Rich White Americans

by Virginia Dale

  The dinner went well. As it turned out, John Hopman had a profound interest in psychology, which I’d receive a bachelor’s in next year. I later learned he had a doctorate in the subject and had written many books about Freud. I treated him with great admiration and respect. He had about a thousand books in bookshelves that he could display with the flick of a switch, something Frank Lloyd Wright had, no doubt, done especially for the heir of such a vast fortune. The books were hidden by a crenelated wooden covering, which folded onto itself when he pressed the switch, revealing more books than I’d ever seen in one man’s library. I noticed a copy of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, my favorite book to date. Jim’s mother was not visible; I assumed she had obtained a divorce like the others. I wondered if Jim missed her and if she drank, too. I’d never met a family like this.

  “They are trying to establish psychology as a science at Berkeley,” I said. “They experiment on rats. It’s called experimental psychology.”

  “That’s such a shame when Freud has already contributed so much to the study of the human psyche.” John Hopman smiled at me. I smiled back.

  “It’s cruel to the rats,” I commiserated. “I’m a Freudian.”

  “You’re a fine young lady,” John Hopman smiled again. So did I. He must be a connoisseur of women after marrying so many times, I thought. I wondered why his knowledge of psychology hadn’t helped his marriages. Little did I know that everyone has their blind spot, which often goes completely sightless when the opposite sex is involved.

  “Thank you.” We kept smiling at each other, and I kept talking. No one could ever shut me up. I was just like my grandmother: talkative and outgoing. “I think Freud’s discovery of the ego, superego, and the id is the most important discovery of the nineteenth century, don’t you?”

  “Yes. And I disagree with Jung.”

  “So do I! I don’t like all of his Christian symbolism, the cross and everything…”

  “You’re not an…?”

  “I stopped believing in God when I was seventeen.”

  I looked at Jim, who was grinning at me. Or was it a smirk? Perhaps I’d gone too far. I knew atheism wasn’t acceptable to many people. The ultimate trauma of Daddy moving us from Hawaii to Los Angeles pushed me into the abyss of depression, something I’d never experienced. I felt like I’d gone to hell, with pimples sprouting like mushrooms on my face and no friends. Not one for six whole months, plus I missed everyone in Hawaii. I was still close to Kathy Stimson, whose own father had driven across the United States with mine in the late thirties while they were both still midshipmen. When they stopped at my grandparents’ house in Salt Lake City, he’d dated Barbara, one of my father’s four sisters, the one who’d been crowned Miss Salt Lake City.

  “I hope I’m not shocking you. It’s just that, as a Navy junior, I had some unusual experiences… I made so many wonderful friends, and then my father would get orders and we’d have to move. I’d have to change schools. When he was passed over for captain, we were in Hawaii; I had fallen in love with a captain’s son… at least I missed him horribly when we left… and had so many good girlfriends there. Plus, there was Punahou, the wonderful school I loved. I used to pray every night that I’d be able to graduate from Punahou… That’s when my father retired from the Navy and accepted a job in Los Angeles as an engineer.” I began to feel embarrassed. I wasn’t used to revealing so much about myself.

  “Don’t worry, Inny. You’re among friends,” said Jim to reassure me.

  “Most people who study psychology become… shall we say, disenchanted with the pat ideas offered by religions,” said John Hopman.

  “I threw the Bible through the window!” We all laughed while the maid came and cleared the table. I was certain a Communist wouldn’t have a maid. As usual, I decided my parents were wrong. I had no idea what the difference between a Communist and a Socialist was at the time, but it was huge.

  “I noticed that you have a copy of Proust’s famous tome,” I said with an appreciative smile.

  “It’s his memoir; a book that made him almost instantly famous,” remarked John Hopman.

  “I loved its intimate tone, the humor, and, of course, the famous scene he makes to get his mother to give him his bedtime kiss goodnight during the course of a dinner party with Monsieur Swann.”

  “You’re a remarkably well-read young lady,” said John Hopman, “Where are you going to graduate school?”

  I looked down at my white linen napkin in my lap on my raw silk dress. I knew I had to get a job after I graduated from Berkeley and then go to graduate school at a state college.

  “I hope to get a Master’s in psychology.” I was flattered that he’d taken such an interest in my studies. No one asked me what I planned to do after college, because very few women graduated in the early sixties. Most married. I had no marriage plans, but I thought I could get a Master’s and work as a high school counselor. I knew I’d have to work, because my parents said they couldn’t afford to pay for any more of my education.

  Jim was duly impressed. So, he invited me to get drunk with him and Bruce, his friend at the house I’d run to the night of the attempted rape, at a bar called the Ofice. It was misspelled on purpose; we loved it, especially after several gin and tonics. Life was such a giggle in those days. Kennedy had successfully foiled the Russians’ attempt to install nuclear weapons on Cuba with a daring standoff. America reveled in JFK and Jackie’s elegance and style. Andronicus’ attempted rape receded into the recesses of my mind as I went to party after party with Jim. That his friends were all business majors didn’t faze me. I was used to being the only psychology major among my friends. It never occurred to me to study anything else after reading Freud’s works.

  We climbed into our neighbor’s tree house, behind her immense garden, one warm summer day. The sun was warm and delicious, and so were Jim’s love-struck brown eyes. He leaned forward and I did, too. We shared a slow, passionate kiss. I was smitten. He kept kissing me. I opened my eyes and looked down at the hard earth beneath us. Regaining my senses, I tickled him under his armpit and we almost fell out of the tree house, laughing the whole time. I thought of my beloved grandmother in Arlington and how I wished I could introduce Jim to her. I loved her more than anyone. Boys came and went, but my maternal grandmother was my first and best love.

  Summer’s end approached. Jim took me to Montecito’s beautiful Butterfly Beach. We were lying on beach towels, listening to the soft lapping of the waves, our arms entwined, when Jim asked me if I’d like to spend a week with him, Susie Brecken, and Bruce Washly at Susie’s cottage in Berkeley. We would return to our respective schools afterwards for our senior years. I lunged at him, wrapping my arms around him. He knew that meant yes. I knew that spending a week with him would entail lovemaking. Still practically a virgin, Jim’s sweetness reassured me, always the optimist, that all would go well.

  Mother and Daddy decided I should take the Amtrak train up to Berkeley that year to save money. They rarely spoke to me, unless it was about a decision they’d made, a hauteur I was used to. I told them I had to go early to find a place to stay, which was also true.

  Little did I know it would be with Ed Morales’ girlfriend, Janey Komanaroff, who’d have an illegal abortion in my bed while I spent the night elsewhere. Most of my Berkeley pals looked upon pregnancy as a curse, especially if it was unintended. Graduation was our goal, not motherhood. We had a reputation. They called us the faction in action. That suited me just fine.

  Before I left, my mother took me aside. She sat down in my bedroom with me, something she had never done before. But, she wanted to impart some important information. I knew she’d be blunt; she always was. Sometimes, her words stung like wasps.

  “Inny, why don’t you marry Jim?” We made eye contact with some difficulty. We weren’t used to such intimate conversations together. Her hair was its usual permed perfection, but it framed a deep frown. I could tell she was not happy with her oldest daught
er, me.

  I shifted my weight on my bed, feeling uncomfortable. “I’m not sure, I… I don’t think we know each other well enough.”

  “You don’t have to know him that well.”

  “Just because he’s from a rich family… doesn’t mean I should marry him.” I groped for words.

  “I doubt if he’d ask you.” She stared at me, trying to think of a more stinging insult. I’d rebuked her request.

  “I haven’t thought about marriage yet, Mother. I don’t think Jim has either. But when I marry, it’ll be to someone I love.”

  “Love,” she scoffed. “If you don’t marry soon, you’ll be an old maid.” Her voice hit a high C when she said old maid. The stigma of the term dug into my psyche; she’d made a direct hit. I flinched. Then, I looked her in the eye and said, “I don’t think being an old maid is the end of the world.”

  “Inny! You must marry someone! Otherwise, you’ll be an oddball, a loner. No one will play bridge with you. You must move up in the world.”

  “Oh, Mother. I want to graduate from Berkeley before I think about marriage. Besides, I’m not in love with anyone.”

  She uncrossed her legs and moved closer to me. “What kind of fool are you? Asking for love…”

  I stared at this woman whom I’d called Mother my entire life. “Do you want me to marry just anyone?” I stood up and turned away from her in the small enclosure of my bedroom, really more of a den than a bedroom. My younger sister always got the larger, more nicely furnished bedroom, it suddenly occurred to me.

  “You’re not getting any younger.”

  “You don’t care about my feelings!” I felt my heart beating faster.

  Quick as a whip, she pounced on me, taking me by the shoulders and shaking me. “You fool! If you don’t marry well, people will talk behind your back. You’ll be an embarrassment.”

  “An embarrassment?” I looked at her as if she’d just dropped a brick on my head. “I want to live my own life. Leave me alone.” I took her hands off my shoulders and glared at her. Deeply hurt that she’d called me a fool, I was on the verge of tears. When she smacked me, I recoiled. Stunned, I watched her walk to the door of my bedroom.

  “Thanks a lot, Mother!” I yelled.

  She slammed the door shut. Stung by her insults, not to mention the slap in the face, yet relieved that she had left, I started packing my suitcases for my senior year, my last year at my beloved Berkeley, where no one called me an old maid or a fool. And no one hit me.

  Yet, deep down, I was shaken. I realized that I was ill-prepared for, not only matrimony, but love, for no one had ever told me they loved me in my entire life. They’d given me instructions, told me what I must do, which exams I must take, and which college I should go to, which skirts were too short, and how unladylike my behavior was. I’d been disapproved of and deemed unworthy of their deeper emotions, if they existed. My grandmother had loved me without saying so; she had held me and given me everything she could. Her love had seeped into me like warm chamomile tea. But not my mother’s.

  Chapter 3

  I waved goodbye to my parents, who didn’t speak to me during the drive to the train station. I was relieved that my mother hadn’t scolded me for being a less-than-desirable daughter. I looked at my father, driving his daughter for her last year in college without much thought. My mother looked grim and unforgiving.

  I couldn’t help but think of the time Daddy had gotten into the car to drive us across the country to San Diego, in California, for one of his last tours of duty. A slightly built man, he’d climbed in behind the steering wheel with a wave to the cluster of friends and relatives that had come to see us off, for we were leaving our comfortable Colonial-style house in Arlington, Virginia, for the last time. We’d never return, except for a short visit.

  Lined up across from our sloping driveway were my eight girlfriends whom I’d played with before, during, and after school for the past three years. Like me, they were thirteen years old. Some of them wore the latest style – blue jeans turned up at the cuff. Anne Young was dressed to the nines in a nice suit her mother had bought at Best & Company, a store known for its expensive apparel. She, Sheila Barton, and I had been inseparable for most of the last three years, including going away to Girl Scout camp in the Appalachian Mountains. Anne missed her parents so much she’d cried. I thrilled at my newfound freedom. All their mothers had treated me like one of their own, especially after I had shown them the red mark my father left on my thigh, right below my buttock, when he’d lost his temper and hit me. We wore shorts in the hot Virginia summers, so the mark showed beneath mine. My parent found me too loud and obstreperous one night and punished me for not acting like a lady. Acting like a lady was what my mother insisted on. I never knew what she was talking about, but when they started calling my six-year-old sister the little angel and me the little devil, I got their drift. I began to hate them. The seeds of rebellion were planted and would soon sprout.

  We had left my naturally platinum blonde, vivacious Aunt Edna, who had been valedictorian of her high school class and married her grade school sweetheart, Uncle Jimmy, whose dark curly hair was carefully combed back as he beamed his warm-hearted, sincere smile, making my heart glad. My cousin, known as little Jimmy, two years younger than me and like a brother, smiled a big grin and tried to mimic his father, whom we adored. Then, there was Grandma, dressed in a cotton dress a bit big and blousy, one that she’d no doubt found in a bargain basement sale, even though my grandfather, Audus T. Davis, earned a princely sum for being the head of the Washington, D.C. post office and its two thousand or so employees, whose names and salaries he knew by heart. Grandpa had the brains, but not the heart, to even accompany my grandmother to say goodbye to us. Grandma always joked about his parsimony but accepted it as her lot in life. She sang on the bus and at children’s funerals and loved every soul she met without reserve, a woman whose generosity knew no limits. She was universally loved. Over the thirteen years we’d spent off and on in Arlington, she’d become my soul mother. She was also the source of my mother’s disapproval, knowing that I loved Grandma more than her. She also attended White House dinners without her anti-social husband, where she sat in a love seat and chatted up President Harding’s wife. Grandma loved every minute of it. My mother grew up quite the opposite: reserved and introverted.

  I’d been taught to be stoic, so I stood there and stared at everyone, not quite grasping that we were leaving forever. That couldn’t be possible, because they meant the world to me. My mother hustled my little sister into our nineteen fifties Studebaker and waved good-bye.

  “Hurry up, Inny!” she said. “We have to go!”

  Just then, Sheila and Anne walked up to me with a gift-wrapped box. They handed it to me. I looked at them in delighted surprise as I unwrapped a small, gray radio.

  “Inny, you can’t take that!” said my mother, who didn’t allow music in the house, not to mention that she didn’t approve of me accepting gifts.

  “But, Mother…” I turned to see her glowering at me. I turned and saw the panorama of my friends, my aunt, uncle, cousin, and beloved grandmother waving at me.

  I heaved a sob and burst into tears. Uncontrollable, heartfelt sobs. I blubbered a tearful thank you to Sheila and Anne as my mother pushed me into the backseat of the car, holding the radio in my arms. My father started the engine and backed out of our driveway with me bawling my head off. It was the last time I would see them. My thirteen-year-old heart had just broken in two.

  Jerking myself back to the reality of taking leave of my parents to go to Berkeley where I’d meet Jim, sobered me. Glimpsing the stately palms that lined the walkway next to the Amtrak station for the last time that summer, I marveled at their beauty and boarded the train. I found a seat next to a conventionally dressed, nice-seeming lady. I began to talk, which I always did when I had a case of the nerves, and the thought of Jim picking me up at the station and what was to follow had me tied up in knots. So I talked – for te
n straight hours. My grandmother and I had this in common: talking was our panacea. Fortunately, the lady sitting next to me and I got along quite well. She found my thousand and one stories entertaining. We were fast friends by the time the train pulled into the San Francisco station.

  I also had time to reread one of grandma’s many letters. ‘Keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half-shut afterwards,’ she wrote, along with other wise and witty advice. She quoted the Bible and told me to ‘give thanks for another day, to accept the beauty of God’s way.’ Grandma was very religious.

  Jim paced back and forth at the San Francisco train depot. When I arrived with four suitcases, running madly about trying to organize them, he laughed out loud. “Why are you so nervous?”

  “I’m not nervous; I’m excited!” My voice was shrill, because I was nervous. I knew we’d spend our first night together. I’d only had one other lover, and we’d broken up in my junior year. I kept running around, trying to organize my luggage, but Jim’s tall frame and broad smile beckoned me like a lighthouse. He kissed me hard. I kissed him back. I looked into his eyes and laughed. We were going to spend the night together, and I was almost a virgin.

  We had to contend with Annie Brecken and Bruce Washly, who were truly just friends and would share the ivy-covered cottage with us that week. The minute we got out of Jim’s car, Bruce started cracking jokes about how close I had sat to him. I put up with his immaturity and laughed it off. Jim squeezed my hand. I smiled into his face and felt my heart beating fast. It was young love.

  We went to Spengler’s and dined on seafood, downing the usual Bloody Marys along with delicious prawns and lobster thermidor. Gaiety, salted with booze, prevailed. Bruce must have been jealous of Jim for making a conquest, for he and Annie were just old friends from Montecito. She laughed, making jokes of which she was often the butt. She was a good sport, a very likeable person.