"I don't notice you being queen of the hop," said Marietta.
"I get along," I said. "I play soccer in the fall and basketball in the winter. I went to the junior prom when I was a freshman. I'm considered a good kid."
"Congratulations," said Marietta.
"You're talking to a trained professional," I said. "I know what works and what doesn't. So far you've been a disaster, which isn't necessarily bad."
"And why is that?"
"Because if you were homely and pathetic, no one would pay any attention."
Marietta seemed to like that. "And?" she asked.
"First, I'm going to get help from Patsy Leonard, who's in your Spanish class, and pretty much does whatever I ask her to."
"Isn't she a cheerleader?"
"Only jayvee." I hastily explained: It was the culture within her family. It would be unthinkable not to have tried out. She had pinned to her bra the handkerchief that her mother had worn when she was elected cocaptain somewhere many decades ago.
"How touching," said Marietta.
I told her that she shouldn't feel superior to Patsy, whose family was so normal that they could win a contest: two boys, two girls, a mother, a father, two sets of grandparents, and they'd never lived anywhere but in a white house with red shutters as long as I'd known them.
"What does the father do?" Marietta asked.
I walked to the big refrigerator to take inventory and came back with a half-empty platter of smoked salmon and its trimmings.
"I'm waiting," said Marietta.
"He's the manager of a men's clothing store downtown."
"Good-looking?"
Was
Mr. Leonard good-looking? His hair was better cut than any professor's on campus. He was beautifully dressed, certainly, even when he wasn't working, and his shoes were always shined. "
Pretty
good-looking," I said. "Why?"
"I always ask," said Marietta. "Due to the superficial nature of my existence."
I changed my mind at that moment: Sweet Patsy Leonard, deaf to irony, was the wrong missionary to convert Marietta Woodbury to popularity. I asked, "How did you do at your previous school, friendwise?"
"I had friends," said Marietta.
"Girlfriends?"
"All my friends tend to be male."
I said, "If you lived in a dorm the way I do, you'd see what happens to girls who say 'All my friends are male.'"
Marietta blotted her lips with a cocktail napkin bearing the seal of the college and arched her eyebrows above it. "They have a lot of sex?"
I was flattered to be asked a question like that. I said, as airily as I could, "No, just the opposite. They get lonely."
Marietta asked a very insightful and progressive question then: Was she supposed to conform, to lose her individualism, all for the sake of winning friends at Birdbrained High? Didn't she have enough to worry about at home, where she was on display whenever she set foot on campus, where everything she wore or said was fair game? To wit: There had been complaints from some touchy boarders about her not waving, appearing unfriendly, some asinine dorky thing like that. Now her father wanted her to dine at
Curran Hall two nights a week, to sit down at a table with total strangers, introduce herself, then actually eat the food. "Can you imagine?" she asked. "How is a person like me supposed to survive
that
?"
I decided then to stop applauding her princess-and-the-pea routine. I asked, even though I was wrapping smoked salmon around a nucleus of caper and chopped egg, "Where do you think I eat every night? The Ritz-Carlton?"
She had manners enough to backpedal slightly. "I don't mean literally survive. I meant my father's job comes with a cook. Why do I have to eat in a cafeteria? I'll have four years of that in college."
I knew the cook was part-time and suspected that Mrs. Woodbury was farming Marietta out on the nights she had no help. I said, "It's not hard: You walk out your front door, walk a hundred yards, show your ID, and there's dinner. You have two entrée choices, a salad bar—"
"I'll eat with you," she said. "You can initiate the conversations, and I'll throw in the occasional bon mot."
I said I had two pieces of advice: Get there early, and take a brownie the first pass through the line because they go fast.
"What about the company?" she asked. "Is there anyone worth getting to know?"
The first face that came to me was Laura Lee's. "Miss French," I said. "Laura Lee. She's new, too. Not a fan of the dining hall experience. I think you'd have a lot in common. And she'll shoo away the undesirables."
She frowned. "You call the students 'Miss'?"
"She's a housemother."
"How old?"
"Forties," I said.
"Married?"
"Divorced."
"Is she attractive?"
"Quite. Long reddish hair."
"Dyed?"
I said I didn't think so.
"What happened?" asked Marietta.
"What happened when?"
"Who wanted the divorce? The husband or this housemother?"
I lowered my voice, even though we were alone in her empty house. "He came home one day and told her he'd fallen madly in love with someone else and wanted a divorce as soon as humanly possible."
Marietta was helping herself to the pâté with the aid of only her index finger. That declaration stopped her in the middle of a long, disgusting lick. "Completely out of the blue?"
I nodded.
"Has she ever remarried?"
"Never."
"Do you think she ever recovered?"
I said I didn't know her well enough, but I doubted it.
"Does she have a boyfriend now?"
I handed Marietta a piece of bread, a knife, and a napkin. "Why so fascinated?" I asked.
Marietta snapped, "You're the one who brought it up. I couldn't care less about some stranger's love life or ex-husband or her divorce."
When I didn't respond immediately—it seemed like a conversational Möbius strip that began with Laura Lee and turned itself into my father—she asked, "Did the ex marry the other woman?"
I said yes, actually, he did. And that has been a long and fruitful marriage. I stood up and got my books from the kitchen counter, saying I had a test to study for and was heading for the library, which was also a good place to mingle with fellow campus dwellers. At the door I stopped. "I probably shouldn't have told you. No one on campus is supposed to know the details."
She asked eagerly, "Because the ex is someone famous?"
I said no, just a teacher.
"You know a lot," said Marietta.
If I had liked her more, I would have confided that Aviva Ginsburg had been the other woman and I was the fruit of that second marriage. I might have enjoyed saying, "Hold on to your hat. Here comes the best gossip in the history of Dewing College." But I hadn't been a party to my father's first-wife big secret long enough to uncork it with any pleasure. And Marietta was getting on my nerves.
T
O EVERYONE'S EXTREME GREAT INTEREST
, especially mine, Laura Lee appeared to be entertaining a gentleman caller in the parlor of Ada Tibbets Hall. He was a man of the cloth and rather effeminate, traits that were helpful in staving off gossip within our fishbowl. "A family friend," Laura Lee would say in her introductions to Father Ralph Zitka—until the pair moved outdoors and several students witnessed them walking hand in hand across a footbridge that led to a secluded stone bench with a reputation.
Who else but I could take her under my wing and explain the problems inherent in being seen walking with a man in the direction of the kissing bench? This was a women's college, and girls could be mean. I was giving her my advice in the library, sharing a table as I was studying for my U.S. History test, and Laura Lee was reading articles on reserve for Criminology and Penology. If rumors had reached me, a mere adjunct resident, she could be sure that every girl in Tibbets had her binoculars at the ready.
She looked up and asked mildly, "Why should I have to refute rumors that aren't true?"
"Because you're new. Because the administration worries about
appearances. Because parents might hear that you're dating a priest and make a giant fuss."
"Who do you mean when you say 'administration'? Does that include the president?" she asked.
I said probably. Administrators. Those who weren't in any collective bargaining unit.
"Aren't you friends with the president's daughter?"
I said I was. I had to be. She was my age exactly, lived on campus, and went to Brookline High.
Laura Lee said, "In other words, in a sea of girls, you're starved for friends your own age. She wouldn't be your first, second, or third choice of a bosom buddy, but she'll do."
I sighed and didn't answer. I'd discovered over the course of several meals that I didn't need to answer on point. Laura Lee liked to interrogate more than she cared to pay attention to the feedback. Whatever I answered, whatever curve I threw, would become the new conversational starting line. Accordingly, I said, "She has two sisters, both older. One is studying voice in New York."
"How much time do you spend over there?"
I said, "We almost always stop there after school if I don't have sports. They have two refrigerators, and there's always food left over from some reception."
"So you're saying they're good hosts?"
I shrugged.
"But you
do
know the parents?"
I said yes I did.
"Would it be possible, then, casually, maybe over a drink, to say something that would put these rumors to rest?"
I said, "
Over a drink?
I'm a kid. I don't have drinks with anyone, especially the college president. He'd get arrested."
She hesitated. "I didn't mean literally over alcohol. I meant ... when you were having a social moment."
I said, "Why don't you arrange for your own social moment?"
"Because! When do housemothers intersect with the college president? Never."
I asked what I was supposed to say to Dr. Woodbury if the opportunity presented itself.
She closed her eyes and moved her lips silently.
"What?" I prompted.
She opened her eyes and announced, "You wouldn't need to say anything to Dr. Woodbury. You'd be very subtle. One day, maybe walking home from school with the daughter, you could say, 'Have you heard about Miss French and her friend?' To which she'd say yes or no. And then you could say, 'There are rumors flying around about them being a couple, but they're just acquaintances.'"
I said, "People have seen you holding hands."
Laura Lee stared forlornly, as if mourning the loss of my good sense. "Frederica. Do you think holding someone's hand is necessarily a sexual act? Especially if that person is a Roman Catholic priest?"
"Sort of," I said.
"He's human. And going through a difficult period. Just because he's a priest doesn't mean one can't reach out to him."
"How often does he come by?" I asked.
"Not that often," she said. "Maybe every other day for a few hours."
"In the parlor, right? Never in your apartment."
"Absolutely in the parlor. With an occasional visit to my kitchen for a cup of tea."
"Why does he always have to visit you? Why can't you visit him?"
"Because," she began, "his place of residence doesn't have the equivalent of a beau parlor. I'd have to visit him in his room, which Ralph could not explain to his landlady."
"Landlady?" I repeated. "Doesn't he live in a special house for priests?"
"Ordinarily, yes."
"But...?"
"He's currently on sabbatical," said Laura Lee. She returned to her homework for another few seconds, then made a note in the margin. I refrained from saying, No defacing reserve articles. They belong to my mother.
"I'd rather people not know that he's on hiatus," she said.
I asked if priests could
be
on hiatus. Wasn't employment a built-in kind of thing, like housemother?
For the first time, her voice dropped to a whisper. "He's leaving the Church. Need I say more?"
I nodded that she
did
need to say more. Had he been fired because he wanted to date? And what about due process?
"One doesn't just walk out the door," she said. "One applies to leave. The Holy Father has to give you the green light. And priests don't have signed contracts like Teamsters. It's much more"—she made circles in the air with one wrist—"divine or esoteric, or whatever you want to call it."
I went back to my own reading—manifest destiny and western expansion. Before long, her pencil tapped the top of my page.
"In order to squelch this silly rumor," she said, "I'm going to nip it in the bud."
"How?" I asked.
"In a dignified manner. To be announced. Possibly a letter to the editor of the
Daily.
"
I shook my head in a decisive no.
"Then what are my options? You tell me what works around here."
"I can't now," I said, as the empty seats around us began filling up. "In fact, I'm separating the two of us." I moved one table over, my back to her for minimal distraction, and began my chapter for the third time.
Within minutes, she was at my side, asking for a piece of paper. I ripped two from my notebook—even that noise attracted dirty looks. She mouthed her thanks and returned to her place. She returned to drop a folded note on my textbook. I opened it and read, "When do you want to take a break?"
I flashed my fingers in a pantomime that I hoped meant thirty minutes. She checked her watch, made a notation with her pencil, and sent me back a thumbs-up.
Halfway to our appointed rendezvous, a folded note flew from her table to mine. I shook my head—
we don't do that here.
I opened it and read, "I'm thinking about a tea at Tibbets for all the VIPs."
I looked up. Laura Lee was nodding, eliciting my approval. I whispered, "I have to read."
A girl at the next table shushed us. Laura Lee stood up and motioned that we should move to a friendlier corner. I took my wallet from my book bag, motioned her to do the same, and led her past the long oak reception desk and out the front door. It was October and cooler than it had been on my walk over.