Tell Me If the Lovers Are Losers (27 page)

“I don't know,” Ann said. “I don't know about Niki, either.” There were tears on her face again. Bess made murmuring, comforting noises.

“Anyway, it doesn't matter anymore. It wouldn't be the same,” Bess said heavily.

“You see,” Ruth tried to explain, “if I got out on the court, I'd feel—” Ann passed her the box of tissues. The sense of physical absence, that was it, the terrible glimpse out of the corner of your eye. When you turned your head there was nothing there. You knew before you turned your head. It would be worse on the volleyball court.

“Why bother, without Hildy,” Bess said.

What Niki would say to that, Ann thought wearily. “But,” she said.

“But what?” Sarah asked, watching her.

“But if it doesn't matter now . . . I don't know . . . we were wrong to think it mattered then. Before,” Ann said.

Nobody answered her.

“I
couldn't,”
Bess said.

“What are you saying?” Sarah asked Ann. “That Hildy would want us to?”

“No,” Ann answered. “That's so stupid. But, I think
I
want us to.”

“Why?” asked Ruth.

“Because—I don't think it'll be easy, but—we should, because we were good. Even when Hildy went out. It was being excellent that was important, wasn't it?”

“So you think we could—win,” Sarah said.

“I don't know. I don't even care,” Ann answered. “I care about not quitting. Everybody would understand, but it wouldn't be right. Would it? Would it?” she insisted.

“What about Niki?” Ruth asked. “Miss Dennis told us—I suppose Carol—”

“No,” Sarah said. “I don't know how the rest of you feel. I don't care how you feel—I don't want anybody else.”

“Just not to let it go by default,” Ann finished her thought. “I'll talk to Niki. OK?” Nobody answered, so she guessed they were agreed.

That evening, Ann and Eloise took Niki a suitcase, while everybody else in the dormitory was sitting down to supper at the accustomed tables with the usual company. Ann realized her distance from the ordinary world. That she would have to return to it irritated her. The intrusive world.

Eloise stayed downstairs while Ann went up to see Niki. “I don't know what she'll say, or do. I don't—”

“That's OK,” Ann said, understanding how far Eloise had come to risk refusal of the offer to share Ann's room.

Niki sat up in a narrow four-posted bed in Miss Dennis's tiny guest room. Tranquilized, wearing a high-necked white nightgown, she was a listless stranger. Ann sat on the bed, not beside Niki but with her. The Munchkin brought in a plate of sandwiches. Niki would not eat. “Nothing stays down,” she explained. “You remember.”

“Try some tea,” Ann urged. Niki cooperatively took a cup and sipped from it.

“And how are you holding up, Annie?” she asked.

Ann thought to make a brave reply, but decided on the truth. “Better than you, but not much.”

“Another advantage to having background?” Niki asked. “It goes with the circle pins and round collars, the stiff upper lip.”

It was a blunted needle, but a needle all the same, and Ann welcomed it. She returned the gift. “Miss Dennis handed in your paper,” she said.

Niki's face convulsed, and then her body convulsed and she retched. Ann left her to the nurse's care.

“What did I say that for?” Ann asked.

Eloise consoled her. “You didn't mean to upset her.”

“I don't understand why it's so hard for her. She
believes
in a world where this kind of accident happens, and worse things, like rapes of little girls and the elderly eating cat food because it's the best they can afford. She believes in a terrible world. In destruction.”

Eloise answered thoughtfully. “What Niki believes in may not be what she wants to be true. What about you?”

“I don't know!” Ann cried. If Eloise was right—how would Niki live?

“I believe in God,” Eloise said, although Ann had not asked her. “I believe not passionately, but hopefully. That's how I make my peace with Hildy's death. How I will make my peace, in time.”

“Hildy didn't believe, not in that way. She knew,” Ann said. “Maybe she was right. Niki believes the opposite.”

They walked on without talking. Ann was thinking, about Homer, and Hildy, and Niki. If she just kept on reading and thinking, studying, learning— Not only in school but all her life—then would she begin to understand? Understand what? she asked herself bitterly: Why Hildy had to die? How Hildy came to die, she had seen. How Hildy lived: that was a good place to begin. Where it would end—there was no way of knowing where things would end. But if you could chart direction, that would be something. There didn't have to be a purpose, but there might be. And if you were careful about the truth, you might glimpse it.

♦   ♦   ♦

Ann remembered to call her parents. “I'm sorry,” she told her mother, “I've changed my mind. I won't be there this weekend after all. Is that OK?”

Mrs. Gardner's voice was surprised, cautious, alert. “Don't worry about it, Ann. Has something come up? You sound odd.”

“Yes, something came up.” She moved her mouth to find the words. “I'm all right.”

“What has happened?”

“My roommate, Hildy—”

Mrs. Gardner waited, then suggested, “I remember. The one you're particularly fond of, the volleyball player. What about her?”

“They're both volleyball players.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Hildy died.”

“Ann?”

“There was an accident, a car hit her.”

“Were you there?”

“No, no. It's all right. I mean I'm all right. She wasn't wearing her glasses is what happened. I'll tell you about it.”

“When was this?”

“Yesterday. Monday. Last night. Evening, actually. But we didn't know then.”

“My dear child. Would you like us to come up?”

“No, that's too much trouble. I just thought I'd call and tell you.”

“Yes. Well—that's right. Do you need anything?”

“Don't worry. Eloise is with me. Eloise Golding from the Hall? Did you ever meet her?”

“I don't remember.”

“Anyway . . .”

♦   ♦   ♦

Three hours later, Mrs. Gardner knocked on the door of Ann's room. Mr. Gardner was downstairs, she said, because he wasn't allowed upstairs, not at this hour, she said, speaking into Ann's hair. She soothed Ann and introduced herself to Eloise. She led Ann down through the dimly lit hall. Mrs. Gardner said they were staying at the Inn and had thought to have Ann with them, but now she saw that was not necessary and thought that Eloise should have company. Ann did not argue, because perhaps they were right. They had been right to come to her.

Mrs. Gardner sat Ann on the stiff living room sofa, and Mr. Gardner sat on her other side. They probed gently at Ann with questions, listened to her, passed her handkerchiefs, and kept their arms about her. Mrs. Gardner said she would call Miss Dennis, to see if there was anything to be done. She said she couldn't understand Hildy's parents, their behavior was inhuman. Ann said, things were different, people were different.
Not that different, they couldn't be, Mrs. Gardner said, holding her daughter close.

When Ann returned to the room, Eloise was lying in Niki's bed, her face bare under the light. Ann spoke naturally, which she had thought never to do again. “They're terrific. I know why they came. Listen, Eloise?

“I'm listening.”

Ann looked at Eloise, solid, comforting. “I'm glad you're here, Eloise, really glad.” She should remember that Eloise needed to be told. “But my parents—they came for my sake, that of course. But also to reassure themselves. Do you know? When something happens—and you want to be sure everyone you love is all right, because you've been forced to remember how vulnerable we all are. You need to touch. You know?” Eloise nodded. “They want us to have breakfast at the Inn tomorrow, you and me. Will you?”

“I would enjoy that. You're fortunate in your parents.”

Ann knew it, as she turned out her light and lay back in darkness, holding close that sense of the strength and the mystery of human love. What Niki would say— It didn't help, really. It couldn't change anything. The ties of need and responsibility and affection, and of blood: she had her first glimpse of how they would always bind her She was immensely grateful.

She could think now. Some definition was needed. She needed some definition, an armor that would contain and defend her. She could construct it out of cruel facts, and she knew them. It was Niki's vision of the world, chaotic and accidental—brutish. She could accept that. She recognized its reality. She could put words to it and make it her own. She could try to face fear and outface it.

Or Hildy's vision, if what Ann saw through the glasses was anything like what Hildy could see without them. Beyond externals. An armor of faith, the purpose accepted though not known, within which the Christian knight moved, certain of the answers to questions that are better not asked, wise in his unquestioning surrender, sure of direction if not destination.

Then, she would have to fit Hildy's death into the plates of armor, either design: she turned and buried her face in the pillow, to muffle her weeping.

♦   ♦   ♦

The funeral services at O'Rourke Hall were conducted by the College chaplain. The stage where they had first seen the Munchkin now held the flower-decked coffin, two chairs, and a podium. The long curtain had been pulled in from both sides to combat the emptiness of the stage. The air smelled dusty.

The auditorium was not filled. Ann, sitting at the front between Eloise and her father (her mother sat on the far side of Eloise) saw many of the freshmen, and other faces, some of which she recognized, faculty, volleyball opponents, staff, and some adults who must have known Hildy from her church because a minister sat in the midst of them.

Niki sat nearby, pale, holding hard onto the hand of a handsome man Ann recognized as her father.

They stared at the stage, at the young chaplain sitting with his hands folded, at Miss Dennis wearing a mouse-gray suit, at the coffin dressed out in bright floral displays. Somewhere among them were the flowers Eloise and Ann had ordered with Mrs. Gardner that morning. Ann had insisted on white. “For the soul,” Eloise had explained, but “For Hildy,” Ann answered. Two long candles burned beside the podium, creamy white in tall bronze holders, as big as your arms, Ann thought. Their flames gleamed.

Mrs. Gardner leaned over and put a gray-gloved hand on Ann's hands, which she held clasped tightly together on her lap. Ann nodded at her mother, reassuring, and the hand withdrew. Ann put one of her hands into the pocket of her coat and wrapped her fingers around Hildy's glasses.

The chaplain came forward. He prayed. He spoke the words. Ann did not listen. Her eyes flicked about. Pallid and square, Eloise sat stoically beside her, her arms lying along her thighs, hands still. Niki hunched forward in her seat, Ann saw, listening to the mellifluous voice that flowed over their heads. Niki's eye met hers and the dark girl cocked an eyebrow toward the speaker Ann raised her chin imperceptibly in agreement. Niki perceived it.

Miss Dennis stepped up to the podium to deliver the eulogy. She looked over the audience as she opened a piece of paper before her. “We are here to speak of Miss Koenig,” she began in her nasal voice. Then she stopped. She cleared her throat. Her Munchkin face, with its expression of wisdom and worry,
mapped with tiny wrinkles, seemed to swell. She stood, patient in her silence, holding the paper with her small hands.

“When Socrates came to die,” she spoke into the microphone, “he had already declared his understanding of death. Either, he said, it is a long, unbroken sleep, or it is the commencement of a just judgment. Words of great comfort: words of great courage. Yet his old friend Crito, no less aged than Socrates himself, urges Socrates to escape from prison, to avoid death. Socrates refuses and cites his responsibility to the laws. The laws of Athens, that is, the laws of men. He does not directly speak of that law which has required him to keep faith with these other laws, but its presence governs his words and choices, as it has all his life. And it is that one law which most concerns us.”

She stepped back to her chair. Mrs. Gardner turned her face to her husband and raised her eyebrows over the girls' hands. But Ann thought she almost understood.

A murmur filled the huge room and rose gently to the domed ceiling. The chaplain led the closing prayers. Unknown men, that minister among them, bore the coffin on their shoulders to the broad doors at the back of the Hall, and the oaken doors swung open.
Ave atque vale.
Hail and farewell.

The Gardners drove Ann and Eloise to the cemetery. Ann stood among the mourners. A light snow was falling. Cloth bands held the coffin suspended over the hole in the ground. Ann reached into her pocket and put on Hildy's glasses. By herself, she could not bear to see this.

The chaplain, looming darkness at the head of the grave, uttered the final prayers. Ann forced her eyes to the coffin: indistinguishable from the earth except for the soft hues of flowers it bore. The empty place beneath it was warm as breath. Fitness, continuity, necessity, and the merry bouquet of color. Ann's eyes filled with tears and they flowed down over her cheeks, where snowflakes stung at them. Tears did not alter what she saw through the glasses, and she knew what it was: the death of a friend; the placing into the earth of Hildy's golden lightness and sure vitality.

Ann removed the glasses, put them tenderly into her pocket, wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, and turned away with the others. They huddled around the cars. Ann introduced her parent to Miss Dennis and left them there while she
introduced herelf to Niki's father. He stood with sadness in his handsome eyes and his arm around Niki.