Penelope (4 page)

“Because they are studying for the math placement exam and leaving messages on random girls’ Facebook walls.”

“Why aren’t you doing that?”

“I don’t know,” said Ted. He eyed the broccoli stuffing suspiciously. “Can I ask you something?” he said.

“Shoot,” said Penelope, who winced again.

“I do not understand why everyone is going insane over the math placement exam. School hasn’t even started yet. Math 55 sounds like hell on earth.”

“I know, seriously. It’s weird,” said Penelope. She felt relieved all of a sudden.

“The ice cream social actually sounds fun in comparison.”

“That is when you know things are bad,” said Penelope.

“How is this fried chicken? It looks amazing,” said Ted.

“It is,” said Penelope. She picked up a glob of broccoli stuffing and zestfully shoved it in her mouth. Obviously, she had to go.

“Well, it has been fun, Ted,” she said.

“Where are you going? Not you too. Are you really going to study for the math placement exam right now?”

“Um, no. But I have to get ready and everything. I need to get a ruler.”

“What? Why?” said Ted.

“Oh, ha ha. Maybe not a ruler,” said Penelope, realizing that she had never used a ruler during a math test. “Well, anyway, I have to go.”

“OK,” said Ted.

Penelope stood up and started to gather her tray. She felt bad about how abrupt she was being, but she also felt that if she prolonged the encounter unnecessarily, she would make some horrible gaffe, like talking about Charles Dickens’s penchant for spiritualism, which was something she discussed in the longest conversation she ever had with a boy. She wanted to be nice to Ted because he was being nice to her. He was sort of good-looking
too, like a Roman senator who was sensitive and unused to fighting in wars.

“So are you coming to the proctor meeting?” she asked, sitting down again. Ted looked confused.

“Well, it is mandatory, so I guess so. I don’t know why they call them proctors. They are mostly just grad students who live in the dorm.”

“Oh, me too,” said Penelope.

“What?” said Ted. “Well, I’ll see you at the meeting.”

“Definitely,” said Penelope. She picked up her tray and stood up. As she walked out, she hit her leg on the side of the table and stumbled, almost spilling broccoli and chicken bones everywhere.

“I’m fine,” she said.

The placement exam went relatively well. In the middle of it, Penelope forgot calculus, but she figured she could always take Counting People for her math credit if all else failed. She had seen this class in the course book and thought it sounded interesting. Counting was something she was excellent at.

After the placement exam, Penelope began her long solitary trudge toward Pennypacker. Other kids were leaving the exam in globs of newly formed acquaintances, talking, perhaps even having a good time. Penelope had no idea when these friendships were formed. Was it while she was sleeping on the futon? Was it during the placement exam? She hated to think it was at the panel. The ironies of her ignorance were sometimes too hard to bear.

It was very hot still, and Penelope’s blouse stuck to her back. The trees did not move, the sun was too yellow. The Yard looked stately if remote. No one was playing touch football on it, that was for sure. Maybe the man wearing the rumpled linen suit at registration had actually been a mirage. He looked like what she had thought Harvard men were going to look like before
she went here, although now that she was here, none of the students looked remotely like that.

Penelope got to her dorm in about ten minutes. She decided to go up to her suite and see if she could walk to the proctor meeting with her roommates. Emma was in their room, violently brushing her hair.

“Hey, Penelope!” said Emma as soon as she heard the door slam.

“Yes?” said Penelope.

“What did you get for question three? Did
x
equal one-quarter or one-half?”

“I don’t remember, uh, one-half?”

“I definitely got one-quarter. I think if you take the derivative of what’s under the parabola, that’s what you get.”

“Oh, maybe,” said Penelope. “I don’t know.”

“It’s one-half, weirdo!” Lan bellowed from her room. “Just accept it.”

“I didn’t even know she was home,” said Penelope.

“Yeah,” said Emma, “she was done with the exam in an hour.”

Penelope heard Lan slam a drawer shut in her room very loudly.

“Hmm. Well, do you guys want to go down to the meeting now? It starts in like five minutes,” said Penelope.

“No, you go ahead. I have to brush my hair.”

“Really? I can wait.”

“No. It’s really all right.”

“OK,” said Penelope. “Emma?”

“Yes?” said Emma.

“How do you know those girls from breakfast this morning? They seemed really nice.”

“Oh, from around. My parents are friends with their parents or something. You know how it is.”

“Oh, yes,” said Penelope.

“I’m hanging out with them tonight, actually. After the ice cream social, we are going to the Owl.”

“Oh, cool,” said Penelope. “What is the Owl?”

“It’s a finals club. Anyway, you should probably go.”

“Oh, you’re right. I should. Lan?” she yelled at her door. “Do you want to go to the meeting with me?”

“No,” said Lan.

“OK, I’m going,” Penelope said. Then she turned and paused.

“Do finals clubs have anything to do with the Masons?”

“What are you talking about?” asked Emma.

“I don’t know,” said Penelope. “Bye!” she said, and left.

The meeting was held in a small, green-carpeted room in the basement of Pennypacker. About five minutes after Penelope had seated herself on an uncomfortable chair next to a broken TV, Emma and one of the breakfast girls strolled into the room. Emma gave Penelope a tight smile but did not wave. Lan, of course, did not show up.

The room was sporadically populated. On the other side of the TV, Glasses and Nikil were vying for the attention of a girl who had a moderate to severe case of acne. Jason and Ted were splayed morosely on a plastic couch. There were other people whom she could not identify huddled near a pool table; most were wearing oversized Harvard paraphernalia. Some looked fourteen. Some looked twenty-nine. No one was wearing a linen suit or leather shoes, unless you counted sneakers. Penelope tucked her legs under her. Suddenly, a man entered the room.

“Hey, guys, sorry I’m late,” he said. “I’m Jared.” Jared was short and wearing flat-front pants that did not have back pockets. Penelope wondered what this meant.

“I’m Jared, your proctor.”

Ted rolled his eyes at Penelope. Penelope kept her face expressionless.

“I guess you want to know a little bit about me.” Jared cleared his throat noisily. “I, uh, am getting my PhD in economics at the grad school. I am interested in developing countries and the way
that they interact with their water sources. For fun, um, I’m on the Ultimate Frisbee intramural team.” Penelope saw a neon-yellow plastic disk peeking out of Jared’s leather messenger bag. She wondered if he had added it to his satchel for emphasis before the presentation.

“So I am your proctor. Well, what does that mean? It means that I am your resource. I live here, in Pennypacker, so anytime you guys have a problem I am here to help. And obviously, if you are having trouble with economics, I think I can handle it.” The crowd mustered a disappointed laugh.

“Obviously, there is no drinking or drugs allowed in this dorm. If I find that you guys have been drinking, I will have to report you to the dean. The whole process is detailed on this handout.” Jared passed out a bunch of pink papers. Penelope stuffed hers into her purse without looking at it. She figured she could use it for gum later.

“Now over the summer you guys were given a small book of essays. It came in your housing packet. I hope you guys have read through them because we are going to have a little discussion about them.”

Everyone took out a thin cream booklet. Penelope tried to recollect if she had received such an item in her housing packet. She vaguely remembered her mother looking through some kind of booklet, proclaiming it interesting, and then throwing it out. She often threw things out when Penelope least expected it.

“OK. Today we are gonna discuss ‘Self-Reliance’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It’s on page thirty-six. Now when you say your comment, just introduce yourself and hopefully we can learn everybody’s name,” said Jared. Everyone obediently turned their pages. Penelope was relieved. She had read the essay in school before. As long as she was not asked to quote the thing at length, she should be fine.

“OK. Now that we are all on the same page.” Mild tittering emanated from the pool table. “Why would something like this essay be specifically appropriate for the start of your first Harvard semester?”

Several hands were raised. Glasses was called upon.

“Well, I think Emerson is trying to stress the fundamental humanity of the individual. I mean, at the risk of being obvious, ‘Self-Reliance’ is, at its core, about self-reliance. The transcendentalist message is really important for us now, at this time in history.”

Glasses looked smug. Jared looked pleased. It seemed that this was exactly the way he had envisioned the conversation going.

A guy wearing a backward baseball cap then raised his hand.

“I don’t know. It kind of reminds me of Adorno. I’m Eric, by the way.” Eric shot a condescending glance at Glasses, who had the wherewithal to look abashed.

Jared was giddy. “Elaborate,” he commanded, shoving his hands in the space where his back pockets would be.

As the conversation dragged on, each person essentially doing free association with German philosophers utterly unrelated to Emerson, Penelope got to thinking.
Is this supposed to be a bonding activity?
So far, no one had introduced themselves properly. No one had told an interesting fact about their past or their favorite color. They hadn’t even fainted into each other’s arms. Penelope was sorry for this. She had even prepared an interesting fact about herself, if it came to that. It was that she sat in a car seat until fourth grade. Very few people could say that for themselves.

If this was the only chance she was going to get to bond with her classmates, she figured she might as well make the most of it. So she raised her hand.

She never got called on. The free association had moved to France and a couple of guys from the pool table got into a debate about Foucault, which took up the rest of the bonding period. Jared looked simply fascinated. By the end of the meeting he was practically brimming with pride.

“Now this, ladies and gentlemen, reminds me why I loved undergrad so much. You will never have conversations like these again!” he said as they departed.

“I can’t imagine what Jared was like as an undergrad,” said Ted to Penelope as they went upstairs.

“Probably very interested in water sources,” said Penelope.

After the discussion Penelope had very little time to go back up to her room and change before the ice cream social. It was her third outfit of the day. She decided to wear a sundress that was sort of low cut in the front. If she was ever going to seduce anyone, it might as well be now. Maybe the man in the rumpled suit would be around. Maybe they would meet and immediately hit it off. “It was the ice cream social,” he would say at their engagement party in Naples, “that started our love.” Penelope would laugh and her mother would laugh too, on a satellite feed, because she was desperately afraid of planes.