Pamela Dean

by Tam Lin (pdf)

  "Is there anything good at the theater? We haven't been to a play since last fall."

  "Diane says they're doing something odd— Godspell, I thin k."

  "Sounds more religious than diverting."

  "It's a musical version of the Gospel According to St. Matthew," said Molly, snipping off her extra ribbon and handing the package up to Janet.

  "I guess Nick might like it," said Janet, dubiously.

  "Nobody really has time, is the problem."

  "Well, what's the senior play this year? At least there's no commuting time for that."

  "Something awfully modern with a long title." Molly got up and rummaged in her desk. "Here. The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. Yuck,"

  said Molly, emphatically.

  "Well, let's go anyway; we can always leave."

  "Okay; I'll talk to Robin. Oh, Lord, I'm going to be late. Say happy birthday to Thomas."

  Janet, with less distance to travel, since Appleton was just up the road, made a more leisurely departure. Greek was especially trying that day, and Medeous seemed a little out of temper by the end of class. Janet escaped with relief, and waited for Thomas outside.

  The silly metal fountain was spurting merrily, and people had as usual been throwing pennies into it. They gazed up at her like dozens of eyes. An oriole was singing madly somewhere in the larches. She was craning her neck after it when somebody bumped solidly into her. It was Thomas. Janet staggered a little and sat down on the wet rim of the fountain.

  "Oh, hell!" said Thomas. "What are you doing here?"

  "Waiting for you to come to lunch, as I have done every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday afternoon for the last six weeks."

  "Well, I can't come to lunch."

  If she had not had presents for him, she would have let him go; if she had not had Molly's package too, she would have hurled her own at him and departed. But she did have Molly's package, and the ground was wet from an early-morning shower.

  "Happy birthday, Thomas," she said.

  "Oh, Christ," said Thomas. He put both long hands over his eyes. Janet looked at him with a certain alarm, but before she could think what to say, he took his hands down again.

  "I beg your pardon," he said. "Let's go to lunch."

  "You needn't come to lunch if you don't want to; just don't snap at me like that. What's the matter?"

  "Just fighting with Medeous. She originally said I'd have to retake Greek 1 if I wanted to take Aeschylus, and now she says I don't have to—after wasting six weeks when I could have been filling out my distribution or something."

  "Well, at least you won't be wasting four more."

  "But that makes this a twelve-credit term; I'll never graduate at this rate."

  "Don't you want to wait for Tina?"

  Thomas was silent. They were walking down the hill amid the larches where Janet had hidden Schiller last fall. The gloom made his expression hard to read, and when he noticed she was peering at him he shook his hair over his eyes.

  "Is that still bothering you?" said Janet.

  "It's still bothering you, isn't it?"

  "Well, Tina's still Tina. Molly says she's growing up nicely, but all it looks like to me is that nobody's thwarted her recently."

  "I can't figure it out," said Thomas. "Is there really nothing there, or are we all just going the wrong way about it? We've made her think she's stupid, which I can assure you had never entered her head until she got here; and that does alter people's behavior for the worst."

  "Nobody who gets straight A's in Blackstock's premed program can possibly be stupid. It's not her intellect, Thomas, it's her taste, or something. She's awfully ordinary and conventional for somebody that bright."

  "Thanks a lot," said Thomas.

  Oops. "If I've insulted anybody," said Janet, "it's Tina. I was thinking she loved you for your looks."

  Thomas stopped dead just outside the door of Dunbar. "I don't think I want any lunch after all," he said.

  Something in his face made Janet swallow her fury. "Here," she said. "Coals of fire.

  See you later." She piled the two packages on his armload of books and went in a hurry up the stairs and into Dunbar. Peg and Diane waved at her from a table overlooking the lake.

  By the time she had gotten her food and greeted them, Thomas had disappeared.

  During the last week of classes, they got their Room Draw numbers through campus mail. Janet and Nick had gone to check their boxes after English 11. Neither of them got mail very often, since Janet's family lived in town and Nick's neglected him. They met in the middle of the basement room where the mailboxes were, unfolding the little blue squares. "Huzzah," said Nick, mildly. "I can have a single, if I want one."

  Janet only half heard him. Her number was alarmingly low. "I hope Molly's got a phenomenal one," she said. "Otherwise it's the Morgue for us." The Morgue was actually Murchison Hall, the ugliest of the modern dormitories, and the most ill-designed. It was also inconveniently situated on the far west side of campus, close only to Taylor's dining hall, and not connected to the steam tunnels that linked the older inner buildings.

  When they met Molly at lunch, Molly looked glum, too; and a glance at one another's numbers showed that they were definitely in trouble. "It's Murchison for us," said Molly.

  "It's worse than that, I bet," said Janet. "This looks to me like we fall off the bottom of the list and end up in some off-campus house that wasn't one last year and hasn't got any lounge furniture or bookshelves or locks on the doors."

  "What's Tina got?" said Nick.

  "It's Wednesday; we don't see her till nine o'clock tonight," said Molly. "She's got that physics seminar."

  "Well, you'd better make up your minds, hadn't you?"

  "Triples aren't very popular," said Janet, "and there aren't any in most of the rotten dorms. Except Taylor."

  "We could ask for Ericson again," said Molly. "Single-sex housing isn't very popular either."

  "The question is, can we stand Tina?"

  "I can," said Molly. "I know you can't believe this, but I l ike Tina. She's an awful nuisance when she's upset—but you haven't seen what I get like, and I haven't seen what you get like, come to that. And it's nice to have somebody to study bio with and help me with the goddamned math courses. But you don't get anything out of rooming with her."

  "I'd get a nicer room," said Janet, ruthlessly. "I don't hate her or anything, but it seems like she's either being dim or dramatic and I can't stand either of them."

  "She's not smart in any field you respect," said Molly.

  "I respect biology!" said Janet, indignantly.

  "Oh, all right—but you don't know anything about it, you just have to take it on faith.

  You like me because I read poetry and science fiction and kids' books."

  "I like you because you're a decent human being who knows what civilized behavior is, and you have a splendid sense of humor and a very sweet temper," said Janet, more indignantly.

  "Well, all right," said Molly, turning pink, "that too. But—"

  "Tina has a sweet temper," observed Nick. "You don't give her a chance to display it, Jenny my lass. You don't give her a chance to do anything. You just back away when she does something you don't like, and the rest of the time you try to pretend she's not there."

  Janet looked at him. Molly said, "You don't know what you're talking about. You haven't seen her struggle."

  "Yes, I have," said Nick, "and so has Tina. Tina isn't stupid, you know"—Janet rolled her eyes; if one more person said that to her, she would scream—"and she can tell perfectly well," said Nick, "when you are being tolerant. Nobody who notices it likes to be tolerated."

  "I take it you think Robin doesn't notice," said Molly.

  Nick grinned at her.

  "Nobody who notices it," said Janet, in as icy a tone as hurt feelings would allow,

  "likes to be
lectured, either. Will you kindly stop speaking in vague generalities and explain just what I ought to be doing differently?"

  "It's not doing," said Nick, "it's feeling."

  "Custom," said Janet, very coldly, "can almost change the stamp of nature. Suppose I wish to be what I would seem to be; how should I begin?"

  "Don't mix Shakespeare and Socrates," said Nick, rather shortly. "They don't blend well. Think of Tina as a real person, that's all, not just a collection of annoying habits."

  "Quit bullying her," said Molly, switching sides abruptly. "Never mind, Jan. We could ask Diane to get a triple with us, maybe—she's always complaining about her roommate."

  "I know, but she wants a single if she can manage it." Janet took a deep breath.

  "No—if you want to, let's just ask Tina." She found herself grinning. "She's probably got plans to get a double with somebody we've never heard of."

  "I don't think so," said Molly, quite seriously. "I don't think she has many real friends."

  Janet stuffed a roll into her mouth before she could say something regrettable.

  Tina had a number so high people had been telling her that she should try for a single—a very uncommon thing for a sophomore. The notion seemed to frighten her, and she received Molly's offer of trying for a triple in Ericson with almost hysterical relief.

  "I was so afraid you'd want to go off without me," she said, and embarrassed Janet enormously by flinging her arms around her. She smelled of tea-rose soap. Janet patted her on the back; then Tina hugged Molly, which made a great deal more sense, if she had only known it. Janet would rather have liked to hug Molly herself, but there seemed no real excuse for it. So they added their numbers together, and instead of studying for the exams that loomed a week away, they went on a tour of the triples available in Eliot, Forbes, Taylor, and (forlorn hope) Sterne, with its boxcar suites and fireplaces and unscarred woodwork.

  Room Draw was a prolonged and uncomfortable procedure, like a combination of sitting in the dentist's waiting room and getting your SAT scores back in the mail. The College did its best by assigning time periods to ranges of numbers; but if you came at the bottom of a range, you still had a weary wait of several hours. Tina and Molly and Janet sat in the old boys' gymnasium, now reduced to Registration, Room Draw, and an occasional amateur theatrical event too large for Ericson Little Theater, and watched rooms melt away like toffee.

  There were plans of all the dormitories tacked up on the wall, and a host of harried student helpers crossing rooms off as they were assigned. Holmes, a coveted residence since it was the only new dormitory with any satisfactory features, was all crossed out when they got there on their assigned afternoon; Dunbar, in which they had no interest since it was devoid of triples, went black in the first ten minutes. Ericson was half full, and so was Eliot. Forbes began emptier than those two, but filled faster; there must be a clump of people who preferred an ugly new dormitory to any of the old ones.

  Sterne filled up. Taylor filled up; many people preferred to be on the west side of the campus, where the ducks were less obtrusive and you could not smell the lake on warm days. Ericson went. Forbes and Eliot were filling fast. Finally it was time to get in line; and when they stepped up to the desk and spoke to the harassed minions of the Office of Residential Life, it was to secure to themselves the last triple in Eliot, on the third floor of Column A. It would get the morning light even earlier than their present room, which was probably why it was still available. Never mind, thought Janet, there are such things as room-darkening shades, after all.

  They saw their names written down on the master sheet, and the room number on three little blue cards, one for each of them. They lingered to watch the room crossed off by a tall, thin boy on a ladder. Then they burst outside into the balmy air and gave three cheers to the startled crows. Tina hugged Janet, who hardly minded; and then Tina hugged Molly; and then Janet hugged Molly, who smelled of formaldehyde.

  They went over to see their room, but its occupants were all out and the door was locked. Janet found the expedition comforting just the same. Eliot smelled very like Ericson, and was of the same vintage; it was odd that they had arranged it in vertical columns instead of horizontal floors like any normal dormitory, but maybe it cut down on the noise. And the dining hall would be right below them, a useful thing in the dead of winter.

  "Oh, well," said Molly, "another time." She hugged herself, grinning hugely. "I feel the way I did when I passed Invertebrates. Come on—let's go out to lunch and eat stuff that's horrible for us and miss all our afternoon classes."

  They accordingly got on their bicycles and rode through the lovely air and across the brimming river to Sheila's. Here they peacefully consumed huge sandwiches that fell apart when you picked them up; piles of Danny Chin's beloved onion rings, oily and heavily battered as ever; and enormous milkshakes. Janet formed a theory that Tina was a lot better when she thought you liked her—only reasonable, but she had not thought her own dislike so obvious. The theory would want testing when she was not dazed from overeating and exhilarated by the possession of a very good room for sophomore year.

  Molly might almost have made her three-thirty class if they hurried, so they got back on their bikes and, looking over their shoulders as if Professor Olsen might come marching down Main Street and collar Molly, they fled through the center of town, rode in a muddled sort of way around its outskirts, and finally fetched up coming down the highway on the far side of Dunbar. They parked their bicycles in the gravel patch, walked onto the wooden bridge, and, in stark contradiction of their expressed intention to take a long walk, stood pitching sticks into the eddying water and talking about boys.

  Molly and Tina did most of the talking; they had had boyfriends in high school, while Janet had had Danny Chin, a very satisfactory friend who happened to be male. She was certain now that that kiss had been a mistake: why grab the boy, after all, just because he

  was a boy; it was just the way women were always complaining about being treated by men. She stood half listening to Molly's entertaining tales of the Four Jerks and the Two Nice Ones. Tina had one Jerk (the one she had been tearing up letters to in fall term, apparently) and one Nice One, about whom she still sounded a little wistful.

  "Well," said Molly, "he can't have been as gorgeous as Thomas."

  "No," said Tina consideringly, "but he was more comfortable. Thomas is exciting."

  Janet felt a little smug. Nick was both comfortable and exciting, though he was certainly not gorgeous. On the other hand, she distrusted gorgeousness. It warped the judgment of the beholder for sure; it might also warp that of the possessor. It occurred to her that it had been unkind to tell Thomas she thought Tina loved him for his looks. She had been so conscious of not saying what she thought to Tina, that she had been saying it to all sorts of innocent people without reflecting on the consequences.

  The term ended in a very satisfactory manner. Janet had applied herself to her vocabulary lists, and found herself, on the final exam in Greek, happily translating an entire passage of Herodotus with only a brief struggle with the genitive-absolute, and a prolonged one with one word she could not for the life of her recognize that turned out to be glossed for her in a footnote on the next page of the exam.

  In English 11, they had read Jane Austen's Emma with enormous glee and admiration.

  Evans had asked them to read the first chapter and write down what they thought would happen at the end—strictly for their own use. Janet had no idea; neither did Molly; but Tina consented to read the chapter and said, immediately, "Emma marries Mr. Knightley, of course." She was right, too. After that, they leapt what Professor Evans called "the romantic chasm" and landed breathless in the wild forests of Wordsworth, whence they journeyed very far afield with Coleridge, muddled around in lovely language but confused ideas with Shelley, alternately smirked and sighed with Byron, and fetched up in the clear-eyed, sensuous, tragic world of Keats.

  Janet found the Augustans more of a
struggle in the exam than in the original reading, but she thought she had retained enough of that bustling, rigorous place to make Professor Evans happy.

  For History 12, she happily reread all the Balzac and wrote a paper on his treatment of the conflict between sexual and creative energy: he thought they had the same source, and if you expended what vital force you had in one activity, you would find the other closed to you. Janet wondered if this was true, and was at the root of her inability to write Nick any poetry. But Nick was writing quite a lot, and nobody could say he wasn't expending sexual energy, either. She also thought long and hard over the choice: it didn't matter now, college left time for very little poetry writing anyway. But if she had to make the choice, which road would she travel?

  Commencement came and went. Rob Benfield, who was graduating on schedule despite his part in The Revenger's Tragedy, carried the battered bust of Schiller under his arm when he went up to get his diploma, and President Phelps, who still held the record for longest possession of Schiller from his own days as a Blackstock undergraduate, gravely produced a cap for the bust's head. Rob consigned the bust to Nick once he got off the platform, and Nick narrowly escaped having it wrenched from him by a mixed group of History and Fine Arts majors who lived on his floor. Janet, Tina, Molly, and Robin were instrumental in thwarting this plot; Thomas had already gone home for the summer.

  Janet had attended the ceremony mostly on Schiller's account, but she stayed to see Nora graduate, which Nora did magna cum laude. Janet wondered if it might have been summa cum laude without the effect of Odile and her roommates. Nora, approached with this theory, laughed and said it had a great deal more to do with almost failing all her French courses. She hugged Janet good-bye, said she would certainly write, climbed into her family's old Buick, and was driven away.

  Janet was suddenly unutterably depressed, though she was luckier than most students.

  She lived in town and could visit the campus whenever she liked; and Nick was staying there for the summer and helping Professor Medeous catalog the Classics Library. There had apparently been a great argument over whether it should remain the Classics Library or be subsumed by the Main Library; and Medeous had won. Nick said this victory probably accounted for her unusual good nature this term.