The exterior was made of Vermont marble, and the finest natural materials of the country had been used. There were four inner courtyards of crystalline flaked white Georgia marble, each with a central fountain, and the walls and floors of all the corridors and entrance halls were of creamy Alabama marble. The wood used in the offices throughout the building was American quartered white oak. Meredith remembered all the names of the different kinds of marble from the book she had read, but seeing them in front of her was a stunning experience.
The main entrance to the building faced the Capitol Building. The Supreme Court Building was designed to harmonize with the important monuments around it. There was a 252-foot-wide oval plaza at the front of the building, and flanking the shallow steps that led to it were a pair of marble candelabra with carved panels depicting Justice holding a sword and scales, and the three Fates weaving the thread of life. Fountains, flagpoles, and benches lined both sides of the plaza. Janet had to urge Meredith to keep up with them, as she stopped to stare at the majesty of it all. And on either side of the main steps there were seated marble figures, and Merrie informed her parents that the statues were by James Earle Fraser, and that the female figure on the left was the Contemplation of Justice, and the male figure on the right was the Guardian or Authority of Law.
The pediment at the main west entrance was supported by sixteen marble columns. On the architrave above was carved “Equal Justice Under Law.” And capping the entrance was Robert Aitken’s sculpture group representing Liberty Enthroned, guarded by Order and Authority.
Double rows of monolithic marble columns flanked both sides of the main corridor inside—the Great Hall—rising to a coffered ceiling. Busts of all former chief justices were set alternately in niches and on marble pedestals along the side walls.
“Will they put a statue of Grampa there one day?” she asked her father, staring at them.
“I’m sure they will,” he said, smiling at her, touched by how avidly she had studied every detail about the art and architecture, and how reverent she was. She wanted to visit the old court chamber, the original one, in the Capitol too, but they didn’t have time that day. Her grandfather promised to take her on her next visit.
At the east end of the Great Hall, the doors opened into the court chamber. It was a huge room eighty-two feet wide and ninety-one feet long, with a forty-four-foot ceiling that soared above them. Its twenty-four columns were Old Convent Quarry Siena marble, from Italy. The walls and friezes were of Spanish ivory vein marble, and the marble floor borders were from Africa and Italy.
Meredith and the entire family stopped and stared with awe at the raised bench, behind which the nine justices normally sat. The bench and all the furniture in the courtroom was a rich mahogany. And the attorneys who argued cases occupied tables in front of the bench. They would then address the bench from a lectern in the center, which Robert pointed out to them. And there was a bronze railing to divide the public section from that of the Supreme Court bar. Press would be seated on red benches on one side of the courtroom, and identical red benches on the opposite side were for guests of the justices, and black chairs in front of the benches were for officers of the court and important guests.
The main floor of the building was divided between the justices’ chambers, conference rooms, and offices for law clerks and secretaries. The offices of the marshal and the solicitor general were on the main floor as well, along with a lawyers’ lounge, and the justices’ robing room.
Robert and his family stopped when they reached the justices’ conference room, where his father would take the first oath that morning. The chief justice, Fred Vinson, was going to administer the constitutional oath, and family members could attend. Bill had asked his son to hold the Bible for him, which was a tradition, and several associate justices would be in attendance. Meredith stood riveted as she watched the proceedings, and was silent and solemn as they moved to the west conference room with the small gathering of Bill’s family and friends, for the chief justice to administer the second oath, the judicial oath, which would conclude the official proceedings of the day. The formal investiture would happen several months later in the courtroom, at a special sitting of the court. After Chief Justice Vinson administered the second oath, Bill posed for photographs with his family and the other justices present.
Meredith thought that being there was the most exciting day of her life, and there was a luncheon afterward at the Mayflower Hotel for her grandparents’ friends. Meredith watched the other guests with great interest, and the family went back to New York the next day on the train. She knew she would remember every detail of the day forever, and she hugged her grandfather extra tight before they left.
“I’m so proud of you, Grampa!” she whispered fiercely, with a look of immeasurable admiration, and he held her and smiled for a moment, with a knowing look.
“I’m going to be proud of you one day too, Merrie.” As he said it, she knew she wanted to live up to his faith in her. She just didn’t know how she would do it yet, but hoped that one day she would.
* * *
—
After the exciting days of her grandfather’s swearing-in, her thoughts turned to going back to school in September, and she felt glum again. She wasn’t looking forward to it. She was going into eighth grade at Marymount, where she’d gone to school before. It was the same all-girls school she’d attended from kindergarten until they left. She liked her coed school in Germany much better, and having friends who were boys as well as girls. Everything about being back in New York felt like a return to her early childhood, and she had started growing up in Germany, she was a teenager now, and wanted a change. She had five more years to attend at Marymount before she’d graduate from high school.
The final weeks of summer seemed interminable. They had rented a house on Martha’s Vineyard for a week, as they always did, and another one on Cape Cod after their trip to Washington. It was fun playing on the beach with Alex, and she made friends with some girls her age staying in nearby houses, but it all seemed boring to her now. She’d had more fun in Italy and the south of France during her summers in Europe, but she didn’t say that to her new friends.
In the fall, she started eighth grade at Marymount, and Alex started nursery school. There were different teachers, but the classrooms were familiar and looked just like the ones Merrie had attended in the lower grades before they moved. She missed speaking German more than ever. For lack of anything else to do, she applied herself to her schoolwork and got good grades, which pleased her parents. She made a few friends, and reconnected with some of her old ones, but her life experience was different now, and broader than the girls her age. She cared about social and political issues, which set her apart too. By the time she’d been back for a year and started high school, Germany seemed like it was a lifetime away. Her parents acted as though they had never left the States and thought that Meredith had adjusted well. They had no idea how lonely she was at times, and how out of step she felt with her classmates. Alex had forgotten all his German after a year. They’d received Anna’s wedding pictures, and she wrote to tell them she was expecting a baby, and sounded delighted about it.
Meredith visited her grandparents in Washington several times, and her grandfather had her come to his chambers at the Supreme Court, which fascinated her. She wrote a paper about it for school, and told her classmates she wanted to be a lawyer one day, like her father and grandfather. They laughed at her when she said it. They all wanted to get married and have babies. Only about half of them wanted to go to college, and only because their parents said they should. The other parents didn’t care. They thought girls didn’t have to go to college, as long as they got engaged within a year or two of high school graduation. The goal for their daughters was marriage, not an education. Meredith couldn’t imagine anything dumber than not going to college and just getting married and having kids. She wanted to do
a lot more with her life than that. She stopped talking about law school, because her classmates all thought she was weird when she said it. And her parents didn’t like the idea either. Her grandfather was the only one who thought it was the right path for her.
She signed up for some volunteer work at school, but the only thing her parents would let her do was tutor younger students, which she didn’t love. She had hoped to do something more interesting like serve meals at a soup kitchen, but they thought she might catch an illness from the people there. None of the options seemed meaningful to her, and high school felt like a desert she had to crawl through in order to get to college, but her parents had strong opinions about that too. They wanted her to go to an all-female college, either Vassar or Wellesley. Her mother had gone to Vassar, so they put a lot of pressure on her to choose that. It was an excellent school for women, and she couldn’t think of where else to go. She would have liked to try for Radcliffe, the sister school to Harvard, but her father told her that her mother would be really upset if she didn’t follow tradition. To make them happy, she applied to Vassar and got in, so her fate was sealed. She was going to Vassar in the fall, just as her mother had done. It felt like a cookie cutter life to her, following in her mother’s footsteps. She was determined to be her own person, but didn’t know how to break out of the mold. Her parents had such rigid ideas about what was expected of her, and she didn’t want to disappoint them. But she didn’t want to be her mother either. She dreamed of getting more out of life than a husband and children, and playing bridge.
She was fiercely excited two weeks before her high school graduation when the Supreme Court ruled for integration of white and colored children in schools, in the Brown v. Board of Education case, striking down the earlier Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which was in favor of segregation. It was a landmark ruling and Meredith called to congratulate her grandfather.
“It was the only proper thing we could do,” he said reasonably, and Meredith told him how proud she was of him. The case had been presented to the Supreme Court three years in a row, and chief counsel for the NAACP Thurgood Marshall had argued eloquently in front of the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the court’s final opinion. Meredith had even caught a glimpse of her grandfather on the news on television that night. She was bursting with pride that he had been part of it.
He and her grandmother attended her high school graduation, and afterward they took her to Europe for a month as their gift to her. She had a fantastic time with them. She wanted to go back to Germany to see her friends, but it wasn’t on the itinerary, and her grandparents told her maybe another time. She would have liked to see Anna, their old nanny, who had two children by then, and they looked sweet in the pictures she sent. They were both girls and were towheaded blondes just like her.
In Paris, she stayed at the Ritz with her grandparents and went to museums every day. Her grandfather took her shopping and bought her a beret. They went to Notre Dame and Sacré-Coeur, and had lunch in bistros and cafés. She loved being with them, and from there they went to London and visited the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and the Tate Gallery, and they took her to several plays and a production of the Royal Ballet. After that they traveled to Rome and Florence, to visit churches and art, and the monuments of Rome. They ended the trip in Venice, where they rode in gondolas and wandered the streets for hours. It was the best present of her life, and she loved being with them. She felt like a world traveler again, and was starting to get excited about college. Even if Vassar hadn’t been her ideal choice, it was still her first step in adulthood. The school claimed that it encouraged independent thinking and hard work, which made it slightly more appealing to Merrie. Her brother, Alex, was eight by then and sad that she was leaving, but she promised to come home often to see him, and said he could visit her at college.
The summer flew by once she got home from Europe. Adelaide helped her pack her trunk. And she got a polite letter from the girl who was going to be her roommate, who was from North Carolina. Her mother and grandmother had gone to Vassar too. She’d sent a photograph, and she was very pretty, with long blond hair.
Meredith had everything ready for her departure, and it all went smoothly until the night before she left, when her mother mentioned that she’d have to come home for several rehearsals for the debutante ball where she was being presented right before Christmas. And she said they’d have to shop for a dress. Meredith looked across the table at her in horror and shook her head.
“I’m not doing that.” She had told them that before, but her parents were sure she’d come around. Meredith thought it was a ridiculous, archaic, snobbish tradition, and said she wasn’t going to be paraded around in a white dress, with a bunch of giggling girls looking for husbands. It always happened during the Christmas holidays of a girl’s freshman year of college, or the Christmas after their high school graduation if they hadn’t gone to college. Normally, the girls were eighteen, which was customarily the right age to “come out.” Meredith had been telling her parents for years that she would never do it. And now her mother acted like she’d never said it before.
“Don’t be silly, Merrie,” her mother said, looking nervous. “All the girls love it, you’ll have a wonderful time. You’ll have to come down from school one weekend so we can look for a dress.”
“I’m not doing it,” Meredith said again. “It’s stupid, and a throwback to another century. The purpose of it originally was to marry girls off. I’m not looking for a husband.” She glared at both of her parents. “It’s a travesty, with more important things happening in the world. The segregation of white and Negro children in school was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, and you expect me to look like an idiot as a debutante.” She had discussed the case in depth with her grandfather for months, and the impact it would have on schools in the South.
“Your mother did it, and she looked beautiful,” Robert said nostalgically, ignoring her comments about the landmark decision. The two issues were not related as far as he was concerned, although he knew Meredith was far more interested in politics and civil rights than picking dresses, which she considered irrelevant.
“Did you go with her?” Meredith looked surprised, distracted for a moment, and her mother smiled.
“Your father was escorting another girl. He was incredibly handsome in white tie and tails. We met that night. It was magical. A friend’s brother was my escort. Who do you think you’d want to take?” Janet acted as though Merrie had made no objection to it.
“I said I’m not going.” She was sullen to the point of rude, as she glared at them.
“Your mother came out at the same ball,” her father reminded her gently, and her mother looked hurt.
“It’s a lovely Cinderella night,” her mother added.
“The purpose of which is to find a husband,” Meredith said stubbornly. “I’m going to law school. I’m not getting married.”
“Of course not. But that’s no reason for you not to come out.”
“I’m not coming out,” she said again, and her brother watched her, puzzled.
“What are you coming out of?”
“Nothing,” Meredith said, left the table, and stormed up to her room. They couldn’t force her. She wouldn’t let them. She didn’t see them again until morning, when she came down for breakfast before they left for Poughkeepsie. Both of her parents were taking her, and Alex too. He wanted to see where she was going to school, and her mother said she was planning to walk the campus for old times’ sake, and see what had changed, after they settled her in. The subject of the debutante ball did not come up again. There was plenty of time to discuss it, Janet had said to Robert. They thought she was nervous about school, and didn’t realize how serious she was about not making her debut.
Her father went to get the car from the garage he used a few blocks away. He had rented a station wagon the day before, an
d the doorman helped him slide the trunk into the back, and put both her smaller valises on top of it, along with a bedspread, a small colorful rug, and two spare pillows. Her bedding was in the trunk, and some posters she wanted to put on the wall. The brochure and advance material had suggested that the rooms were small and not to overdo the decorating. She would have a small closet, a chest of drawers, a desk, and a chair, and she had brought a portable typewriter with her that her grandmother had given her. Her father had reminded her to bring her tennis racket. And she was going to buy a bicycle in town to get around the campus.
She had selected all her classes, and was taking all the required subjects to get them out of the way, and a German literature class that interested her as her only elective. She had kissed Adelaide goodbye the night before, since she wasn’t working that day because they were leaving, and had given her the day off. Meredith felt sad as she left the apartment. She knew her life would never be quite the same again. Her carefree childhood days were over.
It took them two and a half hours to get there, and the countryside in the Hudson Valley was pretty. She had visited the school the year before when she decided to apply, and she had agreed that it was a lovely campus.
West Point, the military academy, was the nearest boys’ school, and Yale was unofficially their “brother” college. Vassar was the second of the Seven Sisters colleges. They had mixers on campus regularly so the girls could meet male students from other schools. There were no sorority houses at Vassar, nor eating clubs or societies, unlike some other colleges. They believed in equality and treating everyone fairly so no one would feel excluded. Meredith’s only real objection to it was that it was an elitist all-female school, but it was her mother’s alma mater, and she didn’t have the heart to let her down.
The Good Fight Page 3