by Amanda Brown
“Everything was normal, at first,” Elle began after Margot served them her famous pink Margotitas with a pink crazy straw. “We were at the Ivy and the mood was perfect. The Cristal had just been poured when Warner basically told me: ‘Elle, when I start law school, I think we should stop seeing each other.’ Boom! Moving off to Stanford Law School, and he told me he needs to find someone more ‘serious.’”
“‘More serious!’” Margot huffed with her pouty MAC Glaze lips. “What’s that supposed to mean? Serious about what?” she asked.
“I don’t know what it means!” Elle said angrily. “That’s what he told me. He said, ‘Elle, I’m ready for someone more serious.’ Just like that. I think maybe he’s grown out of this”—she motioned around the room—“this scene…and out of me!” Elle wiped a stray tear as Margot poured more pink slush from the blender.
“Who the hell does he think he is?” Margot demanded. “There is no better girl, no better Delta Gamma, no better wife for Warner Huntington III.”
“Right!” agreed Serena. “When did he decide that he was too good for Miss June?” Serena mocked. “You were certainly fine for him at his all-important Sigma Chi rat-frat parties.”
Elle had been Miss June on the USC calendar for three consecutive years. She was president of Delta Gamma and of the Intersorority Council. She had practically invented her major in sociopolitical jewelry design by merging technical classes at the architecture school with sociological research on tribal ornamentation and feminist critiques of beauty myths.
She remembered Warner’s pride when she won homecoming queen last October. She was driven around the stadium in her own BMW convertible, the white car glittering with freshly painted USC war stripes, draped in crimson and gold as Elle and homecoming king Warner Huntington waved from the car.
“There are way better guys around here than Warner, Elle,” Serena said. “You know how Javier is dying to date you.” Serena’s ex-boyfriend Javier was moneyed through his family’s investment firm, which had wisely bought California’s largest cement manufacturer and celebrated enthusiastically after every earthquake.
Thinking about Serena’s sloppy seconds made Elle cry harder. Her perfectly tanned shoulders shook with every sob. “I was just positive Warner was going to propose to me tonight! I feel so humiliated!” She looked sadly at her left hand. “I thought the Huntington Rock of Gibraltar was mine for sure. You remember the Rock? The family six-carat?” Margot and Serena nodded solemnly. “Why would he tell me about that ring if he wasn’t going to marry me?”
“Elle, he’s such an operator,” Serena said. “I don’t mean to say I told you so, but he doesn’t care about anything other than himself and his résumé.” Warner was president of the student senate and had been a first boat rower in prep school and a pitcher on USC’s baseball team, which had played in the College World Series the previous spring. Warner often joked about how impressive his college résumé would sound when he ran for president, but he was only half joking.
In fact, Elle remembered, when she wanted to bring Warner down a peg, she would gently mock his political ambitions. “Oh, Warner,” she would coo, “you have the makings of a great vice president.” This would infuriate him. The second son in his family, he had come west primarily because he didn’t want to follow his older brother to Harvard. He was tired of running second.
“Wasn’t his grandfather a senator or something?” Margot asked.
Elle nodded, sipping her drink. “Mmm-hmm, from Connecticut. For like fifty years or something.” Warner had often told Elle that family tradition would lead him into politics and that public service was a Huntington family legacy. His Grandmummy Huntington was DAR Newport, Rhode Island, a grande dame with tremendous influence over her family since the death of Warner’s grandfather three decades earlier. She never let Warner forget that his blood ran blue.
“I should have seen it coming when Grandmummy Huntington came to L.A. for Warner’s birthday last month,” Elle conceded. “Warner hasn’t been the same since. Grandmummy ignored me through the entire dinner and then, as she was leaving, told me that I reminded her of Pamela Anderson!”
“Ewww! Pamela Anderson!” Serena and Margot said in unison. That was the ultimate insult.
Underdog hopped up on the couch, and Elle tugged his soft ears and stared into his devoted deep brown eyes. “You still love me, Underdog,” she cooed to him as she fixed the pink satin bow attached to his rhinestone collar.
Chapter Five
Elle’s tears gave way to resolve as she and her two best friends worked late into the evening devising plans to bring Warner to his senses.
Elle decided around 3:00 A.M. that she would go to law school and beat Warner at his own game. Decided, maybe, after one too many pink Margotitas. Tequila-induced or not, the idea stuck. If Warner was going to Stanford Law School to find someone “serious,” he was going to find one serious Elle Woods.
Elle spent the rest of the fall semester in hibernation, studying for the Law School Aptitude Test, which she had scheduled to take in January. Everyone attributed her social disappearance to her breakup with Warner.
Three months later, Elle was positively beaming as she emerged from the LSAT. Not only were the required sections a breeze, but the extra section, “Logic Games,” allowed her to use what she considered to be one of her greatest strengths: abstract organization. Ever since high school Elle had been a whiz at seating arrangements for parties, saving events that could have been diversity disasters without her strategic social skills. She was famous for the dinner parties to which she would invite sorority sisters with open rivalries or roommates on the outs. She partnered talkers with listeners and athletes with beauties, with dazzling success.
So when she encountered the silly time-zone puzzles in the “Logic Games” section she finished four minutes ahead of the clock. Nothing on the exam came close to approaching the subtleties and entanglements of Elle’s social world.
Days after the exam, Elle sauntered into her mother’s contemporary Los Angeles art gallery on La Brea. The walls had been sponged in rich vegetable-dye pigments and covered with deep brushed metal. The redwood-stained floor shone, and the lighting in the gallery was set to flatter her mother more than the art.
“Kiss noise!” Elle’s mother said when she saw her. Elle leaned across her mother’s desk and they exchanged air kisses to avoid smudging each other’s artfully applied makeup.
“Mother, I’ve got some news that may surprise you,” Elle announced nervously as she settled into a comfortless straight-backed chair.
“Oh, darling! You’re finally marrying Warner!” Eva guessed. Elle had always told her mother everything, but hadn’t had the guts to tell her about the awful October night when Warner dumped her. She knew her mother would be devastated. Although her mother ran one of L.A.’s most successful galleries, she had always told Elle that a woman’s most exalted achievement was in landing a moneyed husband and maintaining a successful marriage.
“No, Mother,” Elle said, “um, not yet. The news is, I’ve decided not to work in the gallery this fall. I’m, uh, well, I’ve decided to go back to school.”
Eva smiled and turned stiffly back to her work looking at slide submissions from new artists. Elle could sense her disappointment. “Design or film, dear?” she asked.
“I’m going to law school.”
Eva bolted out of her chair. She was teetering from shock in her Gucci stilettos and was afraid she might faint. She quickly reached for her chair, and once she was seated, she stared at Elle for several moments before she could speak. “Law school? What are you talking about? Darling, one must pass tests for that sort of nonsense and—”
Elle interrupted. “Oh, I know,” she said, and giggled nervously, tugging at the quilted Chanel fabric of her pale-pink-and-white checked micromini. “I’ve already taken the test and I think I aced it. It may seem sudden, I know, Mother, but I just totally want to be a lawyer.” She shuffled her perfectly coo
rdinated pink-and-white spectator pumps on the gleaming floor and tried to think of a reason that would satisfy her mother.
“I see,” Eva said. “Have you applied to schools already?”
“Well, of course! I applied to Harvard, and Pepperdine as a backup. And, um, Stanford too, I think.” She paused. “Yes, those three, definitely,” Elle lied. She had only applied to Stanford. After all why would she set foot on a campus that didn’t have Warner on it?
“Well, your father will be devastated!” Eva said. “Do you have any idea how much his medical malpractice insurance was last year?”
Elle thought about telling her about the nobler pursuits of the law that she had recently brushed up on to help her write her personal-essay part of the Stanford application, but decided it would be a waste of time. Ultimately, she would get Warner back and both of her parents would be happy.
In late April, while standing in the foyer of the Delta Gamma house leafing through her mail, Elle found a very thin envelope from Stanford. As was typical for a sunny day, the house was empty. Elle ran up the winding green carpeted staircase to her room, gripping the white railing painted with delicate gold anchors with one hand and holding the letter in the other, praying it was a letter of acceptance. She listed all of her credentials in her head before she opened the letter to try to calm her nerves. She had a 4.0 grade point average, a perfect LSAT score, and tons of extracurricular activities. She just hoped that Stanford had liked her personal statement.
Leaning against the inside of her bedroom door, Elle opened the letter with trembling hands and began to read aloud. Her eyes began to fill with tears of joy after she read the letter’s first sentence. “Dear Ms. Woods, we are pleased to extend a spot to you in our first-year class.”
After graduation Elle moved back to her parents’, and from that day on, with Underdog faithfully at her side, she began the project of becoming someone she was sure Warner would regard as “serious.”
Her first instinct, as always, was to turn to Cosmo for advice. The magazine, ripe with articles with titles such as “How to Make Sure He’s Ga-Ga for You!,” had been virtually foolproof in the past. However, when Serena found Warner’s brother and his bride featured in Town & Country, Elle knew that that was her new bible.
With Glamour and Allure tucked safely under her bed, and Town & Country under her arm, Elle shopped at Laura Ashley, traded in her BMW convertible for a Range Rover, and bought a pair of Oliver Peoples wire-rim glasses (without prescription lenses of course). She began wearing pearls.
In August, after a month of daily six-hour shopping excursions, Elle Woods was ready. She packed her flowery sundresses, tartan headbands, and pink furry slippers, zipped her Louis Vuittons, and headed north with Underdog.
Chapter Six
Elle couldn’t believe how demoralizing the Crothers Dormitory was. Her dorm room was less than half the size of her walk-in closet at home and had a low ceiling, dingy gray walls, and a tile floor of an undeterminable color. A solitary window provided the only light.
Elle looked at her watch and realized she was already late. She left her dorm room and the moving men who were grappling with how to wedge in at least three times the amount of clothing and personal items as the room was meant to hold, and drove hurriedly to orientation. She parked the Range Rover and considered what to do with Underdog.
“Sorry, precious,” Elle said, rubbing the dog’s head. “I’ll take care of this really fast and you can guard the car.” She poured Evian into his pink inflatable travel dish, cracked the windows, turned on his favorite Cole Porter CD, and blew him a kiss as she darted off.
The melee in the courtyard in front of Stanford Law School reminded her of the first day of summer camp. Groups of proud parents stood around cooing to their embarking prodigies, who brandished dreadful “Hello My Name Is” tags on their chests. Elle thought about her parents, who couldn’t bear to see her “wasting her talents at law school.” Second-year law students worked at tables hawking Stanford Law bumper stickers, T-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, pens, notebooks, backpacks, and shoelaces to eager buyers. Elle declined the opportunity to purchase Stanford Law paraphernalia and looked for an alphabetical line to guide her, but Stanford had a markedly different organization than civilized activities like sorority rush.
“If you went to Harvard, pick up your name tag here,” read the sign in front of a crowded table of students pushing each other to get their tags. “If you went to Brown,” a busy table of Euro wanna-bes beckoned, “pick up your name tag here.” The MIT/Cal Tech table was teeming with PowerBook-flourishing techies and Trekkies. The Smith table resembled a NOW convention of “Before” candidates for beauty makeovers. Elle approached the “State Schools, except Penn, which really is Ivy” table with a nervous glance, uncertain whether the University of Southern California actually counted as a state school. There was no name tag for her there.
Drifting past the sign for “Cornell, which is not really an Ivy,” Elle felt a creeping sense of horror. Maybe the acceptance letter had been a joke, a terrible mistake. At the far end of the swarm stood a single card table with the sign that she knew was meant for her alone.
“If you went to Santa Monica Community College for summer school, pick up your name tag here,” read a sign at a table so distant it was the equivalent of being seated by the kitchen at Lutece. Nobody was staffing this table, on which lay Elle’s lone sticker with her name and an orientation schedule anchored by a rock. “Very funny,” Elle said, blushing. She had passed her math requirement at Santa Monica but certainly didn’t count it as her alma mater. She shoved the hideous name tag into her Prada bag and departed quickly for a second row of tables.
Pushing past people from among whom Blackwell would have found it impossible to pick out the ten worst dressed, she found a relatively calm-looking woman who wasn’t accompanied by her parents or carrying a PowerBook, and asked her if she knew where she was supposed to go next.
“I don’t know.” The woman looked her up and down and gave an uninterested shrug. “I’m waiting for my fiancé.”
“Thanks.” Elle moved to a nearby table and surveyed its collection of pamphlets on date rape, drug and alcohol abuse, and sexual harassment. The table workers were also aggressively distributing brochures for psychiatric care at Stanford. A lengthy pamphlet on substance abuse among graduate students was shoved into Elle’s hand from the un-manicured clutches of a do-gooder.
Finally, making her way to an unoccupied wooden bench, Elle sat down to read her orientation schedule for the following day.
Tuesday:
9:00 A.M.—10:00 A.M.
Registration
10:00 A.M.—12:00 P.M.
Book Purchase
12:00 P.M.— 1:30 P.M.
Westward-Ho “Bar”-b-que
1:30 P.M.— 3:00 P.M.
Campus Tour (including Law Library)
3:00 P.M.— 5:00 P.M.
You and Others: Meet and Greet
5:00 P.M.— 7:00 P.M.
Dean’s Welcome
7:00 P.M.
Pizza Party, followed by “Bar” Revue
“Barbaric,” Elle said and groaned. As if greasy pizza and a “Bar”-b-que, where they were likely to serve Sloppy Joes, weren’t bad enough, the schedule covered every minute of the day with law-themed activities. How could she even begin to color-code her closet (pinks first, of course) before classes began on Thursday? She thought of Underdog and decided to beat the scheduled book-purchase rush the next day and go straight to the bookstore.
Elle returned to the Range Rover, grabbed Underdog, and hurried to the bookstore. She located the Law section by approaching the already familiar crowd of beaming, chattering parents. While Stanford med students and engineers had their own bookstore on University Avenue, law books were sold on the bottom level of the campus bookstore, a dingy dungeon with a gray-lit stairwell and linoleum floors. Elle had naively thought that she would beat the long lines by arriving ahead of the preprint
ed schedule for book buying. No such luck: dozens of law students, eager to get an edge on their classmates, were staring lustfully at the casebooks they would soon own.
Elle gathered her unwieldy casebooks, twelve in all, thinking how inconvenient they would make vacation travel, and took her place behind yet another set of proud parents and a law student whose stiff demeanor and signature J. Press uniform of khakis, a white shirt, and a navy blazer left no doubt that he had gone to Yale and had never ventured outside of New Haven for shopping trips.
An MP3 player and sunglasses would have been a good call, thought Elle as she tried to ignore the student’s father loudly reminiscing about his days at Harvard Law. An MP3’s volume couldn’t have gone high enough to drown him out, not even if she had played Kid Rock. Elle soon learned that his name was actually Mr. Daniel Baxter III. Tripp, to his friends, as he was greeted by an old Princeton classmate whose pants were sprinkled with alligators and whose belt was embroidered with tiny Princeton crests. His daughter was starting Stanford undergrad, he told Mr. Baxter, with a hearty pat on the back and a quick mention of what he had shot at the club last week.
Baxter’s son, a poor imitation of his father and probably his grandfather before him, smiled and nodded at appropriate times as his father boomed his thoughts like a drill sergeant. “Anne, doesn’t this remind you of when we took Edward to Choate? And then Yale? A heavyweight rower and an all-American squash player!” Tripp Baxter broadcast, punching Edward on the shoulder. Elle’s classmate must not have been the first son, since his mother addressed him not as “Daniel” or even “Dan” but “Edward.”
