Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen
Page 14
I returned to the dorm and flung myself on my bed. Around my room at eye level I had run a strip of masking tape representing Time. It started at the door with prehistory and stretched, densely crowded with tiny writing, all the way around to my bed. There wasn’t room on it for one more entry, but I didn’t care. What I yearned to know could not be fit between a then and a now. It could not be numbered. It was simple and yet hugely complex, like a perfect circle and the Grosse Fuge. It existed outside of Time. If I were lucky it would come to me in another vision that would be so stunning as to obliterate forever the triviality of unlearned French and the pettiness of chapel.
A junior from Cleveland’s West Side called to offer me a ride home in exchange for a tankful of gas and some of the tolls. I accepted. In the car, three Ohioans in N.E.U. sweatshirts and dungarees sang hillbilly songs and Christmas carols with the radio all the way across the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I slumped in the corner pretending to sleep. Not that I disliked the music; I loved to sing and would even have tried to harmonize if it hadn’t been for another tune buzzing in my ears. The farther west we drove the harder I strained to hear it. With my nerves taut as harp strings and my brain cells poised to replay every tantalizing signal, nothing could shake my conviction that I was listening to the Music of the Spheres.
At home I cowered through Christmas, avoiding “Jingle Bells” and relatives. Only the books I had brought from school and baroque music could soothe me. I read deep into every night that vacation. In the daytime I slipped off to the quiet garden of the Cleveland Museum of Art where, thrilling to Bach on the organ, I could contemplate with Spinoza the vanity of all human wishes save one. I followed each idea to the next, finding one subsumed under another, itself subsumed under yet another, soaring after that single axiom or thought or word that would somehow sum up everything.
“Sasha, you’ve hardly eaten a bite the entire holiday. Don’t you think you’re studying too hard, darling?” asked my poor mother. But the only nourishment I took was for my mind; for my body I couldn’t care less. Like Descartes’s, my mind and my body led separate lives, but unlike Descartes, I found no satisfactory way to connect them.
I had always despised my body. Slowly my contempt spread to all things material. For the only time in my life, I didn’t care how I looked. Neither Leibniz, nor Spinoza, nor Newton, nor Locke, nor Berkeley, nor Descartes’s God Himself could bridge for me the growing gap between mind and matter.
My second day home I had gone to an engagement shower for an old high school friend. It turned out so unhappily that I didn’t want to see another Baybury soul.
“Sasha! We never thought you’d come,” said the hostess. “We thought you wouldn’t want to associate with us anymore since you got into that fancy college.”
Fancy college! Just because it wasn’t Ohio State! “Baxter’s not fancy at all,” I said. “It’s just far away.”
“Well,” said the hostess, “nobody ever hears from you.”
“Come on, admit it,” said another friend. “You have to be a Brain to get into those Eastern colleges. But then, Sasha always was a Brain.”
“That’s not true—” I began excitedly. It was the dream again. How should I begin to explain myself?
“Calm down, now. You’re probably both right.”
“You must be meeting a lot of interesting people there.”
“We were sure you’d be engaged by now. Things turn out so funny. The three girls from our group that are left are the ones we all thought would go first.”
“She always said she wasn’t going to get married right away.”
“Yeah, she said she was going to be a lady lawyer. Maybe she really will.”
Being spoken to in the third person didn’t make me feel any more comfortable. After the shower I decided to spend my evenings in the house.
“If it’s for me, say I’m not home,” I hollered whenever the phone rang, and retreated to my room. (Actually, it was now only nominally my room. Since I had gone away to school, it had been converted into an upstairs den. My bed was still there, and my things were still in the closet, but my pictures had been taken down, the room had been painted blue, and a large TV set had been installed on my desk in place of my phonograph and records.) I refused all Christmas parties and phone calls. “You always have to be different, don’t you?” asked my father, shaking his head.
I decided that would be my last vacation at home. When it was over I took a Greyhound bus back to school rather than accept a ride from some frivolous student. I couldn’t bear to be distracted by human chatter. Professors alone, pure mind, didn’t stink of humanity.
“Sasha Davis?”
“Yes.” I stood in the doorway of my narrow room peering at a tall blond girl in a school blazer. Her hair was cropped short at the neck like Joan of Arc’s—not like all the other Baxter girls with smooth pageboys or feather cuts like mine.
“I’ve seen you in the dining room, but I never knew your name. I thought you might be missing this.”
I let out a gasp as delicate fingers held out the small black notebook to which I committed certain of my profoundest thoughts. I had not yet missed it.
“It seemed too private to turn in at the Dean’s office, so I found out your room number. I’m Roxanne du Bois. I write too.”
She dropped her voice and eyes so modestly on the last sentence that I wanted to take her hand. She couldn’t have read my notebook, or she would have known that, as a matter of fact, I didn’t “write.” But I didn’t tell her.
“I guess that makes us both creeps,” I laughed warming with gratitude. “Thank you. Do you want to come in for a few minutes?”
She smiled and walked into my sanctuary, sitting on my unmade bed. It was one of the rare times I had invited anyone into my room. I had chosen Baxter College in the first place because I knew no one there, and I wanted to keep it that way. But this tall, pale girl with the soft voice and delicate hands seemed as separate as I, and fragile besides. “I’ll make us some coffee,” I offered.
As I plugged in the coffee pot to boil the water, I felt her take in my black walls, my Time Line, my cases of books, and the bulletin board on which I mounted pictures of me at cottage, me at several dances with dates, me with my family, and our Baybury house.
“Black walls. What a great idea,” she said. “It really gets the feel of this place. I’m surprised your roommate lets you have black walls. My roommate put some flowered horror in our room, but since she paid for it all I can’t complain. It’s better than the prosaic green we moved into.”
“I don’t have a roommate,” I said, handing her a cup of instant coffee and sitting down on the foot of the bed. “I’d rather have stayed home than have to give up my privacy.” As soon as it was out of my mouth I was sorry I’d said it, Roxanne looked so fragile and distant.
“Not me,” she said. “I’d gladly have ten roommates to get away from Richmond, (home), Virginia.” Embarrassed, she reached out for the book lying on my night table. She picked it up, then looked from it to me. “You like Eliot? I love Eliot,” she said. “I think I’d rather have written Prufrock than any other poem in the English language. ‘Then how should I begin to spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?’”
“‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas,’” I answered her. A silence passed between us, a rest note in a soft duet, as we sipped our coffee.
“Are you majoring in English too?” she asked.
“No. Philosophy.” I braced myself against the awful next question, What is your Philosophy of Life? But that sensible girl didn’t ask it.
“Philosophy! I’d probably flunk it if I ever took it. I’m flunking all my subjects except English. But I don’t care,” she said, growing distant again. “Unless I flunk out. I’d hate that. I’d have to go home.” There was a trace of mockery in the exaggerated Southern way she said “home,” in two syllables. “How come you’re majoring in philosophy?”
Delight suddenly lit up Roxanne’s face as she discovered the tiny volumes of my Little Leather Library. “What dear little books,” she squealed, turning them over one at a time. She was okay, I thought. She handled them so reverently that I offered to lend them to her.
“Maybe they’ll help you out,” I said. “They’ve always helped me.”
It was an odd thing to say, but Roxanne seemed to understand what I meant. “I have a few books you might like to look at too. Nothing like this. … My room’s on the first floor in the West Wing. Room 108. My roommate Dandy is away every weekend, but I’m always here. I don’t have anywhere to go. Drop in some time if you feel like it.” She walked to the door. She was evidently too refined to mention the Time Line. Definitely okay.
“Thanks for the books,” she added. “I’ll be careful with them.”
“Thank you for my notebook,” I replied.
Roxanne hesitated on the threshold. Then, dropping her eyes shyly again, she said, “I want you to know I didn’t read anything in it, except your name.”
“I know you didn’t,” I said.
She was clearly the exception to prove the rule. A girl I could trust.
Two loners together are different from a pair of ordinary friends. They have more respect for one another.
Roxanne and I quietly became friends; so quietly that people began to mistake us for each other. She was right about having books I would love. She introduced me to Gerard Manley Hopkins and Franz Kafka, as I had opened her eyes to Voltaire and Mencken and Russell. My own reading improved when I began underlining with Roxanne in mind, seeing the world through four eyes instead of two.
Our compulsions and fears complemented one another’s. I sat with her in the dining room since she was afraid to eat alone. She hid me in her room during gym and chapel. She listened compassionately as I struggled with the mind-body problem or the problem of free will, and I sat rapt as she read me her poems. After I taught her chess, as my father had taught me, we played by mail, dropping our moves in each other’s postal boxes between classes. Together we went to the movies, or avoided the Smoker and the Student Union. We traded clothes, and lent each other money when we needed it.
On weekends we sometimes went to Boston together, sitting apart from the other Baxter girls on the train. They went to Harvard or Boylston Street or Filene’s, while we wandered in the old bookstores or took in a concert. Occasionally Roxanne called up a friend she dated at M.I.T., and if his roommate was free they’d join us at Symphony Hall for a matinee or meet us for dinner at Durgin Park.
Roxanne’s friend Dave wasn’t bad, but his roommate Gary was so unpleasant I kept forgetting his name. I was temporarily off boys, and would certainly never have gone out with him except for Roxanne. Nevertheless, it was at one of those Symphony Hall matinees that I got my first inkling of a possible solution to the mind-body problem.
We were looking around for someone to light our cigarettes during intermission, when I found myself standing next to Professor Donald Alport. He was alone, standing a full head taller than everyone else, gazing over the crowd distractedly. I was thrilled to see out of context this mind that knew everything. His was the only mind I had ever known that had probably seen my vision, and here it was walking around Boston on long legs, winding up in exactly the same auditorium, and at precisely the same moment, as mine.
“Dr. Alport,” I said.
“Hello there.” He slowly focused on my eyes. “Are you enjoying the concert?”
“Oh, yes! The Eroica’s my favorite symphony. Are you?”
He didn’t answer, just looked at me. Suppose he had hated the concert? To cover up, I changed the subject. “Professor Alport, this is Roxanne du Bois, and her friend Dave Merritt, and … and … and …”
My mind blacked out. I couldn’t remember Gary’s name. Dr. Alport was looking at my face severely now—so severely that I wanted to disappear. I tried to remember the name again, but I couldn’t. If only someone else would say something; if only Dr. Alport would stop staring at me.
I was still searching for Gary’s name when it occurred to me that Dr. Alport wasn’t waiting for me to produce the name of my date at all. He was concentrating his gaze too deeply into my eyes for that to be it. Inexplicably, I felt the flow of adrenalin. My eyes began to waver under that stern gaze, and I was filled with self-loathing at the defeat. It’s the defeat of the Bus Stop Game!—I may not touch it tonight.
I feel myself turning crimson. Now I know what is happening. I have an itch for this hulking man whose power has forced my eyes, unworthy to look at him, into humiliating retreat. This itch that has been such a long time coming—years and years!—this itch spreads in little waves from my joy button to my scalp and fingertips. I know I am deep purple by now, and still I can’t raise my eyes.
“Yes, how do you do?” he is saying, ignoring that I have still not introduced my date by name. He has let me off the hook.
And then I understand that the penetrating gaze was only Dr. Alport’s own attempt to remember my name, which he has now given up. It is he who wants off the hook. He does not know quite everything. Outside the classroom he doesn’t even recognize me.
He moves off. Everyone forgets my gaffe. The gong is sounding for us to return to our seats and I move with the others down the aisle. In my head I hear a distressing discord, more than the sound of the orchestra tuning up. I prepare to hear the music. But the staggering itch remains.
“Miss Davis.”
“Yes?”
“I found your paper on Nietzsche extremely interesting. Did anyone help you with it?”
“No, Professor Alport. No one.” Although I had patently adored Dr. Alport for over a month, unable to take breath without hearing his voice, this was our first private conference. Between last week, when he had called it, and today I had walked around in a mist of anticipation, rehearsing for this moment, taking now my part to Roxanne’s Alport, now Alport’s to Roxanne’s me. But facing him in person, flesh to flesh, I forgot all my lines.
“It’s a very good paper.” He put a pencil to his lips and scrutinized me. Though my pulse quickened, I was paralyzed.
“Has anyone ever told you you have an interesting turn of mind?”
“Not really. Thank you,” I managed, reddening beyond endurance.
“Particularly for an undergraduate. You might want to consider doing some special work.” He was biting deeply into the pencil, making the end disappear under his dense grey mustache, indistinguishable in color from his eyes.
I had slaved over the Nietzsche paper, agonizing over each word, exhausting the library and the unabridged, listening to Wagner, all toward this particular A. But never did I expect anything more. O my soul, I gave thee the right to say Nay like the storm and to say Yea as the open heaven saith Yea. … Thus spake Zarathustra. Nietzsche’s own daring had inspired me, and the Liebestod, soaring higher and higher in my head, provoked such desire that now, watching Dr. Alport’s pink lips move caressingly over the yellow cylinder of wood, I was struggling against the liquefaction of my spine, urging myself: do it!
“A remarkable grasp. If you think you might be interested, I could give you a special reading list. No need for you to stick to the textbook selections.”
Too much. He had remarked my acumen and erudition, and I could never begin to repay him. If only I were worthy of him, he could have me as soup for lunch. O my soul, I washed the petty shame and the by-place virtue from thee and persuaded thee to stand naked before the eyes of the sun. … Thus spake Zarathustra.
“How’re your Saturdays, Miss Davis?” (O my soul … Who knowest as thou knowest the voluptuousness of the future?) “Saturday morning I’ll have time for a good
long chat. We could meet at the library or”—he took the pencil out of his mouth and leaned forward over the desk—“or here in my office if you prefer.”
I heard a laughter which was no human laughter—and now gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed. My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me, o, how can I still endure to live? Thus spake Zarathustra.
“Dr. Alport?” My eyes had locked in their old daring glance, somehow managing not to falter.
“Yes?”
“I wanted to ask you something.”
“What is it?”
“Dr. Alport?” He waited, his grey eyes as unflinching as mine, till I blurted it out: “Are you seducible?”
I felt faint. I had had crushes before, starting as an orthodox bobby-soxer in Baybury Heights with the hots for Frank Sinatra, but never a crush like this. This huge ungainly man destroying a pencil between his jaws personified all that I valued and nothing I scorned. I worshiped him. What did I care that he was twice my age and probably married? I did not believe in youth or marriage. He was so far above the petty concerns that corrupted every shallow young man I knew that I didn’t care if he was forty or one hundred and forty. I loved him for his mind that knew everything—a provocative mind whose experienced eye could penetrate through layers of mask, clothes, skin, muscle, and bone, straight to the center of me where my own untutored mind, now a quivering mass of jelly, lay waiting to be given form and life.
He unknitted his brow and sat back. “I think that can be arranged, Miss Davis.”
Indeed, I led a charmed life. Things went too much my way to be all accident. The Blue Fairy of my childhood had evidently given way to a genie of rare skill. How else explain that this remarkable Professor Alport, of whose mere attention I was so unworthy, should say yes? He barely knew me. And yet he, with his hundreds of students, had recognized buried in my term papers and among the pages of my B-plus bluebooks the one quality I treasured in myself. Not my nose or my skin; not my eyelashes or my ass—but my “interesting turn of mind,” as he dubbed it. My authentic preciousness. Oh, it was his.