Stranger at the Door. Laura Abbot

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      That alien world terrified me. Yet in that moment I found myself wanting to comfort Twink, whose voice betrayed her bravado. Oddly, that made me feel better. I wasn’t the only one uncertain about the future.

      “A whole new world…but, Twink, I can’t do this unless I know we’ll always be friends, no matter what.”

      “Till we die,” she whispered.

      I echoed her words. “Till we die.”

      We were such innocents, little dreaming what changes and upheavals life would bring. But we understood the solemnity of our pledge, and we honor it still.

      Baton Rouge

      1957-1958

      COLLEGE. THE HALCYON years between adolescence and adulthood. Or so they say. First semester of my freshman year, from the frenzy of sorority rush to the rigor of final exams, I felt overwhelmed. So many people. Unfamiliar surroundings. Sharing a room for the first time. And the crushing weight of my mother’s expectations.

      Before I left for the university, I’d been unaware that a coed’s true purpose in attending college was snagging a husband. But in Mother’s weekly phone calls, she made that abundantly clear. “Have you met anyone yet?” Anyone, of course, was code for Mr. Right. I was meeting some college men at fraternity mixers, but they weren’t lining up to escort me to parties.

      Gradually, I settled into a niche. I enjoyed sorority life, and once or twice a month one of my sisters arranged a blind date for me, but none of them progressed beyond friendship. Women today have choices, but back then, college, for most, was a marital hunting ground. We gave lip service to majoring in education, nursing or home economics, but few of us expected to be employed beyond our first pregnancy.

      Meanwhile, Twink regaled me in letters and phone calls with accounts of wild house parties, weekends in New York City and the “divine” men she was meeting. I wasn’t exactly jealous because I knew such glamorous experiences weren’t for me, and yet….

      My sophomore year was easier. Living in the sorority house gave me a comforting sense of home, I knew my place and began to understand the usefulness of my English lit studies. Yet I was no closer to satisfying my mother’s ambitions. The fact of the matter was that I was in no hurry. Marriage was a distant goal. College men either terrified me with their drinking exploits and masculine swagger or bored me with their immaturity.

      Throughout my first two years at LSU, the billiken sat on the dresser in my cubbyhole of a room, mocking me with its silence.

      Baton Rouge

      1959-60

      HONESTLY, I’D EXPECTED my college experience to be like the glossy color photos in the school catalog, where I’d be happily waving a purple and gold pennant in the student cheering section or strolling hand-in-hand with a handsome fellow sporting a letter jacket.

      Amazingly, in my junior year that’s exactly what happened. Drew Mayfield came into my life. If Mother had ordered him from a husband catalog, he couldn’t have more neatly fit her mold. His résumé was impeccable: honor student, captain of the golf team, treasurer of the top fraternity, a pre-law major. From Mother’s viewpoint his most important credential lay in the fact his father was a federal judge.

      Drew was handsome and innately kind. All Southern gentlemen model courtesy, but many practice it in chauvinistic, self-aggrandizing ways. Not Drew. He treated me like a lady, even a cherished one. Therein lay the problem. He was perfect…on paper. We walked hand-in-hand down azalea-lined sidewalks, he bought me a chrysanthemum corsage for homecoming and nominated me for sweetheart of his fraternity. We became a couple. At the end of that year, beneath a full Southern moon, he gave me his fraternity pin.

      When I went home for the summer, Mother was ecstatic. For once, I was convinced I’d pleased her. She pored over photographs of Drew and me, and couldn’t hear enough about our courtship. Yet the more I repeated the story, the more removed I felt, as if I were observing a film entitled the The Good Daughter.

      Drew drove up from New Orleans twice that summer and succeeded in charming my mother and grandmother. Daddy was his usual chivalrous but inscrutable self. Drew seemed maddeningly at home in Springbranch. I say maddeningly, because I caught myself trying to discover a flaw in him. Surely he would be out of place in our small town. But he wasn’t. Even Eunice Culpepper, our nosy neighbor, fell under his spell.

      I liked him. I really did. And I’m reasonably certain he believed himself in love with me. By the beginning of our senior year, we had a tacit understanding that we would marry following graduation. Mother was already considering the guest list and the seasonal flowers that would adorn the church. I was swept away in a tidal wave of others’ expectations.

      It took Twink to ask the question. “Do you love him so madly your body quakes with excitement?”

      I clenched the phone and swallowed the lump in my throat.

      “Izzy?” The compassion in my friend’s voice undid me.

      “I…uh, I…”

      “The answer’s no, isn’t it?”

      How desperately I wanted to tell Twink that Drew was the most exciting man in the world, that he did, indeed, make me limp with desire. That all the pictures in the book we had read in that gazebo years ago had taken on glorious new meaning.

      You might logically assume I broke off with Drew. But I didn’t. He was safe. Predictable. I liked him. Best of all, he pleased my mother. I could learn to love him, I told myself. We could have a nice life together.

      Oh, what a weak word “nice” is.

      Springbranch

      1960

      IN EARLY NOVEMBER OF that year, I was called home from school. Grandmama, who had grown increasingly frail, was in the hospital. Seeing her pale, shrunken body on the bed, I faced mortality for the first time. When I picked up her hand, the paperlike, wrinkled skin felt warm, but her breath came in labored gasps. Her white hair, usually perfectly coiffed, hung lankly. Nurses came and went, but I felt compelled to stay. From the hall I heard whispered consultations. Congestive heart failure. Not long now. Words that pierced my soul.

      Daddy sat in the waiting room, a volume of Wordsworth his only company. Mother bustled. Straightening pillows. Filling the water carafe. Adjusting the blinds.

      But I sat, willing each new inhalation and realizing how much I loved Grandmama and depended on her. I had never had to work to please her. Even if I’d told her the truth years ago about the cotillion disaster, she would have hugged me and said, “There, there, Bel.”

      Later that night after Mother left the room, I found myself humming “I’ll Fly Away” and blinking back tears. Then I felt Grandmama’s thumb caressing the back of my hand. When I looked up, her eyes were open, her mouth curved in the trace of a smile. “Bel,” she murmured.

      “I’m here.”

      With surprising strength, she drew me closer. I leaned over the bed. “That boy,” she whispered.

      “Drew?”

      She nodded. “Passion.” The word had the force of an imperative.

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