Tell Me if the Lovers Are Losers Read online

  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?”r />
  “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.

  At the end of the set, Ann was hot and tired. Niki was flushed and triumphant. “That’s more like it,” she said. “Another?”

  “I can’t,” Ann said.

  “Rest a minute, then see.”

  “It’s getting dark,” Ann said lamely.

  “There’s half an hour still. We could get some games in, maybe even a set.”

  Ann shook her head.

  “You don’t play to win,” Niki said.

  Ann shrugged.

  “You look good, but you don’t win.”

  Ann stared blankly at her.

  “You don’t fight.”

  Ann snapped the press closed around her racquet.

  “What sport are you taking?” Niki asked.

  “I haven’t decided. Are you going to take tennis?”

  “I might. Or basketball. There’s no track team.”

  “I’ve been thinking of field hockey. We played that at school.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “It’s a team sport, with lots of running. It takes some skill too. Basically, it’s a passing game, like soccer, not very exciting but . . .”

  They walked back toward the dormitory. It was too early in September for leaves to have turned and fallen, but Ann knew how it would be when fall had really come. She loved fall. But she did not think she would ever feel at home at Stanton. She did not think she would ever feel at ease with Niki.

  “They don’t have much of a sports program here,” Niki remarked. She swung her racquet at a bushy mountain laurel. “Almost no competition. I don’t know how much fun that’ll be.”

  “You’re competitive,” Ann observed.

  “That, Annie child, is an understatement. You’ve got to let people know you’re worth fearing. You’ve got to get to the head of things. People call you Annie?”

  Ann shook her head, no.

  “I kind of like it. It’s cute.”

  Ann didn’t, but she didn’t say so.

  “I wonder how we’d do at doubles. You don’t charge the net, but you’ve got good ground strokes. Maybe we could play doubles sometime. We might be a perfect team.”

  “Maybe,” Ann said. She hoped not.

  “I’d have liked a second set.” The exercise, instead of deploying Niki’s energy, had apparently increased it.

  “I couldn’t see well in this light,” Ann said.

  “Play by sound—sonar tennis,” Niki answered. “What’s your language?”

  “Greek,” Ann said.

  “You’re kidding. Why?”

  “I took Latin for a long time. Greek shouldn’t be too much harder.”

  “What are you, a Classics major?”

  “I’d like to be.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You look like an English major, or History, maybe Sociology. You look too ordinary for anything else. Your type—”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Don’t kid yourself. You are a type.”

  “And you aren’t?” Annie was growing tired of denigration.

  “No, ma’am. Not me. There are lots of you around, with tans and square jaws and that wavy hair You all move the same way, muscular but not strong, somebody’s idea of femininity. It’s a prep-school type.”

  Ann quickened her step. All she wanted was to lie in a tub with a book and forget where she was.

  “And that clear-sighted, luminous glance you all have. And those Topsiders too.” Ann glanced at her feet. “Topsiders and loafers, that’s what preppies wear.” Niki had on a pair of boys’ sneakers. Which looked terrible, Ann thought, which made her calves appear springy. Ann was no beauty, but she looked better than that. Why should she feel defensive? she demanded of herself. Didn’t she believe in what she knew? Couldn’t she trust her own eyes?

  Back in the room, with an hour before supper, Ann picked out the Odyssey, dog-eared and well-beloved, and announced her intention of taking a long, hot bath. Niki said she would have a shower Ann said she thought there wouldn’t be any in the dorm, because it was so old; just in the gym. Niki declared her disbelief and her inability to take the time for a bath. Ann suggested she then go back to the gym and shower, which, to her surprise, Niki did. Leaving Ann alone.

  She opened the window, first. Trees, hillsides, glimpses of sky among, behind, shadows. The smell of pin and sunshine and deciduous growings and rottings: a woods, a forest, beautiful. Their room, empty, was a peaceful, quiet place. She turned, her back to the window, and looked. Without seeing, without wanting to see. A puddle of late afternoon sunlight lay on the wooden floor Spartan, the beds and accoutrements. Ann regretted the lack of privacy in dormitory living, even resented it. At the Hall she had acquired some tricks to isolate herself: late night studying, quick breakfasts; long afternoon naps. But would these help here? She immersed herself in the emptiness of the room, until her reverie was broken into by sounds from down the hallway. Sounds of unfamiliar voices, unfamiliar plumbing, unfamiliar doors, unfamiliar feet on unfamiliar linoleum hall floors.

  Ann decided to delay the bath; she lay down on her bed.

  In a strange place, she thought, you are more vulnerable than at any other time. Everything conspires to keep you mentally off balance, ready to alarm. Your face is stiff, expressionless, keeping ready to smile, concealing. You feel, like prying fingers, the glances of strangers sliding over you, seeing the faulty details friends never notice. As if—Ann lay on the bed studying the ceiling and the patterns possible in the cracks there—you had found yourself in lands under the earth . . . an elevator that kept going down, or a cavern you followed too far, or a simple crack in the surface of the earth, through which you would stumble and fall . . . . However you got there, there you were, standing, half-blind in half darkness, surrounded by short creatures with outsized heads. Their long-fingered brown hands, covered with fur like the rest of their bodies, reached out to touch you. Because they had lost sight so many generations back that they could not remember the lamps of their eyes going dim, now they used spatulated fingertips for knowing. And those fingertips reached out at you, touched you to learn what you were. Ann imagined this, vivid for a second, and her mind shuddered. That was what it felt like, being in a new place like this.

  Ann got up, made herself undress and prepare for her bath. She opened the door to an empty hall and was smiling when she closed the door of the bathing cubicle behind her When she was settled back in a steaming tub, Ann picked up the book. It opened to the scene in the Cyclop’s cave. Ann read, savoring the words, the picture and the character of Odysseus. She could even work up some ambiguous sympathy for the Cyclops. After all, to have your one eye put out by a sharpened piece of burning wood, worked into your eyeball—like a brace-and-bit, Home
r said. Ann could almost feel that. There was something pitiful in the image Homer made: “He pulled the timber out of his eye, and it blubbered with plenty of blood . . . .” She wondered, reading over the scene, why she should relish the language of violence. Adjusting the hot water with an outstretched toe, she remembered the way she had covered her face with her coat during the murder scene in the movie Psycho; the way she had felt nauseated and terrified for days afterwards at the memory. Maybe books were easier to take; you could close a book and put it away, so they weren’t as real. At least, she thought Niki would say that. It sounded like the kind of thing Niki would say, to show that you were inferior.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  When Niki returned, her tennis clothes in a bundle wrapped around with a towel, it was suppertime. Niki burst through the closed door and Ann—lying on the bed reading—was startled into a quick, involuntary leap of the muscles.

  “Oh,” Ann said.

  “Get dressed,” Niki said. “There’s a line of people down there.”

  “A line?”

  “Well, a gaggle.” She brushed her hair at the bureau. Ann watched. Niki’s hands knew what they were about, twisting, smoothing, pulling the rope of hair up to make a knot at the back of her head.

  “I wish I could grow long hair,” Ann said. She pulled a cotton dress out of the closet.

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Mine’s too thin.”

  “What difference does that make? Aren’t you ready?”

  “Just a belt and my shoes—you can’t wear jeans to dinner. Don’t you remember that?”

  “You’re kidding. Why not?”

  “There’s a dress code.”

  “So what?” Niki stood still, considering. “There are things to be done about a dress code. We used to have one at my high school. I’ve got a skirt in here somewhere.” She rummaged about in the bottom drawer, to pull out a denim skirt as faded as her jeans. She still wore the high sneakers. Ann did not want to go down to dinner with this girl. She did not want to stand with her, waiting for the dining room doors to open. She did not want to sit with her.