Tam Lin Read online

  Molly's head came up like a dog's that hears unfamiliar footsteps. Peg said, "A lesbian? They say that about everybody who lives in Ericson."

  "And what do they say about the guys who live in Dunbar?" said Molly.

  Peg grinned at her. "They say they're all jocks," she said.

  "What a blessing for them," said Molly sourly.

  "Well?" said Christina to Janet.

  "Well, what?"

  "Did she act like—"

  "How the hell should I know?" Janet snapped, and immediately felt guilty. She was reacting not to what Christina had said or almost said about Wolfe, but to the fact that neither Molly nor Peg had liked it. She added more temperately, "She tried to get me to change my major to Classics. That's all." Was that what had put her back up? No, surely not; Melinda Wolfe had been perfectly impersonal: she had just seemed to know too much and to be using it to push her notions of what Janet should do. None of this would enlighten Tina. Janet said, "Peg, I wanted to ask you—"

  "Speaking of which," said Peg, very softly, "coming in the door this very minute are five wonderful reasons to be a Classics major. Don't stare at them, Janet, wait till they come around the corner."

  Janet heard a crowd of boys pass, laughing, and obediently waited until they shoved their trays around the corner and began helping themselves to milk or soda and making obscene comments about the remaining tapioca pudding. She had intended to glance up casually, but she found herself staring. Two blonds, two with dark hair, one redhead. If anybody had asked her, she would have said they were in Theater, not Classics. They had beautiful voices, and a presence that warmed and lit the dingy hall as if all the lights had been repaired instantaneously. Janet looked up, but the dead lights were still dead and the flickering ones still pulsing.

  She looked at the five boys more carefully. They had a full complement of long hair, beards, and mustaches; but she thought of the theater again, of historical drama. They were far too tidy to be her contemporaries. But they wore jeans and T-shirts, or muslin smocks with embroidery, or unironed sports shirts, just like anybody else. They talked like other college students, if those jokes over the tapioca were any example.

  They removed themselves and their trays to the next room, where they could smoke.

  And that took care of that, thought Janet, half displeased and half relieved.

  "Too skinny," said Molly, stacking four empty bowls and looking thoughtfully at the rest.

  "Can you introduce me?" said Christina.

  "Sure you don't want to major in Classics?" said Peg to Janet.

  "What is this obsession?" demanded Janet. "Sharon says she's a Geo major because there are more men than women, and now you—"

  "Hah," said Peg. "When Sharon was eleven, she had a rock collection so huge she had to sleep in the basement. She just likes shocking the young."

  "What about you?" said Molly, also sounding rather irate.

  "I just thought, Wolfe had provided the intellectual bait, and I'd provide some other sort," said Peg, peaceably. "Just doing my share for my department. Every teacher in it is wonderful, really." She looked at Christina. "If you take Latin, you'll meet two of the boys," she said. "They're really into Greek, but you've got to have two terms of Latin for the major, and they're running out of time."

  "I guess it'd be a change from math and science," said Christina. "Which two?"

  "Thomas Lane," said Peg, "that's the tall blond one. And Jack Nikopoulos, that's the tall one with dark hair."

  "Both the tall ones! How can I resist? Who were the other three?"

  "The short one with the curly dark hair was Nicholas Tooley. He's just a freshman, but I know he's going to take Latin."

  "How?"

  "He lives down the hall from Sharon's boyfriend. The redhead's Robert Benfield and the short blond one is Robert Armin. Benfield is Rob and Armin is Robin.

  Benfield plays tennis. Armin's great love seems to be beer, but he must do something besides drink because he's the only freshman in the history of the department to be exempted out of all the beginning courses. They let him go straight to Aristophanes."

  She turned to Janet.

  "What did you start to ask me, Jan, before the boys came in?"

  "Something about your bedspread," said Janet. She sat very still, summoning up the threads of the conversation; she almost had it.

  "You can get them at Jacobsen's," said Peg.

  "We have to go anyway," said Christina, "to get the material for the curtains. Do you guys want to go now, if it's not raining?"

  "Can I come?" said Peg. "Sharon broke my big mug and I'm afraid she'll buy me a new one."

  "Why not let her?" said Molly, standing up and stretching alarmingly "Stupid body," she said, picking up the tray. "There's no point in all these histrionics."

  "I'm not being histrionic," said Peg, with mild indignation. "Sharon'll buy something with some sick Hallmark verse on it."

  "I meant my period," said Molly. "I wouldn't have pegged Sharon for the sentimental type."

  "Huh," said Peg, also standing. "Just you wait."

  When they got outside, the sun had come out and was making rhinestones out of the raindrops. Janet wished it were still raining; what she wanted to ask Peg, she had thought of first in the rain.

  "Do you really want a pink-and-blue Indian bedspread?" said Molly to Janet.

  They had lagged behind the other two; Peg was a brisk walker and Christina had long legs.

  "No," said Janet. She walked faster; Peg and Christina were almost out of sight.

  The backs of her legs hurt from climbing to the top of the observatory yesterday.

  When she was in grade school, she had gone up there every day. "Oh, hell," she said.

  "I forgot to sign up for any Phys Ed."

  "So did I," said Molly. "This time of the month the m ere thought of exercise makes me homicidal. What were you thinking of taking?"

  "Fencing," said Janet.

  "Because you're fierce, I suppose. Everybody will have the reach on you; why don't you take Archery with me?"

  "I'm fast," said Janet, rather nettled. She stopped under the ancient cedar trees that marked the main entrance to Blackstock College, averted her eyes from the brick box, the color of tomato soup, that was Blackstock's newest dormitory, and held out her hands to Molly at waist height, palms down. "Try me," she said.

  Molly grinned unnervingly, positioned her own hands about an inch under Janet's, palms up, and began rattling out, "There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." She snatched her hands away suddenly, but Janet slapped them smartly.

  "Not bad," said Molly, with a kind of grudging pleasure. "Try again. Shit! I can beat all my brothers at this. Come on. Well, hell. You are fast. Okay, give it to 'em for me, too. But I want a rematch when my body's not in rebellion."

  "Oh, come on, take fencing with me," said Janet. Janet started walking again, off the grounds of Blackstock and along Church Street with its collection of tall, narrow, cut-rate Victorian houses. "Didn't you play Three Musketeers when you were little?"

  "Pirates," said Molly.

  "That's swordplay, too."

  "We used clubs," said Molly. "No, I want to take Archery, because what I always wanted to play was Robin Hood and they said if we did, I'd have to be Maid Marian and be rescued."

  "Maid Marian didn't need rescuing," said Janet, shocked.

  "My brothers thought she did," said Molly. "My God, look at that house. I didn't think you had houses like this out in the Wild West."

  "Minnesota became a state in 1857," said Janet, patiently. "That's the President's House; that reception thing for supper tonight is there. They'll give you a guided tour." She had always thought the President's House was profoundly ugly, but there was no denying that it was impressive.

  "Is it haunted, too?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Why is the trim that ghastly pink?"

  "Like Peg's bedspread. Henry Barker's wife painted i
t that color in 1911, and now it's a tradition."

  "Just like the language requirement," murmured Molly. "We'd better move, or Tina will buy pink curtains with little flowers on them."

  "I thought she was talking about red stripes."

  "Only to placate me."

  "We could get a calico print," said Janet, "with red stripes and little pink flowers."

  "Excuse me," said Molly; "I have to beat you both there." She took off running at a speed amazing in somebody who was suffering from cramps. Janet ran after her for perhaps a block, which was enough to prove that Molly's legs were faster than her hands.

  Janet then went sideways around the Methodist Church, and took the shortcut.

  She arrived in front of Jacobsen's plate-glass front before the rest of them, with a stitch in her side and a sensation that the weather was a great deal hotter and damper than she had thought. What had she been doing with herself this last year? This run had been nothing to her as recently as her sophomore year in high school, when she had raced Danny Chin from River Street to the high school, and beaten him by a yard.

  Peg and Christina were coming along the sidewalk now, peering into the window of the music store; making oh-how-cute faces at the little bookstore, which meant the cat George Eliot and her latest litter were wallowing all over the window display; and then, seeing Janet, they looked puzzled and walked faster.

  Molly came pounding up behind them, passed them while narrowly missing a light pole, and skidded to a stop next to Janet. Her face was perfectly white, and with the freckles looked more like a chocolate-chip cookie than anything else. Her breathing was much easier than Janet's. Her gray University of Pennsylvania T-shirt was dark with sweat under the arms and between her breasts, and her hair had gone fuzzy with damp.

  "Show me how you did that," she said without gasping.

  "Later," wheezed Janet.

  "Look at Peg and Tina," chortled Molly. She wrapped her arms around her middle.

  "Shut up," she told it firmly.

  "What's the matter?" said Peg.

  "She was afraid Tina'd buy curtains with flowers on them," said Janet.

  "Only because you threatened to help," said Molly. "It's just cramps."

  "Have you taken anything for them?"

  "Nothing works."

  Peg dug in the pocket of her denim skirt and produced a tiny enamel box with an iris on it. "Want a Happy Pill?"

  Molly's big blue eyes narrowed instantly, and a look of the most glowering suspicion spread over her cheerful face. Janet was alarmed; Peg, however, was not only unperturbed, but appeared to understand. "It's perfectly legal," she said. "It's codeine and aspirin. The Health Service gives them to people when they have flu or strep throat, and we all hoard them for when we really need them. If you don't need to use your brain for anything this afternoon, you should take one."

  Molly accepted the pill and they pushed open the doors and went into Jacobsen's. It smelled of cloth, beef jerky, and rubber, and looked as the labyrinth of the Minotaur might have if it had been built by the owner of a nineteenth-century general store. Half an hour later they emerged with heavy material of striped cotton in red, blue, and green that was going to clash dreadfully with Christina's quilt.

  The sun had gone behind the clouds again, and a twisty damp wind was rattling discarded paper cups in the gutters, since it was not strong enough to pick up the sodden leaves. The light was a diffuse version of the greeny-yellow that precedes a tornado, but the sky was more confused than threatening.

  When they reached their dormitory and opened the door of their room, they found a folded paper lying on the carpet, addressed to Janet. In a stiff backhand full of peculiar s's, it said, "We forgot your Phys Ed. Write in whatever you wa nt, but think about either

  Swimming, which you need to graduate, or Outdoor Fitness, which is good in this weather.

  Archery and Fencing are rumored to be bad choices this year; the usual teacher is on sabbatical. Melinda Wolfe."

  Janet sat on her bed looking at this epistle for some time. Then she unearthed her schedule sheet from under a box of typing paper Christina had bought yesterday, and wrote in, "Fencing, Swifte, 2a," under the list of her other classes.

  "Hey, Molly," she said. "Wolfe says Archery and Fencing aren't a good idea this year because the usual instructor is on sabbatical."

  "Are you taking Fencing?"

  "Yes."

  "And I'm taking Archery. At least I am if I can find my schedule."

  "It's under the curtain material."

  "Seems like a funny thing for an advisor to tell you," said Molly, heaving herself off the top bunk and shoving the package of material from her desk to the floor.

  "Don't get that all dusty," said Christina's voice from the hallway, where she was piling boxes in search of her sewing basket.

  Molly, grimacing, put the material on her desk chair and took her schedule back to Janet's bed.

  "How are you feeling?" said Janet.

  "Dopey," said Molly, sitting down with a force that made the springs creak. She scribbled on her schedule and flung it on the floor. "I still hurt, but I don't care as much."

  "Maybe you should try whiskey."

  "No way. If I'm going to feel like a nineteenth-century consumptive, I demand port at the very least." She lay back until her head dangled off the side of the bed, and sighed heavily. "I miss my ex-boyfriend," she said. "He was a jerk, but he had wonderful hands. I told him he should be a vet, but he wants to be a CPA. He used to rub my back."

  "Why was he a jerk?"

  "Oh, he thought reading fiction was a waste of time, and he thought I couldn't be a scientist if I was rendered miserable once a month by misapplied female hormones, and he was rude to my brothers."

  "Why'd you go out with him at all?"

  "He kissed very well," said Molly, still upside-down.

  "Why'd you get to know him well enough to find that out?"

  "He had a very large vocabulary," said Molly. She rolled over, banged her elbow on the end of the bed, and tucked it under herself, making muffled sounds.

  "What in the world's the matter?" demanded Christina, emerging with a quilted sewing basket appliquéd in pink and yellow ducks.

  "Hit my funny bone," said Molly.

  "You're turning red," observed Janet.

  "Peg says one of the Roberts—Armin, I think—gives good backrubs," said Christina. She made for her own bunk and tripped, as usual, over its discarded upper portion.

  "You bump your head on the upper bunk as you stand up," said Molly to Janet,

  "and we'll all be casualties. Tina, maybe we could lug that down to the basement and hide it somewhere."

  "Not with you all full of codeine and aspirin," said Christina. "After supper, maybe."

  "How does alcohol mix with codeine and aspirin?" said Molly. "I can't remember."

  "Nora's got a PDR, " said Christina.

  "A what?" said Janet.

  "Physician's Desk Reference. It lists a lot of drugs and their side effects."

  "Why?" said Molly.

  "Somebody killed herself a couple of years ago with an overdose of sleeping pills. Nora thought if the RA'd known what to do maybe the kid wouldn't have died."

  "They don't tell you that when they're trying to persuade you to come here," said Molly. "Did Nora say why?"

  "Academic pressure," said Christina. "She had some problem with her boyfriend, Nora said, but it wouldn't have mattered if she hadn't been under so much pressure."

  "Premed?" said Janet.

  "Classics," said Christina.

  "I want you guys to promise me something," said Molly, sliding herself, again alarmingly, into a sitting position on the floor with her back against the bed.

  "What?" said Janet, obligingly.

  "If any of us is thinking of doing something like that, we have to tell the other two first. I mean it. Even if we don't room together all four years; even if we haven't seen one another for months; even if we think we hate
each other. And the other ones have to promise to listen, no matter what, if one of us calls and says it's important."

  "You'd better assign us a password," said Janet. She caught Christina's eye, trying to gauge her reaction. Christina shrugged; Janet recognized, already, her you-guys-are-weird-but-I-guess-this-is-harmless gesture.

  "I'm serious," said Molly.

  "So am I. Something we won't forget in two years."

  "The Snark is a Boojum."

  They smiled at one another. Janet said reluctantly, "That doesn't mean anything to Tina. It should be something we'll all remember."

  Christina, still delving around in her sewing basket, gurgled suddenly and said,

  "Pink curtains."

  Molly rolled her eyes. Janet said to her, "Will you remember?"

  "How could I forget?"

  "All right, then. I swear."

  "And I," said Molly.

  "Me, too," said Christina.

  CHAPTER 3

  Registration was held on a Thursday. It was raining, which meant that anybody with the slightest worry about getting into a particular class stood in long lines, outside the old gymnasium where Registration took place, and became damp and disgruntled. Janet got into all her classes.

  Out of what she could only view as the College's customary perversity, said classes began the next day, instead of waiting decently until Monday. She had Fencing first.

  Two-A felt earlier than she had hoped it would; to get up at nine-thirty was not so dreadful, but to be up and dressed and fed by then left her still a little bleary, and not inclined to physical effort. She supposed that, after the class, she would feel invigorated but not inclined to intellectual effort, just in time for her first class in the philosophical problems of classical science.

  It was, of course, since everybody was fated to spend it indoors, the most beautiful of autumn days, full of cloud shadows and piercing blue sky and the hope that some of those maples might hold on to their leaves long enough to turn them red before they fell. "Do it, trees," said Janet softly to the nearest clump, which held two healthy young maples and a rather straggly ash