Penelope (36 page)

After the play, Penelope really wanted to leave the theater and never return. Unfortunately, as she was gathering up her stuff, she saw Gustav talking with Bitty and Emma in the lobby, blocking the only exit. He was holding several bouquets. Penelope decided it was better to take the bull by the horns, so she started walking toward them rapidly, hoping to imply she was on her way somewhere and could not talk. This did not work, as Gustav intercepted and grabbed her arm as she was reaching for the door. He took one of the bouquets he was holding and gave it to her. Penelope had no choice but to stop.

“Darling!” said Gustav. He put his arm around her. He had gotten her pink carnations. Bitty was holding a single orchid. “I have been looking all over for you. You were wonderful in the play, simply wonderful.”

“Oh, thanks,” said Penelope, suddenly worried she was going
to burst into tears. The violence of some of her emotions amazed her. She should just become a hermit and live up in Cornish, New Hampshire.

“We’re going out to dinner, darling, to celebrate. Come have dinner with us.”

“Oh, Gustav,” said Emma, “I’m sure she’s tired.” Penelope noted with satisfaction that Emma was holding purple carnations.

“That’s OK,” said Penelope. “I don’t need dinner. I’m not very hungry.”

“Oh, darling. At least come for the fun of it. I am going to buy all you girls a massive amount of drinks. You need it after this play. My God, that marionette show. I have never laughed harder in my life.” Gustav squeezed Penelope’s shoulder. “I haven’t seen you in forever, dear.”

“I know,” said Penelope, wriggling away. “It’s too bad! But I have to go backstage and get my things. It will take too much time.”

“You can text us later and come meet us,” said Emma.

“But what about your phone?” asked Penelope. She had the satisfaction of seeing Emma look confused.

“Gustav,” said Bitty, “we really need to go. We have to get to the Fly sometime before midnight!”

“Let me get them with you,” said Gustav to Penelope, apparently referring to her things.

“Oh, that’s OK!” said Penelope.

Penelope started walking backstage very quickly. Gustav followed her. She had lied when she said her stuff was there, but now she had to follow through. Luckily, she found a plastic grocery bag on the floor by the makeup table. She started to fill it with all the communal makeup. Gustav sat down in a nearby chair, put his feet up on the makeup table, and stared at Penelope. It appeared he was going to wait until she was done with this. Penelope started to put the makeup in the plastic bag very slowly.

“I’m tired, darling.” Gustav sighed.

“Oh, really?” said Penelope.

“Yes,” said Gustav. “I positively hate getting up early. Such an overrated virtue.”

“I didn’t know it was a virtue,” said Penelope.

“Oh, of course it is, darling. Haven’t you heard all those contemptible expressions concerning early rising?”

“No,” said Penelope.

“ ‘The early bird catches the worm’ and all that?”

“Oh, maybe,” said Penelope. “Why were you up so early?”

“I was up early because I went to the arboretum. I have no great truck with the thing myself but Harvard has one, and my family supports it rather extensively. Once a year or so, I go out and check how everything is doing. You would hate it because of your stance on nature.”

Gustav laughed genially and it dawned on Penelope that she had been thinking about this trip to the arboretum in an entirely wrong way. While in her room and throughout the play, she had decided that this whole thing was a concerted snub, a directed effort to make her feel unwelcome. In actuality, Gustav had simply forgotten he had ever invited her to the arboretum at all. He just didn’t care. He had even entirely forgotten their previous conversation. He had repeated himself exactly. Did he repeat himself all the time? It was something to note.

“That’s cool,” said Penelope. A concerted snub is a concerted snub, after all. You read about them and they are dramatic, final, and personal. This was sort of worse.

“Emma and Bitty came. They didn’t seem to have that good of a time. But they can’t say I didn’t warn them.”

“I have to go,” blurted out Penelope.

“Well, all right, dear,” said Gustav, surprised. He stood up. “If you must go, you must go, I can’t keep you. I did want to take you out, but I imagine you are so tired.” He patted Penelope on the head in an abstracted manner.

Penelope looked at Gustav. He looked so handsome. Like someone in Princess Grace’s family. Maybe the whole problem was that she herself was never honest about her intentions. If
perhaps she had said to Gustav, “Gustav, let’s see each other during the day,” he might have done it. If she had said something to Emma about going to the arboretum, she might have invited her. But she never said anything to anyone about anything.

“Gustav,” said Penelope, “I have to ask you a question.”

“Shoot, darling,” said Gustav. He stretched and yawned.

“Why have we never hung out during the day, do you think?”

“Why, darling,” said Gustav, looking slightly taken aback, “whatever do you mean? Of course we have.”

“Oh,” said Penelope.

“My, you are funny,” said Gustav.

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

“Darling,” said Gustav, “are you upset about that? Is that why you didn’t want to go to dinner?”

“No,” said Penelope. “I don’t know.”

Gustav rubbed his finger against his temple as if he had a migraine.

“You and I. We have a lot of fun together, of course. But you have no right to be upset or something, dear. We are just friends. I have things to do during the day.”

“OK,” said Penelope. That stung. Did he think that she thought they were dating? But, then of course, they weren’t not dating. She was silent for a moment. “Well, what is happening?”

Gustav let out an exasperated sigh. “Whatever do you mean by that?”

“Are we really friends? I mean, I didn’t think we were dating, but I don’t know.”

“Oh, darling,” said Gustav. He ran his hand through his hair. “Well, I don’t know. I can’t be in anything serious at the moment.”

“Oh, I didn’t think it was really serious or anything,” said Penelope, who suddenly had a feeling in her stomach that occurs when you realize that your time enjoying composure is rapidly coming to a close.

“Darling,” said Gustav. He made a tsking noise. “I never
thought I’d have this sort of thing with you. You’re not the dramatic type. It’s a little bit bourgeois to expect a picket fence and a house in Scarsdale, don’t you think?”

“But I am bourgeois. That is literally what I am in society,” said Penelope. “I also never said anything about Scarsdale. So I don’t think we can really keep this going.”

“All right, darling,” said Gustav. “Although I don’t really know what you mean by ‘this.’ We can still be friends, of course. I want to be.”

“I don’t really think so,” said Penelope, her voice shaking. She was about to cry. “I sort of always knew there was something wrong, the way you always used to see me at such weird times.”

“What?” said Gustav. “The melodrama, my dear! It doesn’t appeal to me.”

“Oh, OK,” said Penelope, and sprinted out of the backstage area and up the stairs to the exit.

Penelope sat down on a wide cement stair outside the theater. It was really cold out and very dark. A brick patio stretched from the stair to the street. Across the street was a vintage-looking drugstore and a vintage-looking grocery store and an American Apparel.

Penelope started crying. It had been ill advised to have that conversation with Gustav, she knew. Conversations like those were dumb. They only confirmed what you already knew.

“What a night,” said someone theatrically into the air. It was Henry Wills-Mather and he was stretching his hands widely toward the sky, like Lee Radziwill on a trip to India.

“Hi,” said Penelope quietly.

“Oh, who’s there?” said Henry Wills-Mather looking around.

“It’s me, Penelope,” said Penelope, still sitting on the stair. She huddled closer into her knees.

“Oh, Penelope,” said Henry Wills-Mather. “Hello.” He
looked at her without recognition. Then he sat down on the step next to her. Penelope was surprised. She thought by saying hi she would scare him away so she could cry in peace.

Henry Wills-Mather stared ruminatively in the direction of the vintage drugstore.

“Did you think we had a good show tonight?” asked Penelope for lack of a better topic.

“Yes,” said Henry Wills-Mather, “I did. Of course, we are going to have to pay for the pianos. I didn’t know that at first when we ordered you to destroy them, but now I do. Now I know. But it’s OK.”

“Yeah,” said Penelope.

“The theater is a demanding mistress,” said Henry Wills-Mather.

“I could see that,” said Penelope

“I fell in love with her as a young boy,” said Henry Wills-Mather.

“Gross,” said someone. It was Lan. Penelope wondered how long she had been there. She was wearing a gray military jacket with huge pockets and she was smoking a cigarette. Raymond was lying on her foot.

“What did you think of tonight’s show, Lan?” asked Henry Wills-Mather with an edge to his voice.

“I hated it,” said Lan.

“If you put the black spotlight on Caligula’s face in the second act again, the play will devolve into meaningless tripe,” barked Henry Wills-Mather.

Lan smoked in silence. Raymond walked over to Penelope and sat near her leg. Penelope patted him and sneezed.

“When did you come out here, Lan?” asked Penelope.

“A while ago,” said Lan.

“Oh,” said Penelope.

“I hate that black spotlight,” said Henry Wills-Mather. “I hate it. Don’t you hate it, Penelope?”

“I don’t hate it,” said Penelope.

The months following the end of
Caligula
were an unhappy blur for Penelope. She had not realized how much structure the play had given her life until it was over. It had been a relief to be somewhere most afternoons, even if that place was inside a marionette stage. Now she had to resume wandering around alone. In many ways, it was the most upset Penelope had been in her short life.

Penelope was not a martyr, however. She tried to bolster herself as best she could. She bought a quote book from Amazon called
Disappointment: It Can Only Lead to Success?
It did not help her much, but she sometimes still read it. She read extracts to Catherine after they received their housing assignments and were placed in Mather House. Catherine was excessively disappointed. Mather House was the only dormitory made entirely of cement, but, as Penelope helpfully pointed out, it was not the only dormitory with orange floors.

“ ‘The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes,’ ” read Penelope to Catherine. They were sitting in Annenberg eating dinner. It had been a trying day. In the morning Catherine had a final, and in the afternoon she and Penelope toured
Mather House with some other freshmen. Catherine had cried when she saw the cement dining room and the cement art gallery of student work.

“Who said that?” asked Catherine.

“Thomas Hardy,” said Penelope.

“Why are you reading that book to me again? That has nothing to do with anything,” Catherine wailed. “We are in such an ugly dorm. Mather is the ugliest dorm!”

“OK,” said Penelope. She closed her book.

It was true that Mather was a very ugly dorm, but Penelope was not really disappointed by it. She liked Soviet architecture. And other things in her life were more disappointing. She had not seen Gustav since their conversation after
Caligula
, for example. Her classes too were winding up badly. Instead of a final exam for Southern Writers Reconsidered/Revisited, the class was forced to choose between writing an epic poem or a short story or a manifesto for a fake agrarian literary movement, all of which Penelope’s principles inhibited her from doing.

What she had to keep in mind, Penelope reminded herself, was that she was not the only one experiencing trials. Others were also experiencing them. Nikil was upset because he hadn’t gotten the summer internship he wanted and instead would have to stay at Harvard, working for the business that put refrigerators in dorms. Glasses was upset because he had gotten two internships and couldn’t decide which one to take, because one was in Bulgaria at its national bank and another was in New York City at a think tank for libertarians, and it was hard to do both at the same time. Lan was deciding whether to let Raymond become an outdoor cat, just for the summer.

“At least Ted is in Dunster,” said Catherine gloomily. Dunster was next door to Mather. “Even though I am glad he is close to us, I would not want to be in Dunster. Dunster is much prettier from the outside, but it has very small rooms. A murder happened there too. A horrible murder-suicide.” This cheered Catherine somewhat. She took a large bite of her turkey sandwich.

“Oh my God, Ted,” she said and sighed theatrically. “It’s been so weird recently. Did he tell you what happened?”