“What a bore,” Sally Anne whispered. “Pinch me if I fall asleep.”
“It’s not a bore,” Jean answered, keeping her voice low. “I love it.” After dinner in the library, Francisco, the Filipino butler, served coffee in demitasse cups on a silver tray and they all listened to Miss Weaver read novels or plays in her throaty voice. It was a warm, animated time. The room seemed peopled by characters living out their triumphs and defeats, with Miss Weaver’s raspy voice unraveling the struggles of all humanity. Through language alone, she could see a boy selling newspapers on a bridge in the rain, a mother sitting by the roadside weeping over a sick child, an immigrant’s chest heaving in anxiety and excitement as he stepped off a train in a strange city. She always imagined herself the female lead and felt anguish at her fictional choices. Through stories she could, momentarily, live more broadly.
“I don’t care if you think I’m silly. I don’t ever want her to stop.”
“Well, she will tonight,” Rene said, “because I’m reading!”
“You?” Sally Anne’s spoon clanked on her plate.
Served her right to be embarrassed.
“What’ll you read?” Jean raised her spoon to her mouth. The beef broth dribbled off and splashed into the bowl. Her cheeks flushed hot. Rats. Just when they were probably looking at her. She dipped in again and concentrated on holding her spoon flat. When she touched it to her lips the spoon was empty. The thin, clear soup didn’t weigh enough for her to tell if she’d gotten any. Beef broth nights were always humiliating.
“Ibsen’s The Doll’s House. It’s a play.”
“Sounds like a nursery. What’s it about?”
“A young wife who’s unhappy with her perfect, narrow, protected married life. It brought a storm of protest when it came out about fifty years ago in Norway and now a new production of it is opening on Broadway.”
Every night that week Jean listened intently, her eyes watering in empathy for Nora. When Rene got to the end of Act III, the room was quiet for a few minutes. Jean heard people shift their positions in the tall wingback chairs. “I feel for her,” she said. “She wanted a real life so desperately, not some phoney, prepared little world.” No one else said anything. “I can hardly believe she did it, though. Left just like that, walked right out the door.” Jean’s voice dropped. “I wonder if any of our lives will be that narrow.”
“Not mine,” Polly declared.
“Of course not yours, but you’re a westerner. For us in New England, it’s different.”
“How?”
“More stuffy. More controlled.”
At the end of that week, they all went to see the Ibsen opening on Broadway. Jean cried in the darkness during the third act.
Most of their evening reading was related to theater they saw: Katherine Cornell as Shaw’s St. Joan at the Martin Beck Theater, Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina at the Broadhurst, the Lunts in Taming of the Shrew. And then there was opera. Miss Weaver always made them read the librettos first. “We’re going to do it right,” she said.
The girls went in style. They wore long gowns and black velvet capes and were driven in a pair of black limousines. They often went to dinner first, usually at some little restaurant in Greenwich Village. Once it was Spanish. Jean could feel the flamenco dancers and tambourines pounding out their heated rhythms right near their table. She felt her heartbeat quicken, and she leaned forward in her chair during the whole meal.
More than anything else the girls did together, Jean loved going to the opera. She didn’t need to have everything explained to her. Strong emotions shot out from the stage in sound. With opera, nothing was denied her. At the Met that season the girls cried at Madama Butterfly and thrilled at Lakme with Lily Pons. But Madame Flagstad’s performances enthralled them most, for she was theirs. When she sang Brunhilde in Die Walkure the girls cheered. When she sang Isolde, they wept. After every opening the girls trooped backstage to see the grand diva, object of their worship.
Elsa and Jean went alone by taxi to Beethoven’s Fidelio. They had been invited to Madame’s hotel afterwards. Back of the Met after the show a crowd of people still shouted “Brava, brava.” They thronged Madame for autographs, overpowering her and the two girls. Jean was shoved. For a moment she lost Elsa’s arm and stood alone among shouting, shoving people, trying to keep her balance. Shoulders, backs and elbows jabbed at her from all sides. She felt like a thin reed sucked in a spiraling eddy. The world swirled in terror. An arm grabbed hers and yanked her through the crowd and into a car.
“Oh, Yeanie,” Madame said in heavily accented English, “I’m so sorry it frightened you.”
“It’s all right. Nothing happened.”
But her eyes watered and she was quiet for a while in the back seat of the taxi. This was what she had wanted, though, to be out in the world. This was adventure. She took a deep breath and tried to settle herself.
“Madame Flagstad, what’s your favorite role?” she asked.
“That’s a hard question, Yeanie. There are too many. Isolde, I think. I love the Liebestod aria in the end.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. It’s so tragic.”
Trips through New York crowds made Jean feel more mobile even though she always walked holding someone’s arm. Once they went to Madison Square Garden to see the National Horse Show. Dody sat next to her and described the equestrian moves in terminology she had just learned from their riding master. “It must be impressive,” Jean said wistfully.
She wrote home every week afterward to find out whether Father had asked Dr. Wheeler if she could ride. Maybe riding was something she could do. All the other sports the girls did—tennis, squash, skiing—were beyond her, but riding might not be. It’s true, she did the ski joring, being pulled on skis by a horse on flat ground, but the girls didn’t do that often. Riding they did every day. If she could ride, she wouldn’t have to be alone in the afternoons. She’d be one of them.
Finally, a letter came from Mother. Jean had Dody read it. “The reading club was here yesterday. We discussed Balzac. Father was appalled. He said the ladies are titillated by the vicarious living they do at the reading club meetings. Bill is doing well at Yale and Lucy is planning a party for next month. Mort’s learning how to punch a time clock at Babson. Dr. Wheeler called yesterday and said he would see no further harm in your riding.”
Jean grabbed the letter and headed for the landing, felt for the handrail and scrambled down, counting the stairs.
“What’s your hurry, Jean?”
“Where’s LCW?”
“In her room, I think.”
She turned on her heel back up the stairs. One, two…thirteen. To the left she heard bath water being drawn in LCW’s suite. She knocked on the door anyway.
“Yes?”
“Miss Weaver, I can ride. Father asked my doctor, and he said it’s okay.”
“Of course you can ride, Jean. I knew you could all along,” she said through the door.
“When can I start?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll tell Herr Frederich and we’ll measure you for breeches.”
Andrebrook horsewomen wore khaki gabardine jodhpurs with leathers, black wool blazers, polished black boots, white silk shirts and stocks, white gloves and black derbies. Custom. The bill was sent to Father. Miss Weaver wasn’t going to have her girls wandering through the Rockefeller estate looking like a bunch of ragtaggles.
Frederich, the riding master, lived above the stables, a respectable distance across the sloping lawn from the main building and the girls. English saddle was his specialty, so all the girls rode English. He gave Jean Glory Girl, a white nag, gentle and safe enough for her, he promised Miss Weaver. “She’s an old poke,” Jean grumped the first day. “Can’t she go faster?”
When Herr Frederich announced a moonlight ride through the Pocantico Hills, the girls tittered in excitement.
“Oh, Jean, he looks so handsome and he rides so tall and straight. He rides ahead of us and we can see his s
ilhouette on his horse up ahead. It’s divine.”
“You mean he’s divine, Sally Anne. Don’t quibble. We know you’re in love with him.” Dody’s was the voice of reason.
“I am not. It’s just that he looks so—hm—in the moonlight. It’s the moonlight, Jean, that makes it all so dreamy.”
“Doesn’t matter to me if it’s moonlight. I’m just glad I get to go.”
“He’ll make you ride on a lead line, though,” Dody reminded her.
“So what?”
“Just imagine. He’ll be holding the other end.” Sally Anne fabricated a swoon.
“I don’t care.”
“Listen to you,” Sally Anne teased. “You do, too. It makes you special.”
“You’re just jealous because I get to ride closest to him.”
“Did you know Frederich watches you all the time?” Dody asked.
“I don’t believe you.”
“He does, Jean,” Sally Anne agreed.
“He just feels protective. He doesn’t need to, though.”
“Don’t tell him that. He might stop.”
She did anyway. Not being singled out was far more important than Frederich. Eventually, in preparation for the yearly Andrebrook Horse Show, Herr Frederich allowed her to ride without the lead. He still rode right ahead of her in order to give her warnings like “turning right” just in time for her to adjust her weight.
One day something spooked Glory Girl and she shot off in front of Frederich and everyone. He took after her at a gallop. “Low branch, Jeanie,” he shouted.
Jean bent down next to Glory Girl’s mane. Her derby flew off and she felt twigs scrape across her shoulders. She raised up again and held on.
“Duck!”
This time she stayed down, close to Glory Girl’s mane. It seemed to her a perfect position, just like a jockey. The movement felt different. She’d been afraid to lean that far forward before. Eventually, Frederich caught up and Glory Girl stopped. “Are you all right?”
“Of course, I am.” She smirked even though she was breathing hard. That’s what Miss Weaver would say. “It was terribly exciting. How far did I go?”
“Maybe half a mile.”
“It never felt like that before. In fact, it felt wonderful.”
“Well, it’s not supposed to hurt.” He chuckled. “You did fine, Jeanie. Do you think you can stay still while I go back and find your hat?”
“Only if I have to.” She grinned. Miss Weaver was right again. Here was something she could do.
Her piano was often silent in the afternoon now. She had to train for the horse show. Most afternoons she was dressed early. “Who’s ready?” she’d call out her door, anxious to drag the first one down to the riding ring. They were learning drills and formations just as they had seen at Madison Square Garden. Herr Frederich would call out commands and Jean had to memorize how many strides for each command in order to know where she was.
On a horse, away from the security of the earth and in an open ring with no walls to bounce back sound, all sense of space and dimension vanished. On the ground her own legs and the length of her stride told her how far she had gone. Now she didn’t have that guide. She could only guess about the stride of the horse. At one point in the routine her position was on the outside of a pinwheel. She had to sense her distance to the horse next to her on the inside so she wouldn’t stray off, away from the line. Sometimes Dody had to tell her, “Move in a few feet, Jean.” Worse than that, sometimes she got confused and had to ask where she was. She had to stay alert to move in rhythm and still perceive constantly changing spatial relationships. After every practice her shoulders ached from tenseness, but that didn’t matter. The ring, even more than the classroom, was a new arena for learning. Of course, she could do it. Miss Weaver had said so.
Though learning to ride was exciting, the closeness it brought with the other girls was far more satisfying. She sensed they thought her more self-sufficient than before so they pampered her less. It made her relax. She was aware of their move from pity to friendship but doubted if they were conscious of it.
Jean felt even more accepted when Sally Anne showed her how to pin up her hair. One Saturday before an opera trip, Jean sat on her bed with a dish of bobby pins and a half cup of water. She was in a hurry and every curl was a battle. Sally Anne saw her struggling and deftly took over without a word. “There now, I’m finished,” she said. “But I didn’t tell you. I spit on every curl. Ran out of water.”
At last Jean felt she wasn’t being crushed by kindness.
The events of one night made her feel drawn into their circle permanently. Late in the evening the girls on her floor were noisier than usual. When Jean pulled back the covers and climbed into bed, her foot jabbed at a fold in the sheet and she couldn’t get in. “What’s the ma—Who short-sheeted my bed? Dody, did you?” she called out into the hallway where she heard laughter.
“Who, me?”
“Sally Anne, you did!” Jean lunged toward Sally Anne’s giggle.
“Not I,” Sally Anne said innocently, turning Jean around.
“Said the little red hen,” Elsa mimicked.
Sally Anne gave Jean a gentle push in Elsa’s direction.
“You did, Elsa! Then I’m just going to sleep in your bed!” Jean scrambled toward Elsa’s bed and heard a funny kazoo noise.
“What’s that?’ Jean asked, climbing in.
“Just some toilet paper on a comb. Try it.” Elsa handed it to her and got another. Sitting up in bed together, the two girls went through a child’s repertoire, from “Yankee Doodle” to “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”
“We’re not kids, Elsa. We’ve got to do something more cultured. What about that “du du” German song?”
“Du, du liegst mir im Herzen,” Elsa sang, and they started in industriously on their combs.
Miss Weaver’s clompy shoes echoed at the base of the stairs. “Girls, lights out.”
“But we’re playing in German,” Jean protested, eliciting giggles from the open doorways down the hall.
“Geht ins Bett!”
“Yes, Miss Weaver,” Elsa said in a singsongy voice.
“Seid ruhig!”
“Good night, Fraulein Weaver,” Jean chorused, placating her and generating more titters down the hall.
Willingly she made her way over to her own bed and snickered as she wrestled to remake it. At last she was one of them, chastised in front of the group. She knew that even though the others thought she was a goody-goody, they valued her loyalty. There was an unspoken arrangement, sacred as any ancient rite. The girls on her floor wouldn’t tell LCW that she read her Braille novels after lights-out, and she wouldn’t tell the crazy things they did, like Sally Anne climbing onto the roof in her slip to look into the boys’ school beyond the stone wall. She never breathed a word about the Polly Gillespie orange escapade.
Polly was a platinum blond from out west, “probably some sprawling ranch,” Dody told her once. Polly had a voice that clattered like cold emeralds tumbling out of a treasure chest, her words loud and older than her years. She’d been everywhere already even though she was youngest. Jean didn’t doubt that she’d done just about everything, too. She imagined her as gaudy butterfly fluttering her eyelashes and waving long, red-tipped fingers. Without fail, she always came back late from holidays because of an asthma attack. “How does she always plan it so well?” Jean asked Dody. Once after semester break Polly arrived a few days late with a basket of oranges.
“For the girls,” she told LCW.
“How thoughtful of you,” Miss Weaver had said. That was before the laughter got louder and louder on the floor above.
Upstairs Polly drew the girls together in her room. “I’ve got something for everyone. Western oranges.”
“What’s so different about western oranges?” asked Sally Anne.
“Try one.”
Sally Anne took the largest one and peeled back the skin. She separated the sections
and popped a fat one into her mouth. “Ooh, juicy.” She let out a knowing squeal. “Pass ’em around.”
Most of the girls grabbed, but a few held back. Jean slurped up the juice with the rest of them. “Why are they so juicy?” she asked.
“I injected them.”
“With what?”
“Gin.”
Amid the squeals of laughter, one girl quietly moved toward the door. “Oh, Cathy, stay,” urged Polly.
“No, I’ve got to study.”
A few moments later Jean heard her close the door to her room down the hall.
“Lame excuse. She’s so dull. She’s got no personality. No sex appeal either.”
Polly’s remark stunned Jean. The sex appeal wasn’t what bothered her. Admittedly, she had no notion of what that consisted of, but she had never considered Cathy dull, just quieter than the others. Did that make her dull too? She couldn’t stop wondering. The next day after lunch, Jean followed Dody into her room.
“Is anybody else here?”
“No.”
“Close the door.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I feel stupid asking this. Is Cathy really dull? Do you think so, Dody?”
Dody didn’t answer right away. “Sit down, here, on the bed.” She touched Jean’s hand to the bedspread. “I guess maybe you don’t see the way we do. Yes. She is. Polly was right. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with her.”
“How could she say it, though? Right out there like that?”
“Saying it doesn’t matter. We all know it anyway.”
That night Jean didn’t read after lights-out. She sat up in bed for a long time. Here was someone else who probably felt on the outside of things. Jean imagined the hollow feeling Cathy must have had, sitting in her empty room the night before when the others were having fun, like swallowing a hard candy too soon and having it ache in your chest until it dissolved. But Cathy seemed happy enough. Maybe it didn’t matter to Cathy. Maybe it shouldn’t matter so much to her either. Andrebrook wasn’t all that the world consisted of, and school was ending soon anyway. And then what? That made her slide down and pull the covers up.
A few days later, Jean attempted doing her hair herself again. When she went down to the dining room for dinner, Sally Anne said, “Oh, Jeanie, you look lovely.”