Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [51]
The day was filled with tension. Professors cut their classes short or canceled them entirely. Students lingered on the lawns, as if waiting for some divine directive. The library was empty. When the news that William Jefferson Clinton had won resounded from TVs and radios all over campus, a feeling of euphoria set in, and even those students who never drank on weekdays stood around kegs and toasted the dawn of a new era. Those who’d voted Democrat but had Republican parents felt particularly smug. It was their turn to rule. Sea Bass and Damascus even put speakers facing outward in their dorm room windows and played Queen’s “We Are the Champions” at full volume on repeat.
When Thanksgiving came, everyone had something to be thankful for. Mr. Booth brought a live turkey to the dining hall to provoke Ethelyn Gaines, the ancient head of Dining Services, on whom he had a crush. “Oh no you don’t!” Ethelyn shrieked, chasing the turkey out of the kitchen, through the dining hall, and out the back door with her cleaver raised. The vegetarians were thankful that the turkey got away.
The Grannies were thankful for Grover’s satellite dish. They gathered at his house in Maryland to watch the Playboy After Dark rebroadcast of the Grateful Dead playing three of their favorite songs and chatting with Hugh Hefner at a party at the Playboy Mansion back in 1969. Hefner looked exactly like James Bond—all suave and cool in his tux. Jerry Garcia looked more like Juan Valdez by way of Haight-Ashbury with his long hair and woolly poncho. And Jerry was so young! It was awesome.
Professor Rosen was thankful for Progresso’s tasty lentil soup. Her recipe for seitan turkey—which required rinsing seven pounds of whole wheat flour in buckets of water until it formed a stringy dough, wrapping the dough in cheesecloth in the shape of a bird, and boiling it for three hours—had not turned out, and she no longer felt like cooking.
Eliza was thankful for the Darien Sports Shop.
Shipley had decided to drive home for Thanksgiving. She needed time to think, time away from Adam and Tom, but she couldn’t face going home alone, so at the last minute she’d asked Eliza to come with her. “Just to make sure I don’t fall asleep and drive off the road.”
No chance of that. Eliza’s constant questions were like a car alarm. “Do you shave your armpits every day? Do you have any allergies? How many fillings do you have in your teeth? Have you ever thought about plastic surgery? If you could change one thing about your body, what would it be? Have you ever been to see the Rockettes? How come you’re sleeping in our room now? Did you and Tom break up?”
Eliza had agreed to come for purely anthropological reasons. She needed to see firsthand the planet from whence her jeans-hanging, ironed-underwear-wearing roommate had come.
They left Dexter at eight o’clock on Thanksgiving morning and arrived at Shipley’s house at three o’clock that afternoon. Greenwich was lovely and clean. The Gilberts’ house was big and white and colonial, with green shutters and a red door, built on a rise with a backward C of a driveway curving in front of it. The hedges were neatly trimmed, and a pot of yellow chrysanthemums stood on either side of the front steps.
Shipley turned off the ignition, pulled down the driver’s side sunshade, and peered at herself in the mirror. She removed her dangly silver earrings and tossed them into her bag. Then she pulled back her hair into a ponytail and spritzed Binaca on her tongue. Finally she tucked her white turtleneck shirt into the waistband of her jeans.
“What are you doing?” Eliza demanded.
Shipley opened the