Sorority Sisters (9 page)

Karen

–
Fall 1976
–

We took Ellen's car, and Ellen drove the whole long way up I-5 from LA to San Francisco; her dad said she was the only one insured for the car, but I think that car insurance actually insures the driver, and my dad does work at Aetna so I know a little bit about insurance. Really, just a little bit because insurance, no matter what my dad says, is pretty boring. Anyway, Ellen drove, weaving in and out of traffic until we got into the San Joaquin Valley, because then, except for big trucks, the traffic really faded away. The San Joaquin Valley, which I was very excited to see since it's the big valley in
The Big
Valley
—that cute western show with Lee Majors and Barbara Stanwyck (I've been a fan ever since my mom made me watch
The Lady Eve
)—is actually flat and hot and boring. It's nothing but mile after mile of crops. I fell asleep, and when I woke up an hour later, it was still crops. I wasn't actually sure we'd moved, but Laurie, sitting in the front seat, promised we had.

Eight hours. It took eight hours of pure driving to get from the sorority house in Los Angeles to Laurie's house in San Francisco. I'm not counting the hour of potty breaks, one in Bakersfield, planned by Ellen, and one in Fresno, demanded by Diane. Diane has a small bladder and she's not afraid to use it. Then there was the time we got lost for a half hour trying to get on the I-5, Ellen swearing, Laurie calmly trying to direct her, Diane laughing, and me trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. I don't do detours well, in life or in traffic.

“Where do we park?” Ellen asks Laurie.

“Yeah, 'cause I've got to go again,” Diane says.

“Again? You just went in Fresno!” Ellen snaps.

“Your point?” Diane says, crossing her legs.

“She's crossing her legs,” I say. “Better hurry or you'll have a wet spot on the seat.”

“There should be parking on the street,” Laurie says. “There's a spot!”

This is San Francisco, the
real
San Francisco, like in
The Streets of San Francisco
and Rice-A-Roni commercials. I don't know San Francisco at all, so I have no idea where we are, but it isn't the suburbs. Laurie's house, what I can see of it from the backseat, is slapped down on a city street with wide city sidewalks like a giant blob of beige Play-Doh. It's tall, imposing, and has no windows on the street level. What it has on the street level is a black-painted door with a brass knocker. That's it.

Ellen, muttering swearwords under her breath, tries to parallel park a half a block from Laurie's house. Diane and I are silent; we don't want to distract her. Laurie is silent as well, though she looks more pensive than quiet.

The whole, long drive up, Ellen asked Laurie questions about her home, and Laurie, in the nicest way possible, changed the subject. The end result is that I feel pretty nervous about staying at Laurie's house, and that was before I saw what it looked like.

Laurie is
rich
.

Sure, I knew that about her already, mostly from all the things she doesn't say, but seeing her house makes it all very clear. The house, its size and location, practically shouts, “Money lives here!”

Maybe Laurie is pensive about what we'll think of her. My heart melts a little, thinking that.

“How close am I to the curb?” Ellen says.

Diane opens her door a few inches. “Less than a foot. We're good.”

“Seriously. Can I get over any farther? Some monster truck is going to sideswipe me. I just know it,” Ellen says.

“Seriously,” Diane says. “You're good. Put it in park.”

“You're just saying that because you have to pee,” Ellen says, but she puts the car in park.

“They can both be true, Einstein,” Diane says.

Laurie remains silent. I can't stop watching her. She seems so tightly and rigidly still. I'm not like this when I go home. I catapult out of the car, talking nonstop, making my dad laugh and my mom smile. I throw open the door, the smell of home as sweet as warm gingerbread. I run up the stairs to my room, the rightness of it, the pure home of it, pulling me in. Welcoming me.

Laurie looks at her home from inside the car and does none of that. In fact, we all get out of the car before she does.

“What am I? Your baggage handler?” Ellen shouts up to Laurie as she opens the trunk. Laurie drops her head a bit, takes a breath so deep that I can actually see it, and gets out of the car.

“Yeah, but don't expect a tip,” Diane says, grunting as she pulls out her suitcase. We're only up for the weekend, a quick trip to watch ULA kill Stanford on the football field, but we've each packed the largest suitcase American Tourister makes. Of course, these are the suitcases we moved to college with. It's not like we have luggage options. It was either this or a paper bag, and, knowing Laurie, a paper bag wasn't really a luggage option.

“What did you pack? A set of encyclopedias?” Ellen says to me, hauling out my suitcase and dropping it on the ground.

“S through Z. I like to educate myself at all times. Even at football games,” I say. “The genius in me just begs to be let loose.”

“Yeah. Genius,” Ellen says.

“Hey, I got you to get my luggage, didn't I?” I say.

We all laugh with nearly grim determination at that, all except Laurie, who's smiling distractedly, her gaze on the front door. No one has come out to greet us. Is that what's bothering her? My mom would have been hanging on the mailbox, counting the minutes until I came home. Ellen, Diane, and I stare at one another in confusion and concern, and then stare at Laurie, who will not stare back at us.

It's awkward, and none of us knows what to do to fix it.

“What are we doing to do—spend the weekend on the sidewalk?” Ellen says, throwing an arm around Laurie's shoulders. “You can invite us in. I promise, we won't spill anything on the carpets.”

“Speak for yourself,” Diane says, pressing her knees together. “My bladder and I will make our own arrangements.”

“Let Diane sleep near the litter box, okay?” I say. “Give her a stuffed mouse and she'll be fine.”

Laurie grins for the first time since Fresno, looking at each of us in turn. It's a moment that passes in an instant, a quiet, sunny moment of thanks. It's gone before I can even smile my response to her. Maybe we do know how to fix Laurie. Maybe we're the only ones who do know how. Or maybe we're the only ones who care enough to try.

I look at the front door of her house again, closed and silent against us.

“Do you have a key or will the butler let us in?” I say.

“The maid will,” Laurie says softly.

Not her mom or her dad. The maid. And here I thought I was kidding.

The maid, a middle-aged woman with graying brown hair and a heavy bosom, lets us in. She has a warm smile for Laurie and a pleasant smile for us. I smile back, not really sure of the protocol; I'm just following Laurie and hoping for the best.

We follow the maid up the mahogany stairs to the main floor. The mahogany stairs continue up and up, winding regally into the upper reaches of the house; it's that colossal sort of staircase, the kind with heavy banisters, the kind of staircase that looks completely at home in a Tudor castle, and I base this on years of watching Hollywood movies that have given me a clear picture of old American money with European sensibilities. I was never sure if that was an accurate picture before now. Now I'm sure.

Beyond the staircase, there's a view of San Francisco Bay from huge windows along the back of the house. My gaze goes to that instantly; it's a bolt of light and air in a dark stained wood interior. We're all standing there, looking out at the view, not moving a muscle because we haven't been invited to, when Laurie says, “And these are my parents.”

I turn abruptly away from the view. To my right is a stately library with a big fireplace, and in front of the fireplace are two fat chairs, and in the two fat chairs sit an older man and woman. They do not rise.

This strikes me as odd, but I don't know what to do. I stare at them. They stare back at me. They both have gray hair and blue eyes and fair skin, his skin a bit ruddy in the cheeks. They look old, very old to be parents.

“Mother. Father,” Laurie says. “These are my sorority friends. Diane Ryan. Ellen Olson. Karen Mitchell.”

I smile. Ellen nods hello. Diane takes a step forward and says, “It's so nice to meet you. Thank you for having us.”

Mr. McCormick nods serenely. Mrs. McCormick smiles blandly. And then they look away from us, staring passively into each other's faces. Diane takes a step back.

“Yes,” I say. “It's so kind of you. Thank you.”

Ellen just stares at them.

They do not stare at us in return.

“Come on, you guys,” Laurie says softly, and she leads us into the room with the view. The maid is gone. I didn't notice her leaving us.

The view of the bay pulls at my attention, urging me to forget Laurie's parents in the next room, to ignore the silence coming from them, to resist the lack of warmth and sound and movement. They are still. The house is still. The whitecaps in the distance on the bay, the swiftly moving clouds racing toward the famous red bridge, the boats like wood shavings being blown toward the green shore all call to me of movement and life. The house, Laurie's house, is silent.

And because it is silent, so am I.

“Amazing view,” Ellen says. “Windy, though.”

Laurie nods.

We continue to stare at the view, silence burying us.

“Is everything okay?” Diane asks. “It's okay that we're staying here, right?”

Laurie nods again, trying to smile. The smile dies before it's even born.

“We can get a motel,” I say.

“No, we're staying here,” Laurie says, still staring out at the bay. “It's fine. It will all be fine. It's just that my parents don't have overnight guests very often.”

“They're shy, huh?” Ellen says.

Laurie smiles briefly and says, “Not so much shy as private. Especially with my friends. Actually, only with my friends.”

“Really, is this going to be okay?” Diane says.

“Absolutely,” Laurie says, turning from the window to look at us. “And if it isn't, they'll get over it.”

“Shit, Laurie,” Ellen says, “we don't want to get you in trouble.”

“You won't. There's not going to be any trouble,” Laurie says.

“You sound like a gunslinger,” I say. “John Wayne in
McLintock!
”

“Do I? Good,” Laurie says. “Though I liked him better in
The Searchers
.”

“Except he was always looking for trouble in
The Searchers
,” I say.

“He was, wasn't he?” Laurie says with a big grin. “No wonder I like it so much.”

“No fair,” Ellen says. “The only John Wayne movie I can remember seeing is
The
Cowboys
, and he died in that one.”

“Hey, the dog died in
Big Jake
. I couldn't believe it,” Diane says.

“And the Indian,” I say.

“The two best characters in that movie, and Big Jake's two best friends. Splat,” Diane says. “What was that line? Everyone keeps thinking Jake is dead, no threat to them, and he keeps saying it when they say, ‘I thought you was dead.' ”

“‘Not hardly,'” I say. “He says, ‘Not hardly.' It's a great line. They couldn't get him, could they?”

“Who couldn't?” Ellen says.

“The bad guys,” Laurie says, looking down at the highly polished floor at her feet. “Come on. Let's go upstairs and get unpacked. We're going to have a great weekend.”

It crosses my mind to say
not hardly
, but I'm afraid it's true, so I don't.

K
aren

–
Winter 1977
–

The 401 Club is on Figueroa and is a complete and total dive. But they don't card, which is how the owner must be making his multimillions. The Four-O, as it's universally called, is at one end of The Row. As they say in real estate: location, location, location.

It's finals week and I've just taken my last final, Oceanography, where I discovered that there was a lab to that class that I didn't know about and never once attended.

For the first time in my life, I
need
a drink.

The outside of the Four-O looks a lot like the inside; it's dark, dirty, run-down, and disreputable. Predictably, there's the slight stench of vomit and urine, both inside and out. Am I imagining that? Maybe. But the ambience of the Four-O is pushing my imagination in that direction.

“Karen. Over here,” a male voice says from the farthest corner on the left. I know that voice. It's Gary Robertson, EE Tau, senior, geology major, destined for parts unknown when he graduates, and the guy I'm cheating on Greg with.

Yeah. I know.

Of course I feel guilty. Cheating is not something I do lightly, believe me. It's just that Gary is so . . . not Greg.

I'm horrible. I'm a horrible person. But that's the truth. Gary is not Greg and, honestly, that's the main attraction.

It's the worst luck in the world that their names are so similar. I've gotten so I don't say either name, ever. I'm just too scared of mixing them up. It happened once and I had to cough like crazy to cover it up. Greg bought me a pack of lemon-flavored cough drops the next day, which is crazy because doesn't everyone like cherry flavored? Really? Lemon? Good thing I didn't really need them.

“Hi,” I say, walking through the gloom toward Gary. He's not alone. I'm not worried about being seen with Gary, because Greg never comes to the Four-O since it's almost exclusively used by those who live on The Row.

Location, location, location.

Gary is sitting with Rob Thompson and Russ Bromley, both ROTC, all EE Taus, and this gorgeous guy with dark blond hair and blue eyes who looks like an angel, if angels looked like well-built, physically flawless men, which I think they might in certain religions.

Gary makes a motion like he wants me to sit on his lap. That is definitely not happening. Gary doesn't exactly know about Greg, but he knows by now that I don't do any public displays of affection. I don't think he understands why, but he doesn't need to know why. No PDA. No exceptions. I smile and walk over to a chair at another table, all set to drag it over.

Angel hops up and says, “Take my chair. I'll get this one.”

“Thanks,” I say. I'm a little breathless, and not from moving the chair two inches. Up close, he's even more devastating. “I feel pretty honored to be sitting at the EE Tau table.”

“Oh, I'm not in EE Tau,” he says.

“He's in ROTC,” Rob says.

“Hi,” he says. “I'm Doug Anderson. Am I still welcome at the EE Tau table?” he asks me with a shy grin.

Doug Anderson. Diane's Doug. No wonder she's crazy about him. My heart flutters the tiniest bit and I say, “I hate to break it to you, but I'm not in EE Tau either. I guess my disguise fooled you.”

“I thought you were sporting a ROTC disguise,” he counters, sitting down next to me, his knee pressed against mine under the table, his blue eyes gleaming brightly. At my puzzled look, he runs his hands over his hair and says, “I think your hair's even shorter than mine.”

“Doug,” I say, running a hand over the nape of my neck, “if you can't say something nice about a girl's hair, not only should you not say anything at all; you should start running before she beats you to death with her shoe.”

Gary snorts with laughter. Rob and Russ hoot and stomp their feet on the sticky floor. Doug smiles sweetly and says, “I didn't say I didn't like it. I do like it. It looks great.”

“Nice save,” I say. “I'll keep my shoe on. For now.”

“Karen! Hi!” I turn to the blast of sunlight coming through the curtain that shields the open door of the Four-O, the sharp line between darkness and daylight quickly narrowing as the curtain falls back into place behind Diane. “What are you doing with the scum of ROTC?”

“Slumming for a free drink,” I say. “No luck yet.”

“I got it,” Gary says, signaling for the waitress.

“Thank you,” I say politely, distantly.

I haven't told anyone about seeing Gary. Greg is my boyfriend. Gary is my secret.

How does Gary feel about this?

I haven't asked him.

Three hours later and the bar is full of people I know well, know slightly, and know not at all. There's something about finals week, some desperate joy mixed with exhaustion. What's done is done. Either you passed or you failed, got the grade or got the boot. Either way, it's over. For a few days, anyway, and then it starts all over again.

I'm cheating on my boyfriend, the man I plan to marry. I always do this, and I don't understand why it always feels so inevitable that I do this.

“You okay?” Laurie asks me, leaning her shoulder next to mine. “How'd your final go?”

“I skipped the lab,” I say, laughing weakly.

“How many times?” she says, draping her arm over my shoulder.

“Every time,” I say. “I don't know how I missed that. I didn't know. I honestly didn't know.”

“If you were going to flunk, they'd have told you before now,” Laurie reasons. “Nobody flunks without a warning shot over the bow.”

“Or a flare fired from the deck,” I say. “Okay. Yeah. You're right. But, Laurie, Diane is having a horrible influence on us, all those naval metaphors!”

We both burst out laughing.

“There is no such thing as too many naval metaphors,” Diane says from behind us. I tip my head back. Diane is standing behind us, holding two drinks, tequila shots by the look of it. “Watch your step or I'll report you.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” I say, still laughing.

Laurie and I are roommates; we're in the two-way in the middle of the second floor, near the back stairs leading down to the kitchen and the dining room. The kitchen, the domain of Melba, the day cook, is mostly off-limits to us. There's an ice machine and a fridge in what I guess is supposed to be a butler's pantry, and Melba keeps a big pitcher of orange juice for us in the fridge. I've always hated orange juice. I don't anymore. I've discovered that if you pour anything over ice, it's drinkable. Hence the appeal of alcohol.

I really am drunk.

I push my empty glass across the table and cross my arms over my chest. I'm done.

“Where's Greg?” Diane asks from somewhere over the top of my head.

“Spanish final at three,” I say.

“Well, hell, it's six now. Isn't he ready to party?” Diane asks.

Diane is always ready to party, and it's one of the things I love about her. Greg, on the other hand, is never in the mood to party, especially not with anyone in a sorority or fraternity—people, it has become very clear to me, he holds in contempt
.
“Born with a
silver spoon in their mouth,”
is something he says often, like every time he walks me home down The Row. Like I'm living with silver spoons.

“He's got an English final tomorrow morning,” I say instead. “I'm sure he's hitting the books hard.”

“Admirable,” Diane says. “From a distance. Too much studying up close . . .” She shudders. “I don't want to catch anything.”

I smile and slink down lower in my chair. It's a hard-backed, hard-seated chair, but when you're a little bit drunk, it doesn't really matter about the chair.

Diane brings her tequilas to Doug Anderson, angel come to Earth, and with much noise and cheers, they lick salt off their hands, shoot the shots, and suck a lemon wedge. Diane holds her shot glass aloft and dances a little dance around Doug, who watches her with a big smile on his perfectly gorgeous face.

She can have him if she wants him, and who wouldn't want him?

“She's got it bad,” Laurie says at my shoulder, her voice low, a thrum against my ear.

“And that ain't good?” I say, quoting some song I can't remember. “It sure looks good to me.”

Laurie looks at me. “How's it going with Greg? You two okay?”

“Fine,” I say, staring down at the tabletop. It's dark, scarred, and stained, like my soul.

More symbols, more metaphors, more similes; and there are only more English courses in my future. I may not survive intact, my brain forever after trained to think in symbols, my sentences burbling out in either iambic pentameter or haiku. Wouldn't Greg love that? The thought makes me laugh, sourly. Like a tequila lemon.

See? Another simile. I'm drowning in them.

“Are you going home for break?” I ask Laurie. I'm not. It's too far. ULA's schedule is unlike any other college schedule; we get a two-week break at Christmas, come back to school for a week or so of classes, then a week of finals. At the end of all that, in mid-January, we get a few days off before spring semester starts. Only those students who live within driving distance of LA go home for semester break. I'll be stuck on a campus that's mostly empty, sitting in my room reading English novels and watching
Colombo
and
Kojak
.

Laurie looks across the room, her gaze scanning the dark corners of the Four-O. Her eyes stop briefly on a group of guys hugging the bar, and then move on. “Missy and I are catching a ride with Joan. We're leaving Saturday morning, trying to miss the Friday San Francisco traffic.”

Laurie lights a cigarette, her gaze going back to that group of guys at the bar. I think they're Rho Delts.

I just keep watching Gary, wondering if anyone can tell that I'm with him, you know, in the biblical sense.

Okay, so I've had sex with Gary. I admit it. I also admitted that I'm a horrible person. That covers all the bases, doesn't it? I'm all about covering my bases.

Greg.

Gary.

Horrible person.

Yeah, bases covered.

Laurie doesn't answer me; she's looking again at the far corner of the bar, smoking her cigarette slowly and casually. But her eyes aren't casual. I look over at the guys she's looking at: three of them, one of them really tall with longish hair. Pete.

“What's going on with Pete?” I ask, tilting my chin in their direction.

Laurie shifts her gaze away from them and reaches across the table to flick her cigarette ash into the ashtray.

“Nothing much,” she says, her hair sliding forward to hide part of her face from me.

“Did you guys have a fight?” I say, looking him over.

“No. We're okay,” she says. “We're just not serious.”

“Oh,” I say. What else is there to say? I'm always serious. I don't date if it's not serious. I don't understand nonserious dating. What's the point if it's not serious?

Laurie shrugs and takes another drag off her cigarette. She's switched from Winstons to Virginia Slims recently, though I don't know why. Living with a smoker when I don't smoke doesn't bother me; my parents both smoke. I'm used to living life in a haze.

I think that was another metaphor.

“He's a nice guy, but we're taking it slowly,” she says. “You want a beer? I'm buying.”

I shake my head as she stands up and walks to the bar, about five feet from where Pete Steinhagen is standing. He hasn't taken his eyes off her since she started moving. She hasn't looked at him once since she started moving.

I know what that means. When a girl is too careful around a guy, it can only mean she really needs to be careful around him.

I don't think that sounds as profound as it actually is.

“Karen,” Gary says. I look up. He's standing next to me, his crotch at my eye level. I tilt my head back and look up at his face. He's got a very nice face. “Do you want to get some air?”

I look around the Four-O for a few seconds, watching to see who, if anyone, is watching me. No one seems to be. Look how careful I'm being. I'm always so careful. I always have so much to be careful about.

“Why not?” I answer, scraping back my chair.

Gary and I leave by the front door, passing Missy and Cindy Gabrielle as they're coming in. We nod and say hello, but Gary is pressing me through, his hand on my back, and so I keep moving. It's dark outside, except for all the streetlights and headlights and taillights streaming up and down Figueroa, and the light over the door of the Four-O, but still, it's pretty dark. And it's cold.

Gary is wearing dark blue cords and a light beige cotton crew-neck sweater. He doesn't look cold. I'm wearing a skintight pair of JAG Jeans and a red V-neck sweater. I'm freezing.

“It's freezing out here,” I say.

“How do you ever make it in Connecticut?” he says.

“I wear a coat. And gloves. And earmuffs.”

Gary smiles, drags me over to a parked car in front of the Four-O, leans his butt against the fender, and nestles me against him, his thighs bracketing mine. I'm not cold anymore.

“You're a great coat.”

My head is tucked under his chin so I can feel the smile disappearing from his face. I tuck my arms up in front of me and press against his chest, nuzzling my face into his neck.

“I need to tell you something,” he says.

“Don't hold back,” I say, kissing his neck.

“I, uh, graduated.”

I lift my mouth from his skin and look up into his eyes. “Are you sure? You don't sound sure.”

“I'm sure. I graduated. Early. This month. I won't be coming back for spring semester.”

He's looking down at me, his hands on my waist, almost like he's holding me tight so that I won't fly into some sort of girly, screaming rage. I mean, why would I do that? He flirted with me, slept with me, and ditched me. It's not like he didn't know he was graduating a semester early three months ago. It's not like he didn't know it two months ago, when I first slept with him. Or three days ago, when I had sex with him in the carrels at Darvey.