Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

“There must be a lot of restaurants around Dupont, too,” said Mrs. Thoms, looking at Charlotte.

“There are,” said Charlotte—it was so painful, forcing the words out—“but they aren’t included in my meal plan, not even the one in the middle of campus. I always eat in the dining hall.” Please! I don’t want to talk about Dupont!

Mrs. Thoms looked across the table at Laurie, Momma, and Mr. Thoms, and said, “Now, I think Charlotte’s getting around a lot more than she lets on. A sister of a sister-in-law of mine has a daughter who has a friend who goes to Dupont, a senior—as a matter of fact she’s the president of one of the big sororities—and she knows who Charlotte is. In fact she seems to know a lot more about Charlotte than Charlotte knows about her, and Charlotte’s a freshman.”

Charlotte saw Momma break into a smile, no doubt because this meant that her little genius had already established a presence on campus. A presence, all right—Mrs. Thoms was looking at her and smiling, too—but could it be with some sort of twisted Sarc 3 cruelty? Could it be that…Death was speaking? This woman was now going to tell it all…for the perverse joy of watching the insect squirm!

The reply came from the mouth of a panicked girl. “I don’t see how! I mean, I’ve never even met her. I’ve heard of her—she’s the president of her sorority and everything, but I don’t know her. I wouldn’t know her if she came walking in that door. There’s just no reason in the world why she would even know my name! I don’t have anything to do with her or any friends of hers or the kind of people who would—”

She stopped. Too late, she realized they were all looking at her in a funny way. Now they would all think there was…definitely something going on here, wouldn’t they? She had to say something that showed that this wasn’t important and didn’t disturb her. “She must have me mixed up with somebody else.”

Of course that didn’t help at all. Mrs. Thoms said with a chuckle, “Well, is there somebody else from Sparta, North Carolina, who’s a freshman at Dupont?”

Charlotte was speechless…and in greater panic. Why would Lucy Page ever mention Sparta? Because they had told her about this naïve hick freshman who kept snapping at people with her “Sparta—you never heard of it” put-down. And why would Mrs. Thoms say that? Because she knew the whole story and was set to torture her with it, drop by drop—in front of her family.

Charlotte looked at Mrs. Thoms in sheer fear. Consciously she realized that she should hate this woman who had come into her home for the perverse pleasure of humiliating her in front of her parents and her two little brothers, who were probably listening in from the kitchen. But Charlotte Simmons no longer had any right to take the moral high ground. She was too worthless to pass judgment on another person, no matter what she was doing.

The silence lengthened in a baffling way that made everybody at the table, the panicked one was sure, realize that they had all at once been confronted with some unspeakable state of affairs.

“I just don’t know,” Charlotte said finally. But why had she said it in such a timid little voice? So she added a smile—which made things still worse! What had she done but call yet more attention to her guilt?

She slogged on. Everybody was dying to hear all about the fabled Dupont, which to them obviously was Olympus, Parnassus, Shangri-la, and the peaks of Darién all rolled into one. What were the teachers like? “They’re fine,” said Charlotte. She wanted to leave it at that, but she saw six people staring at her with shortchanged looks on their faces. So she added, “…except for the T.A.s.” She immediately regretted the emendation. Who were they? What was wrong with them? “They’re graduate students. There’s nothing wrong with them. They just don’t know very much about the subjects.” Surely—there must be some brilliant teachers there? “There are,” said Charlotte, and that was the end of that. How did she find living in a coed dorm? “You sort of get used to it—” And that was the end of that. And the girls shared bathrooms with the boys? “You just sort of deal with it the best you can.” And that was the end of that—in her mind—but the grownups wouldn’t let it alone. Wasn’t it embarrassing sometimes? “Not a whole lot, as long as you keep your eyes on the tiles in the floor and the enamel in the basin and don’t look in the mirror and don’t listen to anything”—and that was as much as she cared to say about that. Did she see much of the athletes on campus? “No.” And that was that, except Momma reminded her that she had told Buddy and Sam that she knew a basketball star. “That’s true, I do know one, but I wouldn’t call him a star.” She left it at that—but who is he? What’s his name? “He’s called Jojo Johanssen.” What was he like? “He’s nice.” That was all, nice? “Well…he’s about as bright as the bottom of an old skillet.” She declined to elaborate. What was her roommate like? “She’s all right.” Just all right? “I hardly ever see her. We have different schedules.” Daddy put on a big grin and said that Buddy wanted to know if she had a boyfriend, but he never did hear the answer. Polite chuckling all around the table.

“Charlotte!” Laurie piped up. “Spill it!”

Bitterly, Charlotte saw Hoyt in her mind’s eye, then said, “No, I don’t.”

She said it deadpan, without humor, without regret, as if she’d been asked whether she had an electric blender in her room. Momma wanted to know where students went on dates. “Nobody goes out on a date, Momma. The girls go out in groups, and the boys go out in groups, and they hope they find somebody they like.”

Momma seemed appalled and wanted to know if Charlotte did that. “I did one time—I went out with some of my friends? But it was so stupid, I never did it again.”

Mrs. Thoms wanted to know what she did instead. By now she was feeling so despondent, so unworthy of human company, she said, “Nothing. I don’t go out. I’d rather read a book.” Saturday night—on the weekend—she didn’t go out at all? “No, I never go out.” Same disengaged poker face. Unconsciously she was beginning to enjoy misery and misanthropy, just the way you’d hear people in Alleghany County say, “Cousin Peggy? She’s enjoying poor health.”

Had she been going to the football and basketball games? Dupont was having a great year in sports. “I can’t go, because they charge too much money for the tickets? But I wouldn’t go if they gave them away, I don’t reckon. I don’t know why anybody gets excited. It’s got nothing to do with them—and it’s got nothing to do with me? It’s stupid, is what it is.”

What did she do for amusement? “Amusement? I guess I—I go jogging or I go to the gym and work out.” For amusement? “Well…to me it’s more amusing than all the stupid things other students do. They all act like they’re in the seventh grade or something, and all that matters is—” She broke the sentence off. She had been about to mention drinking, but she didn’t want to make Momma go ballistic. “Going around acting like idiots.”

Miss Pennington seemed concerned. “Now, Charlotte, surely…the academic side of things must be exciting.” She said it in the tones of an entreaty. She was all but begging for it to be so.

Charlotte suddenly felt guilty for letting Misery out for a romp. “That’s true, Miss Pennington. I have one class—” She started to talk about Mr. Starling’s, but she decided that she shouldn’t call attention to him in view of the catastrophic grade Momma and Daddy and, ultimately, Miss Pennington would soon lay eyes on. I have one class remained suspended in the air.