Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [36]
The male law students bonded immediately. Men who had been strangers the week before went out from the law school in packs, slapping each other on the shoulder as they walked to the Tin Can to play pickup basketball. The women, on the other hand, sat uneasily on the steps of the brick courtyard and complained about bathrooms and interviews with yet another all-male firm. It created a bond, but a negative one. Men, I thought, had sports, and we did not. The only sports for women at my high school in Japan had been cheerleading and tennis. We played half-court basketball, three girls on each side of the court, the way Iowa girls played long after the rest of the country liberalized the rules, and even that was only in physical education and an annual upperclassmen-versus-underclassmen game. I was, believe it or not, the second-fastest girl in my high school, but the fastest girl, Sandy Choate, was faster than most of the boys. In another two decades, Sandy would have gone to college on that speed. But this was a different era. I could see that sports were good for boys, and they were good for those new male law students, so why, I wondered, could they not be good for us, too?
In nearly every intramural sport over three years of law school, I entered a women’s law school team. Volleyball, basketball, softball. And I want to be clear: we were terrible. In every sport. But no team had as much fun. Mary Norris Preyer getting fifteen volleyball serves straight to her corner and missing them fifteen straight times and apologizing sweetly each time. We laugh about it still. Margo Freeman showing up to play softball in bare feet. No, she couldn’t play shortstop like that; she’d at least have to go to the outfield. Donna Triptow dribbling the ball eight inches off the floor into the corner of the court and being trapped there. We were truly terrible. And yet year after year, I could still get women to sign up because we were getting to do what seemed a birthright to men: we were teammates, and then we were companions, and finally we were friends.
My dear friend Glenn Bergenfield, whom I met that first year, will tell you that I was a meddler, making people talk to one another, passing out those intramural sign-up sheets, gathering people for dinner, introducing people I didn’t know, but the truth is that it is Glenn who was the go-between. It was Glenn who said I should go out with John. John Edwards? He was a textiles major from a small town, wasn’t he? And wasn’t he the one who had had a date to a football game with a majorette? I did not think this match would work. But Glenn kept after me, and finally I agreed that I would go out with him.
John picked me up in his red Duster. It was a flood car; he and his dad had cleaned out the mud, and the black and white checked interior gleamed. He wore a bow tie—I have never seen him wear one since—and a sweater vest—also not a staple of his current wardrobe. He took me to the Holiday Inn to dance to a disc jockey under a disco ball. I could hardly hear a word he said for hours. As he drove me home, I decided that Glenn would hear from me what a waste of time this was. And then, at my door, John leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, said goodnight and walked to his car. In an era of fast-forward sexual relationships, I was used to the fight at the door, or worse, in my apartment. And then this, this sweet and tender gesture. I suppose if he hadn’t turned out to be the sweet and tender man that gesture promised, I might not be writing of this at all, but he was, and is. And so when years later I talked to our son Wade about his first kiss, I told him not to underestimate the power of a gentle kiss. It had won me over that first date. I never went out with anyone else again.
At first John was cautious. He didn’t use any words that might be construed as suggesting any permanence to this