Fin De Siècle Meet Cute

My dear, anticipating Readers, before I tell you what Bo and Audrey talked about that day in his office (and I will tell you, of course I will) we have a date to get to. Two dates, in fact.

You already know, don’t you, that we’re set to venture out into the smoky wilds of Los Angeles with Harper and Merritt, but first I’d like to turn your attention to a different girl-on-girl scene from more than one hundred years before: how Miss Alexandra Trills and Principal Libbie Brookhants first came to be Alex and Libbie, our Alex and Libbie.

It seems to me—given the horrors you’ve already experienced with them, and also the dreadfulness still to come in these pages—that we owe them at least that. After all, their particular subplots of this unwieldy story didn’t make it into Bo’s screenplay. (Though I won’t apportion all the blame for that to Bo Dhillon. Alex and Libbie scarcely made it into Merritt’s book on the curse, either. Or at least Merritt’s first book on the curse.)

Of course, young Mary MacLane herself might have briefly appreciated that this was to become the Hollywood way of things: nubile bad girls meeting in the woods beat out middle-aged domesticated sapphics every (screen) time.

And so, before this bad tale subjects them to more trouble, please allow me to linger, for a few moments, on a better time.

They’d first met while students at Wellesley College.

Principal Brookhants was then only Libbie Packard—a sophomore, class of 1893—and Miss Trills a junior and captain of her crew team, known widely among her peers as Alex the Flirt. Wouldn’t Eleanor Faderman have been surprised, Readers, to think of dull Miss Trills as the campus flirt?

Libbie Packard had certainly seen (and heard of) Alex(andra) Trills at various times during the school year previous. However, back then she’d been only a fresh frosh, and even the idea of approaching Alex had seemed a mountain too tall to scale. Now that Libbie had one year of Wellesley under her bicycle bloomers, she decided to take a closer look.

Her first chance for doing so came at the Class Colors ceremony near the start of the fall semester. Alex had been chosen to wave the junior class flag on the shores of Lake Waban, which she did with a kind of unforced and elegant athleticism, while alternately smiling and ducking her head at the attention. Like several of her classmates, she wore a straw hat and necktie with her bright white blouse and a long, pleated skirt that caught the breeze off the water like the stiff petals of a tulip might. She was so slim it was as if her clothing covered only angles and not actual flesh. Still, she was strong with that flag, capable and aware of the attention she drew.

Half of the Wellesley campus was then smashed on Alex the Flirt, and she on them, so who could keep track of one smitten sophomore pinching her cheeks for color and hoping to be noticed in a sea of such girls, some of whom seemed—to Libbie, anyway—to require no cheek pinching at all to appear flushed and vivacious?

And so it was, that very day, that Libbie Packard made a plan to get Alexandra Trills to notice her. And you should know, Readers, that Libbie Packard’s plans to be noticed tended to be successful.

Her whole life (thus far) she’d felt she’d had to find ways to make herself seen. This was because she was the youngest child in a Chicagoan family tree with success at every branch: her father an influential architect; her mother a society maven and (occasional) campaigner for social reform. Not to mention her brothers, one of them only a few years away from being elected to the US Senate. (And there were countless uncles and aunts, cousins and close family friends, all with somehow even shinier shines on their Great American Dreams.) So our Libbie Packard had grown up learning how best to get herself a little attention when she needed it, sea of red-cheeked competitors or not.

She was meticulous in considering her options for approaching Alex: something subtle and clever, or brash and bighearted? Or could she achieve clever and bighearted both—an infinitely trickier pairing?

While she bided her time, Libbie joined a campus club, the Waggish Rogues. They performed skits at assemblies but were better known for their gotcha surprises—think something like early flash mobs—the fifteen or so of them suddenly descending on the library in masks and gowns to stage a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Or, while their more sensible classmates slept on the eve of Halloween, filling the dormitory hallways with cornstalks and pumpkins to greet them come morning.

All that fall and winter, Libbie kept quiet tabs on Alexandra, who was making her rather loud rounds as Alex the Flirt. She was paired briefly that school year with Jane, and then, for months, with Hazel Two.^* Libbie completed an informal polling of several juniors and seniors, Alex’s classmates, to glean the details of the smashes that had come before. And there were so many of them—Evie and Ida, Kitty and Violet—canoodling on the tennis courts, sharing a bag of lemon drops in the library. But so focused was she, so certain of coming success, that these stories inspired not jealousy in young Libbie Packard, but fortitude.

As you’ve no doubt surmised, this quest was less about the particulars of the attraction Libbie had to Alex—whom she did not even know, not really—than it was about the attraction she had to achieving Alex+Libbie status. Soon it would be she who would accept a nectar drop still warm from Alex’s hand, and as it spread its sweetness on her tongue, the two would sit against each other in some conspicuous place on the College Green, tasting sugared peach and being envied by all who were not them.

It wasn’t until May Day—her second year at Wellesley nearly finished—that Libbie Packard felt ready to be seen by Alex Trills. To make certain that she’d be seen by her, that is.

Libbie made her move at that evening’s students-only Follies, an event hosted by the Waggish Rogues. She was adequate in the ensemble skits, but it was really only her solo performance that she cared about, especially once she’d confirmed that Alex was in the audience, pleasantly near to the front and sans Hazel Two.

Libbie was dressed as Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, complete with paper wings strapped uncomfortably to her back and a golden laurel wreath (really just painted branches from campus shrubs) atop her head.

To open the number, two of her fellow Rogues pushed her onstage in a squeaky wheelbarrow. This action, combined with her costume, drew the first giggles. Then the Rogues positioned themselves stage left, where an oversize title card was waiting. They now held it between them to set the scene for the audience:

NIKE, GODDESS OF VICTORY,

RECOUNTS HER ROLE

IN THE VICTORIES OF THE HEART

OF OUR OWN ALEX THE FLIRT.

This drew more giggles and some whoops, too. Libbie watched as Alex straightened in her seat and pretended to be embarrassed by the attention: classic Alex the Flirt head-ducking.

Standing tall in the wheelbarrow, downstage center, Libbie Packard as Nike began her song in just about the sweetest sotto soprano you’ve ever heard. Part of the gag was that, despite ostensibly being the brash goddess of victory, our Nike was a little stage shy. However, as she sang on, listing Alex’s lengthy history of campus crushes—and her own role in bringing them about—she gained confidence:

    . . . Sitting pretty with Kitty, all due to my charm.

    Then Mary’s heart went pitter-patter when you had her on your arm.

    Oh Alex, sweet Alex, that you’re a flirt we know is true—

    but you must now give credit to whom the credit’s due.

    I’ve been there behind the sunsets

    you brought your girls to see.

    I’ve been the cause of the red-rose bloom

    that sealed your victory.

    In all these earthly crushes,

    it’s been me at the strings.

    Why there have been so many conquests—

    you’ve quite worn out my wings!

Libbie had a fairly limited range as a performer, but she’d created this character to maximize her skill set—soft and sweet building to winkingly brash—and she delivered with relish. The audience was hers, but it was Alex’s appreciation she was after, and with the glare of the footlights and rows of grinning faces before her, it was difficult for Libbie to discern what Alex thought of her tribute.

The song reached its crucial final turn, where Nike makes her challenge:

    After Evie, after Hazel

    and after Violet, too.

At this point, a fellow Rogue delivered a scripted interruption by running onstage to correct Nike with the pun “I think you mean Hazel Two.” She held up a card to the audience that read: Violet, too Hazel Two.

Libbie continued with her song, now amended:

    After Evie, after Violet,

    and after Hazel Two.

    I’m bored with bringing triumph—

    I’ve done what I will for you.

    Now it’s your turn, Alexandra—

    to prove your abilities.

    Why not try your hand at Nike?

    Can you weaken goddess knees?

    No, I won’t be there to aid you—

    I won’t assure your victory.

    But if you can claim my lofty heart,

    you’ll have the best of me.

    Come get me, Alexandra—

    our dear Alex the Flirt.

    Come test your mettle with a god—

    if you’re to know your worth.

    You can find me in the Pantheon.

    That’s where I live, it’s true.

    But you’ll need more than disrepute—

    to make me fall for you.

Unquestionably, many a heart went pitter-patter, and several cheeks may have even been pinched for Libbie Packard that night. A few students threw flowers onstage and there was one particularly stellar whistle that came from the back of the theater and cut across the applause in its intensity.

But our Nike was after only a single victory, not dozens of them.

She claimed it out on the lawn, at the cast party, which was as much the reason for the popularity of the Follies as were any of its skits. It had rained earlier but now it was clear. The night was drunk on the liquor of late spring, on wet grass and pale moon, on air still warm even after the sunset, air now scented by the rain-smacked lilac bushes planted at the back of the theater, their branches so heavy with blooms and moisture that several were bent against the ground.

The audience was hers, but it was Alex’s appreciation she was after.

Libbie was being served her second glass of punch, something made with too little wine and too much sugar, but she was glad to have it still. Her mouth was rimmed in grape stain, her shrub wreath slipping down her forehead.

“I hadn’t heard they’d moved the Pantheon to Wellesley,” Alex the Flirt said, approaching her from behind. “Fine work by the trustees.”

Hackneyed or not, Readers, Libbie’s heart lit like a match, and she turned, smiling. It was dark out there on the lawn, difficult to see well, so she couldn’t tell if Alex was smiling, too.

“You know you might have sent me a note,” Alex said. “Or come to find me. I would have met you, if you’d asked me to.”

“There wouldn’t have been any applause for me with just a note.” Libbie’s crown was now tilted over one eye.

“How can you be sure?” Alex asked, stepping closer. Now there was almost no distance between them at all. She held out her hand and softly, steadily righted the wreath, gold paint coming off onto her fingers as she did, though she wouldn’t notice that until the next morning. “I might have clapped for you, alone with my private note.”

“It’s not too late for that,” Libbie said. She heard her blood in her ears. It had started a moment before, when Alex had touched her temple, fixing the crown, Alex’s soft fingers against the even softer skin at her hairline in the warm, scented night—the kind of distinct memory that would plant itself in her to be recalled for much longer than she could have guessed right then.

“How do you know me?” Alex asked, her tone more serious. “I mean, do we know each other?”

“I’m trying to know you,” Libbie said. “If you’d let me.”

“After all this effort, seems I have to,” Alex said. She was smiling. “You did borrow a wheelbarrow. Now it’s Miss Nike Packard of Chicago, do I have that right?”

“I’ll let you call me Libbie,” she said, victorious.