Still singing Cole Porter, Alistair drove us into the unprepossessing town of West Conshohocken. After a few turns down mostly deserted streets, he pulled into the parking lot of a featureless apartment building.
He got out, opened my door and offered his hand as if he were escorting me from a carriage to a royal ball.
“Shall we?” was all he said.
I took his hand and followed. I was learning not to ask questions.
He led me to a small, generic apartment, pleasantly furnished in mid-century single-guy-on-the-way-up style: scoopy leather furniture, smoked-glass topped tables, and a massive stereo.
“It belongs to a friend,” he said. “Much nicer than a dorm room, don’t you think? And there’s a superb record collection.”
He proceeded to peruse the wall of LPs and put a record on the turntable. I recognized Artie Shaw’s band playing “Begin the Beguine”. My Aunt Livy and Uncle Con had the same recording.
The place was full of camera equipment, and the walls were hung with framed photographs—mostly of large country houses. Obviously the owner was a fellow photographer. I recognized a couple of photos of the Bryn Mawr campus and what looked like Punch’s decaying Victorian pile.
“Did you take those?” I asked. “They’re very good. You make Punch’s house look so inviting—somehow you left out the falling-down bits.”
He gave a nod of thanks and opened a cabinet to reveal a nicely furnished bar.
“Glenfiddich?” He held up the green and gold bottle.
One drink wouldn’t hurt, I decided, even though I had a nine o’clock class in the morning. We hadn’t drunk any wine with dinner. I didn’t know if that was because he was being polite, knowing I was underage, or if he was underage, too—one of the many pieces of information he hadn’t volunteered.
Our second session of lovemaking was less excruciating than the first. I almost enjoyed it. The big band music was nice. And so was Alistair’s company. And at precisely eleven, he drove me home, since we had both classes the next day.
My period arrived two days later, and life was good. Once or twice a week, Alistair would show up at Cardigan Hall and we’d walk around campus—usually he’d take photographs with the fancy cameras he always carried around—then we’d go out for a meal and have sex afterward at his friend’s apartment. Lois’s friend’s doctor came through, and I soon had the peace of mind that came from being on the pill.
We never went back to Alistair’s messy little room at Princeton. I never thought to ask why.
He didn’t always call first, so sometimes, if I was in class, he’d have to wait for me in one of the lounges, which we called “smokers” in those days. He seemed to make friends easily—maybe because he was always offering to photograph people and his photos were pretty good. I often found him chatting with some of the chain-smoking upperclassmen, or playing cards with a group of popular seniors he called “the Brontës” because they all seemed to be named Charlotte, Anne or Emily.
His easy charm had the lovely side effect of raising my status in the dorm. I was no longer an invisible freshman. People started calling me “Nick”, which I rather liked—or “St. Nick”, which I didn’t. I didn’t know if my beatification was due to my relative innocence or my creeping weight. I wasn’t proud of either.
I’d started sneaking into the dorm kitchen to steal food in the evenings, mostly because it was something to do. I didn’t go out much because I didn’t want to miss a phone call. Alistair often didn’t contact me for a whole nerve-wracking week, and I had no idea how to reach him. I’d tried to ask him for his dorm’s phone number, but he always managed to change the subject. Not that I would have called except in an emergency. Girls did not telephone men, I discovered. That was even sluttier than putting out on the first date. So I waited—living in terror that I’d be out and miss a call or, worse yet, miss one of his impromptu visits.
When he’d visit and I wasn’t in, he’d get somebody to escort him up to my room and leave a note, or some other sign he’d been there.
The first time this happened rather terrified me. I had borrowed one of Lois’s sweaters, so I’d laundered it and put it on the bed to give her. But when I came back from class, my teddy bear was wearing the sweater.
Yes, I have to admit I took my ancient Steiff teddy bear to college. He was named Sandburg, for Carl, whom my father considered puerile.
Propped against Sandburg’s paw was a slightly wilted daisy.
I was afraid to ask anybody about it, for fear they’d think I was taking serious drugs.
Another time, I found Sandburg wearing a pair of earrings: simple, goldtone clip earrings I’d never seen before. I asked Lois if they were hers, worrying I might be suffering from some sort of sleep-kleptomania, but she looked at me as if I was nuts.
I started to wonder if I was.
The third time it happened, Sandburg held a whole bouquet of flowers, which were accompanied by a note, written on the stationery I kept in my desk drawer—
“While you were out, you had a mysterious visitor—the ghost of Jay Gatsby perhaps—wearing a straw boater and spats, while whistling Cole Porter…”
That’s when I finally got it. I felt like such an idiot. I wasn’t crazy, but I was clueless. I’d failed to see that Alistair was simply being romantic—bringing me these lovely gifts in such a creative way. And I hadn’t even thanked him.
Lois, on the other hand, thought the whole thing was “creepy” and tried to talk me into locking the door to our suite, which I thought was ridiculous with all the security we had on campus.
But when she couldn’t find one of her bras—she wore an impressive DD cup—and it later turned up hanging from the light fixture in the tea pantry, she claimed Alistair had done it.
I told her she was being ridiculous, and was rather cold to her after that.
Wogs didn’t like Alistair either. Not that I’d told her about his strange method of gift-giving, but she and her friends seemed to think he wasn’t cool enough for me.
After Alistair and I ran into Wogs and her hockey team friends one day at the College Inn, she said—
“I think I get him now. He’s so phony, he’s making a statement about phoniness. Sort of a Warhol thing. Either that or he’s the nerdiest guy I ever met.”
After that remark, I was just as glad I didn’t see much of Wogs that semester. She lived in a dorm on the other side of campus and hung out with a noisy, athletic crowd that spent their weekends doing gritty things like hiking and spelunking.
At least the Brontës liked Alistair. In fact, they treated him with more kindness than they did the love-struck Haverfordians who came by to pay them court. I felt good knowing they’d entertain him if I wasn’t in, so he wouldn’t get bored waiting.
“Alistair tells us your father is F. Nicholson Conway!” one of the Annes said on a Saturday evening in November. “I’m taking a senior seminar on the Beats.” She offered me a cigarette from her pack of Larks. “Would you let me pick your brain for my paper?”
I declined the Lark—I was still resisting the pressure to smoke—but agreed to the interview. I didn’t particularly like talking about my dad, but it was an honor to be acknowledged by these women.
To me, they were goddesses. They never seemed to study, and wore wonderful clothes: vintage velvety things with glittery gypsy skirts and scarves. Plus they had glamorous boyfriends who dashed around the world, digging up antiquities in Turkey or writing brilliant little things for The New Yorker.
“Do you play whist?” Charlotte said. “We play the three-handed kind. Some people call it Sergeant-Major.” She played a card with obvious regret and turned to Emily. “Shit. You’ve going to take that trick, aren’t you, bitch?”
“Do let us teach you, Nick,” said Emily, taking the trick with a sly smile. “I’ve got a study date tonight, so I’m going to have to leave after this hand. If they don’t find a third, these degenerates will have to go study or something.”
“Heaven forefend,” said Charlotte, who spoke like character in a Victorian novel when she wasn’t dropping obscenities.
So I offered some quotes for Anne’s senior seminar paper—glowing untruths about my father’s solidarity with the working man—and learned to play whist. I became sort of an auxiliary member of the Brontës. My real first name, which I never use, is Anna—so I figured that almost made me eligible.
The whist-playing helped me survive the emotional rollercoaster I rode between dates with Alistair. I often sank into despair when he didn’t call. Which happened for two whole weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. Even Sandburg received no attention. I lived with the escalating terror that Alistair had disappeared from my life as mysteriously as he had appeared.
It was an awful time, since I had decided not to spend the money to go home for the four day holiday—Thanksgiving had always been grim in our household since Mom died—and faced staying in the dorm alone and lovelorn.
But at the last minute, shocked that I had no plans, Lois invited me to Scarsdale. Her parents took us into the City on Saturday night to see Angela Lansbury in Dear World—my first Broadway play. The senior Meyersons were as generous as Lois.
When they deposited us back at Cardigan Hall on Sunday night, I was ecstatic to see Alistair waiting in the smoker, playing cards with two of the Brontës. He jumped up and greeted me with an enthusiastic hug.
“I’ve missed you Nick,” he said, kissing me with dramatic movie-star flair. “I’ve been in London. So dreary at this time of year.”
London. I was dizzy with relief. He hadn’t abandoned me at all. He was simply a jet setter. I had to get used to that.
“What were you doing in London? Seeing plays?” I was dying to tell him about my own theater experience—and that I’d actually seen Angela Lansbury in person.
“Getting some clothes made,” Alistair said, showing off his elegantly cut tweed jacket. “Plus making a visit to the Gorgon, of course.”
This was the first I’d heard of a Gorgon. I’m sure I looked suitably curious.
“My dear Mater. I call her the Gorgon. It’s Oscar Wilde. In The Importance of Being Earnest, Jack calls Lady Bracknell a Gorgon. Do you know the play?”
I did. I’d played Lady Bracknell in a high school production. I gave him a comforting hug.
“I hope she wasn’t mean to you.”
“Oh, she’s always mean to me, or she wouldn’t be a Gorgon, would she?”
Alistair’s voice was flip, but his eyes were full of pain.
“Can I entreat you to come away with me to West Conshohocken to sooth my wounded soul?”
I was happy again.
I don’t think I even thanked the Meyersons. When Alistair and I emerged from the smoker, they were gone. I waved to Lois as Alistair ushered me out into the night, but I don’t think she saw me.
We drank his duty-free scotch and he told me all about his tailor and the weather in London. He also gave a detailed review of a production of a play based on The Great Gatsby he’d seen, which starred an actress named Delia Kent. He said she was the most beautiful woman in the world and anybody who hadn’t heard of her was an ignorant bumpkin.
After that, I didn’t feel like telling him about my warm and fuzzy time with the Meyersons for fear of sounding even more bumpkinish.
In spite of my fondness for her family, my friendship with Lois soon deteriorated. She’d finally landed a pre-med Princeton boyfriend, Leonard, whom Alistair avoided as if he had a contagious disease. And Lois disapproved of my friendship with the Brontës. She said they screwed everything in pants, and I should have more self-respect.
On a Saturday night in December, over our fifth round of Sergeant-Major, Emily eyed my hair—which was no longer receiving Lois’s ministrations.
“I’m so glad you’ve stopped wearing your hair in that Hadassah flip,” she said. “It made you look so old.”
Charlotte laughed. “I think it’s terribly ironic that F. Nicholson Conway’s daughter hangs out with Princesses. Has your father met your JAP friends?”
I was confused. “Do you mean Lois? She’s not Japanese. She’s Jewish.”
“Exactly. She’s a Jewish American Princess,” Emily said with an eye roll. “What do you want to bet she gets a new nose as a Hanukkah present? They all do.”
I couldn’t say a thing in response to such casual bigotry. My German mother, having survived the Nazis, had taught me from infancy how poisonous racism could be. I was glad when one of the Annes showed up and could take over my hand.
With exquisite timing, Alistair sauntered into the smoker, humming “Begin the Beguine” and carrying a bouquet of daisies—his favorite flower. My hero yet again, he whisked me off for a night of West Conshohocken romance.
Because it was a Saturday, I got to spend a whole blissful night at the apartment, and in the morning, found myself dreading my return to the dorm. As Alistair drove me back, I told him about the Brontës’ disturbing comments.
He just laughed. “They’re old money,” he said. “Charlotte’s family owns half of North Carolina, and Emily’s related to two U.S. Presidents. They don’t realize what they’re saying. People who are born very rich are like that. The rest of us are just so many ants—they don’t even notice they’re squashing us.”
He stopped in front of Cardigan Arch and gave me a quick kiss.
“Fitzgerald said it best in The Great Gatsby: ‘The rich are different from you and me…even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think they are better than we are.”
I thought of Punch Albright, and my imperious Aunt Livy—and my dad. Especially my dad. Fitzgerald was right. Even though we’d been dirt poor before Dad got the job at Harvard—my grandfather disowned him for bringing home a German war bride—Dad never doubted his own superiority for a millisecond.
But I wondered why Alistair didn’t include himself among the “different”? Money was his element. He lived with it the way a fish lived with water.
“But you’re rich,” I said. “Are you sure you’re an ant and not a squasher?”
He took my hand and looked deep into my eyes.
“That’s why I love you Nicky. You never question. Never judge.”
He gave my fingertips a soft kiss.
“Here’s another Gatsby quote for you: ‘If you want to kiss me anytime, Nick, just let me know and I’ll be happy to arrange it for you.’ ”
I love you Nicky. That’s what he said. Everything else fell away as I clung to those words I’d never heard from a man before—not from any one since my mother died. My body went electric. I couldn’t speak. I reached for him.
He leaned over and bestowed me with a kiss: a delightful, de-lovely, trip-to-the-moon-on-gossamer-wings kiss. I melted against him, wanting nothing more than to be with him forever. Everything else was trivial: Lois’s disapproval, the lazy racism of the Brontës, the question of whether Alistair was rich and/or different. Nothing mattered but one thing—one perfect thing.
Alistair Milbourne loved me. He’d just said so.