn’t in her budget.  After the last snowstorm, she had to pay a young man walking down the street, fifty dollars to shovel the driveway, the front walk, and the sidewalk in front of her house. Two weeks ago, she had to pay the vet two hundred and fifty dollars to cure Westerly’s bladder infection, and while they were at it, give him his annual exam and heartworm test and booster shots.
            She really needed a new car. Seven years ago, when Tom got sick, Beatrice advised her to pay off her Volvo wagon so she would have one less expense to worry about since Tom's income was becoming uncertain. She still drove that Volvo wagon but now it needed new brakes, new tires, and heaven knows what else. It stalled sometimes at lights and occasionally refused to start on excessively cold mornings, which meant she had to call AAA and be late for work.
            Everything came down to the lack of money.
            Her son Michael and his wife were trying to