Superior Women

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Authors: Alice Adams
Tags: Fiction, General, Women college students, Women College Students - Fiction
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anyone in his family could afford. She will have to settle for a really good black wool coat; no one not knowing a great deal about clothes, and Gordon knows nothing at all, would guess how expensive it will be.
    Demure, Lavinia says to her father, “Oh honestly, Daddy, I just don’t know. Don’t you think that maybe, with the war on and all, I should just get a plain black wool coat?”
    “Well, of course. Whatever you say, my darling. But come to think of it I’m sure you’re right. And I’m proud that you had the thought.”
    Gazing at each other in mutual satisfaction, Lavinia and herfather lift similar long chins, in similar gestures of pride and self-deception.
    “Look, I can’t even listen to your excuses for not doing my coat on time. I am leaving for Boston on Friday morning. I am coming in here on Thursday afternoon to pick up my coat. At that time you will have it ready. Is that clear?”
    Gray eyes flashing, chin raised, Lavinia delivers this not-pretty speech to the large pale-brown woman who is sitting on the floor, her face on a level with the hem of Lavinia’s new coat, her mouth full of pins, her right hand clutching a stubby piece of chalk. Lavinia does not look beautiful, at that moment, but her pale face has terrific power, nobility, almost. At boarding school, in the senior play she was Joan of Arc, and she could be playing Joan right now, so convincing, so driven by a sense of mission is she.
    The pins prevent the Negro woman on the floor from saying anything at all, but her eyes express acquiescence. Resignation (she hardly has much choice).
    Lavinia smiles. “You do the most wonderful work,” she says, and now she is very pretty. “And it’s not quite right around the waist. I want it to fit perfectly. Like all my clothes.”
    Getting off the train, on a Friday night that is also New Year’s Eve, Lavinia is very beautiful. With the perfectly fitted, perfectly simple black coat (that cost more than the month’s salary of the Negro fitting woman), she wears perfect black suede shoes, with high thin heels, and a filmy pale pink scarf at her throat. As she steps down carefully from the high train, off and into Gordon’s arms, she sees her own beauty reflected in Gordon’s eyes. In his kiss.
    Whatever has been wrong will now be all right. He loves her entirely, as she loves him. They are perfect for each other, perfect together.
    They break apart to look at each other, and kiss again.
    Gordon says, “Well, we’d better start. I’ve got the car, old Potter’s off skiing in New Hampshire, the bum.”
    “Oh, Gordon, that’s perfect.”
    He picks up her bag. “Say, what’ve you got in this thing, your rock collection?”
    She laughs, although she has heard the joke before; it is what Gordon says whenever he carries anything of hers, even the green book bag that he bought for her at the Coop. His first present. Thinking of this, of presents, it comes to Lavinia that later that night, at midnight, maybe, Gordon will give her the tiny gold fly, the emblem of his club. You are not supposed to give them away, and if he did it would mean—not exactly an engagement, but something important. A symbol. A little frightened (suppose he does not give it to her, ever?), Lavinia realizes just how much she wants that tiny fly.
    “Well, how about it?” asks Gordon. “Dinner at the Pudding, okay?”
    Well, it is not okay; they go to the Pudding all the time, and now, in wartime, the Pudding is not an exclusive place; it has been turned into an officers’ club, officers from everywhere, all over the place. All kinds of men, who would not under normal circumstances belong to a club at Harvard, or even be at Harvard. Lavinia is more than a little tired of dinner at the Pudding, although tonight, for New Year’s Eve, there will be a band, and dancing. But she had been hoping, well, hoping for dinner in Boston, maybe dancing there: the Ritz, or at least the Fox and Hounds. However, however, she firmly

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