“I couldn’t even get down the street,” she said breathlessly. “It’s a scene over there. Don’t talk to any members of the press. You know that, right?”
“Of course,” I said, though I didn’t. “Right now I’m trying to find us a place to stay.” I explained the situation to her.
“Let me make some calls,” she said.
I lifted the kitchen curtain with the side of my hand, monitoring the scene out the window, my lips pursing in distaste. There were multiple cruisers bending the Bermuda grass, media vans making a hatched pattern behind the wooden police barrier, newscasters clutching various-colored microphone boxes, looking cold and ready. For a moment, I was lulled into thinking it was just an ordinary Saturday night since that new bar had opened next door. When the parking lot filled up, there were always spillovers tearing up our front yard. I should call the police, I thought, which is what I normally did. Then I realized I would be calling the police on the police, and a sound came out of me that I supposed was a laugh. The phone rang.
“Dr. Donnelly?”
“Pamela!” It was a man’s voice, a voice I’d heard a hundred times before and yet still could not place. “I’ve been trying to get through all morning!” And I remembered I had a boyfriend, someone who loved me and was as worried about me as the other girls’ parents.
“Brian,” I croaked, beginning to cry.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“No. No. I’m fine. But Denise—”
“I heard.”
“How?” I looked around for something to use to wipe my nose, and all I could come up with were the plaid pot holders the cooks used to handle our food. I cringed as I plugged a nostril and blew into one.
“The police are here. They took Roger away in handcuffs.” Roger lived in Turq House, down the hall from Brian.
“Handcuffs!” I cried. “I told them it wasn’t Roger. I told them I was just surprised to see a man at the front door, and they sort of looked alike, and—”
“You saw him?”
“Right before he ran out the door.”
“Did he see you? Did he… do anything to you?”
“What? No! I just told you. I’m not hurt.”
“Thank God,” Brian said, and I could tell in that moment that a real weight had been lifted off his shoulders. What had happened was bad, but it was removed enough from me, and therefore from him, that nothing would really need to change for us. I imagined him closing his eyes and sinking down on the cushioned banquette in the alcove where they kept the phone. The cord was oddly short, and his fraternity brothers joked that he was the only one tall enough to sit and talk at the same time. I liked how tall he was, sure, but I liked more that it was a quality others valued. I liked that he wore needlepoint belts bearing the crest of his Alabama country club but kept his dark blond hair on the shaggy side. I liked people to know I was with someone physically imposing, someone who was not too straight-edged but not a strung-out beatnik either. I know this sounds strange, but I liked that next to Brian, I was not only safe but could pass for normal. If you saw me back then, you would understand how little sense any of this made, because I was normal-looking to the point of parody.
“Listen,” I said to him, “I have to go. I don’t want to tie up the phone line. I’m trying to find a place for all of us to stay.”
“Call me and let me know,” Brian said. “I’m going with you. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I said, and it felt so good to say that to someone, to hear that from anyone.
* * *
Dr. Donnelly connected me to an alumna named Catherine McCall, class of ’37, a retired government statistician who lived out in Red Hills with her publisher husband, about twenty miles from the center of Tallahassee. Mrs. McCall was happy to take in as many of us as she could and helped to arrange accommodations for the rest.
It was around five in the evening when the pattering overhead began to recede and those of us whose rooms had been cleared were allowed upstairs to collect our things. As I stuffed a suitcase full of sweaters and underpants, the sun was slipping behind the Westcott Building’s twin brick towers. I imagined its rays clinging to the Gothic guardrail, trying to hold on just for me. I did not know how anyone expected me to survive nightfall.
All day, I’d felt wretched at the thought of Sherriff Cruso in our rooms, touching our things, going through our drawers. But then, when his men did leave a week later, I had to suppress the urge to chase them down the street and beg them to come back. Don’t leave me in charge. Please. I can’t do this alone.
I pulled back the drapes in my bedroom, donated to us by an alumna who married the owner of Florida’s top fabric chain; I was checking for Brian’s denim-blue Bronco. He and a few of the Turq House guys were going to bus us out to Mrs. McCall’s house in Red Hills. Two armed guards were supposed to meet us there, but in the end we got only one.
“Brian is here,” I called out to the girls who were coming with me.
Downstairs, Bernadette glanced out the windows uncertainly. “How are we going to get past them?” She was talking about the cancerous mass of press, multiplying by the minute outside our back door.
I gave my coat a shake and drew up the hood. “We just have to make a run for it. Cover your head and pretend it’s pouring rain. At least we have practice with that.” At FSU, you could walk to class in the sunshine and come home drenched to the bone.
The patrolman stationed at the back opened the door for us, and we ran out into the storm, the flash of the bulbs invoking the same panicked plea as lightning—please, just don’t strike me. The group shifted so that our hands were on one another’s shoulders, trying to push through the kicked wasp’s nest in a wedding conga line. I heard a woman shouting to back the fuck up! For a moment, I feared it was me. When I got my bid for The House freshman year, it came with the caveat to smile more, roll my eyes less, and introduce some color to my wardrobe. I peered around Bernadette’s head and was relieved to identify the true offender, a woman in a camel mohair coat, pin-straight blond hair sticking out of a newsboy cap like the ones Jane Birkin wore. She was waving a lit cigarette, and cameramen and reporters were jumping back to avoid a slashing by the cherry.
Bernadette leaped into the back seat of Brian’s car, but before I could follow, someone grabbed my elbow and yanked me back, saying excitedly, “It’s her.” A flash went off inches from my face, stunning me senseless. I couldn’t see; I couldn’t move. I only heard—I only smelled—what happened next.
There was a man’s high-pitched screech, one acrid inhale, and I was released. I stumbled, trying to wave away the colorful spots before my eyes like a cloud of gnats.
“Watch it with that thing, lady!” a man shouted.
“Go,” the hatted woman whispered, close to my ear. Though the flash had blinded me, I knew it was her because I could smell the cigarette smoke on her breath. She gave me a boost up into the back seat of the car, and the door slammed shut, and Brian’s voice was asking me frantically if I was hurt. I rubbed my eyes, blinking away the constellation of spots, and saw the guy I was planning on marrying, how badly he needed to hear that I wasn’t.
Seven p.m.
Mrs. McCall opened the door wearing a belted shirtdress, her shoulder-length white hair immovably curled. She sighed at the state of us standing on her porch, between the Corinthian columns, the boys loaded down with overnight bags and the girls with limp, uncombed hair.