Any Place I Hang My Hat Read Free Page B

like … Ivey-Rush.” Yes, that Ivey-Rush. Even I knew about it. But then, for years I’d been reading the copies of Town and Country Grandma Lil swiped from her job. I knew from boarding schools.
    So I said to my guidance counselor: “Don’t worry, Ms. Buonavitacola. If I get in, I’ll be fine.”
    The brochure was printed on shiny paper so thick it didn’t squeak: Located in the serene and verdant Connecticut Valley, the Ivey-Rush Academy was founded in 1903 by Susannah Ivey and Abigail Rush. These two young graduates of Mount Holyoke College were determined “to provide young women with an education as rigorous as that offered to young men.”
    Serene sounded good. As far as the verdancy business went, the only things not green in the brochure’s photographs were Tuttle Chapel (redbrick) and the students (white and yellow, as well as browns ranging from beige to mahogany), although once I got there I realized that about two-thirds of the nonwhites in the photo must have been hired for the day from some Diversity, Our Specialty model agency).
    Joan Murdoch helped me fill out the application. When we finished, I told her that if I were half as gifted as all my teachers raved I was, I had a shot. She agreed. Once Grandma Lil discovered she would still be my legal guardian and that my going away would not jeopardize her monthly check from the City of New York, she signed her name to my application in the rounded, overlarge letters of the semiliterate.
    With the application, I submitted a heart-wrenching essay about visiting Chicky in prison: “Father’s Day” was full of shocking language—in quotation marks, to assure the admissions committee that I, personally, wasn’t the kind of girl who’d say “cocksucker.” Having the typical fourteen-year-old’s penchant for the lurid, I filled it with graphic descriptions of disgusting smells, oozing sores, plus wails from junkie girlfriends begging for money. Ivey-Rush was thrilled with such a well-phrased account of degradation. And to show you how refined they were, when the first alumna interviewer discovered that Amy Lincoln, the leading candidate for the year’s Fahnstock Scholarship—the school’s guarantee of at least one black face in the class photograph—was white, not only did she do a reasonably good job of hiding her dismay, she recommended that the admissions committee let me in. Graciously, they designated me a “full needs” student, which meant all fees, room, board, and books plus ten dollars a week spending money were on the house.
    But to get back to work, and to the Democrats: A waiter was offering tiny circles of pumpernickel overlaid with curls of smoked salmon, which in turn were topped by minuscule twirls of créme fraîche. Most of the guests appeared to be going through the predictable internal debate—How much sodium how many calories how many carbs can this three-quarter-inch canapé contain?—before wolfing down a few.
    Senator Thom Bowles declined the hors d’oeuvres without a second’s consideration and remembered to flash a fast, egalitarian, vote-for-me smile at the waiter. The candidate had been to enough parties like this that he knew even slightly salty salmon could cause dry mouth; caviar was also a no-no, not just because of its salinity, but because a really fine Beluga might turn his teeth gray.
    By this time, it was a little after eight-thirty on a Monday night late in February. The sleet and hail beating against the windows sounded like hundreds of angry women tapping acrylic nails. I had spent the afternoon with the senator’s top adviser on taxes, mostly in a dark conference room, drinking a dangerous amount of Diet Dr Pepper to keep myself from getting comatose as I studied her graphs and pie charts. My pantsuit itched and I was so tired I felt my immune system was compromised. Lichen could grow on the insides of my cheeks and over my tongue.
    At that point, it occurred to me that I ought to get the hell out of