We were seated around the tree, cider poured, the soundtrack from
White Christmas
on the hi-fi, musical credit to Irving Berlin noted. My father pronounced the drink delicious: Warmed one's innards, didn't it? As I circulated with partridge-in-a-pear-tree napkins and walnut-dipped cheese balls, Bibi asked, "Lee-Lee's not helping in the kitchen, is she?"
My father sat up straighter and said, "Lee-Lee's not here, Bibi.
There was an emergency back at school. She had to leave this morning."
Bibi barely looked dismayed. "Would it concern a man?" she asked.
"Partly," said my father.
"Did she make it here at
all?
"
"Of course," he said. "We would have given you more notice if she'd stayed behind."
"Let me guess: A summons—some man saying 'drop everything and spend Christmas with me'—so she packed her bags and ran for the bus?"
"She did, in fact, board a bus."
"When?"
"This morning."
Bibi said irritably, "She couldn't postpone her romantic emergency a few hours to have dinner with her mother?"
My grandmother said, "Maybe when you hear the particulars—"
"What could the particulars change? Is the man on his way to war? Is someone on his deathbed?"
"Sort of," I said.
My father set his cup down on an end table. "Here is the situation, Bibi: The wife of our college president, Dr. Woodbury, is in a coma due to carbon monoxide poisoning—"
Bibi shrieked, "She's dead, isn't she! She's not on a bus! There was a carbon monoxide disaster all over that school, and that's what you're trying to say! That's why you had to tell me in person!"
My grandmother rushed to her side to remove the brimming cup near her from harm's way. All of us shouted our various reassurances—no disaster, not dead, alive and well.
My father said firmly, "Listen to me, Bibi: Laura Lee is fine. Her bus is no doubt pulling into Park Square right now. I would never lie to you."
Bibi's glance shot involuntarily to my mother and back again. "Then why didn't she call me herself to tell me about her change of plans?"
"That was our selfish decision," said my father. "We wanted you
with us for Christmas dinner. We thought if you heard she'd gone back to Boston, you wouldn't come."
"I'm not easily fooled," said Bibi. "I didn't drive sixty-seven miles to find out that my daughter had better things to do on the one day all year she doesn't have dorm duty."
We didn't correct her. My father granted, "No question: It
is
a round-the-clock responsibility."
"Do you want to know more about the circumstances back home?" asked my grandmother.
Bibi looked blank enough for me to clarify, "The president's wife? In a coma?"
"Which you swear is not from anything contagious?"
My father repeated, "Laura Lee left here in perfect health in order to be with President Woodbury."
"She's in love with him," I said.
Bibi seemed to take this assertion in stride. "Are there children?" she asked.
"Three."
"I see," said Bibi. "And is he inclined to accept her suit?"
"They're all over each other," I said.
"If you're asking me if there's an amicable, garden-variety divorce ahead, I'd have to say no," said my father. "Apparently, Mrs. Woodbury has threatened in the past to take her life if he ever left her."
"But now she's done it," said Bibi.
"Unsuccessfully," said my father. "She was rescued by a United Parcel delivery man on his rounds."
"She's in critical but stable condition as of this morning," said my mother.
"But comatose," I added.
"Nothing you've told me so far," said Bibi, "explains why Laura Lee had to board a bus this morning and rush to Boston."
"She's been very upset," said my father. "Very worried about her relationship with the man."
"Is she going there to help with his children?" asked Bibi.
"They're grown-ups," I said. "One's studying to be an opera singer and the other one wants to make cheese after she gets out of grad school. The youngest is my age."
"She's mad about him," said my grandmother. "She wants to be by his side."
"She's never been one to play hard to get," said Bibi.
My grandmother confided, "From what David and Aviva tell me, they're making a spectacle of themselves."
Bibi asked what that meant. Obviously the wife knew, and we knew, but who else?
"Everybody," I said. "Students, faculty, you name it."
Bibi shrugged. "Maybe they had an open marriage."
My father said, "Certainly nothing ratified by both parties."
"Is this a pattern of his?"
My mother said, "Nothing that the presidential search committee detected."
"But of course they won't touch him, will they? Lee-Lee will lose
her
job. The man always comes away unscathed while the woman suffers for both their sins."
My mother said quietly, "Right now, the crisis at hand is the survival of Mrs. Woodbury."
Bibi picked up her cider, pronounced it still too hot to drink, put it down again, and asked pleasantly, "Is the wife an attractive woman?"
I could feel the collective unexpressed gasp in the room.
"I guess I don't understand how that's relevant," said my mother.
"Just trying to picture the triangle," said Bibi. "For example, how old is this Woodbury?"
"Old," I said.
"Fifty. Early fifties," said my father.
"He limps," I said.
"War injury?" asked Bibi.
"No one knows," said my father.
"He was born with it," I said. "Marietta told me. Something a little off with his hip."
"But otherwise attractive?"
My mother stood up suddenly. Surely the time had come for a speech denouncing the cold hearts and shallow values on parade. "If everyone will excuse me," said my militant mother, "it's time to baste the turkey."
"Thank you, Aviva," said my grandmother.
"Did I say something wrong?" asked Bibi.
My father, I knew, was doing his diplomatic best for the sake of his mother and a Christmas already undermined by disorderly conduct and rash leave-takings. But enough was enough for a natural-born spokesperson. "Aviva and I," he said, "try never to judge people by outward appearances. And we've pledged to raise our daughter so that she, too, will see beyond the exterior—"
"That's hogwash," said Bibi. "Ask her. Go on.
I
raised a daughter. I gave lip service to inner beauty and not judging a book by its cover, but that's not what makes the world go round."
I didn't allow anyone but me to ridicule my parents. I, who at sixteen could disqualify a suitor based on the color of his socks, said, "I always try to look beyond the outside of the package, and I give my parents the credit for that."
"I couldn't agree more," said my grandmother. "But at the same time it would help to know what Mrs. Woodbury looks like."
"Don't ask Dad," I said. "He'll say two eyes, a nose, and a mouth."
"We're asking
you,
" said Bibi.
I said, "I've seen pictures of her as a young woman and she was really beautiful."
Bibi snorted. My grandmother asked Mrs. Woodbury's present age.
"She turned fifty last month."
"Did she have a party?" asked Bibi.
I said no, she didn't want one. Her daughters tried. They love their mother, even if they don't always show it.
"Imagine your husband having an affair as you were approaching something as momentous as your fiftieth," said Bibi. "No wonder she tried to kill herself. And believe me—this will affect the way the daughters approach fifty, too."
"What's
he
like?" asked my grandmother.
"Smart. Ambitious. Charming," groused my father. "Very smooth. Too smooth."
"If I know my daughter, he's tall," said Bibi.
My father, looking increasingly strangled and red-faced, sputtered, "The mother of his children may be dying over this affair.
This is not a question of who invited whom to the prom! This is something that affects an entire campus! I don't have just one daughter to worry about; I have a hundred girls in my dorm alone who have the right to ask me, to ask the college, to go to their parents and say, 'Is this the way adults are supposed to behave? Is this a healthy environment for me? Is this how people solve their problems—attach a hose to their exhaust pipe and close the garage door?'"
"David," said my grandmother. "Of course we feel for that woman. And we feel for you because of the difficult public relations job ahead."
Bibi looked puzzled. "Didn't someone say that this woman has threatened suicide before? She doesn't sound like someone who should be the First Lady of a college."
"Because you have a candidate in mind?" my father asked angrily enough to draw my mother from the kitchen.
My grandmother murmured, "This whole conversation got off on the wrong foot."
"What could be the right foot in a situation like this?" asked Bibi. "These are the questions I'd be asking my daughter if she were here. Wouldn't any mother want to know, 'Who is this man and what is his situation?' And 'What besides the wife being on her deathbed was the big hurry?'"
"The holiday bus schedule," said my father. "It was either eight
A.M.
or five
P.M.
"
"I suppose that the silver lining in all of this is that Laura Lee will get first- or secondhand reports on the wife's medical status," said my grandmother. She turned to Bibi. "David's been calling the hospital two or three times a day for updates."
"Because you're close to the wife?" Bibi asked my father.
"Frederica is," said my mother, who was standing in the doorway, one hand in a quilted mitt and the other dabbing a paper napkin at grease stains on her white sweater.
"I used to carpool with her," I said. "Well, not an actual carpool, because we have no car, but she drove me every morning until she got too depressed to drive."
"She was always very fond of Frederica," added my father. "A very gracious and hospitable woman."
"Stop talking about her in the past tense," I cried.
"Critical but stable," said my grandmother. "You keep thinking
stable,
sweetheart, and I bet the next thing we hear is 'Sitting up and eating solid food.'"
Why now? Why after three stoical days did my eyes have to fill and my chin quiver in front of the pitiless Bibi French?
"Frederica," my mother said. "Could you come into the kitchen? I need a hand with the turkey, hon."
"Poultry is Frederica's specialty," my father explained.
Dinner was strained after my grandmother set a conversational ground rule: no more mention of comas or extramarital affairs. Whenever our hostess went into the kitchen for a new course, Bibi would hiss, "What else are you not telling me?" Or "Where do they have their trysts?" Or "What's his house like?" When my grandmother reappeared, our guest pretended to be midway into a benign conversation: snow tires versus chains; white meat versus dark.
Instead of arguing, debating, whistle-blowing, or psychoanalyzing, we made small talk. My grandmother found multiple topics in the heirlooms on display: This Georgian gravy boat, this handmade Belgian lace tablecloth, these monogrammed fine linen hemstitched napkins, would all be mine one day. Bibi in turn summarized the plot of the previous Sunday's
Hallmark Hall of Fame,
which was based on a book she'd once read at Lake George. My mother addressed us on the subject of whether Parents' Weekend, traditionally convened in the fall, should be moved to the spring. My father found his subject on the plate: What elusive herb or inspired spice was sneaking up on him in these succulent creamed onions? In this incomparable cranberry mold?
I felt sorry for me and sorry for my grandmother, who was pretending that Cousin Bibi's presence wasn't a terrible mistake. Everything felt wrong. At Curran Hall, I could pick up my tray, plead homework or piano practice, and escape. Dinner for a mere five, in private, felt claustrophobic. Without a crowd—those thousand sisters I liked to disparage—I found myself miserable. It was the first time that I felt the separation from Dewing so acutely, and I longed to get home.
M
RS. WOODBURY DID NOT DIE
. She came home on New Year's Eve, a ghost of herself, confined to a wheelchair and to the second-story bedroom previously shared with her husband. The dean of students announced at a welcome-back assembly that Mrs. Grace Woodbury had suffered a stroke, which sounded right to anyone who had seen her wan, half smile or the rolled towels that propped her slumping body into an upright position. Next, Dean O'Rourke asked my parents, planted in the front row of the auditorium, to stand. Professor Aviva Hatch would be acting housemother at Ada Tibbets Hall while Professor David Hatch would honorably and capably carry on as houseparent in Griggs. Then, to the astonishment of the one thousand girls in attendance, Dean O'Rourke announced that Miss Laura Lee French, not present that morning, would be acting in the newly created role of emergency hostess to the president, due to the incapacities of Mrs. Woodbury and the urgent social requirements of a college president.
We convened a family meeting the minute I arrived home from school, both parents waiting and pacing in the dorm lobby. They said there were so many issues here, so many unilateral actions to
be grappled with, that their heads were swimming. "Is it time we resign?" I asked.
They motioned that our discussion called for privacy. My mother, with a firm flip of the welcome sign to its
DO NOT DISTURB UNLESS FOR EMERGENCY
side, led us into our apartment and to the sofa beneath our dour portrait of Mary-Ruth Dewing.
Aviva announced, "We can't resign. They have the right to reassign us in an emergency, and apparently this has been declared exactly that."
"Rest assured that we know every codicil by heart," said my father.
"Why you?" I asked. "Why not another couple with less seniority?"
My mother couldn't help looking proud. "It's
because
of our longevity. Dean O'Rourke told us off the record that your father's unblemished seventeen-plus years as a houseparent—he actually used the word 'housepère'—gave the college utmost confidence in him as the first male to carry out the duties solo."