In the doorway appeared a tall girl with a cell phone to her ear, a canvas sling over her shoulder ⦠a girl so tall and thin that Charlotte thought she must be a model from a magazine! ⦠long, full, straight brown hair with blond streaks ⦠big blue eyes set in a perfectly suntanned face ⦠but a terribly thin face, now that Charlotte got a better look, so thin it made her nose and her chin look too big, giving her a slightly horsey look. A long, terribly
thin neck rose up out of a pale, chalky blue T-shirt ⦠even Charlotte could tell it was one of those fine cottons, like lisle ⦠hanging outside a pair of khaki shorts ⦠perfectly tanned, long, long, oh-so-slender legs ⦠so slender they made her knees seem too big ⦠just as her elbows seemed too big for her awfully skinny arms. Still on the cell phone, she kept her eyes cast down at some nonexistent point in midair without so much as a glance inside the room ⦠a mock grimace, and she said, “Eeeeeeyew, that's gross, Amanda!
Fresh meat.
”
Then she looked up, saw Charlotte, Momma, and Daddy, andâthe cell phone still at her earâopened her eyes wide as if in surprise, gave them a big smile, and made a little fluttering gesture with her other hand. Then she cast her eyes down again, as if drawing a curtain, and said into the cell phone:
“AmandaâAmandaâAmandaâI'm sorry, I have to go now. I'm at my room ⦠Uh
hunh
, exactly. Call me later. Bye.”
With that, she pushed a button on the cell phone, slipped it into the canvas bag, and beamed another big smile toward Momma, Daddy, and Charlotte.
“Hi!
I'm
sorry! I
hate
these phones! I'm Beverly. Charlotte?”
Charlotte said hello and managed a smile, but she was already intimidated. This girl was so confident and poised. Somehow she immediately took over the room. And she already had a friend at Dupont, apparently. They shook hands, and Charlotte said in a timid voice, “These are my folks.”
The girl directed her smile toward Daddy, looked him right in the eye, extended her hand, and said, “Hi, Mr. Simmons.”
Daddy opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He just nodded deferentially and shook her hand ⦠limply, Charlotte could tell, and she could feel shame weighing down her confidence.
Oh God, the mermaid!
Charlotte thought she saw the girl flick a glance at Daddy's forearm ⦠When he took her hand, it disappeared inside his.
What does that big callused hand feel like to her?
The girl turned to Momma. “Hi, Mrs. Simmons.”
Momma wasn't at all intimidated. She shook the girl's hand and sang out, “Well, hi there, Beverly! It's
real
nice to meet you! We been looking
forward to it
!”
A woman's voice: “That says five sixteen, doesn't it?” Everyone turned toward the doorway.
In came a middle-aged woman with a lot of pineapple blond hair teased
and fluffed and brushed back in a certain way, followed by a tall, balding man, also middle-aged. The woman wore a simple sleeveless dress that came down to just above her knees. The man had on a white open-necked polo shirt, revealing the puffy onset of jowls, and a pair of khakis and some sort of leather moccasinsâand no socks. Behind them, in came one of the young men in the mauve T-shirts ⦠rather handsome ⦠carefully pushing a dolly over the threshold. There must have been a
ton
of stuff on it, piled six or seven feet high.
“Mummy,” said the girl, “come meet the Simmonses. Dad ⦔
With a big, friendly smile the man came over to Daddy and shook handsâCharlotte could have sworn that he, too, took a quick look at the mermaidâand said, “Hey! How are you? Jeff Amory!”
“Billy,” said Daddy. That was all he said: “Billy.” Charlotte was mortified. The man shot a glance at Daddy's gray work pants. Charlotte shot a glance at Mr. Amory's khakis and at Mrs. Amory's dress. To a girl from Mars, or Sparta, North Carolina, they were dressed essentially the same as her parents. So what was it about themâ
Mr. Amory was greeting Momma, saying, “How are you? Jeff Amory!” Then he turned to Charlotte, pulled his head back, beamed a big smile, opened his arms as if coming across a long-lost friend, and said, “Wellâyou must be Charlotte!”
Charlotte couldn't think of what on earth to say, and so she just said, “Yes, sir,” and felt like a child.
“This is quite a day,” said Mr. Amory. “Are you ready for all this?” He swept his hand toward the windows, as if to take in the whole campus.
“I think so,” said Charlotte. “I hope so.” Why couldn't she come up with anything more than this juvenile politeness?
“When I was starting out as a freshman hereâ'
“In the Dark Ages,” said his daughter.
“Oh, thank you, dear. See what a respectful roommate you have, Charlotte? Anyway, as I recall”âhe aimed a wry smile at his daughterâ“through the fog of my Alzheimer's onset”âhe beamed once more at Charlotteâ“is that it's big, or it seemed big to me at the time, but you really get used to the place very quickly.”
Beverly's mother was saying to Daddy, “How do you do? Valerie Amory. It's so nice to meet you. When did you arrive?”
Before Daddy could say anything, Mr. Amory said, “Oh, brother. Let's see where we're gonna put all these things.”
He had turned around and was talking to the young man who was tending the dolly ⦠tall, slender, athletic looking ⦠sun-bleached brown hair brushed down just slightly over his forehead. Charlotte took in every detail. The dolly bore an enormous heap of ⦠stuff.
Mrs. Amory was greeting Momma. She took her hand and said, “Mrs.
Simmons
⦔ with a smile, a deep look into the eyes, and an inflection that bespoke a sympathetic if inexplicable confidentiality. “Valerie Amory. This is such a pleasure.”
“Why, thank you, Valerie,” said Momma, “it's just real nice to git the chance to meet you all! And you can call me Lizbeth. Most everbuddy does.”
Out the corner of her eye, Charlotte caught, or thought she caught, Beverly staring at her waist-high denim shorts.
“Beverly,”
Mr. Amory said, “you sure you didn't for
get
anything?” He stared at the mound of things on the dolly and shook his head and then smiled at Momma and Daddy. He surveyed the room and said to his daughter, “Where do you think you're gonna put all this?”
From the graphics on the cartons, Charlotte could make out a kitchenette refrigeratorâthat was the really big boxâa microwave, a laptop computer, a fax machine, a digital camera, an electric toothbrush, a television set â¦
Mrs. Amory had turned to Charlotte and, clasping her hand with both of hers, was saying, “Well â¦
Charlotte
.” She brought her face closer to Charlotte's and peered profoundly into her eyes. “We've been so anxious to meet you. I can remember this very day so well myself. It wasn't here, it was at Wellesley, and I'm not going to tell you
when
! But four years from now”âshe snapped her fingersâ“you'll wonder where on earthâ”
“Oh,
Dad,
” Beverly was saying, “you have to
worry
about everything. Just put it anywhere. I'll take care of it.”
Mrs. Amory turned abruptly to Beverly and said, “Hah hah hah, darling.” Then she said to Momma, “I hope Charlotte's better organized thanâ”
A thump on the floorâ“Oh, shit!” said Beverly.
Everyone turned toward her. She was already stooping over to pick up her cell phone. She stood up again and, surprised by the silence, looked about quizzically. Charlotte saw Mrs. Amory glancing sideways at Momma, who looked like she had turned to stone. If anyone had said
Oh, shit
in her presence in her houseâanyoneâMomma would have let her know she had no mind to tolerate it.
Mrs. Amory forced a laugh and, smiling and shaking her head, said, “
Bev
erly ⦠did I just hear you say, âOh, darn'?”
Beverly obviously didn't know what she was talking about. Then it dawned on her, and she opened her eyes wide and put her fingertips over her lips in the classic attitude of mock penitence.
“Oops,” she said, looking about and misting the air with more effusions of irony. “Sorry.” Without skipping a beat, she turned toward the handsome young man in the mauve T-shirt who was beginning to unload the dolly. “Just anywhere ⦠Ken.” She gave him a coquettish smile. “I'm terrible with names. It is Ken, isn't it?”
“Just anywhere?”
said Mr. Amory. “You'll need a loft for
just anywhere
.”
“Kim,” the young man said.
“
Anhh ⦠I thought
I heard Kim, but I just didn'tâI'm Beverly.” It seemed to Charlotte that she looked at him a couple of beats longer than necessary before continuing in a small but somehow flirtatious voice, “What year are you?”
“I'm a senior. All of us”âhe gestured toward the trolleyâ“are seniors.”
Mrs. Amory had turned back to Daddy, eager to change the subject to ⦠any subject, and Boring be damned. “I'm sorry,
when
did you say you arrived?”
“Oh, âbout half hour ago, I reckon.”
“You live in the western part of North Carolina.” She smiled. Charlotte thought she noticed her eyes dart ever so quickly to the tattoo.
“Yep. âBout as far west as you kin git and still be in the state of North Carolina. Wellânot quite, but it took us purt' near ten hours to drive here.”
“My goodness.” She smiled.
Daddy said, “How did you folks git here from Massachusetts?”
“We flew.” She smiled.
Charlotte could see Mr. Amory's eyes run up and down Daddy ⦠his ruddy face with its reddish brown field hand's sunburn ⦠the mermaid ⦠the sport shirt out over the gray twill work pants, the old sneakers â¦
“Whirred you fly
into
?” said Daddy.
“An airport five or six miles out of townâJeff, what's the name of the field we flew into?”
“Boothwyn.” He smiled at Momma, who wasn't smiling.
“Well, I'll be switched,” said Daddy. “I didn't even know they had an airport here.”
Charlotte could see Beverly Amory running her eyes up and down Momma ⦠down to where the denim jumper descended below the knees and the athletic socks rose up â¦
“Oh, it's very small,” said Mrs. Amory. She smiled. “It's not really an airport, I guess. That's probably not the right term.” She smiled some more.
The smiles seemed not so much cheery as patient.
“Anything else I can help you folks with?” said the porter, Kim, who had now removed everything from the dolly. The way he had pushed them together, the boxes created a massive little edifice.
“I think that's just about it,” said Mr. Amory. “Thank you very much, Kim.”
“No problem,” said the young man, who was already heading out the door with the dolly. Without stopping, he said, “You all have a good time.” Then he looked at Beverly and Charlotte. “And a good year.”
“We'll try,” said Beverly, smiling in a certain way.
She'd practically struck up an acquaintance with him! Charlotte felt even more inadequate. She couldn't think of anything to sayâto anybody, much less to some good-looking senior.
Momma cocked her head and stared at Daddy. Daddy compressed his lips and shrugged his eyebrows. All rightâthe boy
hadn't
stood around waiting for a tip.
A muffled ring, oddly like a harp being strummed. Mr. Amory reached into the pocket of his khakis and withdrew a small cell phone. “Hello? ⦠Oh, come on ⦔ His sunny demeanor was gone. He scowled into the little mouthpiece. “How could that possibly ⦠I know ⦠Look, Larry, I can't go into all this now. We're in Beverly's room with her roommate and her parents. I'll call you back. In the meantime,
ask around
, for God's sake. Boothwyn isn't so small that they don't have
mechanics
.”
He closed up the cell phone and said to his wife, “That was Larry. He says there's some sort of hydraulic leak in the rudder controls. That's all we need.”
Silence. Then Mr. Amory smiled again, patiently, and said, “Well ⦠Billy ⦠where are you and ⦠Lizbeth ⦠staying?”
Daddy said, oh, they wouldn't be staying, they were going to turn around and drive back to Sparta, and Momma and Mrs. Amory had a little discussion about the rigors of such a long round-trip in one day. Mrs. Amory said they would be flying back as soon as they could to get out of Beverly's hair and let her and Charlotte arrange things for themselves, and besides, wasn't there a meeting of all the freshmen in this section in a couple of
hours? Hadn't she seen that on the schedule? That was true, said Beverly, but would they mind terribly not getting out of her hair until they had something to eatâ
hello-oh
?âsince she, for one, was starving? Both Mr. and Mrs. Amory gave their daughter a cross look, and then Mr. Amory smiled at Momma and Daddy like Patience on a monument smiling at Grief and said that, well, it looked like they were going to go have a quick bite to eat, and if Momma, Daddy, and Charlotte would care to come along, they were welcome. As he remembered, there was a little restaurant in town called Le Chef. “Not fabulous,” he said, “but good; and quick.” Daddy gave Momma an anxious glance, and Charlotte knew what that was about. Any unknown restaurant named Le Chef or Le anything sounded like more money than he was going to want to spend. But Momma gave Daddy a little nod that as much as said that they probably should sit down and have one meal with Charlotte's roommate's parents, since they had suggested it.