7
THERE ARE TWO CONDITIONS, Margaret says, for dinner at the Schwingles. First, pick up a package at the pharmacy. And second, tell no one.
“What’s in the package?” Faye says.
“Sweets,” Margaret says. “Chocolates and stuff. Bonbons. My dad doesn’t want me to have that kind of food. He says I need to watch my figure.”
“You don’t need to watch your figure.”
“That’s what I said! Don’t you think that’s unfair?”
“That is so unfair.”
“Thank you,” she says. She smoothes her skirt, a gesture that seems inherited from her mother. “So when you pick it up, can you pretend it’s yours?”
“Sure. Of course.”
“Thank you. I already paid for it. I placed the order in your name, so I wouldn’t get yelled at.”
“I understand,” Faye says.
“The dinner is going to be a surprise for my dad. So when you see him at the pharmacy, tell him you’re going on a date that night. With Henry. To throw him off the track.”
“Okay, I will.”
“Better yet, tell everyone you’re going on a date that night.”
“Everyone?”
“Yeah. Don’t tell anyone you’re coming over.”
“All right.”
“If people know you’re coming over, my dad could find out and he’d suspect something. I know you wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.”
“Of course not.”
“If you tell anyone it will definitely get back to my dad. He’s very well-connected. You haven’t told anyone yet, have you?”
“No.”
“Okay, good. Good. Just remember. Pick up the package at the pharmacy. And say you’re going on a date with Henry.”
The party would be unforgettable. Margaret has promised balloons, streamers, her mother’s famous salmon aspic, a cake with three different layers, homemade vanilla ice cream, maybe afterward they would even take the convertible out for a nighttime joyride along the river. Faye feels so special to be singled out for the occasion.
“Thank you for inviting me,” she tells Margaret, to which Margaret gently touches her shoulder and says, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
On the evening of the party, Faye is in her bedroom trying to decide between two versions of the same dress, a smart little summer dress—one green, one yellow. Both were purchased for special occasions that Faye can no longer remember. Probably church-related. She looks into the mirror and holds one up in front of her, then the other.
On her bed, spread out over the blankets and pillows, is paperwork from Chicago Circle. Documents and forms that will, once delivered, officially hold her seat in the freshman class of 1968. She’ll need to put them in the mail within the next week to meet the deadline. She’s already filled them out, in ink, in her neatest handwriting. Each night she’s been spreading out the materials like this, the brochures and pamphlets, hoping something will speak to her, hoping to see something that will finally convince her to go or stay.
Each time she feels near a decision, some worry compels her in the opposite direction. She’ll read another Ginsberg poem and think, I’m going to Chicago. She’ll look at the brochures and read about the space-age campus and imagine being in a place where the students are roundly smart and serious and wouldn’t look at her all funny when she aces another algebra test, and she’ll think, I’m definitely going to Chicago. But then she’ll imagine how everyone in town would react if she went, or, worse, if she came back, which is just about the most mortifying thing in the world, if she can’t cut it at Circle and has to come back, then the whole town would be gossiping about her and rolling their collective eyes. She pictures this and thinks, I’m staying in Iowa.
And so it goes, this awful pendulum.
But she can make one decision, at least: the yellow dress. Yellow feels like the more celebratory color, she thinks, the more birthday-appropriate.
Downstairs she finds her mother watching the news. A story about student protesters, again. Another night, another university overrun. Students pack themselves into hallways and won’t leave. They invade the office of the president and provost. They sleep there, right where people work.
She watches it on television, Faye’s mother, gaping at the weird happenings in the world. On the couch she sits and stares, each night, at Walter Cronkite. The events lately have seemed otherworldly—sit-ins, riots, assassinations.
“The vast majority of college students are not militant,” explains the reporter. He interviews a girl with pretty hair and a soft wool sweater who tells him how much all the other students disagree with the extremists. “We just want to go to class and get good grades and support our boys overseas,” she says, smiling.
Cut to a shot, wide angle, of a hallway filled with students: bearded, long-haired, unkempt, shouting slogans, playing music.
“Good lord,” says Faye’s mother. “Look at them. They’re like hoboes.”
“I’m going out,” Faye says.
“They probably started as nice boys,” says her mother. “They probably took up with the wrong crowd.”
“I have a date tonight.”
Her mother looks at her finally. “Well. You look very nice.”
“I’ll be back by ten.”
She passes through the kitchen, where her father is twisting off the top of the percolator. He’s brewing coffee and fixing a sandwich in preparation for his ChemStar shift tonight.
“Bye, Dad,” she says, and he gives her a quick wave. He’s wearing his uniform, his gray jumpsuit with the ChemStar logo on the front, the interlocking C and S on the chest. She used to joke with him that if he removed the C he’d look like Superman. But they haven’t joked like that in a long time.
She’s opening the outside door when he stops her. “Faye,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“The guys at the factory are asking about you.”
Faye pauses in the doorway, one foot in the house and one foot out. She looks back at her dad. “They are? Why?”
“They’re wondering about your scholarship,” he says as the percolator’s top clatters off. “They’re asking when you’re leaving for college.”
“Oh.”
“I thought we agreed not to tell anyone.”
They stand there in silence for a moment, her father scooping spoonfuls of coffee grounds, Faye gripping the doorknob.
“It’s not something you have to be ashamed of,” she says. “Me getting into college, and getting a scholarship. That’s not—what did you call it? Bragging?”
He stops fussing with the percolator then, and looks at her and smiles his tight smile. Puts his hands in his pockets.
“Faye,” he says.
“That’s just—I don’t know what that is. Doing a good job. It’s not bragging.”
“Doing a good job. Right. Does everybody get this scholarship?”
“No, of course not.”
“So you’re special then. You’re singled out.”
“I had to work hard, get good grades.”
“You had to be better than everyone else.”
“Yes, I did.”
“That’s pride, Faye. Nobody is better than anyone else. Nobody is special.”
“It’s not pride, it’s…reality. I got the best grades, I scored the highest marks. Me. It’s an objective fact.”
“Do you remember the story I told you about the house spirit? The nisse?”
“Yes.”
“And the little girl who ate the nisse’s meal?”
“I remember.”
“She wasn’t punished because she stole his food, Faye. She was punished because she thought she deserved it.”
“You don’t think I deserve to go to college?”