Hildy went to an optometrist late the next afternoon. When she returned, her pupils were dilated but her step did not waver. She seemed unexcited by the experience, although perhaps a little amused. “He was first angry,” she said. “But not at me, I think. He says what you say, that I cannot see. I asked him then, What is it I have been doing all my life? He stopped being angry and became curious. I am a challenge he says.”
“Why?” Ann asked.
“He says there are so many things wrong about my eyes.”
Niki tried to peer closely at Hildy’s eyes, to descry the flaws.
“You cannot see it, he said. He said astigmatic in both eyes. It is so serious for me because of the other flaws, which cause one eye to be nearsighted, the other farsighted. He said that he will have the glasses ready on Friday, because I am in mortal danger until I get them.”
“I’ll vouch for that,” Ann remarked. “Can glasses correct the errors?”
“Big glasses,” Hildy said. “Thick glasses.” She was silent.
Ann tried to reassure her. “You’ll look fine in them.”
“What does that matter?” Hildy said. “I was remembering. As I left he said that my eyes looked perfect to him. He said he was sorry to say I must have glasses. Isn’t that strange?”
“No,” Niki said.
“So I told him if he would write a note to my roommates that I was all right, I would not need them. And he put me in his car and drove me here. So that is done.”
“When do you get the glasses?” Ann asked.
“Friday at four.”
“Then I won’t see them until Sunday when I get back. You won’t schedule a game for the weekend, will you? Remember, I have to go home—it’s my father’s birthday.”
“Our only match this week is Thursday,” Niki said. “No problem.”
“No bike riding until you get the glasses. OK, Hildy?” Ann asked. Hildy nodded meekly, but spoke softly to herself as she lay down on her bed.
“What?” Ann asked.
“Nothing. Nothing. How old is your father to be?”
“Fifty-four.”
Niki joined in. “That’s not young.”
“No. So what?”
Niki shrugged. “I just thought. People, when they get older, into their thirties, they don’t want the inconvenience of small children. I just thought that.”
“I’ve got a younger brother too,” Ann said.
“What’s he like, your father?” Niki asked.
This time Ann shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s strict. He’s conservative. He’s a pretty good lawyer, I think. He doesn’t care anything about art or literature. Cultural stuff. He says he lets Mother dabble in all that. We don’t have these incredible father-daughter talks. I don’t tell him—you know, we’re not intimate. I mean, what does he need to know about my first menstrual period, say, or Greek verbs? He’s busy. We get along OK. I like him.” She thought. “I don’t know him well. Not nearly as well as I should, do I?”
“What’s it matter,” Niki asked.
“Do you know your father, Hildy?”
“I have worked beside him. He has taught me patiently. But as a man—no, I do not know him, and that is proper. He is my father.”
“He’s just a human being, like every other,” Niki argued.
“His seed made me. His blood flows in my veins. His work feeds me, clothes me, shelters me. How am I to think of him as I do other people?”
“Do you like him?” Ann wondered.
“We work well together, my father and I.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Their second sophomore match went smoothly. Ann played the first game, Eloise the second. Watching, Ann could see a coordination in her team that she was not aware of when she was playing within it. Most of the crowd at this match rooted for the freshmen, although a few partisan sophomores hooted, jeered, and called out to their own team, praising and pushing them on. The gym walls echoed the spectators’ enthusiasms, magnifying them.
Miss Dennis slipped onto the bench beside Ann during the second game. She did not take off her heavy jacket, although Ann offered to help her. “This game will not last long,” she said. “You won the first, didn’t you?”
“Fifteen—eight.”
Ann was too constrained by the Munchkin’s presence to shriek eagerly, as she would have, say, when Sarah rose to spike a ball. Miss Dennis applauded a good play, a sound undistinguishable in the general noise, a little Munchkin sound of fingers on palms.
“I want to thank you—”
“For the grade?” Miss Dennis cut her off, leaning slightly toward her. “You disappoint me, Miss Gardner. I had thought you capable of accurate self-evaluation.”
“Yes, of course,” Ann said, flushing as she realized what she had almost said.
The woman smiled at her and inclined her head. It was a gesture Ann knew from Philosophy lectures, perfectly ambiguous.
♦ ♦ ♦
Grades were announced at the middle of the week. Carbon copies of the reports that were being sent to parents were mailed to each student. Ann had a B + in Philosophy; what she would have guessed. The rest of her grades, even the A in English, were not surprising either: except for a D in Sciences. Ann looked at the slip of paper and then at Niki. “I must have flunked the unit test.”
“What?” Niki was displeased about something.
“Science. I got a D. I’ve never flunked anything before.”
“What about the rest?”
“B’s and an A.”
“Don’t sweat it. D is passing and you won’t have to take another science.”
Ann bit her lip.
“Annie—are you really upset?”
Ann nodded.
“Why? You don’t want to transfer out of here or anything. No graduate school will look at a freshman science course.”
“I’m not worried about that. I’ve never flunked. Not even a quiz. I didn’t think I’d done that badly. I don’t understand how I could have. It’s the only thing I could count on being good at, school.”
“Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter, does it? Now, I’ve got a real problem. Look at this.”
“That looks pretty good. How did you get an A-minus in Math?”
“What kind of question is that?” Niki mocked hurt feelings. “No, you’re right. We did some Calculus last year and this first section has been review for me. The A will go down, I promise. But English—”
“C-plus? That’s all right.”
“I need at least B’s to get into Berkeley. Nothing lower They got a lot of transfer applications.”
Hildy entered, bearing her grade slip, serene.
“And how’d you do, Hildy?” Niki asked.
“I have passed everything,” Hildy spoke lightly. “Not well, but I did not expect to do well. See? So that is all good.”
Ann noticed that, although she had received permission to take two sciences, Hildy had C – in both.
Niki was not to be distracted from her own interests. “The English professor doesn’t like me. To begin with. She’d like you, Annie—you’re her kind. She’s a bastard.”
“Maybe if you worked a little harder?” Ann returned. “Maybe if you worked a little?”
“Nope. I keep up, and that’s enough for an English course. She says I don’t think about the stuff. But it’s English. You don’t think about English, you have opinions. What do I do, Ann?”
“How can I tell?”
“Would you look at my papers?”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is the professor right? She is, isn’t she? You don’t think about it, do you?”
“It’s boring. It’s all so . . . undefined. You can prove almost anything, if you twist and turn it enough. And why bother? That’s what I want to know: why bother? I can’t think about that stuff. Just getting the reading done—I have trouble staying awake for that.”
“Well then,” Ann said.
“There’s got to be a way around this. If I could get an A on the long paper, I’d get a B for the semester. Don’t you think? Even if all the rest of my papers are C-plus? How do you get an A?”
“I don’t know.”
“You helped Hildy.”
“Hildy was in trouble.”
“Will you just read one paper? That’s not so much trouble is it? Just one? The Odyssey one. I’m not asking you to do very much, just tell me what you think about a paper. It’s not hard, not for you. I’m not asking you to like me, Annie, just read a paper.”
“All right. I give up, I will. All right.”
Niki opened a drawer and pulled out a paper. “Here, I happen to have it handy. Hildy? What did you get on your Penelope paper?”
“C.”
“That’s two letter grades up. You can do it, Annie. You can do it for me.”
“What do you think of this?” Hildy asked. “If each game a different person sits out. In rotation.”
“Eloise is our sub,” Niki said.
“She improves,” Hildy said.
“How about, everyone but you and me?” Niki suggested.
“I thought everyone. You do not have to though, that will make no difference.”
“I have no objection to the idea,” Ann said.
“Why wouldn’t I make a difference?” Niki asked.
“You play by yourself.”
“Balls,” Niki said. “The team needs me. And you. The team needs us.”
“Not me,” Hildy said.
“Then me,” Niki said. She turned on Ann, “I know how that sounds so don’t bother saying it.”
“You make many of the points more quickly; you make them more easy for us,” Hildy said. “They would still be made.”
“Piss on it.”
“I do not understand,” Hildy said in a genuinely puzzled voice, “why you use such words. If you have chosen them for their meaning, you are either deliberately rude or simply stupid. If for any other reason, you are a hypocrite.”
Niki fumed. Her mouth opened on unuttered responses. Finally she slammed her hand down on the desk. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Nothing. I did not ask a question.”
“You know, you may be right, capital-R Right. But you won’t break me.” Niki’s voice was steely.
“I know,” Hildy spoke softly. “I do not want to. But you cannot know that.”
“I don’t care. That’s the truth of the matter. All I want is to get my English grade up. So I can get the hell out.”
“I’ll read the paper right now,” Ann said, seizing the diversion. “Look, I’m starting. I’m reading the title.” Adultery. Ann read through the seven pages, noted and agreed with the C + grade, and was surprised at the flat though workmanlike content and style.
Niki, she became aware, had watched her throughout. “Well?”
“I need to think,” Ann hedged. “Interesting is the comment by the grade. Is that all the professor said?”
“Ah. You think that, as a critical analysis of the paper, as the response of a trained intelligence seeking to enable improvement, for example, that as such it is not incisive enough? Maybe a little lacking in constructive criticism? Although it is succinct.”
Ann said, “What strikes me is that interesting is the one thing it isn’t.”
Niki threw back her head and laughed. “You’re right, of course. Bizarre, yes? Talk to me after dinner, OK? Annie—I knew you could put your finger on it.”
Later, Ann tried to explain to Niki that it was a matter of the quality of the idea and the complexity of dealing with it. “You’ve missed so much,” Ann said.
“But I only had ten pages.”
“Yes. And you plumped for the most pedestrian use of them. That surprises me.”
“Why?”
“This paper is so safe.”
“When you’re going for the grade—”
“Admit it. You got the grade you got by going for grades.”
“OK, OK. So I’ve got to have better ideas.”
“And deal with them more thoughtfully. That may be hard for you.”
Niki looked down at her paper “I guess that makes sense. OK. I see what you’re driving at Annie. I owe you one. Want me to help you with science?”
“Eloise said she would.”
“Eloise? Why Eloise? Is she smart? I don’t believe that, Annie. She’s such a wimp, how can she be smart?”
“The real thing,” Ann said, sure of it. “Not like us. She may even be a scholar She has that sense for—perfection in detail, is that it? You’re underestimating her, Niki.”
“But I bet I could show you better than Eloise. She won’t know how to yell at you. We’ll try it together.”
Ann was not up to arguing about that, not even for the sake of her new, burgeoning friendship with Eloise.
♦ ♦ ♦
Ann went home for the weekend, riding the express bus. Ann’s home, altogether, in all respects, reflected the kind of polishing that makes silver shine and wood gleam. Mrs. Gardner had a rib roast, Ann’s favorite, for Friday dinner. Her two older sisters had also come home for the occasion, and one of her older brothers. The next day, her father’s birthday, lobsters were served. Sunday morning was filled with leave-takings; only Ann and her younger brother would stay through Sunday lunch. It was a typical weekend at home: logy with food, passing the time slowly in a kind of contented haze, making desultory inquiries about other peoples’ jobs, schools, activities.
When she had a moment alone with her mother, Ann asked whether she could bring her roommate home for Christmas. “Niki?” Mrs. Gardner inquired. “Or the other girl, Hildy.”
“Actually, I asked them both.”
Mrs. Gardner raised her eyebrows.
“But Niki has to go out to California to keep her father from getting married, if she can. She didn’t want to come anyway.”
“Why should she want her father not to remarry?”
“It’s complicated,” Ann said. There were some areas of the world her mother could not understand. “Anyway, I asked Hildy.”
“Before you had spoken to me?”
Ann knew she was in the wrong. “I thought—you’ll like her, I’m sure of it—it’s Christmas and she can’t get home herself—”
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t have much money.”
“So, you’ve been feeling sorry for people again,” her mother said.
Ann left the room.
Ann’s green and white bedroom felt strange to her, for the first time in her life. She had lived in this room for much of her life. Its corners were cluttered with pieces of her childhood and with personal treasures. But she was no longer entirely comfortable there. On Sunday morning she packed a long stuffed snake into her suitcase and rolled up her Kennedy campaign poster; she picked out her first edition of The Secret Garden. She set her suitcase in the hallway, ready to go.
At lunch, a large platter of chicken salad sandwiches, her mother answered her “I’ve been thinking about Christmas. Ann wants to bring a friend home with her for the holidays,” she announced.
The suggestion did not seem to evoke much interest.
“I’ve decided that it’s all right with me,” Mrs. Gardner said. “When you shop, remember that there will be one more person. Her name is Hildy. She plays volleyball—isn’t that right? She comes from a modest background—that’s correct, isn’t it, Ann?”
Ann protested. “It wouldn’t be like that. It wouldn’t be right to give her presents the way we do each other. That would embarrass her.”
“I think the question is,” Mr. Gardner said, “whether it would embarrass us not to do so. Or are you suggesting that we celebrate differently this year?”
“No, not at all. Hildy wouldn’t mind. She wouldn’t even notice. She doesn’t notice stuff like that. Are you trying to tell me it’s a bad idea?”
“Of course not,” Mrs. Gardner said. “I’ll admit I’d have difficulty welcoming Niki. But Hildy, when you write of her, seems quite nice. A little simple. Though she might feel uncomfortable here. Have you thought of that?”
Ann, feeling at that point uncomfortable herself, nodded.
Ann’s brother joined in. “Let’s do it. But play it by ear and not make a big production out of it. Is she pretty?”
“Very.”
“She’ll be bound to have a good time then. Don’t get in a tither, Ma.”
“You know, if you wanted to, you could come up and meet her first. Maybe that’s the way to do it. And if it feels OK to you, you could invite her yourself.”
“Now that’s a workable idea,” Mr. Gardner said. “A very good idea. I’m glad to see our money is not being wasted. We could have a day’s quiet skiing, just the two of us, and take the girls out to dinner. Some time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, don’t you think?” He talked down the length of the table to his wife.
“That does seem better. We should do it quite close to Thanksgiving, though.”
“Niki too, let’s include her in the dinner,” Mr. Gardner said. “I was taken with her. She put spokes in your mother’s wheels, if you can imagine that,” he said to Ann’s brother.
“Of course, Niki might not care to dine with us,” Mrs. Gardner said.
“Yes, but she might. I shall attempt to charm her, if she hesitates.”
“You’d do better to bully her,” Ann advised.
“That too,” her father agreed.
“Is she pretty?” the brother inquired.
“No,” Ann said.
“But, Ann,” her mother said. “Niki could be quite striking. Dramatic. She has lovely hair and a fine figure.”
“What’s Hildy like?” Ann’s father asked. “Besides pretty.”
Ann tried to think of what to say. “She’s sort of—unusual. I like her.”
Mrs. Gardner smiled patiently. “What’s her background, what does her father do? Where did she go to school?”
“Her father’s a farmer. She went to a high school. She works hard, she goes to church every Sunday.”
“Catholic?”
“No, she just—worships.” Ann struggled to find the detail or description that would explain. “I don’t know—she’s just herself. You’ll have to meet her. She’s sort of the volleyball coach. I really like her, everybody admires her.”
Ann’s brother changed the subject. “What is this I hear, you’re playing volleyball?” Ann nodded. “I never figured you for a jock,” he remarked.
“I sort of fell into it,” she justified herself. “I kind of like it. We’re playing on an all-school ladder and doing pretty well.” This much boasting she allowed herself.
“Volleyball?” His opinion of the sport was obvious in his tone: low.
“Mens sane,” Ann answered, knowing how weak his Latin was.
“We know you’re the brainy one,” he responded equably. “But it isn’t like you to play a sport—it isn’t, is it? You won’t even go off the high diving board, Ann.”
Ann giggled, remembering. “OK. I’m no athlete, I’m not even competitive—”
“Hot news flash,” he announced to the table.
“—but you should understand this: I feel like I know how to get better at it. Do you know what I mean? I can almost feel—see—what it would be like to be really good. Like you are at tennis. I never will, of course, but—listen.”
“I’m listening. I can eat and listen.”
“I’ve always been good in school, but I never had to work that hard, especially for the things I liked, like languages and English. It was all sort of accidental. I did the only thing I could think of to do and it was excellent.” She didn’t care if she was boasting, because she was figuring something out. “But in the volleyball, because it’s a team maybe and there are other people . . . . Always before, I never tried for anything I wasn’t naturally good at. Maybe I figured I’d lose anyway, or maybe I was too scared of looking stupid. But now, in this, I’m really working hard even though I know I’ll never be as good as I’d like to be. Doesn’t that happen to you in school? Don’t you know what I mean?”
He looked thoughtfully at her. “You must have a good teacher,” he said.
“Hildy,” Ann said. “She and Niki are really good players. Really good. I’m the worst on the team.” That was true, Ann realized, and wondered why she had never thought of it that way before. “Except maybe the sub. Eloise.” She forestalled her brother’s inevitable question. “No, not pretty. But Hildy . . . well, just wait and see.”
He groaned and smote his breast. “If I were only two years older.”
♦ ♦ ♦
The room was empty when Ann returned. She unpacked quickly. The snake coiled in furry indolence on her bed. The poster, with its photograph of JFK, she tacked over her desk. Ann changed into trousers and walked over to the gym, to see if there might be a practice. She wanted to see Hildy in her new glasses. But nobody was at the gym, so she went back, drew herself a bath and lay in it, sketchily reading The Secret Garden.
A steamy and silent time passed before Niki rapped on the door of the cubicle. “Ann? Is this where you are?”
Niki entered and sat on the little white stool, moving Ann’s towel and underclothes onto her lap.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Ann said.
“You’re not embarrassed, are you?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Don’t you want to see Hildy? We were looking for you. I saw your suitcase. We’ve been walking around. It’s like having a baby in tow. Shall I call her?”
“No! Just give me a minute to get out and clean the tub.”
“OK. OK. Keep your hair on.”
Ann padded down the hall expecting—what? Some great surprise. But there was not that, only alterations. Hildy’s glasses were thick, gold-rimmed. They magnified her cornflower eyes, giving to her face a slightly befuddled expression. “So you see,” she said, self-consciously.
“You see,” corrected Niki.
“I am clumsy still,” Hildy said. “It is the change in depth perception. I fell off your bike, but there was no harm done. I have been practicing.”
“She can recognize people at a hundred yards,” Niki reported, “and read a book at arm’s length. Leap tall buildings at a single bound.”
Ann studied Hildy’s new face. Its simplicity was made more obvious by the thick lenses. There was something helpless about it, appealing—like a startled elf. “What do you think?” Ann asked. “Do you like them?”
“I grow accustomed,” Hildy answered. “There is so much—I did not know. Colors, and light. Everything is cluttered.”
“Don’t tell me,” Ann said. She lay on her bed and crossed her ankles. “I’ve just spent an hour washing the city off myself.”
“Do you ever think about how much garbage a city makes?” Niki asked. “Picture it. The garbage from your own house, multiplied times a million, all piled up, on the streets say.”
“That’s depressing,” Ann said.
“It’s terrifying. Garbage will take over the world, poured into rivers and lakes and the oceans, dug into marshes and meadows. Now there’s a problem with a future. Turn your mind to that one, Annie.” She bit a nail. “I hate cities. Where’d you get that?” She pointed at Ann’s poster.
“From home.”
“I wouldn’t have figured you for a Kennedy fan.”
“Why not? He’s—educated, witty—”
“Rich, good-looking. In short, an aristocrat. I guess I can see it.”
“Well and why not?” Ann challenged her.
“You really buy all that stuff?” Niki asked her. “You don’t know anything about what really goes on?” Ann squirmed. “His daddy bought the nomination for him.” Ann had heard that story. “He’s not even faithful to his wife.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Not from personal experience, no. And what about the Bay of Pigs?”
Ann couldn’t think of a rebuttal.
“You’ve fallen for a pretty face and a quick wit—charisma, that’s all.”
“I don’t know,” Ann said. “But you can’t tell me you would have voted for Nixon,” she attacked. Niki waved that objection away. “Besides,” Ann said, “when there is someone you can be proud of—yes proud, because he speaks well, because he picks intelligent advisors, not political ones—”
“—that’s another of his mistakes,” Niki said.
“Who reads books and treats them as if they’re important, somebody better than the ordinary. It gives you—it gives me at least—the sense that excellence is possible. That it’s not just in stories, or in somebody long dead, excellence; but now. I don’t know, I like being a citizen of the country he’s president of. It’s like—being at Stanton.”
Niki snorted.
“Or like the volleyball team, our team, that’s doing something well. Or even being a member of the class that has that team, even if I didn’t play on it.” She thought. Niki chewed on a finger and watched her. “Besides everybody makes mistakes. Napoleon should never have gone into Russia, but that’s not important. Neither is the way he made his brothers emperors.”
“What is then?” Niki asked.
This time it was a question Ann had hoped for. “The Code Napoleon, he revised the whole legal system of France.”
“Good point,” Niki approved. “But what does it have to do with supporting Kennedy?”
Ann couldn’t say.
“My father does not vote,” Hildy volunteered. “He says they are all great liars and out to deceive, and he will give no one his vote.”
Ann and Niki exchanged a glance.
“What does that look mean?” Hildy asked.
Ann flushed. Niki remarked, “You begin to see how things have changed?”
“It means, in my case,” Ann told Hildy, “that it is a privilege of democracy to vote and that the system rests upon each person using his vote.”
“That little speech is enough to keep me away from the polls forever,” Niki said.
Hildy was watching their faces. Her eyes were—inscrutable.
“My dad is a Republican by reaction,” Niki said. “All the screaming liberals in California make him nervous. But I’d have thought the Gardners were Republicans by choice.”
“The rest of my family is. I’m a heretic,” Ann said. “My grandmother, do you want to know all she had to say about Kennedy? ‘All that hair, my dear, and all that money.’ ”
“The real question is, can he govern,” Niki said. “What history will say about a man who calls his kid Jon-Jon, I don’t know. But it’s history’s verdict that will count, and that’ll take a hundred years. If we have a hundred years. Nobody’s managed to ban the Bomb yet.”
“It is in God’s hands,” Hildy said.
“Do you think so? Do you really think so?” Ann asked, because if Hildy thought it, it might be true.
Hildy nodded.
“In the meantime,” Niki announced briskly, “we have here Hildy, no longer half-blind, in need of some care. Can you ride with her to the lab tomorrow night, Ann? I’ve got a lot of math. All the assignments for the last three weeks, if the truth were known, all due Tuesday.”
“Sure. I’ll take some work. What is it like with glasses, Hildy? What do you see?”
“I cannot tell, it is all so confusing.”
“Let me try them?” Ann held out her hands. Hildy took off her glasses and became herself again.
Ann could see blobs of color and light. Areas in shadow. A pale shape, framed in fluid black, Niki; her tensed body as if—Ann lost the thought. Ann stood up and put out a hand to steady herself. The light from the hall swam before her eyes. The little muscles that control focus strained to make details clear. She turned a head grown suddenly cumbersome to where Hildy sat. Light there, and two deep, darker circles that must be eyes. The body sure and strong there, firm as a tree, supple as spring wood, silent.
Ann rubbed her temples and took off the glasses. “Wow they’re strong,” she said. “It makes me dizzy.”
“It makes me dizzy also,” Hildy said. “But I will adjust.”
“Think of what it’ll do for your volleyball game,” Niki said. “You’ll blast us off the court.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Oddly enough, just the opposite happened. Hildy, looking out-of-proportion with magnified eyes and long legs, played an altered game. On serves, she brought her arm forward with less assurance and power, with more conscious care. She watched the passage of the ball and the expression of the receiver and was, thus, late into position for the return. When her team passed the ball forward, her head followed its progress. Her spike was improved, her blocking hampered. When she made a poor shot, she would shake her arms and stand puzzled, her hands clenched. It was as if her entire internal tempo had shifted.
“You’ll get used to it,” Niki assured her. “You didn’t play badly.”
“I know that,” Hildy said. “I must try harder. It is noisy here.
“It’s always been noisy.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Ann rode with Hildy to the observatory Monday evening. While Hildy looked at the stars, she sat in an empty office studying Ancient Greek. Her absorption was so complete that it was not until a shadow fell over the page of the textbook that she knew lab was over. Hildy leaned down to touch the Greek letters. “What does it say?”
Ann translated: “Whom the gods love, die young.” Then she read the Greek aloud.
Hildy’s eyes stayed on the page. “Those would be cruel gods, to love so,” she said, and her fingers moved over the lines of exercises, as if it were Braille. “People spoke this language.”
“Yes. Although nobody now knows for sure how it was pronounced.”
They walked out to the bicycle rack. Clouds scudded over the stars. “There are lost languages, ancient ones,” Hildy said. “Languages—how many?—there are also, other than our own. Some spoken only by members of isolated tribes. Each with its own vocabulary. Why is that?”
“Some are cradle-of-civilization tongues,” Ann explained. “Like Indo-European, which has word forms, roots, that appear in many languages. Because of that, many languages are quite similar, and in grammars too.”
“Does that make it clear to you?” Hildy asked.
“No. Especially when I think of the infinite variation,” Ann said. “It’s like thinking about stars and space.”
“It would be better if we all spoke the same language,” Hildy said. “How could so many differences exist?”
“The tower of Babel?” Ann suggested.
“Is that possible?” Hildy wondered. She looked at the sky, where the few visible stars seemed snared by bare branches. “It seems a heavy punishment.”
They rode down the mountainside together, in windy silence. Hildy had Niki’s bike. She did not use the gears. Neither did she ride quite steadily. Part of the reason for this was her constant turning of the head, to see Ann, to look up, to look back.
“May I come with you Thursday too?” Ann asked. “I got a lot of work done. There’s no distraction at all, up there.”
“Of course. I would be glad of the company and I am not yet, as you can tell, riding well. But I am so much better than on Saturday, when Niki first took me out.”
♦ ♦ ♦
They played the third sophomore match that Thursday. They had practiced every day, and her team had adjusted to Hildy’s new limits. They covered for her more and counted on her less to back them up. This was no sharp alteration, merely a shift.
The gymnasium stands were full. The audience screamed approval, disapproval, general excitement. Hildy’s team played softly and accurately, except for Niki whose shots had still the old force and crispness. They won the first game, lost the second.
“Push it a little,” Niki urged the team. “Try it a little harder and faster You’ve got to.”
They nodded.
They concentrated, they forced the ball over the net at unexpected moments, they set up more spikes for Niki and Hildy, and they won the game. For some reason, victory did not elate them.
♦ ♦ ♦
Eloise, when she came to see what Ann was doing wrong in science, expressed her understanding of the difference in the team to Ann and Niki. She had stood in the doorway, wearing a skirt and sweater, her feet in penny loafers. “Me and my brace of preppies,” Niki greeted her. Eloise sat on the edge of Ann’s bed, tentative.
“We have all lost confidence in Hildy, so we are unsure of ourselves,” she said. “Except you,” she added to Niki. There was approval in her voice as she said that.
“She’s changed,” Ann said. “You must have felt it.”
“But not that much,” Eloise protested. “Not as much as we have. I didn’t know I was doing it while I was in, but when I watched I could see—you’d look at her, as if you expected her to say something, or you’d move closer to her if the ball was going there. And now move back into position. Everything was taking you by surprise. I don’t know. I’m probably wrong, but that’s the way it seemed to me at the time.”
“You’re probably right,” Ann said.
“Bess remarked,” Eloise went on, “afterwards, that she felt as if she were playing alone.”
“Me too,” Ann said.
“I always felt that way,” Niki said.
“There’s a message in that,” Ann answered.
Eloise looked from face to face, as if dreading Niki’s reaction. It was Niki who reassured her. “We deal directly with one another, me and Annie. I’m not conversant with your prep school subtleties.”
“And proud of it,” Ann said. “Anyway”—she changed the subject and gave herself the last word—“I have this problem.”
The two looked over Ann’s notes and her tests. They muttered over her lab reports and laughed at her drawings. Eloise and Niki were in complete agreement that Ann needed to devise memorization tricks for science. They worked through a vocabulary list at the back of her notebook, grouping the words, making associative connections, connections so outrageous that they were memorable. Some were classical, some literary, many simply obscene. Then Niki fixed Ann with a truculent eye and announced: “You’ve got to stop writing this way.”
“What?”
“She’s put her finger on something rather important,” Eloise agreed, reluctant to offend Ann. “I’m afraid I agree with her,” she apologized.
“Nothing’s wrong with my writing,” Ann said. After all, she was the one with advanced English placement.
“It’s too good,” Niki said. “Too subtle. Too complex. Too thoughtful. Too much dependence on idea.” She grinned. “Make it flat. Stop using verbs well, use to be instead. Be pedestrian. No joke, Ann. I’m succeeding in biology with just that style.”
“But that would make it so dull,” Ann said.
“C dull, do you think?” Niki asked. “Maybe even B-minus dull? Think on it, Annie.”
The shame of a D was great enough to bend Ann’s pride.
Niki had a bridge game at ten—“I’m working up to playing for stakes. Money, eventually; they’re coming around”—and Eloise lingered, reluctant to leave. Ann, who thought she would let her new resolution settle in for a night before she got down to work employing it, welcomed the distraction.
“Where’s Hildy?” Eloise asked.
“In the library. She studies there.”
“Is this her bureau?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I thought so; it’s peculiarly bare. Doesn’t she have any photographs of her family?”
“I’ve never seen any. How are your roommates?” Ann hadn’t thought about them for weeks.
“They’re fine, I presume. We don’t encounter one another frequently, and when we do— They like having me be on the volleyball team, do you know that?”
“We’re getting a reputation. Some of the people in my Shakespeare class said they were going to come to a game. Do you like that, being famous?”
“Yes,” Eloise said firmly. “Yes I do. I never . . .” Her voice dwindled off.
“I know.”
“We’ve really left the Hall behind,” Eloise said. “Not just me, you too. Doesn’t it seem a long time ago, if you remember last fall? Like another country.”
Ann agreed, and added that she was not sorry. “But I loved it there. If I have a daughter, I’ll send her there. If I get married.”
“Is Niki being humorous most of the time?” Eloise asked. “I’d never realized that before. Now it seems possible. Is it all intended to be amusing?”
“Who knows?” Ann said. “I doubt it, but I can’t be sure. Sometimes, I think maybe. It’s easier to take her that way, so I try to. You should too.”
“I’ll try,” Eloise said.
They chattered and gossiped until a few minutes before the dormitories would close. Then Eloise started to leave. “It’s pleasant here,” she said.
“Even Niki?” Ann grinned.
“Try my terrible twosome from Texas. Niki’s not so bad, not so bad at all.”
They met Hildy on the porch, and she and Ann stood together watching Eloise trudge down the path between the trees.
“You like her,” Hildy said to Ann.
“Yes I do,” Ann answered.
“But you didn’t always?”
“No. But I didn’t know anything about her, not really.”
“You are a good friend for her,” Hildy said finally. “And that is right.”