Second Sight

Judy was my mother’s best friend from the time they were both 13. Neither girl had a sister, and Judy didn’t even have brothers, and her parents were a bit offbeat, besides. Her father, Mr. Williams, was an internationally known astrologer whose counsel, I was told, was sought by major companies. Mrs. Williams was a nervous sort. She used to go up to the school at the start of classes every year to instruct the teachers and staff that Judy was to be called only by her full name, Judith Ellen. At home, Mom remembered, Mrs. Williams liked to economize by wearing old cocktail dresses to clean the house.

Photo Credit: Big Stock Photo

Judy and Mom lived about a block apart in Bayside, Queens. They went to the same public high school, where Judy was valedictorian, and they went off to college together, at Syracuse, and were sorority sisters and roommates. They both majored in political science, and they both married men they met through one of their instructors. Mom got the lanky Texan who shared his office, and Judy, in an attested case of love at first sight, fell for his cousin from Ellsworth, Maine, Bob Brown.

Mom and Judy never lived in the same place again after college, but the Browns and their three children visited us in various locations, and several times on family trips we went to their house outside Rochester.

It was a long, one-story house in a wooded neighborhood with a huge screened porch for barbecues and kids’ roller skating. Judy and Bob had built it themselves. They’d spent their savings on an architect and materials, then recruited friends to help them with the actual construction. Bob, ever ingenious, used to get tools free. He would contact a company to complain about the impenetrable instruction booklet that came with, say, its power drill. Then he’d offer to rewrite the instructions in exchange for the drill. For him, this worked like a charm.