I Am Charlotte Simmons (82 page)

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Authors: Tom Wolfe

BOOK: I Am Charlotte Simmons
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She was stunned when Daddy—
Daddy
—said, “Charlotte, we're gonna put you right”—
riot
—“here at the head a the table, so's you can tell everybody”—
everbuddy
—“about Dupont. Everybody's gonna be real interested”—
innerested
. He looked about at the Thomses, Miss Pennington. “Isn't that right?”
In'at riot?
Murmurs, burbles of confirmation, and Laurie's “Like totally!”
Charlotte experienced a pain that wasn't physical but might as well have been. A great pressure squeezed her head from either side and bore down on the top of her skull. There was no worse fate than the sentence Daddy had just meted out. In the same instant it struck her just how countrified Daddy's speech really was, Momma's, too—and just how collegiate Laurie's had become: Laurie's with all the
like totallys
and
cools
and
awesomes
and
ohmygods
.
Charlotte blurted out, “No, Daddy!” She knew she should demur in a calm, somewhat light way, but she was long past wily levity. She was in pain. “Nobody wants to hear me go on about—school!”
School
. She avoided the name Dupont at all cost; too painful. “Laurie—please!—you sit here. I want to hear about N.C. State!”
Friendly protests all around, as if her reluctance was mere modesty. So she found herself sitting at the table on one of the drugstore bentwood chairs Daddy had brought back to life. The inquisitors stared at her down both sides of the table. On one side were Mr. Thoms, sitting closest to her, Laurie,
and Momma—or rather, that's where Momma would be sitting—right now she was in the kitchen—and on the other side were Miss Pennington, sitting closest, Mrs. Thoms, and Daddy.
Mrs
.
Thoms!
—she was Death, sitting there with a hypocritical smile on her face, waiting for the perfect moment in which to cut her down. And Miss Pennington, barely twenty-four inches away from her—Miss Pennington was … the Betrayed … a pending broken heart as big as the moon … in a word, guilt. The rest were merely eyewitnesses to the self-destruction of Charlotte Simmons. Merely? Two of them were Momma and Daddy, still ignorant of the truth, whom she had made the proudest parents in Alleghany County … before her hollow, sham character revealed itself … One was Mr. Thoms, the elder who had officially and sonorously proclaimed her to all of Alleghany County as
the young woman who …
and the other was the young woman who … had scarcely been noticed because Charlotte Simmons's eminence had cast such a long, deep shadow—Laurie, the runner-up who had proved to be everything the illustrious Presidential Scholar wasn't. She had taken her inevitable
fucking
and come back from it as a whole person who was a delight to have around, a young woman who … was ready to head forth, promising as the dawn, into a limitless future.
Thank God, Momma arrived in no time, bearing a tray with the aroma of a freshly roasted turkey, which she set before Daddy along with an old carving knife and fork and a sharpener. The aroma! A single look at the crisp but still moist skin covering the bird's mighty breast, and even a person who had never seen such a thing before would know that here was perfection. Then came Daddy's part, thank God, providing a further reprieve. Daddy stood up and started sharpening the knife on an old-fashioned sharpening rod. It made a rasping sound that brought Buddy and Sam right out of the kitchen to catch the show that Daddy was so very deft, so precise at, the way he first cut the skin that held the thighs and drumsticks tight against the carcass and then found precisely the crucial point where the thighbone joined the hip. He severed the joint with a single, seemingly silken strike, causing the thigh to fall away cleanly, and then he began carving the breast into slices as big and intact and yet as thin and even as you could possibly ask for. The boys were agog at the craftsmanship of it and couldn't wait for the part where Daddy started on the other side of the breast, because he would always sharpen the knife on the rod again, and they loved to hear the rasping sound and see the way Daddy flourished the sharpening rod and the knife like a performer. Laurie said, “Bravo, Mr. Simmons!” and the others oohed
and laughed and clapped, which made Daddy smile. Meantime, Momma brought out the “mystery,” which had a sweet, exotic aroma, and the boiled snap beans, which didn't have much of an odor themselves, but the diced onions in vinegar that went over the snaps had a smell that was sharp and sweet at the same time, and then came the cranberry jelly that Momma made herself and the pickled peaches she always pickled herself late in the summer—and the aroma of the peaches was sublime, and their taste was “ambrosial,” which was a word Momma loved—and everybody was making a big fuss over Momma and her cooking.
No sooner had the applause for Momma as chef crested than Mrs. Thoms turned to Charlotte and said, “Charlotte, how is the cuisine at Dupont compared to
this
?”
Charlotte said, “It's—it's—” She was trying to think of the right word,
le mot juste,
but it wasn't that at all. It was the pain it caused her to have to enter the conversation, to have to emerge from the shell she thought she had begun to create about herself. The words she sought were whatever would answer the question and shut it down and not suggest any follow-up. “It's—there's no comparison. Nothing compares to Momma's cooking.” She smiled to try to show that she was keeping things light—and she herself could tell that somehow the smile flopped about, disconnected from lightheartedness or amusement.
Mrs. Thoms was not to be put off, however. “Oh, I can understand that. I'm sure nothing actually does compare to home cooking, not when it's
this
good. I guess what I mean is, how would you rate the food in general at Dupont?”
“It's not bad.”
Silence. Her response, or lack of one, had created an awkward silence.
“Just not bad?” said Mrs. Thoms, soldiering on.
Charlotte thought and thought, mainly about how toilsome it was to have to talk … to anybody about anything, especially anything to do with Dupont. Aloud she managed to say, “More or less.”
“More or less?” said Mrs. Thoms.
Silence. It was so bad that Charlotte realized she had to force herself to do something … anything. She finally managed to say, “I eat all my meals at the Abbey—the dining hall.”
She didn't want to mention even the name of a building at Dupont. Everyone at the table wore a look that said, “And therefore?”
It was torture, this being forced to talk. “I mean, it's mostly the same.”
Everyone looked baffled. With an agonized frown she said, “What about you, Laurie?”
“What about me what?” said Laurie.
“I don't know … Do you eat all your meals in the same place?—I guess.”
Laurie gave her an ironic cross-eyed look of the sort that asks, “Are you trying to mess up my mind—or wot?” She drew a blank from Charlotte's face. After a dreadful pause Laurie said, “Well, our dorm has its own cafeteria, but there are a lot of restaurants.”
“There must be a lot of restaurants around Dupont, too,” said Mrs. Thoms, looking at Charlotte.
“There are,” said Charlotte—it was so painful, forcing the words out—“but they aren't included in my meal plan, not even the one in the middle of campus. I always eat in the dining hall.”
Please!
I don't
want
to talk about Dupont!
Mrs. Thoms looked across the table at Laurie, Momma, and Mr. Thoms, and said, “Now, I think Charlotte's getting around a lot more than she lets on. A sister of a sister-in-law of mine has a daughter who has a friend who goes to Dupont, a senior—as a matter of fact she's the president of one of the big sororities—and
she
knows who Charlotte is. In fact she seems to know a lot more about Charlotte than Charlotte knows about her, and Charlotte's a freshman.”
Charlotte saw Momma break into a smile, no doubt because this meant that her little genius had already established a presence on campus. A presence, all right—Mrs. Thoms was looking at her and smiling, too—but could it be with some sort of twisted Sarc 3 cruelty? Could it be that …
Death
was speaking? This woman was now going to tell it all … for the perverse joy of watching the insect squirm!
The reply came from the mouth of a panicked girl. “I don't see how! I mean, I've never even met her. I've heard of her—she's the president of her sorority and everything, but I don't
know
her. I wouldn't know her if she came walking in that door. There's just no reason in the world why she would even know my name! I don't have anything to do with her or any friends of hers or the kind of people who would—”
She stopped. Too late, she realized they were all looking at her in a funny way. Now they would all think there was … definitely something going on here, wouldn't they? She had to say something that showed that this
wasn't important and didn't disturb her. “She must have me mixed up with somebody else.”
Of course that didn't help at all. Mrs. Thoms said with a chuckle, “Well, is there somebody else from Sparta, North Carolina, who's a freshman at Dupont?”
Charlotte was speechless … and in greater panic. Why would Lucy Page ever mention Sparta? Because
they
had told her about this naïve hick freshman who kept snapping at people with her “Sparta—you never heard of it” put-down. And why would Mrs. Thoms say that? Because she knew the whole story and was set to torture her with it, drop by drop—in front of her family.
Charlotte looked at Mrs. Thoms in sheer fear. Consciously she realized that she should hate this woman who had come into her home for the perverse pleasure of humiliating her in front of her parents and her two little brothers, who were probably listening in from the kitchen. But Charlotte Simmons no longer had any right to take the moral high ground. She was too worthless to pass judgment on another person, no matter what she was doing.
The silence lengthened in a baffling way that made everybody at the table, the panicked one was sure, realize that they had all at once been confronted with some unspeakable state of affairs.
“I just don't know,” Charlotte said finally. But why had she said it in such a timid little voice? So she added a smile—which made things still worse! What had she done but call yet more attention to her guilt?
She slogged on. Everybody was dying to hear all about the fabled Dupont, which to them obviously was Olympus, Parnassus, Shangri-la, and the peaks of Darién all rolled into one. What were the teachers like? “They're fine,” said Charlotte. She wanted to leave it at that, but she saw six people staring at her with shortchanged looks on their faces. So she added, “ … except for the T.A.s.” She immediately regretted the emendation. Who were they? What was wrong with them? “They're graduate students. There's nothing wrong with them. They just don't know very much about the subjects.” Surely—there must be some brilliant teachers there? “There are,” said Charlotte, and that was the end of that. How did she find living in a coed dorm? “You sort of get used to it—” And that was the end of that. And the girls shared bathrooms with the boys? “You just sort of deal with it the best you can.” And that was the end of that—in her mind—but the grownups wouldn't let it alone. Wasn't it embarrassing sometimes? “Not a whole
lot, as long as you keep your eyes on the tiles in the floor and the enamel in the basin and don't look in the mirror and don't listen to anything”—and that was as much as she cared to say about that. Did she see much of the athletes on campus? “No.” And that was that, except Momma reminded her that she had told Buddy and Sam that she knew a basketball star. “That's true, I do know one, but I wouldn't call him a star.” She left it at that—but who is he? What's his name? “He's called Jojo Johanssen.” What was he like? “He's nice.” That was all, nice? “Well … he's about as bright as the bottom of an old skillet.” She declined to elaborate. What was her roommate like? “She's all right.” Just all right? “I hardly ever see her. We have different schedules.” Daddy put on a big grin and said that Buddy wanted to know if she had a boyfriend, but he never did hear the answer. Polite chuckling all around the table.
“Charlotte!” Laurie piped up. “Spill it!”
Bitterly, Charlotte saw Hoyt in her mind's eye, then said, “No, I don't.”
She said it deadpan, without humor, without regret, as if she'd been asked whether she had an electric blender in her room. Momma wanted to know where students went on dates. “Nobody goes out on a date, Momma. The girls go out in groups, and the boys go out in groups, and they hope they find somebody they like.”
Momma seemed appalled and wanted to know if Charlotte did that. “I did one time—I went out with some of my friends? But it was so stupid, I never did it again.”
Mrs. Thoms wanted to know what she did instead. By now she was feeling so despondent, so unworthy of human company, she said, “Nothing. I don't go out. I'd rather read a book.” Saturday night—on the weekend—she didn't go out at all? “No, I never go out.” Same disengaged poker face. Unconsciously she was beginning to enjoy misery and misanthropy, just the way you'd hear people in Alleghany County say, “Cousin Peggy? She's enjoying poor health.”

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