Pamela Dean (3 page)

"Oh, do you read mysteries?" said Christina, peering over Molly's shoulder at the entirely misleading cover of
The Daughter of Time.
"I love Agatha Christie."

You would, thought Janet. She said temperately, "I used to like the Tommy and Tuppence books a lot." Christina looked as if she, too, were thinking, you would.

She turned to Molly, looking, Janet thought, martyred, and said, "Which desk do you want?"

"I don't care," said Molly. "I work on my bed. At least"—and she cast a jaundiced eye at the bunk beds—"I did at home. Do we have to have these things?"

"You can't type on your bed," said Christina. "Do you want the desk by Janet's bookshelves or the one by my bed?"

"Wanna bet?" said Molly. "I don't care, really; but you do have a point. Do we want to clump up in little corners, or go wandering through each other's territory all the time?"

"We have to dress all in a row in the hallway," said Christina, rather wearily. Janet looked at her for the first time since the conversation began and saw that she was clutching a Smith-Corona portable typewriter case, presumably with typewriter inside it.

"Put Molly by my books," she said hastily. "You take that desk."

Christina thumped the typewriter down on the desk indicated, the one under the eastern windows. Janet walked over and considered the view: a bit of lawn, a circle of asphalt with a bed of geraniums in the middle of it, and the square brick building, like an elementary school, that the asphalt provided access to. Forbes Hall, one of the modern dormitories. Boring, but at least not distracting. Janet tried the southern window: a large lawn spattered with dandelions, bordered by a line of large pines where it met the street, and presently the site of two Frisbee games and a futile attempt to teach a large brown dog to fetch a stick. Janet thought her lake was probably more conducive to reflection; but it depended partly on what subject one had to reflect on. "What are you majoring in?" she asked Molly.

"Biology," said Molly.

"So am I," said Christina, as if she were reconsidering it. "Premed?"

"God, no," said Molly. "I want to study tidepools."

"I'm premed," said Christina.

"Be sure to tell us good-bye when the term starts," said Molly kindly. "And we'll give you a welcome-back party just before vacation. Unless Janet's premed too?"

Janet hooted, until she saw Christina's face. "I'm not a Biology major at all," she said.

"Well, what?"

"English."

"What for?" said Christina.

"Look," said Janet, irritated, "if the thing you liked best to do in the world was read, and somebody offered to pay you room and board and give you a liberal-arts degree if you would just read for four years, wouldn't you do it?"

"But what will you do after that?"

"Go to graduate school and read some more."

Christina sighed. Janet relented. "I guess I'll teach," she said. You did not, clearly, tell Christina that you wrote poetry. You might tell Molly later, or you might not.

"Well," said Christina, not visibly placated, "what are we going to do about this room?"

Molly kicked the nearest bunk bed lightly, then said, "Ha!" and dived into her pile of possessions again. She came up with a battered wooden thing like a misshapen boomerang, with a few flakes of red and white paint still clinging to its surface.

"What's that?" said Christina.

"My teddy bear," said Molly, rolling onto the bottom bunk Christina had made up and staring fixedly at the underside of the upper bunk. "Yep," she said, with considerable satisfaction. She got up again, gripped the wooden thing firmly, and smacked one of the uprights of the bunk bed with it.

"What?" said Christina in her weary tone.

"It's a field hockey stick," said Molly.

Janet began to laugh. "And you think Hesse is boring."

"Field hockey is the quintessence of skill and dispatch," said Molly, and took another swing at the bed. There was an ungodly bang—she had used a great deal more force this time—and the bunk wobbled.

"Do you sleep with it?" said Christina.

Molly said, "No, I keep it under the bed to repel boarders. It's still my teddy bear.

Stand back, Tina, I don't want to get you on the backswing." She swung again.

Between the thumps of the hockey stick Janet could hear echoing thumps on the door. She staggered to her feet and went and opened it. It was one of the girls from the ghost discussion. She was as short as Janet, and much thinner, with gold wire-rimmed glasses, huge brown eyes, and brown hair in braids. She was wearing a red Blackstock T-shirt so much too big for her that the lion and the snake of the Blackstock seal were touching noses and the dove had disappeared entirely in a fold. She said with some asperity, "What is going on in here?"

"We're taking apart the bunk beds," said Janet, with her best semblance of demureness.

"Really? May I watch? We've got them too, and they're nothing but trouble." She eyed Janet dubiously, and added, "My name's Peg Powell; I'm in four-ten.

Sophomore. Classics."

Janet introduced herself and led Peg Powell down the room's little hallway. She was possessed of an intense desire to ask, "Are all Classics majors really crazy?" She said instead, "Do you know anything else about the Fourth Ericson ghost?"

"Oh, certainly. She throws Chase and Phillips and B. F. Skinner out the window."

"But then what does she use to prop up her bookcase?"

"Skeat," said Peg, with every evidence of sincerity.

Janet, who had spent the past month in a somewhat overwrought state and been up most of the previous night packing—for why hurry when you had only half a mile to travel to college?—collapsed upon Molly's desk, whooping.

"You didn't look like a giggler," said Molly, shaking her hands briskly and gripping the hockey stick again. Christina's bed was beginning to resemble a drawing of an irregular geometrical solid.

"Sorry," said Janet, with the tears running down her fac e. Her stomach felt as if

Andrew had jumped on it."No, no, that's a good thing. Nobody wants a stuffy roommate, even if she does read Madeleine L'Engle. Hello, what can we do for you?"

"Carry on," said Peg Powell. "If that works, I want to borrow your hockey stick."

"See?" said Molly, generally. "She knows what it is."

"I went to a pretentious Eastern girls' school," said Peg apologetically.

"So did I," said Molly.

Christina and Janet looked at one another with what Janet recognized as complete sympathy, the first moment of it that they had experienced. Neither the apologetic tone nor the deprecatory adjective alleviated their reaction in the slightest.

For two seconds the Midwest was arrayed against the East. This threesome might work after all. Then Molly hit the bed again.

With a prolonged screeching, the upper bunk slid down its uprights and landed on the lower bunk, on Christina's pink-and-blue patchwork quilt, with a force that made the springs groan. A collection of dust and anonymous bits of stuff sprang out and suffused the sunny air of the room. Peg Powell said, "O moi egoh." Christina made a pathetic but muffled noise, as if somebody had stepped on her foot in church.

Janet managed not to laugh again; if that had been her own quilt, she would have been furious. Molly, utterly unperturbed, dropped the hockey stick and examined the joints that connected the bed. "Uh-huh," she said. "Now that they've been loosened, these just twist off." And she twisted them off. The uprights swayed.

"What you ought to do," said Peg, "is put up a notice on the bulletin board in one of the new dorms with the tiny rooms—Dunbar or maybe Forbes. They've got normal beds and no space, so maybe they'll trade. May I borrow that hockey stick?"

"Well," said Molly dubiously, "I don't know. I think I've cracked it."

"Try women's Phys Ed," said Janet. "There's a field hockey course this term; I saw it in the catalog."

"If I can get one," said Peg to Molly, "will you come and apply it to the bed?"

"Sure," said Molly. "If you help us lift Christina's top bunk off her bottom one."

"Peg's not very big," said Christina. "We can do it, Molly."

"Though she be little, yet she is fierce," said Janet.

Nobody paid the slightest attention to this; Peg merely remarked, "You need four people to balance it," and the four of them, gasping, moved the upper piece of the bed off the lower and let it fall, which it did with an unmelodious groan and a thump that bounced dust out of the rug.

"The downstairs neighbors'll be up here next," said Christina.

Peg went off with a remark about meeting them at dinner if they wanted to eat in Taylor Hall. Christina brushed the bits of bed off her quilt and resumed her unpacking.

"What did Peg say that was so funny?" said Molly to Janet, sitting down on Janet's desk.

Janet laughed again, and told her.

"What's Skeat?" said Molly.

"It's the standard Chaucer text," said Janet.

"Why is that funny?"

"It's the same size as the remedial math book."

"What?"

"That's what I say, too," said Christina.

Janet filled them in on the campus folklore about the old bookcases; they were polite but puzzled.

"Tell you what," said Molly, delving about in Janet's sealing wax and trying to fit the signet onto her thumb, "we'll use it as an index of college-induced madness. You tell us the same thing next fall, and the fall after, and see if we laugh."

"All right," said Janet. She put the unread books up next to the Hermann Hesse.

Something was perturbing her; something was wrong with the joke. A member of the class of 1899 would not, of course, have had a remedial math book, the educational system having been better organized back then. And if she were a Classics major, she would need the Chase and Phillips for other things, even if she hadn't thrown it out the window. So it made sense for her to prop up her bookcase with Skeat. If she would have had Skeat. But would she have had Chase and Phillips?

"Excuse me," said Janet; and she went along to 410 and knocked on the door.

It was opened by the other member of the hall discussion, a round and somber young woman the color of soy sauce. Her hair was very short. The shape of her skull was beautiful, but something in her expression made Janet wish not to know what went on underneath it.

"Is Peg here?" she said.

"Gone for a hockey stick."

Janet introduced herself. The other girl was called Sharon Washington. She was polite, but did not smile. Janet said, "I wanted to look at her Chase and Phillips for a moment; could you tell her?"

"Bottom shelf, one that's falling apart," said Sharon, standing back to let her in.

Peg's shelves were over her bed. Janet knelt on the blue-and-pink-and-purple Indian bedspread and took down a familiar thin black volume. Its binding was hanging by three strings. She found the copyright page. It was in its seventh printing, God alone knew why; but the earliest copyright date was 1941. Janet returned it carefully to its place between
Homer and the Heroic Tradition
and Liddell and Scott's

Greek-English Lexicon,
and stood up thoughtfully.

"Anything else, I'd say borrow it," said Sharon, "but it's worth my life to let that one out of here."

"Are you a Classics major too?" Janet asked cautiously.

"Fat chance. Geo. Nobody in the department is crazy, and there are more men than women. What about you?"

"English," said Janet.

Sharon looked judicious. "Won't hurt you, probably."

"Look, do you know about the Fourth Ericson ghost?"

"Sure. I'd throw Skinner out the window too. Drove Peg crazier than she is, last year."

Skinner. "But how could the ghost have Skinner? And how could she have Chase and Phillips, either, it was published in 1941?"

Janet was sorry the moment she said it. But either this was not in fact a story made up just to confound new students, or Sharon was a consummate actress, because she looked judicious again, then grinned. "Guess some later ghost gave 'em to her.

Young ladies didn't throw books in the 1890's, did they? Somebody had to teach her to be unruly."

"Uh-huh," said Janet, unresentful. Sharon was probably a consummate actress.

"Thanks; and good luck with your hockey stick."

She went back to the room. Christina had spread one of her towels on Molly's desk and was ironing shirts. Molly was lying on the unmade bottom bunk, reading

Magister Ludi
and scowling.

"Don't let them tell you about the Fourth Ericson ghost," said Janet.

"They already did," said Christina; Molly made a vague noise of the kind intended to persuade people you have heard them when in fact you haven't. Janet knew all about those. She was smiling as she went to shut the window her mother had thrown
The Wind in the Willows
out of.

Three days later, emerging from a maelstrom of picnics, discussion groups, encounter sessions, hikes, tours, lectures, and demonstrations of everything from the shortcut through the library to the proper maintenance of one's bicycle in the climate of Minnesota, Janet trudged across campus to meet her advisor and discuss her first term's schedule.

It was raining, the kind of untimely rain you got in Minnesota one fall out of three. It would bring the leaves down before they had even finished turning, making October barren to the sight and the name of Indian summer a mockery. All the elms were giving up already, showering wet yellow leaves on the black asphalt of the sidewalks. The wind picked them up and plastered them to the reflecting glass of the Music and Drama Center.

They did not improve that building's appearance; it was not ugly, but it sat between the pseudo-Gothic brick splendors of Ericson and the pure limestone lines of the chapel like a shoe box among jewelry chests. The rain pooled in all the low spots of the clever brick walks and terraces surrounding it, showing clearly all the flaws in its execution. Much of the Music and Drama Center was underground, and it leaked, and was going to cost a great deal of money to repair. Janet's father called it a perfect example of Modern Maladroit.