My Own Two Feet (14 page)

The Chourrés invited Clarence to come to Mill Valley for Easter dinner. They made him welcome, obviously approved of him, and smiled upon us. There was laughter at the dinner table, and the family enjoyed one another's company. If only my family could be like this, I thought.

The memory of the Chourrés and of serene Mill Valley with its lupine and redwood trees helped sustain me on the trip back to Berkeley and the dread Comprehensive, the first half of which I feared most of all. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. Everyone said these were the most important writers, and I had eluded Milton as if he were chasing me with a knife. A graduate student called Stebbins's English majors to a meeting in the living room and offered to coach us. None of us could afford his services.

We all bought A
History of English Literature
, by Emile Legouis and Louis Cazamian, trans
lated from the French, which was considered the definitive text. Couldn't the English write their own history? I wondered as I opened it to the section on Milton. My thoughts tumbled, words seemed to make no sense, I could not concentrate. I could only sit at my desk and stare at Stebbins's underwear flapping in the breeze on the garage roofs. When the man next door poured sorrow into “Solitude” on his saxophone, I put my head down on my desk. I dreaded the exam, I dreaded Sherwin-Williams covering the earth, I dreaded Mother bearing down on me with her disapproval of Clarence, whom she had never met.

Then Mrs. Cochran, understanding of all the girls' problems, told me that Stebbins was going to rent rooms to women attending summer school and would need a chambermaid. I snatched the opportunity. Mother had little enthusiasm for my doing menial work, but since I would be doing it in California, where no one in Oregon would see me, she admitted the money would help toward my nonresident tuition in Seattle. She gave the neighbors the impression I was to be a receptionist.

At breakfast the morning of the Comprehensive, we English majors, hollow-eyed, silent, and unsmiling, gathered sympathetic looks from others, as if we were about to have major surgery
from which we might not recover. We then collected our freshly filled fountain pens and our blue books. On the way out, I saw a letter from Mother in our mailbox. I left it there.

In the chemistry building, scene of our ordeal, mimeographed questions were passed out. The major question was something like “Discuss the influence of history on English literature.” Most English majors had studied history as a minor, but I had not taken history in college and had skimmed lightly over it when it was brought up in English classes. Silly me. A number of students read the questions and left the room, but I tried to thaw my numb brain and plunged in, spreading my knowledge thin.

The second question was about sonnet sequences. I could think of many sonnets but not in sequence. There was Shakespeare, and there was Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but who else? Could I manage to work in the influence of Petrarch? I couldn't keep my thoughts focused. They drifted to the dreaded letter waiting in the mailbox, to Clarence, to anything but sonnet sequences. I felt as if the Campanile, with each passing hour, was knelling disaster. Nevertheless I wrote something, I can't imagine what.

The Stebbins English majors, relieved, exhausted, and surprised that the sun was still
shining, compared notes on our way back to the dormitory. Jane taped a sign on her door: “An English major knits up the raveled sleave of care.” In room 228 I read Mother's anti-Clarence letter and fell asleep.

In addition to the second half of the Comprehensive, I still had one more exam to take, Advanced French Grammar. I felt exhausted, confused, and incapable of remembering a single idiom. The night before the French exam, Clarence came to Stebbins to try to rescue me. We sat in the living room while he drilled me on grammar and idioms, and I tried to cram into my head a semester's work, desperate to make it stick until I had taken the exam the next day. When Clarence left, I felt as if he were taking my crammed knowledge with him.

Somehow I got through the final and, when it was over, exhaled what little I had learned about Advanced French Grammar. On the postcard I had enclosed in my blue book, Madame wrote: “Mademoiselle, vous n'avez pas étudié.” She kindly let me escape with a C, probably because I was a senior.

Then came the day when those of us who had taken the first half of the Comprehensive could telephone the English office to ask for our grades. When I gave my name, the secretary said, “E–.”

“What?” I asked, aghast. I had never heard of such a grade.

“A, B, C, D, E–,” she said. For a moment I thought she might go on down the alphabet to an even stranger grade, possibly K–.

“Oh” was all I could say, and I hung up and fled to Jane's room to confess and seek comfort. She was as appalled as I and, never having heard of an E–, was sure I had misunderstood. She offered to call the English office and inquire.

“Didn't I give out that grade?” asked the secretary. Jane explained that I couldn't believe it. The secretary confirmed that my grade was indeed an E–, but she did say the Comprehensive would be given again during summer session and I could try it again.

Jane tried to comfort me, pointing out that we still had the second half of the Comprehensive ahead of us, and the two grades would be averaged, so there was still hope. But how, I wondered, did Cal average an E–? I felt like a failure, a guilty failure. My parents' hopes were on my shoulders. I broke the news to them and found Mother sympathetic. She said it was a good thing I was staying in Berkeley for the summer so I could repeat the exam. I knew I was too exhausted to take the exam again, so my only hope
lay in The Novel, the subject I had chosen for the second half of the examination.

The day came; I climbed the steps of Wheeler Hall on heavy feet and waited for the questions. There was only one, a statement rather than a question: Discuss the Novel. For three hours I discussed the Novel and emerged exhausted as the Campanile began to play a merry tune. This time when I called the English office, I learned that my grade was a B, which wiped out the disgraceful E– and gave me a D as a final grade. I would graduate. I hoped Cal wouldn't squeal to the University of Washington.

Dad drove to Berkeley alone to attend my graduation. Mother felt she could not entrust the care of her mother to anyone else. The notebook in which he kept a record of his expenses shows that he drove to California inland and returned by the coastal route, thus making the most of his trip. Although he had never spoken one word of complaint about my grandmother living with us, he did not send my mother so much as a postcard during his two weeks of freedom. He and Clarence were friendly when I introduced them, and we enjoyed dinner together. We were more comfortable without Mother.

Graduation in the Memorial Stadium. More than two thousand of the Class of '38 in our caps
and gowns lined up behind the professors in their colorful regalia, leaders made sure we were in the right order, and when the time came for us to receive our diplomas, Robert Gordon Sproul, president of the university, handed mine to me and said, “Congratulations
to
you.” I was free. The whole thing was so well organized that we each received the right diploma. Clarence refused to take time off from Bedding and Linen, where he was paid by the hour, to attend commencement. I picked up his diploma for him at Cal Hall.

Graduation night. An orchid arrived from Clarence, followed by Clarence himself in Ken's tuxedo with the bow tie untied because Clarence did not know how to tie it. Dad let us take his car, and after stopping at a gas station for an attendant to tie the dangling tie, we were off across the Bay Bridge for a night on the town. Dinner at the Fairmont, dancing at the Palace, more dancing at the Mark Hopkins, where we went to meet friends and made the mistake of sitting down. A waiter handed Clarence a bill for four dollars. What for? “Cover charge, sir,” said the waiter. Four dollars just to sit down—we had never heard of such a thing. Fortunately, Clarence had four dollars left as well as twenty-five cents for the bridge toll.

The next day, after a lunch of crab Louis, a meal Dad remembered for years, we took him on a tour of San Francisco. It was a day we all enjoyed. I was happy to see the two get along and sorry to say good-bye to my father the following morning.

Like Cinderella after the ball, I turned into a chambermaid. I often wonder why I remember Cal with such affection.

The Campanile

Miriam, my roommate at Stebbins Hall

Jane on the steps of Doe Library at Cal

Clarence in 1938, wearing the same tie he was wearing when we met (He still has it.)

Clarence keeps his eye on the ball after work in Bedding and Linen
.

En garde
at Cal

My Cal yearbook picture, class of '38

I escape from Cal
.

A happy afternoon in Golden Gate Park with Dad and with Clarence's orchid on my shoulder

Grandma Atlee after she came to live with us

Grandpa Atlee, Uncle Henry, Cousin Zed