After Hopper
By Georgette Gouveia
The dress was a giveaway. A light wool, short-sleeved, royal blue affair, it was already too warm for early spring, and it seared and itched her skin, molding her already perspired foundation garments to her flesh and tempting her mightily to scratch, which she would not do as she sat ramrod straight on the New York Central Railroad train that rattled its way from Yonkers to Grand Central Terminal.
“Remember: Cool as a cucumber on the outside no matter what’s roiling the inside,” Mama always advised. She just hoped she would not be betrayed by disks of perspiration on her armpits. She had to make that ten-cent jar of cream deodorant last and last, so she used it as sparingly as possible, just as she had taken up the hem of Aunt Violet’s old blue dress a
