Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

The conversation was already such a burden, so heavy, inexplicably heavy, such an invasion of her mind, but Charlotte soldiered on. “No, I don’t think I did, either—oh, wait a minute. You mean the holly wreaths?”

“I reckon they are new,” said Momma, “but I’m talking about something bigger’n holly wreaths.” Big, beaming smile again. “Come on!” She headed toward the living room. Charlotte followed.

The light reflecting from the field of snow across County Road 1709 was dazzling. It lit up the living room brighter than Charlotte remembered ever seeing it. The very air in the room seemed to be lit. It was magical…but in a terrifying way to a depressed girl who sought refuge in light dimmed, in the snuffing out of the light—as they called it in Momma’s Church of Christ’s Evangel—the light at the apex of every human soul.

“You see it yet?” said Momma. “It’s practically under your nose!”

Snapped back into the here and now, Charlotte concentrated on—what was practically under her nose…But of course! The chairs, eight of them, old bentwood like the ones they used to have at the little tables near the soda fountain in McColl’s drugstore, with wooden seats and the simplest sort of bent rods of wood as the backs—all of them newly sanded, oiled, stained, and polished, by the looks of them, and drawn up close to the picnic table in neat ranks, so that the backs almost touched the white tablecloth.

“The chairs?” said Charlotte. “They really were here last night?” A wisp of memory of chairs from last night…during that terrible moment of tears and agony.

“The chairs and what else?” said Momma. “What do the chairs go with?”

Charlotte studied the chairs again. “The chairs are right up against the top of the picnic table? You took those big old benches off?”

“Look at it real close.”

Charlotte lifted up the end of the white tablecloth—and there was no picnic table at all, but a real table. She looked at Momma in a wondering way. Momma’s smile was as happy as a smile could be. Charlotte pulled the cloth back farther. It was a very plain old table, with no carved ornamentation and made of loblolly woods at best, the kind of table they used to refer to as a kitchen table. It must have actually been a worktable, because there was a line of drawers with metal pulls beneath the top on both sides. But like the chairs, it had been restored to within an inch of its never-elegant life, arduously waxed and polished until a certain luster had been coaxed out of its close, bland grain.

“Where’d it come from, Momma?”

“Over’t the Paulsons’ in Roaring Gap.” She proceeded to recount, with considerable pride, how the Paulsons had wanted Daddy to take it to the dump, but he hauled it home and worked on that table for mighty near a week solid and took it all apart until the whole thing was in pieces and then put it back together until it was true and steady as a rock and got new pulls for the drawers—the ones on them when he got it were all rusty—and sanded and oiled and waxed and polished the whole thing until it was a new table.

“And don’t tell him I told you, but you know why he did it? Because his little girl was coming home from college. He knew what you must’ve thought about eating on that picnic table. He wanted to surprise you. Your daddy dud’n say a lot, but he sees a whole lot.”

“What happened to the picnic table?”

“It’s out back where it ought to be. They’re made for outdoors.”

Whereupon Momma led her back to the kitchen door and pointed out the covered hulk out in the snow. Buddy was chasing Mike around it, and Sam and Eli were laughing at them. “It’ll be real nice to have it out there in the spring.”

As soon as they returned to the living room and Charlotte laid eyes on the “new” table again, she began weeping, without even realizing it was going to happen. She forced a smile through the flowing tears and threw her arms around Momma’s neck and sobbed out, “Oh, Momma, Daddy’s such a…good…person…and you’re such a…good…person…and you all are…so…good to me…” She buried her face beneath Momma’s chin.

Momma evidently didn’t know what to say, because she just held her close for a bit. Finally she said, “There’s nothing to cry about, my little girl. I think maybe part of you’s still my little girl.”

“A whole lot of me is, Momma. That’s one thing I learned, and I had to go all the way to Pennsylvania to learn it.” Pennsylvania. For some reason she didn’t want to utter the name Dupont. “I don’t care about everyone else. I just don’t want to let you down.”

“How could you let me down? I can’t figure out what’s going through your head, my good girl. Ever since you got off that bus last night, I’ve been wondering.”

Well—would there ever be a better moment to tell her everything, to confess to everything and beg forgiveness? But what would that solve—forgiveness? Momma would never be able to call her “my good girl” again, never look at her as the same person again. Knowing it would mortify her, no matter how she found out, what were the proper words for the confession? Could she possibly look Momma in the face while she told her—and watch the face of her mother change before her very eyes as she realized what her good girl had become? But this was the moment—

—and how was she to seize it? “I’m fine, Momma.” She gulped back some tears. “It’s just this past week. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s been…awful, Momma. I’ve been under so much stress?” She regretted “stress.” She knew Momma would spot it right away for the trendy term it was. What was stress, when you got right down to it, but just plain weakness when it came to doing the right thing? “We had tests all week—and I never got half the sleep I needed—I’ve been lonesome, Momma. I never thought I’d get lonesome. Miss Pennington was always telling me how independent I am and how unique and everything. I’m not unique, Momma. I get lonesome like anybody else. I had to go all the way to Pennsylvania to realize how many folks I’ve always had around me here at home, folks who will do about anything to help me.”

Momma disengaged from the embrace, although she kept an arm around Charlotte’s waist. She smiled and gestured toward the table Daddy built. “Then you’re going to love tonight.”

“Tonight?” A shadow passed over Charlotte’s face, but Momma didn’t notice that.

“Tonight we’re going to get a chance to see just how good Daddy’s table really is. I—we’ve invited some folks over for supper, folks I know you’ll want to see—”

Horror at the thought: “You have?”

Momma didn’t pick up the horror, merely the surprise. “Just a few special folks…Miss Pennington…Laurie…Mr. Thoms and Mrs. Thoms. They’re all dying to hear about Dupont and all.”

“No, you can’t, Momma!” It just burst forth from her throat before she even considered how it might sound.

Momma looked at her, baffled.

“Not tonight, Momma! I just got home. I need a little time—” She couldn’t dream up what for.

“But you know you like them all. I invited them special.”

Charlotte realized that her reaction had revealed exactly what she wanted to hide. On the other hand, that didn’t relieve the pain of such a prospect at all. With a manufactured calm she said, “I know, Momma, but you never asked me or anything.”

“Well, darling, I’m real sorry. I was thinking it would be a nice surprise. Laurie? Miss Pennington? Mr. Thoms? You want to tell me why you’re so upset?”

“I’m not upset, Momma. The only thing is…” She couldn’t think up what the only thing was. She couldn’t dream up a serviceable lie. It occurred to her that never before had she had to dream up lies in this house, other than little white lies. On the other hand, deep down she realized that lying was not foreign to her nature. Anyone—or certainly she—who has been praised so highly so regularly and for so long keeps within her the means of patching up punctures on the road. “I guess I was surprised, that’s all.”