“Lou and I weren’t getting on anymore. I decided to look for a place here and see if I can get into dancing. Where are you living, Tee?”

“I have a cell over in the nurses’ quarters on 114th Street,” she said. “It’s clean and safe and there’s a kitchen where I can cook an egg or instant soup.”

“It sounds pretty grim,” Missy said.

“It’s the pits,” Tina answered glumly.

“Listen, Tee, I’m staying in a friend’s place in The Village—but that’s only temporary. Why don’t we get a place together?”

“Good idea, Missy. We’ll do it as soon as I get back from Gloversville.”

There was a gilt wreath on the door of her grandparents’ Tudor house in Gloversville when Tina arrived. She thought irritably, Why gilt? Why couldn’t it be natural greenery with some pinecones? Why were things always gussied up in Gloversville?

But as her grandfather opened the door and her grandmother came through the rooms toward her, her arms open, her mouth stretched in a warm, welcoming smile, Tina thought again of why she was there—for the human warmth they gave her, and if it came in gilt, well, pazienza. The wall facing the front door was a display of gilt-framed family photos, the brass screen and tools near the fireplace gave off a gold glow, the large mirror over the untuned piano was in an ornate Florentine frame, and on the piano was a huge vase of gladioli: the fakest of flowers, Tina could hear her mother saying.

And yet the house was warm and comfortable and no more pretentious, actually, than Missy’s family home, or even the Jowers’. It was not her mother’s romantic interiors of driftwood and shells and secondhand sofas from departing English noblemen, nor was it the crazy rococo of many other Italian-American families; but for what it was—a well-to-do American interior with hanging plants, boldly patterned wallpaper, and a cupboard of figurines—it was right and proper. It could have been photographed anytime in living color for the pages of House Beautiful. What Tina really objected to were the missing things: the missing shelves of good books to read; the missing sound from the piano; the missing conversations; the missing flames in the fireplace.

“There you are!” her grandmother called, bearing down on her as she wiped her hands on an apron. She was short-legged, round, and very active, as cheerfully American as her rooms. Her hair was done, she dressed well, and her eyeglasses were stylish but not garish.