Richard had nodded his head, his shaggy hair flopping enough to irritate his dad, and then packed up his belongings for two years in America. His father was right about markets and estate management, but he was wrong about what his son wanted to do with his life. Gentlemanly leisure and the House of Lords were not in Richard’s plans. He wanted more.
When the class bell rang an hour later, Richard gathered up his notepad and pens and looked around for Rebecca. The pretty young woman with the serious face and beautiful blue eyes was already gone, having bolted as soon as the class ended. Richard shrugged his shoulders. At least I know I’ll see her again soon, he thought. We have every class together.
The twenty-one-year-old walked out of Aldrich Hall, where most first-year classes were taught, and headed toward the student center, called Spangler, to grab a cup of tea. He had about thirty minutes before his next class and needed a boost of caffeine to get through the day.
Richard Arrington was pleasantly surprised by the warm weather in Boston, having expected New England to be more like, well, England. He knew the cold weather was coming, but in early September he took off his blazer and rolled up his shirt sleeves to enjoy the sunshine. The leaves and grass were still green on the business school’s campus in the Allston neighborhood of Boston. Red brick Georgian Revival buildings encircled a large grassy quad full of students studying and playing frisbee. The tree-lined path where Richard was walking connected the various buildings – thirty in all – where he would spend the next two years. Behind the quad, Richard knew, was the Charles River. And across from that stood the main campus where the undergraduates lived and learned.
When Richard arrived in the student center, he found he wasn’t the only person needing a pick-me-up between classes. It seemed as if the entire student body was in Spangler. Richard weaved through the crowd to the small drink station near the food court.
“Coffee, coffee, decaf coffee, iced tea . . . where’s the hot tea?” he asked aloud.
A familiar Southern accent spoke out behind him. “This is America, remember?”
Arrington turned to see Rebecca, his classmate, standing with her arms folded and a smirk on her face.
“We don’t drink hot tea,” she concluded.
A frustrated Richard worked to suppress his feelings and keep his cool in front of the pretty girl. “Hi Rebecca. I guess I need to learn to drink coffee, don’t I?” He filled a cup, winked at her, and walked toward the checkout line.
“See ya soon, Becks,” he called out over his shoulder.
FIVE
Rebecca looked for Richard at the beginning of their next class, but he was seated halfway across the room. This professor, unlike their last, had put everyone in alphabetical order. After taking her seat and arranging her class materials – notepad, two pencils, pencil sharpener, extra eraser, and her watch – Rebecca glanced over at Richard and saw that he also repeated his routine from their first class, with a notepad and color-coded pens. She smiled but turned away when he looked at her. Rebecca’s stomach did a somersault and unleashed a flood of butterflies that urged her to look Richard’s way once again.
Miss Lewis focused instead on the papers on her desk, refusing to turn her head to the left at all for the rest of the class. Even when someone else was talking on that side of the room, she still looked straight ahead. Don’t encourage him, Becky, she kept telling herself. Don’t prove Daddy right on the first day of class.
Her father, a doctor in her small hometown of Sandersville, Georgia, was a proud and stubborn man. A man who believed that a woman’s place was in the home. Despite his beliefs, which were shared by many in rural Georgia at the time, Dr. Jefferson Lewis paid for all five of his children to go to college, including his one daughter. Rebecca’s brothers all attended the University of Georgia like their dad, but Rebecca longed for an escape. For city lights and being more than a wife and a mother. So, she headed off to Barnard College in New York City, still separate from Columbia at the time but offering a world-class education nonetheless.
“You’ll never find a husband at an all-girls college,” her father had declared on the day she packed her bags to leave. Four years later, when it was time to drive up to Boston, Dr. Lewis gave her the same speech again.
“I told you, darlin’, that you wouldn’t find a husband at an all-girls college. Maybe you’ll find one at Harvard and finally end all this schoolin’ nonsense. Women need to be educated so they can turn around and educate their children. That’s why I sent you to college . . . I don’t wanna have stupid grandchildren. I didn’t send you to New York for you to put on men’s clothes and get a man’s haircut and think you belong anywhere ‘cept in the home.”
Rebecca had sighed, picked up her bags off the floor, and said “I love you too, Daddy”. The same response she always gave to one of his lectures. He assumed it meant she agreed with him; in reality, it was her way of getting out of the situation as fast as possible. And I don’t have a man’s haircut, she thought. Princess Diana has this same hairstyle, and everyone thinks she looks fabulous.
The class bell rang, and Rebecca realized that she daydreamed through the entire lecture. Shit. We could have an assignment to do and I’d have no idea.
A familiar British accent broke into her thoughts.
“You can borrow my class notes if you’d like,” Richard offered.
“What?”
“It looked like your mind was somewhere else. I’m happy to lend you my notes to make a copy.”
Despite her determination to avoid Richard and her growing attraction to him, Rebecca couldn’t resist his offer. “Thank you so much,” she replied. “That’d be a huge help.”
“In fact,” he said, “why don’t we go over it all during dinner tonight? I hear there’s a great hamburger spot across the river in Harvard Square.”
Rebecca shook her head. “I’m sorry, I told myself I wouldn’t date anyone in my section. It would be too weird after we broke up.”
“We haven’t even had a first date and you already jumped ahead to the breakup?”
“I don’t want to do dinner, okay? I mean, I’ve known you all of what, three hours?”
“That’s the point of a date,” Richard pressed. “To get to know someone better. Besides,” he added with a grin, “I’ve known you my whole life. We must’ve met in Heaven, and I’ve been looking for you again ever since.”
Rebecca’s lips started to quiver, and a sparkle entered her eyes. She snorted, and her hand flew up over her mouth to contain her laughter.
“Why is that funny? I’m serious.”
Rebecca pursed her lips together and lowered her hand from her mouth. “Come on . . . it’s a little funny. Or at least a little corny. You sound like a character in a romance novel.”
“I thought women loved romance novels.”
“Maybe some women. Not me.” She shrugged her shoulders. “All I have time to read are textbooks, anyway.”
Richard picked Rebecca’s briefcase up off the floor and handed it to her. “Does that mean you’re not looking for a guy to sweep you off your feet or rescue you from the dragon?”
Rebecca shook her head and started to walk toward the door. “If any dragons need to be slayed, I want a piece of the action. Why let the guy have all the fun?”
SIX
Rebecca had a smile on her face and an extra pep in her step as she left Aldrich Hall and walked toward her dorm. A breeze picked up off the river and Rebecca pulled her suit jacket tighter around her shoulders. The temperature that day was beautiful for Boston and warm for Richard, but even four years in New York hadn’t changed Rebecca’s Southern views on the weather. Partly cloudy and low 70s was chilly to her.
I’ll warm up once I get moving, she thought. With no classes for several hours, Rebecca was headed to her dorm room so she could change and go for a run along the Charles River. Running was a habit she picked up during college in New York. She loved weaving through the city traffic and parks, feeling the wind whi
p against her face off the Hudson River. Running was how Rebecca best explored a new city, and she couldn’t wait to get to know Boston.
Rebecca was breathing heavier than usual when she took off down the narrow foot path on the banks of the Charles. This is what I get for not exercising for three months, she thought, pushing past the burning in her lungs to travel farther into downtown Boston. It’s also what I get for listening to Mother when she said ‘people don’t run here, honey. It’s strange, and no one wants to marry the strange girl’.
After her college graduation, Rebecca had spent the summer at home in Georgia – three months full of afternoon teas, bridge games, and dates with every eligible bachelor in a fifty-mile radius. The problem was, the few guys she might actually be interested in were off the market: snatched up by their high school or college sweetheart. And Rebecca already had a ‘weird’ label attached to her, having gone up north to a ‘yankee college’. Her mother thought Rebecca was doomed to be an old maid, and her father thought she needed an older, wiser man who could understand her intellectual side. Rebecca rolled her eyes at the memory of her dad’s college roommate, recently divorced, standing on her parents’ doorstep to pick her up for dinner.
Having reached Boston Common, a large park that was four miles from campus, Rebecca stopped running and found an open grassy spot to rest for a minute. They honestly thought I was going to marry someone twice my age with kids older than I am. The date with her dad’s friend was the final straw, and the last few weeks at home had been free of gentlemen suitors. Much to Mother’s chagrin, she thought.
“I refuse to believe that all the men you went out with were terrible. Surely one or two of them had some redeeming qualities.” Rebecca’s mother preached at her daughter the entire time she was packing her suitcases for Harvard. “You know that all men are projects, honey. I’ve been training and refining your daddy for twenty-five years. It’s about finding one worth the effort.”
Rebecca had sighed, rolled her eyes, and continued packing.
“I saw that, young lady. Don’t think you’re better than your mother just because you have some fancy college education.”
The older woman reached into her dress pocket, pulled out a silver case, and lit a cigarette. Her lipstick turned the end bright pink, and smoke billowed around her coiffed hair that was dyed black to cover the gray. Times were changing in the South, but Beverly Lewis hadn’t gotten the memo. Born and bred in Sandersville, Beverly married her high school sweetheart, worked as a secretary while he was in medical school, and threw herself a ‘retirement’ party on the day Jefferson Lewis became the town’s new doctor. Beverly’s life looked almost identical to the one her own mother had lived, all the way down to the weekly schedule: church on Sundays, bridge on Tuesdays, hair on Fridays. She belonged to the garden club and the ladies’ auxiliary, and all housework was handled by ‘the girl’ – an African American woman who was older than Mrs. Lewis and married with a family of her own. Now that her children were grown, Beverly’s sole ambition was to find a husband for her daughter. She couldn’t for the life of her understand Rebecca’s interest in school and business.
“I told your daddy this would happen if he let you go up north for college. You’d start thinking like they do. Forget where you come from.” Beverly took a long drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke high in the air. “People who aren’t from the South like to pretend they’re somehow superior, but it’s really all the same. At a certain level of society, it’s all the same. The only thing that changes is the race of the help. In the South, they’re black. In the West, they’re brown. And up north, they’re white. From all those Soviet countries. The Yankees are the real racists, you know.”
Rebecca continued to pack and let her mother ramble, having learned long ago that interrupting would only prolong the conversation. Beverly Lewis would brook no argument with her views on race, class, and regional culture. And even though times were changing and attitudes in Sandersville weren’t what they used to be, it was hardly worth her daughter’s time to try to change the older woman’s mind.
Some views stick around until the people who hold them die, Rebecca thought. Looking out at Boston Common and the beautiful skyscrapers framing the clouds, she smiled. Rebecca stood up, wiped the grass off her legs, and turned back toward Harvard’s campus. Thank God I escaped all of that.
For her third and final class of the day, Rebecca was once again seated near Richard. This time, though, it didn’t bother her. In fact, after the memories of her parents during her run, Rebecca was excited to be friends with her charming British classmate. Mother might have a stroke, she thought as she sat down one row in front of Richard. Her only daughter is in Boston hanging out with foreigners. Oh, the horror!
SEVEN
Richard noticed Rebecca’s change in attitude toward him as soon as they sat down. She smiled so big that her blue eyes sparkled, and she said ‘hey’ with a slow drawl that made the word have two syllables instead of one. Rebecca was as focused as ever on her schoolwork, but Richard could tell he wasn’t the enemy anymore. Maybe it was her first day nerves, or maybe she hadn’t had enough coffee yet that morning. Or maybe I simply am that charming, he thought with a grin. American girls love an English accent.
Whatever the reason, Richard didn’t waste the renewed opportunity to get to know his classmate – one of six women in their entire school. Rebecca was the prettiest of the group by far, but there was something else about her that intrigued and perplexed him. His other male classmates took turns making passes at the pretty Southerner for the first couple weeks, until word got around that she always said no. But Richard didn’t buy the gossip that Rebecca was ‘frigid’ or a ‘man-hater’. She’s jolly good fun as long as she doesn’t think you’re hitting on her, he thought.
And that became Richard’s approach. If Rebecca refused a date but would eat dinner with a friend, he became her friend – one always up to try a new seafood place on the wharf or Italian spot in the North End. A trip to the movies was a no, but study sessions – even late night, one-on-one – were a yes. When Rebecca mentioned that she would love to find a running partner for her excursions around Boston, Richard jumped at the chance. By the time Midterms arrived, the two were inseparable.
Richard never understood what people meant when they said they ‘fell in love’. What, did you trip? he thought. Love was an emotion, and emotions could be controlled. He was British, after all. Stiff upper lip, cold greetings, keep calm and carry on.
No, Richard had never understood what people meant when they said they fell in love. Until he met Rebecca. And fell himself.
Although he dated his fair share of girls during university, this was the first time that Richard could remember a woman invading his thoughts like Rebecca did. She was with him when he woke up, with him as he fell asleep, and definitely with him in the classroom.
In Marketing class on the day of midterm presentations, Richard found himself desperately trying to pay attention to his classmates’ speeches – to no avail. Rebecca was sitting one row in front of him, diagonal to the right. Try as he might to focus and take notes, Richard couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
He watched as she bit her lip in concentration and wondered what those lips would taste like when kissed. Rebecca ran a gentle hand through her hair, pushing it back out of her eyes, and Richard wanted to know, when he touched her hair, if it would feel as silky smooth as it looked. Every time a classmate made a snide remark in a speech about women in the workplace, Rebecca fidgeted back and forth in her chair – and Richard wondered what it would be like to watch her channel all that pent-up passion into something – or someone – she loved.
Stop it, Richard. He shook his head and scolded himself for letting his thoughts wander during class. Except they don’t wander, he admitted. They stay on her all the time.
“Mr. Arrington? Hello?”
Richard snapped out of his daydream to find Professor Craswell standing in front of him. Richard
’s cheeks turned beet red.
“Ah, there you are. We didn’t know if you were going to join us.”
“I’m sorry, I – ”
“Nevermind that. It’s your turn.” The professor gestured to the empty lectern in the front of the room.
“Right,” Richard replied. “Five minutes practicing the art of persuasion. Convince the class that one’s assigned ice cream flavor is the best.”
****
Rebecca smiled as she watched her best friend take the podium. Best friend. The thought caught her off guard. That’s what he is, though, she realized. For the past six weeks, she and Richard had done everything together. Runs on the river. Red Sox games. Study sessions in the library or a dorm room. And seldom a day went by when the pair didn’t eat at least one meal together. Rebecca spent time with other friends, especially a fun girl from San Francisco named Emily, but Richard was her person. The first true best friend I’ve ever had.
It hadn’t been easy growing up as the nerdy girl with big dreams in a town that wanted her to be a wife and mother by age twenty. Teachers, classmates, and even her own family told her to ‘be realistic’ and ‘let the boys think they’re smarter than you’. College wasn’t much easier, with her Barnard classmates still mostly comprised of future teachers and MRS degrees. To be an attractive, smart, straight woman wanting to work in finance was off-putting to many around Rebecca . . . and even more off-putting was the defensive personality she developed to protect her dreams.
Richard is different, though, she thought while listening to him expound on the virtues of mint chocolate chip ice cream. He’s never treated me like his inferior. Never laughed when I talk about my plans for the future.
Richard had even absorbed her stories about family drama without ever making her feel like she was at fault. After a particularly bad phone call with her father, when the older man wouldn’t stop complaining about the African American family that moved in next door, Rebecca had begged Richard to go on a long run with her through the streets of Cambridge. Her blue eyes were full of tears while they ran – her talking, him listening.
Every Star in the Sky Page 2
