Sally, too, had made a friend. There wasn’t anything particularly shocking about that. She’d always had friends, and she’d certainly expected to make new ones at Cornell. What she hadn’t expected, though, was that her will to find people to befriend would pretty much terminate at the door of 213 Balch. Given the fact that she’d never shared a bedroom, neutral cohabitation was going to be a pretty big ask, but Rochelle Steiner went beyond what she’d dared to hope for in a randomly assigned roommate. Well beyond. In fact, beyond in a way that, as the term progressed, began ever so slightly to unsettle her.
They were both Arts & Sciences, but Rochelle was going to be a lawyer and Sally, with no professional direction at all, had yet to truly care what her classes were, let alone how well she did in them. As midterms approached, Rochelle—never precisely laid-back—seemed to rev up in intensity, burrowing into some private carrel at Uris in the evenings, which left Sally in the distressing position of having to wait up, or having to decide not to wait up, or ricocheting between these two unpleasant options. That was in addition to Rochelle’s impressive array of commitments, each categorized by a different color of pen in her Filofax. Early in the term, she had joined the Center for Jewish Life and then taken on some administrative role, requiring many meetings. Shortly after that she joined a social justice group, and though she ultimately decided against pledging any of the Jewish sororities on campus she still managed to acquire whole groups of new girlfriends in each of them while exploring the possibilities, and these women often came to call, looking at Sally with frank disappointment when they found her home alone. Sally, on the other hand, had yet to discover a campus activity, group, or interest compelling enough to get her out of 213 Balch in the evenings, or even on the weekends, and usually she found herself alone there, doing her class reading and trying not to think too much about when Rochelle was going to get back, or why that seemed to matter so much, or the ways in which her lifelong dream of singularity, now clearly achieved, was turning out to be not nearly as pleasant as she’d imagined.
She and Lewyn both went home for Thanksgiving, then again for the winter break, both times traveling separately by the college’s chartered buses but arriving at the house on the Esplanade within hours of each other. Once back in Brooklyn, brother and sister awkwardly (but at least without discussing it, which would have been even more awkward) regressed to high school–era modes of communication, answering Johanna’s and Salo’s questions about their Cornell lives in a way that definitely implied they were hanging out, at least occasionally. Johanna seemed to radiate anxiety, clasping them both in viselike hugs that went on for far too long. Never a cook, she had ordered in so much food that both of the Sub-Zeros were fully loaded, and her constant fretting about what would be consumed, and when, on which plates, and in which quantities, said everything those painful embraces had not.
The baby seemed distinctly longer than she had the previous summer. Also, thankfully, quieter.
The baby was nothing to her.
Lewyn, confirming the change she had noticed on campus, was definitely thinner, but the transformation of Harrison was truly impressive. Harrison had added a highly unnecessary layer of smugness to his already noxious personality, as if his great superiority had only been confirmed by recent experiences, but he had also become physically hardened from actual bodily labor. This was obvious not only to her but to everyone, and in particular it seemed to fascinate Johanna, who peppered her most highbrow child with endless questions about chickens and cows. To Sally he seemed to have undergone some form of cultish indoctrination, which apparently featured reading by candlelight while watching over baby animals in a barn, or discussing Aristotle while digging up carrots, or some such ridiculousness. He did not have a roommate, as such, since “the men”—Christ—all roomed together in what sounded like a bunkhouse. He was maddeningly evasive about his actual classes, except to say that Roarke referred to these as “seminars,” not “classes,” and that it was a great pleasure to be in a community of fellow intellectuals at last. One of these “Roarke men,” for example, had written an actual book: serious scholarship, properly published, widely admired, etc., etc.
“Well, that’s impressive,” said our mother.
Lewyn, perhaps in response, tried to tell Salo about his art history survey class, which met early in the mornings.
“They always seem to,” our father said.
The holidays labored under Johanna’s frantic embroidery of family traditions. There was Hanukkah, with the small and bent silver menorah that had—according to family legend, anyway—come over from Germany, and eight days of gifts to be selected, purchased, wrapped, and presented, every one of which Sally was forced to appear delighted about, and lie about needing, and which would then have to be transported all the way back to college before she might deposit them in the lounge down the corridor. There was the defiant New-York-Jews-on-Christmas-Day walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to lunch in Chinatown. There was even, horribly, a performance of The Nutcracker, surrounded by hordes of dressed-up children. In the evenings she sometimes ended up in the basement with Lewyn, watching tapes on the still functional VCR from opposite ends of the old couch: Hitchcock, Disney from long ago, Japanese anime that Lewyn liked and Sally couldn’t quite follow. Oddly enough these were not unpleasant evenings, though even alone together they never spoke of Cornell, or their classes, or roommates, or anything else related to the shared experience they were supposedly having.
Every morning while she was home, Sally set her alarm for five and went to her bedroom window, which overlooked Montague Terrace and the back gate, and waited there, watching for the lifting latch and the dark shape of her father as he slipped inside. She’d been doing it for years, and not once had he ever looked up to see her, or know that he’d been seen.
Chapter Thirteen
Light Meat vs. Dark
In which Harrison Oppenheimer’s taste for chicken is forever compromised
When Harrison got back to New Hampshire after the holiday he learned that three of the cows were down with mastitis. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel about this. The cows hadn’t been part of his chore rotation yet, so he didn’t know much about caring for them, nor had he formed anything resembling a human-bovine connection. He went right out to the barn with the others, though, to get caught up.
Three cows comprised a quarter of the school herd, and the sick ones were being kept apart from the others. The milk itself, in a brown plastic milking bucket, looked weird, with what appeared to be flakes and clots in it.
“What is that?” asked Carlos, pointing to the nearest cow’s extended udder.
Tony, who’d grown up on a dairy farm in southern New Hampshire, said, in his succinct way: “Pus.”
Carlos looked like Harrison felt.
The cow did seem to be very unhappy, but perhaps that was just anthropomorphism. (Harrison had found numerous opportunities to use the word “anthropomorphism” since coming to Roarke.) “Is she in pain?” he asked Tony.
Tony said: “Ayuh.”
The milk would have to be dumped until the infection was cleared. The three cows had already begun antibiotics, which Tony and Justin (one of the Justins, the one from Lake Forest) were giving as infusions. Harrison watched Justin maneuver a plastic tube over the first cow’s udder and squeeze the fluid up, then remove the tube, pinch off the teat, and palpate the medicine up into the gland.