"Ralph, but everyone calls him Red."

Marlene glanced at the blaze of copper on Lizzie's head. "I should have guessed. How did you and Red hook up?"

"Oh, you know, my social conscience. After I got out of Vassar I messed around in New York for a year, working for a magazine, which folded, and I guess I was supposed to get a job at another magazine and wait around to get married. I mean that's what Mom did, right? That or be a modern woman and go to professional school like you. But I didn't want to go to professional school, and I wasn't exactly sure I wanted to be a modern woman. The guys I was dating… I mean, they were all right, but you know…"

"Bland."

"Bland, or totally focused on the greasy pole, or… I dated a sculptor with a loft in SoHo for a while, but honestly, all those people… I couldn't take them seriously, the black clothes and that attitude and the constant backbiting about everyone's work. And so I applied to VISTA."

"After the sculptor broke your heart."

Rose laughed longer than necessary and drank some beer. "Yeah, you got me pegged. The Foreign Legion of the white girls. They sent me to Haw Hollow, West Virginia, to help run a craft cooperative. It mainly involved bookkeeping and writing grant applications and arranging child care so the women could quilt and weave. Well, you can imagine it was quite a shock. You don't think people live like that in America anymore. I mean white people."

"Poor."

"Is not the word. The whole county is kept alive by miners' pensions. They won't take any help from the government, you know. Extremely proud, living in these little hamlets up in the hills- hollers is what they call them. The water's all rotten from the acid drainage.