The Wife
“There we were in 1956, a typical couple, Joe intense and focused and tweedy, me a fluttering budgie circling him again and again. Even our clothing is an embarrassment, at least seen from the Olympian vantage point that time provides: his suede elbow patches that attempted to transform a Brooklyn Jew into Mr. Chips, and my long plaid skirts and flats, which I wore because he was short and I was tall, and the last thing I wanted to do was scare him away.
There was no danger of that; he wasn’t sc...ared of me, he was extraordinarily confident and dedicated. He pursued me and I responded, just the way other students and their professors were doing all around the country, engaging in steamy little couplings that were pleasurable and infuriating and grossly imbalanced. I felt honored to have been chosen by him, and relieved, too, for it lifted me out of the prolonged stupor that seemed to have infected the entire student body of Smith College in 1956. This wasn’t strictly our fault. Though many of the girls in my dormitory chattered like castanets about getting married right after college and buying homes in places like Old Lyme, Connecticut (Chancey Foster had already decided which one she wanted: a sprawling Tudor with a goldfish-stocked pond, though she had not yet selected a husband), we were not all silly, or empty, or unaware.MoreLess
There was no danger of that; he wasn’t sc...ared of me, he was extraordinarily confident and dedicated. He pursued me and I responded, just the way other students and their professors were doing all around the country, engaging in steamy little couplings that were pleasurable and infuriating and grossly imbalanced. I felt honored to have been chosen by him, and relieved, too, for it lifted me out of the prolonged stupor that seemed to have infected the entire student body of Smith College in 1956. This wasn’t strictly our fault. Though many of the girls in my dormitory chattered like castanets about getting married right after college and buying homes in places like Old Lyme, Connecticut (Chancey Foster had already decided which one she wanted: a sprawling Tudor with a goldfish-stocked pond, though she had not yet selected a husband), we were not all silly, or empty, or unaware.MoreLess
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