‘Good Morning, Heartache . . .’

by whiteray

Looking back, there was a question I never asked. 

It was early in the autumn of 1974, and – as was my habit – I was on the St. Cloud State (Minnesota) campus early, right around seven o’clock. I don’t remember when my first class of the day was, but I’d take at least an hour, maybe more, to sip some coffee, read the Minneapolis paper and greet other folks from The Table – that corner of the student union snack bar that was the center of my college social life – as they stopped by before or between classes. 

And every day for the first few weeks of that autumn, a young woman with dark blonde hair would come into the same area of the snack bar and settle at a table near the jukebox. Every day, she’d put a quarter into the machine and punch the buttons for just one song. Every day, she’d sit at her table and listen as Diana Ross made her way through Billie Holiday’s “Good Morning Heartache.” 

And every day, after the record ended, she’d sit for a few minutes more and then gather her books and leave. 

Eventually, as often happens between strangers who see each other every day, she’d nod and give me a half-smile as she arrived or as she departed. We began to talk, briefly at first. Then one day, instead of sitting alone at her own table, she sat at the long table with me. Over the next few weeks, she became a regular at The Table. And she quit starting her day with “Good Morning Heartache.” 

We were friends. I think she wanted more, but my hopes were elsewhere that autumn. Still, she and a friend of hers frequently joined us at The Table through October, taking part in the good-natured needling and the sometimes ribald chatter. Then my quarter ended with a traffic accident at the end of October, and I spent November at home. 

When I came back to school in December, she was gone. Back to the Twin Cities after an unanticipated twist in her life, my other friends told me. As far as I know, no one ever heard from her again. And I still sometimes wonder, almost forty-seven years later, why she listened to “Good Morning Heartache” every morning for those first weeks that autumn. I probably should have asked her.