Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504008365 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Distribution |
| Publication date: | 03/24/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 338 |
| Sales rank: | 494,733 |
| File size: | 575 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Class Reunion
A Novel
By Rona Jaffe
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1979 Rona JaffeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0836-5
CHAPTER 1
That year all the nonfiction best-sellers were religious books, except for three. They were the Kinsey Report on female sexuality, Polly Adler's story of her life as a madam, and a book on golf. It was a time of furtive guilty sex. People talked about love all the time and married strangers.
Emily Applebaum's parents came with her on the train to college to help her get settled. It was the first day of Freshman Orientation Week, a clear, sunny fall day, the leaves turning red. The red brick buildings under the blue sky gave the campus the look of a New England picture postcard. Emily had been assigned to her permanent room in Briggs Hall, a single as she had requested. Her mother had wanted her to ask for a roommate so she could be assured of one good friend from the start, but Emily had been uncomfortable about having to share a room with someone she didn't know, and when she saw the tiny cell she knew she had made the right decision. It was a narrow rectangle, at one end a door opening on to the long hall lined with similar rooms, on the other end, a big window looking out at the grassy area called the Quadrangle.
Briggs Hall was one of seven dorms set around the Quad, and each dorm had a reputation for having its own character. Briggs was supposed to be the social dorm, with the prettiest, most popular girls. Emily was delighted she had been assigned there. College was going to be such an adventure–on her own for the first time, all those Harvard men to date! There were not only the Harvard undergraduates, but all the graduate schools full of men: the medical school, the law school, even a school of architecture. And there was M.I.T. down the Charles River, a school for big brains.
'You'll certainly find a husband here, if you want one,' her mother said, helping her unpack. 'I hope you'll remember to study, so you won't flunk out.'
'You can flunk out after you're engaged,' her father said, and laughed. He knew Emily was too smart ever to flunk out. He was so proud of her. Her father's father had come to New York from Europe, lived in a tenement on Hester Street, worked in a factory, and spoke with a heavy accent until the day he died. Her father, who never went to college, had become the shoe king, owning a chain of shoe stores all over the East. They lived in a nice Colonial house in the suburbs and belonged to the country club, and now Emily was the first girl in her family to go to college–and it was Radcliffe!
So here she was, about to be independent for the first time in her life, in a strange city, in a huge university; and she was scared to death. Her father was setting up the cardboard closet her parents had bought her because there was only one closet in her room. Her parents had given her a small checking account in the bank in Harvard Square–another first–so she could buy her school books and furnish her room. She looked around in dismay. A narrow single bed with a striped mattress, a battered desk and chair, a matching clunky dresser, all chipped, and a bookcase. A dark metal lamp sat on the desk. Emily felt a lump in her throat and knew she was homesick already.
She was an only child, and the only trips she'd ever taken were with her parents. On her school vacations they took her to resort hotels, in Florida, Bermuda, Hawaii, Vermont, New Hampshire, where she could meet nice Jewish boys. She'd even had years of tennis lessons although she hated sports. You could always meet boys on the tennis court.
'Remember, Emily,' her mother said, 'I don't want you to waste your time doing laundry. Don't be afraid to send it home.'
'All right, Mom.'
Her mother looked around the appalling little box where her daughter would spend the next year. 'You'll buy a bedspread and a little rug and you'll see how nice you can make this room,' she said encouragingly.
The coarse white muslin sheets from the college linen supply service were folded neatly at the foot of Emily's bed. She was sorry now that she hadn't asked to bring her own sheets, but there had been so much to bring. She felt more homesick than ever. She took her memory candle out of her suitcase and set it on top of the bookcase and felt a little better.
'Oh, Emily, you didn't bring that disgusting thing!' her mother said.
Emily was an inveterate collector of memories. The memory candle, which she had made herself, was a memento of her graduation from Scarsdale High. It was a glass filled with coloured water, and placecards, matchbooks, a pencil stub a boy had used to write down her address at college, the ribbon from her corsage, even the butt from the cigarette her date had smoked at the dance. On top of these treasures she had melted a thick layer of wax, to preserve them. The experiment had been rathera disaster, with everything losing its colour and shape and floating dispiritedly in the viscous blue fluid. Still, her memory candle was all she had left of her graduation prom, and she meant to keep it. She had bought a large scrapbook for college, and she intended to save every souvenir that came her way from the social life she was going to have. She looked forward to that social life because she knew it would be her last chance to have fun and play the field, because when she graduated she would get married and settle down.
A good college was as much a planned part of Emily's path to a good marriage as the years of tennis lessons and the resort hotels had been. But college meant something else, and although she didn't say anything to her family for fear they would laugh at her, she sometimes dreamed of an alternate life. She wouldn't marry until she was twenty-five. That was really old; maybe she'd make it twenty-four. Before she got married she would go to medical school. The dream stopped there. She didn't know if she would have the guts to go all the way: intern, resident, actually practise medicine. But she had gotten into one of the best colleges in the United States, and she could study anything she wanted to, under the best professors. She'd always been interested in medicine, and she liked helping people. Perhaps she could be a pediatrician and work with little kids. It was an image that was both intellectual and feminine. And maybe she could marry a doctor and they could work together. He would work with grown-ups and she with children, and then at the end of their workday they would eat dinner together (prepared by their cook), and they would compare their experiences.
'Is that the only bathroom, the one down the hall?' Her mother's voice brought her out of her daydream.
'I don't know,' Emily said.
'Well, don't leave your towels there. Someone will use them and you'll get who knows what. And put paper on the toilet seat.'
'Yes, Mom.'
'And don't use that awful bathtub. Take a shower. I don't care how much you try to clean that bathtub, it's not the same as home.
'Okay.'
Her father was looking at his watch. 'We'd better get going. She's a college girl now, she can take care of herself.'
'Don't forget to eat the fruit I left you,' her mother said. 'Bartlett pears, apples, and those seedless grapes you love. They're all washed. Share them with the other girls, you'll make friends fast.'
Emily watched from her window as her parents got into the taxi they had called. It moved away, and suddenly she wasn't homesick anymore; she was filled with excitement. The adventure was beginning.
She inspected the dorm. Girls were still arriving, struggling with their luggage up the four double-flights of steep stairs. Freshmen had to live on the top floor because they were the least important. Downstairs, on the main floor, there was a huge living room with a fireplace at either end and dark, gloomy-looking furniture. There was a large entrance hall with a desk and switchboard at one side, next to the front door, and a little mailroom on the other side of the front door, with a cubbyhole for each girl, where she would receive mail and phone messages. Off the large main entrance hall there were two card rooms where bridge tables and chairs had been set up, and further on there was a cheerful dining room with a lot of windows in it, a fireplace, and doors leading to the dormitory kitchen. There was a phone booth on the first floor, and some more rooms down a long hall to the side.
That afternoon there was a meeting in the living room and all the rules were explained to the new freshmen.
Curfew was at ten o'clock. Freshmen were allowed two one o'clocks a week. On Sunday night you could stay out until eleven, so it was obvious that Friday and Saturday nights were the ones to use your late privileges. You were given a key. In the front hall of the dorm, next to the door, there was a sign-out book. You had to write down where you were going, what time you left, and most important, what time you came back. You were not to lie. If you came back after one o'clock–and you would be caught one way or another–you would have to go before the House Committee, an elected group of girls from your dorm who would mete out your punishment. The punishment was Social Pro, which meant you had to be upstairs at eight o'clock for however many nights they decided, and you could have no dates. Naturally you could not have visitors, since men were never allowed upstairs in the dorm under any circumstances.
The work program, which they all had to participate in to keep school costs down, consisted of waiting on tables in the dorm dining room, scraping dishes, and answering calls on the switchboard, a job known as Bells. Upperclassmen usually got Bells, because it was much more desirable than working as a waitress. You had to work for two hours two days a week. When on Bells you would buzz the girl who had a phone call or a caller–each room had a buzzer and a light over the door for calls, and there was a phone in the laundry room on each floor. If the girl wasn't there you were to leave her a note in her mailbox. Since men never asked to be called back and it was unthinkably pushy to return a phone call, Bells wasn't as hard as it might have been because you didn't have to write down numbers. Emily decided that if possible she would never get stuck waiting on tables at breakfast because she hated to get up so early.
In the evenings after dinner the House Mother would serve demitasse in the living room, a ritual known as 'gracious living.' It was important for a Radcliffe girl to know how to live graciously and to be a lady. Blue jeans were never to be worn to class, nor in Harvard Square, nor to dinner in the dorm. Since Emily didn't own any, that question was academic. Nor could you wear slacks or any other sort of pants to class, even in the snow.
Smoking in your room was forbidden. There was a smoker on each floor.
Everyone was handed a mimeographed schedule of the week's events. In the morning they would register for classes, and there would be conferences with their college advisors about their possible choice of majors. Some courses were mandatory, like Freshman English, which was composition. They had to take that one at Radcliffe, but they could take all their other courses at Harvard if they wished. Emily definitely planned to.
They were not to go into the men's dorms with a man unless there was a third person in the room to act as chaperone, or, of course, if it was a party. This was a rule of the Harvard houses, and they could get the men into trouble if they broke it, not to mention getting into trouble themselves. They laughed at that, because they all knew what it meant.
This week they would also take the fire rope-test, to show them how to get out of the dorm in case of fire, and the swimming test. You couldn't graduate unless you could both swim and float, so you might as well get it over with as soon as possible. Emily wondered if knowing how to swim and float were also necessary attributes of being a lady.
She looked around the room at the other girls. At high school the girls had tried to make themselves look exactly alike, but these girls all looked different. She had heard regional accents for the first time in her life, and she thought what a miracle it was to be living in a dorm with girls from all over the country, people she might never have met if she hadn't come to college. There were so many strangers here she didn't even know their names yet, and she wondered which ones were Jewish.
After the meeting was over the girls milled around casually, getting to know each other. Emily felt shy and went upstairs to her room to get her cigarettes. She had brought her own little ashtray from home, and because she felt too timid to go into the smoker she sat on the floor outside her room and lit a cigarette. Just this one, she told herself, and the next time I'll go into the smoker and meet some people. She was sure the other girls felt as shy and strange as she did, but still she wished someone would come up to her and start a conversation.
Two tall, beautiful girls came up the stairs chatting. One had long red hair, the other blonde. They were unmistakably not Jewish, she could tell that at a glance. They stopped in front of Emily.
'Well, I guess we're next-door neighbors,' the red-haired one said. She had a southern accent. 'I'm Annabel Jones.'
'I'm Emily Applebaum.'
'I'm Daphne Leeds,' said the beautiful blonde one. She spoke as if she had a mouthful of hot potatoes and Emily could tell she was some kind of supergoy socialite. 'What a pretty name ...' Daphne said. 'Applebaum. I never heard that before. What kind of name is that, German?'
'Um, I think so,' Emily said. If she knew it was Jewish she probably wouldn't talk to me anymore, she thought. 'Are you two roommates?'
'No, Daphne's two doors down. Neither of us have roommates. Do you?'
'No.'
'Oh, you brought an ashtray!' Annabel said. 'How smart of you. Well, I'll just share it.' She fished a cigarette from a pack in her skirt pocket and sat on the floor beside Emily. 'Did you ever hear so many silly rules in your life?'
Daphne sat on the floor beside them and blew a perfect smoke ring. 'I thought they had rules at Chapin,' she said, 'but this is ridiculous. After all, it's college. What a bore.'
'We're allowed to smoke in the hall,' Emily said quickly.
'I know,' Annabel said. 'I mean all those dating rules. If we're going to do anything we can do it before ten o'clock just as well as after.' She laughed. 'What incredible hypocrites.'
'I'm not looking forward to that fire rope-test,' Emily said. 'Do you think we have to jump out the window?'
'It can't be too bad.' Daphne said. 'It's in the gym.'
'As far as I'm concerned, anything that's in the gym is bad,' Annabel said.
Emily giggled in relief. 'Oh, do you hate gym too?'
'I loathe it. I like to ride horses, but mainly because I like the drinking that comes afterward.'
Emily looked at Annabel in amazement. She had never met anyone so sophisticated and worldly in her life. She could just picture her in riding clothes, like someone in a movie, being escorted into a hunt breakfast by two tall, handsome young men. Did she drink mint juleps? Champagne?
Annabel finished her cigarette and stubbed it out in Emily's ashtray. 'I happen to have a little care package in my room,' she said. 'If you two wish to join me. If dinner is anything like lunch I think we should fortify ourselves first.'
What did she mean, Emily thought, liquor? Certainly her mother didn't make her pack fruit.
The three of them went into Annabel's room. It was an identical cell to Emily's, but there the resemblance stopped. The room looked as if she had lived in it for a year. Cashmere sweaters and tweed skirts were tossed on the chair, across the bed, dropped on the floor. A few things hung in the closet. Shoes, unpaired, were scattered on the closet floor, and there was a jumble of makeup and toilet articles on the dresser. All the drawers were open. The only thing that was neat was the bookcase. Annabel had obviously brought her most treasured books from home, and had put them in order on the shelves. There was a complete collection of the Oz books, all the Winnie the Pooh, the complete works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Emily Dickinson, Sarah Teasdale, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Yeats, and T. S. Eliot. There was a portable phonograph on the floor, and next to it a pile of old 78 rpm Noel Coward records. Annabel put on 'Someday I'll Find You,' and pulled a box out from under the bed. It contained water biscuits, caviar, a tin of smoked oysters, cheese, and two splits of champagne.
'You didn't,' Daphne said.
'I did.'
'We'll get expelled our first day,' Emily said in delight and terror.
'Go get your toothbrush glasses and we'll lock the door,' Annabel said.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Class Reunion by Rona Jaffe. Copyright © 1979 Rona Jaffe. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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