Penelope (11 page)

“I don’t get this movie at all. Can we just talk?” said Ted.

“Sure,” said Penelope. She snapped her laptop shut with unnecessary vehemence, hoping that Ted would get the hint, which he did not.

“So,” said Ted.

“What have you been doing all day?” asked Penelope.

“Oh, I dunno. I’ve just been in my room,” said Ted.

“Cool,” said Penelope.

“Yeah,” said Ted. He stared at the futon. “Anyway, Penelope …”

“What is your favorite movie?” asked Penelope.

“What is my favorite movie?” Ted looked at her uncomprehendingly.

“Yes,” said Penelope. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe
Reservoir Dogs
?”

“Oh, weird,” said Penelope. “I would have thought
Ben-Hur
.”

They both fell silent.

“I’m sorry brunch was so weird,” said Ted. “I was going to tell you about Catherine.”

“Oh, it’s OK,” said Penelope. “You didn’t have to, ever.”

“There just didn’t seem to be an opportunity, you know? I
wanted to tell you walking over to chorus, but it just really didn’t seem like the right time. And then, brunch. I don’t know. Those guys were so weird about it. It wasn’t like I planned on hooking up with her. I even wanted to hang out with you but you had to go home.”

“I had to go home because someone vomited on my shoes,” said Penelope.

“Yeah, that guy you made out with. I can’t believe you made out with him.”

“Well,” said Penelope, “it was the result of an inevitable chain of events.”

“It just sort of happened,” Ted continued. “We got back to the room and one thing led to another. I was so drunk. She tried to have sex with me on the couch in the common room!”

“Wow,” said Penelope.

“Then we went into my room. It was so weird this morning,” said Ted.

“Hmm,” said Penelope.

“I just got out of there as fast as possible,” said Ted. “I sort of knew we didn’t have practice today but I wasn’t sure. She kept grabbing hold of my legs with her legs all night.”

It was at this moment Penelope realized that these confessions were not only embarrassing her, but they were making her rather piqued. She couldn’t really say why. Maybe it was because she had forgiven but not forgotten the Helen of Troy incident. Maybe it was because she thought they were in bad taste.

Ted stared at the floor for some minutes. Then he said, “Well, I should probably be going.”

“Really?” said Penelope. She hoped she sounded sufficiently regretful.

“Yeah,” said Ted. “I have huge amounts of work to do. I will probably never get it all done in time.”

“OK,” said Penelope.

“So I’ll see you at chorus tryouts tomorrow?” asked Ted.

“Oh, uh, OK,” said Penelope. That sounded like a catalog of
horrors. Penelope decided she would fake a sickness to get out of it. Perhaps an ear infection.

“Good,” said Ted. “Well. Bye.”

“Bye!” said Penelope

Ted walked out the door. Penelope opened up her laptop and returned to her movie.

“Hey, guys. I’m Jared. I’ll be your Counting People TF this semester. Welcome.” Jared started clapping, and shortly, everyone else followed suit, including Penelope, even though Raymond had bit her hand that morning and it still ached. Lan said she thought he had rabies. Penelope hoped that wasn’t true.

It was the first week of discussion sections and official homework. Harvard had a lot of lecture classes, and in order to compensate for the lack of individual attention associated with that format, each lecture class also had a once-a-week mandatory discussion section taught by TFs, or teaching fellows. These were usually graduate students who had specialization in the class’s material.

TFs determined a student’s final grade, so who one’s TF was was very important. Students competed for the easiest TF with a sort of death aggression. They called their professors at home. They made up fake prior commitments so they would be free only during their favorite’s time slot. Emma had changed all her TFs in two days. Ted had switched into two of Penelope’s sections. Penelope did not know how to do any of this and therefore accepted Jared as part of her inalienable destiny. The one nice
thing about Jared was that she knew him already since he was the proctor of her dorm. Although it remained to be seen if he even remembered her from the “Self-Reliance” conversation.

“I figured we’d talk about the readings in the packet today, but first I just want everyone to go around the room and say their names, introduce themselves, and say why they were interested in this class. I think I know some names from the list here, but I just want to make sure,” said Jared. Penelope smiled at him. She always felt bad for men in necklaces. While she was wondering about why that was exactly, a tall blond man burst through the door carrying several leather-bound notebooks of varying sizes. To Penelope’s surprise, she realized that this was the man in the rumpled linen suit. He was actually a student.

“Oh, damn, sorry I’m late,” said the man in an accent that was an odd mixture of British and something that sounded like German. “I must remember to add punctuality to my list of accomplishments.”

The class giggled nervously. A guy in a Harvard sweatshirt started whispering to the guy next to him, who was also wearing a Harvard sweatshirt. Penelope resented them.

“You have to be on time next time,” said Jared in a low, stern voice. “What is your name?”

“Gustav,” said the man. He ran his hand through his hair, which was abundant.

“Hesse-Cassel?” asked Jared,

“The very one,” said Gustav. He sat down and took off his trench coat, only to reveal another jacket underneath, a tweed sports coat that had red driving gloves stuffed prominently in its pockets

“Well, Gustav, you might as well go first. Where are you from? Why do you want to take this course?”

“Well, origin is rather difficult to determine. I’m German, really, but then my grandfather was rather great friends with Juan Perón. Buenos Aires, for purposes of simplicity.”

“Oh,” said Jared. “I love Argentina.”

“Really? Why how terribly charming!” said Gustav. He let
out a loud laugh. This utterance was so exaggeratedly British it almost toppled headlong into German.

“Why do you want to take this course?” asked Jared in a high, panicked voice.

“Oh, I dunno, I suppose I’ve always liked counting really.”

“This is a demography class,” said Jared.

“Yes, I know,” said Gustav. “Counting is integral to that field of science, I believe.”

“Next? Who wants to say their name next?” yelled Jared.

In all of Penelope’s years as a human living on earth, she had never in her life seen anyone nearly as handsome as Gustav. She knew this from far away, but she especially knew this now that he was up close and personal. He was unlike anyone she had ever encountered. His hair was longish, he had a dimple in his chin, all his clothing was rumpled. The men of Connecticut, even at their best, had a certain healthy straightforwardness to them that Penelope found singularly trying. Gustav looked like a jewel thief. A man like that would never just walk into a McDonald’s.

“Oh, I will go next,” said Penelope. “My name is Penelope.”

“Awesome,” said Jared. “And you’re a freshman? I recognize you from Pennypacker, I think. Are you are one of my proctees?”

“Yes,” said Penelope, unaccountably embarrassed.

“Well, welcome, Penelope. Glad to see you again. So tell us, why do you want to take this course? Just quickly.”

“Um, why? Well … you have to do a report on a country. So that’s pretty fun.”

“It is fun,” said Jared. “It’s the most fun I have all year. Those papers are always so interesting.”

“Yeah, so that,” said Penelope.

During class, Gustav took notes in his leather-bound notebook with a tiny ballpoint pen of military precision. He didn’t speak again. When it was over, Gustav slowly gathered up his belongings. He took a white linen handkerchief out of his front pocket and used it to dust off the outside cover of his notebook.
For fingerprints probably
, Penelope thought. She was in love.

The next day, Penelope tried to look Gustav up on Facebook. Penelope did not use Facebook or the Internet very often. When Penelope was little, her mother discouraged her from using the Internet because she was afraid that Penelope would be the victim of online bullying. Even now, Penelope was a hesitant joiner of websites.

Luckily, it was easy to find Gustav on Facebook. Unluckily, all she could see was a picture of him in jodhpurs in the middle of the desert, his face obscured by a giant Panama hat. Penelope decided against friending him. Everyone says it is usually better to play hard to get, she thought.

While Penelope was trying to figure out which desert Gustav was in by Google-imaging deserts, her mother called her.

“Hi, Mom,” said Penelope.

“Penelope! You finally called!”

“I thought you called me.”

“I can’t really talk now. I’m going into the grocery store. But how are you? Good? Did you get into the chorus?”

“No,” said Penelope. “I didn’t want to go to the final audition. It just didn’t seem very fun. I didn’t feel very well.” Ted had not seemed to buy the ear infection story, especially since Penelope called him and told him about it in a very hoarse voice, only realizing later that an ear infection probably would not affect that part of your body. Penelope had successfully avoided talking about it with him since.

“Oh, OK,” said Penelope’s mother. “How are you feeling about it?”

“Oh, fine.”

“You know, I know you didn’t want to go on that day, but maybe you could go up to that guy Ron and ask him if you can still be involved in some of the chorus stuff. Like maybe they need a stage manager or something, you know? Then you sit in at some of the practices at least, and that might be really fun, to sit in. You could go on all the bus trips and stuff.”

“No,” said Penelope.

“Because I was talking to Liz the other day, and she said she knew someone who did that.”

“I don’t want to do that,” said Penelope.

“Well, fine, Penelope. But that is what people do.”

“It’s not,” said Penelope.

“Well, you’re wrong, Penelope, totally wrong. I’m not going to get into it, but you are. How else will you make friends unless you do something?”

“You can wordlessly make friends by challenging them to a game of Tetris. Which is why I need Tetris back,” said Penelope.

Penelope’s mother sighed. “How are your roommates?”

“Oh, they’re fine. Lan got a cat.”

“Penelope! A cat? But what about your allergies?”

“They are bad.”

“You need to tell her that. Aren’t cats illegal in the dorms?”

“I don’t know. Lan told me they were legal as long as you told no one about them,” explained Penelope.

“Oh God, Penelope. Well, what about Emma? How is she?”

“She’s OK,” said Penelope.

“What does she do for fun? Maybe you should ask her to dinner or something. Maybe you guys could go to the movies.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think she would want to do that. She is pretty busy rearranging the furniture in our room. And I don’t think she likes me very much, to be honest. More and more of my stuff has ended up in the common room.”

Penelope’s mother sighed again.

“That’s too bad. How is school going?”

“Oh, fine,” said Penelope.

“That’s good. Hey, I have an idea. What about joining the literary magazine? Remember when you were in high school and you were on the literary magazine?”

“No, I don’t remember that because I wasn’t on the literary magazine.”

“Yes, you were! Remember? I can’t believe you don’t remember.
There was that girl on it who had that scrunchie collection, and you used to always talk about it.”

“Mom, that was the president of the debate team, and I was never on the literary magazine and neither was she.”

“Well, why do I remember dropping you off at school for a meeting of the literary magazine then? I remember that, Penelope. You were definitely on the literary magazine.”

“I really was not on it.”

“Fine. Anyway, I was thinking about this the other day and I think you should try out for the literary magazine. They have one of those, right? If they do, I think you would really like it. You like reading. And you could meet all different people from the ones in your dorm.”

“Do you think German-Argentineans would work on a literary magazine?” said Penelope.

“I don’t know, probably,” said her mother. “A German-Argentinean? Where are you meeting those? Isn’t that kind of like
Marathon Man
or something?” She started laughing her silent laugh.

Penelope waited until she finished. Then she said, “But I just don’t like literary magazines. In books I always hate it when people talk about their own poetry.”

“There is no time like the present to try things out. If you hate it, you can quit, but I bet it’s better than being left alone in your room with a disgusting cat. I’m in the checkout line of the supermarket now so I have to go. Call me tomorrow! Oh, also, am I still forbidden from coming to Parents Weekend?”