The Bookseller(46)
“Want to go out to dinner tonight?” I ask Frieda when I come back inside.
“What for?”
I shrug. “No reason. We just haven’t had a ‘date’ in a long time, sister.”
Frieda and I have been calling each other “sister” for most of our lives. That is where the name of our store comes from, of course—it was a natural choice for the store name, something we came up with simultaneously when we first discussed opening a bookstore together. Our use of the expression started in high school, when we wished we were real sisters. She was the oldest of four and the only girl in her family; I was an only child who, but for my mother’s loss of those three baby boys, would have grown up with the same family structure. What each of us wanted most in her childhood was a sister.
Frieda and I first met on a September day in 1938. We were freshmen at South High, and it was our first day of school. South was nearly new then; only a decade or so had passed since its groundbreaking. The linoleum hallways were still gleaming, the windows bright and uncracked, the bricks a vivid, school-proper red, without the toll that weather and years would eventually take. We freshmen filtered in that first day, following upperclassmen who seemed to know their way around as if they’d been born inside that building. Those older students spoke animatedly to one another. There were shouts of joy as students hugged one another, many of them thrilled to be reunited after a summer apart. Still others laughed over memories of a summer spent together: “Remember the Fourth of July? Will we ever have that much fun again? Ever?”
As freshmen, we envied those older students. Though some of us knew each other from our humble grammar schools, we all felt disjointed. Our exchanges with one another were awkward and brief. “I hope your summer was nice.” “Do you know how to find room 106?” We immediately grasped, as the crowd jostled inside the building, that our place in these huge halls was yet to be determined. And we were not at all sure that the fates bestowed upon us would be those we’d choose, if given the choice.
Into this mix of insecurity and unfamiliarity strolled Frieda, head held high, long brown hair pulled back from her high forehead with a tortoiseshell band. She wore a straight taupe skirt and an ivory sleeveless blouse that showed off her shoulders, which were tanned and becomingly freckled. Her dark eyes gleamed with mystery and magic. Not just freshmen but even older boys gazed at her as she made her way through the hall. I couldn’t take my eyes off her; I stared until she entered a classroom and disappeared.
As luck would have it, I found that I was headed for the same room. As I stepped in, I noticed that—miraculously—the seat to her right was vacant. Boldly, not knowing where my courage came from, I took the seat and held out my hand.
“I’m Kitty Miller,” I told her. “It’s nice to meet you.”
She nodded. Her grip was warm and firm. “Frieda Green. Nice to meet you, too.”
We compared our schedules, which had been mailed to us from the school’s office the week before. We found that we had nearly every class together. “What a relief,” Frieda said. She leaned toward me and whispered conspiratorially, “I was a little afraid of finding my way around alone—weren’t you?”
Yes, of course I’d had the same fear. But I was astonished at her candidness in admitting it. Recovering, I nodded and smiled at her. “Let’s find our way together, shall we?”
She grinned back. “Indeed we shall, Kitty Miller.”
Over time, I got to know everything there was to know about Frieda. She came from money; her maternal grandfather had made a fortune in railroads in the 1880s, and her father’s family owned a large construction firm. His family had gotten in on the ground floor when Denver was a young city, just being built up, and they’d stayed on top ever since.
Frieda had gone to private school through eighth grade, but her father felt that she needed to round out her education at a public high school, where she would meet and mix with people of all classes. He had a theory that his children, despite their advantages, would best build their characters by interacting with others of different backgrounds. While attending our solidly middle-class high school, Frieda lived with her parents and brothers in a large three-story brick house in the Country Club section of town—an elite development of palatial houses a couple of miles north of the modest Myrtle Hill district in which my family resided. The first time I went to Frieda’s house, I impulsively called it a “mansion,” which made her giggle. “You are so cute, Kitty Miller,” she said, grabbing my arm affectionately.
All these years later, I still remember how her grip felt on my arm, how possessive it was—and yet gratifying as well. Despite all that she had, all that she was, Frieda Green—somehow, inconceivably—wanted to be my friend.
It took months before I finally worked up the courage to ask her about this. What, specifically, made Frieda want me to be her dearest and closest friend, when she could have been best friends with any freshman girl in the school, or even with an upperclassman girl, if she’d wanted to?
Frieda had laughed at the question. “You are you, Kitty,” she said simply. “I could tell from the first moment I met you that you would be loyal, that you would be truthful, that you would stand by me.”
It was an unusually warm day for November, the day I asked that question, and we were standing on the school lawn between classes. Frieda waved her slender arms dramatically, as if to take in the entire student body, most of which milled around outside with us, enjoying the sun and warmth. “I didn’t see that sincerity in anyone else. Not at first glance, anyway.” She shrugged. “So, no point in letting myself be disappointed when others let me down.”