The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  I reflected that for someone who had supposedly scaled the heights of detachment, Miss Head was sounding suspiciously angry.

  During the opera, I developed a special sympathy for the poor dwarfs who were being whipped to shreds by the wicked Alberich. They were so small that his demands — that they mine minerals for him with their minuscule picks — were impossible to fulfill. Yet they struggled on faithfully and industriously. My heart went out to them. I imagined that Eddie, had she been there, would have leapt onto the stage and started unionizing them. Beads of sweat were popping out on my upper lip as I strained with them in their agony.

  Miss Head leaned over and whispered, ‘Notice the incessant recurrence of the dwarfs’ leitmotif, the ways in which its tonal structure hints at the futility of their attempts.’

  I gritted my teeth and whirled toward her. Miss Head was serenely watching the stage over the tops of her lenses and was nodding slightly to the rhythm of the leitmotif.

  When I went into Eddie’s room the next night, she was sitting on her window seat, in a spot cleared out among stacks of newspapers, playing her guitar and singing ‘Mr. Tambourine Man.’ She saw me and nodded pleasantly but kept on singing, determined to finish out the song. She had a very appealing husky alto singing voice.

  I glanced around the room. There was a new reddish clay model of something or other sitting on her bookcase. I walked over to it. Two nude women were lying on their sides facing each other. Their arms were wrapped around each other, and their legs were entwined. On both faces were expressions of ecstasy.

  Finishing the song with a loud self-mocking strum, Eddie laid the guitar on the stacks of paper and stood up and stretched her statuesque body languidly like a cat. ‘Do you like it?’ she asked me, nodding toward the model. ‘I just finished it.’

  ‘Uh, yes. The pattern of the lines is fascinating.’

  ‘Yes, I know. It’s brilliant technically. But what I asked is whether you like it.’

  ‘Sure. Yeah. It’s very nice.’

  ‘How do you feel about the subject matter?’

  Detaching myself in my best Spinozan fashion from the fleeting sense of panic I’d felt upon my first seeing it, I said calmly, ‘I feel it’s a valid form of sexual expression. After all, Freud says that man is essentially bisexual and is channeled in one direction or the other by his conditioning.’

  ‘Screw Freud and screw that “man is” crap. What emotions does this particular clay model elicit from you, Ginny Babcock?’

  I drew a deep breath. “Well, frankly, Eddie, I’m not very interested in sexuality in any of its forms.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I had too much inept sex at too early an age, and I’m fed up with it, that’s all. I have more important things to think about.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Eddie said gravely, tucking in her chin and looking out over imaginary glasses in a good imitation of Miss Head. ‘By the way,’ she asked brightly, ‘would you be interested in signing my petition to President Johnson demanding that he end our military involvement in southeast Asia?’

  ‘Why do you bother asking me when you know what I’ll say?’

  ‘Just trying to give you a chance to save your soul.’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

  ‘Why not? Don’t you want to save your soul?’

  ‘You say it’s a civil war and we shouldn’t interfere. My father says it’s the vanguard of the world-wide Communist take-over and has to be nipped in the bud. You feel sorry for the innocent people who are being maimed and killed by American troops. He feels sorry for the innocent people who are getting other people’s theories crammed into their brains, and who are being maimed and killed by Communist troops. How do I know which of you is right?’

  ‘Which do you feel is right?’

  ‘Neither. I feel nothing. I’m not interested. I’m interested in fact, not opinion. I happen to feel that the degree of a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic,’ I announced, resolutely parroting Miss Head.

  ‘Intelligence, garbage! You’re talking about paralysis, moral paralysis! The way you live your life is a political act, whether you like it or not. You’re taking a stand by the very fact of refusing to take a stand.’

  For several moments, we glared at each other with ideological contempt.

  ‘But to what elevated purpose do I owe the honor of your presence in my humble garret?’ Eddie asked.

  “Well, actually, I came in to ask how the Roxbury busing is going.’

  She glanced at me quickly. ‘What’s it to you, fascist?’

  ‘I went through Roxbury last night on the way to the opera with Miss Head, and I sort of saw your point.’ I was appearing to yield now in order to gain more yardage later.

  ‘Big of you. It’s going quite well, no thanks to you and your Miss Head.’

  ‘But I do have a question,’ I said innocently.

  Eddie raised her hands, palms up, and bowed her head to indicate that her ears were at my service.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s patronizing of you to assume that our way of life is so superior to theirs that they should be given the opportunity to ape us?’ I was hoping against hope that Eddie wouldn’t have an answer for this argument of Miss Head’s.

  Eddie shrugged impatiently. ‘It’s patronizing to want to give someone the skills and attitudes necessary to earn enough money so that his children won’t have to be gnawed by rats when they go to sleep at night?’

  ‘But don’t you think that the cream will rise to the top anyway?’

  ‘Perhaps. But a lot of perfectly adequate whole milk goes sour in the meantime.’

  ‘How do you know that the people in Roxbury aren’t just as content with their lives as people anywhere else?’

  ‘I’ll tell you how I know,’ she said, turning on me with fervor. ‘I know because I grew up in a slum in Boston. Do you know who my father was?’

  I hesitated, feeling as though I should know. So many people here had diplomats, famous academicians, important businessmen for fathers. Holzer, Holzer. Who was Eddie’s father, and why on earth would he have raised her in a Boston slum? ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Well, we’re even. I don’t either. He was a rapist. He dragged my mother into a cellar hole and stuffed a rag in her mouth and tied her wrists with his belt and beat her black and blue and then raped her.’

  I stared at her with horror. ‘I’m — sorry.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not,’ Eddie said harshly. ‘I mean, if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here, would I? Or at least not in my current configuration. But your cream rising bit is crap. Cream doesn’t rise under constant agitation, or when the fucking bottle is smashed to bits.’

  ‘But it does,’ I insisted, holding out my hand illustratively. ‘Look at you.’

  ‘You know why I’m at Worthley? I’m here because one lousy teacher at that hellhole where I went to school took a special interest in me and loaded me down with books and devoted herself to my progress. But there weren’t enough of her to go around. In fact, I was the only one in my whole class who benefited like that.’ She looked at me defiantly, waiting to see what sort of half-baked notions I would come up with next for her to refute from her position of superior experience.

  ‘Well! I guess that only proves my point — that rational people stay clear of politics. I mean, you can’t understand a situation and know how to approach it until all the facts are in — and how many situations are like that in life?’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Eddie shrieked. ‘Reactionary rubbish! Your head is just packed full of shit by that Head bitch, Ginny! Go ahead, model yourself after her! Spend your life with a clock tacked to your boob — everything safe and neat and orderly. No risks, therefore no mistakes. No mate, no children, no animals to interfere with her precious schedules. Her cello to wrap her legs around when she’s lonely, and her magnum opus on Descartes to occupy her busy little brain. Ideal, you would say. So
go ahead!’

  ‘It’s not such a bad life she has. It beats the hell out of careening from one disaster to the next, as I did before I came to Worthley.’

  ‘It’s not so bad if you don’t mind a living death.’

  “You’re so goddamn self-righteous!’ I gasped. ‘What makes you think your approach to life is superior to hers?’

  ‘I don’t think, I know. I know that plunging into involvements with other people and risking rejection and ridicule in a good cause is better than self-embalmment. The only passion Miss Head has ever experienced in her life is her passion for certainty a la Descartes and Spinoza.’

  ‘Well, I happen not to know what constitutes a “good cause,” Eddie, and that’s why I’m apolitical. Look at all the atrocities that have been committed in the name of good causes. I’ll stick, along with Miss Head, to areas in which I do “know.”’

  She shook her head, her braid lashing in disgust. ‘But you don’t know. You only think you know. You think, therefore you know. Ha!’

  ‘Even if I were to admit to being convinced by Nietzsche’s remarks, which I’m not doing, there are other areas of knowledge that are unquestionable facts.’

  Eddie snickered. ‘Like what, for example?’

  “Like the fact that a second is 1/31,556,925.9747’s of the orbital year that began at noon on January 1,1900. And the fact that you can take this fact, and with it construct other facts called minutes, hours, days, years. Like the fact that an atom is constructed of positive charges called protons and negative charges called electrons, and that if they are combined in a designated manner, you will always get a certain element.’

  Eddie shook her head and said, ‘And so you don’t have to be involved with other people because you’re so busy tracking down these important truths? Well, if you say so. But do you know that there’s a culture in India that happens to use as its basic time unit the period required to boil a pot of rice? And they seem to get along all right.’

  I turned around and stormed out, slamming her door. I charged down the hall, got into the rickety elevator, and descended to the first floor. I ran through the reception hall and past the rows of imposing portraits and under the vaulted stone-archway. I pounded on Miss Head’s massive door.

  She opened it, holding her cello in one hand. ‘Oh, Miss Babcock, it’s only you. Good heavens, I thought it was at least a fire warning. Come in, come in.’

  I marched in and sank down on the horsehair loveseat

  ‘Whatever is the matter?’

  I breathed deeply, trying to relax.

  ‘Would you like some tea? I just made some.’

  ‘Yes, thank you. With lemon, please.’ What Eddie had said about Miss Head simply wasn’t true. She had involved herself with other people — with me, for instance. Never mind that she had ulterior motives.

  Miss Head leaned her cello against a chair and sat down at her Queen Anne tea table and poured from her encrusted silver urn. ‘Now! What brings you here so late at night?’

  ‘Did I disturb you? I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, no, it’s perfectly all right. I was just playing some Vivaldi.’

  ‘Is it too late to change out of nineteenth-century philosophy and into your advanced Descartes seminar for this term?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ she said, glancing at me shrewdly, forcing herself not to say ‘I told you so.’ ‘Well, it is a little late. I mean the term’s half over, isn’t it? But let me think about it. It helps that I happen to be your class dean, your adviser, and the professor of the seminar you want to get into, doesn’t it? But it is a highly irregular request. Most unusual indeed…’

  ‘I’d really appreciate it, Miss Head. I think Nietzche’s getting me down.’ To say nothing of his disciple Eddie Holzer.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘Indeed. Yes, I know exactly what you mean. Well, I’ll give you my decision in a few days. You can count on it.’

  She set down her teacup and unleashed her metronome at a dizzying rate. Then she picked up her cello, fitted it between her knees, and filled her chambers with a driving rendition of sections of ‘The Four Seasons.’ I followed the straightforward themes and variations with ease and was soon feeling much better. The polished red cello gleamed mellowly in the dim light from a converted oil lamp. Outside her windows, blue icicles hung from the gutter like stalactites.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Head,’ I said, as I was setting down my cup and preparing to leave. ‘I needed that.’ I felt as serene now as a harried housewife after her morning dose of Librium.

  ‘You’re quite welcome, Miss Babcock. Any time. Within reason.’

  That Wednesday as I sat in the dining hall eating chop suey, Eddie sauntered up with her lunch tray and began unloading her dishes next to mine. I acknowledged her with a cold nod. I, in my neat tweed suit, found Eddie’s studied sloppiness — her wheat jeans and turtleneck and Goliath sandals, her messy braid with strands of straggly hair escaping — objectionable, aesthetically offensive.

  ‘Well, and how’s the grande dame of Castle Court?’

  ‘Are you referring to me?’ I inquired with dignity.

  ‘Yup, to you, sweetheart. How ya doin?’

  ‘Fine, until your arrival, thank you.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Ginny. We have many more tedious months next door to each other. Let’s be civil, okay?’

  ‘It’s all right with me. If you’ll recall, you were the one who started us off on this note just now when you referred to me as a grande dame.’

  ‘All right Yes. You’re right. I apologize. Look, I need your help.’

  ‘What?’ I asked, surprised at the notion that she could need anything from me.

  ‘Some friends of mine are doing an experiment for Psychology 302. They need some more subjects. Will you volunteer? It’ll just take half an hour in one of the labs.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know…I have a paper due and…’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, delighted to have the notorious Eddie Holzer begging me for something.

  After lunch, we walked through the courtyard en route to the psychology labs. Eddie stopped and studied the bronze sundial with its ornate leaves and vines and reclining gods and goddesses. Its scrolled gnomon cast a shadow at 2:15.

  ‘My God!’ I exclaimed. ‘Two fifteen? I have an appointment with Miss Head at two thirty.’ She was going to give me the word on her Descartes seminar.

  Eddie laughed. ‘Don’t panic, kid, it’s not two fifteen. This fucking thing is Flemish. It’s set for the latitude of Flanders.’

  When we got to the lab, Eddie’s friends were already there — several juniors and seniors, all members of the very small artsy set on campus, who wrote and directed and acted in the plays, who wrote and edited the paper and the literary magazine. They all looked identical to Eddie in their wheat jeans and turtlenecks and sandals, with long straight hair or braids. I felt instantly intimidated in my Helena Head tweed suit and bun.

  ‘We’re all here now,’ said a tall, dark hunched senior who had a painting exhibit in the arts center at that very moment. The psychology project was apparently hers. Eddie and I and two others sat side by side; the senior and another girl stood in front of us. A third girl sat in the corner taking notes.

  The senior explained the rules. She herself would hold up a constant control card made of cardboard. The other girl up front would hold up a succession of cards of different lengths. One at a time, we four subjects were to say whether the second card was longer than, shorter than, or the same length as the control card. It seemed simple enough. In fact, it seemed downright simple-minded. I couldn’t believe that these hypercreative upperclassmen couldn’t come up with more intriguing ways to spend their time.

  After several practice runs, the experiment began in earnest. I was sitting on the far end and was always the last to express my judgment, but it really didn’t matter because we all agreed anyway. Yes, yes, that card was shorter than the control. And that one was longer. And so on. I was beco
ming very impatient and irritable. After all, I did have a paper to write.

  During the sixth round the atmosphere of bored agreement suddenly shifted, and I found the three others blandly agreeing that a card was shorter, which to me was obviously longer.

  And again. ‘Longer,’ said the first girl.

  ‘Longer,’ agreed the second.

  ‘Longer,’ said Eddie with a yawn.

  ‘The same,’ I insisted staunchly.

  And yet again. I kept glancing around furtively as the others perjured with indifference the testimony of their senses. Or at least of my senses.

  ‘The same,’ said the first girl.

  ‘The same.’

  ‘The same,’ agreed Eddie.

  ‘Longer,’ I mumbled belligerendy. Damn! How could they call it the same, when it was so obviously longer?

  ‘Shorter,’ said the first girl.

  ‘Shorter,’ said the second.

  ‘Shorter,’ said Eddie, stretching luxuriously.

  ‘The same?’ I suggested uncertainly. It couldn’t be shorter. Could it? The others glanced at me with surprise.

  ‘Longer,’ said the first girl, about a card that to me was clearly shorter.

  ‘Longer,’ confirmed the second girl.

  ‘Longer,’ agreed Eddie.

  Unable to endure the social isolation any longer, I intentionally belied the verdict of my eyes and said casually, ‘Longer.’ It felt marvelous to be in step with the others. I breathed a deep sigh of relief.

  ‘The same,’ said the first girl.

  ‘The same.’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Shorter,’ I wailed pitifully. Was something wrong with my eyes? I squinted and then opened them as wide as possible, trying to rectify my apparently faulty vision. Then I stared so intently at the control card that my vision blanked out altogether and I couldn’t see anything for a few seconds. Eddie and the first girl looked at me, then glanced at each other and shrugged.