The Prodigal Daughter (16 page)

“But that includes
your shares as well as mine, my dear.”

“No,” said
Florentyna, “it doesn’t take into account my saving on the Woolson Prize
Scholarship.”

Miss Tredgold
made no reply.

An hour later,
Miss Tredgold stood on the dock in New York’s Hudson River waiting to board her
ship, finally to release her cl
,arge
to adult life.

I shall think of
you from time to time, my dear,” she said, and
hope
that my father was right about destiny.” Florentyna kissed Miss Tredgold on
both cheeks and watched her mount the gangplank. When she reached the deck,
Miss Tredgold turned, waved a gloved hand once and then hailed a porter, who
picked tip her bags and followed the stern-looking lady toward her cabin. She
did not once look at Florentyna, who stood like
a ,tatue
on the pier holding back the tears because she knew Miss Tredgold would not
approve.

When Miss
Tredgold reached her berth, she tipped the porter fifty cents and locked the
door.

Winifred
Tredgold sat down on the end of the bunk and wept unashamedly.

F
LORENTYNA HAD NOT
BEEN SO UNSURE about anything since her first day at the Girls Latin School.
When she returned from her summei holiday in Europe with her father a thick
manila envelope from Radcliffe was awaiting her. It contained all the details
of when and where she should report, what to wear, a course catalogue and the
“Red Book” detailing Radcliffe rules.

Florentyna sat
on her bed studiously taking in page after page of information until she came
to Rule I I a: If you entertain a man in your room for tea, at all times the
door must be kept ajar, and all four feet must always be touching the Door.
Florentyna burst out laughing at the thought that the first time she made love
it might be standing up, behind an open door, holding a cup of tea.

As the time drew
nearer for her to leave Chicago, she began to realize just how much she had
depended on Miss Tredgold. She packed three large suitcases, including all the
new clothes she had bought on her European trip. Her mother, looking elegant in
the latest Chanel suit, drove Florentyna to the station. When she boarded the
train she was suddenly aware it was the first time she had traveled anywhere
for any period of time without knowing somebody at the other end.

She arrived in
Boston to find New England a beautiful contrast of September greens and
yellows. An old school bus was waiting to transport students to the campus. As
the ancient vehicle crossed the Charles, Florentyna looked through the back
window to see the sun glinting off the dome of the State House. A few sails dotted
the water, and eight enthusiastic students were pulling their oars through the
wash while an older man on a bicycle shouted orders through a megaphone as he
rode along the towpath. When the bus came to a halt at Radcliffe, a middle-agod
woman in academic dress herded the freshmen into Longfellow Hall, where
Florentyna had taken the Woolson exam. There they were briefed on which hall
they would live in during their first year and their rooms were allocated to
them. Florentyna drew room 7 in Whitman Hall. A sophomore helped her carry her
bags across to Whitman and then left her to unpack.

The room smelled
as if the painters had moved out only the day before.

It was clear
that she was to share with two other girls: there were three beds, three
dressers, three desks, three desk chairs, three desk lamps, three pillows,
three coverlets and three sets of blankets, according to the checklist that was
left on the inside of the door. As there was no sign of her roommates, ihe
chose the bed nearest the window and started to unpack. She was just about to
unlock the last suitcase when the dooT was flung open and a large valise landed
in the middle of the room.

“Hi,” said a
voice that sounded to Florentyna more like a foghorn than a freshman from
Radcliffe. “My name is Bella Hellaman. I’m from San Francisco.”

Bella shook
hands with Florentyna, who immediately regretted the act as she smiled up at
the six-foot giant who must have weighed well over two hundred pounds. Bella
looked like a double bass and sounded like a tuba.

She began to
size up the room.

“I knew tney
wouldn’t have a bed large enough for me,” was her next pronouncement. “My
headmistress did warn me that I should have applied to a men’s college.”

Florentyna burst
out laughing.

“You won’t laugh
so loud when I keep you awake all night. I toss and turn so much you’ll think
you’re on board a ship,” Bella warned as she pushed open the window above
Florentyna’s bed to let in the cool Boston air.

“What time do
they serve dinner at this place? I haven’t had a decent meal since I left
California.”

“I’ve no idea,
but it’s all in the Red Book,” said Florentyna, picking up her copy from the
side of her bed. She started flicking through the pages until she reached
“Meals, times of.”
“Dinner, six-thirty to seven-thirty.”

“Then at the
stroke of six-thirty,” Bella said, “I shall be under starter’s orders at the
dining room door. Have you found out where the gymnasium is?”

105

“To be honest, I
haven’t,” said Flcrentyna grinning. “It wasn’t high on my list of priorities
for the first day.”

There was a
knock on the door, and Bella shouted, “Come in.” Florentyna later learned that
it had not been a shout, just her normal speaking voice.

Into the room
stepped a Dresden china blonde, not a hair out of place, dressed in a neat
darkblue suit. She smiled, revealing a set of small, even teeth. Bella smiled
back at her as though her dinner had arrived early.

“My name is
Wendy Brinklow,” said a voice with a slight southern accent. “I think I’m sharing
a room with you.” Florentyna wanted to warn her about Bella’s handshake, but it
was too late. She watched Wendy cringe.

“You’ll have to
sleep over there,” Bella said, pointing to the remaining bed. “You don’t by any
chance know where the gymnasium is, do you?”

“Why should
Radcliffe need a gymnasium?” said Wendy as Bella helped her in with her
suitcases. Bella and Wendy started to unpack and Florentyna fiddled with her
books, trying not to make it too obvious that she was fascinated by what came
out of Bella’s suitcases. First there were goalie pads, a breast pad, and two
pairs of cleats, then a face mask, which Florentyna tried on, and finally a
pair of hockey gloves, all in addition to the two hockey sticks she had had
strapped to the valise she had earlier flung into the room. Wendy had all her
clothes in neat little piles packed away in her dresser before Bella had even
worked out where to put her hockey sticks. Eventually she just threw them under
the bed.

When they had
finished unpacking, the three girls set off for the dining hall. Bella was the
first to reach the cafeteria line and loaded her plate so full with meat and
vegetables that she had to balance it on the palm of her hand. Florentyna
helped herself to what she considered a normal amount and Wendy managed a
couple of spoonfuls of salad. Florentyna was beginning to feel they resembled
Goldilocks’s three bears.

Two of them had
the sleepless night Bella had promised Florentyna and it was several weeks
before either she or Wendy managed eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Years
later, Florentyna discovered that she could sleep anywhere, even in a crowded
airport lounge, thanks to spending her freshman year with Bella.

Bella was the
first freshman to play goalie for the Radcliffe varsity and she spent the year
happily terrifying anyone who dared to try to score against her. She always
shook hands with the few who did. Wendy spent much of the time being chased by
men who visited the campus and some of the time being caught. She also passed
more hours reading the Kinsey Report than her class notes.

“Darlings,” she
said, eyes saucer-wide, “it’s a serious piece of academic work written by a
distinguished professor.”

“The first
academic work to sell over a million copies,” commented Bella, as she picked up
her hockey sticks and left the room, Wendy, seated in fiont of the one mirror
in the room, was checking her lipstick.

“Who’s it this
time?” asked Florentyna.

“No one in
particular,” she replied. “But Dartmouth has sent their tennis team over to
play Harvard and I couldn’t think of a more pleasant way to spend the
afternoon. Do you want to come along?”

“No thanks, but
I would like to know the secret of how you find them,” said Florentyna, looking
at herself appraisingly in the mirror. “I can’t remember when anyone other than
Edward last asked me out.”

“It doesn’t take
a lot of research,” said Wendy. “Perhaps you put theni off.”

“How?” asked
Florentyna, turning toward her.

Wendy put down
her lipstick and picked up a comb. “You’re too obviously bright and
intelligent, and not many men can handle that. You frighten them and that’s not
good for their egos. “

Florentyna
laughed.

“I’m serious.
How many men would have dared to approach your beloved Miss Tredgold, let alone
make a pass at her?”

“So what do you
suggest I do about it?” asked Florentyna.

“You’re
good-looking enough, and I don’t know anyone with a better dress sen.w, so just
act dumb and massage their ego; then they feel they have to take care of you.
It always works for mc.”

“But how do you
stop them thinking they have the right to jump into bed with you after one
hamburger?”

“Oh, I usually
get three or four steaks before I let them try anything. And just occasionally
I say yes.”

“That’s ~11 very
well, but how did you handle it the first time?”

“God knows,”
said Wendy. “I can’t remember that far back.”

Florentyna
laughed again.

‘
rhe
Past: 1934-1968 107

“If you come to
the tennis with me you might get lucky. After all, _there’ll be five other men
from Dartmouth, not to mention the six on the Harvard team.”

“No, I can’t,”
Florentyna said regretfully. “I still have an essay on Oedipus to finish by six
o’clock.”

“And we all know
what happened to him,” said Wendy, grinning.

Despite their
different interests, the three girls became inseparable, and Florentyna and
Wendy would always spend Saturday aftemoons watching Bella play hockey. Wendy
even learned to scream “Kill ‘em,” from the sidelines, although it didn’t sound
very convincing. It was a hectic first year and Florentyna enjoyed regaling her
father with stories of Radcliffe, Bella and Wendy.

She had to study
hard as her advisor, Miss Rose, was quick to point out that the Woolson
Scholarship came up for renewal every year and that it would do neither of their
reputations any good if the prize were withdrawn, At the end of the year
Florentyna’s grades were more than satisfactory and she had also found time to
join the Debating Society and was made freshman representative for the
Radcliffe Democratic Club. But she felt her greatest achievement was trouncing
Bella on the Fresh Pond golf course by seven strokes.

In the summer
vacation of 1952, Florentyna only spent two weeks in New York with her father
because she had applied to be a page at the Chicago convention.

Once Florentyna
had returned to her mother in Illinois she threw herself back into politics.
The Republican Party convention had been held in the city two weeks earlier and
the GOP had chosen Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon as their candidates.
Florentyna couldn’t see how the Democrats would come up with anyone to
challenge Eisenhower, the biggest national, hero since. Teddy Roosevelt. “I
Like Ike” buttons were everywhere.

When on July 21
the Democratic convention opened, Florentyna was given the job of showing VIPs
to their seats on the speakers’ platform. During those four days she learned
two things of value. The first was the importance of contacts, and the second
the vanity of politiciails. Twice during the four days she placed senators in the
wrong seats and they could not have made more tuss if she had ushered them into
the electric chair.

108TiiE PRODIGAL
DAUGHUR

The brightest
moment of her week came when a good-looking young congressman from
Massachusetts asked her where she was at college.

“When I was at
Harvard,” he said, “I spent far too much of my time at Radcliffe. They tell me
now it’s the other way around.”

Florentyna
wanted to say something witty and bright that he would remember but nothing
came out, and it was many years before she saw John Kennedy again.

The climax of
the convention came when she watched the delegates select Adlai Stevenson as
their standard-bearer. She had greatly admired him when he was governor of
Illinois, but Florentyna (lid not believe that such an academic man could hope
to defeat Eisenhower on Election Day. Despite the shouting, cheering and
singing of “Happy Days Are Here Again,” not everybody in that hall seemed to
believe it either.