Chapter 6: Adjustments

When school started again, our big old house felt empty. Rachael and I lived in the den, kitchen and master bedroom. Leah had her big corner room and, now that the others were gone, her own bath. On the face of it, the place was much too big for us! Still, it was home.

Because it was Leah's senior year in high school—and since she was the only one left at home—if she was involved in a function, Rachael and I were in attendance. We went to football games to watch her lead cheers. We went to the play, to see her in the leading role. We saw 90% of her softball games. We were even chaperones at a couple of the dances.

Leah's grades were excellent, though her work habits hadn't improved much. And her test scores were fantastic. She ended well up in the top tenth of the top percentile and won a Merit Scholarship! She was deluged with mail from colleges and universities, large and small, offering all kinds of inducements to attend their school. The elite schools didn't offer much, but we soon learned that she could, literally, go to any school in the country she wanted.

Really torn, Leah knew that the other kids were all in California. She could get a very good education in any of the University of California schools, or at Stanford, or USC. On the other hand, she could attend one of the 'elite' universities in the east, like the 'ivies', Duke or Virginia. Do something different...

In the end, she was a western girl and, since cost wasn't a factor, the prestige of Stanford won out and she decided to follow her brother.

As graduation approached, we were pleased, though a bit surprised, to learn that Leah was valedictorian of her class. We knew her grades were good, but she'd taken the toughest classes offered. We expected someone with half the academic and social load would have beaten her out.

When the time came, her speech was funny—gently chiding the male half of her class for failing to come up with even one who was up to her standards...

After graduation, she went to Stanford to spend a week with Ben and Beth. She settled with the school on admission—and bargained for a small scholarship, on the basis of the National Merit award. She also bargained, hard, for the right to live with her brother and his wife, rather than the freshman dorm. Then the three of them went looking for a house they could rent or buy that would be suitable for all three of them. They could certainly afford their own place.

They were smart enough to ask our help, so I visited a friend who headed the local office of a national real estate chain. I told him what the kids wanted and asked for a referral to a top professional in Palo Alto. After making some calls, he referred them to an agent in Sunnyvale—close enough.

They told us later that they looked at 'a couple hundred' houses before narrowing it down to two. One, in Palo Alto, was a nice, older house. It was available for sale or rent and reasonably priced for that outrageously expensive area. The second was right on the campus, on Mayfield Avenue. Spanish style, with an enclosed courtyard, it had been built in the 30's by a well-to-do professor. It needed a lot of work, but the rent was reasonable and the location unsurpassed. The land belonged to the university and was under a long-term lease. Its purchase price was also reasonable, for the location and the condition of the building.

The kids decided that, being undergraduates, they'd prefer to live on campus. After renegotiating the lease on the land, to extend it to 90 years, they bought the house. That summer, one or the other was nearby most of the time, to supervise the restoration of their home. They ended up with a fine old house—with state-of-the-art amenities. That is, they fixed everything that was broken, painted and installed new carpets, new plumbing, a new kitchen, new heating and air conditioning. The house retained its charm, but was thoroughly comfortable. And all without extravagance. Rachael and I were proud!

(Years later, when they sold the house to one of Leah's friends, they reaped an outrageous profit. The kids made a great investment, too!)

Soon after school started, Leah began inviting friends over for coffee, or to study. As with the twins earlier, the house soon became a meeting place. Ben said that it was really interesting, because both girls are very lovely—far above the norm for Stanford. ("Ninety-nine of one hundred women in California are gorgeous—the other one goes to Stanford," according to the accepted wisdom among male students.) Beth, quiet as always, entered into a discussion only when she had something to say—and Ben and Leah always deferred to her when she did. Leah, outgoing and flirtatious, had boys coming around all the time. But they were all ruthless about 'weeding out' any boy who had the lack of tact and decency to try to hit on Beth. They all liked to look at Beth (who doesn't?), but everyone was polite and respectful to her—or they were gone.

[Years later, at a class reunion, Leah heard stories from a couple of these guys, who both claimed that they were 'ruined' by Beth. Having met and gotten to know her a bit, they wouldn't settle for less, themselves—Beth proved that such girls existed. But there weren't many 'Beths' around. Leah agreed and gave them her sympathy. Still, they'd been allowed to meet Beth and get to know her. That was not given to everybody.]

During her first year, Leah met a lot of guys she liked, but none she really liked. Rarely, Leah had someone stay over. Mostly, she'd say with a grin, "If he really wants to get it on, it's a good challenge for him to come up with the place. Besides, I don't want some guy to think he can move in on me."

Like the twins before them, the kids all worked very hard and received excellent grades. Ben and Beth were as straight as could be—and so was Leah, except that she liked boys. That is, she liked uninhibited sex, without emotional or other entanglements, so long as she liked the guy. But no one who bragged about it ever got another chance. So although she enjoyed a reputation as a 'good date', Leah was real 'straight', too. They liked it that way.