Sorority Sisters (16 page)

There is a short hallway that connects a first-floor bedroom to the kitchen: a maid's room, by my definition, but it is a nice room with a full bath attached. The room has two windows that face impenetrable woods, as far as I can tell. There isn't a neighboring house in sight.

Karen puts my suitcase on the floor next to the bed. The headboard is tiger maple, the bedspread is butter yellow, and there's a russet and tan braided rug. Karen looks at me in both accusation and humor. “Well. That was fun.”

“Karen,” her mom says disapprovingly. “Do you have everything you need, Laurie? There are fresh towels in the bathroom, and toothpaste. There's also a new toothbrush, in case you forgot to pack yours.”

“Yeah, because you're not using mine,” Karen says.

“I think I remembered mine,” I say, trying not to laugh at Karen, trying to keep the joy of this inside, where no one will see it and it won't embarrass me. I'm a weekend guest here. I'm not a long-lost cousin.

“I'll leave you girls, then. The lemonade is ready whenever you want it,” Mrs. Mitchell says, smiling at me before she leaves the bedroom.

I look around the room and peek into the bathroom. The bathroom has a yellow tile floor and yellow tile wainscoting; above the tile the walls are painted ivory. There is a big window next to the toilet and wooden shutters on the window. The towels are white and thick. It's a very happy-looking bathroom, very playful in a spare sort of style. My bathroom at home looks nothing like it.

“What do you think?” Karen asks me.

“It's great. I love it,” I say, saying far less than I could say, and far less than I want to say.
I want this
, is what I want to say.
I wish this could all be mine.
I can't say that. I don't think Karen would understand, even if I could make myself say it.

“Once you get changed, I thought I'd drive you around town, show you my high school, just for the pure thrill of it, and then I could drive you by Miss Porter's if you want. Tomorrow I thought we could go swimming at Barkhamsted. Then tomorrow night, would you like to go to the Chart House for drinks? I could call some of my high school friends if you want, or we could go alone. Whatever you want. We could drive into West Hartford to shop or see a movie, or both. Really, it's up to you. What sounds good?” Karen asks.

Every bit of it. Small-town life in the trees, a family home with an actual family in it, lemonade in the kitchen, and swimming in the local lake. I feel like I'm in an Andy Hardy movie.

“It all sounds wonderful,” I say. “Can we do it all?”

Karen laughs. “Sure! Get changed and we'll get going. But first, lemonade with my mom.”

“Of course,” I say.

Karen leaves me alone to change, which feels odd to me. We live in each other's pockets at ULA, four or five girls in a room the size of this one, sharing a bathroom with eight to ten girls; privacy is not possible and it becomes a thing barely remembered by October. But this is June and we've been apart, so the old rules, the pre–Beta Pi rules, have reemerged.

I miss her. She didn't need to give me my privacy. I keep my shirt and change into white shorts, following Karen's lead. I slip on white sandals and fluff my hair. My lemonade awaits. I feel almost giddy.

I follow the sounds of female voices down the short hallway from the bedroom to the kitchen. The room has a large mullioned window looking out over the wooded backyard; there is a flagstone patio next to the house, a huge oak tree on the edge of the lawn, and a tire swing twirling gently in a negligible breeze. The kitchen table is a huge oak circle with a thick pedestal base and it's next to the big window. The working part of the kitchen is U-shaped, with the sink at the base of the U and facing another window into the backyard. There is also a window box with red geraniums gleaming in the summer sun. The room is large, open, and wallpapered in a lemon yellow and white plaid, Blue Willow serving dishes hanging on plate hooks on the walls. On the long wall that leads into the dining room and, I think, the family room, there is a series of family photographs. I walk to that first. It's irresistible. Family photos in the family kitchen. Of course. How right that is.

Mrs. Mitchell and Karen stop talking when I enter the room, their faces open and smiling as I walk to the picture wall. The black-and-white photos are mostly of Karen: Karen's first Christmas; Karen's first day of school; Karen in her Brownie uniform and missing one-third of her teeth but still smiling enthusiastically; Karen going to the prom.

I stop at that picture, struck by it, studying it, shocked and struggling not to be.

Karen as a teenager in her prom dress, a pale halter dress that does her figure justice, her dark hair long and softly curled and tied back with a small ribbon near her face . . . Karen with a different nose from the one she has now.

“Here's your lemonade,” Karen says, getting to her feet, bringing the lemonade to me, trying to pull my attention away from the photo.

I turn, smile, and take it. I take a sip and smile its goodness and my thanks. I walk to the table and try to think what I should say, or whether I should say anything at all.

“I don't suppose Karen told you,” Mrs. Mitchell says, “but she had her nose done right after she graduated from high school.”

Karen flinches slightly, a tightening of her spine and her mouth, but then she smiles and shrugs, looking at her mom as her mom keeps talking.

“Doesn't she look better? She's always been an attractive girl, in an unusual way, but her nose was rather enormous, and really, it's such a simple thing to have taken care of. She looks so much better now, don't you think?”

I have no idea what to say. I stare at Karen, lost for a response.

Karen saves me.

“I couldn't wait to have it done,” she says. “I hated my nose.” Mrs. Mitchell nods vigorously. “It didn't even hurt, though I couldn't go swimming for a few months afterward.”

“A few months of nuisance and then, poof, you're done with it and you look so much better as a result,” Mrs. Mitchell says. “Of course, it's not something we talk about, but it's not really a secret either. There's nothing shameful about cosmetic surgery. It's changed so many lives for the better.”

I nod and sip my lemonade.

“I look at it the same way I do orthodontia,” Mrs. Mitchell says, getting up and walking to the sink. “If you have crooked teeth, you get them straightened and no one thinks a thing about it. Karen had braces, too, and there's no shame in that.”

Karen grins a huge grin, showcasing her teeth.

“You never went to an orthodontist, Laurie?” Mrs. Mitchell asks me. “Some people don't need it—lucky them—but if you do need it, it's so nice that it's so readily available.”

“I didn't, no,” I say, pressing my lips together. My teeth are slightly crooked, both top and bottom, but I don't have an overbite or an underbite.

“You're one of the lucky ones, then,” she says, washing tomatoes in the sink, water droplets spraying around her arms, the geraniums glowing in the sun. “Though I think nearly everyone could do with a little improvement. You might think about having a consultation with one, just to be sure that everything is as it should be.”

“I suppose so,” I say, looking at Karen. Karen knows I didn't get my teeth straightened because my parents didn't arrange for it and I was never home long enough for them to do so. I was away at school, and my teeth were away with me.

“Mom, we've got to go,” Karen says, saving me again. “I want to drive Laurie around before dinner, see if we can find any cute guys at Lums.” Karen laughs and gets to her feet, pulling me with her. “Bye, Mom! We'll be home by six.”

“Bye, girls. Have a good time. And run a comb through your hair! You never know who you'll run into, and you want to look your best,” Mrs. Mitchell says, still at the sink with the tomatoes.

As we walk back down the flagstone steps to Karen's car, I'm fumbling for the appropriate thing to say, not sure there is one, yet certain that I should say
something
.

“I didn't know,” I say.

Karen chuckles, a nervous sound, and says, “That's okay. Actually, that's good. I don't want it to be obvious, and it
is
kind of a secret.”

“Okay. I won't tell anyone,” I say as we both get in the car. After Karen has backed out of the driveway and started down her street, I say, “Do you mind my asking . . . did it hurt?”

“Nope. Not a bit. My mom told me it wouldn't and she was right, as usual.”

“That's good. Did you always want to change your nose? You've got a cute nose now, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Karen says, winding through her neighborhood, the sunlight skimming her arms and neck, throwing her profile into sunny relief. “I did. I always hated my nose. If I could have lived life like Bazooka Joe, my sweater pulled up over half my face, I would have.”

“Always? That must have been miserable.”

“Well, maybe not always. It just seems like always when you're waiting for the surgery. I thought I'd never be old enough. You have to be eighteen,” she says, looking at me. “You have to have stopped growing. Where do you want to go? We could cruise for cute guys.”

“That sounds good,” I say.

“I spent half of high school cruising for guys,” she says with a grin.

“You dated a lot in high school, didn't you? You always had a boyfriend.”

Karen shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Why did you think you needed a new nose? I mean, it's not as if the guys thought there was anything wrong with the way you looked.” Karen shakes her head, a twisted smile on her face. “I'm sorry,” I say. “This is none of my business.”

“No. It's okay. I don't mind telling you.” She brakes for a stoplight and looks over at me. “I think I was about eight years old; I might even have been seven. Some kid at school—I can't even remember if it was a boy or a girl—said I had a big nose. I still remember how confused I was by that, how I couldn't even see where that came from. So when I got home I asked my mom if I had a big nose. You know what she said?”

I shake my head, staring at her. The light changes and Karen slowly accelerates, the trees a blur of green as we pass them on the winding road.

“My mom said, ‘Well, it
is
rather enormous.' I'll never forget that moment. Never. I remember everything about it. I looked at my face in the mirror after that and I hated what I saw. I hated my nose. I hated . . . everything.”

I can't think of what to say to that. I can't even grasp what I should think.

“I think you're pretty,” I say. “I like your nose.”

“Yeah, the new one's okay. The old one was a disaster,” she says, grinning at me, humor and gaiety and warmth shining out of her eyes just like always.

But it's not just like always.

“I can't believe your mom said that to you,” I say, angry on her behalf.

“Oh, no, she was right,” Karen says. “It was too big. I look better now. I'm glad she was honest about it. It would have been worse to have her lie and tell me my nose was fine.”

I was right. I don't even know what I should think.

Karen

–
Fall
1977
–

Monday nights in a sorority are unlike Monday nights anywhere else. I haven't done the research on this, so it's technically a guess, but still, I know it has to be true.

Sorority house Monday nights are full of requirements. One: you have to be there. If you can't make it, you're going to need a doctor's note, which is just barely an exaggeration. Two: you have to wear a dress and just generally look nicer than you normally would for eating a normal meal. Three: you have to use your best, most polished manners. To do otherwise will result in public humiliation of the most ritualized sort, and that's no exaggeration. Four: you have to attend the chapter meeting after dinner, which is truly an exercise in endurance and self-control. I mean, come on, I don't think the Bataan Death March was much worse than the Monday Night Dinner and Chapter Meeting package.

That might be a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one.

“I don't think I have a clean dress left,” Laurie says, running into the room, dumping her books on her desk.

Laurie and I are in a second-floor two-way this semester. Diane is rooming with Lee in a two-way next door to us, and Ellen has a room to herself since she's the president.

“I've got a skirt you can borrow,” I say, tying my belt around my waist. I'm wearing my striped cotton dress with the wrap-tie waist. It wrinkles if you look at it, but it will look good enough to walk into the dining room. After that, all bets are off.

“Thanks, but I think this will work,” Laurie says. She shakes out a pair of dark gray gauchos a few times and yanks them on. It goes okay with her white cap-sleeved T-shirt. She sits on her bed to pull on a pair of Frye boots.

“You're going to die of the heat in those boots,” Diane says. “It's got to be eighty degrees today, which puts it at one-twenty in the chapter room.”

“I'll try to snag a seat next to Jenny Van Upp in the chapter meeting and sweat all over her,” Laurie says.

“Good plan,” Diane says. “Mitchell, we're going to plant ourselves downwind.”

“Roger that,” I say. “We've got five minutes. We need to get down there.”

They keep roll and you get dinged if you're late. Monday Night Dinner is just one thrill after another.

“Hey, wait a minute,” I say. “Are those new? When did you get diamond studs?”

I rush across the room, careful not to trip on the popcorn machine cord, and take a close look at Laurie's ears.

“Saturday,” Laurie says, smiling slightly, brushing out her hair. “I figured I wasn't going to let Joan Collier one-up me.”

“They're gorgeous,” I say. They are, and they're bigger than Joan's. If you're going to one-up someone, you really have to, you know, do it. “How big are they?”

“Half a carat,” Laurie says. “I went to the diamond district downtown.”

“I'm going to kill you in your sleep—you know that, right? You've had fair warning,” I say.

“I'll be sure to mention that at your trial,” Diane says.

“I'll split them with you,” I say to Diane.

Diane grins. “I'll be a very uncooperative witness. They won't get a thing out of me.”

“Deal,” I say.

Laurie just smiles and keeps brushing her hair, her eyes closed.

Laurie has never been what you'd call raucous, but since Pete married Barbie last summer, she's been more reserved than ever. She's just sort of still, inside and out. It's not a bad way to be, if it happens naturally or from the womb or something. But this isn't natural. This is heartbreak and lost hope and dashed dreams and all that other stuff the best poems are about.

Naturally, we don't talk about it. Laurie is a very private person, and besides, what is there to say? The guy she was crazy about married someone else; plus he strung her along before he did it.

No, there's nothing to talk about. In fact, since I think I might be in the same position, I
really
don't want to talk about it.

I haven't cheated on Greg again, not since I was home for the summer, though I've been tempted a few times. Oh, I've flirted a few times this semester, but nothing came of it. I didn't want anything to come of it either, just to get that straight. I love Greg. I'm not going to mess this up. Still, it seems like it's getting messed up all on its own.

Greg has not proposed, not formally. It's getting to be kind of a thing, actually. I mean, I've been dating him since before I became a Beta Pi, and all the Beta Pis know him, and we've been to nearly every party and now we're seniors and . . . nothing.

“You look really nice tonight, Karen,” Laurie says. “Any special reason?”

See? That's what I'm talking about.

It's at the Monday Night Dinners that girls get pinned and engaged. Nearly every Monday night, especially in the spring, there's this heightened tension, wondering if it's going to happen, and to whom.

“Yeah, the reason is that this is my last clean dress,” I say. “You know I'd tell you guys.”

“You'd better,” Diane says, buckling her cream high-heeled sandals as she sits on the edge of my bed. Diane is wearing a dark green wrap dress with a pale beige geometric design on it. She looks as gorgeous as usual. I've gotten used to it.

Diane hasn't dated since the debacle with Doug Anderson. She's gone on dates, but she hasn't dated. That jerk really blew her up. We all hate him—deservedly so, right?

Definitely.

What is it with guys that sleep with you and then . . . nothing?

Greg again. He says he wants to marry me, that he's going to marry me, but he hasn't actually formally proposed. Don't think I haven't asked him about it because I have. I want the ring ceremony at Monday Night Dinner. I want the date set. I want to start planning things with my mom.

My mom doesn't say a word. Well, she tries not to, but a few choice words slip out. Greg has met my parents a few times; the most recent was last year when they came to the West Coast for a week's vacation during spring break. They met Greg before we all went on a driving trip up to Monterey to visit a friend of my mom's from college. It wasn't just the few words about Greg my mom tossed out, but my dad's total silence on the subject. That combination was chilling, and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to fix it. I've sung Greg's praises; they're deaf to it.

Some days it feels like I'm the only one out of all of us who wants us to get married.

I know he loves me. He tells me he loves me, though not very often. I tell him I love him a few times a day, but he says he doesn't like to “wear it out.” Like telling a girl you love her ever gets old and worn-out. I don't even know what he's talking about. I always tell him I love him, like shaking salt on French fries, the more the better, and he'll occasionally tell me he loves me, like he's sprinkling diamond dust every time he has to say, “I love you.”

I can't understand what's going on. He says he loves me. He tells me he wants to marry me.

Okay, then, marry me.

I actually thought being a senior was going to be less stressful than this. All it would take is a little diamond ring to make everything all sparkly and bright. And safe. I want to feel safe. Being married will make me feel safe. I don't know why that's true, but it is. I want to get married. I've always wanted to get married.

That may not sound very modern, but I don't know anyone, any girl, who doesn't want to get married. I guess we're supposed to blame that on Cinderella and Doris Day movies, but I don't believe that. Being married, sharing your whole life with someone, someone who loves you, who promises to love you forever and then actually does it, that's in the bone. That's not a dream you can blame on Walt Disney. As to blame, why blame anyone? Being married, being loved, those are good things. Wonderful things.

Greg sees that. He wants what I want. He says so, but not as much as he used to.

“I'm ready,” Laurie says, grabbing her cigarettes. “Let's go.”

We go down the back stairs, the stairs closest to the kitchen, and there's the usual Monday night mob. We stand around on the stairs, waiting for it to clear once the dining room doors open and we can go in and get seated. From my perch eight steps up, I can see Mrs. Williams, our house mother, coming out of her room on the first floor, making her way down the hall. Mrs. Williams, at a guess, is about ninety-two years old, and I'm basing that entirely on the way she wears her hair. She wears it in a 1930s kind of style, gray, of course, but how old are you when you were in your prime in 1936? She's nice, quiet, soft-spoken, and unobtrusive. A watchdog, guarding our sterling moral fiber, she's not. Naturally, part of Monday Night Dinner is being lovely and gracious to Mrs. Williams, taking turns sitting at her table—no one really wants to sit at her table for obvious reasons. It's a real conversation killer, even if she is only seventy-five. My grandmother, who's eighty, has more zip than Mrs. Williams.

How does a woman end up being a house mother? Because she never got married and has nowhere else to go in her golden years?

Not being engaged is ruining my senior year and warping my psyche; I think that's pretty obvious.

We start down the stairs, one slow step at a time, like a wedding procession, and squeeze into the dining room. Ellen is already in and is standing next to Missy and Lee at one of the tables in the middle of the room. She lifts her head in hello and invites us over with her eyes. Laurie, Diane, and I dutifully obey her silent summons, slinking through the crowd until we get to their table.

We stand behind our chairs, sing the song that starts dinner—yes, a song—and then, once Mrs. Williams has taken her seat, we all sit and start the first course: salad and a roll. The dining room, a large room full of circular tables and long windows on one side, curtained since the only view is to the side of the AG house, is done in shades of white and blue and yellow. The whole house got redecorated in the summer of 'seventy-six, turning it from a scrambled-egg blend of dingy white and golden yellow into a crisp, smart, new space of white and navy with accents in lemon yellow. It looks amazing now; I really love it. Very fresh and clean-looking. I'm just not a fan of white and yellow; that's been well established.

“I heard the Zetas got a new hasher,” Ellen says, shoving her roll away from her. Ellen never eats her roll, or her butter. The butter is sliced and sitting in an artful array of ice chips. Yellow and white again. It's everywhere. “He's supposed to be gorgeous.”

Our hasher comes into the dining room at that exact moment, looking sweaty and overworked. His brown hair hangs in oily clumps against his shiny forehead. His white coat is covered in old stains and new. I have no idea what his name is. Hashers serve and clear and clean. They don't speak, or I've never heard ours speak. Being a hasher is the lowest job on earth. It's hard manual labor and, to the girls in the sorority, you're invisible. Is there anything worse than being invisible to the opposite sex?

No. There is not. No amount of money is worth that.

“Why can't we ever get a gorgeous hasher?” Diane says.

“Like you'd be able to do anything with him if we did,” Lee says.

The hasher arrives at our table and we all lean back in our seats so he has clear passage to take away the dirty dishes.

What must it be like to be the only guy in a house full of women? He is, literally, the only guy. Of course, he has to come through the back door, stay in the kitchen, and is only allowed in the dining room to clean up. He's not here for very long either. A sorority is a female-only domain, unlike anything else I've ever experienced. It's actually sort of relaxing, in an emotionally charged kind of way.

The hasher rushes through the rest of the room while we all talk, the noise level in the room rising, and then the main course is served: chicken and rice and peas. Monday Night Dinner is the best meal we get all week. The door to the kitchen, a big, sunny room, opens off of the butler's pantry, but it's strictly off-limits to us. I mean that.

Anyway, during the rest of the week, we eat a lot of tuna salad. I mean, a
lot
of tuna salad. Sometimes Melba, the day cook, will mix it up and we'll get taco salad. The thing is, with all the bike riding to class and my unpaid job cleaning Greg's apartment and then all that salad, I've lost quite a few pounds. Ellen practically wants to hit me when I complain about the starvation diet they have us on, so after saying something in a chapter meeting about how we could, once in a while, have lasagna, I haven't said another word about it. But I'm down to a size five, and when I joined Beta Pi I was a size seven. Pretty soon I'll be shopping in the toddler department.

Greg hasn't said a word about me dropping a size. I don't think he notices that kind of thing. He, on the other hand, has gained more than a few pounds since we started dating. And I'm the kind of person who notices. I'm not sure what that says about me. Maybe just that I'm more observant about the person I love.

“How's Craig doing, Missy?” Diane asks.

“He's fine. He's thinking of quitting the water polo team,” Missy answers.

“No kidding! How come?” I ask.

Missy shrugs. “He's sick of all the traveling, all the workouts. I think he's seen three football games since he got here.”

“Bummer,” Diane says. “What do you think? Do you think he should quit?”

Missy shrugs, leaning back in her chair. She's eaten half her chicken, all her rice, and none of her peas. “I don't have an opinion. He can do what he wants.”

“How's it going with you guys?” Ellen asks.

Missy and Craig have a volatile relationship; they started hot and heavy, had a fight, broke up, got back together a week later, were hot and heavy for a couple of months, had a fight, broke up, got back together the next day. I think their last breakup and makeup was over the summer; it's been quiet since then. Still, with them, you never know.