The House of Lee

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neighborhood—she wore black-cat eyeglasses and had a blond Dutch-boy haircut.

“Good grief!” was her signature saying when her students fell short of the mark. She said it to me when I linked baby Bs as I practiced penmanship. (“They look like ladies holding each other’s gowns,” I explained.) On my report card she noted my poor handwriting.

On the afternoon she told our class President Kennedy had been shot, her face was stained with tears, but she held her composure. She asked us to draw a picture. I sketched him in a glass casket waiting for a kiss to revive him, just like Snow White.

Ann’s daughter, Barbara, was my best friend. Her bedroom had two beveled-glass cases of antique dolls. During sleepovers in her vintage bed, we plotted how she would become a famous artist and I a famous writer.