“What?!” I cried. “What?!”
Casey was frozen, her face a mask of horror. “Rat!” she spat out finally. “Rat!!”
I climbed on my chair and looked down.
Yes, there was a Ruggles-sized rat, in all its fat, furry, twitchy-nosed, red-eyed, fang-toothed, and bald-tailed glory. There had been several sightings of said rat by several staff members ever since we’d moved. But neither I nor Casey had ever encountered it. Until now.
And here he was, poking around my office like he owned it.
I suddenly felt like I was going to vomit.
Jumping down from my perch, I rushed past a still-quivering Casey and raced down the hall, out the glass doors, across the vestibule, to the ladies’ room. I burst into a stall and heaved my morning Diet Coke in a splashing rush into the porcelain.
After another heave, I took a few deep breaths. I perked up a little. Nausea…now, that was a good sign. A great sign. I felt instantly a whole lot better. Suddenly, the Stepford Twins didn’t seem all that important.
I let out another deep breath and pulled down my skirt. While I’m here, I might as well pee, I thought.
But the next thing I knew tears were flowing down the Anna Sui blouse in a veritable monsoon.
I had gotten my period.
2
Local Girl Awarded Full Scholarship to Connecticut Prep School
—Athens Daily Banner, August 1979
Yet another unsuccessful fertility treatment. And yet another not-so-veiled threat from the Stepford Twins. It was shaping up to be a great day.
To take my mind off the failed fertility treatment, I focused on my interaction with Ellen and Liz, which plunged me into a real depression. I thought of that Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime” with David Byrne’s bewildered voice questioning: “How did I get here?” Thinking on it sent me back to the darkest period of my life.
I was fourteen, fresh out of a commune in rural Georgia.
Yes, a commune. Not the David Koresh, religious cult kind. It was a hippie, antiestablishment, grow-our-own food, conserve-energy, homeschool-our-kids kind. And it provided a somewhat happy, if unorthodox childhood, for me and my younger brother, Alex.
My parents were from the Northeast. They met when they were both on the tenure track at Yale—Mom as an art instructor, Dad as a philosophy professor. At the encouragement of one of their mentors, they left the rigidness of academia behind for communal life on a farm right outside Athens.
Whenever I think of my mom in those days, I picture her in low-slung hip-huggers with her hands caked in mud. She had long, straight blond hair; a perpetual tan; and deep, thoughtful dimples that came out whenever she concentrated really hard, like when she was working clay.
Pottery was her first love. I honestly think she enjoyed tossing pots more than spending time with Dad, me, Alex, and all of us combined. She would spend hours in the pottery shed, and sometimes I thought if we didn’t go in to get her she wouldn’t sleep, eat, or do anything else. When we would distract her from the spinning wheel, she’d seem like she was emerging from a coma, blinking and staring at us, like she had no idea who we were. The funny thing was, very few of those pots would actually make it to the kiln. Many of them sat unfinished, air-dried, and crumbly, lining the shelves and waiting for what, I never knew. I don’t think Mom knew, either.
Dad was covered in hair. He had a head of brown spirals that reached down to his shoulders; a chestnut coat of fur on his chest; and a bristly russet beard and mustache, which made his piercing blue eyes stand out even more. He had an offbeat sense of humor, a strong mischievous streak, and a quick and articulate tongue. He loved to get in tête-à-têtes with anyone who would listen. When the others at the commune became weary of his rantings, Dad would pull on his tweed blazer with the elbow patches—his only blazer—and go over to Athens and engage local students in his favorite coffeehouse. Sometimes he’d be gone for a day. Sometimes he’d be gone for a few days. But he’d always come back from those jaunts elated and rejuvenated. Whenever we would happen to be in town with him, young girls would rush up to greet him. “Hey, professor,” they’d call between giggles, even though he wasn’t one—at least not anymore. Not that Dad was a liar. But his ego would allow him to pad the truth a bit, and I knew those young girls were tasty feed for that hungry ego. Mom knew it too, though she’d go throw some pots and forget.
Dad was a great teacher, though, and schooling on the commune was probably far superior to that of the average public school. Not only did we learn all of Shakespeare’s plays by the time we were eleven, but we honed our math skills, debated politics, painted, drew, sculpted, built, and fished, which was my favorite thing to do.
Whether I’d go out in our self-made rower with Dad, Alex, or alone (despite her earthiness, Mom had prissy tendencies when it came to fish guts), I found fishing to be the best escape of all. It was quiet. It was challenging. Everything except the mossy lake seemed far away and unimportant. And it was the one time when I felt completely myself, comfortable in my skin. Plus, there was nothing like landing a bass or a trout bigger than Alex’s, and basking in Dad’s proud smile.
But communal life wasn’t all idyll. Deep down, I knew both Mom and Dad believed that it could provide a better, simpler, more tolerant, more equal, less evil life than the outside world. But no matter how much they tried to shun reality, it would inevitably creep in.
Work on the commune could be tiring. And as tolerant and mellow as everyone tried to be, there were frequent squabbles. During those times, Dad would talk about moving into town. But most of the townspeople weren’t welcoming to having people like us as neighbors. The university set were the only people in town, in fact, who wouldn’t mutter “dirty hippies” when we passed by. The problem was that housing near the university was expensive.
So we stayed put, probably for much longer than we should have. To cool off from disputes with the others, or just to remedy their restlessness, my parents would simply take off, sometimes for days on end. They’d drive miles to see a Grateful Dead show or leave to join a protest. Many times we had no idea where they were going, but we always knew why they left. And although Alex and I felt comfortable with the others on the commune, we still couldn’t help but feel left behind.
Through it all, my parents never let go of the esteem of academia, which is why they encouraged me to apply to northeastern prep schools. “You need to see the world in other ways, too,” I remember Mom saying, perhaps a little too urgently.
“You can always come back, if you want,” Dad pointed out. “But you need to go beyond the bubble. A great education starts with seeing all views. And there’s a lot to be said for a good education,” he’d add wistfully, making it clear where he’d rather be. I wondered if their sending me off was fulfillment of their lost dreams. It was almost as if they were too committed to the communal lifestyle, or too proud to admit that it might not be working as they had hoped. More likely, I think neither of them had the energy to leave for good.
In spite of everything, I was proud of my upbringing; I still get sentimental about it even today. Too many times in my life I have become homesick for its simplicity—which is ironic because soon after my acceptance into prep school, I resented everything about it.
My parents couldn’t have been prouder when I received a full scholarship to Hillander, the exclusive Connecticut prep school that was the alma mater of dozens of presidents, captains of industry, and Pulitzer Prize–winning writers. Though I doubted I would eventually fall into any of those categories, I was optimistic about the opportunities that were sure to come along. Even more exciting was the fact that I had never been around so many people my age. I was eager, and ready, to make a lot of friends.
It didn’t quite turn out that way.
On