Even after the media had reported that the man had been a fraud and the story had disappeared, she and Larry had realized the past was something they could never escape. They had tried to go back to their normal life, but it was as phony as the man who had garnered the headlines.
Maybe keeping up the facade was why Larry had sought refuge in another woman. Of course, at the time, Diana had been so shaken by his demand for a divorce that she had fallen apart, seized by an irrational fear of being on her own. In her distorted view of things, she had believed she and Larry had an obligation to each other—their own private, mutual-protection pact. How dare he throw her aside? Then, on top of that, Larry had told Kevin she had faked her illness, further driving a wedge between her and her son.
She had stewed in fear and anger until finally, with Jonathan, she had rediscovered joy. Now someone wanted to rip that happiness away from her.
Was it possible that just as she had felt when Larry deserted her, her ex-husband now viewed her engagement to Jonathan as a breach of their shared bond—a violation of their ugly secret?
Impossible, she thought, as another memory seeped in. The Larry she had once known would never turn on her like this.
They were calling it Indian summer, and no one wanted to do any work, even though it was the end of September, a month into classes, and everyone should have been in study mode. The stagnant ninety-degree air, heavy with smoke, made them all lazy, including Di. She leaned back on a patch of dried grass on Columbia University’s sprawling lawn, surrounded by dozens of other students. Beyond loomed what looked like the Pantheon with its Ionic columns and domed roof, but was actually Columbia’s Low Library, the soul of the campus, as its statue of Alma Mater proclaimed. The building’s broad steps were covered with students. Many, like the ones on the lawn, were smoking pot, and even though Di wasn’t a fan of marijuana, she couldn’t help but inhale the sweet fumes that seemed to be part of the atmosphere.
She stretched out her legs and examined her faded tan, a remnant of sunbathing at Crandon Park Beach, back home in Miami. She hadn’t expected to need summer clothes up in New York, but her mother had packed this pair of pastel madras shorts and a pink sleeveless blouse, just in case. She knew she was different from most of the other Barnard College women in their blue jeans and tie-dyed shirts, and it bothered her that she looked like someone who didn’t know that the Donna Reed Show had been off the air for three years. But mostly, she was genuinely mystified by how different people were in New York from those in Miami. And it wasn’t as though she were a hick. But something had happened this summer while she was off in Europe with her parents. Maybe it was Woodstock. Or the first man to walk on the moon. Or maybe the escalation of the Vietnam War. But when she’d returned home from vacation, then left for college with a suitcase filled with tailored dresses from Burdines Sunshine Fashions, she had found herself in a very different world.
She glanced at the lethargic students parked on blankets or tossing Frisbees in their cut-off shorts and T-shirts, some of the guys with their long hair in ponytails, strumming guitars or passing joints, the girls holding sun reflectors to tan their faces. A number of professors had brought their classes outside, where the students sat in semicircles beneath spreading oak trees, pretending to listen to lectures on the wisdom of Sophocles and the declines of Rome and civilization.
She took in another lungful of sweet, sleepy air, surprised to see her roommate hurrying toward her, full of energy and purpose, a jarring contrast to everyone else. But then, Gertrude was unlike anyone Di had ever known before. So much her own person, she even bragged about her ugly name as though it were a badge of honor.
Gertrude was puffing on a cigarette, her black hair in a single braid that swung from side to side behind her as she glided between the students on the lawn. She wore what she always wore, regardless of the weather: a long-sleeved white-cotton blouse with embroidery around the scooped neckline, which was not quite sheer enough to show her braless breasts, but close, and tattered blue jeans that dragged in the dirt and hadn’t been washed since the two girls had moved into their freshman-dorm room a month before.
She stopped beside Di and extended her free hand. “Come on,” Gertrude said, blowing out a stream of smoke. “Time to split.”
Di took her hand, slick with sweat, and allowed herself to be pulled up. “Where are we going?”
“A meeting,” Gertrude said. Behind her rose-tinted glasses, her eyes looked violet. “We’re already late.” She had an awful Brooklyn accent that was incongruous with the graceful way she moved.
“What kind of meeting?” Di asked, trying to keep up with Gertrude’s rushed pace.
“Some guys I know,” Gertrude said. The sun glinted off the stainless-steel dog tag she wore around her neck that had belonged to her brother. She never took it off, even to shower. “We’re gonna fix this damn world.”
“Fine,” Di said. “But don’t get angry if I leave in the middle. I told you I don’t care about political stuff.”
“I don’t care about political stuff,” Gertrude mimicked, capturing Di’s hyperenunciated speech pattern and hand gestures. She was a natural chameleon. “I can’t believe I’m rooming with goddamn Pollyanna.” Gertrude said it lightly, in her coarse voice. It was their roomie joke, how they referred to themselves. Pollyanna and Che Guevara.
They walked around the outside of the imposing library, through a courtyard, then into a building Di had never been inside. Since all her classes were at Barnard this semester, she usually only came over to Columbia to use the main library.