Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

Not all that long ago the mountains were a wall that cut Alleghany County off from people in the rest of North Carolina so completely, they called it the Lost Province, when they thought of it at all. Modern highways have made the county accessible, but an air of remoteness, an atmosphere primeval, remains, and that is what the summer people, the campers, the canoers, the fishers, hunters, golfers, and mountain crafts shoppers love about it. There is no mall, no movie house, and not one stockbroker. To the people who lived in Sparta, the term ambition didn’t conjure up a picture of hard-driving, hard-grabbing businessmen in dull suits and “interesting” neckties the way it did in Charlotte or Raleigh. Families with children who were juniors or seniors in the one high school, Alleghany High, didn’t get caught up in college mania the way families in the urban areas did—college mania being the ferocious, all-consuming compulsion to get one’s offspring into prestigious universities. What parents in Sparta would even aspire to having a son or daughter go to a university like Dupont? Probably none. In fact, when word got out that a senior at the high school, a girl named Charlotte Simmons, would be going to Dupont in the fall, it was front-page news in The Alleghany News, the weekly newspaper.

A month or so later, one Saturday morning at the end of May, with the high school’s commencement exercises under way in the gymnasium, that particular girl, Charlotte Simmons, was very much a star. The principal, Mr. Thoms, was at the podium up on the stage at one end of the basketball court. He had already mentioned, in the course of announcing the various citations for excellence, that Charlotte Simmons had won the French prize, the English prize, and the creative writing prize. Now he was introducing her as the student who would deliver the valedictory address.

“…a young woman who—well, ordinarily we never mention SAT scores here at the school, first, because that’s confidential information, and second, because we don’t like to put that much emphasis on SATs in the first place”—he paused and broke into a broad smile and beamed it across the entire audience—“but just this once, I have to make an exception. I can’t help it. This is a young woman who scored a perfect sixteen hundred on the SAT and perfect fives on four different advanced-placement tests, a young woman who was chosen as one of North Carolina’s two Presidential Scholars and went to Washington, to the White House—along with Martha Pennington of our English department, who was honored as her mentor—and met with the ninety-eight students and their mentors representing the other forty-nine states of our nation and had dinner with the President and shook hands with him, a young woman who, in addition, was one of the stars of our cross-country team, a young woman who—”

The subject of all this attention sat in a wooden folding chair in the first row of the ranks of the senior class, her heart beating fast as a bird’s. It wasn’t that she was worried about the speech she was about to give. She had gone over it so many times, she had memorized and internalized it just the way she had all those lines when she played Bella in the school play, Gaslight. She was worried about two other matters entirely: her looks and her classmates. All but her face and hair were concealed by the kelly-green gown with a white collar and the kelly-green mortarboard with a gold tassel the school issued for the occasion. Nevertheless, her face and hair—she had spent hours, hours, this morning washing her long straight brown hair, which came down below her shoulders, drying it in the sun, combing it, brushing it, fluffing it, worrying about it, since she thought it was her strongest asset. As for her face, she believed she was pretty but looked too adolescent, too innocent, vulnerable, virginal—virginal—the humiliating term itself flashed through her head…and the girl sitting next to her, Regina Cox, kept sighing after every young woman who. How much did Regina resent her? How many others sitting beside her and behind her in their green gowns resented her? Why did Mr. Thoms have to go on with so many young woman who s? In this moment of stardom, with practically everybody she knew looking on, she felt almost as much guilt as triumph. But triumph she did feel, and guilt has been defined as the fear of being envied.

“…a young woman who this fall will become the first graduate of Alleghany High School to attend Dupont University, which has awarded her a full scholarship.” The adults in the rows of folding chairs behind her murmured appreciatively. “Ladies and gentlemen…Charlotte Simmons, who will deliver the valedictory address.”

Tremendous ovation. As Charlotte stood up to head for the stairs to the stage, she became terribly aware of her body and how it moved. She lowered her head to indicate modesty. With another twinge of fear of being envied, she found herself looking down at the gold of her academic sash, which went around her neck and down to her waist on either side, showing the world or at least the county that she was a member of Beta, Alleghany High’s honor society. Then she realized she didn’t look so much modest as hunched over. So she straightened up, a motion that was just enough to make her mortarboard, which was a fraction of an inch too big, shift slightly on top of her head. What if it fell off? Not only would she look like a hopeless fool but she would also have to bend way over and pick it up and put it back on her head—doing what to her hair? She steadied the board with one hand, but she was already at the stairs, and she had to use that hand to gather up her gown for fear of stepping on the hem as she ascended, since she held the text of her speech in the other hand. Now she was up on the stage, and the applause continued, but she was obsessed with the notion that the mortarboard might fall off, and she didn’t realize until too late that she should be smiling at Mr. Thoms, who was stepping toward her with a big smile and an outstretched hand. She shook his hand, and he put his other hand on top of hers, leaned toward her, and said in a low voice, “We love you, Charlotte, and we’re with you.” Then he half closed his eyes and nodded his head several times, as if to say, “Don’t worry, don’t be nervous, you’ll do fine,” which was her first realization that she looked nervous.

Now she was at the podium, facing everybody sitting in folding chairs on the basketball court. They were still applauding. Right before her was the green rectangle formed by her classmates, the seniors in their caps and gowns. Regina was clapping, but slowly and mechanically and probably only because she was in the front row and didn’t want to make her true feelings entirely obvious, and she wasn’t smiling at all. Three rows back, Channing Reeves had his head cocked to one side and was smiling, but with one corner of his smile turned up, which made it look cool and sarcastic, and he wasn’t clapping at all. Laurie McDowell, who had a gold Beta sash, too, was clapping enthusiastically and looking her right in the face with a genuine smile, but then Laurie was her friend, her only close friend in the class. Brian Crouse, with his reddish blond bangs—oh dear, Brian!—Brian was applauding in a way that seemed genuine, but he was staring at her with his mouth slightly open, as if she weren’t a classmate, much less anything more than that, but some sort of…phenomenon. More applause, because all the adults were smiling and beaming at her and clapping for all they were worth. Over there was Mrs. Bryant who ran the Blue Ridge Crafts shop, Miss Moody who worked in Baer’s Variety Store, Clarence Dean the young postmaster, Mr. Robertson the richest man in Sparta, owner of the Robertson Christmas-tree farm, beaming and clapping wildly and she didn’t even know him, and over on that side in the second row Momma and Daddy and Buddy and Sam, Daddy in his old sport jacket it looked like somebody had wrestled him into, with the collar of his sport shirt pulled way out over the collar of the jacket, Momma in her short-sleeved navy dress with the white bows, both of them suddenly looking so young instead of like two people in their forties, clapping sedately so as not to seem possessed by the sin of pride, but smiling and barely holding back their overflowing pride and joy, and, next to them, Buddy and Sam, wearing shirts with collars and staring at their sister like two little boys in a state of sheer wonder. In the same row, two seats beyond the boys, sat Miss Pennington, wearing a dress with a big print that was absolutely the wrong choice for a sixty-some-year-old woman of her ungainly bulk, but that was Miss Pennington, true to form—dear Miss Pennington!—and in that moment Charlotte could see and feel that day when Miss Pennington detained her after a freshman English class and told her, in her deep, gruff voice, that she had to start looking beyond Alleghany County and beyond North Carolina, toward the great universities and a world without limits because you are destined to do great things, Charlotte. Miss Pennington was applauding so hard that the flesh of her prodigious bosom was shaking, and then, realizing that Charlotte was looking at her, she made a fist, a curiously tiny fist, brought it almost up to her chin, and pumped it ever so slightly in a covert gesture of triumph, but Charlotte didn’t dare respond with even so much as a smile—