Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

“A class in what?” Miss Pennington stared at her, still in an attitude of supplication.

“Neuroscience,” said Charlotte. Awkward silence—it was such…agony…making conversation. “I never thought it could be so interesting.” She realized that her face must not have looked as if she was interested in any thing. Another awkward silence. “My teacher, Mr. Starling, says the year 1000 was just forty sets of parents ago. He always puts it that way.”

Mrs. Thoms said, “Starling…Isn’t he the one who won a Nobel Prize?”

“I don’t know,” said Charlotte.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” said Mrs. Thoms. “You were saying, ‘just forty sets of parents ago’?”

“That was what he said. Mr. Starling.” With that, Charlotte dropped the subject. She no longer wanted to talk about the “sets.” Her voice would sound as if every set weighed a ton and she was lugging them out one by one.

Silence. Ten or fifteen seconds of it seemed like an eternity.

Mrs. Thoms plunged into the vacuum. “But I’m curious. Why did he say that?”

“I don’t really know,” said Utter Loganimity on a monument, smiling at Grief.

Silence; a gruesome silence this time. But guilt intervened. Guilt wouldn’t allow her to remain that dead. “I’m guessing, but maybe he meant the year 1000 isn’t all that long ago, but the way human beings look at themselves—in the West, anyway—has totally changed?” Not only Miss Pennington but also Momma seemed preternaturally attentive to this revelation. Then it dawned…for the first time all evening, they were getting a little of the Great Dupont from her, something deep. Charlotte became hyperaware of all sounds in the here and now, the muffled, low-crunching combustion of the potbellied stove…Daddy chewing—he didn’t always keep his mouth closed…Buddy trying to order Sam around in the kitchen in a low voice, because if Momma heard it she’d set him straight and mean it…fwop fwop fwop fwop a car with a flat tire gimping along outside on 1709…a chunk of snow sliding off the roof…

Mr. Thoms said there was certainly a lot written about multiculturalism and diversity in colleges these days. How did they manifest themselves in everyday life at Dupont?

“I don’t know,” said Charlotte. “I just hear about them in speeches and things.”

Laurie piped up again. “At State, everybody calls diversity dispersity. What happens is, everybody has their own clubs, their own signs, their own sections where they all sit in the dining hall—all the African Americans are over there?…and all the Asians sit over’t these other tables?—except for the Koreans?—because they don’t get along with the Japanese, so they sit way over there? Everybody’s dispersed into their own little groups—and everybody’s told to distrust everybody else? Everybody’s told that everybody else is trying to screw them over—oops!”—Laurie pulled a face and put her fingertips over her lips—“I’m sorry!” She rolled eyes and smiled. “Anyway, the idea is, every other group is like prejudiced against your group, and no matter what they say, they’re only out to take advantage of you, and you should have nothing to do with them—unless you’re white, in which case all the others are not prejudiced against you, they’re like totally right, because you really are racist and everything, even if you don’t know it? Everybody ends up dispersed into their own like turtle shells, suspicious of everybody else and being careful not to fraternize with them. Is it like that at Dupont?”

Laurie was looking at Charlotte. They all looked at Charlotte. Charlotte drew her breath in through her teeth with a sharp sigh, focused her eyes at Nowhere in the distance, as if contemplating the question, and then began nodding yes with a pensive frown. She was contemplating all right, but not Laurie’s question on her “dispersity” theory. No, she was thinking of the gusto with which Laurie delivered it, her high spirits concerning the human comedy that was college life, her youthful joy in adventure, her eagerness to impart what she was learning in the great outside world. In short, she had all the qualities they had hoped to see in Charlotte Simmons—the dour little taciturn mope now sitting at the head of the table.

She didn’t envy Laurie. Not at all; from the very beginning, she had hoped Laurie would assume the role she had been designated to play. All this…talk…was so painful. Laurie’s wonderful spirit—venturing forth and exploring the world—made Charlotte realize that she herself had become worthless. Her sitting here at the head of the table was a dreadful fraud. Although Momma’s, Daddy’s, Miss Pennington’s, Mr. Thoms’s, and Laurie’s intentions were only the best, every question they asked her about her college “experience” was de facto mockery. Part of Charlotte wanted to spring it all—now. Get it over with! Go ahead, show all that was left of Charlotte Simmons’s world, which was the handful of souls at this table, how completely she had corrupted herself in a mere four months. She had no ill feelings toward Mrs. Thoms. You have to think yourself worth saving before you get angry at someone who wishes to kill you. She felt like leaning back in this poor drugstore chair, rocking back on its two rear legs, spreading her arms like Christ’s on the cross, looking straight at Mrs. Thoms, and saying, “Come, Death, take me. I have no desire to struggle any longer. Save me the trouble of doing it myself.” Being so young, she had never thought of what Death would look like. It had never occurred to her that Death might be a woman. Now, after eighteen years, the day had come, and Death was a pretty, fortyish brunette with provocative lips, posing as the wife of a country school principal. She stared at Mrs. Thoms, and Death stared at her, pretending to be puzzled.

Laurie was holding forth—very amusingly, too—about how at State, girls never used words of more than three syllables when boys were around. “You’d never talk about dressing appropriately because ‘appropriately’ has five syllables. Instead, you’d say, ‘dressing the way you ought to,’ or ‘dressing the way people expect you to.’ You’d never say ‘conversationally,’ because that has six syllables. It’s not that a boy won’t understand a five-syllable word, it’s that it makes a girl sound too—oh, efficient, I guess—or too bright, as if she might be able to take care of herself. She won’t seem vulnerable enough. She won’t seem like she needs the big brave man enough.” And Laurie was having such a good time! A delightful smile played about the corners of her lips every time she opened her mouth.

Before dessert, Laurie and Mrs. Thoms got up to help Momma take the dishes off the table. Miss Pennington started to get up, too, but Momma said, “No, Miss Pennington, don’t you move. Many hands make light work, but we’ve got too many hands already. Kitchen’s not big enough.” Miss Pennington didn’t protest very hard.

Mr. Thoms was busy talking to Daddy about something. Miss Pennington said to Charlotte in the sincerest of voices, “It’s just so good to see you, Charlotte. I’ve thought about you a thousand times since you left. I’ve had so many things I was dying to ask you.”

“It’s so good to see you, Miss Pennington,” said Charlotte. She tried to smile but wasn’t a good enough actress, and that was that. She just stared at her old mentor and idly took note of the reticulated veins in her face.

“You’re awful quiet this evening, Charlotte.” Miss Pennington cocked her head slightly and smiled in the all-knowing way she had. “In fact, I can’t figure out if you’re here in this room or someplace else.”

“I know,” Charlotte said. She sighed, and as she let her breath out, she felt as if her whole bone structure were collapsing. “But it’s not that, Miss Pennington. I just feel so tired.” She slipped a little tarred into the pronunciation, and only afterward did she consciously face the fact that she was talking Down Home solely to solicit pity as a little country girl. “I had so much to do last week—we had a test in neuroscience that was worse than a final exam. I didn’t hardly get any sleep all week.” The implicit double negative was on purpose, too.