Page 54 of One of Them

“Was she? Because she fell in love and did what people in love have always done?” Anne looked around at the rest of them.

“Can you really say that none of you have been tempted? Or even gone all the way?” Midge’s face was turning a bright pink, and Carol was looking rather desperately around the room.

Anne knew she’d hit a nerve. “And maybe you were even jealous—jealous that he picked Delia.” She paused to let the comment sink in.

“And anyway, it was never about that. You didn’t like her because she was Jewish, and seemed like a foreigner with all her French ways.

Because of that, you did a terrible thing.

We all did. I’ve apologized to her for my part in it, by the way.

Not that an apology makes things right. She was still expelled. ”

For a few seconds, Virginia didn’t reply.

Then she said, “I should have known there was something not right about you. Something off. You never really talked about your family, where you were from. You didn’t want us to know.

And now it comes out. No wonder you’re defending Delia Goldhush—you’re two of a kind. ”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Anne stood up, accidentally knocking the cup from its saucer; tea splashed all over Virginia’s lap.

“Look at what you did!” Virginia dabbed her skirt with a napkin.

Anne felt the smile forming. She didn’t even try to hide it as she walked out of the Rose Parlor, without looking back.

After that, she braced herself for the fallout.

Of course Virginia would start a campaign against her, and all the others would get on board.

She imagined the snubbing, the whispering, and the looks.

Rumors too, like what they—and she—had circulated about Delia.

And there was a bit of backlash—those girls kept away from her at first, looking away if they saw her, or passing her by without stopping to talk.

But then Polly showed up at Anne’s door one night after dinner.

Anne was so surprised that she just stood there and blinked.

“Could I come in?” Polly finally asked.

“Oh, of course.”

Polly sat down, and the words poured out in a rush. She said they had all felt bullied by Virginia, and though they’d grown tired of it, they were all too cowed to confront her.

“Until you did,” said Polly. “None of us could believe it at first. I mean, I—we—didn’t think of you as someone—”

“Who could stand up for herself? Well, I wasn’t. At least not then.”

“So what changed?”

“It wasn’t just one thing—it was everything coming together. Paris. Running into Delia. Palestine.” She wanted to add, Falling in love . But she wasn’t ready to talk about that. She couldn’t imagine when she would be.

“Delia Goldhush? You saw her in Paris?” Polly leaned forward. “What was that like? It must have been... awkward.”

Anne told Polly about that chance meeting in Paris, and their trip to Palestine. When she was finished, she saw that Polly seemed uncomfortable. Was it hearing about Delia?

“Can I ask you something?” Polly said. “Something kind of personal?”

“Maybe. It depends.” Anne’s guard went up.

“I wanted to ask you about being a Jew. I mean, being Jewish.”

This wasn’t at all what Anne expected. “I don’t understand. What would you like to know?”

“I’m not even sure. I’ve never really known anyone Jewish. I mean, I knew Delia from a distance, but I don’t think I ever had an actual conversation with her. Or any other Jewish people. Jews just weren’t in my circle.”

“You knew me.”

“Well, yes, but I didn’t know you were Jewish.”

“Isn’t that the point?” When Polly looked blank, she added, “Jews are pretty much like anyone else.”

After that, Anne found that those girls from freshman year in Main considered her something of a leader—they asked her opinion and sought her advice.

They invited her, included her, and were influenced by what she wore and said and did.

This was a totally unexpected turn of events.

She liked this new version of herself. And seeing herself in a new way opened new possibilities about what she might want to do after graduation.

She was majoring in art history with a minor in French, which made her lean toward a job in a museum or gallery.

Hadn’t Delia said her father had a gallery in Greenwich Village?

But why was she worrying about this now?

She had more pressing concerns, like working on the long final paper that was due in the spring, along with the final comprehensive exam that was part of the requirement for graduation.

She’d selected her topic: the stained glass windows at Chartres Cathedral.

She knew that there had been many books and articles on the topic, and worried that she might not have anything new to say.

But she’d been there, experienced for herself the power of that space, and felt the exaltation it created.

She’d seen the saturation of those colors, their glow.

She hoped all that would lead to something that truly was her own.

She’d already started listing the sources she wanted to consult; many of them were in French, but by now she felt like she could read them comfortably, if not with total ease.

But after that, she came to a mental roadblock.

Or more like an electrified fence. Every time she sat down to work on her paper, something pushed her away, and she let herself get easily diverted by anything else instead.

After a couple of weeks, she realized what should have been obvious: she just didn’t want to write about Chartres.

That’s why she was avoiding it. She needed to change her topic and her adviser.

The chairman of the art history department might not allow this; she’d have to come up with both a compelling topic and an equally compelling reason for the switch to be approved at this late date.

But as she walked briskly across the quad toward Taylor Hall, she felt sure she could figure it out.

The answer was somewhere inside her, buzzing, humming, and just waiting to be let out.

“Hey, wait up!”

Anne turned to see Diana Beckham waving at her, and she stopped so Diana could fall into step with her.

“Are you headed to Miss Grayson’s class? You’re early,” Diana said. “I guess I am too.”

“She’s so good, you don’t want to miss a minute.”

Diana, like Anne, was on her way to Miss Grayson’s 300-level seminar, Rodin: Modern Master.

There were just ten students in the class, and three of them—Diana Beckham, Margaret Bailey, and Evangeline Roberts—were seniors and art history majors Anne knew from other classes.

The others were juniors she knew only by sight.

But all of them were united in their awe of the professor, Pamela Grayson, who possessed the kind of glamour not typically found either among academics or in Poughkeepsie.

Miss Grayson had started teaching at Vassar last year, when Anne was in France, but when she was signing up for the course, Anne discovered that there was already a kind of fan club surrounding the professor.

Anne could see why. Her lectures were nothing short of scintillating, delivered with the kind of passion and verve that belong on the stage more than in the classroom.

She couldn’t keep still when she talked and tended to pace around the room.

As she roamed, her words poured out in a rush, as if mere speech couldn’t keep up with the speed of her thinking.

Anne tried her best to follow, but sometimes she’d be writing so quickly that she couldn’t decipher her notes later on.

And then there were Miss Grayson’s clothes.

She’d show up to class wearing a velvet cape or a hat with several large feathers sprouting from the brim.

Her lips and nails were always painted a deep scarlet, and she tended toward fanciful jewelry—ropes of pearls that may or may not have been real, a brooch in the shape of a giraffe, a turtle, or a mushroom on her jacket lapel, earrings of colored stones that winked and sparkled near her face.

One week she might wear long leather gloves in a burnt-orange color, with a billowing silk scarf whose design was a series of interlocking orange and brown squares; the next, she’d pair a green mohair suit with a blouse of green, teal blue, and yellow.

She was unlike any professor Anne had ever known, and Anne considered herself lucky to have gotten into the class. They all did.

“I heard twenty-six people tried to sign up,” Diana was saying this morning. “But she wouldn’t allow any more than ten because she said she wanted us to learn from each other, not just from her.”

Anne considered this. The discussions they had in class were interesting and even exciting.

But as interesting or exciting as Miss Grayson?

It wasn’t possible. When they got to Taylor Hall, they went upstairs and took their seats around the seminar table.

At the front of the room, Miss Grayson—today she wore a chocolate-brown velvet suit with a cameo pinned at the neck of her peach-colored silk blouse—sat with a sheaf of papers in front of her.

After greeting all the students, Miss Grayson asked one of the girls to dim the lights, and she began to show the slides.

Anne was struck by the enormous range of Rodin’s work—marble, bronze, and plaster.

He worked on monumental pieces that were meant for public spaces and small-scale table-size ones that could easily find a place in someone’s home.

Professor Grayson spoke for a bit about Rodin in general—how he was a rule breaker, an iconoclast—and then clicked on a slide of a small bronze figure. “Here’s Rodin’s interpretation of Danae. Can someone tell us who she was?”

Anne had read about her for another class. “She was a Greek princess. Her father was told he’d be killed by his own grandson, so he locked her up. But Zeus wanted her, and he turned himself into a shower of gold dust that poured down into the tower where she was a prisoner.”

“That’s right,” Professor Grayson said. “But even though she’s a mythological figure, she’s presented as a real, flesh-and-blood young woman.”

Anne looked at the small body, tucked in upon itself. “It’s like she’s trying to protect herself,” she said. “Even to hide.”

“Exactly!” said the professor. “And look at how realistically she’s rendered—the evidence of her bone structure, the texture of her skin.”

The class continued: more slides, more questions, more conversation.

But something about that small bronze form stayed with Anne, and when the lights went back on, and everyone was filing out of the room, she stayed behind.

That little figure might be the answer to the question that had been on her mind since last night.

“Miss Grayson, I’d like to change the topic of my final paper. I want to work on Rodin’s sculpture, but specifically the small pieces, like the Danae you showed us today. Would you consider being my adviser?”

“I thought you were doing something on Chartres,” said the professor.

“I was. But this is calling to me. There’s something special about the small works—they’re intimate. Personal.”

“I see what you mean,” said the professor. “And I think it’s an interesting perspective.” She put her lecture notes in a leather folder and snapped it closed. “If you can get permission to change topics, come and see me during my office hours. We can discuss it then.”

“I would really like that. Thank you.” Anne was excited at the idea of working with her—much more than she had been with tedious Professor Abbott.

“And didn’t you spend your junior year in Paris?” Miss Grayson asked. “You must have seen a lot of sculpture, including Rodin’s, there. You could place those small pieces within the context of other work on that scale.”

“I did,” said Anne. “At the Louvre and other places too. But one of my favorite pieces was in a gallery, and made by someone not very well known.”

“Who was that?”

“Sophie Rossner. She’s American, but she lived and worked in Paris for many years.”

“Sophie Rossner. That name is ringing a bell.” The professor began walking down the stairs.

“You’re familiar with her work?” Anne fell into step beside her.

“I remember now. I was out on Long Island recently, visiting an alum who’s considering a donation to the art gallery.”

“She’s donating a piece of Sophie Rossner’s?”

“She was planning to donate two paintings, both from the nineteenth century. But she and her husband bought a very large lot of sculpture from a warehouse in Paris that had gone out of business, and I think some of them—quite a number actually—were made by Rossner.”

“Sophie Rossner’s daughter Delia was a student at Vassar, and—”

“She is?”

“Well, no. She was.” Anne did not want to go into that story, especially not now. “She grew up in Paris, but she and her father escaped when the war started. Sophie stayed behind, and so did the sculpture. Delia’s been trying to find it for months.”

“Where was she looking?”

“Paris. She went back last year to find her mother’s work.”

“If these are the works she’s looking for, they’re in a pool house in Old Westbury.

Only a few had been unwrapped. I remember now, because I thought they were very strong.

Adele—that is, Mrs. Bancroft—wasn’t sure what to do with them, and I suggested that some of them might be part of the donation. ”

“Do you think she would let us see them?”

“I’ve already seen them.”

“No, I mean Delia Goldhush, Sophie’s daughter. And me. Delia’s been looking and looking and thought that she’d never find them. She’ll be so happy to know that they’re safe—and not only safe, but here in the United States. Do you think Mrs. Bancroft would agree?”

“I don’t see why not,” the professor said. “I’ll give you the address, and you can use my name when you write to her.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful!”

“And this girl... Delia. Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. I’ve lost track of her.” The last time Anne had seen Delia, she had been in the hospital in Be’er Sheva.

She might still be there. Or she could be in Paris, New York, or anywhere else in the world.

Anne hadn’t tried to contact her since she’d returned to school.

But the discovery of the sculptures changed everything.

Miss Grayson wanted to know where Delia was?

So did Anne, and Anne was going to try her best to find her.