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By senior year, I'd fully accepted that going to Naz was like going to Danvers. Sister Alberta, our ancient English teacher, was too tired to conduct class, but managed to work around the issue by convincing us that we were too tired to learn. After instructing us to put our heads down on our desks and “rest,” she read to us, as if we were still in kindergarten. She preferred Southern writers with a flair for the macabre. Her favorite short story was Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily,” about a reclusive Southern spinster who feeds her lover rat poison and then cohabits with his corpse. After she finished reading it, she didn't call for a class discussion because the class was asleep. I thought I'd enliven things by asking if the story was about necrophilia, but Sister Alberta said, “Just put your head down on your desk, dear, and it will be over soon.”

In addition to the nuns, we had several lay teachers, including Mrs. Barnett, who taught drama and speech. She was pretty and smart, and because she wasn't insane, I adopted her as my role model. Some of the other students criticized her for using a depilatory on her mustache. Since I'd never heard the term
depilatory
, one of the Italian girls explained that Mrs. Barnett's upper lip was red every week before speech class—a sure giveaway that she was using something to get rid of excess hair. She began calling her Mrs. Depilatory. Given the stunted education at Naz, Mrs. Barnett's mustache seemed a refreshing symbol of growth. I began taking private drama lessons with her after school.

With Mrs. Barnett's encouragement I become president of the drama club and starred in a play about nurses who become addicted to heroin. I overdosed in the end, performing what I thought was a brilliant death scene. Since the nuns were preoccupied with staging our spring musical—
Flower Drum Song—
they hadn't paid any attention to the content of the play and when they finally saw it, I was called into Sister Superior's office.

“A play about a drug addict?” she said. “Have you totally lost your mind?”

After I told her that the nurse died for her sins, she was somewhat pacified until she noticed I was wearing mascara. “Take that off immediately!” she said. “Next you'll be wearing eye shadow and rouge, and then what?” In her mind, mascara was a gateway cosmetic that would inevitably lead to an acting career and depilatory addiction.

The spring dance was the final event before commencement, and I didn't have a date. Mrs. Barnett fixed me up with her nephew, who went to Phillips and who came from a prominent Andover real estate family. The other girls were going with boys from the local Catholic prep schools, or ones heading off to the military or possibly jail. I needed a dress, a really great one. My mother, acknowledging the importance of the occasion, took me to Yankee Lady, a small boutique off Main Street. It sold preppy Lily Pulitzer–type prints and other emblems of the WASP lifestyle. For years the store's most covetable item had been a straw fishing tackle bag with a long leather strap. I wanted it more than anything, and when Bumpa bought it for me, I was thrilled.

The saleswoman wore her steel-gray hair in a chin-length bob and spoke in an affected accent. I'd carried my straw bag to show that I wasn't just any non–Yankee Lady who'd walked in off the street.

“She needs a dress for the spring dance,” my mother said.

“Oh, at Phillips?” the saleswoman asked.

“No,” I said.

She was nosy and wouldn't let it go. “So
where
?”

“Nazareth,” I mumbled.

“Isn't that in the Holy Land?”

“It's in Wakefield,” my mother explained. “She's dating a Phillips boy.” She casually dropped his name, and the saleswoman immediately perked up.

“Oh,” she said, smiling. “Then you need something very special.”

I tried on numerous dresses, each worse than the last. I wasn't the Lily Pulitzer type. Finally, the saleswoman showed me a long dress covered in tropical splashes of fuchsia and lime. It reminded me of the gowns Oleg Cassini had designed for Jackie Kennedy, if Jackie had been color-blind and forced to attend a black-tie luau.

“That really brightens her up, don't you think?” the saleswoman said to my mother, who agreed. She was tired of looking at dresses.

The store carried a small selection of shoes, and the saleswoman said she had a perfect match. She presented me with a pair of patent-leather heels in a brilliant shade of ruby. It wasn't a color I'd normally wear, but the dress wasn't something I'd normally wear. Going to a formal dance wasn't something I normally did, and going on a date was something I never did. All in all, it was virgin territory.

Mrs. Barnett's nephew turned out to be adorable, with dark brown hair and eyes and the cutest smile. He was sweet and polite and never complained when the nuns kept a vigilant watch on our dancing, making sure the boys weren't spilling their seeds on our new dresses, resulting in mortal sin and costly dry cleaning. Afterward, he drove me home, kissed me good night, and never called again. It was obvious that he was only doing his aunt a favor, and that was okay. I had my ruby slippers, and I'd go wherever they'd take me.

To Oz and Back

T
he shoes took me to Washington, DC, where I spent my freshman year at the Catholic University of America. I know what you're thinking, that by now I should have tried something different, like a yeshiva, or even the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, where according to the school's brochure, little monkeys jump among the trees. But the Catholic University of America had one thing the Catholic University in Rio did not and that was a great drama department with teachers who spoke English. I'd read that several famous actors had attended the school, including Jon Voight, who played Rolf in the original Broadway production of
The Sound of Music
. That was enough for me.

I wore my ruby shoes the first day of class, pairing them with lime-green culottes, matching vest, and a polyester fuchsia shirt from Casual Corner at the Peabody mall. It was 1969. Neon colors were in. If you ignored the actual outfit, I could have stepped out of a Peter Max poster. The CU campus was large, the pumps uncomfortable. After two days of walking, I developed a blister, which turned into an abscess, and I landed in the infirmary for a week. My foot needed to be soaked and drained several times a day and didn't appear to be improving.

“Am I going to lose my foot?” I asked the nurse, who was also a nun.

She pointed to the pearl ring Bumpa had given me as a high school graduation present. “Do your parents approve?”

“Why wouldn't they?”

“You're very young to be walking down the aisle.”

“So I'll be able to walk?”

“Marriage is a big commitment, and I don't think you're ready.”

“I don't think so either.”

“So maybe you should break off the engagement.”

It finally occurred to me that she'd drawn the wrong conclusion from my ring, possibly imagining that some sweet Rolf type had seduced me in an Alpine gazebo, while singing “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.” After setting her straight, she went on and on about how young girls are often led astray their first year of college.

“Am I going to be able to walk again?”

“What a silly question! Of course you are!”

And I did. After three semesters, I walked out of Catholic University, just as Jon Voight left the von Trapps to become a Nazi and later a hustler in the Oscar-winning
Midnight Cowboy.
Well, not exactly like that, but I did take my ruby slippers and got out of there.

“You want to do
what
?”
my mother said when I brought up the idea of transferring. “I can't even mention this to your poor father. He will have an absolute fit.” Over the years, my father had gone from someone who had “plenty” to say, even though he was very quiet, to someone prone to “fits,” even though he rarely lost his temper. I patiently explained my reasons for wanting to leave, including the lack of diversity among the student population. “I think it would be good for me to go to school with people other than just Catholics,” I said. As expected, that didn't go over too well, so I skipped to the next reason. CU was in the northeastern part of DC, adjacent to a crime-ridden neighborhood. Several female students had been raped and we couldn't walk unaccompanied to the library at night. Three of my girlfriends were transferring to other schools.

“So what are you saying?” my mother asked.

“That I could be raped and murdered.”

I didn't have to add, “Do you want that on your conscience?” because we were both geniuses at inducing guilt.

“Well, okay,” she said finally. “But if your father has a coronary from the stress, it will be on your conscience.”

There's no place like home. I wound up at Tufts University, in Medford, which is a mere fifteen minutes from Andover. Emily had moved into my bedroom and was now the Big Sister, a role she achieved by wearing platform shoes that made her even taller than her height of five feet nine. She had several pairs, including espadrilles and a cork wedge-heel platform from the popular brand Kork-Ease. I had to look up to her whenever we spoke, which, as a middle child, was undoubtedly the desired effect. Despite our age difference, we'd grown closer in recent years, bonding one summer during long walks along the beach. We shared a similar sense of humor and laughed at the same things.

At the time, Nancy wasn't into shoes or fashion at all. At least she'd agreed to brush her hair, which my mother considered a milestone of child development, although it was not without its trade-offs. Nancy demanded to eat her dinners in front of the TV in the basement/den. This was not a particular hardship for my mother. In many ways, it was easier having her out of the way, but my mother pretended it was a sacrifice she was willing to make for the sake of appearances, specifically Nancy's. While Bumpa prepared the evening meal, Nancy would descend into the basement to watch reruns of
Gilligan's Island,
singing the theme song at the top of her lungs. Bumpa would say, “That's wonderful, dear!” and then she'd demand hors d'oeuvres, and he'd bring down Cracker Barrel cheese on Ritz crackers. Dinner on a tray would follow.

Around the same time, Nancy rescued a kitten from a “Save a Pet” booth at a local school fair. She hadn't bothered to consult my mother. After much back-and-forth, including the usual tears, screaming, and threats to run away, Nancy was allowed to keep the cat, which she named Pie. The two were inseparable; she enjoyed dressing it in her doll's clothes, stuffing its arms and legs into a variety of soigné dresses that it wore around the house and inside the litter box. She also taught it to do somersaults, throwing aluminum foil balls at the ceiling, while Pie jumped eight feet off the ground, twirled in the air, and then executed a perfect landing on the oriental carpet.

With the flying cat and numerous other distractions, I was happy that I'd made the decision to board at Tufts, where I was assigned a double room in a dormitory suite. As a transfer student, I didn't have a choice of roommates and mine was either suffering from severe depression or else she hated me. Possibly both. She was addicted to playing James Taylor's “Fire and Rain,” and while I realize there are worse addictions, this one was pretty bad. “Fire and Rain” is a beautiful song. It's also about depression, substance abuse, and suicide. It doesn't leave you feeling happy, the way you might after listening to the Partridge Family. I'm not saying I liked the Partridge Family, but after a steady diet of “Fire and Rain,” David Cassidy took on qualities that we now ascribe to Prozac.

Across the hallway were two pretty, perky girls, who were both engaged to frat boys and were always having the kind of fun I associated with being a coed in a 1950s musical. A senior with long blond hair lived in the single at the end of the hallway. I remember her as a hippie but that may have been only in comparison to the coeds. She spent her free time smoking pot and concocting various conspiracy theories on why Paul McCartney was dead, even though Paul McCartney had stated publicly that he was very much alive. With the coeds off doing fun things, like going on hayrides and my roommate reliving James Taylor's experience at the Austen Riggs psychiatric facility, I hung out with the hippie, listening to her play “Revolution 9” backward a million times.

“He's saying, ‘Turn me on, dead man,'” she explained. “Isn't that proof enough?”

She'd then move on to “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the song that she and millions of other conspiracy theorists claimed was definite proof that Paul was dead. John supposedly uttered the words, “I buried Paul,” when he actually said “cranberry sauce.” Next she'd usually pull out the
Abbey Road
cover, which showed the Beatles walking across the street. “Isn't it just like a funeral procession?” she'd ask. “John's wearing white, so he's the priest. Ringo is in black, so he's the undertaker, and George is in jeans, so he's the grave digger. Paul is barefoot, so that means he's dead.”

“I'm not sure going barefoot means you're dead,” I said, although I knew better than to challenge her because she'd practically majored in “Paul Is Dead.”

“Did you know that in the Kabbalah the body is described as the shoe of the soul?” she asked. “What do shoes do?” She didn't wait for an answer. “They protect your feet from rocks and splinters and dirt. In the same way, the body acts as a shoe to protect the soul from our dirty physical world.”

“And that means Paul is dead?”

I was beginning to wonder if Tufts was really for me. My suite mates were weird, all in different ways, and in a repeat of what had happened when I'd left St. Augustine's for Andover Junior High, I'd gone from getting straight A's to receiving average grades. Some of my teachers' comments were lacerating. “You are the worst writer I have ever encountered,” an esteemed Shakespeare scholar noted on one of my papers. “And I am very old.” My favorite, though, came from my American Theater professor, referring to a paper I'd written on Ethel Barrymore. After I'd mentioned that she'd gained seventy-five pounds, surely not an insignificant development for an actress, he wrote, “
Now, Patricia, I'm beginning to get annoyed. This tittle-tattle may be good enough for
True Confessions,
but it comes close to character assassination!”

Midway through the semester, I had a plan. Tufts had a program in London for English and theater majors. Maybe I'd be happier there.

I brought it up to my parents when I was home one weekend. “I'm not sure Tufts-in-Medford is right for me,” I told my mother before Sunday dinner. “But I think Tufts-in-London would be perfect. I've always wanted to go to London, and your mother was born in London, and, well, for lots of reasons I think I should be in London.”

“For lots of reasons I think you should be in Danvers!” she said. “You better not tell your father, because he will have an absolute fit. His head will explode, and you'll be left to pick up all the pieces. What is wrong with you? Why can't you just find a place and stay put?”

“Nobody stays in one place anymore.”

“Thank you, Carole King,” my mother said. I had to hand it to her. She was no slouch when it came to popular culture.

“Well,
you
bring it up to your father. I'm through. But if anything happens to him, if he dies of a coronary and slumps right over the chicken with sherry sauce that Bumpa made especially for
you, then don't come crying to me. You brought it on yourself.”

I went into the living room, where my father was reading
The
Boston Globe.
He loved Sundays because the paper had multiple sections. With Nancy's cat flying over his head, I laid out the plan, including the comparable tuitions. Pie had never achieved such heights before and Nancy called Bumpa in from the kitchen to watch.

“Incredible,” Bumpa said, applauding. “Pie is ready for the Olympics.”

“By the way, don't forget my hors d'oeuvres,” Nancy said. “Besides the cheese and crackers, I'd also like celery sticks filled with cream cheese. But please remove the pimentos.”

“It's Sunday,” my mother said. “You are not watching TV downstairs.”

“So can I go to London?” I asked my father.

“Can I go to London?” Nancy asked.

“At the rate Pie's going, she'll get to London before any of you,” Bumpa said, cheering the cat on.

“Okay,” my father said. Pie had landed on his lap, obscuring his view of the paper. If he wanted to read the editorials, the cat had to leave and so did I.

Emily was sad when she heard the news. Even though she didn't want me back in the house, she also didn't want me out of the country. I was her closest ally in the family. I felt a twinge of guilt, but how could I not go to London?

When I returned to Tufts that evening, I shared my new plans with my roommate. It may have been the first conversation we ever had. She told me that London was where James Taylor first started writing “Fire and Rain.” I immediately left to find the hippie. She was distraught because after much soul-searching and consultation with the campus mental health service, she'd come to the tragic conclusion that Paul was in fact alive.

“Maybe you need to move on,” I suggested gently. “I'm going to London.”

“To Abbey Road?” She was having a hard time letting go.

“Maybe.”

“Remember what the Kabbalah says.”

“Wear shoes so people won't think you're dead.”

“Yes, and watch out for rocks and splinters.”