She was lost in her own thoughts as they reached the campus. She was wishing she was back in Germany. She would have preferred to go to college there, but her parents wouldn’t agree to it. They didn’t want her so far away at her age, and wanted her to have an American college experience, particularly at an outstanding school with such strong traditions. She was still hoping to return to Germany for junior year.
The Main Building came into sight, which was prominent on the brochure with its Second Empire–style palatial structure. The residence halls were built around the quad. She had been assigned a room in Lathrop House. There was a long line of cars driving onto the property, and Alex looked around as though they were landing on the moon.
“It’s all girls here, huh?” he commented. The only men in evidence were the arriving students’ fathers and brothers and a few male workers handing out name tags and dorm assignments. At first glance, Meredith felt suddenly overwhelmed and wished she’d gone to another school, where there were male students, and everyone didn’t look so fancy. She saw girls in skirts and sweater sets, with saddle shoes, getting out of cars. Their hair was perfectly done, and she noticed that a few of them wore a string of pearls with their sweaters. Meredith was wearing a Black Watch kilt, navy sweater, and flat shoes, and wished she didn’t have to get out of the car. She wanted to go home. Her mother had worn a new pink suit, and her father and brother had worn suits and ties to help her move in, as did all the other male relatives assisting the arriving freshman girls.
Robert got Alex to help him pull the trunk and suitcases out, while Janet and Meredith went to get her room assignment. The smiling young man she got her dorm keys from told her where the building was and how to get there. And then the four of them set out to find her dorm, with Alex and Robert carrying the trunk.
As soon as they reached Lathrop House, Janet pointed to her own freshman hall across from it, as Robert and Alex headed into the building and struggled up the stairs. Her room was on the second floor, so they didn’t have far to go, and as they walked into the room, they saw that half of it was decorated in pink, and there was a teddy bear sitting on a pink bedspread on the bed. The other half of the room was bare, waiting for Meredith to unpack her things, and she was suddenly nervous about the girl she’d be rooming with. What if they hated each other?
Janet got out the keys to the trunk when Alex and their father set it down, while Merrie sat down on the bed and looked carefully around the room. Beyond the window, she could see the campus, it looked venerable and distinguished with handsome old trees. She could hear women’s voices everywhere, in the halls, in the other rooms, on the stairs, and outside as they stood beneath Merrie’s windows, and suddenly everything she’d brought with her seemed wrong. All the decorative items she’d packed were bright red. Her bedspread, some throw pillows, and even her typewriter all clashed with the powder pink of her roommate’s childlike treasures. Meredith’s choices were bolder, just like her points of view.
Meredith unpacked photographs of her family first, all in red frames, including a photograph of her grandfather in his robes when he’d been sworn into the Supreme Court, and several of her parents and Alex, and one of Anna and her two little girls in Germany. The photograph was a way of bringing a piece of her German life here.
She and her mother hung her clothes in the small closet, while Robert put a small record player under the desk with her Frank Sinatra records. They put the red rug down, spread the bedspread on the bed with the pillows, and put the posters over her bed with tape. One was a photograph of a German castle, and the other was a movie poster of Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, which she had seen that summer and loved. Her roommate had posters of Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, and Judy Garland over her bed, so they had all the current movie and singing stars covered.
Within an hour, the room was set up, Meredith was unpacked, and there had been no sign of her roommate yet. They were about to leave the room when she came sailing in, breathless from running up the stairs, and smiled at Merrie. She was a pretty blonde with a long pageboy, and was much better looking than her pictures, with a startlingly good figure for a young girl, and a heavy southern accent when she greeted everyone.
“Hi, I’m Betty. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to welcome you. We went to the cafeteria to get some lunch,” she explained. “My parents just left.” She clapped her hands excitedly when she saw the record player. “I didn’t think I’d have room for one.” She smiled at Alex, who was fascinated by her. She was wearing a tight pink sweater and a slim gray skirt, with the saddle shoes that all the girls seemed to be wearing, except Merrie.
“We were just going to take a walk,” Meredith explained shyly, somewhat bowled over by her effusive roommate. “My mother wants to take a look, for old times’ sake.”
“So did mine. She met my dad while she was going here. She dropped out after freshman year and they got married. And then I came along.” She beamed at them, as Meredith tried not to stare at her voluptuous chest. She looked like a movie star. None of the girls at Marymount had looked like that. The nuns forced them to be much more restrained. “See you when you get back,” she said, as they gathered up their things to leave. “Maybe we can listen to some of your music then,” she said, as she took a pack of cigarettes out of her purse and a pink ashtray out of a drawer and set it down on her desk. “I hope you don’t mind if I smoke.” She looked very sophisticated as she lit up.
“No, it’s fine,” Meredith said, somewhat stunned by her. She had a lot of personality, and seemed warm and friendly and very southern and was anything but shy. “See you in a while.”
Meredith followed her family down the stairs, glancing at the other girls moving in or going back down the stairs in pairs with their new roommates. She couldn’t imagine being close to someone like Betty. She was very different from the girls Meredith knew at school, and seemed a lot older and more glamorous. She had noticed that Betty was wearing makeup, and all Meredith had brought was a single pink lipstick, which was the only one she owned. Betty looked like the kind of girl that boys would be crazy over, and Meredith suspected she’d be engaged by Christmas, or the end of freshman year, like her mother. Meredith never knew what to say to girls like her. She had nothing in common with them and felt awkward when she compared herself to them. For a minute, she wished she had gone shopping with her mother, as Janet had suggested. She’d bought a few new sweaters, but mostly brought comfortable old clothes.
They walked around the campus until her mother had seen everything she wanted to, and then they hugged Meredith. She waved as they drove away, and she wandered back to her dorm, feeling lost and lonely, wondering what she was doing there. She felt like the ugly duckling in the midst of a flock of glamour girls. She noticed a thin, pale girl with her blond hair in a long braid sitting by herself on a bench as Meredith went back to Lathrop House. Their eyes met for a moment, and the girl smiled, and Meredith wondered if she felt as out of place as she did. She was wearing a simple pleated skirt, a dark sweater, and loafers with navy knee socks. She looked like the girls Meredith had known in Germany, more serious and subdued than the students here, and she seemed more European.
When Meredith went back to her room, she found Betty and three other girls listening to her Frank Sinatra records. The album covers were on the bed, along with a Nat King Cole record she really liked, and Buddy Holly.
“Is this okay with you?” Betty asked over her shoulder, Meredith said it was, and sat down on her bed to listen too. The girls left a little while later, and didn’t ask Meredith to join them. They seemed to already have plans, and one of them said to Betty that there was a mixer planned that weekend with the freshman boys from West Point. They all squealed with excitement at the news, and Meredith felt like an outcast before she even started.
She skipped dinner that night and stayed in her room, and it was right before curfew when Betty came back. She disappeared to the bathro
om with her bathrobe and makeup case, and came back with her hair in pin curls. Meredith went to get ready for bed then, and when she returned Betty was reading a movie magazine with Grace Kelly on the cover. She’d been in two movies that year, The Country Girl, and Rear Window with Jimmy Stewart. Meredith had seen Rear Window with a friend from school, and had loved it. Betty showed her photographs in the magazine of Grace Kelly on the Riviera with Cary Grant, filming a new movie that summer, and gave it to Meredith to read when she was finished. The two girls didn’t seem to have much in common, but Meredith tried not to be daunted by her. Betty was wearing a frilly nightgown, and lit another cigarette as she lay on the bed. Meredith was wearing a faded flannel nightgown she’d had since Germany and still liked, even though the cuffs were frayed and it was a little small.
“Smoke?” Betty offered her the pack of Lucky Strikes, and took out her pink lighter, and Meredith shook her head. She had never tried and was afraid it might make her sick if she did. Betty looked like one of the popular girls in a movie, and Meredith didn’t know what to say to her. She was so beautiful and had all the accessories and mannerisms of someone girls would follow and men would fall in love with. Meredith had never aspired to be one of those girls. She’d had friends who were boys in Germany, but she’d never had a boyfriend or a date, and going to an all-girls school, didn’t have any opportunity to meet any. She’d never been boy crazy, and studied most of the time, to maintain her good grades. “My mama said she had a lot of fun when she was here,” Betty said as she put out her cigarette, and it was easy to believe, if she looked anything like her daughter.
They lay silently awake in the dark for a long time, without saying anything, as Meredith wondered if they’d become friends or be like ships that would pass in the night, each of them observing the other like a rare specimen they had never seen before, and they’d be sharing the room for the rest of the year. Meredith had her own natural beauty, but she was totally unaware of it, unlike Betty’s looks, which were carefully studied to make her appear sexy and appealing. Meredith felt like an alien from another planet next to her. What boy would want to meet a girl like her, when they could have Betty, ripe for the plucking? But Meredith didn’t really care. She hadn’t come here to meet boys, but to learn, get her degree, and go on to law school after she got her bachelor’s degree. She wondered if she’d make any friends at all, or if she’d be an awkward outsider forever, wherever she went. And as she puzzled over it, she drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Three
Meredith wore her dark hair in a long, sleek ponytail down her back, with a kilt and a black twin set her mother had packed for her, knee socks, and loafers as she hurried off to class the next day.
Betty was wearing a soft pink cashmere sweater, a circle skirt in the same shade of pink, and her saddle shoes with short white socks. Her hair hung in waves and soft curls to her shoulders after the pin curls of the night before. And she’d worn just a touch of pale pink lipstick. There was no dress code, so they could wear whatever they wanted. Vogue had recently praised the fashion sense of the typical Vassar girl, so the students on campus had set a high standard to live up to, which Merrie was determined to ignore.
Betty met up with two other girls in the hall, and they went to orientation together. Meredith walked down the stairs alone and consulted a map of the campus to figure out where she was going. She saw the girl with the long braid walking ahead of her, heading for orientation too. They sat in the same row in the auditorium, but didn’t speak to each other, and listened to all the speeches and introductions, and then left the hall with all the other freshman students. Meredith could see Betty on the other side of the building, and her group of followers had grown. There were six or eight of them walking together to their English class. Meredith had to consult the map again that she’d brought with her. The building she was going to was farther away, for her German literature class, and she was surprised to see the girl with the braid walk in ahead of her. This time they smiled at each other when they sat down in class.
The room was small. There were ten students, and the young woman who taught it had a noticeable German accent, and kept everyone’s interest for the ninety minutes she spent with them. She said they were going to be reading the classics and greats of German literature: Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Günter Grass, Hoffmann, Freytag, and Irmgard Keun. Meredith was sorry they couldn’t read them in German, and she was considering buying some of them in the original, but was afraid her German was too rusty now to do so and get the full meaning, although she was still fluent enough to hold a conversation with ease. And she wrote to Anna in German.
She was excited about the serious nature of the course, and she liked the professor, who was a woman in her late thirties and made her description of each book they would be reading sound fascinating. Meredith was disappointed when the professor said the time was up and dismissed the class, and Meredith stopped and thanked the professor in German. The teacher looked at her in surprise and smiled, and they chatted for a few minutes, as the young woman with the braid walked slowly by. She looked as though she would have liked to join them, but didn’t dare.
She was standing outside when Meredith came out, and looked at her with her shy smile.
“Are your parents German?” she asked her in German, and Meredith smiled back as she shook her head. She loved being able to speak the language again, which reminded her of the happiest days of her life so far. She had felt so comfortable and at ease in Germany, more so than in the States since she’d been back.
“No. We lived there for four years. In Nuremberg. Are your parents German?” She continued speaking German to her, which seemed comfortable for both of them. The young woman seemed to hesitate before answering the question.
“No,” she said firmly, “they’re American. But I was born there. In Berlin. Your German is very good,” she complimented her.
“I don’t get a chance to speak it anymore. I was fluent when I got back five years ago. I loved living there.”
The girl with the braid nodded, and then spoke in barely more than a whisper. “I used to love it too. I came here nine years ago.” She had obviously come at the end of the war, or just before, Meredith calculated easily.
“Where are you going next?” Meredith asked her.
“Math class,” she said with a sigh.
“I have English. I think they’re in the same direction. My name is Meredith McKenzie,” she volunteered then, and the other girl stuck out a polite hand to shake hers, which was something one rarely saw between women in the States but was common in Europe, where everyone either shook hands or kissed.
“Claudia Steinberg. How do you do?” It seemed like providence that they had met, in their first class, and could speak German to each other. “My parents don’t really like me speaking German,” she said wistfully. “They want me to be American now that I’m here, but I miss speaking my own language.”
“I miss speaking your language too,” Meredith said, and they both laughed. “Did you and your family come over after the war?”
Claudia shook her head in answer. “No. I came,” she said clearly, offered no further explanation, and Meredith sensed that she didn’t want to share more. They chatted about the school and the dorms on their way to class. She was in the same house as Meredith, on the floor above.
“Do you like your roommate?” Merrie asked, and Claudia shrugged.
“She’s not very friendly so far. We haven’t really talked. My parents were here yesterday to bring me. And she was busy too.”
“Mine looks like a movie star,” Meredith said, smiling. “She seems okay. She wears makeup and smokes and reads movie magazines. I think she came here to meet boys.”
“She won’t meet any here,” Claudia said, laughing, referring to the all-girls school.
“She wants to go to the mixers. Her mother got
engaged while she was here, and I think she has the same thing in mind.”
“I didn’t really want to come to a women’s school, but my mother went to school here, so they insisted,” Claudia said cautiously.
“So did mine. I’d rather be in a school with men too, not for romance, but it’s just more interesting to have a male point of view in class. And I like having men friends. I’m tired of being with women all the time. I went to an all-girls high school in New York. I had much more fun in school in Germany.”
Claudia didn’t respond to that, and by then, they had reached the math building and she had to go.
“Do you want to have lunch?” she asked Merrie before she left, Meredith nodded, looking pleased. She liked Claudia, and they had more in common than she did with Betty the blond bombshell.
“I’d like that.” They made a date at the dining hall at noon, and then both of them hurried off to their classes.
Meredith found her English class far less interesting than her German literature class, and the professor very dry. Her mind was wandering for the second half of the class, and she almost fell asleep. She left quickly when it was over and hurried to the dining facility, where Claudia was already waiting for her.
“The professor let us go early,” she explained. They went to choose their meal then. The food looked adequate and wholesome, and they came back to the table after they’d both signed for their lunch with their campus account.
Claudia asked Meredith about life in Germany right after the war. Meredith told her she hadn’t been there since 1949 when they’d left, but she had loved living there.
“They did a lot of reconstruction while we were in Nuremberg. The city was very badly hit and almost destroyed by the Allied bombing raids, but the rebuilding went pretty quickly. The Germans are hard workers.”
“Some of them,” Claudia said cynically. “Did your father do business there?” She was intrigued by Meredith and how well she spoke German, as though she had always lived in Germany or been born there.
The Good Fight Page 4