Pamela Dean (45 page)

And she had the feeling it was worse than that. Her grade in Mr. Tyler's class had been based primarily on the term paper, and all the term paper showed was that she had a good grasp of the way in which Christopher Fry treated romantic love. She had neglected all the religious issues of his plays and failed to read one or two of them altogether. She also felt obscurely that she had wronged Professor Tyler. He had been generous and tolerant to her, letting her hare off and read Fry; but she had doodled and fidgeted her way through all his lectures and, except for a grudging admiration of Wallace Stevens, had emerged untouched. It wasn't fair. She reread the Fry paper, dwelling gloomily on all Tyler's laudatory remarks, and felt even worse. She was rather taken with the Fry concept of romantic love, and none of its varied forms was anything like what she and Nick were engaged in.

She put the paper away, sighing, and tried to sit down and translate the first thirty lines of
The Iliad.
Mr. Ferris had read them aloud to give everybody confidence and inspiration, but these emotions did not survive the peculiar Homeric constructions of the first five lines.

Janet stared at the angular Greek letters and brooded. Nick was awfully testy this term. She compared her state to that of Tina, who seemed content to hang around with the folk dancers in a large amorphous group, going to movies and dances with whoever was handy; and then with that of Molly, who had discovered a whole new field for argument with Robin. Molly was entirely entranced with Professor Davison and all her literary theories.

Robin thought Professor Davison, who had been his freshman advisor, was a nice girl, but too serious, and he thought her literary theories were nonsense. This subject could keep Molly and Robin happy for hours. Nick, rather oddly given that his main attitude towards Davison was not benign, nevertheless agreed with Molly about the literary theories. But when he joined the argument things were apt to get less happy.

Janet went back to the Greek, absently looked the particle
te
up in Liddell and Scott, realized with irritation that it was the first one she had learned in Greek 1 and that, further, she had neglected to translate its invariable companion
kai
—no, she hadn't, there was no kai up there. She shut up
The Iliad
and picked up the fat blue Robinson edition of Chaucer.

But the General Prologue to
The Canterbury Tales,
which she had in any case read already in English 10, begins in April; reading it in a snowstorm was just too much. Janet shut up the Chaucer, too, and gazed out across the clean white expanse of Bell Field, set about with bare black trees and crowned with the icy stream.

Then she got up and ran down to the second floor, where the telephone for Column A was kept, and she called Thomas.

The phone was answered on the second ring by a woeful male voice that said it would fetch Thomas if she wouldn't talk to him for very long. Janet promised, and in a moment Thomas said dully, "Hello."

"It's Janet; what's the matter?"

"Winter. What's up?"

"Would you like your revenge?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I want to complain to you about my love life. Then you can make a suggestion that will result in a breakup, and we'll be even."

"What seems to be the problem?"

"Do you have to talk like a doctor? I told that boy who answered the phone that I wouldn't talk long."

"Oh, Juan. Yes, he's waiting for a call from his girlfriend— except I don't think he'll get it. But okay, sure, where do you want to go?"

"Why don't I meet you on the bridge and we can go over to the TR? I could use some nice greasy French fries."

"See you in ten minutes," said Thomas, and hung up.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon, very cold and windy, and getting on for dark. The lake was frozen solid; on the other side of the bridge, there was a small pool of open water where the effluent from Eliot came down. Two disconsolate ducks revolved slowly around it. Janet found a stale bun in her pocket and had just finished feeding it to them when Thomas came walking hollowly over the bridge. The ducks took off, squawking; Janet jumped and then smiled at Thomas. He was well wrapped in a scarf, but his head was bare.

Janet didn't say anything, but fell into step beside him.

They climbed the trodden snow between Forbes and Eliot, passed Ericson, and without consultation kept to the southern side of the Music and Drama Center, even though it meant a longer walk. Olin, Chester, the M&D Center, and the chapel among them channeled the wind beautifully, though you would have thought they were too far apart to do it; it was better to walk along the edge of campus and duck sideways only when you had to. They did this in silence; they trudged past the charming sandstone castle that had been the original library, and past the vast brooding front of Taylor, and past the student Union with its clock tower, and came finally into the steamy warmth of the Tea Room.

A number of people appeared to share Janet's craving for greasy fries; there was a short line at the counter. Janet and Thomas went and stood at the end of it. Janet looked at Thomas, in the good light, without the encumbrance of her hat or his scarf, and was shocked. Where his face had been nicely hollow, it was gaunt. She saw a lily on his brow, though it was not moist with anguish or anything else. He needed a shave, and he had not washed his hair in too long. Such symptoms were fairly common at the end of the term, but not in the first week.

"You look awful," said Janet. "Maybe you should be pouring out your sorrows to me instead."

"Thank you very much," said Thomas, without much heat. "It wouldn't help. Allow me to feel useful and intelligent by telling me your troubles; that's the best thing to do."

They ordered their food and stood looking at the grease-spattered menu and the bunch of marigolds on the countertop. When the food came, Thomas paid for it over Janet's protest and carried the tray to a remote corner of the room. At least it hid enough food for two on it; he didn't look as if he'd been eating. She should have asked Kevin about him more often, last term.

"Now," said Thomas, taking a gulp of his coffee, "what seems to be the problem?"

Janet told him, in as much detail as she could muster, and doing her best to keep Christopher Fry out of it. She felt she was not being very coherent, but Thomas sat nodding at her, absorbing food and information in the same deliberate way.

When he had finished, he swallowed the last of his coffee and said, "I think you expect too much."

Janet took a deep breath, and Thomas said, "Not of love; not in the long run. I think you expect too much from the time you've had. It's only been a year; and only three months of it had any leisure at all in them. And people don't really discover everything about one another in the first months of acquaintance. They think they do, but they don't. They just like fooling themselves. And you're not very good at that, I don't think."

Janet had always feared that she was very good at it; perhaps that was just the exception that proved the rule, if she could fool herself into thinking she was good at fooling herself. She shook off this impending tangle and said, "All right. That takes care of my attitude. But what about Nick? He seems all friendly and open and cheerful, and he seems to talk about himself a lot; but he really doesn't say much. He's met my family dozens of times. All I know about his family is that they're in England and he doesn't go see them during vacations. And he makes inexplicable remarks. And he and Robin are just maddening. I'm sure Robin knows all this stuff."

"You planning to marry him tomorrow?" said Thomas.

"Robin?"

"No, you dimwit, Nick. What's your hurry? He's met your family because you love them and are proud of them. What if he doesn't love his and is ashamed of it? Do you think there are no parts of you that won't stand the light of day? Just you take a good look at them, before you go accusing Nick of being secretive and refusing true intimacy, or whatever exactly it is you're upset about." He stopped suddenly and ran a hand through his lank hair.

"I'm sorry. But I meant it. Give the lad some time. These extroverted people are often the most insecure of all, you know."

"But—''

"What's the matter, do you see some better prospect wasting away for lack of attention?"

"I don't see people as prospects," said Janet furiously, "and that has nothing to do with it."

"Of course it has."

"You are the most unromantic person I've ever met."

"Thank you," said Thomas, with every evidence of sincerity.

Janet sighed. "Have
you
got any prospects?"

He shook his head. "It's so difficult to know how to go about it."

Janet stared, openmouthed; she had just started to close her mouth and school her expression when he glanced up and caught it. "Well, Tina was awfully lonely, you know,"

he said, "and she had a sort of theory that one must have a boyfriend in college or one is a failure; and it hurt her feelings very much that Nick preferred you. But you see how that all worked out." He shrugged.

Janet clamped her teeth together over a strong desire to explain to him that if he would just look at them as he was looking at her—possibly stopping first to wash his hair and put on a less grubby sweater, but possibly not—women would fall into his arms in droves.

They would only fall out again, presumably; and maybe he didn't want that sort of woman, anyway. "What sort of person are you looking for?" she said, a little breathlessly.

Thomas's whole face hardened, as if he were about to say something unforgivable.

Oh, great, here we go again, thought Janet. But then he shrugged again, and looking over her right shoulder he said, "A motherly sort."

"I'm not sure I know any."

"They're in remarkably short supply these days," said Thomas, with an extreme grimness that surprised her.

"Well, look, give us some time. You don't expect people our age to have quite gotten the knack of it, do you? We're still half children ourselves."

"Mmmm," said Thomas. "Well, maybe." He seemed to gather himself together, and looked at his watch. "Well. Are you willing to give Nick a little time?"

"I notice you don't say effort."

"I don't think it would work with Nick."

"Mmmm," said Janet, in her turn. "Why don't you come and sit with us at dinner? It's been ages."

"I notice you don't say, eat dinner with us."

"After all this?"

Thomas laughed, and got up. "All right," he said. "If I'm very good, do you think Robin and Molly will argue?"

"I guarantee it," said Janet, getting up too. "They hold completely irreconcilable notions about
Henry V.
"

"Do you ever get tired of Shakespeare?"

"The woman who is tired of Shakespeare," said Janet, in her best tone of exaggerated sententiousness, "is tired of literature, for there is in literature all that Shakespeare can afford."

"Mmmm," said Thomas.

Winter term passed peacefully. Janet did realize, round about the fifth week, that among Homer, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, she was bereft of her native language, and had to read straight through all the novels of Raymond Chandler to restore a sense of proportion and keep all her translations of
The Iliad
from coming out in blank verse.

She discovered that Nick had not read any Chandler, and once she had persuaded him to do so, they had the food for many a discussion. Thomas, it transpired, was passionately fond of Chandler. His own favorites were the same as hers,
The Long Goodbye
and
The
Little Sister,
whereas Nick insisted on regarding such inferior efforts as
The Lady in the
Lake
and
The High Window
as Chandler's best, which gave them food for more discussion than any of them would live to finish. Tina read one or two of the novels and settled on
The
Big Sleep
to defend. Molly refused to have anything to do with Chandler, saying that the amount of violence in Shakespeare's history plays was more than enough for one term.

Tina went out with Jack Nikopoulos four times, which made Janet and Molly hopeful.

But she came home from the last of these dates, at eleven o'clock of an arctic February evening, and demanded that Molly and Janet put on their boots and come with her to the little stream in the Lower Arb. She wanted to toss her brand-new three months' prescription of birth-control pills into the water and wash her hands of romance altogether.

They had a prolonged argument, dealing jointly and severally with whether Tina might not want the pills later, what she might do if suddenly thrust into a tempting situation, how the vile drugs and the indestructible plastic case might affect the wildlife, and why it couldn't wait until tomorrow. But Tina was immovable. They could stay up here if they wanted to—she was going down to the Arboretum this minute and get rid of these goddamned drugs. Janet looked at Molly and nodded. Molly shrugged crossly, got out of bed, and began to put her boots on.

"Oh, thank you," said Tina, and hugged Janet hugely.

"What are roommates for, if not to be foolish together?"

"Am I being foolish?"

"You're right to get rid of those blasted pills. Giving up on romance seems a little hasty."

"Well, it's not like I'm entering a convent. I just feel happier if I don't worry about it.

Theoretical biology is bad enough, right now."

"You may have something there," said Molly, less crossly.

They went as softly as they could, in heavy boots on an uncarpeted and creaky floor, and left Eliot by the side door. The moon was full; another new fall of snow blurred all the corners of the world. Their breaths made great blue clouds in the fierce dry air. The temperature was somewhere on the wrong side of zero. They got thoroughly covered with snow just scrambling down the hill to the bridge to Dunbar. Janet hoped they would not get lost in the Arboretum and die of exposure.

"There's open water right here, Tina," she said, "and with all the soapsuds from Eliot, what are a few artificial hormones here and there?"