Curtis Sittenfeld - Eligible

“YOU NEED TO tell me what happened at Stanford,” Liz said to Jasper. “I get that you don’t like to think about it, but not knowing is weirding me out.”

She was back in the bar of 21c, and they were waiting for a salad for her and french fries to share. Though Liz still hadn’t eaten — Jasper had ended up returning to the home of a squash coach for dinner — it was nine-thirty.

“I’ll tell you,” Jasper said. “But your buddy Darcy doesn’t come out looking good.”

“All the better.”

Jasper exhaled deeply. “It’s spring of senior year. What should be the pinnacle of college, a time to chill with your friends before facing the real world. I’m taking creative writing with this woman who has a graduate fellowship. So one, she’s not a real professor, and two, she isn’t even a fiction writer. She’s a black poet named Tricia Randolph, and by the way, I don’t think she ever published a book before or since, so God knows how she was teaching at Stanford. As my final assignment, I turn in a story about guys at a frat party. It’s satire, and I totally mean to make these guys douchebags, but Tricia Randolph calls me into her office and says, ‘Jasper, how do you think your female classmates will feel about your objectification of women?’ ”

Experiencing a prickle of uncertainty, Liz said, “Why did she ask that?”

“The main character and his friends are saying which girls they’d fuck, but, again, it’s satire. And yes, that is how guys in college talk. Don’t kill the messenger.” Jasper’s face twisted with bitterness. “Tricia Randolph says unless I rewrite it, it can’t be workshopped. I say fine, then it can’t be workshopped. But the story’s already out there, everyone in the class has a copy, and they make more copies for their friends. It becomes this total samizdat phenomenon.” Liz could tell that Jasper had been transported back — he was far from her, Cincinnati, and his own adulthood.

“When the story’s an underground hit, Tricia Randolph is humiliated,” he continued. “She decides to seek revenge. Pretty soon, I’m sitting in front of the judicial affairs board, and who’s one of only three undergrads on it but good old Fitzwilliam Darcy. He’d been tapped to be a student representative by the administration. I seriously think he’s one of those dudes where, his whole life, he’s gotten credit for being smart and moral for no reason other than he’s tall. Anyway, it’s 1997, Stanford and campuses everywhere are in the grip of political correctness bullshit, Tricia Randolph suddenly decides that she’s offended by my story not just as a woman but as a black woman, and suddenly I’m caught in the middle of a racial controversy. And I swear to you the story had not one thing to do with skin color. But Darcy, who could have been the voice of reason — he was the only person on the board I actually knew, including faculty — he throws me under the bus. The next thing I know, I’ve been expelled.” Jasper’s expression was both so sour and so expectant that it crossed Liz’s mind that he hoped she’d challenge him, except that her specific presence hardly seemed to register.

She said, “But what were the charges against you?”

“Some very vague violation of school policy. Obviously, the university was afraid Tricia Randolph would sue.”

“It seems like she should just, at the most, have given you an F.”

“After she offered to let me rewrite the paper and I said no, I was fucked. It was double jeopardy.”

Liz was fairly sure the situation in question wasn’t double jeopardy, but this hardly seemed the moment to point it out. She said, “Did you attend graduation?”

He shook his head. “I got my degree on the condition that I left campus immediately.”

How had Liz not known about this episode? She had met him a few months after its conclusion. She thought again of never having been introduced to anyone with whom he’d attended Stanford.

After the food arrived, they spoke only intermittently, which was unusual for them; she was tired and suspected he was, too. Interviewing people, paying close attention — it always wore her out. As they rode the elevator upstairs, she said, “You’re meeting the coach again for breakfast tomorrow?”

“Yeah, at nine-thirty at a pancake place near his house.”

In the hotel room, she used the bathroom first, and as she brushed her teeth, she wished, sex-wise, that she’d eaten fewer fries. But when she emerged from the bathroom, she found him sound asleep, still in his clothes. The TV was on, as were several lights. She didn’t wake him. Instead, after turning off the lights and the television, she slipped under the covers, listening to his steady breathing. He hadn’t offered to let her read his story from college, and if he had, she wouldn’t have wanted to. In fact, as she turned on her side and closed her eyes, she very much hoped that no copies still existed.

“YOU!” MRS. BENNET shouted as she hustled from the front door of the Tudor toward the Cadillac Liz was driving. “You have some nerve, young lady! Telling your sisters that Dad and I are selling this house just because you’ve decided it’s time.”

It was shortly after eight A.M. Having set her phone alarm for six o’clock, Liz had sleepily turned off the ringer and not awakened for another hour and forty-five minutes, at which point sunlight was flooding Jasper’s hotel room. As she’d driven along Columbia Parkway, she had rehearsed possible excuses for her whereabouts; to her right, the languid Ohio River had seemed to mock Liz’s agitation.

The moment she pulled into the driveway, Liz’s fears were confirmed: She saw her mother, who wore a cream-colored satin bathrobe and slippers; behind her mother was Jane (looking, Liz noticed for the first time, rather curvy); behind Jane was Mary; and behind Mary were Kitty and Lydia.

Liz pressed her foot against the brake and turned off the engine; surely the way to make a bad situation worse would be by running her mother over. As Liz opened the car door, her mother shouted, “This is not your decision! Do you understand that, Elizabeth? If and when the time comes, it will be your father and I who choose to sell the house.”

To Kitty, Liz said, “Why did you tell her?”

“I didn’t tell her anything,” Kitty retorted.

“It wasn’t Kitty,” Jane said. “I thought Mom knew.”

“You don’t get to waltz in and tell us what to do!” Mrs. Bennet’s face had become scarlet.

“Where am I supposed to live?” Mary asked.

“You’ll live here!” Mrs. Bennet said. “You’ll live just where you always have.”

“Get on the Internet and find an apartment, Mary,” Liz said. “It’s 2013. That’s what people do.”

“I know you and Jane think you’ve been terribly helpful with your organic vegetables and your opinions about how we can all improve ourselves,” Mrs. Bennet said. “But who do you think was making dinner for the last twenty years while you were enjoying yourselves in New York? Do you imagine I let your father and sisters go hungry?”

“We’ve been trying to make your life easier,” Liz said.

“We never meant to step on your toes, Mom,” Jane added. “We wanted to free up your time so you can focus on the Women’s League luncheon.”

“Everyone likes Mom’s food better than yours,” Kitty said to her older sisters.

“Do you know how you can make my life easier?” Mrs. Bennet, who was three inches shorter than Liz, drew herself up, scowling. “You can stop meddling in matters that are none of your business.”

It was at this point that Mr. Bennet, whose emergence from the Tudor had gone unnoticed, cleared his throat. “Lizzy’s not wrong about the house, and you know it, Sally,” he said. “We do need to sell. Girls, clear out your rooms and start looking for other living arrangements.”