Tell Me If the Lovers Are Losers (24 page)

“How did it happen that you two read this paper? I think I am correct in saying they have not been returned.”

Niki answered for them. “That was all up-and-up. These two—they're not in question. I had it on my desk and Hildy saw the title. She hasn't actually read it. Ann's read it, but she asked me first. They're clean.”

“And you?”

“A little sullied, I think. No more.”

Miss Dennis slid down from the chair and poured more tea. She stirred sugar into hers. Ann watched her hands, deft and tiny, without rings, the nails cut square. Hildy sat cross-legged watching the flames.

“What do you feel about this, Miss Koenig?”

“To take somebody else's idea is not right. A paper must be your own, your own ideas and your own writing. Otherwise you must acknowledge the person from whom you have taken. That is so?”

“That is so. Let me ask you this: when Socrates refers to just judges, what does he mean?”

“He means that a few among those who sat in judgment dealt with the facts of his case. The others, the unjust judges, made their decisions because of their own emotions, or for
presumption about where this habit of questioning would lead. Some perhaps even for revenge. But the just judges understood that under the law and under the gods Socrates had acted and taught rightly. His purpose was to bring out the truth.”

Miss Dennis asked, “How is it that you know that?”

“You taught me,” Hildy answered. Her eyes regarded Miss Dennis steadily. “I understand. You think it is not so simple.”

“I think it is not simple,” Miss Dennis agreed.

“Can you show me the rightness of it?” Hildy leaned forward. “If you could. I can see how it is not simple. I can think of that and understand it. But in myself I cannot make it right. In myself I know it is wrong. There is a lie in that paper. Can you show me that there is not?”

“That is Miss Jones's job,” the Munchkin said.

“Oh no,” Niki's voice grated. “I won't do that. I don't have to.”

“Yes,” Hildy said. “You do.”

Miss Dennis agreed.

Niki shook her head again, denying it.

Ann gave way to exasperation. “What are you after, Niki?” She twisted her head to look behind her Niki's eyes were closed and her fingers clutched the fragile handle of the teacup. “You agreed. Remember? You said you would.”

Niki opened bleak eyes. “Yeah. OK. Look, Hildy,” she began. “There is a convention about ideas in print, and when you are plagiarising them and when you are not. If you take somebody else's words and present them as your own, that's cheating. We're agreed about that. No question. I didn't do that.

“But what about ideas without print? What about conversations, where people exchange ideas? Ann talked about this, and she made good sense to me. I agreed with her ideas. Are they still just hers then? Or, if I am convinced by them, do they become mine? I think they are mine also, from that point on. So, when I write them out, it is my own work. And there is no plagiarism involved.”

They all watched Niki as she spoke. A silence followed, where only the fire chattered. Niki waited.

“No,” Hildy said. “That is not the truth of it.”

“I am not lying.” Niki loomed forward.

“You are not telling the truth,” Hildy said quietly.

“You don't want to hear the truth. You don't want to see what really is the truth.” Niki came out from behind Ann's chair and paced the room as she spoke. “You and your categorical negatives and affirmatives. Things aren't that simple. Yes or no, that's not enough.”

“It is the very beginning,” Hildy said.

“There is no very beginning,” Niki answered. “You live in a dream world, where God is a daddy who keeps things orderly. Where right is different from wrong. That's all illusion, and you don't admit it. I'll tell you what's right. Winners are right, by definition. They have the power to make themselves right. In this world you have to know what you want, and go after it. Whether it's good or bad, you have to fight for it, hard and sometimes dirty. If you can't, well tough luck on you. If you're not willing to kick in a few teeth, you won't get what you want, if you're not willing to lose a few of your own teeth.”

She paced back and forth, too large for that room. She looked at nobody as she spoke. Her eyes had an inward focus. “We're not free agents. I'm not. You're not. I never made a free choice in my life. So I'm out for myself—where's the crime in that? So is everybody else. Even you Hildy. I can show you. I want to go to Berkeley and I need B's for that. To get a B in English I need an A on a paper Annie gave me an A paper idea and I took it. Simple as that. That's what's simple. And what about you? You're going back to marry a man your father has selected for you, to raise chickens and darn socks. You've turned your back on Stanton too. On what it stands for. On your friends here. And you've already done that, always done that, from the first. But you're not thinking about that, or them, or the money the College has invested in you. The volleyball team, what about them? You're so concerned with being right. But you've used Stanton, the same way I have. You've lied, by implication. You may say it's different because you put it on your application, but that difference doesn't mean anything.” Niki crouched between Hildy and the fire. She thrust her face into Hildy's. “Do you hear? That difference doesn't mean anything. Nothing. Because we're the same, you and me. Call it what you like, we're the same thing. That's all we can be because we're human beings and there's nothing simple about that. Only our rhetorics differ. And it doesn't
matter what we do with our lives, or why we do it. Because we just die in the end and it's over. The great accident, the joke. People are frightened so they convince themselves there is meaning to it. History, progress, knowledge: none of it works. None of it makes any difference whatsoever to anythng. The world isn't going to be saved. It isn't even lost. It just is. We scrabble around on its surface. Like bugs. The biggest bugs grab what they can. That's it.”

Hildy shook her head, mute.

“You can fool yourself. You can fool Annie here and all the rest, and even her,” Niki's head jabbed toward Miss Dennis. “You can't fool me. I wish you could, but you can't.

“The truth is that it doesn't matter how you get what you want as long as you're safe from society and the law. What I want is a chance to get even for some of the things society does, and the law does. Before they blow us all up. Nobody will care how I got it, once I've got it. And I did not break the rules.”

Niki stood up again, above Hildy, and she spread her hands apart. “That's the way it is, Hildy. I'm sorry, because that's not the way you want it to be. I'm sorry because you're—I like you. I admire you. But that's the way it is. You can't beat me on this one.”

It was Niki who had tears in her eyes.

“If we can return to the particular event,” Miss Dennis said, “and I think we should . . .” Ann and Hildy nodded their heads. Niki's face was immobile. “Let me tell you what I see as justice in this matter The paper, Miss Jones's paper, is safe.”

Ann understood that and her heart flooded with relief.

“Miss Jones,” the Munchkin went on, “is not.”

Ann's sense of security vanished. She waited for Miss Dennis to say more.

But the woman had no more to say.

“What should she do?” Hildy asked.

“Should isn't in question. You heard her,” Niki said. “What I will do is—nothing. That's it. It's over.”

Hildy stood up, taller than Niki. “You do not care about being right. You think to win is to be right.”

“That's not fair, Hildy. It's not even true,” Ann protested.

“I see that now,” Hildy continued, as if Ann had not spoken. “Miss Dennis?”

“I cannot argue it with you, Miss Koenig.”

“Why not? You must make me see.”

“I can't. I have made my decision, under the rules. It is a correct decision and I will stand by it.”

“Hildy,” Ann asked, “if I don't mind, why should you?”

“It is not for you and me to mind,” Hildy said. “It does not matter for us, or for Miss Dennis. For Niki to be right, that is what matters.”

“There's nothing wrong with what I did. Miss Dennis—albeit reluctantly—-just said so.”

“Do you believe that? Niki?”

Niki looked straight at Hildy, hard and straight. “Yes.”

Hildy shook her head. “No, you do not.” She gathered her coat and left the room, unhurried.

Ann sat crumpled in her chair.

“I'm off too,” Niki said briskly. She thrust her hand out to Miss Dennis. “Thank you.”

Miss Dennis took her hand, but did not shake it. She held it within both of her small palms. “Don't thank me, Miss Jones. I have done you no favor Illusions are of more than one kind.”

Niki swallowed. “But we cherish our own,” she said. Then she, too, left.

Miss Dennis turned to Ann. “You had hoped for more, I think.” Ann nodded. “But you will have to find your own way,” Miss Dennis said. “I can't do that for you.”

“I guess I should have known,” Ann answered. “Anyway, I do thank you, for your time and trouble. I won't bother you like this again. I'd already thought of everything that you said.” She carried the tea tray into the tiny kitchen.

Miss Dennis walked with her to the door “We have to find our own compromises,” she said. “People like us. I have been inadequate here. I wish I could have been more.”

“I can't imagine what else you might have done,” Ann consoled her.

“Neither can I,” Miss Dennis said. “But Miss Koenig can imagine. And Miss Jones can.”

Ann walked slowly back to the dormitory. Leaden skies hung low and sullen. In the gathering darkness, the air was piercingly cold. She jammed her hands into the pockets of her coat and scuffed her feet. She slipped frequently. Films of water had begun to freeze on the sidewalk. She approached the
dormitory through disheartened pines. Windows glowed with yellow light, warm and welcoming, but she did not want to be welcomed or warmed. Her own room was dark. She dropped her coat on the bed and sat on it.

The room had been abandoned. She had been abandoned. Hildy's glasses were folded on Hildy's dresser in a line with the comb and brush. Niki and her typewriter were gone. Ann sat and waited. Nothing happened. The usual noises occupied the rest of the hall, the other rooms. Her own room held barren silence. She turned on the bedside light and lay back, studying the ceiling, until supper.

Sunday supper was always sparsely attended, and the most dismal dishes from the deepest dark corners of the iceboxes were brought to the tables. Niki and Hildy did not appear.

Ann returned to the empty room after the meal. She hung up her coat and undressed. She put on her nightgown. She got into bed and pulled the covers up over her head.

She could not sleep. It was only seven o'clock, she thought to herself, and besides, if she could sleep she would only wake up terribly early.

It wasn't the failure, her own failure, that distressed her She decided that. It was the hopelessness.

And it was being in the middle. Wishy-washy. Niki knew what she wanted. Niki was certain and sure. Hildy too. But she, Ann, what was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to figure out which side she was on? She'd chosen Hildy's, but she couldn't
be
Hildy. She suspected that Niki was—not right, that was Hildy's word—correct. Safe was the word the Munchkin used.

Miss Dennis had not solved anything. Ann had only made things worse. For everyone.

Hildy was right. Hildy was always right. That didn't help Ann at all.

Ann discovered that she didn't understand either of her roommates. She had thought she knew instinctively about Hildy. She had thought she could intellectualize Niki and know her. She hadn't understood either one of them. And now she had a feeling of sympathy for Niki and a kind of fear of Hildy, to add to her inadequate understandings.

She got out of bed, took a dime from her wallet, tied her bathrobe tight, and slipped her feet into loafers. The slippers
were under the bed and she was too tired to bend over. She went out to the pay phone and dialed an operator who placed the collect call. Home.

Mrs. Gardner accepted charges and made bright inquiry into Ann's health and classes and social life.

Ann brushed those aside. “I think I'll come home this weekend. Is that all right with you?”

“You know it is, dear But with Thanksgiving the following week, don't you want to save your weekends?”

“I want to come home.”

“Then by all means do so. You know we're always happiest when you children are home. Shall I tell your father? Or would you like to surprise him?”

“I hadn't thought of that. Let me surprise him.”

“He'll enjoy that. I hope I can remember—”

“Mother! It's your own idea.”

“That should help, shouldn't it? What do you think, a leg of lamb, or a steak? Which sounds better to you for Friday?”

“Steak, by all means, steak. It's been a long time since I've had steak. And really rare, and with mushrooms? Could you do that?”

“It sounds good. Shall I meet the five o'clock bus?”

“No, I'll get a cab. If you're not home, Dad will suspect something.”

“That's right. He is suspicious, isn't he, by nature. I've never given him cause—it must have to do with the law, don't you think?”

“Maybe he just knows human nature better than we do.”

“Maybe so. It'll be good to see you, Ann. I had my mind set on not seeing you until next week, so this is a special treat. What a good idea this is.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Ann said.

“For what? This is your home.”