Newbold Noyes presents his daughter, Alexandra Noyes, at the Spring Bebutante Ball, Washington DC, 1968

About this photo:
It’s a perfect example of just how much reality a photo can hide.
This is what you don’t see in that photograph:

Both my father and I have each just swallowed a tranquilizer with champagne.

I am wearing makeup covering my shoulders and neck that hide what remains of an extreme case of ringworm. I got the ringworm from a litter of kittens my mother  brought up to the attic room where I had been cloistered all winter – suffering deep depression. She thought the kittens would cheer me and they did, until they infected me and the one friend I allowed into that dark space, my dear friend, Hap. Sadly they were all put down, as our vet deemed their infection too advanced for treatment.  I pretty much felt I should have gone with them.

Earlier that Fall I had what amounts to an emotional breakdown. I’d taken an unplanned spring break from Woodstock Country School the year before. As a result I took a job as nanny for two seven year old twins adopted by a couple friendly with my parents. They all lived in a posh apartment on New York City’s upper west side. Their Mom was a serious professional editor and the Dad, a longtime photographer for Time-Life company Both parents were deeply committed to their professional lives, though they’d adopted these twins later in life.  It was for me a full, full-time job. However, in my spare time I managed to become enamored with a young man I met through friends. We hung out together every week on my days off.

Together, we managed to get me pregnant. I didn’t realize my condition until I later returned to Woodstock for my final trimester. When I got the news in that strange doctor’s office in the village, I didn’t know what to do. There was a strange mix of abject fear and a weird, detached excitement.  I remember I stopped in a little jewelry shop and bought a charm bracelet. I guess I sensed I was going to need some kind of otherworldly enchantment  to survive what was to come.

I told my prince , who I thought I was in love with, the news. He was scared too and also excited and blew hot and cold all summer long. One day he’d tell me he’d bought an engagement ring, the next he’d say he’d found out where I could go for an illegal abortion. All the while, as a kind of welcome distraction, I kept plugging away at finishing up my time at Woodstock. Oddly, during that tumultuous period I was really shining academically.  I got an A on my final term paper on Japanese internment camps during WWII, received heaps of praise for a term long project of artwork and creative writing reflecting my love for the coast of Maine. Oh yes, and  I played Lucky in Beckett’s Waiting for Gadot. “Qua, qua qua!”

When I returned home to Maryland after graduation I finally told my parents what was really going on, besides all the lovely accolades. I was nineteen. I felt like and in many ways was, two separate people headed in two entirely different directions. Dad didn’t take the news well. Mom was uncharacteristically quiet. He asked me to invite my “boyfriend” down for a “visit.” When my friend arrived a few days later, after what seemed like cordial introductions and sandwiches and beers on the screened porch, my Dad pretty much read the poor fellow the riot act. The upshot was, I packed a little bag that same day and headed up to the City to, I thought,  get married. But so much for half baked expectations.

Once in his mother’s apartment, his family put me in their sights for their own firing squad of reality. His sister and each parent exclaiming loudly,  it felt like all at once, that basically I must be crazy to consider marrying such an immature, emotionally unstable lad. He was twenty-two and had enough sense to remain absolutely still during this barrage.  I just sat there too, letting their sharp  pronouncements blast through me. They hadn’t even offered me a cigarette or a blindfold. Afterward I  understood how he must have felt under my Dad’s attack.  His family finally ran out of ammo and his Dad made the unlikely suggestion that we all head out for dinner at a nearby great deli. I was totally thrown by this dear jewish family’s negotiation tactics. They just didn’t compute. Later I learned that that first confrontation had probably been only the beginning of a planned,  much greater parley.

Once out in the street I wondered why I’d brought my little suitcase with me to go to the deli? I found myself lagging behind his family, now all chatting happily striding west toward, “the best corned beef sandwiches in Manhattan,” as though the first round had been theirs and that had settled something and an uncomfortable weight was lifted. My prince charming noticed me shuffling behind and came back to see what was up. I barked something like, “I just can’t do this. I need to go home.” And without another thought I flagged a free cab just heading my way, kissed his cheek, jumped in and rode alone to the airport to take the evening shuttle home and fly into the eye of another kind of cyclone.

When at last I descended those attic stairs to the first floor of my childhood home I only thought I was going to share a meal with my family for the first time in months. But I was actually emerging from a kind of hell. So, I was totally dumbfounded when my Dad absurdly asked me if I’d be willing to participate in that season’s debutante, coming out party? My first response was a solid, hell no! But over the next few days he stumped me by persisting in bringing up the silly topic. Once he even gently reminded me that he’d never asked me anything in my 19 years, but now he was and this was it. He was never able to explain why it meant so much to him that I’d be willing to participate in what he knew was a ritual I despised in every way. But here’s the thing, I loved my Dad to pieces, even before everything had happened. But here he had seen me though that infernal time. I slowly came to realize, I hadn’t been the only one hanging fire those past months. Even though he’d been upset with me, he’d so easily and completely forgiven me for everything, if he had ever really judged me at all and now all he wanted – all he was asking was for me to stand by him, dressed to the nines, at this silly event. He didn’t care that the ball meant nothing to me. I was a truly perverse Cinderella. He was asking me to get up out of my self-absorbed pity and damn well shine with him, loud and proud, for all the world  (or at least stupid Washington society) to see- my ringworm, sorrows and all.