On a Farther Shore by William Souder Read Free Book Online Page A

referring to Skinker as “the big boss.” Carson said that she felt “safe” with her affairs now firmly in Skinker’s hands, but she was rudely questioned by her classmates, who disapproved of the change from English to biology. Their complaints, Carson said, were monotonous.She amused herself by dissecting a dogfish, which was terrific fun, though it made Carson and everything she touched smell awful. She could hardly wait to begin embryology in her senior year.
    In March 1928, friends arranged a date for Carson to attend the annual PCW prom. The young man, named Bob Frye, was a junior at nearby Westminster College. Carson bought silver slippers a size too small—all the girls did this—and spent a few days trying to break them in before the dance. In a letter to a friend after the event, Carson declared that she’d had a “glorious time” and that she had enjoyed the dim lighting and the mirrored walls at the Schenley Hotel. More memorable than anything else, though, was one of the chaperones, the radiant Mary Scott Skinker: “Miss Skinker was a perfect knockout at the Prom,” she wrote. “She wore a peach colored chiffon-velvet, with the skirt shirred just about 8 inches in front and a rhinestone pin at the waist. Then she wore a choker necklace of rhinestones and two longer ones of tiny pearls.”
    Evidently, there was nothing relevant to report about Bob, though she mentioned going with him to a basketball game the next day and said that it had been an “awfully nice weekend.”
    Carson saw Bob Frye at least one more time that spring.And then she never dated again.
    Not long after Carson finalized her decision to switch to biology, Miss Skinker said she had something important to tell Rachel. She said she couldn’t discuss it yet, but assured Carson that she would be among the first to know.A few weeks later, Carson learned that Miss Skinker planned to take a leave of absence to complete work on her PhD and would not be at PCW for Carson’s senior year. Skinker would spendthe summer studying at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and then go to either Johns Hopkins or Cornell for her doctorate.
    Disconsolate, Carson for a while imagined she might transfer to Johns Hopkins herself.She applied for admission to the graduate program in zoology at Hopkins and was promptly accepted. But in the end Carson realized that her scholarship and the money she already owed to PCW would keep her there.By the middle of her senior year, Carson owed PCW close to $1,400, an impossible sum. She proposed taking a mortgage on two of her father’s lots but was told by the bank that mortgages on vacant land were hard to obtain, and even if she could get one it was unlikely to reflect the true value of the property. Instead, she was advised to offer the two lots directly to PCW as collateral and to arrange a payment plan she could manage by installments after graduating and finding work. To Carson’s relief, PCW agreed to this. Carson signed the formal agreement on January 28, 1929, nine months before the American economy collapsed.
    Skinker was replaced by a woman named Anna Whiting.Whiting held a PhD in genetics from Iowa State University, where she’d concentrated on cattle breeding. She was thrilled to have a job at PCW because her husband was a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. But Whiting turned out to be unqualified to teach any of the advanced biology coursework Carson had signed up for, and she was inept in the lab. Carson and her classmates felt they knew more about the material than their professor, and Carson spent her senior year wondering if she would learn enough to survive in graduate school if she ever got to attend one. To keep their spirits up, Carson and a couple of her friends organized a science club and named it Mu Sigma Sigma—in tribute to Mary Scott Skinker.
    Carson’s thoughts about life after PCW were also shaped by a singular experience—a moment of profound