My bust is massive, disgustingly bovine. I don’t have breasts; I have udders.
“Oh, come on,” Karen says. “You’re so pretty.”
“For a fat cow,” I say. This, I don’t mind sharing. This, everyone can see for themselves.
Laurie smiles and shakes her head at me. “Where did you ever get the idea that you’re fat?”
From Ed. But I’m not going to share that either.
“You think we don’t have mirrors in Northridge?” I say. Northridge is where I grew up; it’s in the Valley. Our house is in a neighborhood built in an old orange grove and our yard is full of orange trees; my mom makes fresh-squeezed orange juice for Ed every morning. She doesn’t even like orange juice since it gives her heartburn. I think Ed is what gives her heartburn. “Come on, let’s go be charming for the Rho Delts, and if we can’t be charming, we’ll just have to settle for being drunk.”
“I’m going for charming since I can’t stand the beer either,” Laurie says.
“Way to kill off your options, McCormick,” I say as we walk into the fraternity house.
The Rho Delta Pi house is like all fraternity houses; it’s large, sparsely furnished, and slightly dilapidated. There is no lawn. There is only dirt as hard-packed as concrete. That’s one of the rules of The Row: all the sorority houses have manicured lawns and all the fraternity houses look like bomb sites.
The Rho Delts do their best to make us welcome, which mostly involves getting plastic cups full of beer into our hands as quickly as possible, which is totally fine with me. I get separated from Laurie and Karen and find myself standing next to Missy Todd.
“How’s it going?” I ask, my mouth next to her ear so I can be heard above Black Sabbath. “Do you think you’ll stay after the hour?”
We only have to stay at the exchange for an hour, our commitment to making Beta Pi look good accomplished after only sixty minutes. You’d be surprised how long an hour can be when you’re bored to death.
Missy looks around the room critically—openly critically. That’s the thing I’ve noticed about Missy. She doesn’t give a damn what you think about her because she’s so busy figuring out what she thinks about you. It should be as annoying as hell, but I love it. Like tonight, her brown hair is in a loose ponytail and the only makeup she’s wearing is mascara. She’s wearing a really casual tan skirt and an Indian gauze shirt with some tiny mirrors embroidered on it in red thread. On her feet are navy blue Dr. Scholl’s. Dr. Scholl’s. To a dance.
She looks like she threw on whatever clothes she had on the end of her bed this morning and didn’t even think about changing for this exchange. It’s like every bone in her body is shouting, Screw you.
God, I love that.
“I can’t tell yet,” she says. “Are you?”
“Let me swig down another beer; then I’ll tell you.”
Missy laughs.
“Another beer?” some guy says from behind me. “I’ve got you covered.”
He’s back in less than a minute, a beer in each hand, a smile on his face. Guys always get real cheerful when girls keep drinking. I’ve noticed that a lot.
“I’m Mike Dunn,” he says, handing us the beers.
“And you’re empty-handed,” I say.
“The price of chivalry,” he says, his gaze on me, practically ignoring Missy. Missy doesn’t seem to mind.
“I’m Ellen. This is Missy.”
He nods and smiles. He’s got blue eyes and black hair and the sort of handsome bad-boy look that has always gotten on my nerves. I’m not interested in being a conquest for some bad boy.
“Would you like to dance, Ellen?” he says.
“What about my beer? I just got it,” I say.
“You could drink it,” he says, taking a full beer from a passing Rho Delt.
“With you crying, ‘Chug, chug, chug’?” I ask.
“Would I do that to you?” he says, looking at me with a very naughty glint in his light blue eyes.
“You know you would,” I say, shaking my head at him. “But I will if you will.”
His eyes widen; so does his grin. “You’re on.”
Without any more stupid banter, we chug our beers. He wins, but just by a swallow. I let him win. What’s the harm? Guys love to think they can drink girls under the table, and I’m the kind of girl who loves to watch them try.
I turn to Missy as Mike starts to lead me to the center of the room. “Go grab one of Diane Ryan’s extra guys. She can’t need them all.”
“I don’t know,” Missy says, looking across the room to where Diane is standing. “She might.”
Diane
– Fall 1975 –
Look, the reason I know so many guys is because I’m in ROTC. Sure, I knew plenty of guys before I signed on for ROTC, but that’s beside the point. Then again, maybe it’s the actual point. The thing is, I like guys and they like me, and that works out great. Or it should, but actually, no, it’s not so great, at least not all the time.
It all started out with me having a great freshman year. In fact, it was so great that I almost flunked out. Needless to say, my dad was not pleased. Saying that my dad, a navy pilot, was not pleased is really saying something. Trust me on that.
“Diane, what in the hell were you thinking?”
That was what he said when I got home from school last summer. Naturally, Dad wasn’t expecting an answer since these rhetorical questions are part of the drill. My duty as his only child is to stand there and take it, without flinching and without whining. Any lame excuse is whining, and my dad is the one who determines what a lame excuse is. Pretty much, they’re all lame, and I base this on a lifetime of experience.
So here’s what happened: my dad told me that he was done. He told me that if I wanted to return to ULA, then I’d have to find a way to make it happen because he sure as hell wasn’t going to throw any more money down the Diane well.
I cried. I can admit it. I didn’t sob, but I cried.
But Dad is not the kind of father who crumbles when faced with a few tears. Mom, having been married to him for twenty-two years, is not a crumbler either. If she’d been a crumbler, he would have chewed her up and spit her out a long time ago, like on their first date back in Meridian, the old home place. Mom and Dad met when Dad was stationed in Mississippi just before the Korean War. Mom is a true southern belle who grew up in a small-scale version of Tara, minus the slaves, the cotton, and the War Between the States, known to the rest of the world as the Civil War. It could be argued, but not by me, that Mom doesn’t understand the meaning of the term civil war. There’s no point in arguing it because while Mom didn’t have slaves, she did, and does, have plenty of southern bourbon. Never argue semantics with a woman clutching a highball glass. Nobody pushes a southern belle around, not even Dad. Scarlett O’Hara taught the world that, and Dad learned the lesson up close and personal from Mom. There are no scars to prove it. Southern belles have more finesse than to leave visible scars. The movies never get that part right.
But back to me . . . No money for school and no grades to get a scholarship. Dad was very helpful about the whole thing, suggesting ROTC the way he did. He also made it clear that they didn’t take just anybody, and maybe, with a good word from him thrown in, I might make the cut.
Gee, thanks, Dad.
So here I am, ROTC all the way. Go, navy. Hoo-ah.
It is a great way to meet guys—I’ll say that for it—not that I have a problem meeting guys.
Hoo-ah.
Joining a sorority is supposed to be the antidote for ROTC. That’s Mom’s theory, not that she put it in those exact words. No, her words were more like, “Diane, certain sorts of people join the military and certain sorts join sororities. It’s good to be able to mix well with all sorts.” She took a healthy swallow of a bourbon and wa
ter somewhere in her declaration, though I can’t remember exactly where. But she took it, believe me.
My mom was in a sorority in college and my mom, after a few drinks, likes to talk about those days. She makes it sound great. Lots of parties, fancy dresses, dates with corsages. We’re talking the early 1950s here, in Mississippi, so I’m not sure how well it’s going to translate to LA in the mid-1970s, but she’s confident that I’ll make “lovely friends” and that I’ll “acquire a certain polish.”
I guess I’m not all that polished right now. Plastered, sure, but not polished.
That’s what I’m talking about. Mom is death on comments like that. I get the feeling sometimes that she doesn’t think Dad being in the navy has been good for me, that he might be, by accident, polishing me in all the wrong ways. But, Mom being Mom, she never actually says that. She says other stuff, like how being in a sorority will be good for me and “stand me in good stead.”
How’re they paying for this, ULA being so expensive and Dad being your average, above-average navy pilot? I mean, he has a lot of ribbons and shit, but still, ULA sorority costs are way beyond his salary. Mom’s parents are paying for it—that’s how. Mom, and her mother before her . . . They really believe in the whole sorority drill. Hell, they made it sound great, one party after another, guys with corsages, a pajama party every night. What’s not to love?
So here I am at a required sorority-fraternity exchange, surrounded by guys. Who says war is hell?
“Hey, do you need all these guys or can you pass a few around as hors d’oeuvres?” Missy asks me.
“I can spare a few. How many do you want?” I say.
“Two or three dozen ought to do it,” Missy says.
“Take an even fifty. They’re free.”
Missy laughs and eyes me approvingly. I know what that look means. She was wondering if I was stuck-up, and now she’s figuring out I’m not. I’ve been run through this same girly gauntlet since my senior year of high school, when I finally, thank God, “blossomed.” That’s Mom’s word for it, not mine.
The guys in question, all three of them, can’t hear what we’re saying since Three Dog Night is blaring on the stereo and Missy has her mouth next to my ear. That, and I’ve got my beer cup up against my mouth.
“You don’t want even one for yourself?” she asks.
“They’re all yours.”
Guys are great; I love them. They’re adorable, fun to play with, and they hardly ever break, but I’m not interested in having some guy carry me through life, or even through a fraternity exchange. The navy is my chance at a no-holds-barred career, with no limit to how high I can go. “Diane, there’s no limit to what you can do,” Dad said. I believe him. I’m not going to let some guy screw that up, even the one guy who tempts me to screw that up. Midshipman Temptation is not a Rho Delt, so I can relax and let the good times roll.
“I think I’ll take him. He looks good,” Missy says, using her chin to point out the middle guy in the trio standing across from us. He’s a fellow ROTC, so this is going to be easy.
“Rawlins! This is Missy. She’d like to dance,” I say, grabbing Dean Rawlins by the arm and pulling him toward me. “You’ve been volunteered.”
Rawlins smiles, nods at Missy, and escorts her to the dance floor—in this case, the middle of the Rho Delt living room, the couches having been pushed to the walls.
I stare at the two remaining guys. One is another ROTC and the other one isn’t. I’m avoiding ROTC guys as a rule—Dad’s rule—so I smile at the guy with hair that reaches his collar. “Cat got your tongue?” I say.
“You the cat? Then not my tongue,” he says, a glint in his eyes. Oh, one of those. He does have that look, not that I mind. You’ve got to watch that type every minute, but you’ve got to watch them all every few minutes anyway. It’s part of their charm.
“Come on, sweetie. Dazzle me with your moves.”
He leads me onto the dance floor, but we all know those aren’t the kinds of moves I need to worry about.
Do I look worried?
Hell, no.
Laurie
– Fall 1975 –
I joined a sorority so that I could make friends—I told the truth about that—but the truth I didn’t tell is that I also joined a sorority, any sorority, so that I could casually bump into Pete Steinhagen during a Rho Delt exchange. The problem is that after six years of girls’ boarding school, I have no skill whatsoever in casually bumping into a guy, and I certainly couldn’t manage any sparkling interaction with guys on my own, but with my new sorority sisters around me, I can manage to create the illusion of ease and sophistication. I’m fairly confident of that after so many exchanges. Of course, none of the previous exchanges meant a thing to me; they were my dress rehearsal for the Rho Delt exchange.
“Why are you guys still standing around?” Ellen says, having pushed through the crowd to stand next to Karen and me. “You don’t even have beers!”
“I thought we covered that on the walk over,” I say.
“Yeah, yeah. I blanked that out. It was too awful. Hey, let’s go over there. He’s cute,” Ellen says.
“The guy or the keg?” Karen says.
“Any guy standing next to a keg has a leg up on the competition,” Ellen says. “Who’s with me?”
“I’m in,” Karen says. “Laurie?”
Karen and I have been stuck to each other, our backs against the wall, since we walked into the room. I’ve been looking for Pete from my corner; I haven’t seen him. He, if he’s here, hasn’t seen me. “Sure. Why not?” I say. I need to move around, get into the crowd, and give Pete a chance to find me.
“Are you the beer man?” Ellen says to the guy. “Do you need a barmaid to help you deliver the frothy goods to the eager customers?”
He smiles. “You can be my tavern wench if you’ll split your tips with me.”
Ellen grins. “Tavern wenches don’t get the kind of tips you can split.”
“At least he thinks you’ll bring in the bucks,” I say.
“Is this Pimp Dialogue 101?” Karen says. “I need a syllabus.”
“God, can you imagine the reading list?” Ellen says.
He shakes his head and says, “Never get into verbal warfare with one woman, let alone three. I’m toast.”
“Sisters?” Karen says, starting to laugh.
“Four,” he says. “And I’m the baby.”
“Oh, you had it bad,” Ellen says. “Okay, I forgive you the tavern-wench thing.”
“So are we back to splitting your tips?” he says.
“Hey, I’m not even going to split my beer with you,” Ellen says. “How’s that sound to you?”
“Normal,” he says, shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest. “The baby, remember?”
“You didn’t get the best of everything, all of them babying you to death?” Karen asks.
“There’s a picture of me with a dozen pink and lavender barrettes clamped on my little baby head, if you want to call that the best of everything,”
“Lavender?” Karen says, looking at us. “I believe him. No normal guy knows the word lavender.”
“Great. Thanks,” he says.
“Look, I hate to keep insulting you without knowing your name,” Karen says.
“You like your insults to have the personal touch?” he asks.
“Yeah. Pretty much,” Karen says.
“I like that,” he says. “Shows you have standards.”
“What guy doesn’t appreciate the personal touch?” I say.
He actually blushes, which is kind of cute. We’re giving him a fairly hard time and he’s taking it well. With four older sisters, he’s clearly had a lot of practice.
“I’m Laurie,” I say. “I have three older sisters.”
> “Matt Carlson,” he says. “Fellow sufferer.”
“Karen. Pampered only child,” Karen says.
“Ellen, oldest of two girls, official crime boss and barrette administrator,” Ellen says.
“So, not a brother among you?” Matt says, handing us plastic cups full of cheap beer. “Where’d you get all your experience at torture?”
“It was my high school community service,” Ellen says. “You find your quarry in the field, do the deed, get the grade. I got an A.”
“She does it now as a volunteer effort,” I say. “Ellen is very civic-minded.”
“I am. I learned it at home,” Ellen says, her voice taking on a slight edge. Ellen laughs and toasts Matt. “To the winner of the lavender barrette. Long may he reign.”
“A nice take on what others might call crimes against hair,” Matt says, toasting us all in return.
Matt seems like a nice guy; he’s funny, easy to talk to, and not unpleasant-looking. Actually, he is cute. His brown hair is thick and his eyes are brilliant blue, which is not as spectacular-looking as it could be because his cheeks are lightly pockmarked and his build is relentlessly average. However, Matt’s smile is truly a thing of beauty and completely disarming.
Pete’s entire manner is disarming, and I have been thoroughly and permanently disarmed, though I wonder if I was ever armed to begin with. I haven’t been paying that much attention to the conversation with Matt because I’m looking around the room as discreetly as possible for Pete. Unfortunately, I don’t see him. I don’t think he’s here, not yet. He’s too tall to miss, even in a crowd, and it has gotten crowded, the room filling with smoke and music, the sounds of forced male cheer hanging over the living room like heavy smog. And I do think it’s forced. It has that quality to it; that pushed-out, overly loud, overtly raucous sound that boys make when they’re trying to impress girls.
Pete doesn’t do that. Pete is quiet when the whole world abounds in meaningless noise. Pete has to be here tonight. I joined Beta Pi so that I could be here, at Rho Delta Pi, so that I could casually find him and so that he could, so very effortlessly, find me.
Sorority Sisters Page 3
