I Am Charlotte Simmons (23 page)

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Authors: Tom Wolfe

BOOK: I Am Charlotte Simmons
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Part of Charlotte wanted to get out of the place immediately, even if it meant walking around aimlessly until dawn. She refused to be lumped with this … well … homely girl.
Then she faced up to it: leaving was the last thing in the world she was about to do. She could live with the business about the accent. She could forgive the implied insult regarding pajamas. She could roll with those punches and a dozen more like them. She was dislodged, rooted out of her own bed, thrown out of her own room, discarded, adrift, helpless, deracinated practically, but at least she was not
alone.
At least, for however brief an interval, she had a sunny, friendly face to look into. She was eye to eye with a human being whose fate she shared—and never mind how demeaning or miserable the fate—someone she could talk to … even open up to, assuming she could find the courage—
If only she could call Miss Pennington … or Momma … Hello, Miss Pennington? Momma? You know Dupont, on the other side of the mountains? The Garden of Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, where great things are to be done? Well, Miss Pennington, Momma, I plumb forgot to ask: did anybody ever tell you about being sexiled? About being marooned in a public lounge in the middle of the night so that your roommate, so-called, can rut like a pig with some guy she just picked up?
It seemed terribly important to keep the conversation with Bettina going. She ransacked her brain and finally came up with “Who were they?”—nodding toward the corner where the perfect guy had swooped up the perfect girl.
“I don't know who
he
is,” said Bettina, “but she's a freshman. I saw her the other two times I was sexiled, too. She's always up late and got some guy chasing her. She's
hot
, I guess, but she's terribly,
you
know, all
Oooo Oooo Oooo Oooo Oo.”
Bettina cocked her head and opened her eyes wide and fluttered them in the baby coquette fashion. “If she wanted to swap legs, I wouldn't say no, though.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said Charlotte. But she said it in a dull, flat manner, because she was merely being agreeable. Deep down inside she wanted to say, “Then wait'll you see mine. I used to run cross-country in the mountains.”
That revived her a bit. So gutted, disemboweled, scoured out had she been, by loneliness, she had all but forgotten the Force:
I am Charlotte Simmons
.
“Dear Momma and Daddy,
“I'll admit my eyes blurred with mist when I saw you drive off in the old pickup.”
The old pickup?
…
my eyes blurred with mist?
… She sighed, she groaned, deflated. What on earth did she think she was writing? She lifted her ballpoint from the top sheet of a pad of lined schoolroom paper and slumped back, or as far back as you could slump in an exhausted wooden chair with no arms. She looked out the window at the library tower. It was lit up ever so majestically in the dark. She saw it, and she didn't see it. Beverly's cast-off clothes mashed on the floor, Beverly's web of extension cords plugged into surge-protector strips and knuckle sockets in midair, her rat's nest of a percale-sloshed unmade bed, her littered CD cases, uncapped skin-care tubes, and spilled contact lens packets, her techie alphabet toys, the PC, the TV, the CD, DVD, DSL, VCR, MP4, all of them currently dormant in the absence of their owner, each asleep rattlesnake-style with a single tiny diode-green eye open—her roommate's slothful and indulgent habits were all over the place … Charlotte was sort of aware of it and sort of wasn't really.
She rocked forward with another trill of low-grade guilt to confront her
letter home …
the old pickup.
Daddy is totally dependent on that poor, miserable old truck, and I'm treating it like it's something quaint.
Eyes blurred with mist
… Yuk! She could just imagine Momma and Daddy reading
that
. The “pretty writing” …
She riiiiiiippped the sheet off the pad—then saved it. She could use it for scratch paper. She hunched over the desk and started again:
“Dear Momma and Daddy,
“I hope I didn't seem too sad when you left that day. Watching you all drive off made me realize”—she starts to write,
what a long journey I have set out upon
, but the pretty-writing alarm sounds again, and she damps it down to “how much I was going to miss you. But since then I have been so busy studying, meeting new people, and”—she grandly thinks of
figuring out Dupont's tribal idiosyncrasies
, already knowing she's going to settle for “getting used to new ways of doing things, I haven't had time to be homesick, although I guess I am.
“The classes haven't been as hard as I was afraid they would be. In fact, my French professor told me I was ‘overqualified' for his class! Since he had a peculiar way of teaching French literature, in my opinion, I wasn't unhappy about switching to one a little more advanced. I have a feeling that it is harder to get into a university like this than it is to stay in it. I suppose I shouldn't even think like that, however”—she starts to write
lest I have a rude awakening—
and how is
lest
supposed to sound in Alleghany County?—then downscales it to “because it might be bad luck.”
“The library here is really wonderful. You remember it, I'm sure, the tower, the tallest building on campus? It has nine million books, on every subject you can imagine, sometimes so many you hardly know where to start. It is really busy, too. There are as many students using the library at midnight as there are in the middle of the day. The other night I went there”—changes it to “I had to go there”—“kind of late, to use a computer, and there was only one computer not in use in a cluster of about 25 of them. I made a new acquaintance when we”—starts to write
got into an argument
, instead writes—“couldn't figure out which of us was next in line.” So much for that—no name, no gender.
“My best friend so far is a girl from Cincinnati, Ohio, named Bettina, who lives on my floor. We met one night when each of us was having a hard time sleeping and decided to go down to the Common Room on the first floor and read for a while. Bettina is a very cheery and energetic person and
not shy at all. If she wants to meet somebody, she just pipes right up and says hello.
“Generally I sleep very well. The only problem is that Beverly goes to bed really late”—starts to write
3, 4, even 5 a.m.,
instead writes—“2 a.m. sometimes, and it wakes me up when she comes in.”
She slumped back in the chair once more and stared out the window a few light-years into the darkness. This, she figured, was it. Right here was the point where she either cried out or she didn't cry out. Momma, only you can help me! Who else do I have! Listen to me! Let me tell you the truth! Beverly doesn't just return in the dead of the night and “go to bed really late”! She brings boys into bed—and they rut-rut-rut
do it—
barely four feet from
my
bed! She leads a wanton sex life! The whole place does! Girls
sexile
each other! Rich girls with fifteen hundred SATs cry out, “I need some ass!” “I'm gonna go out and get laid!” The girls, Momma, the girls, Dupont girls, right in front of you! Momma—what am I to do …
But she stiffened and swallowed it all. Just one little mention of … sex … and Momma the Wrath of God would head east in the pickup, and haul her back to Sparta, and the whole county would hum like a hive: “Charlotte Simmons has dropped out of Dupont. Poor thing thinks it's immoral there.”
So she writes, “By the same token, when I get up in the morning at my usual time, it wakes Beverly up. We are getting used to each other, however, even though we don't have many opportunities to spend time together. There seem to be a lot of her prep school friends here, and she also spends a lot of time with”—starts to write
her boyfriend(s),
instead crosses out the
also
and writes—“a lot of time with them. I'm not sure she has ever heard a Southern accent before.” She strikes out the previous sentence. Despite what a couple of people have said, she essentially has no regional accent. “Beverly and I get along fine, however.
“You wouldn't believe how important sports are here! The big football and basketball stars are celebrities. Everybody on campus knows them by sight. There were four basketball players in the French course I started out in, and they were so tall they made everybody else feel like a midget. I met one of them. He was very friendly and complimented me on my performance in the class. The athletes like to pretend they don't care about academic work, but I think this one really is interested, even though he acts as if he isn't.” Dying to write
He immediately invited me to grab some lunch
,
which is the prelude to grab some ass
—but doesn't take even one step down that road.
“Living in a coed dorm was strange at first. Pretty soon, though, the boys just seem like neighbors ‘across the way.'” Dying to write,
By now I hardly notice them except when Beverly brings her hookups up to the room to give them some fresh meat.
Actually writes, “That doesn't mean I don't have a lot to learn about Dupont, but every freshman is in the same boat. The freshmen girls go around in little ‘herds'”—puts quotation marks around
herds
, doesn't want to characterize them to Momma and Daddy as dumb animals, especially since that is what they are, dumb, frightened, rich rabbits, chronically, desperately, in heat—“so that they won't feel both confused and lonely. Confused is bad enough!
“So everything is going along pretty much the way I hoped it would. I have to pinch myself to make sure this isn't just a dream and I really am a student at one of the best universities in the country.” Thinks: where one and all make Channing and Regina look like harmless four-year-olds. “Dupont isn't Sparta, but I've already come to believe that growing up in Sparta has advantages that people I've met from places like Boston and New York have never had.” Would love to write,
They don't realize that not everything you say has to be ironic or sarcastic and cynical and sophisticated and sick, virulent, covered in pustules, and oozing with popped-pustular sex
. If only there were a way to slip that sentiment into a letter to Momma—without her exploding! Settles for “Some things money can't buy.”
“I didn't mean to make this letter so long. I should have written you before now to bring you up to date. Give my love to Buddy and Sam; also to Aunt Betty and Cousin Doogie. Tell them I miss them and that everything is going fine.
I love you,
Charlotte.”
 
She slumped back again … There it was—one long, well-intentioned lie.
 
 
For a long time she just sat in the chair and looked out the window in something close to a trance. The floodlights down below sent shadows up the sides of the library tower as if they weren't shadows at all but great washes of watercolor. The undersides of the compound arches and decorative outcroppings
caught the light here and there. What if she called Miss Pennington? She would be a lot more objective than Momma. She was wise as well as intelligent … Miss Pennington … She tried to imagine it—but what did Miss Pennington know about sex on the other side of the mountain? Nothing. How
could
she know? She was an old, homely spinster who had lived all her life in Sparta. Charlotte immediately chided herself for thinking that way about someone who had been so good to her. Yet it was true. “Spinster”—would anybody at Dupont even be
aware
of the word? No, the sex-obsessed know-it-alls of Dupont would sneak through Miss Pennington's blood/brain barrier and swim through her arteries and veins like liver flukes until they found evidence, no matter how far-fetched, of lesbianism or transexuality or something else disgusting. They would roll her in their muck, all the while piously “defending” her right to her “orientation.” What hypocrites they were! Still, what did—how could—Miss Pennington know about it all? And she already
knew
what Miss Pennington would say: “Get busy, start a project, ignore them.” Be yourself, be independent, march to a different drummer, swim against the current—they'll admire your courage, the way they do here—Oh, Miss Pennington! You don't understand. In Sparta that was so easy. It was easy maintaining my pose, looking down my nose at the Channings and the Reginas all day with a Little Scholar's sneer as they called me an “uptight cherry” and a lot of other things, and asked me—Regina once said it to my face—when I was going to “give it up.” It was easy, because at nightfall the skirmish was over, and I went home to Momma and Daddy and Buddy and Sam. Oh, I was superior to
them
, too, even to Momma. How backward I knew my family to be by the time I was thirteen! But that poor old shack out County Road 1709 was always there; it was mine. It reeked of kerosene and a coal grate, but no one could touch me, no one would try, no one could look Daddy in the face when his eyes went cold, no one dared provoke Cousin Doogie to the point where he bared his fangs. Once he threw rocks—“thhhhhhoo rrrocks,” as he spluttered it out later—at big Dave Cosgrove when Dave winked a sarcastic wink and said, “Reckon you ain't fixing to give me no cherry on ice, hunh, Charlotte?” … rocks might'near big enough to kill him. Then Cousin Doogie stood there with another rock in his hand and said, “Try talking that way again, fat boy. I ain't rammed a spit up a pig's ass in a long time.” Dave, who must have weighed eighty pounds more than Cousin Doogie, just slunk away. That was why he went limp when he crashed the party after commencement. There was Cousin Doogie.
Here, now, at Dupont, when she came “home,” she wasn't getting away from it alt—right here was where she had to wallow in it all. Right here, in her “own” room, which was supposed to be a place of peace, sleep, and refuge—right here was where she got her nose shoved in the filth. It wasn't so much a thought as an instinct: what she needed was somebody wise who also
knew
and who would assure her that yes, her situation was unjust, and yes, it was her duty to hold firm and remain independent, a rock amid the decadence all around her. That person, in the Dupont catalog, would be the R.A. Ha ha, a joke. Her R.A., Ashley, had immediately taken her for a hopelessly innocent little country girl and told her a sentimental lie about “dormcest.” She could just
see
Ashley's “sincere” face and her flyaway tangles of blond hair—
Bango!
—the blond hair, the blond hair and the freckles: Laurie. Only a freshman herself, at North Carolina State, but Laurie was levelheaded and mature, at least compared to other girls at Alleghany High, and she was religious—New River Baptist Church, the Better Sort of Baptists, the in-town Baptists, as opposed to the foot-washing Baptists out in the countryside, even though the Better Sort also baptized people with full immersion in the New River at Easter when the water was still ice-cold. Laurie had convictions!
Charlotte got up from the chair and picked up the “room” telephone, a white portable. The instrument itself belonged to Beverly, but Charlotte could use it, entering her own code when she made a call. It was hardly ever used. Beverly lived on her cell phone, and Charlotte, like her folks, would do almost anything to avoid “calling long distance.” She felt reckless and oddly exhilarated. She punched in Information in Raleigh, North Carolina, for North Carolina State, hung up, and then punched in General Information at State. All this was going to cost money, but with giddy abandon she refused to think about that now. A recorded voice answered and instructed her to press
this
if she wanted this, or this for this, or this for this or … It was bewildering. She had to hang up and dial again …
flinging
money out the window. This time she concentrated on the disembodied instructions and pressed
this
for
this …
and
this
referred her to this or this or this, and
this
instructed her to punch in the first four letters of the last name, which she did, MCDO, which led her to a series of automated voices that went through the McDodds, McDolans, McDonoughs, and McDoovers before finally reaching the McDowells, whereupon another voice took over and ran A. J., Arthur, Edith, F., George, H. H., and Ian McDowell by her before reaching
L. McDowell. Charlotte was frantic. She had never been in phone-mail jail before. She took a wild stab and responded yes to L. A squad of patchedtogether digital voices gave her L. McDowell's number.

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