Pamela Dean (37 page)

"I didn't know you could
get
pregnant in a girls' college in 1897."

The larches rustled, and something crackled. Another lump of snow landed behind them, and a dusting of it went down Janet's neck where she had tied the wool scarf too loosely.

"Hey!" shouted Molly. "Quit throwing snow, goddamn it! Stupid jerks." She walked faster too. Janet was relieved; Molly was more likely to throw snow back, and with people in the kind of mood they got into during exam week, a snow fight could get nasty.

"It wasn't a girls' college," said Janet. "It's been coeducational since the day it opened.

They were very strict about everything, though. But I guess there have always been ways to manage these things."

"I didn't know good girls did manage them in those days."

"All the worse when they did, then. If she felt she had to kill herself—"

"Right."

"Do you think there really is a ghost?"

"I don't know," said Molly. "I have to admit," she said, as they turned left between the Music and Drama Center and the ghostly skeleton of Olin, "I thought Tina might be doing it for the attention. But she's not getting any attention out of it—and after this last exhibition over Thomas, I'm certain it's not Tina's style to mystify everybody and chuckle quietly over it."

"The display says that before she killed herself she threw all her books out the window."

"And how do they know?"

They climbed the snowy steps to Ericson. The College was good about keeping snow shoveled, but the wind was better at spreading it out again.

"Good question," said Janet, yanking open the heavy door. The foyer smelled overwhelmingly of coffee. Janet saw in a moment that this was because there was an urn of it on a table in the lounge, surrounded by the ruins of sandwiches and cookies. Nine or ten girls were seated and sprawled in the room. The television set was off and they were all reading or scribbling. Two of them scowled automatically at Janet and Molly, who ducked quickly up the stairs. "That's a very good question," said Janet. "Any good scholar asks about sources. We can go back tomorrow and check."

"I have a physics test tomorrow," said Molly. "Maybe in the afternoon."

Tina was not in the room, but her bed was rumpled and on her desk was a green glass vase full of tiny red roses, huge white carnations streaked with red, and a few drooping clumps of greeny-yellow flowers. The sweet scent of the roses and carnations was underlaid by an odd bitter smell.

"My God!" said Molly. "I guess Thomas was repentant all right. What are those ugly little green flowers?"

Janet, whose mother grew herbs, sniffed at the maligned blooms and laughed. "I think it's rue," she said. "Do you suppose Tina will get it?"

"Where did
Thomas
get it this time of year?" said Molly. "You can't tell me florists sell something that looks and smells like that."

"Health-food store, maybe," said Janet. "I think you can use it to make tea. It must be good medicine if it tastes like it smells. It's better in the summer in the garden."

"I don't suppose we could get rid of it? Just the rue?"

"Tina would kill us. We can open the window if you want."

At four o'clock that morning, four hours from the time of Molly's physics test, while Janet was awake listening for the sound of bagpipes, Tina came along the hallway whistling Mozart, put her key into the lock so quietly that Janet did not hear it, and managed to squeeze past Molly's toy theater without making anything rattle or swearing under her breath. She closed the window over her bed, undressed, and went to bed as quietly as a ghost, and Janet did not hear Molly stir or turn over. But she was annoyed just the same.

They ascertained the next afternoon that the room housing the Thompson Collection contained no sources for its allegations. Molly dragged Janet, protesting, to the little cubicle given by the College to the Women's Caucus, and they talked to the student in charge, a tall, thin young woman with long black hair and a great deal of eye makeup. She was rather abrupt in her manner, but readily fished out for them photocopies of Victoria Thompson's diary and two letters written by her mother to her aunt afterwards. The mother's letters employed a lot of circumlocution—which was just as well, thought Janet, because if one could not be amused and indignant about that, there would be no barrier between oneself and the awfulness of Victoria's story. In conjunction with the diary it was clear that the exhibit's summary of events had been accurate. The diary made Victoria's lover sound rather like Kit Lane; but of course Kit's was a type much in vogue at the time.

Victoria's family had wanted very much to know who the young man in the case was—so they could horsewhip him, or what? said Molly—but possessed no clue at all.

"It's not Tina's style to fake a ghost," said Janet to Molly as they went down the steps of the Student Union afterwards, "but is it Peg's?"

"I don't think so."

Despite all the upheaval, nobody failed any courses. Tina got straight A's. So did Molly, but that was forgivable. Janet got a B in astronomy, her theory being sound but her mathematics rather uncertain.

So they began Spring Term. Janet was back with Professor Evans for English 11, at the civilized hour of eleven-fifteen in the morning; she was taking History 12, required for graduation, to get it out of the way; and after very little conscious thought but a great deal of consideration in the back of her head, she was taking Greek 1 from Professor Medeous.

She had meant to take it the following fall from the exacting but kindly Ferris, whose fault it was anyway that she was interested. But next fall contained two vital and daunting English courses and next spring a rare offering of Greek Lyric Poetry, which, if she took Greek 1 and 2 and Homer, she would be allowed to register for. So she gritted her teeth and wrote down Medeous's name on her form.

Melinda Wolfe had not said a word about it; she had smiled pleasantly and signed the sheet and asked if Janet wanted a Phys Ed course this spring. Janet had not: she figured, though she didn't say so to her advisor, that walks with Nick would probably fill the bill very well, even if they could not be credited toward graduation.

Spring Term began on March 27, and was distinguished by five inches of snow.

People who had gone home to balmier places for spring vacation, including Molly and Tina, grumbled a great deal; Janet thought they were crazy. Nick and Robin, who had both stayed at Blackstock helping Medeous with a computerized concordance to Euripides, grumbled also. Thomas thought they were crazy. As a result of the final conversation on this subject, Janet found herself engaged to go traying with him down the hill to Bell Field one more time before the thaw came.

It was already rather warm, and the snow was soft; but a previous party had packed a couple of paths down already. Janet had invited Nick to come along, but he was going to a small party that Professor Ferris had arranged for the members of his forthcoming Aeschylus class. So she and Thomas met at the top of the hill with their trays under their arms. Janet had abstracted a red one at lunch, red being the easiest color to find should the tray escape and go shooting across the frozen field. Thomas had a blue one, and also one of the triple-sized, scarred brown trays on which the bowls of toppings were set out every Sunday for people to concoct their own desserts with. He was wearing one of those huge thick sweaters in incomprehensible Irish stitches, and no hat. He had had the wit to put some gloves on.

"I'm amazed you have any ears left," Janet greeted him.

"There's a hood on my winter jacket," said Thomas, dropping his trays in the trampled snow. "But I'm not wearing my winter jacket in March. It just encourages them."

"Encourages whom?"

"The sprites of the weather. How do you want to do this? Some solo trips first to get the feel of it, and then try the big tray? I've never used one of these before. I hope we don't break it. You go first so I can push you; you've got less mass than I have."

Janet sat down on her tray, tucked up her feet, and said, "Ready."

Thomas gave her a huge shove. The tray slithered down a few yards, hesitated at a spot where they hadn't gotten the path smoothed down to start with, fell six inches with an ungodly bump, and flung itself down the hill fast enough to bring tears to her eyes.

They had made the bottom of the slide properly: instead of stopping abruptly in the hollow made by everybody's stamping feet, the tray skimmed halfway across the huge expanse of Bell Field, slowed, and slowed, and stopped somewhere past the middle. The setting sun lined the bare branches of the trees across the stream with gold, but down here there was a blue and gray twilight. The sky had already lost the profound and chilly color it got in winter.

Janet got up and picked up her tray just as Thomas came hurtling past her, whooping.

He got more distance than she had, jumped up at once, and came trudging back through the clinging snow, beaming. "My goal is to crash right through those bushes and end up in the stream," he informed her.

They climbed gasping to the top of the hill, and this time elected to make a race of it.

Janet won the first time, but never again, though they kept at it for more than a dozen tries, filling the air with snow dust, covering themselves with snow, and attracting a small audience comprised of people on their way to dinner in Eliot. The spectators drifted off soon, complaining about the cold.

"Let's try the big tray," said Thomas. "You can beat me another time."

"What other time? It's going to be fifty tomorrow."

"Next winter, then," said Thomas, rather gloomily. "I'll be here, imitating a freshman in the English Department. Is it a date?"

"Sure," said Janet.

They climbed the hill, stacked their trays on the sidewalk, and considered the large brown one.

"You'd better take the front, I think," said Thomas, "to give me a little more room for my legs. Sit down where it's comfortable, and we'll work from there. Can you scoot forward about six inches? Yes, I know we'll resemble a pretzel, but there's no help for it."

He sat down behind her, enveloped her knees in his long legs, and wound his arms around her shoulders. Janet thought suddenly of her mother's herb garden in the blazing middle of July, with the slabs of red paving overgrown with thyme, and the sundial in the middle, counting only sunny hours. Thomas smelled of rue.

"Let's go," said Thomas; they made a concerted convulsive movement, and the tray went walloping down the hill as if it were on runners. It bounded off the path they had made about halfway down, turned sideways, and ran them with terrible speed parallel to Eliot, alight high on its hill, and tossed them out under one of the little maples at the edge of the stream.

"Jesus," said Thomas, picking himself up, "are you all right?"

"Sure," said Janet, taking his offered hand and hauling hers elf to her feet. One elbow

and her tailbone felt sore, but she would have done it again in a moment. "You weren't scared, were you?"

"Yes, I was—for two of us, since you haven't any sense." He picked up the tray. "It's dark. We'd better stop."

"Molly said she'd make us cocoa."

They floundered slowly through the snow, which down here was still knee-deep, with treacherous mattings of bent grass and drifts of leaves underneath. Janet became aware, for the first time since they began this encounter, of a certain constraint in the atmosphere.

Seizing on the first topic of mutual interest that came to mind, she remarked, "I'm taking Greek 1 from Medeous starting tomorrow."

"What the hell for?" demanded Thomas, stopping and staring at her. "Take it from Ferris in the fall, for God's sake."

"I can't, I've got Eighteenth-Century Literature with Evans and the horrible Modern Poetry class."

"Well, you can't take it from Medeous."

"Why not?"

"She's very jealous."

"Of me? She doesn't know me from Adam."

"Well, she will, won't she, once you take a class from her?"

"What has she got to be jealous
about?
"

"You are the
dimmest
intelligent woman I have ever met in my life," Thomas said, flung both his trays down in the snow, and took off at a great speed on his long legs.

Janet snatched up a wad of snow, compressed it briefly, and hit him square in the middle of the back with it. He didn't turn. Janet picked up the trays and turned in the other direction, over the icy wooden bridge and up the hill to eat in solitary splendor at Dunbar.

Let Thomas explain to the rest of them, if he dared.

After she had eaten, she stopped by Nick and Rob's room in Taylor; neither of them was there, so she left Nick a friendly note and went to the library, where she spent the rest of the evening very happily reading an edition of Keats's letters. When she got home, Tina and Molly were in bed, drinking tea. "I wish you wouldn't fight with Thomas," said Tina reproachfully.

"I don't fight with Thomas. Thomas fights with me."

Tina rolled her eyes at Molly, who had the good sense not to respond. Janet went away, fuming, and brushed her teeth.

* * *

Greek 1 met in a small and oddly shaped room on the first floor of Appleton, the building devoted to the Department of Fine Arts. The building itself was an uninspiring twin to the library, redeemed only by the possession of a rather pleasant fountain with an abstract sculpture in the middle. Nobody had been so optimistic as to turn on the fountain yet, but its bowl was full of melted snow and the gray metal sculpture looked well in a halo of icicles. The room's windows looked out on the fountain; the room itself might once have been somebody's office. A long table with a lectern and eight desks had been crammed into it, but there turned out to be only six students. One of them was Odile; another, to Janet's considerable astonishment, was Thomas. He came in last, and gave her a sheepish grin.

Before she could decide how to respond, Professor Medeous came in.

Janet had not realized before how tall she was. She must be well over six feet. Her hair fell to her knees. She was wearing a skirt and blouse in the red-and-green plaid of the Erskine tartan, to which Janet doubted she was entitled. She carried a pile of books and papers under one arm, and swept the class with a grave impersonal gaze that widened suddenly, on Thomas. She seemed as surprised to see him as Janet had been. She put the books and papers down on the table, still looking at Thomas; and he stood up and gave her a Drop-Add slip. She went on looking at him, and he took a pen from his pocket and gave that to her. She went on looking.