For Lucy, Emma, and Rebecca: sister goals, sister ghouls
“It’s nice to meet you,” I told Old White Dudes #19 and #20.
Every alumnus looked the same. Sure, there were minor variations. Paunches were small, medium, or large. Hair was nonexistent, receding, or artificially puffed. Smiles were indifferent but polite (good), paternal and doting (meh), or lecherously smirky (gag).
But everyone qualified as Old and White and Dude.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. I was at the Senior Triumvirates, Past and Present reception, and the all-boys Chawton School hadn’t merged with Ansel Academy for Girls until 1978. They’d combined campuses and mascots (Angel Tigers, rah rah rah!), but Ansel had lost its name, as in a marriage, the commemorative plaque says. Chawton is a snooty private school in the snooty suburban enclaves of northern Virginia. It neighbors George Washington’s plantation, which should tell you something: it’s steeped in history, history of a certain type. The history of Old White Dudes running shit.
OWD #19 had moles. I bet someone clipped OWD #20’s nose hair. I bet not him. “A pleasure,” said #19.
“The Chawton boys are lucky these days, eh, Davis?” said #20.
“Sure are,” said #19, looking me up and down.
With the instinct born of eighteen years of being a girl in this world, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why do you say that?” I said as politely as I could manage.
Which was not all that polite.
OWD #19 put a spotted hand on my upper arm. I shook him off and took a step back. “Hundreds of adolescent boys,” he said. “Not one female among us—remember, Richard?”
“Do I.”
“We could spot the Ansel girls playing field hockey from the maintenance tower—”
“Naturally we’d convene there—”
“Those gym suits they wore!”
I glared at them, my arms still crossed. OWD #19 chortled. “Your male classmates are very fortunate,” he told me.
“Smile, dear,” OWD #20 added. “It’s not all doom and gloom.”
“This is my face,” I began, “so don’t tell me—”
“Hello, hello!” Gennifer Grier appeared at my elbow, beaming at the OWDs. “I am so sorry to interrupt, but, Jemima, we’re needed at the silent auction.”
I gave them a cursory nod and stalked after Gennifer. They’d put the silent-auction items outside, but in early April the evening air still held an unpleasant nip, and the courtyard was deserted. Gennifer’s fake smile vanished. “What’s your deal, Jemmy?” she said.
I hated that name and she knew it. “What’s your deal? Why’d you drag me out here?”
“I had to extract you before you got all three of us in trouble.”
“What the hell. This was a ruse?”
“The light dawns.”
“I was about to educate those assholes. They told me to smile.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Like they think my function’s purely decorative.”
“Do you even understand the point of this evening?”
“Of course I do, Ghennifer.” I said it with a hard, aspirated G, as in ghastly. These nicknames weren’t new. If there had ever been any love between me and Gennifer, it had been lost long ago.
“We are decorative,” she said. “We’re a blank slate upon which the former triumvirs can write their own memories of Chawton.”
Gennifer is what you’d get if you googled “perfect American girl”: white and blond and thin. She has perfect teeth, which, like her, are white and straight and polished. Sometimes her prettiness made me think she was dumb. She’s not. She is just about the opposite of dumb.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s pretend we’re checking on the silent-auction table.”
Andy joined us as we straightened the baskets of fancy shampoo, the placards proclaiming AN AFTERNOON FOR EIGHT AT THE MERCER COUNTRY CLUB and AN ITALIAN COOKING LESSON WITH MASTER CHEF LUIGI DEL CARMINE. “You two hiding?” he said.
“Jemima needed to be reminded how to shut up and smile and nod.”
“She’s so strident,” said Andy, winking at me. “So shrill.”
“Fuck off,” I said. He grinned. Sometimes he acted like a chauvinistic asshat just to annoy me. And then sometimes he acted like a chauvinistic asshat because he was a white, straight, wealthy eighteen-year-old guy, and chauvinistic asshattery was basically his birthright.
I should note that I, too, am white. And straight. And wealthy, or my parents are. But despite these disadvantages, I do my best not to be a horrible person. I was a feminist before it was trendy.
“I wish we could have a real meeting tonight,” said Gennifer. “We have way too much to do before Jamboree.”
“Jamboree’s eight weeks away.”
“Seven,” said Gennifer. “And do you know how much stuff we have to organize? The election, Powderpuff, prom—”
“Beware,” I announced. “Ghennifer Grier has entered checklist mode.”
“My checklists have saved your asses all year.”
“When I reminisce about my senior year of high school,” said Andy, gazing into the Commons, where a black-coated swarm of OWDs was doing just that, “it’ll be to the soundtrack of you two squabbling.”
“Because women don’t debate or argue,” I said. “They squabble.”
“Exactly,” said Andy. “They catfight. I’m glad we’re on the same page, Kincaid.”
If he hadn’t grinned at me, I’d have picked up that shampoo and hurled it at his handsome face. But he grinned and it was over. That was what happened every time. Andy’s magical grin. Not that I had a crush on him or anything like that. He was cute. Of course he was cute. He was Chawton School chairman—captain of the lacrosse team, smart, too, golden-haired and broad-backed—but I steeled myself against all of that, almost by instinct at this point: he was Andy and I was Jemima, and never the twain would meet.
Or rather, we would meet all the time in the bureaucrats’ wet dream that was Senior Triumvirate. Meeting after meeting after meeting. But we would never meet meet. Like in the biblical sense.
I wouldn’t have attended a biblical meeting with him even if a PowerPoint agenda arrived in my inbox.
Probably not, anyway.