Louisa Hall - Trinity

Unfortunately, however, in those days, I was twenty pounds overweight.

Sometimes, at night, in my dorm room at Rosemont, I ate bowls of cereal.

I stuffed my face full of soggy spoonfuls of Wheat Chex, which I’d bought during the day in the attempt to be healthful. By nighttime, however, when I’d finished my simpleton’s art history homework, I’d get caught up writing draft upon draft of some terrible novel, some sprawling, disjointed blob about American Characters in the Nuclear Era.

For hours and hours, I’d escape into the lives of the characters I’d invented. I’d duck into the personalities of people who weren’t like myself in any way, and while I wrote, giddy with freedom, I’d forget all appropriate concern for my figure. Then, in the morning, bleary eyed and appalled by how many bowls I’d consumed, I’d squeeze myself into a dress and go to class to be pretty.

MAYBE A STRONGER-WILLED GIRL WOULD HAVE GIVEN UP THE PURSUITof a husband to follow her dreams of writing in earnest.

But then I had to consider the enormous effort my parents had made: the company my father had built out of nothing, the faultless veneer my mother had polished, the insults they’d so gracefully borne, and all in the belief that their daughters would flourish.

Every time I considered rebellion, the awareness of their sacrifice deflated my will.

At the end of the day, any rebellious energy I had left was spent on eating too much cereal, pointlessly and absurdly resisting my mother’s wish that we girls should stay slender.

I DON’T KNOW WHY I RESISTED SO FIERCELY. IT’S CLEAR TO ME NOWthat my mother’s desire rose out of nothing but love. She herself had escaped a long line of women whose bodies were fed to their children. She hoped we’d rise above that. For us she wanted the dignity of life without a womanly body.

In other words, her intentions were pure. But for some reason, at night, I felt compelled to resist them. I stuffed my face with cereal. Then, in the mornings, with my undignified body spilling out of my dress, I went to class so unhappy.

I could barely keep it together to sit still and look pretty. I only just managed to make the right kinds of friends, in order to meet the right kind of husband.

LEFT TO MY OWN DEVICES, I’D NEVER HAVE FOUND HIM. I WAS TOOtired and unhappy after all those long nights. I was lucky my roommate Kathy had the energy to step in and assist me. The only reason I ever met Stan—and Robert, as a result—was because Kathy dragged me along with her to Princeton to go on a double date with her and her new boyfriend.

We drove up together in the Studebaker her parents had bought as a present for her coming-out party: not the Charity Ball, but the private cotillion our parents threw, just so we Catholic girls wouldn’t miss out. Kathy and I wore white dresses beaded with seed pearls. We danced with boys from exemplary families, and I tried not to gaze over their shoulders at the engraved silver trays of petits fours and friandises .

WHAT A MESS I ALWAYS WAS. I WAS LUCKY I HAD KATHY TO LOOK OUTfor my interests. She ruled them with an iron fist.

Sometimes, remembering how determined and unscrupulous Kathy was about building alliances on my behalf, I start to get angry. Then I feel so bad for her I could weep.

Building marital alliances was her only pursuit. In some other existence, she could have arranged to make me the seventh wife of Henry VIII, thereby reversing the ecclesiastical schism. But in the early fifties at Rosemont, all she had was me and her Studebaker and the eligible friends of her boyfriends.

While we drove up to Princeton, the leaves lining the highway were changing. Kathy was driving with both hands gripping the wheel, sitting up very straight, wearing a cute pillbox hat and the white kidskin gloves she’d bought for herself at Strawbridge and Clothier.

The radio was turned to a channel on which several panelists were discussing the war in Korea, and how Truman had ordered atomic devices to be assembled at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa.

Apparently B-29 bombers were flying practice runs from Okinawa to North Korea, dropping dummy atom bombs. The panelists on the radio were debating the effectiveness of using nuclear weapons against North Korea, despite the fact that every important building in the country had already been destroyed by our bombers, and despite the fact that the Soviets had nuclear weapons as well, and had already tested two additional bombs since their original 1949 test.

And meanwhile I sat in the passenger seat with my hands crossed on my lap, looking at the changing leaves outside the window and wrestling with that hollow gnawing sensation I often mistook for real hunger.

When we crossed into New Jersey, I began to root around in the pockets of my camel-hair coat, where I was delighted to discover a Fireball I must have been saving. I tried to be subtle when I unwrapped it, but the cellophane was crinkly, and I could feel how tense Kathy was getting.

Nevertheless, however, I allowed myself to believe it might be possible to enjoy it.

Once I’d popped it into my mouth, however, the project became increasingly stressful. I had to suck it without making a sound, which involved shifting it from side to side while preventing it from knocking my molars.

By then, my eyes were watering. Kathy was forcing herself to keep her eyes on the road, but her expression was increasingly flinty. A few times, I glanced over and caught that telltale flare in her nostrils.

“Don’t you want to save your appetite?” she finally said.

Then I couldn’t enjoy it, so I spit the candy back into its wrapper. I noted that it was white and lightly veined with pink threads, so that it looked like the underside of an eyeball.

Not knowing what to do with it, I held on to it for a while, until I thought Kathy wasn’t paying attention. Then I slipped it back into my pocket.

“That’s disgusting,” Kathy said, five minutes later.

By then, the car was so full of her disapproval that for a moment I wondered if she’d make me get out and walk. In the end, however, she didn’t, and finally we came to Princeton and parked. Then I followed her into the restaurant.

We took a seat at the table and I removed my camel-hair coat, revealing my mohair sweater and the tasteful pearls my mother had bought me, which unfortunately did nothing to hide my dolphiny figure.

Still, I wasn’t too nervous. I was expecting Kathy’s boyfriend to show up with an unattractive but socially advantageous companion. That was the kind of alliance Kathy tended to forge me.

But when Kathy’s boyfriend walked in the door, it was with a person so tall and handsomely swarthy I felt immediately sick to my stomach.

Then they sat down—the handsome roommate on my side of the booth—and began to explain how they’d become friends in the air force. They’d both been deployed to Korea for several months before completing their service and returning to Princeton, and while they talked about their experiences flying planes, they both seemed somewhat larger than life and extraordinarily handsome.

Then I began to suspect that a person as handsome as that particular roommate would be disappointed to have been set up with such a fat girl, a dolphin in a pearl necklace.

Nevertheless, however, the dinner progressed, and the roommate seemed inexplicably happy.

That only aggravated my panic. It was almost as if he couldn’t see how fat I really was.

It was as if he’d missed it completely, so the awful revelation was always just coming.

Then I began to wonder if Kathy had given up on arranging a socially advantageous connection, and whether that roommate was in fact somewhat low on the totem pole of people I should have been dating. Perhaps, I realized, that was his motive for missing the fact that I wasn’t slender.