Free The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose by Susan Wittig Albert Page B

this Monday was different, and remembering made her smile.
    “This isn’t your everyday Monday, Daffy,” she said, rubbing her cheek against his golden fur. After a moment, she put the cat back on the bed and stripped off her filmy nightgown. “I’m in charge of the office today. And not just today, either. All this week and maybe next. It’s going to be swell fun!”
    She stepped into her cotton panties and put on a brassiere and slip. She was slim enough not to need a “foundation garment” or even a lighter-weight girdle, an omission that her mother—who wore a boned corset—considered disgraceful. Padding barefoot to her closet, she took out a silky rayon crepe with three-quarter sleeves and a ruffled neckline. In soft browns and orange, it was her favorite dress. She wore it when she felt like celebrating.
    As Daffy watched, Lizzy sat down at her dressing table and began to brush her brown hair. “And where, you are asking, will Mr. Moseley be while
I
am in charge of the office?” Talking to a cat was one of the pleasures, she thought, of living alone. “Why isn’t he sitting behind his desk, smoking his pipe and signing papers, the way he usually does?”
    Without waiting for Daffy to answer her question, she picked up her brown eyebrow pencil and began to sketch out thin, stylishly peaked eyebrows. “Well, since you’ve asked, I’ll tell you. Mr. Moseley has gone to Birmingham to meet with the Alabama Roosevelt for President club. They are planning to send a delegate to the Democratic convention next year to try and get Governor Roosevelt on the ticket. Then Mr. Moseley is driving over to Warm Springs, Georgia, where he is going to meet with the governor, who spends his vacations there. So what do you think of
that
, Daffodil? Mr. Moseley is meeting with Governor Roosevelt!”
    Lizzy picked up her lipstick—a soft orangey red—and applied it deftly. She was glad that the Kewpie-doll lips of the twenties were passé and full lips, like hers, were back in fashion. That done, she added gold button earrings and turned her head this way and that, studying her reflection in the mirror. She saw a not-quite-pretty face with wide-spaced, steady gray eyes, prominent cheekbones, and a resolute chin, framed by a ripple of soft brown curls. It was the face of a woman who knew her own mind, she thought. The face of a woman who could handle just about any challenge that came her way.
    She got up. “And while the cat is away, my dear, sweet Daffy, the mice—so to speak—will play. While Mr. Moseley is gone,
I
am in charge!” She bent over and swept up the cat with a fierce hug. “Isn’t it wonderful, Daf? Mr. Moseley trusts me enough to ask me to manage the office while he’s gone!”
    And with that, she skipped down the narrow stairs and into the kitchen, where she poured out a bowl of Daffy’s dry cat food and sat down to coffee and Post Toasties with fresh sliced strawberries from her own backyard. When she finished, she rinsed her dish and made her lunch: a piece of leftover fried chicken, an egg salad sandwich, and two raisin-oatmeal cookies, with two more for Verna. She and Verna planned to eat lunch together the way they always did, in Verna’s office if it was raining or on the courthouse lawn if it wasn’t.
    The kitchen of Lizzy’s bungalow was small, but there was room for a table and two red-painted chairs, a four-burner gas range, and a white GE Monitor refrigerator. The table was covered with a red-and-white-checked oilcloth. There was a red linoleum-topped counter along one wall, white-painted cupboards with china knobs, and over the sink, a wide window with ruffled dotted Swiss crisscross curtains. On the windowsill sat a red geranium in a red ceramic pot, and over the table hung a lamp with a red-fringed shade that Lizzy herself had painted with bright images of fruit and flowers. She loved her kitchen, and though it might be silly to say so, she absolutely adored her GE refrigerator. It