Penelope

by Rebecca Harrington

  After the placement exam, Penelope began her long solitary trudge toward Pennypacker. Other kids were leaving the exam in globs of newly formed acquaintances, talking, perhaps even having a good time. Penelope had no idea when these friendships were formed. Was it while she was sleeping on the futon? Was it during the placement exam? She hated to think it was at the panel. The ironies of her ignorance were sometimes too hard to bear.

  It was very hot still, and Penelope’s blouse stuck to her back. The trees did not move, the sun was too yellow. The Yard looked stately if remote. No one was playing touch football on it, that was for sure. Maybe the man wearing the rumpled linen suit at registration had actually been a mirage. He looked like what she had thought Harvard men were going to look like before she went here, although now that she was here, none of the students looked remotely like that.

  Penelope got to her dorm in about ten minutes. She decided to go up to her suite and see if she could walk to the proctor meeting with her roommates. Emma was in their room, violently brushing her hair.

  “Hey, Penelope!” said Emma as soon as she heard the door slam.

  “Yes?” said Penelope.

  “What did you get for question three? Did x equal one-quarter or one-half?”

  “I don’t remember, uh, one-half?”

  “I definitely got one-quarter. I think if you take the derivative of what’s under the parabola, that’s what you get.”

  “Oh, maybe,” said Penelope. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s one-half, weirdo!” Lan bellowed from her room. “Just accept it.”

  “I didn’t even know she was home,” said Penelope.

  “Yeah,” said Emma, “she was done with the exam in an hour.”

  Penelope heard Lan slam a drawer shut in her room very loudly.

  “Hmm. Well, do you guys want to go down to the meeting now? It starts in like five minutes,” said Penelope.

  “No, you go ahead. I have to brush my hair.”

  “Really? I can wait.”

  “No. It’s really all right.”

  “OK,” said Penelope. “Emma?”

  “Yes?” said Emma.

  “How do you know those girls from breakfast this morning? They seemed really nice.”

  “Oh, from around. My parents are friends with their parents or something. You know how it is.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Penelope.

  “I’m hanging out with them tonight, actually. After the ice cream social, we are going to the Owl.”

  “Oh, cool,” said Penelope. “What is the Owl?”

  “It’s a finals club. Anyway, you should probably go.”

  “Oh, you’re right. I should. Lan?” she yelled at her door. “Do you want to go to the meeting with me?”

  “No,” said Lan.

  “OK, I’m going,” Penelope said. Then she turned and paused.

  “Do finals clubs have anything to do with the Masons?”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Emma.

  “I don’t know,” said Penelope. “Bye!” she said, and left.

  The meeting was held in a small, green-carpeted room in the basement of Pennypacker. About five minutes after Penelope had seated herself on an uncomfortable chair next to a broken TV, Emma and one of the breakfast girls strolled into the room. Emma gave Penelope a tight smile but did not wave. Lan, of course, did not show up.

  The room was sporadically populated. On the other side of the TV, Glasses and Nikil were vying for the attention of a girl who had a moderate to severe case of acne. Jason and Ted were splayed morosely on a plastic couch. There were other people whom she could not identify huddled near a pool table; most were wearing oversized Harvard paraphernalia. Some looked fourteen. Some looked twenty-nine. No one was wearing a linen suit or leather shoes, unless you counted sneakers. Penelope tucked her legs under her. Suddenly, a man entered the room.

  “Hey, guys, sorry I’m late,” he said. “I’m Jared.” Jared was short and wearing flat-front pants that did not have back pockets. Penelope wondered what this meant.

  “I’m Jared, your proctor.”

  Ted rolled his eyes at Penelope. Penelope kept her face expressionless.

  “I guess you want to know a little bit about me.” Jared cleared his throat noisily. “I, uh, am getting my PhD in economics at the grad school. I am interested in developing countries and the way that they interact with their water sources. For fun, um, I’m on the Ultimate Frisbee intramural team.” Penelope saw a neon-yellow plastic disk peeking out of Jared’s leather messenger bag. She wondered if he had added it to his satchel for emphasis before the presentation.

  “So I am your proctor. Well, what does that mean? It means that I am your resource. I live here, in Pennypacker, so anytime you guys have a problem I am here to help. And obviously, if you are having trouble with economics, I think I can handle it.” The crowd mustered a disappointed laugh.

  “Obviously, there is no drinking or drugs allowed in this dorm. If I find that you guys have been drinking, I will have to report you to the dean. The whole process is detailed on this handout.” Jared passed out a bunch of pink papers. Penelope stuffed hers into her purse without looking at it. She figured she could use it for gum later.

  “Now over the summer you guys were given a small book of essays. It came in your housing packet. I hope you guys have read through them because we are going to have a little discussion about them.”

  Everyone took out a thin cream booklet. Penelope tried to recollect if she had received such an item in her housing packet. She vaguely remembered her mother looking through some kind of booklet, proclaiming it interesting, and then throwing it out. She often threw things out when Penelope least expected it.

  “OK. Today we are gonna discuss ‘Self-Reliance’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It’s on page thirty-six. Now when you say your comment, just introduce yourself and hopefully we can learn everybody’s name,” said Jared. Everyone obediently turned their pages. Penelope was relieved. She had read the essay in school before. As long as she was not asked to quote the thing at length, she should be fine.

  “OK. Now that we are all on the same page.” Mild tittering emanated from the pool table. “Why would something like this essay be specifically appropriate for the start of your first Harvard semester?”

  Several hands were raised. Glasses was called upon.

  “Well, I think Emerson is trying to stress the fundamental humanity of the individual. I mean, at the risk of being obvious, ‘Self-Reliance’ is, at its core, about self-reliance. The transcendentalist message is really important for us now, at this time in history.”

  Glasses looked smug. Jared looked pleased. It seemed that this was exactly the way he had envisioned the conversation going.

  A guy wearing a backward baseball cap then raised his hand.

  “I don’t know. It kind of reminds me of Adorno. I’m Eric, by the way.” Eric shot a condescending glance at Glasses, who had the wherewithal to look abashed.

  Jared was giddy. “Elaborate,” he commanded, shoving his hands in the space where his back pockets would be.

  As the conversation dragged on, each person essentially doing free association with German philosophers utterly unrelated to Emerson, Penelope got to thinking. Is this supposed to be a bonding activity? So far, no one had introduced themselves properly. No one had told an interesting fact about their past or their favorite color. They hadn’t even fainted into each other’s arms. Penelope was sorry for this. She had even prepared an interesting fact about herself, if it came to that. It was that she sat in a car seat until fourth grade. Very few people could say that for themselves.

  If this was the only chance she was going to get to bond with her classmates, she figured she might as well make the most of it. So she raised her hand.

  She never got called on. The free association had moved to France and a couple of guys from the pool table got into a debate about Foucault, which took up the rest of the bonding period. Jared looked simply fa
scinated. By the end of the meeting he was practically brimming with pride.

  “Now this, ladies and gentlemen, reminds me why I loved undergrad so much. You will never have conversations like these again!” he said as they departed.

  “I can’t imagine what Jared was like as an undergrad,” said Ted to Penelope as they went upstairs.

  “Probably very interested in water sources,” said Penelope.

  After the discussion Penelope had very little time to go back up to her room and change before the ice cream social. It was her third outfit of the day. She decided to wear a sundress that was sort of low cut in the front. If she was ever going to seduce anyone, it might as well be now. Maybe the man in the rumpled suit would be around. Maybe they would meet and immediately hit it off. “It was the ice cream social,” he would say at their engagement party in Naples, “that started our love.” Penelope would laugh and her mother would laugh too, on a satellite feed, because she was desperately afraid of planes.

  While Penelope was changing, Lan emerged from her room, which now smelled like paint thinner. Lan was wearing a black T-shirt with iron-on letters that spelled I HEART LIFE.

  “Hi,” said Penelope. “Why does your room smell like paint thinner?”

  “I was painting in there,” said Lan.

  “I don’t think you’re allowed to paint your room.”

  “Shut up,” said Lan.

  “What?” said Penelope. Lan had gone into the bathroom.

  Emma came into their room while Penelope was trying to fix her bra straps under her sundress.

  “That’s an interesting dress,” said Emma, throwing her bag, a green leather satchel redolent with unnecessary chains, on her bed.

  “Do you like it?” asked Penelope.

  “What are you doing tonight?”

  “The ice cream social, I think. I mean, what else is there?”

  Emma did not answer. She walked over to her bureau and took out her makeup bag. She started applying very dark eyeliner to her bottom lids. “Did you like the talk downstairs?”

  “It was pretty awful.”

  “Yeah,” said Emma.

  “I kind of zoned out during it.”

  “Me too. Does my eyeliner look OK?”

  “Yeah, it looks great!” said Penelope.

  “Good.” Emma pursed her lips and glanced at Madeleine Albright.

  “Well, I’m off. I’m getting drinks at Noir with my friends before this thing. I think I’ll only go for like five minutes before I go to the Owl.”

  “You’re getting drinks at a bar?” asked Penelope.

  “Yeah.”

  “How will you get in?”

  “I have my friend’s fake. It always works, at least in New York. They probably won’t even check here.” Emma laughed wildly, this time a sort of braying sound.

  “Well, have a good time,” said Penelope.

  “Thanks,” said Emma. She picked up her bag, checked her cell phone, snorted, texted someone, and strode out of the room.

  Penelope floated into the common room and planted herself on the futon. Lan was milling around in the bathroom, opening and shutting the medicine cabinet really loudly. Penelope didn’t feel hungry but decided she should go to dinner. This time she didn’t even bother asking Lan to go with her.

  After a long, lonely dinner, in which Penelope enjoyed a heaping plate of canned corn with a side of what was supposed to be chicken masala, she decided to make her way over to the ice cream social. She walked very slowly. Penelope always felt uncomfortable when she arrived at things on time. She usually played Tetris on her cell phone until there was a good-sized crowd somewhere, but her mother (in one of their many precollege pep talks) told her she was not allowed to play Tetris in front of people anymore. Penelope’s mother did not believe that people played Tetris at social events, despite what Penelope told her about the prom. Penelope told her mother that she was being closed-minded and then Penelope’s mother canceled Penelope’s subscription to Tetris. So now she didn’t have it anymore.

  She shouldn’t have worried. The ice cream social was mobbed with people who had all packed themselves into Harvard Yard for the event. There was no more ice cream, unless you liked strawberry—and Penelope didn’t. Penelope walked around the perimeter of the gathering, wishing for Tetris and searching for people she knew. Emma and Lan were nowhere to be seen. She saw Adorno Eric playing with a hacky sack. She saw Glasses and Nikil trying to chat up a girl who was carrying a Razor scooter over her shoulder. Then she saw Ted and Jason glumly eating ice cream near a tree.

  “Hi,” said Penelope, and sat down beside them.

  “Oh, hello,” said Ted. “How has your evening been?” Jason continued to shovel ice cream into his mouth at a rapid rate.

  “Oh, fine. I hate strawberry,” said Penelope.

  “Terrible!” said Ted.

  “You are a freak!” said Jason. It was at this point when Penelope realized both of them were very drunk. Jason was almost completely crimson and sweating profusely. Ted was drinking whiskey out of a flask.

  “Where did you get that flask?” asked Penelope.

  “At 7-Eleven,” said Ted. “Are you having a good time here?” He took a gigantic swig of whiskey and coughed slightly.

  “Oh, not too bad. The strawberry situation is pretty depressing and my roommates aren’t here, so …”

  “Do you want to go? It’s pretty awful,” said Ted. Jason had put his ice cream cup on his head and was lying against the tree, eyes closed.

  “Where are you guys going? I just got here, so I don’t know. Are you going to the Owl?”

  “What is the Owl?” said Ted.

  “I don’t know,” said Penelope truthfully.

  “No, we are not going there. We are going back to my room to drink more whiskey out of this flask. It is much funner in my room. We have been drinking there for about four hours. All of them were blissful. Just look at Jason.” Penelope did look at Jason, who was snoring.

  “OK, I guess I can leave,” said Penelope.

  “Up, Jason,” said Ted. Jason got up groggily and gagged. His entire face was red except for a thin strip of skin above his upper lip, which was greenish. Penelope took him by one arm and Ted took him by the other.

  As they staggered away from the Yard, Penelope passed Glasses and Nikil. The Razor scooter girl had abandoned them. Now they were talking to another girl with dirty pigtails, drooping eyes, and the body of a quail.

  “So where did you go to high school?” asked Nikil.

  “Milton,” said the girl.

  “Oh, cool. Bronx Science,” said Nikil.

  “Stuy,” said Glasses.

  “Did you know Sharon Dwoskin?” asked Nikil. “I think I met her at an Academic Decathlon thing in Alaska.”

  “That sounds familiar, but I don’t know. Westinghouse took up all my time,” said the girl.

  “Cool,” said Glasses.

  “OK, we have to get out of here,” said Ted. He hoisted Jason up and started walking. Penelope trotted after him.

  Jason vomited three times on his way to Pennypacker: once behind a suspiciously phallic monument covered in tarp and twice in front of a Chinese restaurant. He was a joyless drunk. He repeatedly referred to Penelope as “the Whore of Babylon” and refused to drink any water. Penelope had never seen anyone this wasted in her whole life. At her high school, people smuggled vodka in water bottles to class in the mornings, but they were always very businesslike about it.

  Finally, they arrived at the door to Pennypacker. Jason’s face was covered in vomit and dirt. His hair looked oddly like a toupee.

  “You look like you swallowed a fucking lemon,” said Jason to Penelope.

  “Oh God. Penelope, can you open the door please?” said Ted, and hoisted Jason over his shoulder and carried him up to his room. Penelope flitted in the vicinity, occasionally patting Jason’s shoulder.

  Ted threw Jason onto his futon. Jason found this very funny. Then he fell asleep.

&nb
sp; “I want to put him in his room, but I don’t know where his key is, and I also don’t want him to choke on his own vomit. Maybe he should stay on this futon for a while. What do you think?” asked Ted, his hand on his hip.

  “Uh, sure,” said Penelope. “But I don’t want to wake him up.”

  “We can go in my room,” said Ted.

  “Oh,” said Penelope. “OK.”

  In all the novels that Penelope had read, puberty progressed in a certain, similar way. One got one’s period at twelve. One dabbled abortively in popularity at thirteen. One French-kissed at fourteen. None of this was so for Penelope. She did not get her period until she was fifteen, and even then it was a bit of a struggle. She was never really given the opportunity to abandon her true friends for more popular drug users and learn from the experience. And she had never, really, properly made out with someone before.

  She wasn’t completely inexperienced. She had kissed people briefly. When she was a junior in high school she had a boyfriend named Greg for a week and a half. Greg had a lisp that only she could hear. Penelope’s mother wouldn’t let her have boys in her room, so she and Greg used to hang out in her living room and play Ping-Pong. Greg would talk about Dune. Penelope would pretend to play the piano, and eventually the entire experience began to resemble an absurdist play. Only chaste kissing occurred, like monks through some kind of grate.

  Thus when Ted said to Penelope, “Why don’t we go into my room?” Penelope was mostly gripped with a cold fear. Yet she steeled herself to adversity and decided to follow him in there anyway. She had to grow up sometime.

  Penelope entered Ted’s room and stood in the doorway pretending to examine her phone, which, once again, did not have Tetris on it. Ted’s room was entirely spartan except for a copy of The Fountainhead posed prominently on a plywood bookcase. Ted sat on his bed and took out his laptop.

  “Do you want to listen to some music?” asked Ted.

  “Sure!” said Penelope, still standing in the doorway. She scratched her head.

  Ted stared at his computer screen for a moment, lost in concentration. Then he seemed to find something he liked, which was “Crash into Me” by Dave Matthews Band.