I Am Charlotte Simmons (24 page)
Read I Am Charlotte Simmons Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
God knows what the Information calls alone cost. But now she's drunk on her own heedlessness. She punches in the number, stretches the coiled cord, and sits back down in her chair. Seven rings, eight ringsânot there, even if L. is Laurieâ
“Hello?” Loud rap music in the background.
Terribly embarrassed: “May I speak to Laurie McDowell?”
Hesitation ⦠“This is Laurie ⦔
Charlotte is elated! Laurie! Why hadn't she called her in the first place? Laurie will
know
! Laurie will understand! Shivers of delight. She wants to laugh, she's so happy. Almost a shriek: “Laurie! You know who this is?”
know
! Laurie will understand! Shivers of delight. She wants to laugh, she's so happy. Almost a shriek: “Laurie! You know who this is?”
“No-o-o-o ⦔
Carried away by joy, she giggled, “Regina Cox.”
“
Reg
i
na?â
Charlotte!
”
Reg
i
na?â
Charlotte!
”
Shrieks, laughter, interjections, I-can't-believe-its, more shrieks and laughs. The rap music is banging away. “Knock it on some fox's box, my cock”âblip: Doctor Dis. Since when was Laurie interested in rap?
“Regina ⦠Charlotte, you are like totallyâOhmygod, I mean the day Reginaâwhere are you?”
“In my room in the dorm.”
“At Dupont?”
“Yeah ⦠at Dupont ⦔
“I can't say you sound very excited. What's it like? I can't believe this! Like a hundred times I've been on the verge of calling
you
! I totally
have
!”
you
! I totally
have
!”
“Me, tooâsame thing.”
“The Dupont girl!” said Laurie. “Tell me everything! I've been like totally dying to know. Wait a minute, let me turn down this music. I can hardly hear you.”
Laurie and ⦠all these
totallys
? The rap band banging in the background began to digit down, and the last thing Charlotte heard distinctly was Doctor Dis making one of those crude rap half rhymes, “ ⦠take my testi-culls, suck 'em like a popsi-cull ⦔ For a moment she worried that the distraction would make Laurie forget what they were about to discuss, namely, Dupont. At the same time she didn't want to pounce right back onto the subject herself, for fear of revealing how eager she was to talk about it.
totallys
? The rap band banging in the background began to digit down, and the last thing Charlotte heard distinctly was Doctor Dis making one of those crude rap half rhymes, “ ⦠take my testi-culls, suck 'em like a popsi-cull ⦔ For a moment she worried that the distraction would make Laurie forget what they were about to discuss, namely, Dupont. At the same time she didn't want to pounce right back onto the subject herself, for fear of revealing how eager she was to talk about it.
Laurie returned to the telephone. “Sorry, I didn't know I had it on so loud. You know who that was, the singer?”
“Doctor Dis,” said Charlotte. She left it at that. She didn't want things to go off on a tangent about some stupid illiterate singer, if you could call rap singing. At the same time, she had a terrible itch of curiosity. “I didn't know you liked rap.”
A bit defensive: “I like
some
of it.”
some
of it.”
Dead air. Silence. It was as if the conversation had leaked out a hole. Charlotte ransacked her brain. Finally, “Is it like
here
? All
anybody
plays at Dupont is rap and reggae, except for the ones who like classical music and all that. There are a lot of musicians in my class.”
here
? All
anybody
plays at Dupont is rap and reggae, except for the ones who like classical music and all that. There are a lot of musicians in my class.”
“Rap and reggae are really popular here, too,” said Laurie, “but there are a lot of kids, guys especially, who listen to country and bluegrass? I got enough of that in Sparta. But other'n'at, N.C. State's like totally cool. It's big! The first two weeks it liked to drive me crazy, it's so big.”
Liiiikedâ
sounded almost like
locked
. It was a relief to Charlotte to know that somebody else was in college with the Sparta accent, the Sparta diction, the Sparta “other'n'at,” the Sparta “liked to” for “almost,” the Sparta declarative sentence that modestly questions itself at the very end. Laurie would
understand
, if she could ever get her back on the subject. “At Dupont,” Laurie was saying, “do you have to do everything online?”
Liiiikedâ
sounded almost like
locked
. It was a relief to Charlotte to know that somebody else was in college with the Sparta accent, the Sparta diction, the Sparta “other'n'at,” the Sparta “liked to” for “almost,” the Sparta declarative sentence that modestly questions itself at the very end. Laurie would
understand
, if she could ever get her back on the subject. “At Dupont,” Laurie was saying, “do you have to do everything online?”
“Well, a lot ofâ”
Laurie talked right over the top of her. “Here you register for classes online, you turn in assignments online, if you need to ask a T.A. something about homework, you do it onlineâbut I don't mind.” With great enthusiasm she proceeded to tell Charlotte about the endless number of things that made N.C. State cool. “Everybody's always talking about how State is an aggie college and all that? Well, there are a lot of really cool kids here. I've made so many friends?”
Free-uns.
“I'm glad I came here.”
Free-uns.
“I'm glad I came here.”
Charlotte didn't know what to say. Laurie
liked
it there. Since misery loves company, that was a disappointment.
liked
it there. Since misery loves company, that was a disappointment.
Laurie said, “Wellâwhat's up with you? You've got to tell me all about Dupont!”
“Oh, it's great, or I guess it's great,” said Charlotte. “They sure
tell
you enough it's great.”
tell
you enough it's great.”
“What do you mean?”
Charlotte told her about the speech by the dean of Dupont College at
the “frosh” convocation, the medieval banners, the flags of forty-three nations, the name-dropping, the Nobel-droppingâ“That's what
they
say, and what do
you
say?”
the “frosh” convocation, the medieval banners, the flags of forty-three nations, the name-dropping, the Nobel-droppingâ“That's what
they
say, and what do
you
say?”
“Oh, I don't know,” said Charlotte. “It probably is that great, but I don't know what difference it makes.”
“Oh wow,” said Laurie. “You're sure jumping for joy.”
Charlotte said, “Do you live in a coed dorm?”
“Do I live in a coed dorm? Yeah. Practically everybody does. Do you?”
“Yeah,” said Charlotte. “What do you think of it?”
“Oh, I don't know,” said Laurie. “It was weird at first. The guys were totally
loud
all the time. But now it's like calmed down. I don't think about it much anymore.”
loud
all the time. But now it's like calmed down. I don't think about it much anymore.”
“Have you ever heard of sexiling?”
“Yeah ⦔
“Has it ever happened to you?”
“
To
me? No, but it happens.”
To
me? No, but it happens.”
“Wellâit happened to me,” said Charlotte. “My roommate comes in about three o'clock in the morning andâ” She proceeded to tell the story. “But the worst thing was the way
she
made
me
feel guilty. I was supposed to
know
that if she gets drunk and picks up some guy somewhere and brings him up to the room, that's more important than me being able to stay in
my
room and get some sleep before a test in the morning.”
she
made
me
feel guilty. I was supposed to
know
that if she gets drunk and picks up some guy somewhere and brings him up to the room, that's more important than me being able to stay in
my
room and get some sleep before a test in the morning.”
A pause. “I guess it's the same way here.”
“At Dupont,” said Charlotte, “everybody thinks you're some kind ofâofâsome kind of twisted ⦠uptight ⦠pathetic little goody-goody if you haven't had sex. Girls will come right out and ask youâgirls you hardly even know. They'll come right out and ask youâin front of other girlsâif you're a V.C., a member of the Virgins Club, and if you're stupid enough to say yes, it's an
admission
, like you have some terrible character defect. They practically sneer. If you don't have a boyfriend, you're a loser, and if you want a boyfriend, you have to have sex. There's something perverted about that. Don't you agree with me? This is supposed to be this great university, but it's like if you haven't âgiven it up,' as Regina used to say, then you just don't belong here.
I'd
say that's perverted. Am I rightâor do I just not get it or something? Is it like that there?”
admission
, like you have some terrible character defect. They practically sneer. If you don't have a boyfriend, you're a loser, and if you want a boyfriend, you have to have sex. There's something perverted about that. Don't you agree with me? This is supposed to be this great university, but it's like if you haven't âgiven it up,' as Regina used to say, then you just don't belong here.
I'd
say that's perverted. Am I rightâor do I just not get it or something? Is it like that there?”
Pause. “More or less.”
“So what do
you
do when it comes up? What do you
say
?”
you
do when it comes up? What do you
say
?”
Long pause. “I guess I like ⦠don't say anything.”
“Then what do you
do
?” said Charlotte.
do
?” said Charlotte.
Longer pause. “I guess I try to look at it in a different way. I've never lived anywhere but Sparta before. CollegeâI don't know, I guess I think of college as this opportunity to ⦠to experiment. I needed to like get away from Sparta for a while.”
“Wellâme, too,” said Charlotte. She couldn't imagine why Laurie was saying anything so obvious.
Still longer pause. “You think maybe it's possible you got away, but you brought a lot of Sparta with you to Dupont?” said Laurie. “Without knowing it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I'm just asking ⦠like suppose it's something to consider. I guess what I really mean is college is like this four-year period you have when you can try anythingâand
everything
âand if it goes wrong, there's no consequences? You know what I mean? Nobody's keeping score? You can do things that if you tried them before you got to college, your family would be crying and pulling their hair out and giving you these now-see-what-you've-gone-and-done looks?âand everybody in Sparta would be clucking and fuming and having a ball talking behind your back about it?âand if you tried these things after you left college and you're working, everybody's gonna fucking blow a fuse, and your boss or whoever will call you in for aâ”
everything
âand if it goes wrong, there's no consequences? You know what I mean? Nobody's keeping score? You can do things that if you tried them before you got to college, your family would be crying and pulling their hair out and giving you these now-see-what-you've-gone-and-done looks?âand everybody in Sparta would be clucking and fuming and having a ball talking behind your back about it?âand if you tried these things after you left college and you're working, everybody's gonna fucking blow a fuse, and your boss or whoever will call you in for aâ”
âthe
fucking
just slipped out and hit Charlotte in the solar plexusâ
Laurie!
fucking
just slipped out and hit Charlotte in the solar plexusâ
Laurie!
“âlittle talk, he'll call it, or if you have a boyfriend or a husband, he's gonna totally freak out or crawl off like a dog, which would be just as bad, because it'd make you feel guilty? I mean, look at it that way, Charlotte. College is the only time in your life, or your adult life anyway, when you can really
experiment
, and at a certain point, when you leave, when you graduate or whatever, everybody's memory like evaporates. You tried this and this and this and this, and you learned a lot about how things are, but nobody's gonna remember it? It's like amnesia, totally, and there's no record, and you leave college exactly the way you came in, pure as rainwater.”
experiment
, and at a certain point, when you leave, when you graduate or whatever, everybody's memory like evaporates. You tried this and this and this and this, and you learned a lot about how things are, but nobody's gonna remember it? It's like amnesia, totally, and there's no record, and you leave college exactly the way you came in, pure as rainwater.”
“Tried
what
things?” said Charlotte. “What's an example?”
what
things?” said Charlotte. “What's an example?”
“Wellâ” Laurie hesitated. “You were talking about boyfriends and what boyfriends expect and everything ⦔
“Yeah ⦔
Laurie's voice rose. “Charlotte! That's not the end of the world! This is the time to cut loose! To really learn about everything! To learn about guys,
to really get to know them! Really find out what goes on in the world! You just have to let yourself fly for once, without constantly thinking about what you left behind on the ground! You're a genius. Everybody knows that. I'm being sincere, Charlotte. Totally. Now there's other things to learn, and this is the perfect time to do it. Take a chance! That's one reason people go to college! It's not the only reason, but it's a big reason.”
to really get to know them! Really find out what goes on in the world! You just have to let yourself fly for once, without constantly thinking about what you left behind on the ground! You're a genius. Everybody knows that. I'm being sincere, Charlotte. Totally. Now there's other things to learn, and this is the perfect time to do it. Take a chance! That's one reason people go to college! It's not the only reason, but it's a big reason.”
Silence. Then Charlotte said, “So you're talking about ⦠going all the way ⦔
Silence. Then, “Not
just
that, but, wellâyes.”
just
that, but, wellâyes.”
Embarrassed pause. “Have
you
done that, Laurie?”
you
done that, Laurie?”
Bravely, nothing to be ashamed of: “Yes, I have.” Silence. “I know what you're thinking, but it's not all that big a deal.” Silence. “And it's a relief. I meanâwell, you know.” Silence. “If you decide you want to, all you have to do is call me up, and I can tell youâI can tell you some things.”
Laurie went on for a while, in the abstract, about how little the deal was. Charlotte kept the receiver at her ear. She let her eyes wander ⦠the pale gray wash up the side of the tower ⦠the curious ragged diagonal the lit-up windows on the other side of the courtyard made ⦠the bra that had somehow gotten tangled around the high heel of a shoe underneath Beverly's bed. Laurie was going on about how every girl was on the pill, and it didn't cause you to gain weight, the way she'd always heard â¦
Charlotte had a picture in her head of thousands of girls getting up out of bed in the morning and shuffling to the bathroom with sleepers in their eyes and standing in front of a small, discolored cream-gray enameled basin with an old-fashioned zinc-gray chain attached to a black rubber stopper and a medicine cabinet with a mirror on the door, and they're all reaching up, in a fog, thousands of college girlsâshe can see thousands of arms and hands reaching up, in this building, that building, the one across the way, the one behind thatâincalculable numbers of buildingsâthey're all reaching up and opening the cabinets and taking The Pill, which she imagined must be the size of the pills they give mules on the Christmas-tree farms for heartworm.
That was the picture, but she didn't actually hear anything after “Yes, I have.”
I
t was very nearly dark, and along the footpath on the edge of the Grove, blinking yellow lights came bobbing and bouncing by, one after the other, weak yellow lights, bunched together here, spread out there, but a whole train of them, all going in the same direction, bouncing and bobbing and blinking along the footpath by the arboretum. Adam squeezed the brake levers on his bicycle and stopped, even though he was already late for his meeting at
The Daily Wave
.
t was very nearly dark, and along the footpath on the edge of the Grove, blinking yellow lights came bobbing and bouncing by, one after the other, weak yellow lights, bunched together here, spread out there, but a whole train of them, all going in the same direction, bouncing and bobbing and blinking along the footpath by the arboretum. Adam squeezed the brake levers on his bicycle and stopped, even though he was already late for his meeting at
The Daily Wave
.
It took a moment or two to figure out this spectral locomotion: joggers. The yellow lights, which blinked in order to alert motorists at night, were built into the CD players they wore Velcro'd around their upper arms. But their armsâthey were hardly even there! These joggers were girls, every one of them, so far as Adam could make out, and half of them were terribly thin, breastless, bottomless, nothing but bones, hair, T-shirts, shorts, big sneakers, and blinking lights. They were determined to burn up every last calorie they could squeeze out of their juiceless hidesâor die, literally die, trying.
Adam saw a story in it immediatelyâTHE ANOREXIC MARATHONâand nobody at the
Wave
was going to grouse about his being late if he arrived with a good idea like this oneâon top of the real bombshell he was delivering this evening concerningâhe could already envision this story's headline, tooâTHE GOVERNOR, THE BLOW JOB AND THE BRAWL.
Wave
was going to grouse about his being late if he arrived with a good idea like this oneâon top of the real bombshell he was delivering this evening concerningâhe could already envision this story's headline, tooâTHE GOVERNOR, THE BLOW JOB AND THE BRAWL.
He hurried on, pedaling past Crowninshield, past the Little Yard, all the while wondering if it was hard to get anorexics to agree to pictures. THE LIVING DEAD WHO WON'T LIE DOWN ⦠The interviews? No problem for an enterprising reporter like him. None of these wimp-out caveatsâ“the names have been changed”âeither. He could see it in print. He could
feel
it in print. There was something almost chemical about new story ideas. They gave him a visceral rush. THE GOVERNOR, THE BLOW JOB AND THE BRAWLâalthough little Greg Fiore would never have the guts to put BLOW JOB in a headline. He pedaled faster.
feel
it in print. There was something almost chemical about new story ideas. They gave him a visceral rush. THE GOVERNOR, THE BLOW JOB AND THE BRAWLâalthough little Greg Fiore would never have the guts to put BLOW JOB in a headline. He pedaled faster.
Out in the real world, as opposed to Dupont's cocoon, the typical newsroom of a daily newspaper wasn't much different from the home office of an insurance company: the same somber, invincible synthetic carpeting, the same rows of workstations with young backs humped over in front of low-grade-fever-blue computer screens. Only college newspaper offices such as the
Wave'
s preserved the lumpen-bohemian clutter of newsrooms in the fabled
Front Page
era of the twentieth century, not that anybody at the
Wave
other than Adam himself or possibly Greg, the editor in chief, had ever heard of
Front Page
or its era, more than seventy years ago, back in the last century, which to college students today was prehistory.
Wave'
s preserved the lumpen-bohemian clutter of newsrooms in the fabled
Front Page
era of the twentieth century, not that anybody at the
Wave
other than Adam himself or possibly Greg, the editor in chief, had ever heard of
Front Page
or its era, more than seventy years ago, back in the last century, which to college students today was prehistory.
As Adam walked in, Greg was rocked back on the rear legs of the old wooden library chair he used, holding forth to five other staff members, two boys and three girls, who had perched themselves wherever they could, against a backdrop of discarded pizza take-out boxes glistening with their greasy cheese residue, cardboard baskets that buffalo wings and chicken fingers had come in, cracked translucent tops from containers of coffee and jumbo Slurpees and smoothies, mealy-feeling molded gray composite-cardboard trays, various crumpled bags, and sheets of newspaper and computer printouts strewn upon an exhausted carpet splotched with raspberry Crazy Horse caffeine-jolt spills or worse. The bombness of it all! The pizza boxes ⦠after this meeting he would have to hustle over to PowerPizza and put in four frantic hours of pizza deliveries.
A skinny Chinese girl named Camille Dengâthat skank, thought Adamâwas saying, “I think we've still got some unresolved homophobia issues here. I don't buy the administration's cop-out that the maintenance staff âthought they were
combating
homophobia.'”
combating
homophobia.'”
“Why not?” said Greg, leaning back even farther on the chair's hind legs and eyeing Camille down his nose. Greg and his gotta-be-tough-newspaperman
pose, thought Adam. Greg and his scrawny neck and receding chin.
pose, thought Adam. Greg and his scrawny neck and receding chin.
“Well,” said Camille, “do you think it's just a coincidence that Parents Weekend is coming up, and the administration, which is always telling us how they're a hundred percent behind diversity and everything, you think they might just possibly not want the parents to see descriptions of how Dupont guys make love written in chalk all over the sidewalks? âWe're Queer and We're Here'âyou think Dupont Hall wants to let that big cat out of the bag? Because they
are
here.”
are
here.”
“How come you're saying
they
?” said a boy with shaggy red hair. Randy Grossman. “You sure you don't have an issue yourself? Like maybe a little covert pariah-ism? Like maybe a little self-loathing lesbianism?”
they
?” said a boy with shaggy red hair. Randy Grossman. “You sure you don't have an issue yourself? Like maybe a little covert pariah-ism? Like maybe a little self-loathing lesbianism?”
Camille went
Unnngghh
in a groan of utmost contempt.
Unnngghh
in a groan of utmost contempt.
I've got an issue of covert pariah-ism, too, when it comes to Randy, thought Adam. Randy had turned into an aggressive pain in the ass ever since he came out. Like everybody else on the
Wave
, Adam had admired him for his courage. Now he wished to hell he'd go back in the closet.
Wave
, Adam had admired him for his courage. Now he wished to hell he'd go back in the closet.
Greg ignored Randy and said, “Look, Camille, some night-shift security guy spots all this writing on the sidewalks describing âcock-and-ass jobs' and sticking fingers up the ass and stroking the prostateâI saw the remains of that one myselfâand it's two or three in the morning, and Security tells Maintenance, and Maintenance decidesâremember, we're talking about the night shift hereâ”
Camille broke in. “What difference is that supposed to make? Night-shift maintenance personnel are automatically retarded?”
“Let me finish. Maintenance figures this is antigay vandalism. âWe better get rid of it before daylight.' What's so hard to believe about that? These guysâit's the middle of the night, and how are they supposed to know this is the Lesbian and Gay Fist striking a blow for gay freedom? So they spend the rest of the night scrubbing it all off, and in the morning there's nothing left but chalk smears, and they think they've done the right thing. I can get down with that, but the Fist goes postal. Whattaya think happenedâa buncha guys got together at three a.m. and had a public relations meeting about Parents Weekend?”
Greg's right, thought Adam, and Camille's a skank, but Greg's right from the wrong motive. Greg, like every
Daily Wave
editor in chief, was supposed to be a fiercely independent journalist who pulled no punches. Greg
was not alone in
Wave
history in his inclination to pull lots of punches, since the administration, and fellow undergraduates, had an infinite number of waysâmoral, social, and substantiveâto make life miserable for any editor who took his charter of independence at face value. Nevertheless, it was important, not only for Greg's public face but also for his private soul, for him to believe that he was one tough journalist who would rake the muck whenever it needed raking. In fact, the chances of Fearless Greg Fiore denouncing the administration for not proudly upholding the right of the Fist to write anal sex exotica all over the sidewalks for Parents Weekend never existed in the first place.
Daily Wave
editor in chief, was supposed to be a fiercely independent journalist who pulled no punches. Greg
was not alone in
Wave
history in his inclination to pull lots of punches, since the administration, and fellow undergraduates, had an infinite number of waysâmoral, social, and substantiveâto make life miserable for any editor who took his charter of independence at face value. Nevertheless, it was important, not only for Greg's public face but also for his private soul, for him to believe that he was one tough journalist who would rake the muck whenever it needed raking. In fact, the chances of Fearless Greg Fiore denouncing the administration for not proudly upholding the right of the Fist to write anal sex exotica all over the sidewalks for Parents Weekend never existed in the first place.
Of course, Adam, as he himself realized, was not altogether objective when it came to Greg Fiore. It went without saying that he, Adam, was the senior who should at this moment be sitting in that rickety chair looking down his nose at staffers from his eminence as editor in chief. He couldn't blame Greg for the situation, but he found it in his heart to resent him all the same. No, at bottom it was his parents who were to blame, most specifically his father, who had left him and his mother in the shabby circumstances that made it necessary for him to work two jobs in order to get through college. Editing a daily like the
Wave
was a full-time commitment that left no time for things like delivering pizza and filling in for Jojo Johanssen's brain. Adam couldn't have accepted the job of editor if they had come on their knees begging him. Jews without money. Adam's father was the grandson of some Jews without moneyâ
Jews Without Money
was a 1930s “proletarian” novel that Adam had read just because of the titleâwho had immigrated from Poland to the United States in the 1920s and wound up in Boston, where they remained Jews without money. His father, Nat Gellin, had been the first Gellin, or GellininskyâAdam's great-grandfather had given the name a little trimâto go to college. Strapped for money, he had been forced to drop out of Boston University after two years, at which point he considered himself lucky when he got a job as a waiter at Egan's, a big, popular, glossy downtown restaurant that attracted the sort of businessmen who liked to dine breathing the same air as bigger businessmen, flashy politicians, TV anchors, journalists from the
Globe
and the
Herald
, and the odd visiting show-business celebrity. In sum, Egan's was irresistible to that creature of the big city, he who must be “where things are happening.” Nat Gellin had the three qualities essential for success in such an establishment: punctiliousness, tact, and charm; and in just under ten years he had worked his way up from waiter to captain to maître d' to manager. Adam barely remembered
him, but his father must have had the gift of glib bonhomie, too, because Egan's, historically, was Irish through and through. The joint had a bar trade that by six o'clock in the evening fairly roared with the boisterous conversations of people who knew they were drinking in the right place. The bar featured massive swaths of oak with polished brass accoutrements, inch-thick glass shelves bearing ranks of liquor bottles lit from below as if they were onstageâand Nat Gellin in a gray unfinished-worsted suit, a freshly starched shirt, and a navy tie with white pin dots, a look he had picked up from the team of official greeters at “21” in New York City. He greeted one and all at Egan's with a smile set between a pair of rubicund round cheeks. He had the knack of never forgetting a name, not even if the fellow came in only once in a blue moon. It was while he was a mere waiter and college dropout that he met pretty, cute, bouncy little Frances “Frankie” Horowitz, a high school graduate who had a job routing customer accident and theft calls for Allstate Insurance.
Wave
was a full-time commitment that left no time for things like delivering pizza and filling in for Jojo Johanssen's brain. Adam couldn't have accepted the job of editor if they had come on their knees begging him. Jews without money. Adam's father was the grandson of some Jews without moneyâ
Jews Without Money
was a 1930s “proletarian” novel that Adam had read just because of the titleâwho had immigrated from Poland to the United States in the 1920s and wound up in Boston, where they remained Jews without money. His father, Nat Gellin, had been the first Gellin, or GellininskyâAdam's great-grandfather had given the name a little trimâto go to college. Strapped for money, he had been forced to drop out of Boston University after two years, at which point he considered himself lucky when he got a job as a waiter at Egan's, a big, popular, glossy downtown restaurant that attracted the sort of businessmen who liked to dine breathing the same air as bigger businessmen, flashy politicians, TV anchors, journalists from the
Globe
and the
Herald
, and the odd visiting show-business celebrity. In sum, Egan's was irresistible to that creature of the big city, he who must be “where things are happening.” Nat Gellin had the three qualities essential for success in such an establishment: punctiliousness, tact, and charm; and in just under ten years he had worked his way up from waiter to captain to maître d' to manager. Adam barely remembered
him, but his father must have had the gift of glib bonhomie, too, because Egan's, historically, was Irish through and through. The joint had a bar trade that by six o'clock in the evening fairly roared with the boisterous conversations of people who knew they were drinking in the right place. The bar featured massive swaths of oak with polished brass accoutrements, inch-thick glass shelves bearing ranks of liquor bottles lit from below as if they were onstageâand Nat Gellin in a gray unfinished-worsted suit, a freshly starched shirt, and a navy tie with white pin dots, a look he had picked up from the team of official greeters at “21” in New York City. He greeted one and all at Egan's with a smile set between a pair of rubicund round cheeks. He had the knack of never forgetting a name, not even if the fellow came in only once in a blue moon. It was while he was a mere waiter and college dropout that he met pretty, cute, bouncy little Frances “Frankie” Horowitz, a high school graduate who had a job routing customer accident and theft calls for Allstate Insurance.
Adam's mother idolized the incomparable restaurateur Nat Gellin. Even years later, in the midst of monologues of pure old-fashioned hate, she would come out with something like “There isn't another Jew in Boston who coulda done what your father did with that Irish restaurant.” What Adam took away from all that was the idea that a successful Jew was one who was a hit with the goyim.
Nat Gellin of Egan's was a hit with the goyim, all right. Two years before Adam was born, Nat charmed an old-line Brahmin bank, First City National, into a prodigious loan and bought a half interest in Egan's from the original Michael F. X. Egan's five children, who were happy to get some cash out of the place in the here and now. Then he bought a house in Brookline to go with it, even though it meant he was now leveraged over the moon. Adam spent the first five years of his life in what he would recognize years later was a big, elegant Georgian house in Brookline, built about 1910 on a small lot, after the urban fashion of the day, in what was no doubt the right section back then and wasn't bad now. Nat's hubris was leveraged up to the ultimate, too. His ascension from salaried manager to profit-sharing full partner made him feel that he had risen to a higher social and, one might say, romantic level. One night, while wafting bonhomie in his restaurant, he met a blond twenty-three-year-old recently graduated from Wellesley, a WASP with all sorts of Ivy League and Beacon Hill connections, and in due course he began having to stay later and later at night to wrap up all the loose ends in his establishment, the operation of which was a matter of infinite
complexity, after which, nevertheless, came the inevitable drive back to Brookline and to Frankie.
complexity, after which, nevertheless, came the inevitable drive back to Brookline and to Frankie.
Frankie. He had grown, and she hadn't grown with him. She
had
grown older, however, and no longer looked pretty, cute, and bouncy as much as she did chunky, prematurely middle-aged, and not much different from any other uneducated American mom putting on weight and growing more and more remote from where things were happening, as she cooed and cooed in Brookline over her baby, Adam.
had
grown older, however, and no longer looked pretty, cute, and bouncy as much as she did chunky, prematurely middle-aged, and not much different from any other uneducated American mom putting on weight and growing more and more remote from where things were happening, as she cooed and cooed in Brookline over her baby, Adam.
It was one Sunday, while Nat was in just such a gloomy yet hubristic mood, and she was in the sunroom watering some Lollipop Stamen lilies, that he decided he had to tell her straight out. He actually used those words: “I know it's not your fault, Frankie, but I've grown, and you haven't grown with me.”
He couldn't have worded it in a worse way. He was not only telling her he was leaving her, he was also informing her that it was because she was an unsophisticated dimwit, an embarrassing
zhlub
. Adam was so young when it all happened that his memory contained nothing more than a single snapshot of his fatherâspecifically, of his porky belly and his genitals emerging naked from the bathroom. He also had a snapshot of the moment his mother informed him Daddy was moving out, although he couldn't remember how she put it. He was old enough a couple of years later to be quite aware that they were moving from the grand house in Brookline to the second floor of a not-so-great house in the West Roxbury section of Boston, although he was still too young to have any more than a vague idea of the status implications. His own personal status was fabulous. He was His Majesty the Only Child. His mother put him on that throne, sang his praises, worshiped him, strewed petals of adulation upon his every path. Inasmuch as his teachers also made a fuss over him, it never occurred to him that the elementary school he attended, along with a lot of unruly Irish, black, Italian, Chinese, Canuck, and Ukrainian children, might be somewhere toward the soggy bottom of the Boston public school system. He was royalty in the school building, too; His Majesty the Prodigy. It was only after he was thirteen and had a scholarship to Roxbury Latin, a famous and prestigious old private school, that he realized what a free fall it had been from Brookline to West Roxburyâand learned how it happened.
zhlub
. Adam was so young when it all happened that his memory contained nothing more than a single snapshot of his fatherâspecifically, of his porky belly and his genitals emerging naked from the bathroom. He also had a snapshot of the moment his mother informed him Daddy was moving out, although he couldn't remember how she put it. He was old enough a couple of years later to be quite aware that they were moving from the grand house in Brookline to the second floor of a not-so-great house in the West Roxbury section of Boston, although he was still too young to have any more than a vague idea of the status implications. His own personal status was fabulous. He was His Majesty the Only Child. His mother put him on that throne, sang his praises, worshiped him, strewed petals of adulation upon his every path. Inasmuch as his teachers also made a fuss over him, it never occurred to him that the elementary school he attended, along with a lot of unruly Irish, black, Italian, Chinese, Canuck, and Ukrainian children, might be somewhere toward the soggy bottom of the Boston public school system. He was royalty in the school building, too; His Majesty the Prodigy. It was only after he was thirteen and had a scholarship to Roxbury Latin, a famous and prestigious old private school, that he realized what a free fall it had been from Brookline to West Roxburyâand learned how it happened.
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