by Smiley, Jane
The New York Times was not sold in the town near Loren Stroop’s farm, so even if he had been able to drive his truck, he would not have had easy access to an article that he certainly would have read, as it mentioned his university and one of his faculty members, whom, had he read the article, he would have felt free to call on the phone, had he been able to talk, in order to discuss the economic ramifications of his invention, which, when all was said and done, was still safe in the barn, untouched and unsabotaged by the FBI, the CIA, and the big ag companies.
DR. GARCIA PREFERRED to read the Chicago Tribune, because it carried more human interest articles of the sort that he liked, for example the one about the Polish Catholic firefighter, father of five, who had undergone a successful sex-change operation, but who still lived at home with his wife. The two women and their grown children were shown in numerous color photographs. It looked to Garcia like the two wore just about the same dress size. Dr. Garcia also enjoyed the frequent Tribune articles about nuns and priests, which was not a regular feature of the Times, either.
DEAN NILS HARSTAD THOUGHT it was interesting the way your eyes picked out the two words (Moo University) in a sea of print that had something to do with you. Then he stored this observation for communication to Marly later on, as he did many observations that, he thought, combined a notable fact with a subtle expansion of her horizons. On the whole, he felt, it was all for the best that she had put off the wedding again. It gave him more time to educate and mold her. Wives often took amiss as criticism what fiancées appreciated as attention.
He skimmed the article once to see if it presented any potential trouble to him personally, but it did not. Then he read it carefully. He did not, on balance, disagree with the concept of developing the Tierra del Madre cloud forest or the land around it. Had he not devoted the best years of his life to Third World development, and if the effort had gone wrong here and there, did they not have themselves to blame? The fact was, though of course you didn’t say this to their faces, those peoples didn’t have the capacity for real development because they didn’t possess a higher moral nature, which, Nils thought, was instilled somehow through the effects of cold weather. While on the face of it, this appeared to be a racist concept, which was why Nils never mentioned it to anyone, in fact he had the greatest respect for the moral nature of both the Lapps and the Eskimo peoples, and was willing to admit that even the Scandinavians, even the Norwegians, fell a degree or so below both of these peoples in the rigor of their moral lives.
Gift and his friends could do a lot worse than to come to Dean Nils Harstad for a little advice.
The article, of course, would present a problem for Dr. Gift. While Nils and Dr. Gift were on perfectly friendly terms, Nils was not really very sorry to see Dr. Gift, who made, as a distinguished professor, five thousand dollars a year more than Nils did as a dean (very unorthodox), have to cope with a few problems. Nor, upon reflection, was Nils all that sorry to realize that his brother, Ivar, would have some coping to do. It would remind him that in spite of all appearances, the world was a stony and unforgiving desert, and it was better to fix his attention on the eternal future. Lately, perhaps because things with Marly were getting a bit tricky, Nils had been brooding more and more on Ivar’s future. It was all very well for Ivar and Helen to stroll through this earthly paradise of food and sex and friendship that they made for themselves, oblivious to him and to everything else, but a year is as a blink of the eye in the context of eternity, and there would be regrets, there would certainly be regrets.
Dean Harstad folded up the paper and threw it with some vehemence at the recycling bin.
DR. SANCHEZ WOKE UP with a start and the terrifying conviction that she had fallen and was still falling. Usually when she woke up, she turned her mind first to memories and anticipations of the Chairman touching and caressing her, but this morning that seemed like a box that she dared not unwrap, so instead of lingering in bed, she ran to the bathroom and threw water on her face.
MRS. LORAINE WALKER WASN’T a bit surprised by the article. How could she be, when the reporter had called her Friday and thanked her for being such a terrific help in linking Gift, Horizontal, Seven Stones, and Arlen Martin? She wasn’t going to be surprised the following Monday, either, when another article appeared delving into Seven Stones’ environmental record (shocking) and recycling that story about the timely bankruptcy of Appalachic Coal just before it was ordered to relocate or compensate the victims of that underground mine fire (appalling). Just then, as she was folding her paper and putting it in her bag to take home to Martha, the door opened and there was Gift himself. He walked right past the receptionist. Mrs. Walker put her hands on the keys of her computer and started typing. Only after he had spoken to her twice did she look up.
“Where is Ivar?”
“The provost is taking some personal time this morning.”
“Have you seen this?” He set the flyer on her desk in front of her. “I’m sure there are university regulations against this sort of abomination?”
“University publishing restrictions do not cover ditto machines, as a rule. I could find out if the author used more than two hundred sheets of university-supplied ditto paper, but probably the provost would not act even if he or she did, since ditto paper costs only about a dollar twenty-five a ream.” Mrs. Walker smiled cooperatively.
“I’m talking about the disrespect! I’m talking about the damage to my reputation! I’m talking about the public disclosure of confidential information!”
“I hardly think this information is confidential. Have you seen this morning’s New York Times? I have it here somewhere. Let me see.” She thought her helpful manner was practically authentic.
“WHERE IS IVAR?”
Mrs. Walker gave Dr. Gift one of her dark looks. She did not care to have anyone yell at her, and she made a mental note to do a careful audit of all of Dr. Gift’s university accounts. More than one arrogant or disagreeable faculty member had sat in that hard wooden chair by her desk, kicking his heels while she asked, “Now, what exactly were these ‘incidentals’ you charged to your university account while you were in Phoenix at that conference? Let’s itemize them, shall we, and then you can explain to me how each one relates to your research.” She said to Dr. Gift, “The provost is unavailable. I will have him call you when he gets in, shall I?”
“As SOON as he gets in, got that?”
“Oh, yes, sir, I certainly have got that. Thank you, sir.” Dr. Lionel Gift turned with what he considered to be emphatic dignity and departed. When he had closed the door behind himself, Mrs. Loraine Walker said to the other secretaries, “Do not mention this to the provost. Leave that to me.”
They nodded.
58
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
THEIR ROOM in Dubuque House had not turned out to be the golden, lamplit haven that over Christmas vacation Keri had remembered it as being. Only a few days into the semester and everything about it was already getting on her nerves. Her mother, who had assigned her plenty of housework every day of vacation, and then followed after her, redoing everything “properly,” would have been astonished at the sight of Keri scrubbing the tops of moldings and spraying Tilex in the corners of the shower stalls and buying her own Windex to clean the windows. Sometimes her mother’s voice, rising to a whining pitch just below that of a silent dog whistle, came out of her own mouth as she said to Sherri, “Well, why don’t you pick that stuff up? Who do you expect to pick it up, me?”
The answer, of course, was no, Sherri didn’t expect anyone to pick it up. She expected it to remain on the floor. This was a dorm room, after all.
And therefore, Keri could have replied, abounding in fun and good-fellowship, four girls against the world, the way it had been in the fall. But NO! This semester the four girls were always in each other’s way and their friends were always around smoking cigarettes, casting suspicious glances, keeping their mouths shut, suggesting other places to
go. Keri’s own friends did the same thing, except for the smoking cigarettes part.
The worst thing was that from time to time in the fall, she had longed to be back home on the farm, especially after harvest, when the pace of work would have slowed and her father would have been around and maybe her mother would have made something he liked for dinner, and they would have eaten at the kitchen table, then done the dishes together in water so hot that her father, who washed, would wear rubber gloves, and she and her sister would have pretended to drop the plates and then maybe they all would have watched something on TV, but when she got home it never happened quite that way, and the farm seemed incredibly quiet and her days incredibly endless, so she longed to be back at school, with Sherri reeling out some story about how drunk she had gotten the night before, and Diane laughing, and Mary shaking her head in benign disbelief, but in two weeks back, that hadn’t happened, either. Mary always had friends with her, black friends, who gave off the distinct impression that they did not like Keri; Sherri had gained some weight and was spending what Keri viewed as a dangerous amount of time at the gym; and Diane had a new boyfriend, a Theta Chi with a Mustang. He and Diane were actively pursuing a merger of their corporate assets at the frat house.
Everyone had reverted to type, including Keri, who had spent her Christmas money on three crewneck sweaters in foamy pink, lemon yellow, and navy blue, colors none of the others could or would wear, as if she didn’t plan to loan out her clothes ever again.
The worst thing was that the more she stayed around the room, waiting for something between the four of them to gel, the more it came to seem, even to her, that the room was her domain, a sign that she (1) had nothing better to do, (2) was too much like a mom and not enough like a kid, (3) had illusions about the others that would not be borne out by events, (4) had stalled in some stage of adjustment to university life that the others had passed through, (5) all, some, or none of the above.
But she stayed around anyway, studying on her bed with the radio on low, looking up and saying, “Hi!” if any of the others came in, “How’s it going?” getting, she saw in the mirror, the way she always got in the winter, pink and rabbity-looking around the eyes and nose.
“WHAT’S THE MATTER with you?” said Sherri. “Are you sick or something?”
As usual, Keri just shrugged.
Sherri crossed to the refrigerator and took out her afternoon’s ration of cigarettes, three. What you did (this was all her own idea) was, you got something out of the vending machine whether you wanted it or not, but before you unwrapped it, you lit a cigarette and smoked it as fast as you could, then, while you were stubbing out the butt, and the taste of the cigarette was still in your mouth, you started eating whatever it was that you had bought, and you ate it quickly, more or less stuffing it right down your throat. Then after that, you really didn’t want anything else, nothing to eat, and no more cigarettes, either. Sherri thought it was a brilliant dieting method. The psychological part was that you didn’t do the same thing when you ate something low-fat or good for you—you let yourself enjoy that. She hadn’t told anybody about it, though, and didn’t plan to until the effects were visible. A week or so? Well, who could tell, the whole method could turn out to be so great that she could patent it or something. She put the rest of the cigarettes back in the refrigerator and said, “You want to come to the gym?”
“Haven’t you been to the gym already today?”
“Not really.”
“What does that mean?”
“I just rode the bike a little. It doesn’t count if I don’t go at least forty minutes on the stair climber.”
“That girl down on the third floor—”
“I know, that girl down on the third floor spent all her time at the gym and turned out to be bulemic and now she’s at Red Stick Hospital in an eating disorders program.”
“Well?”
“Well, we all saw her. She was thin already. She was crazy. I’m not crazy.”
“You—”
“I gained seventeen pounds in the fall. When I got home over Christmas, it just hit me that I was the same old Sherri as I used to be. I’m lucky to be here for the spring semester. I could be back there, taking night courses at the junior college. When I go home in May, I’m just not going to be the same old Sherri, I’m just not. So if I go to the gym and pay attention to that, all the other stuff seems to follow. If I don’t go to the gym and let all that slide, than all the other stuff slides, too.”
Keri sighed.
“So what’s the problem with you, anyway?”
“Nothing. It’s just that everybody seems to be going their separate ways all of a sudden.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I liked it the way it was the first semester.”
“You mean everyone hanging around the room?”
“Well, yeah, I guess.”
“It’s a big campus. It’s like a town, but all the facilities are a hell of a lot newer and nicer than the ones in my town. You’re from a city”—(Keri blushed to think that Sherri still believed this lie)—“so maybe you don’t realize what a change it is, but when I got back to Fishburn over break and saw that the only thing to do was STILL hanging out at the A and W, I said to myself that I wasn’t going to waste my chances ever again. Come on, we’ll get suits and go swimming, too. You get to see all the old faculty members nearly naked. The women you can see really naked. It’s kind of scary what they’ve let happen to their tits.”
“I was going to study.”
Sherri pulled on her sweatpants. “Well, it’s up to you.” She shrugged, grabbed her bag, and slammed the door on her way out.
MARY HAD TO admit that she was a little irritated to find Keri still there when she got back from her two o’clock English class. She had counted on having the room to herself. “How’s it going?” Keri said, just the way she always did, so Mary said, “I thought you had your lab Thursday afternoon.”
“It was changed to Tuesday.”
“I have art all afternoon Tuesday!”
“So?”
Mary recollected herself before she revealed the size of her disappointment. The fact was that it had gotten so that she only felt comfortable in the room when she was alone. She left right after breakfast and came back right before bed, but that schedule was beginning to make her feel homeless and she didn’t like that, either, hauling all her books with her all day, spending too much time in the library, hanging out with Hassan until he got a little bored with her.
She pursed her lips in annoyance and hung up her coat, then climbed onto her bunk with her statistics book. Keri had apparently gone back to reading, and maybe it would be okay if she really had, but she kept sighing and fidgeting and bouncing on the bed. She was eating something, too. She rustled the paper very softly, clearly trying not to disturb Mary, but the very softness of the rustle made Mary feel crazy. And then she coughed a tiny, martyred cough into her hand or her pillow or something. Mary said, “You can cough in a normal tone of voice if you have to.”
“That’s all right.”
Whining again, thought Mary.
More silence, silence that distracted Mary until she couldn’t even focus on her statistics textbook enough to recognize the words.
But she didn’t want to talk. That’s what Keri wanted her to do, to talk about something, and that’s exactly what she herself did not want to do, what she had made up her mind that she wasn’t going to do anymore. It was just the way her friend Divonne said it was: First of all, none of them knew any other black people, so you had to explain every little thing (“And even after you do that, they get half of it wrong,” said Divonne), then they assumed that you were talking not just for yourself but for all black people, so they got nervous or offended or something, so then you had to explain more. It was too time-consuming and wasn’t getting her anywhere. Her plan for the next fall was to live with Divonne and some other black women in an apartment they knew they could get about three
blocks from campus. “The whole idea of that dorm is typical of them,” said Divonne. “They pay you to be like them.” At this apartment where they would move, the women celebrated Kwanzaa and other African holidays, and two of the women had actually been to West Africa on a tour last summer.
It was a good plan, but not one that she intended to divulge to Carol. For one thing, it would cost her about a hundred dollars a month more to live away from Dubuque House—that was twelve hundred dollars a year that Carol would resent, and her resentment earned interest depending on the prime rate. Twelve hundred dollars now amounted to a certain larger amount later that they would need to move to that terrific kitchen-bath combination, or else a certain longer time that it would take them to get there. One or the other—that was how the numbers worked. Or maybe she expected Malcolm or Cyrus to make up for her? Oh, Mary could hear everything Carol would have to say on the subject, but Carol wasn’t here, and she didn’t understand living in Dubuque House the way Divonne did.
Mary’s main problem this semester was that she was irritable. It was like being premenstrual all the time. No, her main problem was that she felt guilty about being irritable. For that reason, she had come to especially admire Divonne, whom she had found hard to take in the fall. Divonne claimed irritability as her birthright, and made an art of it, rather the way Carol did, but with this difference, that Divonne supported her and agreed with her rather than criticizing and prodding her.
Keri sighed. It was a long, vulnerable, unhappy sigh that seemed to re-echo off the walls and resonate with all the self-pity that white girls had for themselves. Mary slammed her book shut.
“What’s the matter?” Keri’s voice rose, anxious and sheepish. That’s what white girls were always asking their boyfriends. Every time you eavesdropped on a conversation between a white couple, she would be saying, “What’s the matter?” or “What are you thinking?” or “Are you upset about something?” and he would be saying, “Nothing, no problem, don’t worry about it.”