Connections

By Elizabeth Guider

“Set against the seismic events that have shaped the America of today, Elizabeth Guider draws an affecting tale of a mother and her two daughters, of their love for one another, and of their love for the men that matter to them. She weaves her unforgettable story with restraint and wonderfully observed detail.” – Wendy Oberman, Novelist and Playwright

Spanning the last fifty years, this family saga focuses on three generations of women, who grapple with sex and marriage, the elusiveness of success and the power of love to get them through tough times. Told chiefly from the alternating points of view of two sisters who come of age in the 1960's, the story takes us from Princess phones and prom dresses to the Vietnam War, women’s lib, the lure of Hollywood, 9/11 in Manhattan—and a family emergency like no other. Throughout the years the sisters often misread their own hearts or are mistreated by those they care about. When real crisis arises, they are challenged to summons their better angels. But can they?

Connections is a standalone Historical Fiction novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Foundations Books Publishing Company
• Release date: Sep 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463323359

Elizabeth Guider

Elizabeth Guider is a longtime entertainment journalist who has worked in Rome, Paris and London as well as in New York and Los Angeles. Born in the South, she holds a doctorate in Renaissance Studies from New York University. During the late 1970’s, she was based in Rome where she taught English and American literature and where much of the action of her first novel, The Passionate Palazzo, takes place.While in Europe, she worked as an entertainment reporter for the showbiz newspaper Variety, focusing on the film business, television and theater. She also traveled widely, reporting on the politics affecting media from Eastern Europe to Hong Kong as well as covering various festivals and trade shows in Cannes, Monte Carlo, Venice and Berlin. Back in the States since the early 1990’s , she specialized on the burgeoning TV industry and eventually held top editor positions at Variety and latterly at The Hollywood Reporter. Most recently she has freelanced for World Screen News as senior contributing editor.She mostly divides her time between Los Angeles and Vicksburg, MS where she grew up and which is the setting for Milk and Honey on the Other Side.

Book preview

1967

Pete Seeger, 1961

Chapter One – Mellie

The Princess phones changed our world. However silly that sounds. The truck from Bell Telephone was parked that wintry afternoon outside the house like any ordinary repair service vehicle—Mother or Father often needed something fixed or replaced—so at first neither Callie nor I thought anything of it. We didn’t even exchange one of our sisterly glances. We had other things on our minds, like, in my case, how to pass the upcoming math exam or how to translate a passage of Caesar’s Gallic Wars in front of the entire Latin class.

What my sister had on her mind that winter is anyone’s guess. Mostly she kept to her room, listening to Peter, Paul & Mary on her record player or studying the antics of the fish in her aquarium. She had no friends.

We were so different, my sister and I, and though she drove me (increasingly) crazy, when it came to tests, she aced them all. When well enough disposed toward me, she tried to drum the ablative absolute into my head; she even dissected earthworms for me, pinning them to my makeshift display board. Most importantly, she persevered in explaining the rudiments of calculus. In return, I taught her the Watusi and tried my best to coax her hair into an actual do.

The point was, Mother and Father expected us to succeed academically, and as long as we acquitted ourselves adequately, which to their minds meant figuring among the top twenty percent of the high school class, we could go to a reasonable number of palette parties and sock hops. In other words, we could live our lives pretty much as we pleased. The only hitch: by the time we were both seniors, I began to struggle in school while my sister did nothing but excel. On the other hand, I turned down more dates in a week than my stick-in-the-mud sister had in a year.

That explains the Princesses: to allow us to confer with fellow students over homework (that would be their goal for me) or to gossip about boys (which would be their fond wish for Callie)—and not tie up the main line in case an emergency call might be placed to our father. Needless to say, I did all the giggling on the phone, my sister all the conferring.

Whatever our parents’ motives, however, a private phone line was just the thing I coveted: more than a new dress, the latest Beatles album, or a signed autograph from Troy Donahue.

The phones themselves, Callie’s pink, mine green, were designed as Christmas presents, but Mother had placed the order late, or the company was slow in making deliveries so under the tree we each got a hastily wrapped rectangular box, empty they turned out to be except for cryptic notes saying coming soon, be patient.

Anyway, by the time dinner in early January was over, Mother having served Cornish hens with her special oyster and pine nut dressing, her way of commemorating Twelfth Night—no partridges being available, my father had quipped—we two headed upstairs.

Before I go on, I should state that not everything in our house was as perfect as stuffed hens on Epiphany might suggest. I can’t say exactly why but every time Callie and I did go upstairs, each to our own bedroom, it would strike me. Not the creaky stairs, as they were reassuringly old and comforting (except when we wanted to sneak out without being detected), but the long hallway from our parents’ bedroom to ours. It always got me thinking—vaguely unsettling thoughts which I could never adequately piece together. I’m not talking about ghosts or anything: more like disappointments that had settled like dust along the baseboards.

The corridor itself was lined with Globe Wernicke bookcases whose contents ranged from our father’s medical journals to our mother’s complete works of Euripides, Sophocles and Aristophanes, which, believe it or not, she had as a teenager read in the original. In Greek, that is, which, if you think about it, made us girls look like numbskulls. Well, me at least. I’m reckoned the shallow one. Callie occasionally dipped into a few things from those shelves, works by foreign-sounding authors like somebody Lorca or somebody Gide. (As I’ve hinted, my sister is nothing if not intellectual.)

Anyway, that passageway led to a vestibule with high, leaded-glass windows overlooking the front yard, off which on each side was a door to our respective bedroom. We called this common area a lanai, which was not a word either of us or any of our friends could define, but for me, it conjured the exotic. (Teachers often said I had a romantic imagination, which I prefer to think of as a compliment.)

Callie and I were not too old not to remember that our parents originally intended to convert that vestibule into a nursery, but that plan had long faded. We two were, and remained, the only children of Dr. Richard and Mrs. Elena Masterson—born ten months apart in the year 1950—and the lanai eventually acquired chintz-covered armchairs, a writing table and an old piano. In short, it became the space where we studied together, or took turns on the upright, or entertained friends. Mostly other girls. Mostly my chums. Boys, it was tacitly understood, could be invited over to watch The Fugitive or to sip cherry cokes in the parlor. They didn’t dare venture upstairs.

As I was saying, we each had our own room, and for anyone who didn’t already know which was which, signs were affixed. These signs had varied over the years, but essentially my sisters were precise and literal-minded. Like her. That’s why she was so good at math. Callie’s Corner, Callie’s Cottage, Callie’s Cove, the words hand-drawn neatly on cardboard in red magic marker, the same implement she used to underline key passages in most all our textbooks. So annoying.

Mine, on the other hand, smacked of high romance or played on movie titles I liked. If they were in French, even better. At the time we got the phones, my door sign read Mellie’s Demesne, which I took particular pleasure in designing (in various colors, with fancy crayons from the high school art department) because I figured it might be one of the few words my sister would have to look up in the Larousse. If she were so inclined. Which she probably wasn’t as I no doubt was as annoying to her as she was to me.

Sisters.

Of course, sharing our own phone line—636-7135—soon required greater sibling coordination. Up to us to give out the new number to our friends and to insist to our parents that anyone who got through on our old family line be informed of the new line. Highly organized as she was, Callie started that very evening to dial up her closest schoolmates—of which by my count there were only two: both girls, both brainy, both (and this I don’t say to be unkind) more unattractive than they needed to be.

As for Callie herself, observed from the right angle she could be said to boast strong suits in the looks department: underlying ones, like good bones and big eyes. Unlike me, she doesn’t believe in working on her assets. (I make a point of leaving my Pond’s face cream on the stool next to the shower. My Max Factor pressed powder and mascara as well.)

I had to wait my turn for the phone. For several evenings in fact. But, unlike my sister, I wasn’t about to start placing calls, especially not to boys. Word about the new line would get around between classes soon enough and whoever wanted to talk to me would have scribbled down, or better yet, consigned to memory the number. Plus, Callie and I settled on a system, she being an early riser, I a night owl. Within a week most of the boys in my circle had figured out that our joint line would be busy from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., (Callie going over her homework with one or the other of her equally diligent girlfriends), and that to reach me required a call in the after-hours.

And, yes, despite that look from my sister that suggested I was beyond frivolous, I did redo my makeup before talking on the new phone, even at 10 p.m. Looking my best is second nature to me. Think what you like.

The other thing that needs to be said at the outset—to put our cards on the table, like they do in Gunsmoke—is to explain our names. They’re not what you’d guess. Mellie is short for Melpomene and Callie for Calliope. Not that we made a big deal of them to our friends; neither of us wanted to be singled out as weird or in want of attention. If shortened names like those of my friends Sherry and Emily were sufficient unto themselves, why not Mellie and Callie?

The few people in authority who did demand an accounting—like my French instructor, Miss Revère, with an accent grave she was always quick to remind, or Dr. Faulkner, our math professor, who noticeably wanted to know as much as he could about me, however mediocre a student I was. When they graded pop quizzes, these two typically addressed us by our full, formal names: Mademoiselle Melpomene Masterson: Vous avez expliqué le scène crucial entre Phédre et son neveu avec beaucoup de sensibilité, mais attention à l’emploi du subjonctif, or in Callie’s case: Miss Calliope Masterson, Your solution to the last equation was eloquent—dare I say, arresting—but bear in mind there’s a shorter, equally valid approach which I’d be prepared to go over with you—your sister too—during homeroom. In class out loud though these teachers too stuck to the abbreviated forms of our names.

Only the principal of Hillside, a spinster named Miss Callahan, ever demanded a thorough explanation of our names. We were fifteen and standing awkwardly in her office. She was dressed in a sad outfit of gray gabardine, her button-hook shoes with clunky heels even sadder. She eyed us suspiciously.

The names were our mother’s idea, but our father thinks the Hellenic conceit is charming, and fits us, Callie blurted out in our defense, though we were both too cowed to elaborate on the Nine Muses, or why those two goddesses in particular were selected. Probably wise. The principal jotted herself a note, betraying with a scrunch of her brow vague disapproval of our parentage.

What we should have but did not add: that, despite what the humorless Miss Callahan might have intuited, our immigrant mother had an impressive command of the classics. I mean, how many people at age seventeen have tackled something called the Oresteia in the original Greek and wrestled the Latin of Virgil’s Aeneid to the ground? Knowing the names of the Nine Muses was the least of it.

Nor did Callie and I bother to explain how our mother came to have such smarts, though in the dribs and drabs we imbibed growing up, her past sounded uncannily like that Dickens novel we read in tenth grade: a child torn from her roots and reared abroad by a maiden aunt with lots of money and peculiar ideas. No public schools for her; rather, private tutors and textbooks next to the dinner table. (Cranky that she was, Miss Callahan would likely not have much sympathy for such a tale and definitely not for home-tutoring!)

Neither did we bother to raise our hands during that segment on Latin America that Mrs. Turnbull made us study last term in history class. Unlike the other students, whose idea of that entire continent was hazy at best, we knew where Colombia was, and that things were bad down there.

Hillside High, Callie declared in that superior tone of hers, does not have much truck with things beyond its narrow field of interest. It’s what’s called a closed eco-system, Mellie. No one cares about things so far away.

To be honest, no one at home much talks about our mother’s past either. It’s become one of those subjects to file away and forget. The only thing I will say is that all those achievements in adolescence did not prevent her from being lonely. Probably why these days she harps less on our homework assignments and shows more interest in our social lives.

It’s as important to make good friends as it is to make good grades, she advised us after the workman from Bell Telephone had finished the installation of the Princesses. I would that someone had clued me in on this when I was your age, she added.

Wistfully, it seemed to me.

Thank God she eventually met our father. Became Americanized.

Chapter Two – Callie

It wasn't just the Princesses. The cheval mirror changed things for us as well. However weird that sounds.

For as long as I can remember, it resided in our parents’ bedroom, angled to reflect their canopied bed but at a discrete distance. Like most of the antique furniture in the house, some of it inherited by Father, a few choice pieces acquired later by Mother, its frame was solid oak. Garlands of lilies were carved into the corners. The beginnings of a dark sooty stain were visible along the edges of the glass. It creaked when tilted. Then one day, not long after the Princess phones were installed in our respective rooms, we came home from school to find it in the lanai, between the two front windows, facing the piano.

Impossible to overlook. And impossible not to see ourselves in it.

Before I knew it, my sister was primping in front of the glass, running her fingers through her blonde curls and shaking them back into place. The late-afternoon light from the window would reflect off the surface, catching the delicate planes of her face, the sparkle of her green eyes. Beautiful Mellie was, and she knew it. The spitting image, people would often say, of our handsome father.

Without a word (and avoiding my own reflection), I turned the knob of my bedroom door and plopped three heavy textbooks on my reliably sturdy desk.

Callie, are you all right? I thought you were going to help me with the math test.

Later, Mellie. After dinner. I’ve got other things to do now, I called out.

Whatever, I heard her mutter. Then the water running in the bathroom we shared. Over the sound of the faucet, I could soon make out her humming, something from the Beatles album she’d been playing to death, a little off-key but recognizable.

Now that you two are young ladies, and so many parties are ahead of you, your father and I thought it made sense to equip you with a proper, full-length mirror. It never hurts to look your best, Mother soon came down the hall to explain, a stack of folded sheets in her arms. A distinct odor of starch filled the air. How hemlines hang, for one thing… she trailed off, and when I declined to take her up, retreated down the hallway toward the linen closet.

Later that evening, I did try to explain how to formulate and solve the inevitable equation to be on the upcoming mid-term test: a fly enters the window of a train, traveling at x speed and then exits to enter the window of another train going in the opposite direction at y speed. How long did it take the poor insect to make it back to its point of origin? Mellie all the while fidgeted, gnawing on the nub of her pencil before finally complaining that she couldn’t imagine anyone in life would ever need to know such a thing, and thus, she would bank on said fly to act as I indicated—(she hastily copied the equation into her notebook)—and, if not, she’d rely on the mercy of Dr. Faulkner to pass her anyway.

Once I had finished outlining basic solutions to the most likely test problems and talked through the advanced bonus questions first with Arlene then with Gertrude on the pink Princess, I copied (though not word for word) my transliteration of our Latin assignment for Mellie: excerpts from Trimalchio’s dinner from the Satyricon. Famous it supposedly was for its satire on the vulgar host. I managed to compose an acceptable version in the time it took for Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to exhaust itself on the phonograph in Mellie’s room, not once consulting my dictionary. Instead of three white swine decorated with muzzles and little bells, I wrote, three pale pigs with little bells on their collars; instead of Country cooks can prepare a piece of beef in short shrift, but my cooks can boil up whole calves! I wrote, My cooks can roast an entire cow in no time!—phrases less felicitous than my own translation of the Latin but designed so as not to raise Mrs. Nelson’s suspicions.

Collaboration, coincidence, cheating? All of the above. Still, I couldn’t fathom why anyone would think Petronius’s satire on the Roman nouveau riche useful in the world we were about to make our mark in. Like flies flitting between trains, I guess.

In that respect, Mellie and I do see eye to eye.

Around midnight, I separated the math problems from the Latin translation and returned them both to our joint work table out in the lanai. With no sign of a light on in my sister’s room, I stole a glance at myself in the tall mirror. In the dim light from the streetlamp, a stick figure stared back. Button-sized protuberances for breasts, spindly legs like pogo sticks. Hardly what a boy would be enticed by. Perhaps my dark chocolate eyes? Like Mother’s. But what boy would care about those?

You underestimate yourself, Mellie would say, at least when well disposed toward me. Some boys are born blind.

But I can see. Boys flit like flies around my sister, lured by her blonde curls, unapologetic breasts and curvy hips. With (studied?) nonchalance, she swats them away, which makes them swarm more determinedly.

Insects. I know how they behave.

Chapter Three – Mellie

Overheard as I’m coming down the stairs to get some chocolate milk from the fridge: I’m worried, Richard, about both of them.

Since it’s rare these days to hear my parents conversing in anything more than monosyllables, I pause to listen. Plus, they’re talking about us.

Two more steps down and I can see they’re sitting across from each other in the living room, my father with the paper open in front of him, my mother hemming some dress or other. The TV is droning on in the background. He gives her a quizzical look, his chin up-tilted.

It’s this prom thing. I ran into Janice Dickerson downtown on Peachtree. Seems her son Rusty has asked Mellie. So, apparently, have several others. She hasn’t, so far as I know, given an answer to any of them. Also, so far as I know, Callie hasn’t been approached by anyone with an invitation.

When is this thing? Surely there’s time for things to firm up. My father sounds vaguely amused or distracted. He picks up his late-night highball—only ever one, he is a doctor—and takes a sip. I can hear the jiggle of the ice cubes.

My mother ties off a knot and snips the thread. In the flickering light from the TV screen, her face appears purple and perplexed. It’s a month or so off, but preparations, dresses and such, have to be readied. Besides.

I wouldn’t fret over them so much, Elena. They’re pretty, they’re smart. They should do fine. Prom or no prom.

It’s not as simple as you think. Being girls. Being their age.

That may well be, but I can tell you: it’s the boys nowadays who have to worry. Didn’t you hear—(My father flicks his head toward the TV, which is, as usual, tuned to the late news on CBS.)—they’re calling up more troops. A lot of young men from around here are being drafted. They, and their parents, are the ones who have cause to fret.

Silence. I can feel my mother choosing her words, the same way she selects the right color thread to use. With deliberation.

You’re right, of course, Richard. There’s a larger picture to consider. The war and everything…

She appears to hesitate, perhaps expecting Father to finish her thought. His head though is now turned toward the screen where the news anchor is rattling off statistics. There are numbers on the screen which I can’t make out from where I stand.

Still, Mother resumes in a different key, "I want them to have fun. They seem so—I can’t settle on the right word—preoccupied, I guess. But they don’t confide, not in me, at any rate."

They’re teenagers. You know what the books say: we need to let them figure things out, my father states with authority and sets his drink on the stand next to his armchair. He glances at his wristwatch. I’ve got an early morning consult.

He rises and skirts my mother’s chair, brushing her arm with his hand.

Hastily, I retreat up the stairs, foregoing the chocolate milk.

Back in bed, I take stock. My mother has, however haphazardly, hit upon it: I am preoccupied but not about the prom. I’ve met someone. Older, self-confident, mysterious. And I no longer care (if I ever did) about Billy or Rusty or any of the other boys at school. As for confiding in anyone, I haven’t even told Callie. She’s so withdrawn of late, and since she’s intent upon avoiding the very word prom, I’m sure she’s obsessing over nothing else.

Funny how some days I wish we’d never gotten the Princess phones: so many calls, likely invitations to this or that graduation bash, I’m determined to duck. It’s embarrassing. Especially since Callie only ever gets calls from that pasty-faced friend of hers, Arlene, who touts herself as some kind of math genius. Like my sister. How can anyone talk for hours about delta this or gamma that? Honestly.

As for yours truly, I could care less about the prom, except that it would look like I hadn’t been asked if I didn’t show up. Call me shallow. I could care less.

The fact is, I’m in love.

And to think it all started by chance. Like in those magazines on the rack at Walgreens, the ones Callie dismisses as pure trash. Anyway, it was a special gym session to promote summer activities around town. I had planned to do a modern dance clinic but he—Erin is his name—made synchronized swimming sound so seductive that I changed my mind. He’ll be teaching the course and offering private diving lessons as well. After the presentation on stage, we chatted, he and I, longer than he did with the other girls.

Naturally, Callie didn’t bother to attend the assembly, holed up in the biology classroom to dissect tree frogs with her chums. Didn’t seem worth mentioning the idea of synchronized swimming to her on the way home. Now that I think about it, she doesn’t even own a decent one-piece, let alone a bikini. Instead, she’s applying to work in a lab over at Emory. Testing urine samples or something. B-o-r-i-n-g, though I did not say so. Father’s setting it up for her; she may get paid or receive college credit. Good to have one brain between us, I admit.

To be on the safe side, I haven’t mentioned anything about this Erin to anyone else, not even to Emily, who nominally is my best friend (next to Callie), since she would have said I was crazy. But synchronized swimming—why not? It’s like all those Esther Williams’ movies we used to stay up and watch on late-night TV. Lord knows they’ve kept at me about doing something productive during the summer months, so why not this? I’ve done enough ballet, and tennis makes the arms too muscular.

And, while I’d never say so out loud, I look great in a bikini.

On Saturday I take the bus over to Buckhead and walk the two blocks to the municipal swimming pool. Little kids are splashing around in the shallow end while a harried-looking woman in an unbecoming maillot keeps blowing a whistle. I look for the office and a sign-up sheet for summer classes. Once located, I scan the schedule for the names of instructors.

Behind a rickety desk, an older woman with close-cropped hair and a baked-in tan eyes me curiously. If you’re thinking about synchronized swimming, we’ve already closed out the June through August class. More than thirty is too many to handle.

I look crestfallen. But I was really hoping—

Hey, Erin, she suddenly calls out, jerking her head toward the boys’ locker rooms. I’ve got an extra here for that synchronized class. Says she’s done this sort of thing before. You OK with adding one more?

Go ahead, a voice from behind the tiled walls responds.

The woman shrugs and pulls out a beat-up cigar box with wads of dollar bills in it. The fee is twenty-five dollars, which includes lessons twice a week. Also, a few practice sessions to be arranged before the finale in late August. If you’re still interested.

I nod as neutrally as possible and pull out my wallet. As I turn to leave, HE appears from out of the men’s entrance. In dark blue trunks that match the late April sky, and his eyes.

I blush, which is not something I normally do in front of boys. But Erin is not exactly a boy.

I remember you. From the high school over in Decatur, right? I nod, my face still burning. So, seems you did give the idea some thought. He shifts a bath towel from one arm to the other. His shoulders are broad, his hips narrow, his legs long and muscular. A swimmer’s physique. He stands expectantly. Bemused.

In such a moment having Callie or Emily with me would help. Keep me from saying something foolish.

Yes, I did give it some thought. And it does sound like fun. You know, after high school and all.

Ah, you’re graduating next month. Calls for celebration. He eyes me as though calculating my age—or my ability to swim.

I can do, uh, ballet legs and the barracuda, and stuff, I stammer.

His lips crinkle at the edges. I drop my gaze.

Well, I’m sure you’ll do fine, Number 31. After all, it’s mainly about having fun.

My name is Mellie. So that you know, I respond in a voice I don’t recognize. The woman behind the office window appears to be smirking. I move away, my head twirly, and turn toward the exit.

See you, Mellie, in a few weeks, he calls out. Teasingly.

He’s easily twenty-one. I shake my head yes but do not look around. Right then I decide to go with Billy Norris. To the prom. Not that it matters with whom. He may be the quarterback, but high school boys, I’ve discovered, are all pretty much the same.

Chapter Four – Callie

Within the space of an hour, it happened. Three different boys—who I barely know except that they are always mooning over Mellie—call to invite me to the prom. I was already thinking about feigning illness that weekend, or, to be more productive, curling up with those laboratory reports Father put on my desk. Not to be. Jimmy Grayson had the bright idea of ringing up, not on the Princess phone but on the main line. He spoke directly to Mother and essentially asked permission of her. She accepted with pleasure. On my behalf!

Now I’m torn between irritation that I was circumvented and relief that the whole ridiculous thing has been resolved. No more chagrined looks exchanged between my parents, or even with Mellie, as to my inability to elicit an invite to an excruciating evening of stiff taffeta, sweaty palms and sickly-sweet punch. The girls in our class don’t say so, but I’m sure many feel as I do. I know Arlene does. Even Mellie, who of late seems unusually distracted, and not at all excited about her date with Billy Norris.

Something’s up with my sister, but when I ask, she brushes me off: When you’re more mature, she had the nerve to say the other night. As though she’d forgotten I have ten months on her or as though she acted anywhere near as intelligent as I do.

So aggravating.

Hard though to be angry for long with Mother. Her own teenage years were the weirdest thing we ever heard of, her childhood even worse. It was Father who told us, briefly, about her parents disappearing in the middle of the night somewhere in the wilds of Colombia. Never to be heard from again. (Mother never talked about that part, but she did go on and on about her Great Aunt Rosaria and all the studying she was obliged to do—devoted herself to doing—once she was hustled off to Miami.) Sounded so depressing—no schoolmates, no social activities, not even a phone—though she did have the view of the Atlantic Ocean from the big house, and, when her aunt died at ninety-eight, a lot of old jewelry. (Father said the sale of the property paid for Mother’s enrollment at Emory, and subsequent scholarships did the rest.)

Or, as she used to put it to us, with feeling: Studying does pay off, girls, often adding, with even more feeling: Otherwise, I wouldn’t have met your father!

Like I said, Mother also wants us two to have fun, which I understand, especially since she herself rarely seems to enjoy much of anything anymore. Father either, as far as I can tell. Grown-ups.

As for Jimmy Grayson and the others, I haven’t anything against the inept boys who are not quick or confident enough to score with a date on their own but who, instead, are pressured by their parents or their teachers into service. "We have seventeen girls still to match up, so I’ll handle the A’s to M’s if you’ll tackle the rest," Mrs. Nelson cawed to Mrs. Turnbull the other day in the hall, not even pretending to hide the fact of their collusion from passing students. So, it must have been the latter—she with the hint of gray whiskers above her upper lip—who cornered poor Jimmy, daring him to demur as she thrust the Masterson home phone number into his unsuspecting hand.

No recourse. I have to acquiesce. Consider the whole thing a rite de passage. Pretend I’m in one of those trashy French novels Mellie has strewn about her room but hasn’t the facility or the patience actually to read. Bonjour Tristesse indeed.

What I’d rather: to be ensconced among the microscopes and flasks in the lab at Emory, an inconspicuous intern among all those aspiring medical students. Even if it’s only to shake the jars of pickled livers or to stack Petri dishes or to transcribe data onto index cards. Whatever is needed, I’ll be prepared to do. The job can’t start soon enough.

If you’re sure this is the direction you’d like to go in, Callie, my father inquired, studying me quizzically when I first broached the subject months ago. I had spread my winter term report card in front of him at the dining room table along with a note from the biology professor, Dr. Kuhnert, attesting to my potential. "Your daughter, Dr. Masterson, displays quite an aptitude for the sciences. She possesses analytical skills as well as a delight in the physical world—plants, animals, even the insects that so many girls her age flinch from."

Quite an encomium, my mother interjected. And, scanning the long line of E’s (except in gym class) on my report card, she lavished more praise: Not to mention the grades in practically everything else.

"Marks are