The Other New Girl

by LB Gschwandtner

  “…On January tenth I’ll turn eighteen. And then I have to register for the draft…”

  The DRAFT, I thought. That was what this was about? Of course. Guys had to think about that. But he would be in college after graduation. He would get a deferment. Everyone like us got a deferment. As long as a guy was in school, he was safe. And anyway, they hadn’t started calling guys up for the draft in forever.

  I looked down at the paper again.

  “So maybe I’ll just say I’m not sure what to do. And I want to know what you think. I could register as a CO (he meant Conscientious Objector . . . we’d learned about that in Quaker Life class) but that’s what the problem is. See, part of me feels like that’s a cop out, like I’m not really a man if I do that. I mean, who lets somebody else go do their fighting for them? Not that I’ve ever advocated fighting. But when do you draw the line? It’s okay to say in Meeting for Worship that pacifism is the only moral choice. But what would have happened if the Allies didn’t fight the Nazis? What if someone with a gun breaks into your house and threatens to kill your family? Is pacifism going to stop that person? I don’t know. I can’t imagine every situation that could happen. But I think that every person must have some fight threshold, some point at which they would do violence to another person. Maybe as a species we are programmed to fight under certain circumstances. This may all be academic. But from what I’ve read, we don’t seem to have a strategy for getting out of Vietnam. And we seem to be getting, step-by-step, more, rather than less, involved. We’ve talked about it in history class with Mr. Gerstle. Most people are more concerned with the Berlin Wall, but Mr. Gerstle says we’re sending advisors to Vietnam and Laos and we’ll probably take over in Vietnam after the French give up completely…

  I’m probably boring you with all this. I was happy to see you tonight. Even if it was only for a couple of minutes. I kept your image in my mind the whole time I was home in California. So far away. But it was like I was waiting to come back to a piece of candy I’d hidden away—a tasty treat that I could look forward to rediscovering.

  Good night, my treat.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Eyeliner and Lipstick

  I TOLD MYSELF AT LEAST A THOUSAND TIMES, I COULDN’T have known. But that was later. After. Before, I couldn’t have told myself anything because before something happens, you are unaware of the swirling currents that could rock your boat. I was just happy to be back with Wes, back at Foxhall, back in our little world.

  What I did tell myself throughout that first day back was that after my “experience”—and I put it that way because that was how I thought of it, as a big experience—at the soup kitchen, now I could see other people’s circumstances with a clearer eye, with a softer heart, with a deeper understanding. I should be a better person after all that, I told myself. But really, behind all those thoughts, I knew I was no different. I was the same me, the way other people are the same them, doing what we had always done and thinking about ourselves first because that was what nature intended. Nature. The nature we referred to when we want to think that every act, every instinct was predetermined. We were, after all, mostly animal instinct. Like nature. We followed our natural urges. We ate and slept and had sex. Because we were programmed to do what would keep us—the collective us—going as a species. Nature. We relied on it as the backdrop for all existence. And it always treated us so well. Didn’t it? Nature . . . always dependable and reliable.

  It was a chilly night. Winter was just over the hill. A crisp, clear, moonless night. Stars were just beginning to show themselves in a shy display. Wes and I walked hand in hand to the gym. No deans around to point and tell us that was a no-no. I felt as if I were floating rather than walking.

  “I want to talk,” Wes said.

  “Yes?”

  “About the KOB I sent you.”

  “Okay. At the dance? It might be hard there.”

  “We can’t go anywhere else with the dance on. You know the rule. Either at the dance or in your room or at the library.”

  “Right. Well, we can find a quiet corner maybe.”

  The future was sealed right there. And I was oblivious. Or maybe the future was never simply a matter of one decision in one split second. Maybe it was not only one event. Maybe it was a series, like a cascade, starting with a trickle and then building, building, to a rush that couldn’t be contained. And afterward you ask, what if I had done this or said that or not gone there or been more alert or a million things, what if they had been different. Well, of course, if a million things had been different, everything would have been different. The Greeks offered a tidy explanation of how our lives unfold. Three fates spinning, measuring, and cutting our lives. A fantasy view of the universe. A poet’s view. A fatalist’s view. A quaint, but untenable, locked-in view that utterly denied a human free will. I didn’t know how the ancients wrapped their collective mind around that view but we had evolved. We had choices. We made choices. They may have seemed obvious or expedient, even forward-looking at the time we made them, but they didn’t always yield the expected results.

  One of the AV boys had brought his entire collection of forty-fives to the gym. He stacked a batch on a record player— the kind with a fat tube that fit the large holes in forty-fives—and set it to run on its own, oblivious to the gym half-full of students, more of them than usual at an unscheduled dance, milling around in tight groups against the walls or out in the middle dancing to Elvis (“Don’t Be Cruel”), The Fleet-woods (“Come Softly To Me”), The Drifters (“There Goes My Baby”), The Everly Brothers (“All I Have To Do”), with most of us lip syncing the lyrics—You ain’t nothing but a hound dog / Cryin’ all the time / You ain’t nothing but a hound dog / Cryin’ all the time / Weeeell, You ain’t never caught a rabbit / And you ain’t no friend o’ mine.

  And then they played the latest hit—Georgia, Georgia / ah, The whole day through / Just an old sweet song / Keeps Georgia on my mind . . . and I just wanted to melt right there in the gym.

  Bleaker stood to the right of the door about ten feet down the wall, like some hawk perched in the perfect spot to see her prey as it walked through the open door.

  Wes and I moved the other way, steering clear of her by visceral instinct. As we made our way to a far corner, I noticed Donald Wingart standing on the other side of the record table. He had on a bow tie, it was bright pink, and a starched shirt and slacks. His shoes were shined. I could see little glints of lights reflecting from the round toes. I smiled to myself. Little Donald Wingart had come to the dance. I felt a tiny stab of triumph.

  Wes and I reached our corner, leaned against the gym wall, and just watched the dancers for a few minutes, more to get our bearings than because we were interested. But there were Daria and Tim. She was dancing rings around him as usual. No one could keep up with Daria on the dance floor. Tim was smart enough not to try. He just let her whirl and every once in a while he put out his arms and she fell into them before turning again, as if she had the music inside her, hair flying, a faraway smile on the lips, eyes half closed, for a few precious moments transported from the view of basketball hoops and the sickly stale scent of sweat and floor wax.

  “You read it?” Wes asked.

  “Of course.”

  “And . . . ”

  “I don’t know what to say. I mean, I have no idea what it must be like to have to make that decision.” I felt helpless and sounded to myself like I didn’t care. Which wasn’t the case. But I didn’t know how to care about the draft, about war. “I mean, how do you even think about it? We’ve never had to fight a war. It seems so alien. Like, here we are in school, not even college, and we’re supposed to be deciding all this stuff about a future we know nothing about.”

  “I know. It’s bizarre.” Wes looked at his shoes. He was wearing jeans and a shirt under a maroon sweatshirt that had the Harvard Veritas logo. He’d applied there. Also Stanford and MIT. I didn’t know which one was his safety. It didn’t really matter. “I mean
, I could register as a CO without any problem. I’ve been actively going to Meeting my whole life. But from what I hear, they put COs right up front, like with the ambulance corps where you have no protection.”

  “Where did you hear that?” I always wondered about the guy grapevine. I figured all they did was talk about sports.

  “A lot of places. I’ve read about what happens if you’re a CO. Anyway, sometimes I think I’m just a big chicken.”

  “You don’t have to have a gun in your hand to be brave.”

  “Yeah, but if you’re depending on someone else to be brave with their gun on your behalf, then it does seem like you’re not taking responsibility for yourself. And you’re not much of a team player.”

  Yeah, that was one of the guy things—being a team player. Girls didn’t have to concern themselves so much with that, unless you were on an actual team and even then it sometimes didn’t really matter that much.

  “Well, if being a team player means killing someone else, then it’s really like being a gang member.”

  “But not in a war. A war is different.”

  “Are you arguing in favor of war? Here? At this place?”

  “No, of course not. I’m just saying, well let’s say you and I are married . . . ”

  He lost me for a second as I fantasized about us being married, a couple, with a baby and a cute little house and our own dishes and a big bed with a feather comforter where we could have sex whenever we wanted.

  But he was still talking . . .

  “. . . and someone breaks into our happy little home, waving a gun and threatening to kill us. Well, if I had a gun I’d probably shoot it at him. I’d protect my family.”

  “But you wouldn’t have a gun.”

  “No, but the argument still holds up.”

  From somewhere at the periphery of my vision I felt, rather than directly saw, Moll enter the gym.

  “Wes,” I said and held up a hand.

  “What is it?”

  “Moll just showed up.”

  “So?”

  “Well, that’s so great.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Donald came to the dance, too.”

  “You mean Wingart?”

  “Yes. Look.” I nodded toward the record table.

  Donald had moved in front of it. He was looking at the door, at where Moll was standing.

  “She looks different, kind of,” Wes said.

  The melancholy strains of “Mr. Blue” wafted through the gym as couples slow-danced.

  I’m Mr. Blue (wah-a-wah-ooh)

  When you say you love me (ah, Mr. Blue)

  Then prove it by goin’ out on the sly

  Provin’ your love isn’t true

  Call me Mr. Blue

  I’m Mr. Blue (wah-a-wah-ooh)

  When you say you’re sorry (ah, Mr. Blue)

  Then turn around, head for the lights of town

  Hurtin’ me through and through

  Call me Mr. Blue

  “She got herself done up. Her hair looks teased. And where did she get that bright red blouse?”

  I shook my head. “I doubt Donald will notice anything different. He’s pretty oblivious.”

  Donald had started making his way to the front door. Moll just stood there, looking as if she’d been stopped by a cop, eyes wide, staring across the room. I started saying a little prayer to myself: Just be cool, Moll. Let him come over to you. Don’t get flustered. He wants to make contact. Just let it happen.

  And then he had made it to where she was standing. I saw him say something to her. And she nodded. So far so good. Contact! Moll would be happy tonight. Finally.

  “Let’s dance,” Wes took my arm and led me out to the floor where Mr. Blue was still crooning and we turned away from the front door and slow-danced, drenched in the love-sick feeling that 1960 would soon be over and Wes would face a decision that could affect the rest of his life.

  “I wish I could be more helpful,” I whispered.

  “It’s okay. It’s enough just to know you’re there. Just to have someone to talk to.”

  “When will you decide?”

  “I don’t know. I thought about talking to Mr. Brownell about it. Their son was a CO in Korea.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah, he was with an ambulance corps. His leg got shattered by a land mine.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  He held me as close as was safe with Bleaker in the gym. I looked around to find her and there she was standing guard by the door, arms crossed, that grim look still on her face. Moll was nowhere nearby. I thought she and Donald must have found a place to talk. I looked over at the record table but he was gone. And then I noticed him under one of the basketball hoops. He looked frozen to the spot. But no Moll.

  “Maybe we can meet up by the track—you know at the steps—after study hall?” Wes whispered.

  I nodded but my attention was somewhere else, wondering where Moll had disappeared. And then I thought maybe the girls’ room, and after that I stopped thinking about Moll because Wes had his arms around me in another slow dance, and even though we had agreed that only desperate couples used it, I started to think that maybe we should try the mattress room some night because by then it had turned too cold to go to the trestle again.

  TWENTY-SIX

  If the Key Fits

  THE USUAL SCHOOL BUZZ DIDN’T START RIGHT AWAY. MORNing bells sounded the same as always. I showered quickly, brushed my teeth, and dried my hair like I did every morning. The first week after any break was always a bit slow to get going. People dragged themselves to breakfast. A lot of the boys didn’t bother with a.m. grooming—at least the boys who never dated. We all looked a bit bleary-eyed as we slowly settled back into the school routine. Even the teachers at our tables had a hard time instigating the usual in-depth conversations they liked to encourage about politics and where the country was headed. I, for one, was perfectly happy not to discuss whether Nixon or Kennedy had the better plan for America. By Thursday, we were almost back in the groove but not quite. There was still a little vacation rustle in the air, like leaves that had half turned but weren’t quite ready to dislodge themselves from the trees.

  Just as I was buttering my toast, Daria came flying up to my table and leaned in so only I could hear her.

  “Did you hear?”

  I sat back and blinked. “About what?”

  “The key,” she whispered and then Brady appeared and whispered something to Daria and they ran off, leaving me in a state of bewilderment.

  “Miss Greenwood, what’s going on?” asked Mr. Fenstermacher, our table’s faculty member. He was a youngish man, prematurely bald, wearing a tweed jacket that looked as if he’d slept in it for the past year at least. He taught modern European history and was faculty advisor to both the chess and AV clubs. Not really my type of guy.

  “Oh, nothing,” I shrugged and concentrated on my toast.

  “Seems quite a lot of commotion for nothing.”

  He looked across to a table where Jan was assigned, not far from us nearer the doorway where Daria and Brady were leaning down, whispering behind their hands and shaking their heads.

  What key? I thought and then it hit me.

  “Um, Mr. Fenstermacher, may I be excused?” I stood up fully expecting him to say yes.

  “For what purpose?”

  He looked up at me kind of astonished. I thought fast. It came to me without much strain to my gray matter because, after all, what man wants to know too much about the monthly female cycle, especially at breakfast.

  “I . . . um . . . have to change . . . um . . . go to the ladies . . .”

  “Of course, go ahead.” He waved an arm as if to say, “No more information, please.”

  So I bolted out of the room by way of the other table and managed to poke Brady in the arm as I sped past toward the dining hall door. Once out in the hall, I did head for the ladies room down at the end of the hall and by the time I
hit the door with both open palms, the sound of hurried footsteps told me the others were on my trail.

  “What’s this all about?” Jan spoke first.

  I put my finger to my lips before leaning down to check for feet inside the stalls, but the bathroom was empty so we leaned against the sink while Daria told us what was going on.

  “I went down to the mattress room last night after lights out.”

  “Yes, what about it?” Brady’s voice shook.

  “I’m getting to it. Shit, let me talk.” Daria glared at Brady so we all shut up.

  “Tim was meeting me near the laundry room door.” She pointed to the end of the hall outside the bathroom. We all knew what she meant.

  “So? I’ve met someone there before,” Brady whispered.

  “I know. Let me finish. So I stuck a wad of chewed gum in the back fire door latch, and then when Tim got in and met me in the basement, the key to the mattress room didn’t work. It wouldn’t fit. And now they’re tearing Wilkins Dorm apart.”

  “Wait a second,” Jan said. “I don’t understand. What are they looking for?”

  Daria turned to her with an expression of total exasperation. “The key. You know to the mattress room.”

  “But Tim has the key,” Jan said, still bewildered.

  “No he doesn’t. I told him to flush it.”

  “Why didn’t it work?” Jan wouldn’t let it go.

  Brady broke in, “Someone must have changed the lock.”

  “That’s what we think,” Daria nodded. She looked scared. It was the first time I saw her look anything but in complete control.

  “What happened to Tim?” I asked.

  “He went back to Wilkins. He didn’t get caught, thank God.”

  “How did they find out?” Jan asked. She had pushed away from the sink and was clutching her hands, folding and unfolding her fingers.

  “Someone must have squealed,” Brady said. “Are they also searching Dreier?”