Tell Me If the Lovers Are Losers (2 page)

“Yes.”

“Did you go to school out there?”

“Yes.”

“I see. A high school?”

“Yes.”

“I understand the California school system is a very good one. The Pennsylvania one isn't, I'm afraid.”

Niki looked at her.

“Do you find the East very different?”

“I've only been here half a day,” Niki pointed out.

“Yes, of course. Well, I'm sure you'll enjoy it here. You have such an unusual name. Niki.”

Ann wanted to say,
She knows her name, Mother,
but tried to help instead. “Is it short for something? Nicole?”

“Nicholas.”

Mrs. Gardner laughed, in a short burst. “You're teasing us.”

“No, I'm not,” Niki said. “My mother wanted a boy. She was sure I was one,
in utero.
But I wasn't.”

“Is Nicholas your legal name?” Mrs. Gardner asked.

“No, Niki.”

“Did your mother have her boy, later?”

“I'm an only child.”

“Oh.”

“They're divorced.”

“Oh.” Intoned with an unspoken
I'm sorry.

“It started with me. The man determines the sex, you know. My mother genuinely didn't want me to be a girl. My father said just what you did, ‘Why not Nicole?' But my mother said she didn't want to be a hypocrite and pretend she was satisfied when she wasn't. She blamed my father.”

“I see,” Mrs. Gardner said.

“She said it would be dishonest not to say just what she felt.”

This time it was clear that Mrs. Gardner actually did see: “Painfully honest,” she observed.

“Painful for other people,” Niki qualified it. Their eyes met, as equals, and Mrs. Gardner nodded. She relaxed her spine.

“You live with your mother then, out in California.”

“No, with my father.”

“Oh.” The back straightened up again. “And what does your father do?”

“He's an entrepreneur. What does your father do?”

Anger followed surprise over Mrs. Gardner's features. Ann giggled. Then, to Niki's surprise but not to Ann's, Mrs. Gardner chuckled. It was a warm, human sound. “I am sorry. I've been rude. You have every right to be offended.” She chuckled again.

Ann was smiling. “My father's a lawyer. Does that make us even?”

“I guess so.” Niki grinned at her.

“I wonder what she'll do about books, the other girl,” Ann said. “We're supposed to get our books today, for Monday classes. The bookstore is being opened specially.”

“Oh, I know that,” Mrs. Gardner said. “The Dean's office called and asked you two to pick them up for her. Hildegarde—you can remember that name. Everything has been arranged—the books will be waiting and the charge slips have been verified—but you two are supposed to bring the books here for her The housemother told me.

“Oh
shit,”
Niki said. Mrs. Gardner overlooked that: a visible, conscious effort, carefully overlooking it.

“Mother, what if I hadn't reminded you?”

“I'd have remembered. I always do, don't I?”

Ann raised doubtful eyebrows.

“Niki, would you have lunch with us? I'm sure Mr. Gardner would like a chance to get to know you.”

“I can't. Thanks anyway.” Niki thought for a brief space. “I have to unpack. It'll take all afternoon to get the books.”

“Well, all right, if you're sure,” Mrs. Gardner said. “I guess Ann will find you here before she goes to the bookstore.”

Ann rather hoped not.

“Probably.” Niki shrugged.

Ann's father entered the room, heartily. He was tall and distinguished, dressed in a three-piece suit. He bent to speak a word to his wife, who shook her head. Ann heard Niki singing softly, from “Sumemertime”: “. . . yer paw is rich, ‘n' yer maw is good looking . . . .” Ann smiled at the dark girl across the room, but Niki ignored her and went to the window. Mr. Gardner shook hands with Niki, then demanded his lunch without further delay and herded his family out of the room and down the stairs.

Outside, standing in warm sunlight, Mrs. Gardner looked worried. “I don't know how you'll get along with her. Maybe you ought to request a change?”

Ann had retreated into a lumpish silence and only looked back, up at the window of her room. She could see Niki standing there, looking down. She thought it must be obvious from the conspiratorial angle of her mother's head what it was she was suggesting. The figure at the window gave her no clue as to how to answer.

♦   ♦   ♦

The roommates did go to the bookstore together. They had to, in order to bring back the third girl's books along with their own. There would be twelve of them, including notebooks and lab manuals, the housemother said. Ann and Niki returned, arms feeling stringy and stretched. Two armloads of books bounced onto two beds. “Wow,” Niki said. “I don't know if I can keep up with this.”

Ann—whom Niki had ushered impatiently through the stacks of books—looked at her with troubled eyes. “I know. I'm trying not to think about it. But, you know? I did feel this way my first few days at the Hall, and that turned out all right.”

Niki shrugged. “I meant—”

Ann waited for her to continue, then asked, “Meant what?”

“They act as if it was important, the courses and all. Like opening the bookstore especially for freshmen. As if they really didn't know.”

“Didn't know what?”

“That it's not real, and not important. The academic life. Ye olde ivory tower. You don't think it is, do you?”

But Ann did think learning was important, real—and exhilarating. Privately, she liked being intelligent and was proud of it. In books, and when you were writing papers, you could think about what was true. You didn't have to worry about being a nice person, or a popular person, or successful. You could look for the truth of things. You didn't have to pretend that something wasn't important because it wasn't tactful, or because whoever was sitting next to you might have his feelings hurt, or might think you were an egghead. And the people who wrote books, great books, used words the way architects used stones, exactly and carefully, aware of weight and balance. Ann knew this put her out of step with a lot of people. But when she could take a sonnet apart and study the imagery and discover the idea and then put it back together and hear how the poem still rang—the language levels deep—then she knew she had her hands on something real, and she couldn't help the happiness of it. She could imagine, however, what Niki would say about this. This was too personal to trot out for a stranger to attack. So she changed the subject: “She's taking two lab courses, did you notice?”

“Who?”

“Hildegarde. Astronomy and Biology.”

“You're one of those people that like school, aren't you,” Niki demanded. Ann didn't answer. “Why, because it's safe? I bet—you're good at it and it's always been easy.”

What was wrong with that? Ann wondered.

“And why don't you have the freshman English text?” Niki asked.

“I got advanced placement so I'm taking Shakespeare.” Ann stoically endured the beady glance for half a minute, then defended herself: “I'm terrible in math and science and only fair in history. I've got a gift for languages, literature, that kind of stuff. The really useless stuff,” she concluded, as she often had when accused of being smart.

“Oh,” that seemed to satisfy Niki. “I'm a well-rounded student myself. Did you want to come here? I mean, was Stanton your first choice?”

Ann thought about that. “It's the only school I applied to. The headmistress and my parents agreed that it was the best place for me. Otis Hall prefers to have you apply to only one college. Unless, of course, you're taking a chance.”

“You're kidding,” Niki said.

“I kind of liked it. The Hall has a sort of reputation, you see. So the colleges will usually accept a candidate, if the school feels she can do the work. It almost never happens that somebody doesn't get in.”

“So they told you where to go?”

“No, not at all. They gave me a list of places, and we went visiting—you know, that visiting trip everybody makes with her parents? I liked Stanton best. So did my family. My aunt went here. There's a good classics department.” Her voice dwindled as she realized that she was apologizing again.

“I didn't want to come here,” Niki said. “Still don't, but what the hell—I figure if I get decent grades they'll accept me as a transfer student at Berkeley.”

“You didn't get in at Berkeley?” Ann asked. Eastern colleges had higher standards than western, everybody knew that.

“I didn't even apply. It would have been a waste of time. They have to take the top three per cent first, and there are enough of them to fill both Stanford and Berkeley. I'm only top seven per cent. My advisor said he thought this might be a way to get there, to do well in an eastern school.”

“What do your parents say?”

“What's it got to do with them?”

“I guess nothing.”

“Dad pays the bills. He won't buy anything that's not worth its price, so I figure Stanton has a good-enough reputation. He doesn't care, here or Berkeley, as long as he gets his money's worth.”

“So you'll only be here for a year.”

“I hope so. I don't think I could stick it for longer.”

“Why not?”

“You're kidding,” Niki said. “You're not,” she concluded glumly. “There are too goddamned many circle pins and round collars and—life isn't that plump.”

Ann said nothing. It was not that she didn't want to, but that she couldn't think of how to say what she wanted to say.

“I think I'll pick up my copy of that magazine. Want me to get yours?” she asked.

“No—let's
do
something instead. You've got a racquet. Wanna play tennis?”

“I don't know,” Ann said, wanting to refuse.

“C'mon. I go crazy if I don't get enough exercise, and I haven't done anything today. By the time I find somebody else, it'll be too dark. Or what? Are you afraid to play me?”

Ann's eyebrows arched. She had been well-trained, she knew that, and had played with the varsity at the Hall. Goaded into it, she agreed.

“What's so special about two lab courses?” Niki asked. They were changing into tennis clothes, and Ann moved slowly, not wanting to take out the tennis dress she usually wore, knowing it would cause comment. But Niki ignored it, pulled on cut-off jeans and a T-shirt.

“Each one takes six hours a week, two labs and two lectures. And science courses are more difficult, in any case. The catalogue said they were arduous. She needed special permission to take two.”

“How do you know?”

“In the catalogue.”

“I'm taking Biology. What about you?”

“Co-ordinated Sciences. It's for the nonmathematical student.”

“Easier?”

“I hope so,” Ann said, and was rewarded with a smile.

“Maybe I should take it.”

“Why?”

“For the grade.”

“If you wanted to, you should have signed up for it in the first place. Why didn't you?”

“I couldn't read the damned catalogue.”

“Didn't your father help?”

“I'm old enough to make my own decisions. Besides, he couldn't be bothered.”

“They're strict here about switching courses, especially freshmen. Unless you think you'll flunk Biology.”

“Oh no.”

“How do you know?”

“You heard the Munchkin: high caliber of intelligence.”

Ann envied any confidence. When she thought about it, she was not sure that she would do passably well, in anything. And yet, Ann knew her own abilities. She was just scholar enough to assemble the details of a work into something living. So that
when King Lear raged against himself for not sharing those miseries the poorest of his subjects suffered, “I have ta'en too little care of this,” she felt a quivering within herself that might have been a ripple of recognition along the blood. And she wondered automatically about the nature of kingship, wondered if a man—to be a king—must be a king of beggars as well, and always. It seemed to her, she wanted to be such a king—which was ridiculous, she knew, and also very true. Her mind skittered so—she hoped profoundly that she would not discover at Stanton that she wasn't as intelligent as she had been told she was.

“What did you do for that magazine?” she asked Niki.

“Photographs.”

“Really? Are you a photographer?”

“Not on a bet. It's just easy to take pictures. I took a couple of arty ones. You know, ski trails, sand dunes.” Ann did not know. “Ready?”

“Do you know where the courts are?”

“I found them this morning. They're clay.”

“Of course.”

“I haven't played on clay.”

“What did you play on? Grass courts?”

“You're kidding,” Niki said again.

The six tennis courts were cut out of the woods behind the gym. Trees surrounded them, enclosed them. After the girls had batted the ball back and forth a few times, Niki announced that she was ready.

Ann lost the first three games before she understood what was happening. Niki's form was bad, she swung choppily, her backswing was minimal, she was forever getting to the ball at the last minute. Ann, who played a stylish game, felt confident of her long, smooth ground strokes and her good preparation for shots. Yet Ann lost almost every point. Niki raced around, charged the net to slash at an overhead, hurled herself at lines and corners and won the points.

Ann had played a few tournaments, at school, and she knew how to steady herself down. She did and managed to hold her serve during three hard points before Niki seized control again. Each serve that Ann stroked smoothly across the net was jabbed back at her, and she felt herself being worn down. For
the last games, she did not even expect to win a single point. She didn't.