I wore my ruby shoes the first day of class, pairing them with lime-green culottes, matching vest, and a polyester fuchsia shirt from Casual Corner at the Peabody mall. It was 1969. Neon colors were in. If you ignored the actual outfit, I could have stepped out of a Peter Max poster. The CU campus was large, the pumps uncomfortable. After two days of walking, I developed a blister, which turned into an abscess, and I landed in the infirmary for a week. My foot needed to be soaked and drained several times a day and didn’t appear to be improving.
“Am I going to lose my foot?” I asked the nurse, who was also a nun.
She pointed to the pearl ring Bumpa had given me as a high school graduation present. “Do your parents approve?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“You’re very young to be walking down the aisle.”
“So I’ll be able to walk?”
“Marriage is a big commitment, and I don’t think you’re ready.”
“I don’t think so either.”
“So maybe you should break off the engagement.”
It finally occurred to me that she’d drawn the wrong conclusion from my ring, possibly imagining that some sweet Rolf type had seduced me in an Alpine gazebo, while singing “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.” After setting her straight, she went on and on about how young girls are often led astray their first year of college.
“Am I going to be able to walk again?”
“What a silly question! Of course you are!”
And I did. After three semesters, I walked out of Catholic University, just as Jon Voight left the von Trapps to become a Nazi and later a hustler in the Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy. Well, not exactly like that, but I did take my ruby slippers and got out of there.
“You want to do what?” my mother said when I brought up the idea of transferring. “I can’t even mention this to your poor father. He will have an absolute fit.” Over the years, my father had gone from someone who had “plenty” to say, even though he was very quiet, to someone prone to “fits,” even though he rarely lost his temper. I patiently explained my reasons for wanting to leave, including the lack of diversity among the student population. “I think it would be good for me to go to school with people other than just Catholics,” I said. As expected, that didn’t go over too well, so I skipped to the next reason. CU was in the northeastern part of DC, adjacent to a crime-ridden neighborhood. Several female students had been raped and we couldn’t walk unaccompanied to the library at night. Three of my girlfriends were transferring to other schools.
“So what are you saying?” my mother asked.
“That I could be raped and murdered.”
I didn’t have to add, “Do you want that on your conscience?” because we were both geniuses at inducing guilt.
“Well, okay,” she said finally. “But if your father has a coronary from the stress, it will be on your conscience.”
There’s no place like home. I wound up at Tufts University, in Medford, which is a mere fifteen minutes from Andover. Emily had moved into my bedroom and was now the Big Sister, a role she achieved by wearing platform shoes that made her even taller than her height of five feet nine. She had several pairs, including espadrilles and a cork wedge-heel platform from the popular brand Kork-Ease. I had to look up to her whenever we spoke, which, as a middle child, was undoubtedly the desired effect. Despite our age difference, we’d grown closer in recent years, bonding one summer during long walks along the beach. We shared a similar sense of humor and laughed at the same things.
At the time, Nancy wasn’t into shoes or fashion at all. At least she’d agreed to brush her hair, which my mother considered a milestone of child development, although it was not without its trade-offs. Nancy demanded to eat her dinners in front of the TV in the basement/den. This was not a particular hardship for my mother. In many ways, it was easier having her out of the way, but my mother pretended it was a sacrifice she was willing to make for the sake of appearances, specifically Nancy’s. While Bumpa prepared the evening meal, Nancy would descend into the basement to watch reruns of Gilligan’s Island, singing the theme song at the top of her lungs. Bumpa would say, “That’s wonderful, dear!” and then she’d demand hors d’oeuvres, and he’d bring down Cracker Barrel cheese on Ritz crackers. Dinner on a tray would follow.
Around the same time, Nancy rescued a kitten from a “Save a Pet” booth at a local school fair. She hadn’t bothered to consult my mother. After much back-and-forth, including the usual tears, screaming, and threats to run away, Nancy was allowed to keep the cat, which she named Pie. The two were inseparable; she enjoyed dressing it in her doll’s clothes, stuffing its arms and legs into a variety of soigné dresses that it wore around the house and inside the litter box. She also taught it to do somersaults, throwing aluminum foil balls at the ceiling, while Pie jumped eight feet off the ground, twirled in the air, and then executed a perfect landing on the oriental carpet.
With the flying cat and numerous other distractions, I was happy that I’d made the decision to board at Tufts, where I was assigned a double room in a dormitory suite. As a transfer student, I didn’t have a choice of roommates and mine was either suffering from severe depression or else she hated me. Possibly both. She was addicted to playing James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain,” and while I realize there are worse addictions, this one was pretty bad. “Fire and Rain” is a beautiful song. It’s also about depression, substance abuse, and suicide. It doesn’t leave you feeling happy, the way you might after listening to the Partridge Family. I’m not saying I liked the Partridge Family, but after a steady diet of “Fire and Rain,” David Cassidy took on qualities that we now ascribe to Prozac.
Across the hallway were two pretty, perky girls, who were both engaged to frat boys and were always having the kind of fun I associated with being a coed in a 1950s musical. A senior with long blond hair lived in the single at the end of the hallway. I remember her as a hippie but that may have been only in comparison to the coeds. She spent her free time smoking pot and concocting various conspiracy theories on why Paul McCartney was dead, even though Paul McCartney had stated publicly that he was very much alive. With the coeds off doing fun things, like going on hayrides and my roommate reliving James Taylor’s experience at the Austen Riggs psychiatric facility, I hung out with the hippie, listening to her play “Revolution 9” backward a million times.
“He’s saying, ‘Turn me on, dead man,’” she explained. “Isn’t that proof enough?”
She’d then move on to “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the song that she and millions of other conspiracy theorists claimed was definite proof that Paul was dead. John supposedly uttered the words, “I buried Paul,” when he actually said “cranberry sauce.” Next she’d usually pull out the Abbey Road cover, which showed the Beatles walking across the street. “Isn’t it just like a funeral procession?” she’d ask. “John’s wearing white, so he’s the priest. Ringo is in black, so he’s the undertaker, and George is in jeans, so he’s the grave digger. Paul is barefoot, so that means he’s dead.”
“I’m not sure going barefoot means you’re dead,” I said, although I knew better than to challenge her because she’d practically majored in “Paul Is Dead.”
“Did you know that in the Kabbalah the body is described as the shoe of the soul?” she asked. “What do shoes do?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “They protect your feet from rocks and splinters and dirt. In the same way, the body acts as a shoe to protect the soul from our dirty physical world.”
“And that means Paul is dead?”
I was beginning to wonder if Tufts was really for me. My suite mates were weird, all in different ways, and in a repeat of what had happened when I’d left St. Augustine’s for Andover Junior High, I’d gone from getting straight A’s to receiving average grades. Some of my teachers’ comments were lacerating. “You are the worst writer I have ever encountered,” an esteemed
Shakespeare scholar noted on one of my papers. “And I am very old.” My favorite, though, came from my American Theater professor, referring to a paper I’d written on Ethel Barrymore. After I’d mentioned that she’d gained seventy-five pounds, surely not an insignificant development for an actress, he wrote, “Now, Patricia, I’m beginning to get annoyed. This tittle-tattle may be good enough for True Confessions, but it comes close to character assassination!”
Midway through the semester, I had a plan. Tufts had a program in London for English and theater majors. Maybe I’d be happier there.
I brought it up to my parents when I was home one weekend. “I’m not sure Tufts-in-Medford is right for me,” I told my mother before Sunday dinner. “But I think Tufts-in-London would be perfect. I’ve always wanted to go to London, and your mother was born in London, and, well, for lots of reasons I think I should be in London.”
“For lots of reasons I think you should be in Danvers!” she said. “You better not tell your father, because he will have an absolute fit. His head will explode, and you’ll be left to pick up all the pieces. What is wrong with you? Why can’t you just find a place and stay put?”
“Nobody stays in one place anymore.”
“Thank you, Carole King,” my mother said. I had to hand it to her. She was no slouch when it came to popular culture.
“Well, you bring it up to your father. I’m through. But if anything happens to him, if he dies of a coronary and slumps right over the chicken with sherry sauce that Bumpa made especially for you, then don’t come crying to me. You brought it on yourself.”
I went into the living room, where my father was reading The Boston Globe. He loved Sundays because the paper had multiple sections. With Nancy’s cat flying over his head, I laid out the plan, including the comparable tuitions. Pie had never achieved such heights before and Nancy called Bumpa in from the kitchen to watch.
“Incredible,” Bumpa said, applauding. “Pie is ready for the Olympics.”
“By the way, don’t forget my hors d’oeuvres,” Nancy said. “Besides the cheese and crackers, I’d also like celery sticks filled with cream cheese. But please remove the pimentos.”
“It’s Sunday,” my mother said. “You are not watching TV downstairs.”
“So can I go to London?” I asked my father.
“Can I go to London?” Nancy asked.
“At the rate Pie’s going, she’ll get to London before any of you,” Bumpa said, cheering the cat on.
“Okay,” my father said. Pie had landed on his lap, obscuring his view of the paper. If he wanted to read the editorials, the cat had to leave and so did I.
Emily was sad when she heard the news. Even though she didn’t want me back in the house, she also didn’t want me out of the country. I was her closest ally in the family. I felt a twinge of guilt, but how could I not go to London?
When I returned to Tufts that evening, I shared my new plans with my roommate. It may have been the first conversation we ever had. She told me that London was where James Taylor first started writing “Fire and Rain.” I immediately left to find the hippie. She was distraught because after much soul-searching and consultation with the campus mental health service, she’d come to the tragic conclusion that Paul was in fact alive.
“Maybe you need to move on,” I suggested gently. “I’m going to London.”
“To Abbey Road?” She was having a hard time letting go.
“Maybe.”
“Remember what the Kabbalah says.”
“Wear shoes so people won’t think you’re dead.”
“Yes, and watch out for rocks and splinters.”
9
Love on a Shoestring
I fell in love for the first time at Stonehenge. Bending down to lace up one of my new granny boots, I noticed him bending down to tie one of his rust suede shoes. In front of the world’s most famous prehistoric monument, we forged a bond based on mutual attraction and loose laces. He gave me a soulful look and said, “Hi.” He may have also declared his undying love, but right then a swarm of Girl Scouts descended from a convoy of tour buses and drowned him out. I had a knot in one of my laces and he helped me undo it. His name was Scott, and with his wild mane of curly hair and large blue eyes, he reminded me of Roger Daltrey.
We were touring England as part of the Tufts-in-London program, but instead of taking in the sights, we’d been taking in each other. At Oxford’s Bodleian Library, I looked up from the illuminated manuscripts to see him staring at me from across the display case. Walking down one of countless regal staterooms, past portraits of homely royals, I saw him looking past the duchess with the double chin and priceless pearls and directly at me. We didn’t say a word. We just looked and then looked away. Finally, after our shoe-tying ceremony at Stonehenge, an ancient Druid rite that transformed us into a couple, we sat together on the bus. Cat Stevens’s “Moon Shadow” was playing on the radio. “So, where are you from?” he asked.
In London we lived at a funky South Kensington hotel that served as the school’s academic base. By chance, Scott had been assigned the room directly opposite mine. We took most of our classes in the hotel’s Victorian parlor rooms, lounging on threadbare sofas and chairs. The hotel had only one tiny shower, and on Saturday nights—theater night—there’d be a line of students clad only in towels, snaking down several flights of stairs. There was so much to see: Laurence Olivier in Long Day’s Journey into Night; Diana Rigg in Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers; Peter Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Vanessa Redgrave in The Threepenny Opera; Alan Bates in Butley; Nureyev and Fonteyn in Swan Lake. Scott, who wanted to be a composer, introduced me to jazz, and we heard Ornette Coleman, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, all the greats. The tickets were so inexpensive we had money left over to eat at cheap Italian restaurants with white tablecloths and candles in Chianti bottles. One night, over a plate of spaghetti carbonara, Scott called me radiant. I said, “It’s just the candles and your second beer,” but he assured me, “No, it’s definitely you.”
I wore my granny boots practically every day. They were my “first love” boots. All I had to do was look at them, and I’d feel a surge of happiness that practically made me dizzy. Letters to my parents overflowed with excitement and the occasional odd detail: “My kidneys are fine!” I exulted. “I think I must have gone to the bathroom so frequently at home out of sheer boredom because I haven’t had any trouble here. That’s what happens when you are HAPPY!”
One day, Nathan, my adolescent crush from the November Club, appeared in Scott’s room. It turned out that he was a friend of Scott’s roommate and had just returned from Africa. He didn’t remember me at all.
“We went to the November Club,” I reminded him. “We danced together and then you called me Scarecrow.”
“Why would I call you a scarecrow?” he asked, puzzled.
“Especially since she’s a cow,” added Scott’s dreadful roommate, who hated that Scott and I were in love. In truth, I was more cow than scarecrow. I’d gained fifteen pounds devouring Marriott Hot Shoppe cheeseburgers at Catholic University and was no longer thin. But I preferred to think Nathan didn’t recognize me, not because a decade had elapsed, or because I’d gained weight, but because love had transformed me beyond all recognition.
During our monthlong winter break, Scott and I made plans to travel together.
My roommate, Barbara, a sweet, easygoing girl from Rhode Island, reminded me how lucky I was to be seeing the world with someone I loved. I agreed. I was very, very lucky.
A few weeks before we were set to go, Scott announced that his father wanted him home for the holidays and had already sent him a plane ticket to New York. I was distraught in a way that’s only acceptable when you’re young and in love for the first time. A month seemed like a thirty-year jail sentence. I didn’t know how I’d be able to handle it. I pictured myself collapsing on the floor, tugging at his cord
uroy pants, and screaming, “Please don’t leave!” In acting class, when our teacher asked us to evoke a painful memory, I remembered the moment when Scott told me he’d be going to New York, and I actually made myself cry. “I didn’t think you had it in you,” the teacher said. “Brava!”
With my plans canceled, I tagged along with Barbara, her best friend, Caroline, and Mary Sue, who was from Louisiana and wore false eyelashes and a fur stole. Unlike Barbara and Caroline, sensible English majors carrying backpacks, Mary Sue and I were aspiring actresses and traveled with a complete wardrobe. Among Mary Sue’s many pieces of luggage was a professional makeup case that had multiple drawers for her lashes, tubes of glue, and dozens of shadows and lipsticks. I brought clothes for every occasion, including ones I was unlikely to attend, such as a papal audience or dinner at a palazzo. Naturally, I brought my granny boots, which I hoped would comfort me during the dark days ahead.
We traveled everywhere by train, standing nose to nose with other passengers for ten hours at a time. Our hotel in Rome had stained wallpaper and a broken toilet that coughed up murky brown water. It rained nearly every day. Italian men, none of whom appeared to own palazzi or even appartamenti, followed us everywhere, grabbing, pinching, and making lewd noises. I missed Scott. Nothing compared to the pleasure of his company, not the Sistine Chapel, not the Coliseum, not the “genuine Feragamo” ballet flats that subsequently fell apart because I didn’t know how to spell Ferragamo.
After Rome, we went to Florence, arriving at the Santa Maria Novella train station, where a cute young policeman asked if we needed a hotel room. He told us that his cousin owned a cheap but charming place around the corner. Figuring he planned to rape us, I whispered my concerns to Barbara, who said, “For God’s sake, he’s a policeman!” So we went to the hotel, which was indeed clean and charming, and I felt slightly better, until he asked us to have dinner at another cousin’s restaurant. He’d bring three other policemen. They were cousins too. None spoke English, so the conversation was limited, but the food was the best we’d had in Italy. Even better, it was on the house. The next night, we all went to a noisy club, where at some point the first policeman asked me if I wanted to rent a car and see Tuscany with him. After I declined, he turned to Mary Sue, who, batting her false eyelashes, drawled, “Why, sir, you insult me.” At the end of the evening, the policeman announced that someone had stolen his wallet and would we mind paying the cover charge and drinks?
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