“Oh,” Linda said.
“Where did you go, then?” Ally asked.
The pity in Brett's eyes: she'd understood.
“I didn't go to college,” I said. “I was a secretary at the engineering school. That's how Danny and I met.”
“Well, shut my mouth,” Kath whispered under her breath.
“I just . . . when you assumed I'd been to college, I was too embarrassed to set you straight.”
Linda, frowning, adjusted her Stanford cap. Then her eyes lit up, all those colors. “You should apply to Stanford, Frankie,” she said.
“Not everyone has to go to college, Linda,” Brett said. “Not everyone even wants to.”
“Here's one of the greatest universities in the country,” Linda said, ignoring Brett, “and you can practically walk to it.”
“Stanford?” I said. “But I wouldn't know where to begin.”
Linda turned her eyes heavenward, a God-give-me-patience look. “You would too, Frankie. You're a smart girl. You just get the application, fill it out, take the SATs. Send it all in. Walk it in!”
As if it were that easy. As if there were no question of my being smart enough. As if the thousands of dollars of tuition were pocket change and she herself had gone off to graduate school when she'd wanted to, never mind the twins.
SO, SEPTEMBER 1969. School starting. Leaves falling. Miss America—which the Wednesday Sisters talked about skipping that year. Though the pageant would have higher ratings than the year before, and the following year a record 22 million households would watch, all the controversy—those boardwalk protesters—had taken a toll. Pepsi had withdrawn its sponsorship, saying Miss America didn't represent the changing values of society, which ought to have been true. To the Wednesday Sisters, though, the pageant was more than a beauty contest; it was the anniversary of the day we'd begun to write. Which was what we talked about at Brett's that night, while we fixed our gin and tonics and vodka gimlets and sidecars. A year, it had been, and yes, Brett's essay had been published and Linda's story would be soon, but the rest of us were making no headway.
“Some things just take time,” Linda said. “Ruth Spangenberg started the Committee for Green Foothills seven years ago, and we're still fighting development there. And sometimes I think we never are going to get this community to accept teaching minority viewpoints in our schools.”
“That fella Sid Walton, he's a Black Panther,” Kath said, referring to the district's director of multiculturalism who'd just resigned amidst an uproar over “exchanging” students with the Ravenswood district, where most students were black. “Anna Page's teacher says his house is full of books and bullets.”
Bert Parks appeared onstage then, and we turned our attention to the television. Before we'd even seen Miss Alabama, Linda announced she was rooting for Miss New York, who was Jewish, and Kath, without pausing to think why Linda might care what religion a contestant was, asked if she had a nose.
“A nose, Kath?” Linda said. “It would be hard to be voted Miss America without one, don't you think?”
Kath patted her braid headband, then dragged a lock of hair across her ample chin. “Sure, of course. I just meant—”
“Do I?” Linda asked.
“Do you what?”
“I'm Jewish, Kath. Does that make you feel differently about me?”
And I said—I know, unbelievable, but I did—I said, “But you're blond.”
Miss Iowa, Miss Kansas, and Miss Kentucky walked out, Bert Parks announcing them as I tried to come up with some way to take back my words, to make a joke of them, to break the stupefied silence. But it was Ally's quiet voice we heard first, Ally who said, “My Jim is from India.”
“That was Jim.” I exhaled the words, not meaning to say them aloud but it was such a surprise, somehow, to have it confirmed. And when Ally looked at me in response, I tried to explain. “I saw a dark-skinned—” I started, before thinking better of it. What would I say? I couldn't imagine you married to a nonwhite even with him right there in front of me?
Ally's eyes darkened in her pale face. She hadn't needed me to finish my sentence to know what I meant to say; she'd been facing that kind of prejudice since the day she'd started seeing Jim.
Kath, looking from me to Ally, said, “From India like Gandhi? Or from India like the British families who—”
“Jim graduated top of his class at Michigan Law School, and you were right, Linda, he should have had his pick of jobs,” Ally interrupted, shutting us all up. “But he didn't get a single offer from the New York firms, or the San Francisco ones, either.”