by Mandy Berman
“I wanted to have a playdate with Isabelle,” Henri whined as they walked out of the school.
“Maybe another time,” Simone lied, and held onto his hand a little bit tighter.
8.
THE STUDENTS IN Professor Roiphe’s seminar Sex, Sentiment, and Sympathy were mostly young women, mostly keen and overzealous, their notebooks open to a fresh page before the start of every class. They were the kind of girls who, like Fiona, had fallen in love with language early, who’d holed themselves up in their teenage bedrooms but were afraid to share what had really allowed them to love books in the first place: the romance of Austen and the Brontës, or the sisterly bonds in Little Women, or, for the moodier girls, the glorified depressiveness of The Bell Jar. But they were afraid to be marked as too feminine or drippy or suicidal, and Fiona understood not wanting to be identified by what you loved.
So when Professor Roiphe had asked, back on the first day of class, what they’d all read over the summer, they hid behind the safe and plot-centric, emotionally withholding voices, the men who wrote like men and the women who wrote like men: Salinger and Welty and Hemingway and O’Connor. The two young men in the class threw in a Faulkner and a Cormac McCarthy to assert that they had an interest in the gothic, that they weren’t afraid of violence. Fiona told the truth: that she’d read the entire Gossip Girl series over the summer—the only stuff she managed to get through—to which the other students were unsure how to react. (This was, after all, a class about women being punished for their sexual and romantic choices in a patriarchal society. It stood to reason that the students in it ought to start not being embarrassed for liking feminine literature.) Liv simultaneously defended and one-upped her friend’s summer reading, sharing that she had read the more highbrow but “thematically similar” Anna Karenina during the month of July. Professor Roiphe had appreciated both of their answers, had said that, in fact, the course would be focusing on similar themes of societal and class constraints, and these were strong examples of how the sentimental novel has persisted over centuries and into today.
The seminar took place at a round table in Leviathan. They sat in gray-blue plastic chairs around the wooden table, which showed decades of wear: initials carved into the sides, varnish gone where strips of adhesive tape had been peeled away. The off-white walls, too, were peeling in the corners. On one wall, there were four black-and-white photos, appearing to be from the seventies, the frames slightly askew, of professors teaching, fingers up in the middle of pontificating, of a trio of diverse students—one black girl with an Afro, a Latino boy in bell-bottoms, and a white girl with Farrah Fawcett–blown hair—leaning forward in their seats, rapt. Fiona had no idea the significance of these photos in this particular classroom. Considering that Buchanan cost as much money as it did, she often wondered about the shabby nature of the rooms, about how no attention whatsoever was spent on maintaining them. Where did all that money go? Probably to fancy visiting professors like Oliver Ash.
Today they were discussing The Coquette, and Professor Roiphe had written on the board, “Is Foster subversive?”
She was lecturing: “On the surface, the novel is purely instructional, no? Eliza Wharton sins and dies, and in this respect, she satisfies the conservative moralism demanded of the time period in which it was written. Foster could not have publicly penned a novel that questioned the patriarchal demands on women in 1797; this was a time in which, at the formation of our brand-new nation, many believed that gaining control over women would lead to a prosperous and, perhaps more important, virtuous republic. And one way control was gained was through books: women could and should read, because they were the educators of our future generation, but they shouldn’t be too well-read. A learned woman was a dangerous woman.
“So a book that came out and said ‘Women should not be punished for wanting love—for wanting more than the life of a homemaker, or, God forbid, sex’—would flat-out never have been published. But there’s an argument to be made that Foster’s novel does, in fact, say this. The real Eliza Wharton—Elizabeth Whitman was her name; Foster doesn’t take many pains to disguise her—died in 1788, and the New England papers turned her death into a moral allegory, blaming her demise on the reading of romance novels. This was Foster’s response; it paints Whitman in a more sympathetic light, and allows room for a more sensitive reader to understand the impulses that might lead Whitman to make the decisions she does.”
She wrote “moralism” on one side of the board, and “sympathy” on the other. Liv, sitting next to Fiona, was taking prodigious notes, barely looking up from her notebook.
“And an even more sensitive reader,” Professor Roiphe continued, “might infer that Foster’s novel is a sort of secret message to all the other women of the time reading romance novels. It satisfies the guidelines of the moral conservatives, but it also is a romance novel itself. The epistolary form, with all of its different points of view, would allow a shallow reader to be satisfied with the book as a cautionary tale, but there are also times in which Eliza appears as a victim of the marital standards heaped upon her. Structurally, politically, Foster is perhaps criticizing societal norms, and the republic itself, for leading Eliza to this point. And, still—still—even though it was disguised within itself, Foster published it under a pseudonym. This was how tightly the reins on women were held.”
Fiona looked over at Dave, who was doodling in his notebook, apparently not listening to Professor Roiphe. Today he was wearing an oversized flannel shirt, rolled up around his elbows, the dark hair on his forearms showing. He hadn’t trimmed his beard in a while, and the hair around his mouth had spread wildly to his cheeks.
“Do you believe the novel is subversive?” Professor Roiphe asked the class. “How did you read it?”
Liv raised her hand. Professor Roiphe waited for a few moments to see that no one else was volunteering, and gave in to Liv, whose hand was always shooting up first.
“Yes,” Professor Roiphe said, sounding somewhat resigned. “Liv.”
“I did,” Liv said. “I thought the epistolary form gave us some insight into her decision-making in a way that was meant to make us sympathetic toward her.”
“Okay,” Professor Roiphe said. “Can you point to an example?”
“Yes, so, she has these really modern desires to simply enjoy herself for the experiences themselves.” Liv leafed through the pages. “Here, on page thirteen: ‘I am young, gay, volatile….Let me then enjoy that freedom which I so highly prize. Let me have opportunity, unbiased by opinion, to gratify my natural disposition in a participation of those pleasures which youth and innocence afford.’ She says things like this throughout the book, and we’re supposed to relate to that feeling.”
Dave suddenly perked up and raised his hand.
“Yeah, but that’s a really modern reading,” he said. “I’m not sure we are supposed to relate to her, because all along the way, there are dissenters, there are people who are morally rebuking her, and I think those are the people we’re supposed to take the side of. Because right after Eliza says that, Mrs. Richman responds to her, ‘Of such pleasures, no one, my dear, would wish to deprive you. But beware, Eliza!—Though strowed with flowers, when contemplated by your lively imagination, it is, after all, a slippery, thorny path.’ She gets the last word in that conversation.”
“What about all her letters with her friend Lucy?” Liv said.
“What about them?” said Dave.
“Why else would the author include such personal correspondence as a confidential one between a woman and her best friend?”
“Because Lucy is supposed to be the voice of reason,” Dave said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “And we’re supposed to align with her, not with Eliza. She’s the one who gets married and has a happy ending. That’s what readers of this time are supposed to want.”
“I don’t know,” Liv said,
shaking her head. “On the surface, yes. I think the tragedy of Eliza’s death is supposed to be critical of the patriarchy, though. It’s tragic that she dies because the patriarchy forced this upon her, because awful men like Sanford gave her no choice but to give in to him.”
“I’m not sure why that’s Sanford’s fault, though,” Dave said. “Eliza could say no to him, but she doesn’t.”
Liv was full of passion and had lots more to say, but Professor Roiphe interceded.
“She could say no,” she said. “That’s right. But what about the idea of female agency? Is Foster for or against it? Look to page forty-eight.” As they paged through their books, Fiona looked up to see Liv looking over at Dave with admiration, or fury, or a mix of both.
* * *
—
After class, Liv stayed behind to ask Professor Roiphe a question about her project. Fiona thought that maybe this was her chance: maybe today would be the day that she talked to Mountain Man after class.
“Dave,” she said, following him out. He turned, surprised to hear his own name.
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to say, I thought that was interesting, what you were arguing about with Liv in class.”
“Oh,” he said. “Thanks.”
“I think I agree with you,” she said, though she hadn’t finished the book. “I think it’s unwise to take too modern a stance on a book that was written over two hundred years ago.”
He nodded, as if this topic was now so far beyond his radar that he’d already forgotten about it the minute he left the classroom.
They were crossing through the quad outside of the library now, past the Adirondack chairs where she had sat and talked to her mother a few weeks earlier. Since then, leaves had fallen from the trees and were crunching under their feet as they cut across the lawn toward Phillips Avenue.
“Do you live this way, too?” she asked, which she knew as soon as she said it was a dumb question, because all upperclassmen lived off campus, and almost all of them lived on Phillips Avenue or on one of the side streets stemming from it.
“Yeah, I’m on North French,” he said.
“Cool,” she said. “I’m on North Abbott. Neighbors.” The streets were two away from each other, not really closer to or farther apart from one another than your average seniors at Buchanan would live.
“What are you up to this weekend?” she asked.
“Not sure yet,” he said, not reciprocating the question, as she had hoped.
They walked down Phillips together, toward her block.
“Anyway, this Saturday,” she said, trying to sound casual, “there’s a party at Zeta they do every year. It’s Hawaiian-themed. They fill the basement with sand.”
“Sounds messy.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Um, I’m not sure what I’m up to,” he said. “My roommate’s in Zeta, so he could probably get me on the list. You gonna be there?”
Inside, Fiona delighted. This was the first clue he gave that he might, in any remote way, be interested in her.
“Definitely,” she said. “You should come.”
“Cool,” he said. “Maybe I will.”
“All right,” she said.
“Wasn’t that your street?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. They’d walked half a block down Phillips past Abbott. “Whoops.” She pivoted. “I’ll see you Saturday, then?”
“Cool,” he said, and gave her a little wave as she walked back in the direction they came from.
* * *
—
All day Saturday, she labored over what she might wear. Should she go casual, in jeans and a black top? More dressed up, in a tight dress and heels? Marley and Liv were at the library, so Fiona paraded her outfits in front of Lula, who seemed more disapproving with each new one than the last.
“Trying too hard,” she said to a floral dress that highlighted Fiona’s bosom.
“Too boring,” she said to jeans and a cotton button-down.
After Fiona’s own closet was exhausted, they went down to Lula’s. Lula had better taste than Fiona did: her closet was filled with vintage flared jeans, silk scarves, never-worn suede heels, Frye boots, sturdy motorcycle and army jackets, and a dozen Diane von Furstenberg dresses that had belonged to her mother in the seventies.
“What about this?” Lula said, pulling out one of the DVF dresses: a classic wrap, deep V-cut in the front, with three-quarter-length sleeves and a short, flared skirt. It was black with small beige teardrops patterned throughout, and a matching belt to cinch the waist.
“Will it fit?” Fiona said. It was elegant yet flirty, refined yet effortless: the exact balance that she wanted to strike. But Lula was a good four inches taller than she.
“Try it,” Lula said, and Fiona undressed to her bra and underwear.
“You’ve gotten so skinny,” Lula said, in the cadence of a compliment. Fiona felt herself blush with pleasure; Lula herself was thin, though always had been. She had fewer curves than Fiona did, and her thinness took a more natural form, that of the tall, gamine Manhattanite. But it was additionally rewarding when a thin person recognized Fiona’s own thinness.
“How do I do this?” Fiona said, with the dress open, fumbling with the tie. Lula helped her to pull one end of the belt through the hole, wrapping it around the back and toward the front, joining it to the other end in a tight bow right of center.
Lula stepped back to appraise her friend.
“You look hot,” she decided.
Fiona checked the full-length mirror on the back of the door. Despite the two women’s different body types, the dress had somehow molded to Fiona’s form. Her breasts were highlighted, but not as obviously as with the floral dress; rather than pushed into the bodice, the V-cut here dipped only to the middle point of her cleavage, and narrowly so, allowing for the right amount of allure. Her waist looked tiny, and the flared skirt lightened up the look, making it more playful than serious.
“I do, don’t I?” Fiona allowed herself to say. “Do I wear heels?”
“God, no,” Lula said. “Wait.” She disappeared into the back of her closet and resurfaced with a pair of ankle booties, camel colored, with a block heel.
“Have you even worn these?” Fiona asked, picking up one of the shoes and inspecting its unscathed surface.
“And this.” She took a black leather motorcycle jacket from its hanger and threw it to Fiona, who caught it.
The boots were a bit big, but not obviously so; only Fiona would notice the small space between her heel and the back of the shoe. And the jacket pulled the whole look together, as Lula knew it would. Lula took a long look at the completed outfit. She put her fingers to her mouth and kissed them, like an Italian chef.
“You’re getting laid tonight,” she said. “The dress can be dry-cleaned, but don’t spill on the shoes. They’re suede.”
* * *
Wow-ee Maui was one of Zeta’s most popular parties of the year. Every fall, the first weekend of November, they filled the entire basement of their house with a foot of sand, poured rum punch into coconut shells, and “lei-ed” every girl that entered the frat house with a plastic version of the real thing. The fraternity brothers wore grass skirts over their jeans, and some girls dressed for the theme in tropical dresses, though this was mostly what underclassmen did, since older girls knew it was better to wear what you wanted than to conform your outfit to the theme of a frat party.
Fiona had managed to get all four of them to come out, which hadn’t happened since the night they went to Truckstop at the start of the semester. Brandon, who seemed to have radar on Liv, appeared the moment the four of them walked through the front door, running down the wide steps and scooping her up in the main entryway. She squealed with faux annoyance as he spun her around; then he let her down and kissed her.
&
nbsp; “Hey, girls,” he said to the three of them, pulling Liv close to himself. “Who needs to get lei-ed?” He laughed at the play on words, as if he were the first person to come up with it. He lifted an arm, which held a dozen or so of the plastic garlands. Liv and Marley each took one, but Fiona and Lula declined, too conscious of their good outfits to ruin them with a prop from Party City.
Fiona looked around at the young girls streaming in behind them, already tottering on their heels. At the boys: some serving punch from a table in the entryway, others moving toward the basement, where the party really took place. Fiona could hear the bass pumping. She was looking for Dave without trying to make it seem like she was obviously looking for him, though she knew she’d be preoccupied with thoughts of finding him all night, worried that she might miss him if she wasn’t paying close enough attention.
They headed downstairs, where it was busy and loud but not too packed, not like it would be in an hour, and Brandon handed them all coconuts filled with fruit punch. It was mostly brothers and their girlfriends; they’d gotten there fairly early. Fiona took a sip: it tasted like red Kool-Aid. Marley and Lula ran into a girl they knew from rugby—they used to play, freshman and sophomore years. Liv was making out with Brandon. Fiona stood with Marley and Lula for a while, not quite able to follow the rugby-centric conversation—people she didn’t know, terms she didn’t understand—and she drank her fruit punch quickly. She looked over at the beer pong table on the other side of the staircase, at some frat brothers playing, yelling things across the table at each other, but it wasn’t beer pong: there was no Ping-Pong ball. It was some game only they understood, and it appeared that girls weren’t allowed to play: some girlfriends were standing around the table next to their boyfriends, who were ignoring them. The girlfriends, with leis around their necks, were chatting with one another, holding coconuts and watching the game. Fiona told Marley and Lula she’d be right back, and walked over to the bar behind the pong table for a refill. There was already sand inside the too-big-for-her booties.