Behind Miss Pennington came Laurie. She immediately frightened Charlotte—because she looked so radiant—actually radiant it was, her complexion; actually winning it was, her smile; actually contagious, they were, her high spirits—Laurie lit up the room.
“Mrs. Simmons!” she said. “It’s been a month of Sundays!” Whereupon she gave Momma a big hug.
“Merry Christmas!” The jolly contralto of Miss Pennington as she shook Daddy’s hand and then put her other hand on top of Daddy’s hand, creating an affectionate sandwich.
Daddy was beaming over such a merry and sincere expression of fondness, and his eyes followed her as she embraced Mr. Thoms and then made a fuss over Buddy and Sam.
The boys had been smiling and dancing a little jig ever since she and Laurie came through the door.
“This is for you and the family!” said Laurie, hoisting her other hand, two fingers of which were looped through the neck handle of a half-gallon plastic jug of apple cider, non-fermented, one could be sure. There was a green-and-red plaid Christmas ribbon about the neck. “This is from Miss Pennington, too. Merry Christmas!”
Momma took the jug in both hands. “Well, I’ll be switched,” she said. “You all surely did bring this to the right house. Buddy and Sam are sort of partial to apple cider themselves!”
She looked at them. Buddy put on a comic grin, and Sam copied him, and everybody laughed.
“What do you say, boys? ‘Thank you, Miss Pennington, thank you, Laurie! And Merry Christmas to you!’”
Charlotte stood where she was, next to Mrs. Thoms. She was fully aware of what a marvelous Christmas moment this should have been…the family assembled round the potbellied stove…dear friends arriving on a snowy night bearing gifts…cheeriness so rich and thick you could cut it like fruit-cake…Laurie looking absolutely glorious, a girl in the prime of youthful joy, generosity, and love for the folks around her…and Charlotte Simmons, on her first trip home from the field of triumph—she goes to Dupont—in a state of panic over what somebody right here in the room knows. She wanted to rush forward and hug her beloved mentor, who had plucked her out of obscurity in the Lost Province and sent her off to the great world arena “where things happen.” She wanted to shriek “Laurie!” in unrestrained, girlish camaraderie upon seeing her best friend from high school—the one constant when she took her stand against Channing and Regina and all the rest of the Cool clique—and rush toward her and embrace her with the sheer uplifting joy that gladdens the heart of every grown-up looking on, because she knows she’s witnessing a bond of sisterhood that will last a lifetime, regardless of their fates in terms of wealth, the status of their husbands, or anything else. But Charlotte could barely force herself to put a civil smile on her face, and a rush toward anyone was out of the question.
Charlotte could see Momma coming about. “Where’s Charlotte?” she said. “Charlotte! Look who’s here! Oh, there you are! I can’t see for looking!”
From the expression on Momma’s face you could tell that she was just waiting for her daughter to come forward, rush headlong, and put on the show of affection the moment demanded. And so was everybody else. Charlotte made the gravest smile one could imagine—and she knew it—and could do nothing about it—and moved forward, away from Mrs. Thoms, ever so slowly. She wanted to move faster…con brio…but she couldn’t command her legs to do it. She could feel her smile growing steadily more feeble by the moment.
In the few seconds it took her to reach Miss Pennington, something must have happened to her poor feeble face, because she saw Miss Pennington’s big Christmas smile grow puzzled. She threw her arms around the big woman’s neck and said, “Oh, Miss Pennington, Merry Christmas.” The words were right, but the music was off, the notes, flattened by panic and something more, which was guilt.
Miss Pennington must have detected something herself, because this wasn’t the kind of homecoming embrace in which both parties rock this way and that before finally stepping back to make a beaming appraisal of one another. No, they parted pretty quickly, and Miss Pennington sounded as if she were speaking in some official capacity as she said, “Well, Merry Christmas to you, Charlotte. When did you arrive?”
Charlotte told her when she arrived and what a time they’d had driving up the mountain in the snowstorm. What on earth had the woman seen in her face? Then she turned to Laurie and tried hard to do better. “Laurie!”—and she held out her open arms.
“Why, it’s the Dupont girl!” said Laurie.
They hugged each other and even put their cheeks next to one another’s; but as hugs go, it felt like sheer protocol. Whatever it was about her expression—her manner—
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Thoms! Mrs. Thoms!” Laurie had already turned to the Thomses. Her ebullience had immediately returned. Her cheeks were rosy. Her smile was sunshine itself. Youth! Joy! Hope! Rude animal health! Beauty! Laurie wasn’t really beautiful, but her radiance made up for any flaw. What did it matter, the faintly puffy quality of the end of her nose? She was the girl—the confident, warm-spirited, buoyant, loving young woman—any parents would love to see coming home from college. Charlotte didn’t envy her, however, because envy was irrelevant. Envy was a luxury of those who still had hopes for the future. No, Laurie merely made Charlotte pity herself all the more. She forced her to see in the most graphic way all the qualities Charlotte Simmons no longer possessed. She no longer had the strength to pretend, either. Anything anybody said, any look anybody gave her—for that matter, the mere presence of anybody in this room—bore down on her with an abominable weight and made her anxious to be somewhere else. The entire planet now orbited menacingly around her deep worries. All else was irrelevant.
Momma wasn’t the sort who was given to having people stand around talking and drinking refreshments—not even unfermented cider or lemonade or branch water—before sitting down to have supper. Charlotte decided she was just going to have to find the strength to get through it. There would be some pretty good talkers at the table, Momma, Miss Pennington, Mr. Thoms, and, as she now realized, Laurie (who had gotten fucked, same way she had) and Mrs. Thoms wouldn’t be bad at it, if she had to guess. That left only her and Daddy. So she would just let all the talkers talk and talk and talk, and she would get through it by forcing a smile and nodding a lot, and if anybody asked her about something at Dupont, she would just turn it over to Laurie and ask her how that thing is at N.C. State.
She was stunned when Daddy—Daddy—said, “Charlotte, we’re gonna put you right”—riot—“here at the head a the table, so’s you can tell everybody”—everbuddy—“about Dupont. Everybody’s gonna be real interested”—innerested. He looked about at the Thomses, Miss Pennington. “Isn’t that right?” In’at riot?
Murmurs, burbles of confirmation, and Laurie’s “Like totally!”
Charlotte experienced a pain that wasn’t physical but might as well have been. A great pressure squeezed her head from either side and bore down on the top of her skull. There was no worse fate than the sentence Daddy had just meted out. In the same instant it struck her just how countrified Daddy’s speech really was, Momma’s, too—and just how collegiate Laurie’s had become: Laurie’s with all the like totallys and cools and awesomes and ohmygod s.
Charlotte blurted out, “No, Daddy!” She knew she should demur in a calm, somewhat light way, but she was long past wily levity. She was in pain. “Nobody wants to hear me go on about—school!” School. She avoided the name Dupont at all cost; too painful. “Laurie—please!—you sit here. I want to hear about N.C. State!”
Friendly protests all around, as if her reluctance was mere modesty. So she found herself sitting at the table on one of the drugstore bentwood chairs Daddy had brought back to life. The inquisitors stared at her down both sides of the table. On one side were Mr. Thoms, sitting closest to her, Laurie, and Momma—or rather, that’s where Momma would be sitting—right now she was in the kitchen—and on the other side were Miss Pennington, sitting closest, Mrs. Thoms, and Daddy. Mrs. Thoms!—she was Death, sitting there with a hypocritical smile on her face, waiting for the perfect moment in which to cut her down. And Miss Pennington, barely twenty-four inches away from her—Miss Pennington was…the Betrayed…a pending broken heart as big as the moon…in a word, guilt. The rest were merely eyewitnesses to the self-destruction of Charlotte Simmons. Merely? Two of them were Momma and Daddy, still ignorant of the truth, whom she had made the proudest parents in Alleghany County…before her hollow, sham character revealed itself…One was Mr. Thoms, the elder who had officially and sonorously proclaimed her to all of Alleghany County as the young woman who…and the other was the young woman who…had scarcely been noticed because Charlotte Simmons’s eminence had cast such a long, deep shadow—Laurie, the runner-up who had proved to be everything the illustrious Presidential Scholar wasn’t. She had taken her inevitable fucking and come back from it as a whole person who was a delight to have around, a young woman who…was ready to head forth, promising as the dawn, into a limitless future.