Gibbon's Decline and Fall

by Sheri S. Tepper

“I haven’t any idea,” said Albert, rather startled. “I don’t think he allows any public intrusion into his private life.”

  Including, it seemed, where he lived, what citizenship he claimed, where he’d been educated. Funny, Carolyn thought, that Albert could so obviously adore a man about whom he knew so little. Crespins were usually more discriminating than that, or pretended to be.

  “What do you think he was doing at the FBI?” she wondered.

  “He was with the director,” said Albert in the rather haughty voice Crespin men adopted in speaking to wives and daughters who had ventured too close to the boundary of Men’s Business. “Which, in and of itself, makes it improper for me to speculate.”

  “The director was in that group of men who walked by us?”

  He nodded dismissively, with a shadow of a smile, as though to say, “There, aren’t you a lucky girl to have seen him.” She felt an ambiguity, as if in a dream, where one should know where one is but does not. The director of the FBI had been in the group, but at the time, Albert had commented only on Webster. Mike and Hal, too. How very odd.

  That night Albert took them all to dinner in an expensive restaurant, where, so Carolyn thought, the menu had more flavor than the food. Mike’s wife, Tricia, was sleek and dark and outspoken; Hal’s wife, Barbara, was little and plump and quite witty. Carolyn tried to ignore the heat in her face every time she looked at Hal, and was able to admire the pictures Barbara passed around, two toddler boys, rotund little staggerers with Hal’s eyes and Hal’s curly, lovely-looking mouth.

  Then they all went to see the new Hitchcock film with Cary Grant—all that chasing about on Mount Rushmore—and Albert took her back to her hotel room, kissed her chastely on the forehead, and bid her good night. She showered and braided her hair and climbed into bed. The night was quiet, the bed comfortable, but something kept nagging at her. Eventually she fell asleep, only to waken repeatedly, her heart pounding at a sense of imminent peril. She knew all about these night terrors, though she hadn’t had them since she was a child, after her father had died. Then they had been provoked by loss and pain. What had provoked this one she couldn’t imagine. All she could remember of the dream was a voice saying ominous and terrible words. It wasn’t Albert’s voice. It wasn’t anyone she knew. Eventually, about dawn, she fell deeply asleep.

  “Did you have a nice time?” Mama asked when she got back home.

  She wanted to say, “I fell in love, Mama. With a married man who has two sons.” She wanted to say, “I had this awful dream,” or, “The funniest thing happened.” A peculiar sense of caution stopped her from doing so.

  “It was very nice,” she said instead. “We had a pleasant supper with the Winters and the Shepherds, who are colleagues of Albert’s.” She didn’t say “friends.” The Winters and Shepherds were obviously friends of one another, but even though they had chatted politely through dinner, she did not feel they were Albert’s friends, no matter what Albert believed. “We went to the movies, and of course I saw where Albert works.”

  “That must be impressive.” An aunt, smiling, approving.

  “Oh, yes, very impressive,” she responded, trying not to sound negative.

  “And next week it’s off to school!” Mama, very jolly sounding, trying to make the best of it.

  Carolyn couldn’t help but feel sorrier for Mama than for herself. Once Carolyn was gone, Mama would be there all alone among the Crespins.

  FALL 1959

  The campus sprawled rosy brick over a hundred acres and buzzed with a thousand new students making their way through room assignments and registration. Extracurricular activities were posted on the bulletin boards in front of Old Main. Drama-club meeting on Saturday morning. Orchestra tryouts for non–music majors, also on Saturday morning. Women’s-chorus tryouts, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

  Carolyn had an unencumbered hour on Tuesday, so she decided to sit in on the chorus tryouts. She sang some, and if the standard wasn’t too high, it might be fun to try out. She sat down next to a plainly dressed young woman with a strong, rather horsey face and offered her hand.

  “Carolyn Crespin, from New York.”

  “I’m Agnes McGann. I’m from Louisiana.”

  An improbably perfect blond on the other side of Agnes leaned forward. “Hi, I’m Bettiann Bromlet, from Fort Worth.”

  She smiled, rather shyly. Carolyn, looking at the careful grooming and wealth of tumbled curls, wondered what she had to be shy about.

  “Sopranos,” called a woman in gray from the front of the room. “Please pick up a copy of the audition music from the table to your left. Contraltos, the table to your right, please. The accompanist’s music is clipped to yours. This is for reading ability, ladies—we’ll do you alphabetically. Be sure your name is on a sign-up card.”

  “I’ll be near the front,” said Bettiann. “Just for once I wish they’d do it backward. It makes me nervous, being first.”

  “Bound to be a few Adamses or Abrahams before you,” Agnes McGann muttered.

  But there weren’t. Bettiann was called first. She handed the piano music to the person at the keyboard, went to the front of the dais, and sang competently. She read the music easily, and though her voice was small, it was true. Considering the shy smile, and the nervousness, Carolyn was surprised at the amount of personality she displayed, a bit too much pizzazz for Carolyn’s taste. If Bettiann Bromlet was the general standard, Carolyn herself might decide to try out.

  “Very nice,” said the woman in gray. “Lily Charnes?”

  “You’ve done that before,” said Carolyn when Bettiann returned to her seat.

  “Beauty contests,” Bettiann murmured, flushing hotly. “My mom was all the time entering me in these pageants. Last time around I won a scholarship.”

  “Congratulations,” said Carolyn.

  The blond shook her head. “It’s crazy that I won. I’m not that good-looking. It’s all pretending.…”

  Carolyn found this an interesting idea. She hadn’t thought before that one could pretend to beauty, though of course it made sense. Certainly Bettiann’s stage personality was not the same as that of the rather hesitant girl sitting beside her.

  It was a while before they got to McGann. Carolyn asked her if she was nervous, but Agnes said no, not particularly. She’d had a good voice teacher at St. Monica’s. They’d had a choir they were proud of and paid a good deal of attention to.

  “Catholic school?” Carolyn asked. “Me, too.”

  “Really? I’ve been in boarding schools since I was six. My family was killed when a truck hit their car, and the settlement was put in trust for my education and keep. I’ve spent my life in Catholic school. Too long, Mother Elias says. She’s the abbess at the Sisters of St. Clare near New Orleans, where I’m going to be a nun. I wanted to enter right away, but she wants me to get through college and take an M.B.A. first.”

  “An M.B.A.? For a nun?”

  “They want to start an oyster farm, to make money for the abbey school, but there’s no one in the order with business training—”

  “Agnes McGann?” called the woman in gray.

  Agnes had a voice better than Bettiann’s, with a good deal more range. She, too, sang competently, though almost without emotion. Carolyn identified the style as churchy: angelic voices conveying as little human emotion as possible.

  “Very nice,” said the woman in gray. By this time Carolyn had it figured out. “Very nice” meant you were in. “Thank you very much” meant you were out. Hmm, “thank you” meant “maybe.” When Agnes returned, the three of them went on sitting, curious about all the other putative singers.

  “Faye Whittier,” the woman called at last. The final one.

  Faye was colored—tall, graceful, with her hair cut very short. Agnes had never seen hair worn like that, just a cap of it, natural. She thought colored people straightened their hair. The maids at St. Monica’s had. The pianist tinkled through an introduction as Faye clasped her hands loosely in
front of her, holding the music almost negligently. Either she knew this composition or she’d already memorized it.

  The voice came like velvet, smooth throughout its register, organlike on a low note, whispering on a high one, easy, fluid, capable of infinite shading and power.

  Carolyn decided she would skip trying out for chorus.

  “Oh, God,” whispered Bettiann. “If that’s what they want! I’ll never make it. I shouldn’t even have tried.…”

  Agnes shook her head, put her hand firmly atop Bettiann’s hand and said, “No. You and I are fine for the chorus, but that girl will get all the solos.”

  When Faye had finished, “Oh, my, yes,” said the woman in gray, conveying a fourth degree of judgment, one heretofore unexpressed.

  Agnes, who was on the aisle, had a little fight with herself as Faye came from the dais. On the one hand, she was colored, and Agnes had no experience with colored people except for the maids and cooks at school. On the other hand, she was colored, and there’d been the recent Supreme Court decision on equal education. One should err, if one did err, on the side of friendliness—especially a nun should, or a person intending to become one. Besides, Faye was elegant looking.

  Agnes offered her hand. “You have a beautiful voice,” she said. “I’m very envious.” Which was perfectly true, and she’d have to confess it, too.

  “Don’t be,” Faye said with a flashing grin. “So far all it’s done is get me in trouble.”

  Fifteen minutes later the four of them walked out together, down the sidewalk, turning at the same place toward the same dormitory, found they were all living in Harrigan Hall (Harridan Hall, said Faye, laughing) and were even in the same wing.

  “Must be the new-girl wing,” said Agnes. “Who’s your roommate, Bettiann?”

  “I haven’t met her yet. Her name is Ophelia Weisman, and she’s from New York.”

  “And yours?” Agnes turned to Faye.

  “I thought they might put me with Jessamine Ortiz, because we already knew each other from school in San Francisco, but they didn’t.”

  They met Ophelia, Bettiann’s roommate, in the dorm lounge, a skinny gamine with dark tattered hair and enormous gray eyes behind huge glasses. Faye introduced them, first names only, to her friend Jessamine Ortiz, a slender Eurasian girl with a face so calm and shuttered it did not seem as lovely as it was. Jessamine was majoring in science and math, and so was Ophelia: Jessy had a landscaper father and a passion for biology; Ophy had a physician father and a passion for medicine. Both their fathers thought it was silly to waste college educations on girls.

  “Dr. Dad thinks I should go to nursing school,” Ophy announced, wrinkling her nose. “My mother was a nurse. She put Dad through med school, and then he divorced her and married a girl about my age. I do not like my father.”

  “Interesting,” said Faye. “I think that must be a white thing. With some black people, it’s the men who think they don’t need an education.” She turned to Jessamine. “All through high school we knew each other. You never said anything about your father’s not wanting you to come to college.”

  Jessamine flushed. “My father is a really nice man, but he has this sort of traditional picture of women’s place in the world. He says men are made to take care of women, that women are happier not knowing very much, because if they did, it might make them dissatisfied being wives and mothers.”

  Agnes silently agreed. Men should take care of women. They were stronger and larger and it was their proper role. And there was entirely too much fiddling about with women’s proper roles. Still, women doctors were needed. So much more … modest to be treated by a woman physician.

  Faye snorted, a sound that could have been outrage, or simple amusement.

  “So how’d you get here?”

  Jessy laughed, too, rather wryly. “My mother wasn’t educated, but she’s still dissatisfied being only wife and mother, so she started saving up for my education the day I was born. She had a father who felt the way my father does, and she always hated it. We never told my father. He thinks I won a scholarship.”

  “So who’s your roommate?” Faye asked.

  “She’s from New York. Her name is … let’s see, Crespin.”

  “I’m it,” said Carolyn, offering a hand.

  “And yours?” Faye asked Agnes.

  “I haven’t met her yet. I can’t pronounce her name. It’s spelled S-o-v-a-w-a-n-e-a a-T-e-s-u-a-w-a-n-e.”

  They puzzled over that for a moment, deciding it was probably Hawaiian. “Who’s rooming with you, Faye?” Jessamine asked.

  “They haven’t assigned anyone,” she replied, her eyes very watchful. “I been asking myself whether that’s because I’m black or because I’m majoring in art.”

  “I doubt it’s because you’re an artist,” Carolyn said matter-of-factly. “I suppose it could be because you’re black. Or it could be they just haven’t assigned anyone yet.”

  All of which made the subject of blackness all right to acknowledge, along with advanced education for women, which joined other subjects of conversation when Agnes invited them all into her room. They were still there, chattering away, when someone came to the open door and stood shyly looking in as their heads came up, one by one.

  She was the most unusually beautiful creature they had ever seen, beautiful in a way they could neither dismiss nor envy, any more than they would dismiss or envy a glorious sunrise.

  “Is one of you Agnes?” the beauty asked in an enchanting voice, low and rich, with a slight, indefinable accent. “Agnes McGann?”

  Agnes raised her hand, gargled, could not get the words out.

  The new arrival smiled. “I’m your roommate. SOvawah-NAYah ah’TAYsoo-ahWAH nay,” she said. “Please, call me Sova.”

  Jessamine was invited to a fraternity party by a boy she’d met in biology class. He told her to bring her friends.

  “It’s a Halloween party, let’s all go,” Jessamine suggested to Aggie.

  “I don’t know,” said Agnes doubtfully. “We weren’t invited.”

  “They said bring friends. You’re my friends. Ophy talked Bettiann into coming.”

  “Doesn’t Bettiann like parties?”

  “She’s got this eating problem. She thinks she’s fat.”

  “Bettiann?” Agnes laughed.

  “Right, but don’t laugh. Ophy says it isn’t funny. It isn’t logical, either. It’s a psychological thingy that comes from trying to stay thin for all those contests her mother put her in. She feels guilty about eating. Sometimes she eats and then makes herself throw up. Or she starves herself. Anyhow, Ophy’s read up on it, and she’s made Bettiann into a project. Part of the therapy is to go places and act normal. Carolyn’s coming. And I’ve asked Faye. Come on, Aggie, Sophy.” They had tried calling her Sova, but it had inevitably become Sophy as all their names had transmogrified. The ABCs: Aggie-Betti-Cara. Plus Ophy-Sophy and Jessy-Faye.

  Oh, very well, Agnes grumbled to herself. She hated parties, she always ended up by herself in a corner. Still, the others were going, so come evening she went with them. It was the first time all seven of them had gone anywhere together, but there was such a mob at the party, they didn’t add appreciably to the crowd. There was beer. There was punch, which was made of brandy and several kinds of wine, had peaches in it, and didn’t taste as lethal as it was. By eleven most of the people present were either unconscious, very drunk, or well on their way.

  At which juncture two young men decided to escort Sophy home after the bash.

  “No, thank you,” she murmured soberly, though she’d had several cups of the lethal punch. “I will walk back with my friends.”

  But they wouldn’t take no for an answer. One thing led to another, and a fight broke out. Agnes, who was always abstemious, pulled Sophy away from the fray, went in search of the others, gathered them up—even Carolyn, who was inclined to stay and see what happened—and the seven of them departed while the two combatants were still rolling around a
mid spilled punch and broken crockery. They were well down the block before the police car pulled up in front of the frat house, and soon thereafter they were all in Agnes and Sophy’s room, drinking cocoa, eating popcorn, and laughing immoderately at nothing much.

  “You certainly made a hit,” said Faye to Sophy. “Cut quite a swath through the male population, you did.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Sophy. “It’s really very disturbing.” Her voice sounded more than merely disturbed; it quavered with outrage or shock. “I don’t understand men.”

  “Do any of us understand men?” Jessamine asked in a faraway, cold voice. “I never have.”

  Carolyn glanced curiously at Jessamine and said, “It’s not just men. Do any of us understand people? Including us? I don’t understand me!”

  That started them all off. Agnes, in a sober confessional mood, told them she had first decided to be a nun when Father Conley had told her she was fortunate to be plain and gawky because she would not therefore be an occasion of sin. Though calmly pale during the telling, she became flushed and agitated when the others told her she was not gawky, and this led to a discussion of female beauty, during which Bettiann told them about pretending to be beautiful, how it often worked just to pretend, and about judges who looked at little girls like so many pet puppies and tried to put their hands down her panties.

  Faye erupted in outrage, saying the judges must all be Humbert Humberts, like in Nabokov’s book Lolita, the one that had been banned, and Jessamine started to tell them something about herself but then broke off, very pale, and ran for the bathroom. Ophy told about her father’s not wanting to pay for her education even though he could afford it, and how her mom had to go to court to make him do it, and Carolyn picked up the true confessions, tipsily telling them about Albert. Somehow she got off onto Hal’s infectious grin and warm brown eyes. She couldn’t put him out of her mind, she said, which wouldn’t do, of course. Catholics did not get divorces or break up other people’s homes. Neither did Crespins. In any case, she, Carolyn, was already promised to Albert.…