The Girls from Ames (23 page)

Her birthday went unacknowledged by her college friends and acquaintances. In another letter to Jane, she said the day was bearable because of the cards and phone calls she received. “I heard from Karla, Diana, Jenny, and of course, you remembered. I knew you’d remember.”

In those years, as the Ames girls started spreading around the country for college and then jobs, Marilyn wasn’t the only one articulating a sense of longing and disconnection. It was impossible to re-create the comfortable lifelong friendships they had with each other in Ames. They missed their friendships terribly, and often questioned themselves. Diana, working as an entry-level accountant in Chicago, shared an apartment with two roommates. “I’ve been really bummed out, just going through a down period,” she wrote to Kelly. “My two roommates have been making dinner together almost every night. I know that when three people live together, two of them will naturally get along better. Still, I’ve cried over this. And I haven’t made any friends at work, either. I wanted to call you and ask why you are my friend, and why you think other people don’t want to be.” Another letter from Diana to Kelly began: “I get so sentimental about us sometimes. . . .”

From the University of South Carolina, Jenny told the other girls how she decorated her half of her dorm room. “It’s so ‘me,’ ” she wrote. “You know, I’ve got all kinds of Shit Sisters pictures around. It’s excellent!” In saying “me” she meant, by extension, “them.”

Karen, at Iowa State, lamented in letters to the others that the phone company was no longer allowing long-distance calls from the sorority house where she lived. In those days before cell phones, making long-distance calls wasn’t always easy for college students. The girls without regular access to phones often felt isolated, which is why letters became their lifelines.

Karen liked most of her sorority sisters, but she was struck by the phoniness and the prejudices of some of them. At one sorority meeting, the discussion turned to whether a certain girl should be invited to pledge. A few older sisters from back east announced that the girl was Jewish, insinuating that that could be a problem. Karen immediately thought of easygoing Jane—“Why in the world would being Jewish have anything to do with anything?” she said to herself—and she realized that what she loved about the Ames girls was how accepting they were.

In those first years apart, the girls would cling to the things that kept them connected. A simple birthday present would be appreciated as if it were a way to be in each other’s presence.

One summer Jane went to Portugal and brought Marilyn back a sweater. Even though it wasn’t yet cold, Marilyn started wearing the sweater in September, and she sent Jane a long letter with all the details: “I must have received at least 15 compliments today on the sweater you gave me. The sweater was perfect for walking from class to class, though it’s not cold enough to wear inside. So many people said, ‘You look warm’ or ‘Did someone make that for you?’ I told them, ‘My best buddy from home bought it for me in Portugal.’ ” Marilyn just kept going on and on about that sweater. “If it’s chilly outside, I’ll just put it over my outfit. If it’s really cold outside, I’ll wear it as my outfit.” It’s possible that no sweater ever has been described more exuberantly. Eventually, Marilyn sewed up her sweater commentary with a simple declaration: “I love you.”

Marilyn could reveal to Jane her dorkiest efforts to fit in at college. She had gone off to school with her dog-eared copy of
The Official Preppy Handbook,
the 1980 bestseller, and was earnestly dressing and conducting herself based on what she’d read in the book. Jane sent back letters reassuring Marilyn that she was wonderful just the way she was, even if she was carrying a few extra pounds or wasn’t dressing up to the standards set by the preppies on her campus.

As Marilyn yearned for love, a girl living on her floor—a senior—was having sex five to eight times a day. “It’s a problem,” Marilyn wrote to Jane. “She’s quite a moaner! But at least she’s graduating early. I’m glad about that.” Rather than knock on her door asking her to quiet down, Marilyn found it easier to endure the moaning and just spill everything to Jane.

While Marilyn was at Hamilton, her older sister, Sara, was working on her master’s degree in psychology back at Iowa State. For her thesis, Sara had mounted a research project tracking loneliness. As the data accumulated, Sara was able to accurately predict where study participants would be on a scientifically calibrated loneliness scale. Not surprisingly, both males and females with close female friends were far less likely to be lonely. (Even when females spent time with male close friends, but little or no time with female close friends, their loneliness scores were high. Women need other women.)

As Marilyn’s sister explained to her: Men who’ve confided only in a spouse or girlfriend can feel lost after a breakup or divorce, because they’ve lost their only confidant. But for women with close female friends, the end of a romantic relationship is more bearable because they haven’t lost their entire support system. That’s also why retirement is easier for women. Men too often define themselves by their job, while women have a social network that provides a gauge for their self-esteem in their retirement years.

Marilyn found Sara’s findings reassuring. Even if she was at times struggling socially on campus, even if her romantic life wasn’t what she wanted, because of her bonds with the other Ames girls, she’d be OK.

 

 

W
hen she was in high school, Marilyn was always making lists. That’s why the other Ames girls had once given her
The Book of Lists
as a birthday present. Now, in college, she compiled a long list of attributes she sought in a man and mailed it to Jane. She told Jane that she wanted to find a guy like her father. Her perfect-man laundry list included:

“I’m too picky, aren’t I?” she asked Jane.

“Well, if you’re looking for someone like your father, that could be an impossible standard,” Jane told her.

Marilyn’s reply: “I know. I’ll probably never get married because my expectations are so high.”

At one point during college, Marilyn fell in love. He wasn’t necessarily the man of her dreams, but she appreciated that he helped her feel good about herself. He was so attentive and chivalrous that she felt loved. As she told Jane: “He carries my tray to the trash cans at dinner. He opens doors for me. He writes notes and puts them in my mailbox, saying that ‘a beautiful woman should always have mail in her box.’ ”

Later, there was another guy who didn’t smile much, which bothered Marilyn, but he had a way of giving advice that reminded Marilyn of her dad. She was intrigued by him, even if she didn’t feel anything for him romantically. She confided in him that she wasn’t fitting in socially with certain girls at Hamilton. He told her she shouldn’t expect to re-create the lifelong, close friendships she already had back in Ames.

“He says there are some people in your life that you will learn from, and then they will go their own way and you won’t need them in your life anymore,” Marilyn explained in a letter to Jane.

Back in Ames, Marilyn and Jane had always loved cooking and eating together. Marilyn’s high-school diaries were filled with descriptions of meals shared and enjoyed. There were also plenty of descriptions of pounds added—of looking in the mirror and not being pleased with the image there. Knowing Marilyn so well, Jane filled her letters to Marilyn with encouragement and reassurances.

“I might be happier if I didn’t put myself down all the time,” Marilyn said to Jane in one phone call.

“You’re great just the way you are,” Jane replied. “You really are.”

In the letters between them, Jane and Marilyn traded detailed plans for what they’d do together once they were home from college for the summer. They vowed to play the Hall and Oates song “Kiss on My List” again and again (because that’s what they did when it was first released in the spring of 1981, their senior year of high school). They also planned to sit in front of the fireplace at Marilyn’s house, sipping hot chocolate mixed with peppermint schnapps. Then they wanted to go over to Jane’s house and, as Marilyn put it, “boogie to the Carpenters!”

Just before leaving college for the summer, Marilyn was in the computer center at Hamilton. Computers back then were these giant machines and were still being operated with thin rectangular cardboard keypunch cards. Marilyn was in the lab waiting for a fellow student. She had nothing to do, so she decided to play around and put together a computerized message for Jane. When she was finished, she stacked up all the keypunch cards and mailed them in a long manila envelope to Jane.

Days later, when Jane fed the cards into the computer at her school—with all those punched-out numbers—the message that came up was: “Isn’t this groovy? I am so excited to see you in two weeks!!!! We will have a wonderful time!!!!! I . . . . . . LOVE . . . . . . . YOU!!!!!!!”

Their friendship had entered the computer age.

 

 

A
fter graduating from Hamilton, Marilyn knew she wouldn’t fully enter adulthood if she settled back in Ames. She had spent her childhood bumping into people all over town who told her how great a doctor her dad was or how they had always admired her mom. Once, home from college on break, Marilyn went to a photo store to get film developed. When it came time to pay, she was $3 short. The woman behind the counter saw her name on the order blank, asked if she was Dr. McCormack’s daughter, and then said, “Don’t you worry about the bill, honey. If you’re Dr. McCormack’s daughter, the three dollars are on me.”

A large part of Marilyn loved such Ames encounters. It made her feel special and lucky to be a product of her family. But, just as in college, she needed to establish her own identity. Besides, Ames was a college town and a family town. It was no place for a single woman in her twenties.

She ended up in St. Paul, mostly because her older sisters were already there and it wasn’t a long drive back to Ames. It was a decision that felt safe to her. She landed a job teaching a ballroom dancing class for beginners at Arthur Murray Dance Studios, a natural fit for her outgoing warmth and ability to connect with people.

At times, she felt inferior to some of the other Ames girls, who were taking more academic and professional paths. Jane was studying for her Ph.D. in psychology. Diana was working as an accountant. Jenny had gotten involved in politics. Sally and Karen were teaching. Angela was building a public relations career.

Marilyn later got a job selling Mary Kay cosmetics.

When she was deciding whether to take the Mary Kay job, she worried about what her friends would think. The company’s director said, “Do you generally rely on your friends’ opinions to make a decision?”

“Yes, I guess I do,” Marilyn admitted.

“Is that how you want to make decisions in the future?”

“No, I really don’t,” Marilyn said.

“Then, now would be a good time to start believing in your own strengths.”

The director’s words tapped a source of confidence in Marilyn that gave her direction in jobs and relationships. Her energy, thoughtfulness and ability to read people eventually led to jobs in insurance, ophthalmology and the publishing business.

For a while, Marilyn struggled romantically. She tried a couple of dating services. “Everyone I like doesn’t like me. They don’t call me back,” she confided in Jane. She dated one guy a few times and then casually asked him, “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” He actually took a step backward. “Whoa!” he said. “Back off.”

Some men did show an interest in her. “But so far,” she told Jane, “the guys who like me, well, they’re not for me.”

She and Jane—and the other Ames girls, too—would sometimes talk about how it was hard to find men who possessed the qualities they were looking for. “Why is it that I can find those attributes in plenty of women?” Jane would ask. “Why do so few men seem to have them?” She had decided that there seemed to be more interesting women in the world than interesting men. “There are definitely great guys out there,” she’d say, “but not a lot of them. So a lot of really neat women who’d be great wives are not going to end up meeting someone special.”

The inability to find impressive men who’d also make them swoon could be disheartening for all the girls. Marilyn briefly dated a man in Minnesota. He was obese, without social graces, and without much personality, but he was confident. He said to her, “I’m everything you’re looking for!” As soon as the words left his mouth, Marilyn thought to herself: “You’re not what I’m looking for at all.” But she smiled and said nothing.

Eventually, most of the other Ames girls started meeting their future husbands, and Marilyn felt stuck in place. Diana was set to marry a strikingly handsome businessman; her equal in the looks department, the other girls decided. When Marilyn met him she was happy for Diana, but envious, too. Here was this guy who looked like a prince and had a complete romantic streak. He once gave Diana a Louis Vuitton purse, and when she opened it, there was a string of pearls inside. That was an incident the Ames girls couldn’t stop talking about for months. Marilyn felt like the perennial bridesmaid, wondering if her time would ever come.

Jane, meanwhile, after being Marilyn’s confidant in the “it’s so hard to find a good guy” conversations, finally met a very special man. Problem was, he wasn’t Jewish. So she put him out of her head as a prospect.

At the time, September 1985, Jane was in graduate school at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, majoring in experimental psychology. The guy—his name was Justin—was a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology, and she first saw him while standing in line at orientation to get her ID card. He was wearing a blue-striped shirt and khaki pants, and Jane immediately thought, “Wow, this is a nice-looking guy.”