“You know there are only boys at Clarendon, right? No girls.” Molly sounded irritated. Maybe she was insulted that Todd wanted to go to college where she couldn’t.
“They may get girls,” Rebecca said. “My mom’s friend says they’re working on it right now.” She waited to see if Molly was going to say something about the women’s meeting and the radicals and Commies, but Molly only nodded through her cigarette smoke.
“Cool.” Josh smiled up at Rebecca.
She wished that she and Josh were sitting next to each other, but this was okay. She took in the mild day, the chickadees chirping in the tall pines around them. A few minutes later she felt headachy and nauseated, and she lay back on the cold granite, put a hand to her forehead.
“You okay?” Molly asked.
She nodded. “Just a little sick to my stomach.”
Josh got to his feet, and stood peering down at her.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Is it—are you feeling—because, you know, we’re in the cemetery and everything—” Molly didn’t finish.
This moment always cropped up sooner or later. She’d catch a look as it went between two classmates or two teachers: We feel sorry for this girl, don’t we? Or else someone would look at her for a second, then quickly turn away. She knew what that meant: I know about you. You’re different, tainted now. She just wanted to be normal, but normal kept slipping away. She was always going to be sad. She was always going to be weird.
“What do you think it’s like inside the frats?” she said instead of answering Molly.
“Kath and Lacey have gone to one,” Molly said. “They went to KA and told the guys they were from Gilman Junior College. Lacey’s friends buy pot from a guy there.”
“What was it like?” Rebecca asked.
Molly shrugged. “Kath said it smelled bad. They didn’t stay long, just had a beer and checked things out and then left. It’s no big deal, everyone from the high school goes to the frats all the time. Kath says the trick is to go when it’s not a party weekend. If it’s just a regular night, a weeknight or a Sunday night, you can walk right in and hang out, and no one cares.”
“What if we did that?” Todd asked.
“They’d never let us in, dumbass,” Josh said. “No one would mistake us for college guys.”
“What are you, chicken or something?” Todd said.
“No, man. I just don’t want to get beat up by some big college guy, some hockey player, you know?”
Rebecca laughed at the thought of some giant college hockey player pounding Josh into the ground, but they all turned to look at her like she was crazy. “Sorry, it just sounded funny. I don’t want you to get beat up, either.”
* * *
Late morning on Monday, the reference room at its quietest, Virginia ticked through another Peale biography, this one from the ’40s. Half her brain reviewed Friday night, replaying her absurd stop in the frat—she kept hearing her own stupid voice, We could go in for a minute, see what it’s like. Virginia had encouraged Louise’s drunken outburst because of her own momentary wish to see what the young people were doing in there. She had to think of something, some way, to help Louise.
She turned her focus back to the Peale brothers’ biography. Despite the mentions in the index, Sarah Miriam Peale was peripheral—only a niece, only a daughter—to the brothers’ story. Virginia felt a sudden strong desire to get away from Westfield. If she could hole up in the archives of the fine arts academy in Philadelphia, she might track down a few more of Sarah’s portraits, most of which had disappeared into homes and attics, never exhibited. But she needed money, time, someone to stay with Rebecca—she couldn’t do this. She was still doing everything wrong. She closed the book, releasing its dusty-mold smell, and rested her head on her forearms.
“Coffee? I’m going to the stacks,” Jeannette said—there was a coffeepot in the staff room outside the stacks. Virginia lifted her head to nod.
Jeannette returned with the coffee, which was cooked down and stale, and she asked about Virginia’s research. Virginia told her about the rough list she’d made of the known portraits and still lifes. It felt like a mountain range stood between her and the rest of the portraits. And she wanted to tell Jeannette about how she might have wrecked things for Louise. But the less said, the better.
“You’ll get there,” Jeannette said, her confidence unwarranted. “One thing we know how to do is research, so we’ll research grant money to cover your travel. I’m sure it’s out there.”
Grant money. She was so lucky to have Jeannette as a coworker. “Thank you, Jeannette. Where would I be without you?”
Jeannette laughed. “Hey, did I tell you my chapters came?” After the women’s meeting, Jeannette had called one of the Boston women, wanting to volunteer. The women’s collective was revising their health booklet, and Jeannette had signed up to help edit the new version. The one good thing to come out of that meeting, Virginia thought.
She was still musing over the hidden portraits and Jeannette’s confidence about grant money for travel when Henry Jernigan passed by the reference-room doorway. She hadn’t seen him since the Spring Sing. At the doorway, Henry stopped, then waved vigorously, as if he were ashore and she at the rail of an ocean liner. At the desk a minute later, he exclaimed over her presence in the library—he hadn’t known she worked here. His springy hair was cut short so it wasn’t as flyaway as before.
“I’m sorry I left you hanging at that Spring Sing mess,” he said, once she’d explained about her new job. He’d already apologized on the phone, had told her how he’d gone home to pack ice into a plastic bag, and when he’d returned only the janitor remained. “I meant what I said about getting dinner,” he said. “To thank you.” She said she’d call him when she got home, and they’d make a plan.
* * *
In the afternoon, June called five minutes after Virginia had hung up the phone with Henry Jernigan, and she told June about this upcoming dinner date, Westfield Inn coffee shop, nothing fancy. But as soon as the words left her mouth she knew she should have said nothing. “It’s not that kind of a date, it’s just that he’s new in town, new to Clarendon,” she amended.
“Oh, no, Ginny,” June said. “No, no, no! It’s way too soon. And hey, you never sent a thank-you note to Mr. Burgess for the interview, and it’s been three months.”
“How—how do you even know that? And why do you call him Mr. Burgess?”
“Force of habit, from the boys,” June said. “You’re missing the point. Any dolt knows to send a thank-you note after a job interview. I can’t think how they’ll ever want to hire you now.”
It had been all Virginia could do to put that interview behind her. Now she told June about her new job, which she should have done weeks ago.
But even now, June was stuck on the idea of Virginia moving back to Norfolk. “Anyway, it’s too soon for you to go on a date. Wait a year, at least.”
“It’s not a date. He just wanted to thank me for—” she didn’t want to get into the strange Spring Sing breakdown “—some volunteer work I did for the college.”
“I just mean that you need to stay quiet after such a big—after any big loss. Not make any big decisions and all that.”
“It’s just dinner. It’s not a big decision.” Virginia changed the subject, asking about June’s two boys, both at UVA.
June pinged between her usual brags and laments about her sons, and then returned like a terrier to her usual refrain, “Marnie thinks you’d be happier down here. Momma too.”
“I don’t want to talk about any of that, Junie,” she said. “At least, not until after my dinner date.” At least tweaking her big sister still felt okay.
June let out a growl. “You never, ever listen to me.”
“I listen. I just don’t agree.” She said goodbye, and went to put in a load of laundr
y. Talking with June had perked her up, had distracted her from her own foolish behavior. She called Marnie to complain about June, and she let herself listen to Marnie’s gossip about Norfolk, soothing and inane.
Chapter Sixteen
Three days later, Virginia and Henry Jernigan made their way through the lobby of the Westfield Inn, silent. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say; they’d used up all their conversation on the five-minute car ride here. To her left, in the inn’s parlor, some older alums and their wives had gathered for drinks, and she could hear one of the men talking and then a noisy spasm of laughter. All those old couples together for fifty years—she’d never get to have that. Oliver wouldn’t, either. The familiar pangs of loss and sorrow struck her. See, you’re doing it all wrong, Ginny, June would say. She probed those pangs, felt again the lack of Oliver, the dull ache of him being gone. She’d made yet another mistake, walking into the inn with a strange man. She should be home with Rebecca; she should make a nice meal for Louise, who was in limbo, waiting for her hearing.
“Hellooo...” Henry called, as if from a distance. “I do that too sometimes, just get lost in whatever I’m thinking about. Used to drive my wife crazy.”
“Oh, sorry,” she said.
“My ex-wife, I should say,” he said. “We got married right after college. She left me four years later when I was just about finished with grad school. She got sick of waiting.”
Not what she’d expected. “I’m sorry about that.”
He smiled, his eyebrows furrowing so he looked sheepish. “It was a long time ago. She’s happily remarried, three kids now.”
“Well,” she said. “That’s good, I guess.” She sounded insipid. She turned and led the way to the coffee shop, where the lights had been dimmed in an attempt at atmosphere, but better to eat in the coffee shop than the inn’s hushed dining room with its acres of carpet, its white tablecloths and silver domes covering the dinner plates.
At the table—he hadn’t pulled out her chair for her, the way Oliver used to do—they stared at each other, and then at the menus. A waiter appeared and said that martinis were on special tonight. “Okay,” she said to the waiter. “Why not.”
“Me too,” Henry said. “Two martinis.” When the waiter disappeared, Henry leaned forward. “So, about that time I ran into you at the A&P,” he said. “I—uh—I’d realized that I’d never said anything to you about Oliver, about your loss, and then I went and did the same thing at the singing competition. That was inexcusable. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” She considered whether to offer some platitude, but instead asked about his work. He began to talk about how he’d wanted to do physics undergrad, that math had been a fallback. He’d done a little work with computers at Cornell, and now he spent a lot of time working with the mainframe. “It’s pretty exciting stuff, at least for me.” Their drinks arrived and they ordered their food, and once the waiter had left them, Henry returned to his computer talk. She listened, with a dizzying sense of being back in college, of following the old mantras—find out what he’s interested in, let him take the lead in conversation, because men are interested in women who are interested in them!
“...and of course even more useful in broader economic studies, let’s say, studies of employment patterns or voting patterns or hospital usage. Honestly, it’s going to be transformative.” He took a breath—he’d been talking too fast, like an excited kid. She smiled and nodded, pretending to be fascinated.
He pushed at his glasses. “I’m sorry, I know I tend to go on and on about things. It’s something I’ve always done.”
She laughed, then covered her mouth to hide the laugh, so as not to seem insane. “I—I—you see, I was thinking just now about the rules for dates that we learned when we were young.” He looked at her with alarm. “Ah, that is, the main rule was to always ask the guy about whatever it was he liked, you know, car-engine repair or football, or whatever he was interested in. To keep the conversation going.”
“And you were doing that with me just now,” he said. “Were you?”
“Sort of, but I didn’t need to—I mean...” But she sounded cruel, as if she were admitting that he’d bored her, and she’d only pretended interest. They were interrupted by the arrival of her codfish cake and his chopped steak, and they ate for a few moments without talking. She’d hurt his feelings. But this wasn’t a date, it was only an outing, to give two lonely neighbors something to do on a Saturday night.
“Okay.” He set his fork down. “So what if the rules went both ways? Why do they only go one way?”
“Pardon?”
“You said, the main rule was to ask the guy about his interests, right?”
“Right.”
“And the assumption is that the girl, the woman, has no interests, at least none worth talking about. Why is that?”
All those magazine articles she’d read as a teen, all the things she’d heard from June and Marnie and Seventeen were about the boy: what he liked, what he wanted, what he was interested in. She felt herself blush at the obviousness of that belated realization. Had her own interests been so inferior? “You’re right, of course, but—”
“So! Let’s hear them.” He leaned back in his chair—they were waiting for their maple sundaes now—and smiled. “You’ve got interests. Car-engine repair, am I right?”
She laughed and told him about her abandoned dissertation, about Copley, and how she hoped to begin again with Sarah Miriam Peale.
He asked her to tell him more, and she tried to describe what she’d learned about Sarah Miriam Peale. “The thing is, it all feels new, like I’m uncovering something that hasn’t been studied to death,” she said. “I want to know how she did it, how she got all those commissions as a young woman so long ago. People actually hired her.”
“Because she knew what she was doing.” He made it sound like a given.
“Well, yes, and the family business was portrait making, so she had that. Still, she was a working artist a very long time ago.” Now she found herself talking, speculating about Sarah Miriam Peale’s influences, the materials she might have worked with, how she might have handled portrait sittings, bossing Philadelphia gentlemen about—stand please, no, sit down, sir. She’d been talking for ten minutes without a break, and she stopped.
“Think what I would have lost if we only went by those rules you talked about before,” Henry said. “I wouldn’t have learned anything about those artists, or your work, or the thinking you’ve done about it.”
“You’re kind to say so.”
“Is that a rule too?” he asked. “To tell someone he’s kind?”
She laughed and shook her head no. “I talk too much,” she said.
“Me too,” he said. “Generally at the wrong times.”
“Do you like Westfield?” she asked. “It’s such a small town, and isolated. And the winters, you know. They’re long.”
He took a bite of his maple sundae, tilted his head to one side. “Still getting used to it,” he said. “But I don’t mind the winter, I like the snow.”
“Me too,” she said. “Do you ski?”
“A little cross-country,” he said. “Maybe one of these days I’ll try downhill skiing.”
She told him about her ski accident, how the football had hit her head, her fall. The ankle that remained puffy, aching in the middle of the night.
“You’re braver than I am,” he said. “Maybe I won’t try downhill skiing after all.”
Maybe she could tell him about Louise’s strange situation, her tenure getting questioned, even the women’s meeting that had caused all the trouble, and he would have something to say about all that. It might be nothing like what Oliver would say. Would have said.
But instead they were talking about the movie Downhill Racer. That was the last movie she’d seen with Oliver, and they’d had a fig
ht when they’d gotten home. Oliver had enthused about going skiing in Switzerland, and she’d replied that it would be too expensive, and the high altitude could be tough and maybe he should lose some weight first, because what if—And he’d said, Oh, come on, it was only a pipe dream, Virginia, and could she at least let him have that, and did she need to criticize him at every single turn? And she’d stomped upstairs because he was so sensitive and angry lately. Oliver had been troubled for months before he died, and she’d barely noticed.
“I guess you didn’t like the movie very much, huh?” Henry said.
“Oh, right. No, it wasn’t my favorite.” A thought struck her, and she spoke before her more careful other thoughts could drive the first thought away. “Do you want to see a movie some time?”
“Is that one of those rules?” he asked. “Just kidding. Sure, a movie would be great. I haven’t seen a movie in months.”
On the short drive home, they talked about the Spring Sing and the nonsensical brawl. “You’ll think me a fool, but it never occurred to me that anyone would be against coeducation, least of all the students,” he said. “There were only a few girls in my classes at Cornell, but they never had any trouble, at least not academically.” Her looked her way, caught her eye.
“It seems obvious, doesn’t it?”
“I heard that Weissman had to meet with the trustees a couple of times to reassure them that our boys aren’t complete dopes,” he said. “Makes me wonder if Weissman’s job is on the line.”
Virginia felt another prick of loss; Oliver would have shared such inside information with her, and she’d have speculated with him on Weissman’s motives and whether he was about to be fired. “It’s funny how the least bit of protesting turns the campus on its ear. The girls have a legitimate cause. They’re so much braver than I would have been.”
“Maybe the protest and the boys fighting, and that women’s meeting have gotten the trustees’ attention.”
“I was at that meeting,” she said. “I was one of the—I helped to plan that meeting. And Louise Walsh has gotten into trouble over it, which seems terribly unfair.”
The Wrong Kind of Woman Page 20
