Ten Girls to Watch (12 page)

This was getting worse and worse. First, she was announcing that she and Robert had collective tastes. And then she was making me sound like a collectible you could carry around in your pocket. Any minute now someone was going to comment on how well I cleaned up.

“I think you should send Dawn to the new immigrant party,” Robert said. “Or maybe the hip-hop superstar party. Or wait, is there a party for people with aliases? That one would definitely do the trick. DJ McJammin, meet Kelly Burns.” I peeked at the wine bottle across the table and noted both that it was sitting right next to Robert and that it was totally empty.

Rachel skated right past the Kelly Burns comment, which must have sounded like pure gibberish to her given the gibberishy ring it had even to those of us who knew about my pen name. “If she didn’t find anybody she liked at the first party,” Rachel said, “we’d start by sending her to another party along the same lines but with new people. And if that still didn’t work, we’d put her in our wild-card group.”

I didn’t want to go to any parties. I just wanted to go home.

“So, let’s sign her up and see,” Robert said.

“Wait, don’t I have to consent to be signed up?”

“Come on, it’ll be an experiment,” he said. “You can write an article on it.”

I rolled my eyes. “About 482 people already wrote that article.”

“Then you can write one of your little stories about it.”

Lily interjected, “I can’t believe you just called them ‘little stories.’ They’re
not
little stories.”

So Lily was sticking up for me now? Had I said anything to Robert directly, he would have said, “You’re so sensitive. Why are you so sensitive? You need to be more confident. If you were more confident, you wouldn’t care what anyone said. You know who’s successful? Confident people.” Like some
Glengarry Glen Ross
lecture he was warming up for the pretzel salesforce. And I would have gotten increasingly angry in the back-and-forth, and he would have retrenched even further into his position, and then I would have started crying, and then we would have broken up. I knew, because we’d performed almost that exact script more than once.

“Stories, short stories, great stories,” he said, responding to Lily.

She gave him a slight approving head nod, and just like that we moved on. No escalation. No tears.

“But I agree with Robert,” Lily continued. “I think you should do it, Dawn. It’ll be interesting.”

“Fine,” I said. Partly because of the wine, and partly because all of this—the back-and-forth, the eagle-eyed watching for signs of Robert and Lily’s blooming love, the attempts at conversation with Rachel—had dispirited me. I said fine to be done with it.

Lily clapped, and not like she was happy to be pawning Robert’s old girlfriend (of whatever significance) off on some men from the Internet. Like she thought it was actually fun. “Done! We’ll sign you up tonight!” she cheered.

Robert smiled at Lily, clearly admiring her enthusiasm.

Rachel, on the other hand, looked annoyed, or, rather, like a person who had been annoyed at some point in the past, a point that had corresponded perfectly with a swift hit to the back that froze her face that way. She’d then been covered in a fine glaze and put in a kiln overnight to set. She was the perfect annoyance-themed mannequin. It had, after all, been a full minute since Robert, or anyone for that matter, directly attended to her.

“So Rachel,” I said halfheartedly, “Lily was telling me that you and her sister were roommates during college?” This turned out to be rather weak as far as annoyance interventions were concerned. Rachel barely registered that I’d said anything at all.

Lily hadn’t missed the glassy Miss Texas look either, and being the gracious hostess that she was, she decided to rescue us both. “My sister was saying you just came back from a big trip to, was it Argentina?”

Cue Rachel’s interest in showing off, obviously much greater than her interest in roommate stories of yesteryear.

“Oh, we went to the most amazing wineries,” she cooed. And then she proceeded to extol the virtues of Argentina’s terroir. The Andean watershed, the altitude, the Malbecs!

After dinner I could have escaped, but a sort of pious perversity bound me to the evening, like I was a saint, praying for more arrows to mortify my flesh. We all retired to the living room, where Robert steered us toward his all-time favorite topic: celebrity doppelgängers. He had long been convinced he was a dead ringer for Hugh Grant, and based on his belief, he brought up celebrity doppelgängers whenever possible, then just waited for the Hugh Grant comments to roll in. The slim percentage of the time they did gave him enough fire to carry on till the next go-round. There was a certain something about the lines around his eyes, his flouncy hair, his longish face, but dead ringer? If the ringing were so high only dogs could hear it, maybe.

Lily said I reminded her a little of Cate Blanchett, which I thought was very nice. Feeling a strange flare-up of reciprocal generosity, I gave her back a Kate Beckinsale even though it was only vaguely true. And then Rachel announced that she sometimes got Hilary Swank.

After Rachel wished us all good night, Robert said to me, “Stick around and help us do dishes.” His voice was warm, like the night had been familial and fun and he hated for it to end. Lily added, in the exact same entreating tone, “We still have most of that last bottle we opened to finish . . .”

Was I the only one who hadn’t been happy tonight? But I’d come in the first place. I’d stayed all evening, despite my misery. So why would I start listening to my feelings and leave now?

Robert sudsed up a large pan that, I knew from last winter when I’d adventurously roasted a pheasant for his birthday, fit only awkwardly in his dishwasher. Lily sat on the counter with a glass of wine in her hand. I leaned against the cupboard, closer to the door.

“More like Hilary Skank,” Lily said, guffawing, apropos of nothing.

My eyes widened into round plates. The gracious hostess turning on her guest?

“Oh, come on,” Robert said. “She wasn’t at all skanky. Why is that the first thing women say when they want to criticize each other?”

“Robert, I appreciate your righteous feminist attitude,” Lily replied earnestly. “You’re right, she’s not Hilary Skank.”

So maybe Rachel wasn’t skanky, but her laser focus on Robert and nothing but Robert hadn’t engendered my affection either. I appreciated that Lily had noticed and commented on it. “More like Hairily Rank?” I offered.

Lily cackled again. Robert folded his arms, like a stern father preparing to chastise his overly rambunctious offspring.

“Fine, I was just trying to rhyme,” I said. “But Robert, didn’t you notice that the only person she was remotely interested in was you?”

“What can I say?” He unfolded his arms and kissed his biceps.

“Verily Stank?” I interjected, to no applause. “Okay, fine, that’s a stretch. Anyway, I think she’s one of those women who doesn’t know how to interact with other women. They’re the women who say things like ‘I just get along better with men,’ when what they really mean is that men pay attention to them because men pay attention to any woman who is remotely attractive, whereas women are discriminating. If you suck, we don’t want to be friends with you.”

“Exactly,” Lily said.

“Exactly,” I echoed, reaffirming Lily’s affirmation of me.

“But Rachel is friends with your sister, right, Lil?” Robert said.

“Actually, more roommates, less friends.”

“Why did they room together?”

“I think it was just a softball connection.”

“Maybe she just likes men better because men are more fun,” Robert said, flashing a showbiz grin.

I kissed my biceps and nodded. “That must be it.”

When I finally gathered my things and moved toward the door a few minutes later, Lily asked with concern, “You’re taking a cab home, right?”

I nodded, though of course I wasn’t planning on taking a cab. A cab from the Upper West Side to my house might have been, what, forty dollars? I didn’t know exactly, but I knew it was more than I had. Before Lily, on the nights when I’d stay late at Robert’s but feel compelled to sleep in my own apartment, Robert had started out trying to force cab money on me. His face twisting with distress, he’d hold twenties out to me. “Just take the money,” he’d say. And I’d flatly refuse. Robert taking me to dinner was one thing. Robert handing me cash felt like another. And besides, there was some pleasure in my showy refusal.
We aren’t all pampered, we aren’t all coddled,
I felt like I was saying, as if I were hardened and streetwise. Though whatever pleasure I took always faded over the course of the hour-plus I spent getting home on the subway late at night. After too many failed attempts, Robert had stopped holding out the cash. He’d taken on a resigned, withdrawn look, a take-your-chances, I’ve-done-all-I-can look, as if I were a recidivist junkie.

Tonight, he smiled pleasantly and waved me off, which turned my heart to sinking lead. His fussy, irrational worry for my safety had meant he cared. And just like that, the light blinked off, and his concern was all elsewhere, in his apartment, with Lily. The door closed and they retreated inside together while I waited for the elevator to come. I barely nodded at the doormen as they pushed the revolving door for me.

Ellen Poloma,

Northwestern University, 1970

_________

THE PROBLEM SOLVER

Ellen loves the lab. A top-of-her-class biochemistry major at Northwestern, she plans to attend medical school after graduation. She’s gained hands-on experience already, volunteering at a free clinic in Chicago. But even though she enjoys patients, the scientific aspects of medicine are her favorite. “I’m addicted to solving puzzles,” she says.

Chapter
Five

L
abor Day approached, and at work in the basement again, with still no signs of anyone in the building but me and Ralph and no repeat visits from Secret Agent Romance, I took deep breaths of cardboard-scented air, stretched my dialing fingers, and began making phone calls in earnest. I spoke with Stephanie Linwood, a 1969 winner who became a lawyer and told me about staying in a boring job at a real estate law firm in New Jersey for almost a decade after law school before landing a position as counsel for a fair housing advocacy organization, then becoming a professor of housing law and urban housing policy at NYU.

“We get so used to thinking success means one thing,” she said. “Like you can take a snapshot and see if you have it. It’s not like that. It’s your whole life, and you have years and years to work with. I always want to tell young people, don’t be so hard on yourself. Life is long. Be patient.”

Years and years to work with . . .
The years and years part sounded daunting, but in general these were words that made me want to holler “Amen!” Being a pale girl from the Pacific Northwest, I did something more like nod and blink vigorously as I clutched the receiver, my eyelids acting as windshield wipers to whisk away the sudden mist.

“I’ll tell you,” I said when she finally paused, “as a young person I really appreciate hearing that.”

“Well, it’s true! Take it to heart,” she answered.

In addition to being slightly crooked, my nose troubles me by turning red anytime my emotions rise. For what I was sure wouldn’t be the last time, I thanked my lucky stars that this was a phone interview and that my nose could glow Rudolph-bright in this basement without a soul to see it.

After Stephanie Linwood, I talked with Kirsten Nantz, a 1982 winner and graphic designer who became one of the country’s foremost creators of new fonts. She told me that she knew she’d made it when she started throwing away invitations to events that were printed in her fonts. “For the first couple of years, every time I got one I saved it. It was this rare thing, and it felt like I might never get another. But then, I remember, it was actually a birthday card from my insurance agent, I was thirty-eight, and somehow I was finally confident that this wouldn’t be the last card I’d get with my font. Throwing that card away was a real personal milestone.”

After that, I tracked down Ellen Poloma, who was now the Chief of Pathology at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. I told her she was one of the first winners I’d come across, working my way from the fifties forward, who’d gone into medicine. “I bet that’s right,” she said. “When I went to medical school it seemed like this outrageous thing to my family. And there were only a few women in my class. I felt like a trailblazer.”

She told me a little about her job, the slides she examined, how fascinated she was by cell tissue, but when I asked about her life outside work, she grew much more animated. Turned out, she had two things she wanted to discuss. First, Randall; second, Japanese hair straightening. She and Randall had been married for just four years. “I thought I was
never
going to meet the man of my dreams.” She drew out each word with drama. “Little did I know I just had to wait for him!” Ellen and Randall had just returned from a trip to Antarctica, and while we continued talking, Ellen whipped off an e-mail to me, attaching a few photos of the two of them in pounds of coats, crouching near penguins. Then she moved us right along to her hair.