The Panty Raid (7 page)

“It’s never been like that for me with anybody else,” Hank told her honestly.

The two just stared into each other’s eyes in the dim light of the shadowed stairs. Hank was trying to remember who they were, where they were and why he couldn’t just throw himself on top of the woman in his arms. She was still sitting pertly on his rock-hard erection and that was not doing his good sense any good at all.

“Let’s walk,” he suggested.

Hank set her on her own two feet. Dot seemed to be suffering from jelly legs, but he didn’t offer his hand. Hank didn’t feel all that steady himself, and having her lean against him could lead them straight into what he was hoping to stroll away from.

He clasped his hands together behind his back and walked beside her among the squarely manicured box hedges.

Hank tried to collect his thoughts. He tried to grasp some kind of intellectual understanding of his feelings for Dot. He had only hoped that tonight he might see her, dance with her, admire her from across the room. Instead, he’d held her in his arms. He’d kissed her, caressed her. He never wanted to let her go. Was that selfish? It probably was, but he couldn’t conjure up a smidgeon of regret. Still, he apologized.

“I’m sorry that…I mean, I’m sorry if...if I pushed too much,” he said. “I usually have better control of myself.”

Dot shrugged and shook her head. “I usually have better control, too.”

“And, Dot,” he told her sincerely. “I promise that, if you’ll continue to see me, I’ll not put such pressure on you in the future.”

“You won’t?”

“No. That is, I’ll really try not to,” he said. “I know that you’re still trying to figure out what you want. I’m not going to push you into anything. I want you to be free to make your own choice.”

“I have,” she said. “I choose you.”

Hank stopped in his tracks. He turned to look at her. She was smiling up at him.

“Say that again, so I know my brain is not playing tricks on me.”

“I decided that I want to be with you,” she said.

“You mean, steady until we get out of school or

marriage until death do us part?” he asked.

“I don’t remember hearing any marriage proposal,” she pointed out. “So I can’t answer that last one. But I can tell you that I love you. I want to be with you, laugh with you, make a life with you and have children with you.”

Joy bubbled up inside of him.

“That sounds like a marriage proposal to me,” he said. “I accept.”

He wrapped his arms around her, lifted her feet from the pavement and spun around like a crazy man. They were laughing, hollering, kissing.

“I am so happy, so happy,” he told her. “I can’t even imagine our life together.”

“I can,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it all evening.”

“Really?”

“I think we should get married right after graduation,” she said. “Then you should accept the chance at engineering school. We can move into a little apartment near campus and I can get a job. I can clean houses or wait tables. I can even type, if the truth be told. Financially, it’ll be tight, but I’m used to managing on no money. After you go to work, I can stay home and raise kids.”

Hank was still smiling. This was exactly what he wanted. It was his dream come true. But something inside him just felt wrong.

“What about your dreams, Dot?” he asked her. “What about your future, your career? After all this hard work, you’ll still want to pursue science.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head definitively. “That was just a silly, girlish whim and I’ve forgotten about it completely.”

Hank felt cautious now, his exhilaration suddenly as fragile as spun sugar.

“A whim?” he asked. “You’re the first person in your family to go to college. You’re one of the top students in our class. You’re the winner of the
Women in Science Foundation Scholarship.
When did you start thinking that is a whim?”

“Actually, I have you to thank for that, too,” she said. “I realized it after my interview with Mr. Wojciechowski. He made it clear to me that I would never be accepted in the world of science. Society is not going to allow women to compete with men for important top-level jobs in the workforce. Even if I got hired, I’d never be taken seriously. I’d never get the kind of research challenges that I’m capable of completing. It’s just never going to happen. I’m always going to be second-class and therefore second-rate. And what was I going to have to give up for that? I was going to have to give up you, our future together, the children we might raise.” She shrugged. “It was simply too high a price for no chance at the prize.”

Hank stepped back from her. “So you’re just giving up,” he said. “You’re not even going to try?”

“I’m going to try to be the best wife and mother that I can be,” Dot said. “I’m going to channel all my goals and ambitions into your life. Your success will be my success. And I’ll do everything I can to help you be successful.”

“Dot, will that be enough?”

“Of course,” she insisted, a little too brightly. “It’s enough for all the rest of the women in the world. Why wouldn’t it be enough for me?”

“Because you’re not anybody else,” he said. “You’re unique, special, brilliant, talented.”

She chuckled. “Believe me, Hank,” she told him. “The suburbs are full of brilliant, talented women. I’m sure I’ll fit in fine.”

“I don’t know if I want you to fit in,” he said. “What?”

“You’re different from any girl I ever met,” he said. “I love you for that, Dot. I love you for all that you want, for all that you are. If marrying me makes you give that up, then I’m not sure I want to marry you.”

“What?”

“I mean if, at the very first obstacle, you can give up on something you been working toward all your life,” Hank said, “what’s to keep you from throwing in the towel at the first tough patch of our marriage.”

“That’s not the same thing,” she insisted. “And Woj- ciechowski wasn’t the
first
obstacle. If you run into a brick wall again and again and again, only a fool never decides to change direction.”

“There is nothing foolish about going after what you want, what you deserve,” he said.

“What I deserve?” Dot’s color was high and her tone was infuriated. “What I deserve is a man who loves me without question. A man who is willing to let me make my own decisions and who will stand behind me or beside me or wherever I need him to be.”

“And what I deserve,” Hank shot back, “is a woman who’s not sacrificing her life to some ideal of marriage martyrdom.”

D
ot was
out of breath by the time she got to the doorway of Compton Hall. That was to be expected. She’d walked out on Hank and left Baldridge intent on returning to her dorm alone. Unfortunately, Hank was not satisfied with just letting her go. He came after her, ostensibly escorting her home.

“Are you just going to leave?” he asked. “You’re not going to try to talk it out, work it out. Are you just going to throw us away?”

Dot didn’t answer. Instead, she walked faster and faster until she was practically trotting with him beside her, asking question after difficult, unarguable question.

She didn’t even glance in his direction.

She had volunteered to accept the limitation of being his helpmate. She’d chosen to give up everything she’d ever wanted for him. And he’d thrown that offering back into her face, as if he didn’t want it.

Dot vowed silently never to speak to him again as long as she lived.

When she reached her dorm, she walked inside without even a look back. Mrs. Livingston was in the office.

“You’re home early. Did you have a nice time?” she asked.

“It was lovely,” Dot answered. “But I’m tired.”

She made it all the way to her room and had the door shut safely behind her before she burst into tears. She threw herself down on the bed and cried off every bit of mascara that she wore.

Why was it like this? Why was everything in her life so hard? Dot was tired of fighting. She wanted to be like other girls. To have a normal life where she did what was expected of her and other people approved. That’s what she was trying to do. Why wasn’t it working? It worked for other girls—why didn’t it work for her?

She’d been honest with Hank, or mostly honest at the very least. She did love him. She did want to marry him. And she wasn’t willing to give that up. All that was true.

But part of what he said was true as well. Giving up on her hopes and dreams was a tremendous sacrifice. It proved everyone right and everything she’d tried to do as wrong. She knew that there was good, valuable work she could do that would never get done. But she couldn’t change the world. If Hank didn’t understand that, then...then why was she thinking of marrying him?

Her thoughts and hopes, her sadness and her tears dragged her down for hours. But she’d managed to change out of her fancy clothes, to wash her face and present a reasonable appearance by the time the rest of the girls made it home. She didn’t want any questions from anyone about anything.

Fortunately, luck was with her. Or love at least. Trixie was floating on air. Buzz, the red-haired, freckled-face shrimp, had turned out to be Prince Charming.

“He’s clever and funny and he’s Pre-Med,” her roommate told Dot, excitedly. “He’s going into general practice with his father.”

“Sounds perfect,” Dot agreed.

The other big news of the evening was that Esther, Barbara’s roommate, had gotten pinned. Her boyfriend, Ned, who was in the Civil Engineering fraternity, gave her his Chi Delta Chi pin. The status was more serious than going steady, but less than engaged.

The girls of Compton Hall held an impromptu candlelight ceremony. Dot was urged to join them. She tried. The pajama-clad women sat in a circle near the stairwell, passing a white candle as they sang, “When I Fall in Love.” Each girl would hold the candle, stare into the flame, looking for her own true love. The sentiment of a forever kind of love that was complete oneness and totally reciprocal brought shy tears to the eyes of many of the girls, including Dot. As they came to the last line of the song, a commitment to forever and a belief in love as the greatest power on earth, the candle was handed to Esther. Accepting both the joy of the moment and the obligation of the future, Esther blew out the candle. Everyone applauded and hugged her.

That was the way love was supposed to be, Dot thought, as she slipped away from the group and returned to her room. You were supposed to find the right person and live happily ever after. There was no abandonment of what you wanted, no grief for the dreams you’d have to leave behind. There was nothing but a perfect, magical meeting of hearts and minds.

Dot went into her room and closed the door behind her. She worried that she might start crying all over again. She leaned over the small sink that was wedged between the two overflowing closets and gazed at her reflection in the mirror.

In truth, she had no doubts about what she wanted. She wanted everything. She wanted the career, the children, the little house with the picket fence
and
the Nobel Prize. Why couldn’t a woman just have a chance at everything? That was what was fair, what was just. It simply wasn’t what was easy.

Dot silently vowed that she would never allow herself the lazy luxury of being limited by what other people thought her capable of. That’s what she’d been doing. She was as wrong in that as Dr. Falk was wrong. And Dr. Glidden was wrong, too.

Dot was not certain exactly who was right, but so far, Hank had come the closest.

At that moment she was startled out of her thoughts by a noisy bump at the dorm-room window. She hurried over to discover the top of a wooden ladder perched upon the sill. She raised open the window and leaned out to look down. Hank was already halfway up.

“What are you doing?” Dot called out to him.

He didn’t answer, just kept coming.

Dot went back into the room, dumped the trash on the floor and hurried to the sink. She filled the container to the brim and returned to the window to view his upward progress once more.

“I’ve got a wastebasket full of water and I know how to use it,” she threatened.

He hesitated, but only long enough to look up at her.

“I don’t care if you douse me with benzene,” he said. “I’m coming up there to talk to you.”

Dot didn’t pour the water on him. When he reached the window ledge, she set the wastebasket down, turned her back to him and walked across the room.

“I have nothing to say to you,” she announced.

“Okay,” Hank responded. “Then I’ll do the talking. I

love you. I want to be married to you. I want to spend my life with you. But I don’t want to give up my life for you. And I don’t want you to give up yours for me, either.” She spun around to face him.

“What else can I do?” she asked him. “What choice do I have? Do you expect me to change the world?”

Hank shrugged. “Maybe,” he answered. “It certainly could use some changing.”

“Yeah, well that would be nice, but I’m not sure I’m up to the task,” she said.

“But you can try,” Hank said. “I can try, too. Together, the two of us. It’s a start.”

“I want everything,” Dot admitted. “But I just don’t know how I can get it.”

“I don’t know, either,” Hank said. “I don’t know what we can do, what we’ll face, how successful we’ll be. But I know that we love each other and if we’re together and we’re both willing to try, we can face whatever it is that comes our way.”

Hank stepped forward, took her hands in his own and dropped down to one knee.

“Marry me, Dot,” he said. “Marry me, but don’t give up yourself. I want the real Dorothy Wilbur for my bride. Not somebody else’s idea of who she ought to be. Be my wife and my lawfully wedded scientist as well.”

Dot looked down into his eyes. She was reminded so vividly of the first time she’d gazed into them. She’d doused him with cold water. But she loved him now and he loved her. She wouldn’t throw cold water on this declaration.

“All right,” she answered.

He rose to his feet and took her in his arms. He opened his mouth over hers. Their kiss was full of love,

longing, and tenderness. Equally in love, their love was an alliance of equals.

Unexpectedly, the door opened. Trixie, and a half- dozen other girls, froze on the threshold.

“Man on the floor!” someone hollered out.

“Panty raid!” someone down the hall speculated.

Echoes of female screeches were heard all up and down the hallway.