Meredith was at the Vineyard with her family for the Fourth of July, and they gave a barbecue for friends as they did every year. It was a cozy homegrown event, with her father taking orders at the barbecue. He was always relaxed at the Vineyard.
Four days later, Meredith’s predictions came true, when the first American “advisor” was killed in Vietnam. It spawned a huge argument between them about what would come next.
“One day there will be a full-scale war over there, with American soldiers dying. How can you pretend that that won’t happen?” Meredith said angrily to her father.
“One dead advisor is not indicative of a full-scale war coming,” he insisted, and she looked at him with narrowed eyes.
“If that one dead advisor were Alex, you’d be looking at this very differently,” she said. He didn’t answer, and went back into the house. Afterward he told Janet that their daughter was crazy and she had a new crusade to rage about. It was always something with her. And he thought his father was as crazy as she was, since he agreed with her. Robert believed in the U.S. military presence in Vietnam, and he was even all for bombing the North Vietnamese before they created a serious problem, to scare them into line. But he didn’t for a minute believe that there would be a full-scale war there, with the deaths of American boys. That just wasn’t going to happen, in his opinion.
Meredith had lunch with her grandfather the day before she started law school. He was in New York on some personal business, and wanted to wish her well on her new adventure.
“You’ll be changing the world after this,” he said proudly. “Learn everything you can. Maybe you’ll be on the Supreme Court one day. Or be president. You can do anything you set your mind to.” He always flung open the doors for her, and the horizon was limitless the way he described it, unlike her parents, who wanted to keep her life small and disapproved of everything she wanted to try her hand at. They weren’t thrilled about her going to law school, and were worried about where it would lead her. Certainly not in any of the directions they envisioned for her, straight into marriage and motherhood, where they were convinced she belonged. They were very old-school and still believed a woman’s place was in the home. They thought she needed a husband to tame her, which sounded like a horrifying prospect to her. She didn’t want to be tamed. She wanted to roam free, like a wild horse on the plains. Her grandfather understood that, and had been a wild horse all his life. It had worked well for him. But he was a man, and she was a young girl.
The classes at Columbia were harder than she’d expected, but she enjoyed them. She’d been there for two months when she got an invitation to Ted Jones’s wedding in Greenwich to Miss Emily Margaret Barclay. She knew they’d gotten engaged a year before, but with no further news from him, she’d hoped he had come to his senses. Apparently he hadn’t. He had gone to work at his father’s bank, and was marrying the girl his parents wanted him to marry, the one he’d said bored him blind the whole time they were in college. Now they were getting married at twenty-four, and babies would be next. The thought of it made Meredith sad, because she knew he could have done so much better, and was settling for a life he didn’t really want. He didn’t have the courage to do otherwise. And Ted knew it too, however he justified it to himself.
She responded to the invitation with a heavy heart, and decided to go. Claudia was invited too, but she wasn’t going. She had an interview to do that day, and was glad to miss it. Meredith had fantasies about standing up and objecting when the minister asked if anyone knew of a reason for the marriage not to go forward. “YES!” she wanted to scream. “He’ll be miserable! And he doesn’t love her!” She would then be dragged out of the wedding, and maybe even arrested by Emily’s parents, while Ted would thank her and run away to freedom. But it wasn’t going to happen that way. She was going to watch him put a noose around his neck and hang himself, or wish he had.
The wedding was the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. Meredith took the train to Greenwich in the outfit she was wearing to the black-tie wedding, complete with an old mink coat she had borrowed from her mother for the occasion. She was sorry she had never fallen in love with Ted. Even if she would have driven him crazy, he would have been happier than he was going to be with Emily for the rest of his life, or however long the marriage lasted. She hated to see him make a mistake like that. It was a big one.
She took a cab from the station to the house. The wedding was being held in the large, rambling home of Emily’s parents, with a heated tent outside with chandeliers and a dance floor. The guests were already gathering in the part of the tent where the ceremony would be held with neat rows of gold chairs lined up. Meredith almost expected to see a hangman’s noose dangling from the rafters of the tent. She recognized a few people from college, but most of the guests were friends of the parents and strangers to her. They were escorted to their seats, and a few minutes later the music began playing. Eight bridesmaids came down the aisle in pale pink velvet dresses and looked like Barbie dolls. The ushers all looked equally unreal. There was a surreal quality to all of it. Both sets of parents were seated in the front rows, with Ted’s smiling grandmother, whom Meredith genuinely liked. Meredith was angry at Ted’s parents for roping him into a marriage that felt like a fraud
Ted was waiting at the makeshift altar with the best man and the minister, and a moment later, Emily came down the aisle in white velvet trimmed in white fur, with a little white mink pillbox hat perched on top of her French twist. She looked like something in a bridal magazine. None of it felt like two people who genuinely loved each other, but Ted was beaming as he looked at her, and Meredith tried to tell herself that everything would be okay and maybe they really loved each other, at least for a few of the right reasons.
The crucial moment in the ceremony came and went and she didn’t object or make a scene, and everyone cooed when he put the ring on Emily’s finger and kissed her, and the minister declared them man and wife. Meredith noticed then that there were tears rolling down her cheeks, and she wasn’t sure why. Ted was the first of her friends to get married, and she just hoped it would turn out all right for him. He looked happy. The lamb being led to slaughter, and willingly at that. Emily was gushing and squealing and kissing people and clapping her hands and showing off her diamond wedding ring and looked ridiculous to Meredith. She couldn’t imagine anyone with a brain acting that way, even on her wedding day.
And then the champagne came out, poured lavishly, and the bar was open. Eventually dinner was served, and she found herself seated next to one of Ted’s college roommates whom she hadn’t seen in ages. They both had too much to drink and danced a lot. The bridal couple cut the wedding cake eventually, and Emily did a cute little thing where she smooshed it all over Ted’s face and then he did it to her, which all made Meredith want to drink more. Ted’s old roommate asked her if she wanted to go upstairs and have sex in one of the bedrooms, and she thought that it was a terrible idea, so he went with one of the bridesmaids instead a little later. She managed to hug Ted before he left on their honeymoon to Jamaica. She wasn’t sure whether to say “Deepest sympathy” or “Condolences,” but she said neither and just kissed him and wished him luck. He laughed at her when she did.
“You’re shitfaced, McKenzie.”
“That’s a distinct possibility,” she admitted. The champagne had been excellent. And she had just watched one of her best friends marry the wrong woman and get stuck in a dreary existence he would hate and bitterly regret for the rest of his life. “Have fun in Jamaica,” she said, mellowed by the drinks she’d had. It was the only way she could get through the wedding.
“Watch out for Jason Leland, the guy sitting next to you,” Ted warned her. Emily’s mother had done the seating and didn’t know Ted’s friends.
“He’s fine, I think he’s upstairs with one of the bridesmaids.”
She left a few minutes after the bridal couple, in one of th
e cabs Emily’s parents had provided for departing guests, and she caught the train back to New York. She was sad, thinking about him. She had just watched someone she loved ruin his life. And with that, she fell asleep and slept all the way to Pennsylvania Station in New York. As she left the train and made her way to the taxis, she realized that she was going to have one hell of a headache the next day. But it was nothing compared to the headache Ted would have when he woke up next to Emily for the rest of his life. It seemed like a terrible waste of a good guy to her.
Chapter Nine
One of the most exciting things to happen to Meredith in her first year of law school was the prospect of John Fitzgerald Kennedy running for president. Like most people of her generation, she was crazy about him. But he was more than just a solid, complete liberal candidate for the presidency. He was a dashing, handsome example of American royalty, filled with charisma, and everything about him and around him was magical. His beautiful wife, her fabulous clothes, her beauty, their adorable little girl, the way they lived, the eloquence of his speeches, the promises he made the nation. He was the American dream personified and captured everyone’s imagination. Meredith was carried along on the tidal wave of his limitless charm, and she volunteered to work on his campaign early on. She wanted desperately for him to win. The country needed him to pull them out of the doldrums of the Eisenhower administration. She thought Richard Nixon, as the Republican candidate, was a grim alternative, whom her father preferred, of course. And as a Democratic appointee to the Supreme Court, her grandfather supported Kennedy wholeheartedly.
Working on his campaign as early as January was fun for Meredith. The young people already supporting him were enthusiastic and dynamic. She met lots of people of all ages who were as excited about him as she was. She volunteered at least two nights a week, and planned to spend more time later in the campaign if he won the nomination.
And after considerable thought, she decided to spend her spring break from law school in Greensboro, North Carolina. She signed up through the ACLU to join a protest organized by four young black college students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College. They had singled out the Woolworth’s lunch counter, where only whites were served, and on a rotating basis, they had black and white volunteers sit at the counter to protest that blacks were not served. It was relatively peaceful and had caught the attention of the country as a further step in the ongoing protests against segregation. It didn’t scare Meredith, who had told her parents she was going to Florida with friends from law school for spring break, which seemed fine to them. Meredith was planning to spend a week in Greensboro, and take the shifts she was assigned to sit at the counter for several hours.
Everything was fine until her father turned on the news one night before dinner, saw the filmed reports of the protests at Woolworth’s in North Carolina, and spotted his daughter sitting at the counter. He had no way to reach her, but he was livid as soon as he saw her. He called his father in Washington to find out if he knew anything about it.
“No, I didn’t. But are you really surprised?” Bill McKenzie asked his son. “That’s who she is, Robert, right now, anyway. She’ll be fine,” he said soothingly, which only enraged his son further.
“What if she gets arrested?”
“If she does, she’ll call you, and you can bail her out.” Bill sounded calm about it. They couldn’t reach her to stop her anyway, and her grandfather thought joining the protest in Greensboro was brave of her. You never knew how those things would go, or if they’d get out of hand. He worried about her too, but he had faith in her ability to make good decisions and take care of herself in most circumstances. She was a sensible girl.
As it turned out, things happened just the way her grandfather said they might. On Meredith’s third day in North Carolina, after four hours at the lunch counter, someone got in an argument with the Woolworth’s employees, who were stressed and angry about the protest, and Meredith and five other protestors were arrested and taken to jail. Feeling somewhat sheepish, she called her father, told him where she was, and asked him to pay her bail.
“I know where you are,” he said, furious with her. Fortunately, it was a Saturday and he was at home to get the call. “I saw you on television. Your mother and I have been worried sick about you.”
“I’m fine, Dad, but they won’t let me stay on the phone. Can you do something about posting bail for me?”
“I will if you swear to me you’ll get on the next bus or train home. I want you out of there, Meredith, as fast as you can.”
She hesitated for a second. “I was planning to stay here for a week.”
“You lied to us, you said you’d be in Florida,” he said sternly. “You heard me. I’ll post bail if you come straight home. If you’re going to hang around down there, you can stay in jail. You’re safer there.”
“Fine, I’ll come home,” she said, sounding like a surly child, and hung up.
Robert called a judge he knew in Raleigh that he’d gone to law school with, explained the situation to him, and asked if he could arrange for bail, and Robert would send him a check immediately to reimburse him. The judge guffawed for a minute. “I don’t like this thing any better than you do, Bob. I think one of my boys is there too. He may have gotten arrested with her, he just called me from jail. I’ll take care of it right away.” Robert thanked him profusely and was somewhat reassured. And two hours later, Meredith called him from the bus station. She was on her way home.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said, sounding slightly mollified. It was the first time she’d been arrested, and it was terrifying, but the police had been relatively nice because she was white. Her colored fellow protestors hadn’t fared as well. The police told her to go home and forget Negro problems, when they let her out of jail. Let the police take care of it, they said.
“I want to talk to you as soon as you get home,” her father said harshly, and she could imagine what he was going to say. She could tell that he was livid. “You risked your life down there, Meredith. You could be hurt or killed by one of the locals, or get caught in a riot. This isn’t your battle. Stay out of it.”
“I have to catch the bus, Dad,” she said to cut him off. “See you later.” He hung up, and told her mother that she was on her way home.
She walked into the apartment at six in the morning after a seventeen-hour bus ride, and her father was waiting for her. He gave her all the stern warnings she expected. “You’re an embarrassment to me. Do you understand that?” She was shocked when he said it to her. “I don’t ever want you doing something like this again.” She nodded but didn’t promise, because she believed in what she was doing, even if he didn’t.
Her mother cried when she saw her later that morning, and Meredith called Claudia and told her what had happened. She was nervous for her too. Meredith was fearless, but that wasn’t entirely a good thing, and Claudia could just imagine how angry the McKenzies were. Her own parents would have been irate if she’d gotten arrested for a protest.
After Meredith went back to law school a week later, her father had good news for them when he came home one night. He was being appointed a federal judge by President Eisenhower. Meredith realized it was probably his last chance to be a Republican appointee, if there was a Democrat in the White House after the next election. And she hoped there would be, if it was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But she was happy and excited for her father. It was a big step up for him. So they had a federal judge in the family now and a Supreme Court justice. And as her grandfather told her at her father’s swearing-in, “Now it’s up to you, Merrie.” She hoped he was right.
* * *
—
A month later, the army sent more military advisors to Vietnam. They were beefing up for something, but no one knew what, and Meredith got into more arguments with her father about the growing threat in Vietnam, none of which he believed, no matter how often she an
d her grandfather said it to him. He remained a devoted hawk.
The only real fun in Meredith’s life at the moment was the campaign work she did for John Kennedy. She stepped up the time she committed to it in the spring. And she was either in the library, studying for school, or at campaign headquarters, doing whatever tasks she was assigned. She was willing to do anything to help.
It all paid off in July when Kennedy won the Democratic nomination. And two weeks later, Richard Nixon won the Republican nomination. He was still Robert’s preferred candidate, of course.
As things got busier over the summer, Meredith found herself working side by side with a third-year Harvard law student, Adam Thompson, who was as dedicated to Kennedy’s campaign as she was, and they went out for a drink afterward several times. They were both in love with the idea of Kennedy in the White House and everything it would mean to the nation. It seemed like America’s time had come, they had found their prince, and everyone’s dreams would come true.
Meredith liked Kennedy’s position on civil rights, and she enjoyed going out with Adam. They had fun together, grousing about law school and how much work it was. He was spending the whole summer working on the campaign, and other than a week on Martha’s Vineyard, so did she. She even got her little brother to hand out flyers and leaflets with her, and he was excited about Kennedy too. Neither of them thought Nixon was an appealing prospect, and she hoped he wouldn’t win. Her father was staunchly wearing a Nixon button on his lapel every day. And every time she and her brother put up Kennedy posters or banners in the house, he took them down.
Adam, her Harvard law student friend, was good company. He told her that he’d recently broken up with a Radcliffe senior named Wendy at the beginning of the summer and admitted that he wasn’t completely over her yet. So they went on outings, but Merrie wouldn’t sleep with him, although he tried. They took a blazing hot day off and went to Jones Beach together. She introduced him to Claudia and Thaddeus, and they liked him. Claudia and Thaddeus were fairly serious by then. She was working on her book with his encouragement, and making slow but steady progress, recording her childhood memories of the war, her family, and the camp.
The Good Fight Page 13