Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

Momma wasn’t the sort who was given to having people stand around talking and drinking refreshments—not even unfermented cider or lemonade or branch water—before sitting down to have supper. Charlotte decided she was just going to have to find the strength to get through it. There would be some pretty good talkers at the table, Momma, Miss Pennington, Mr. Thoms, and, as she now realized, Laurie (who had gotten fucked, same way she had) and Mrs. Thoms wouldn’t be bad at it, if she had to guess. That left only her and Daddy. So she would just let all the talkers talk and talk and talk, and she would get through it by forcing a smile and nodding a lot, and if anybody asked her about something at Dupont, she would just turn it over to Laurie and ask her how that thing is at N.C. State.

She was stunned when Daddy—Daddy—said, “Charlotte, we’re gonna put you right”—riot—“here at the head a the table, so’s you can tell everybody”—everbuddy—“about Dupont. Everybody’s gonna be real interested”—innerested. He looked about at the Thomses, Miss Pennington. “Isn’t that right?” In’at riot?

Murmurs, burbles of confirmation, and Laurie’s “Like totally!”

Charlotte experienced a pain that wasn’t physical but might as well have been. A great pressure squeezed her head from either side and bore down on the top of her skull. There was no worse fate than the sentence Daddy had just meted out. In the same instant it struck her just how countrified Daddy’s speech really was, Momma’s, too—and just how collegiate Laurie’s had become: Laurie’s with all the like totallys and cools and awesomes and ohmygod s.

Charlotte blurted out, “No, Daddy!” She knew she should demur in a calm, somewhat light way, but she was long past wily levity. She was in pain. “Nobody wants to hear me go on about—school!” School. She avoided the name Dupont at all cost; too painful. “Laurie—please!—you sit here. I want to hear about N.C. State!”

Friendly protests all around, as if her reluctance was mere modesty. So she found herself sitting at the table on one of the drugstore bentwood chairs Daddy had brought back to life. The inquisitors stared at her down both sides of the table. On one side were Mr. Thoms, sitting closest to her, Laurie, and Momma—or rather, that’s where Momma would be sitting—right now she was in the kitchen—and on the other side were Miss Pennington, sitting closest, Mrs. Thoms, and Daddy. Mrs. Thoms!—she was Death, sitting there with a hypocritical smile on her face, waiting for the perfect moment in which to cut her down. And Miss Pennington, barely twenty-four inches away from her—Miss Pennington was…the Betrayed…a pending broken heart as big as the moon…in a word, guilt. The rest were merely eyewitnesses to the self-destruction of Charlotte Simmons. Merely? Two of them were Momma and Daddy, still ignorant of the truth, whom she had made the proudest parents in Alleghany County…before her hollow, sham character revealed itself…One was Mr. Thoms, the elder who had officially and sonorously proclaimed her to all of Alleghany County as the young woman who…and the other was the young woman who…had scarcely been noticed because Charlotte Simmons’s eminence had cast such a long, deep shadow—Laurie, the runner-up who had proved to be everything the illustrious Presidential Scholar wasn’t. She had taken her inevitable fucking and come back from it as a whole person who was a delight to have around, a young woman who…was ready to head forth, promising as the dawn, into a limitless future.

Thank God, Momma arrived in no time, bearing a tray with the aroma of a freshly roasted turkey, which she set before Daddy along with an old carving knife and fork and a sharpener. The aroma! A single look at the crisp but still moist skin covering the bird’s mighty breast, and even a person who had never seen such a thing before would know that here was perfection. Then came Daddy’s part, thank God, providing a further reprieve. Daddy stood up and started sharpening the knife on an old-fashioned sharpening rod. It made a rasping sound that brought Buddy and Sam right out of the kitchen to catch the show that Daddy was so very deft, so precise at, the way he first cut the skin that held the thighs and drumsticks tight against the carcass and then found precisely the crucial point where the thighbone joined the hip. He severed the joint with a single, seemingly silken strike, causing the thigh to fall away cleanly, and then he began carving the breast into slices as big and intact and yet as thin and even as you could possibly ask for. The boys were agog at the craftsmanship of it and couldn’t wait for the part where Daddy started on the other side of the breast, because he would always sharpen the knife on the rod again, and they loved to hear the rasping sound and see the way Daddy flourished the sharpening rod and the knife like a performer. Laurie said, “Bravo, Mr. Simmons!” and the others oohed and laughed and clapped, which made Daddy smile. Meantime, Momma brought out the “mystery,” which had a sweet, exotic aroma, and the boiled snap beans, which didn’t have much of an odor themselves, but the diced onions in vinegar that went over the snaps had a smell that was sharp and sweet at the same time, and then came the cranberry jelly that Momma made herself and the pickled peaches she always pickled herself late in the summer—and the aroma of the peaches was sublime, and their taste was “ambrosial,” which was a word Momma loved—and everybody was making a big fuss over Momma and her cooking.

No sooner had the applause for Momma as chef crested than Mrs. Thoms turned to Charlotte and said, “Charlotte, how is the cuisine at Dupont compared to this?”

Charlotte said, “It’s—it’s—” She was trying to think of the right word, le mot juste, but it wasn’t that at all. It was the pain it caused her to have to enter the conversation, to have to emerge from the shell she thought she had begun to create about herself. The words she sought were whatever would answer the question and shut it down and not suggest any follow-up. “It’s—there’s no comparison. Nothing compares to Momma’s cooking.” She smiled to try to show that she was keeping things light—and she herself could tell that somehow the smile flopped about, disconnected from lightheartedness or amusement.

Mrs. Thoms was not to be put off, however. “Oh, I can understand that. I’m sure nothing actually does compare to home cooking, not when it’s this good. I guess what I mean is, how would you rate the food in general at Dupont?”

“It’s not bad.”

Silence. Her response, or lack of one, had created an awkward silence.

“Just not bad?” said Mrs. Thoms, soldiering on.

Charlotte thought and thought, mainly about how toilsome it was to have to talk…to anybody about anything, especially anything to do with Dupont. Aloud she managed to say, “More or less.”

“More or less?” said Mrs. Thoms.

Silence. It was so bad that Charlotte realized she had to force herself to do something…anything. She finally managed to say, “I eat all my meals at the Abbey—the dining hall.”

She didn’t want to mention even the name of a building at Dupont. Everyone at the table wore a look that said, “And therefore?”

It was torture, this being forced to talk. “I mean, it’s mostly the same.”

Everyone looked baffled. With an agonized frown she said, “What about you, Laurie?”

“What about me what?” said Laurie.

“I don’t know…Do you eat all your meals in the same place?—I guess.”

Laurie gave her an ironic cross-eyed look of the sort that asks, “Are you trying to mess up my mind—or wot?” She drew a blank from Charlotte’s face. After a dreadful pause Laurie said, “Well, our dorm has its own cafeteria, but there are a lot of restaurants.”