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The day was warm, the air fragrant with the scent of flowers. Four-year-old Midge Helen, and her six-year-old sister, Dixie Virginia, nicknamed Diddie, were planning a major social event. They raided Mother's closet for pretty, colorful scarves, and tied some around their waists, draping others over the peach trees to fancy up the garden. With exquisite care they laid out tiny cups and saucers brought home from the toy department of Daddy's big store in town. Then, with great ceremony, they invited Gina, their mother, and Mama Carter, their grandmother, to join them for tea and lemonade.
Playmates were scarce in McLemoresville, Tennessee (population two hundred), but that barely accounts for why Dixie and Midge are such deliciously dear friends.
"Oh my. I can't remember a time we didn't get along," Dixie says without hesitation. "Mother had a rule that if we fought, no matter who started it, she'd spank us both. We'd go to laborious pains to sneak off for a fight somewhere she wouldn't catch us, and by the time we got to the barn or wherever, we'd lose our steam and forget about it. We even divided the icing when Mama baked a cake. She'd call us in, her little lambs, to lick the pan, and we'd draw a line right down the middle to make sure the other one got enough. Our parents always made a big point of being sure we got equals.
"We slept in the same bed from the time we were born until we moved to town (Huntington, population three thousand) because the school was better. Then we had twin beds in the same room. Our wonderful house in McLemoresville had nothing but fireplaces downstairs to heat it. In the winter, before we went to bed, Mama Carter would come over from her house next door and hold up a blanket in front of the fire. Gina would hold the other blanket up, and they'd tell us stories. When the blankets got hot enough, Midgey and I would scamper up the stairs ahead of them, and they'd wrap us up together, pile more quilts on top, and we'd go to sleep under all this weight, curled up like two little spoons."
Decades later, the sweet spirit of their childhood glows in their adult eyes when they sit down to talk about each other. They cuddle up; their Southern accents thicken; the years melt away and they become as tender as little girls.
"Long after Gina stopped dressing us alike," Dixie continues, "we were allowed to dress as we wanted, and we still chose to dress the same. Miss Eunice, a wonderful seamstress, made all our clothes. We'd be taken in the beginning of the season to the piece goods department in Daddy's store and -- would you believe -- we'd pick the very same material and patterns, at different times. And -- cross my heart this is the truth -- at least once a season on different sides of the country we bought our daughters dresses of the exact same fabric. It happened over and over again.
"When we'd gone our separate ways after college, we'd write letters home that would arrive at the same time and say pretty much the same thing. Our children still say that when they were little and we came up behind them, they couldn't tell which one of us it was because our hands felt the same. Isn't that extraordinary?"
"What I find amazing," Midge remarks, "is how Dixie has this very psychic way of reaching out to me emotionally, especially when I'm down. Before my third child was born, she was doing summer stock in North Carolina. Out of the blue, she called home and told Gina, 'I think Midgey needs me.' She flew to California and by the time she got to my house, I'd fallen down the front steps and broken my ankle. It being close to my due date, she just stayed to help. Now, Dixie does not love to do housework, but she cleaned my house from top to bottom and then went off and bought every single thing in the grocery store. Food to cook, a thing to hold paper cups, a new toilet brush. She went nuts."
"But you are the most loving, unselfish sister anyone ever had," Dixie interrupts. "Midge despises crowds," she explains. "Her idea of a huge party is four people. But she came to New York to support me when I was trying to get my career started. She applied for a job at American Express, and she was so cute and pretty they made up some receptionist position for her. She worked every day and brought home money so I could study and audition."
"In retrospect, I didn't like my job a whole lot," Midge admits. "But I wanted to go to New York and be with you in that wonderful little sublet in Greenwich Village."
"Where all we had to do was water the African violets for forty dollars a month."
"Then the sublet ended and we basically had nowhere to stay except that horrible hotel for a couple of nights."
"At Fifth Avenue and 5th Street," Dixie remembers.
"We put a chair under the doorknob."
"Do you remember that terrifying mouse in the closet?"
"Oh, Dixie," Midge sighs. "You always were a scaredy cat. When we were real little you'd ask me to go upstairs ahead of you because you were afraid. On the other hand, when I was in seventh grade and you were in ninth, I was deathly afraid of spiders, and you came along at a picnic and wildly chased some friends who were scaring me with a spider. We've always taken care of each other."
"You came to New York to save me when my first marriage was breaking up," Dixie reminds her. "I called and said, 'You must come.' You took your two little children, got on the plane, and when I came home from my soap opera, there you were."
"That was so different from the other time we lived in New York," Midge recalls. "This time you had a posh apartment, and we both had little children who were at a wonderful age to do things with. The circumstances were unfortunate, but we actually had a lot of fun, just the two of us together again." "And you, looking after me in a big way." Dixie rubs her sister's arm. "I can barely talk about how much I love you without going into tears, into big middle-aged weepers."
"I feel like you are an extension of me, though we are quite different," Midge says. "You seem to think whatever I do is grand, and I get the vicarious excitement of being out in the world from your being there for me. Do you want to tell our dream?"
"You mean about our long-range ambition?" Dixie asks.
Midge nods.
"Well," Dixie pauses and takes her sister's hand. "When we get to the rocking chair stage, we plan on living in very close proximity, either side by side or in the same house."
Just like they were way back in McLemoresville, giving tea parties among the peach trees.
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