We Never Told Page 14

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Must be kinda fun having Mother away.”

  I hurried to the elevator, my heart pounding from anger. The next day, I opened the mailbox and it was empty again. On the third day of an empty mailbox, I phoned my mother in Evanston. No answer. She was often not there. I phoned much later that night. “Kyle won’t give me the mail.”

  “What do you mean Kyle won’t give you the mail?”

  “He won’t.”

  “What do you mean? You have a key don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just open the mailbox.”

  “I did. There was nothing in it.”

  “Then there was no mail.”

  “But there was none yesterday either.”

  “That’s not Kyle’s fault.”

  “He won’t give me the mail.”

  “Don’t be silly, Sonya. If there’s mail, Kyle will put it in the box. That’s his job.”

  Was there some federal law against interfering mail? I had no idea. I was appalled to find myself the victim of an adult bully. I knew there was some board that governed the apartment building but I had no idea where the board met or who the people were who sat on that board or even if my sort of problem mattered to them. If I told my father, he’d know my boyfriend stayed past midnight.

  “How much do you want that mail?” Kyle asked in a suggestive way the next time I opened the empty mailbox. He ran his eyes down my body and my heart leapt up. I was just home from my friend Ellen’s where we’d experimented with eye shadow and bright red lipstick. My hair was up on top of my head in the hairdo she’d given me. “I’m going to tell on you,” I said and cursed the trembles in my voice.

  Kyle laughed. “You do that.”

  To outsmart Kyle, I pretended to have no interest in the mail and each day walked past the wall of brass boxes. The problem was that if I got accepted I had to let the school know right away or else I’d lose my place, according to the grapevine. All my friends had received their letters. Everyone felt sorry for Ellen not being accepted anywhere and we wondered how she would go on living, especially because her sister was at Smith. This would probably happen to me. Kids at school would say, “What are you going to do now? Take a year off?” Off from what? From life? Behind my back they’d whisper, “Did you hear about Sonya? She didn’t get in anywhere. Not even her safe school!”

  Probably Kyle didn’t know what to do with all the accumulated junk mail because one day I opened the box and it was crammed full. I thumbed through the flyers from Sears and Gristedes and found two fat letters, one from the University of Wisconsin and the other from Connecticut College. They were both happy to inform me … I burst into tears then realized I had no one to tell. I couldn’t share my relief with my friend Ellen. She was hiding in her bedroom from the shame of not getting in anywhere. Pete never suffered from college pressure so he’d say, “Of course you got in.” I couldn’t call Joan because she’d say, “You’d choose Connecticut over Wisconsin? You must be nuts.” She chose Carnegie Tech because there were four boys to every one girl.

  It was a sunny day when I drove to New Rochelle to tell my father that I’d been accepted and that the tuition at Connecticut College was twice that of Carnegie Tech. He was supposed to pay for college as per the divorce decree and it was my understanding, based on some fluffy idea of his career, that he could easily afford to. He was a Jewish man and Jewish men, unless they were my Uncle Norman, sent their children to college and paid for it.

  Behind the wheel of my mother’s new Buick, two-toned blue with giant fins in the back, a sensible choice according to Grandpa Greenstone who paid for it, my heart began to thump in anticipation of fighting with my father. He was pushing a lawn mower when I arrived, a task once performed by a gardener. I parked in front of the house because once when I parked in the driveway he complained that I was boxing him in. “But if you needed to leave couldn’t you just ask me to move my car?”

  “I shouldn’t need to. You should know tisn’t polite to block a person’s driveway.”

  Dressed in a sleeveless undershirt that showed his gray chest hair, he adjusted his old Yankees cap, leaned on his rake and said, “New car is it?” I went forward and gave him a dutiful peck on the cheek. Why hadn’t he shaved? Usually he was fastidious.

  “A Buick,” I said.

  “Spiffy,” he said. He continued mowing, the sound of the blades turning announcing that he wasn’t going to stop what he was doing, because he didn’t care if I visited him or not. He thought I was neglectful and was sour about it each time I visited.

  “Annabelle here?” I said.

  “Inside,” he said and flicked his chin impatiently toward the living room window, which I took to mean she was watching television instead of helping him with yard work.

  “Daddy,” I said. “I got into Connecticut College where I want to go. It’s my first choice.”

  “Zat so?”

  “Do you have a moment to sit and talk? Have tea maybe?”

  I left him standing there in the garden. From the kitchen, the television in the living room sounded like a distant crowd cheering. I turned on the flame under the kettle and went into the living room. “Hey, Annabelle,” I said.

  Dressed in a red caftan, she was stroking Rinso on her lap. She turned and said, “Hello.”

  “How’s everything?”

  “Oh, everything’s just fine.”

  “That’s good.”

  I retreated to the kitchen, put some cookies on a plate, filled two mugs with hot water and put a tea bag next to each one and carried the tray out to the yard. My father indicated I should set the tray on the wrought iron table under the apple tree, and we both sat down on lawn chairs. “One tea bag is enough,” he said. “You don’t need two.” He dunked the bag in his mug then handed the spoon with the soggy tea bag to me. I dunked it in my cup. “It’s a waste to use two,” he said. I took a sip of weak tea. “In fact,” he said. “You can use this tea bag a third time. Tisn’t any reason to throw it out.”

  “Daddy,” I said. “I have to send in a deposit.”

  “Zat so?”

  “Otherwise, I lose my spot. We have to send the first semester tuition by June.”

  “What’s the cost?” I told him. He opened his eyes wide. “That’s twice what I pay for Joan!”

  “I know.”

  “Why should I pay double? That’s ridiculous! Go some other place. Didn’t you get in any other place?”

  “University of Wisconsin.”

  “How much does that one cost?” I told him. “Then you’ll go there.”

  “But I don’t want to. Connecticut is a much better school.”

  “Nonsense. Everything there is to learn is learned after college.” A robin bounced on the lawn, inclined its head to listen for worms beneath the grass, then bounced to another spot. My father stirred his tea nervously, clinking the spoon against the side of the cup. “I’ll give you what I give Joan. Not a penny more.”

  I couldn’t tell him that I was afraid to go to Wisconsin because it was so far from home and there would be so many students there and the teachers wouldn’t pay any attention to me sitting way in the back in huge lecture halls, and none of them would make a fuss over me the way the English teachers did in high school and I was afraid of sororities, of being rejected by other girls, afraid of fraternities where there were kegs of beer and boys got drunk and said lewd things, afraid of big football games and people in raccoon coats leaping to their feet to bellow forth, and pretty blond cheerleaders waving pom poms and showing their crotches as they leapt in the air with their legs wide apart. That school was too big and loud. I wasn’t up to it. Quite unexpectedly, the sting of tears prickled my eyes and sent the taste of salt into my throat. This was not part of the plan. I never cried in front of my father. Whine and nag, yes, but a display of actual distress, never. My father had been on earth many years longer than I, so if he said everything there is to learn is lear
ned after college then it probably was true. He was telling me that it didn’t matter which school I went to. The University of Wisconsin was easy to get into. I could never be proud to say I went there. Anybody could get in there and everybody knew anybody could get in there. Tears were rolling in fast like a tsunami. I wailed, “But it’s my future!” and put my head down on my arms so he wouldn’t see my weeping face. Part of me was sobbing and part of me was saying get a grip. But I couldn’t find the turn off button. I was so tired of nobody taking care of me and now I’d have to go be all alone at a huge university full of cheerful blond coeds. I felt him tapping my arm with impatient, rigid fingers. “Tut tut,” he said. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  Everything in me clamped shut. I stood up, left the tea things for him to clean up, and walked across the lawn vowing to never see him again plus if I ever had children I’d never let him near them. I got into the Buick and drove home to Scarsdale.

  “I’ll ask Dad,” my mother said on the phone. “There’s no reason on earth that Dovey Lee and Alan’s children can go to the schools of their choice and you can’t. Why should my children have less than theirs?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Connecticut College was in New London, a seedy place with lots of bars, one small movie house, and an elderly hotel that seemed slightly ashamed of itself. In a taxi from the train station driving toward the college, I saw the Coast Guard Academy, a conglomeration of red brick buildings that seemed to shine with orderliness. Young men in navy blue uniforms were marching in formation while the biggest American flag I’d ever seen in my life waved high above them. Across the street was Connecticut College, a series of modest gray stone buildings that seemed like mousy librarians. They faced a grassy quadrangle where girls in short skirts and shin guards whacked a field hockey ball.

  Everywhere there were parents unloading station wagons, girls saying goodbye to their dogs, fathers carrying lamps and typewriter cases. I lugged my suitcase up some wide stairs, down a hall, and into the room designated on my housing form. I expected to find the other girl assigned to that room. I knew nothing about her except that she was from Atlanta, Georgia, and her name was Elaine. That she was from so far away gave me post purchase reassurance. This college, apparently, was highly regarded all across the nation.

  The room was empty but the roommate had been there. She’d made up the bed near the window. I saw her perfume and lotion bottles on top of one of the bureaus and her dictionary and expensive electric typewriter on one of the desks. I unpacked, hung some clothes in the closet, put my sweaters neatly folded in the empty bureau, made the bed up and sat on it to wait for Elaine to return. We would go together to the required orientation meeting, maybe get lost together trying to find the auditorium.

  The dorm was full of girls moving in, the voices of mothers and fathers and the squeals of girls being reunited with girls they knew from before. How did they know each other? I didn’t know anyone. When my roommate did not return, I found my own way to the auditorium, and took a seat surrounded entirely, front, back, sides, by girls my age. I’d never seen so many girls gathered in one place. Many of them were knitting.

  Above the click, click of knitting needles, the school president introduced herself. She was a middle-aged woman with gray hair and sensible shoes. Standing at a podium, she said into the microphone, “Girls, you are the privileged few.” I didn’t know what she meant. Did she mean we were better than everyone else? How could she say such a thing? I had never felt so lonely in my life. What was privileged about feeling so bereft? She went on to say that because we were different from everyone else, set apart, the world expected us to contribute. Was she talking about money? Did she mean I was privileged compared to my Woodbridge cousins, Claire and Avery, who would go to work right after high school? I understood that college was an advantage that was handed to me. All I had to do was get good grades. I didn’t feel privileged to be among that roomful of scrubbed and polished girls. I was on the conveyor belt of life.

  I’d been plunked down amid a tribe of immaculately groomed young women, no rough edges, nothing fly away, nothing slouchy. Many were blond with small noses and coiffed hair. They wore blouses tucked into plaid kilt-like skirts. It seemed they all had a circle pin on the round collar of their blouses. It was an announcement in gold of something I couldn’t translate, a badge of some sort.

  Assembly over, groups of three or four of them walked together across the quad back to the dorms, chatting in the rapid way of girls catching up. How did they all know each other on the very first day of school? I hoped my roommate would be waiting for me. She was probably feeling just as lost as I was. Maybe we’d unpack our records and discover we had the same taste in music. Maybe she’d be an English major too. Maybe we’d have the same sense of humor and laugh our heads off about something.

  A startling sight awaited in my dorm room, twin girls. They were identical, both with frizzy dark hair and thick glasses. They were busy unpacking books and did not greet me. They seemed a self-sufficient unit, two beings wrapped in a kind of obliviousness, almost like insects who don’t care if you stand there and watch them. Chatting in a southern accent, they glanced at me as I sat on my bed. “Elaine?” I said and looked from one to the other. “I’m your roommate, Sonya.” She nodded in a way that meant obviously I was the roommate otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting on the roommate’s bed. After several minutes of arranging and chatting, they got up and without saying goodbye went out of the room. This was a blow. I’d been assigned a roommate who didn’t need a friend.

  I went next door to introduce myself. There were four or five girls in the room, some sitting on the beds and others cross-legged on the floor. It seemed I’d stepped into a meeting so I was going to retreat but a lanky fawn of a girl standing in front of a mirror picking something out of the edge of her eye said, “And who do we have here? I’m Inky.” She made me feel welcome just by turning her gaze on me. “My last name’s Blackwell.” She gave a helpless shrug and said, “Thus the Inky. They gave it to me at Miss Porter’s.” The other girls paused their conversation when I entered and each one told me her name and then when I’d taken a seat at the end of one of the twin beds, they went back to what they were talking about.

  Teed said, “You can’t ask Todd Coddington.”

  Elizabeth said, “Why not?”

  Blanche said, “Who is he?”

  Elizabeth said, “He’s a Walcott on his mother’s side.”

  Anne shook her head. “Your grandmother will not be pleased. His mother had him in the public schools until grade six.”

  Elizabeth said, “What about George Farrington?”

  “Can’t,” Teed said. “He’s escorting Suzi Howe the weekend before.”

  “She’s coming out this season? Isn’t she still in Switzerland?”

  Were these the privileged few? I learned that they knew each other from boarding school, had been away from their parents since they were very young. There was a ranking among them, highest being girls whose coming out parties were at the Waldorf Astoria, lowest were the girls who would “come out” at their country clubs. They all had to choose two male escorts. Some boys would do, others would not depending not on the boy’s personality but on his family, best being a family that included politicians, preferably state governors. All of the girls were afraid of disgracing their parents. They all had the same way of speaking, with a tinge of an English accent, and they all dressed alike and seemed to announce by their very presence that there is nothing more important than conforming. Their struggle to please others was endless. Imposing that struggle upon others was inconsiderate. Thus, the inexpressive faces, the erect posture, the correct smile at the correct time.

  To express personality through dress was in poor taste. To express personality at all was in poor taste. The debutantes set the standard at Connecticut College. We knew which one was the wealthiest. Her father worked for the government for a dollar a year. Her grandmother took her to Paris over Christmas
vacation, and she came back with clothes designed by Pierre Cardin. She opened her closet and showed them to me. “You are so lucky,” I said. She said, “You jest. Well maybe your fittings don’t take as long as mine do.” Was my father right? Should I have gone to Wisconsin?

  By the end of freshman year, a gold circle pin was on my round collar. My blouse was tucked into a tartan kilt. On my feet, blue and white saddle shoes and on my wrist a single gold bangle. My sister Joan, in Pittsburgh, was wearing black knee-high boots, a leather jacket with fringe on the sleeves, tight jeans, dangling earrings, Bakelite bangles up to her elbows, and a black velvet ribbon choker. Her curly black hair was down to the middle of her back. She changed the shape of her eyes with a thick line of black like Nefertiti. Her design teacher called her Beauty right in front of the whole class.

  Television in my dorm lobby showed white adults screaming at small black children and protesters being pushed back by fire hoses. Pete, at Cornell, was inhaling weed while at my school we were expelled if caught with wine in our room. During second semester, via telephone, Pete and I decided to break up. We were so far away from each other and we wanted to try out other people. It did occur to me that other people were more available to him than to me. They were in his classes and living in a room next door, while I had to be in my dorm by ten every night. He guffawed when I told him. “You have a curfew? You?” He could stay out as late as he wanted. During the week before exams, reading week, I would be expelled if I left the campus for any reason. Pete laughed when I told him this. “Sonya. You’re in a nunnery!”

  On Fridays, the bathrooms in the dorm were crowded with girls taking showers and shaving their armpits and leaning in close to the mirror with tweezers. We took the train every weekend to service the boys at Harvard, Yale, and Wesleyan. While just last year those boys sat next to us in high school, now they were considered adult enough to make their own rules while we, being girls, had to be cloistered. The boys never came to our dry campus where there was nothing to do. We always went to them with freshly shaved legs and silky hair perfumed by our youth and shampoo. They were expected to pay for the motels where we slept, but we paid for the train tickets. While America was erupting, my biggest concern was getting a date for the Harvard/Yale game and finding a husband to pay the bills after graduation. I became fluent in shapes of diamond rings—emerald, pear, marquise—and knew how to describe the jewel thrust into my face for inspection by the latest lucky duck who just got engaged.