“Yes I do,” Ann answered.
“But you didn’t always?”
“No. But I didn’t know anything about her, not really.”
“You are a good friend for her,” Hildy said finally. “And that is right.”
chapter 7
The match against the top sophomore team took place on Tuesday afternoon. When the freshman challengers arrived at the gym, the benches were full and people had overflowed onto the floor. Ruth was the one picked to sit out the first game, glad to do so. She watched tensely from beside the center pole, where the Munchkin, in a heavy camel hair coat, sat behind her.
The first game did not last long. The freshmen never took control of the ball. Nothing went right for them. Balls they sent close to the end lines seemed to float out of bounds. Sets were too low. Passes wobbled across the court. Balls popped up off the palms of their hands erratically. Ann felt herself closing into herself, lowering her expectations to the most basic elements of her game, trying to just hold her arms correctly and receive the shot, trying to find the point at which she could begin to play again. But every time, she slapped desperately at the ball. She lost her sense for what the others were doing, so focused was she on her own part of the court. Her confidence waned, dwindled, then fled. During the last points, she even began to shy away from the ball, leaving Niki more room to play in.
“Let me go out,” Eloise asked Hildy. “Please. It’s too tense. I can’t when it’s so tense, I just can’t.” Hildy agreed.
That was not like Hildy. A further change. Ann, waiting to be called into position, looked at the sophomores. Their eyes were smug.
Niki harangued the team. Her hands waved impotent fury, her fists pounded the air. Ann did not listen, thinking that in ten minutes it would all be over, and ten minutes was not so long. “And Annie”—Niki’s voice broke into her thoughts—“Annie’s quit. Sarah’s playing like a pregnant cow. You can’t do this. Hildy—watch the ball, for God’s sake. For somebody’s sake. Bess, you’ve got to move. Not stand there like a lump of lard. Ann, you’re wallowing in self-pity. You can’t do this to me, you hear? If you do, so help me I’ll—” her teeth clenched around unspoken thoughts—“I’ll find a way. Every one of you. And you’ll be sorry.”
Ann felt a silly smile spread over her face, prelude to a giggle.
“Try me, Annie, just try me,” Niki growled.
Her fierceness was like a slap in the face, a direct physical assault. Ann was sobered, even frightened.
“All of you,” Niki said. She glared at five pale faces, each pair of eyes staring at her. Only Hildy’s were unshocked.
They trotted out onto the court, with Niki behind them. Ann was dreadfully aware of where Niki stood and where Niki looked. She did not dare return a glance.
Hildy served. The sophomores passed the ball forward and sent it to rear center, low, curving away. Ann’s ball. It was too far away to be fetched, but Ann dived anyway—because Niki snarled—and, incredibly, she got a clenched fist under it. Ann struggled to put any kind of punch into her shot, to lift the ball high enough, just that much, so that Hildy or Bess might pick it up. The sinews of her shoulder twisted.
She managed it, and Hildy managed a shot forward, and Niki slammed the ball into the vacant center of the opposite court.
“All right,” Niki muttered. Not in approval but in continued threat.
The next point went on for minutes. Ann strained after the ball, her eyes fixed on it, her muscles always ready. She could half-see Hildy, beside her, moving as she herself moved, in parallel. She was aware of Niki at the net, her eyes (her whole will it seemed) bent on the receiver of the ball. When Ann was that receiver, she could feel the hot anger Niki emanated, hanging over her, like a curled tidal wave.
This point too, they won.
After five points Hildy was still serving. The sophomores played well, but the freshmen played hard, as if something stood behind, pressing them.
After ten points Hildy was still serving. The sophomores were less smug now. The freshmen were desperate, as before; but careful too, as if they knew that a slip would put them at a greater disadvantage than slackened effort.
Hildy served the fifteenth and final point. The sophomore receiver muttered to herself, drew back with arms raised, and caught Niki’s glare through the net. She fumbled the ball. It sailed out of bounds.
The stands erupted into cries and cheers and the incongruous small sound of applause. Ann had played the long game in a vacuum of concentration. She awoke and looked about her The same dazed expression she saw on Ruth’s face was probably on her own.
“Change courts,” Niki ordered. They obeyed, like automatons. “You’re not through yet,” she warned them. “You hear me?” Five heads nodded. “Annie?”
“Yes?”
“You serve next. When we get it.”
Ann nodded. She had heard the threat. She swallowed twice, thickly, bent her knees, and looked up to the whistle. The sophomore served to the center rear Ann fixed her eyes to the ball, and silence descended upon her again. She could hear nothing except Niki, and she only imagined that Niki spoke to her.
Ann served, not boldly or powerfully, but with unfailing accuracy. Time and again, Ann pulled back her clenched fist to drive the ball at the opponents. Always, as she knew it must, it stayed within bounds. She was hard, she was relentless, she would make no error.
The silence within Ann spread to the audience. The gym was empty of sounds, except for the grunts of the players and the slap of palm against the ball. Through the silence moved Niki’s anger and Niki’s will. She was darker, by degrees, than anybody else playing. She sweated more profusely and gnawed on her lower lip. She swiveled her head with sharp, vicious motions, watching the members of her team make their shots. And when she leaped to spike, you could see her exert her strength to snap gravity’s hold, as if actual hands twisted around her ankles, to seize the height, to make the play, to win the point.
Hildy leaped with a diver’s ease, as if those fingers that clutched at Niki turned light and springing for her. She soared up, a temporarily winged being, overreached the ball and gave to it her own curve, descending. Her head was touched by the beam of sunlight that wafted in through the high windows and her hair turned the pale, fading light into fire. Hildy spiked often, to countereffect the lackluster quality of her other shots, her passes that did not fall into receivers’ fingers easily, blocks that misfired as often as they won the point.
Ann had not kept score—she bent her head, gathered her resources, looked up to serve again—and was surprised that the other team was not there to receive the ball. Silence dissolved into a roar of approval from the audience as the freshmen won the third game as they had the second, fifteen—zero. Miss Dennis was on her feet, clapping.
The crowd drifted away, leaving the freshmen alone with Miss Dennis. They did not notice her, however. They waited for Niki to dismiss them. But Niki lay belly up on the floor, her eyes closed. Her skin was blotched, mottled.
Finally the Munchkin spoke. “Miss Jones?”
Niki opened her eyes.
The Munchkin nodded her head, up and down, twice. “I congratulate you.” She held out her small hand to Niki, who reached up to shake it. “That was well executed. Crude, but having signs of splendor.”
She turned from Niki to smile at the others, but warmer for Hildy. “Miss Koenig. How do you find the glasses?”
“Confusing,” Hildy said.
“One becomes accustomed,” Miss Dennis said firmly.
“Yes,” Hildy said.
The small woman left. She hurried to the exit, without looking back.
Niki looked around her. “God damn but I’m tired. Sorry, Hildy. You know the thing about the Munchkin? She is perfectly laconic, but never without the right word to say. Let’s get out of here.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Later, after baths, after dinner, Hildy asked Niki: “You sent Eloise from the game?”
“Did I?” Ni
ki asked.
Hildy’s eyes flashed. “Don’t lie. You spoke to her. I could see.”
“If you say so,” Niki answered.
“You knew that you could not drive her so?”
“That. I also thought she might collapse. I didn’t know if she was too strong or too weak. It wouldn’t have worked with her. Like it didn’t work with you, only you permitted it.”
Hildy continued to study her.
“That’s all. That’s the complete truth,” Niki said. “It’s almost Halloween.”
“So what?” Ann said.
“So I’m going to New York.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. A guy I know at Columbia—they throw a big party for Halloween. He said he didn’t have a date for it so if I wanted to come down I could.”
“You’ll miss classes,” Hildy said.
“Not English, and that’s the only one I need to keep a perfect face for When do you think we’ll play the juniors?”
“Not until you return,” Hildy promised. “Saturday afternoon, I think. Eloise must play.”
“Fine by me. I’ll be back Friday. I’ve got English Friday.”
“I will give up wearing these glasses,” Hildy said.
“Don’t you dare,” Niki said. “Don’t do that. What’s the point of the technological nightmare if you don’t take advantage of the little it can do for you?”
“I cannot say that,” Hildy said, “but—”
“No buts.”
“Perhaps. In any case, I will need them for the writing of my long paper, if I am to type it myself.”
“But I’ll do that if Niki can’t,” Ann offered. Hildy shook her head. “What are you writing on?”
“King Lear. Cordelia.”
“Why her?” Niki asked. “She’s such a weenie.”
“A what?” Ann giggled at the sound of the word.
“A weenie.” Niki waved her hands. “You know. She trundles across the stage and you say to yourself weenie-weenie-weenie. You know what I mean.”
“No I don’t,” Ann said, “and I’m not sure I want to. Cordelia should make a good paper for you, Hildy. You should put some quotes in, to prove your points. Do you know how to do that?”
Hildy said she did.
Ann loved King Lear, although she could never feel she understood it completely. There were always new and unexpected facets, she felt.
“You know what my favorite line in Lear is? When he meets Gloucester on the beach and says, ‘If you would weep my fortunes, take my eyes.’ The play turns on that line.”
“How is that?” Hildy asked. Niki listened.
Ann summarized her notion of compassion in King Lear and showed how the characters fit into it. She discussed the theme in relation to plot, especially the irony of Edmund’s capitulation at the end. She tied it into tragedy, the alternate themes of power and justice, and the parent/child motif. She found herself excited by her own idea, delivering a small lecture to her roommates, without realizing what she was doing. Until Niki began to applaud. Then, Ann smiled foolishly and apologized.
“Well, except for the beginning, with that lamentable favorite-line gambit, I’d say she’s done a creditable job.” Niki said. “Wouldn’t you, Hildy?”
“Oh yes,” Hildy said. “I could understand only a small part of it.”
“Maybe because the rest was hot air,” Ann suggested.
“Don’t do that kind of stuff, Annie. Don’t cover yourself in that way.”
“Yes, dear,” Ann spoke meekly. Then Niki thought her ideas were good?
“Which is not to say I’d sign up to take a course,” Niki said, answering that unspoken question. “But again”—she grinned—“I might.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Niki departed for New York on the afternoon of Halloween. She had rented a car. “But that’s against the rules,” Ann protested, although Niki argued that her father had given her the credit card. She did not sign out until just before she walked out the door, so that nobody could stop her. Ann, looking at the signout book, noticed that she had left no destination, no address or phone number where she could be reached. This too was against the rules. Ann could now perceive Niki’s code of behavior: Niki would not lie, but she would not volunteer the truth.
They practiced every day that week, grimly. Hildy took part in those practices, but did not seem able to recapture the authority that the glasses had taken from her game. Ann thought she was philosophical about the loss. She stayed late after practices with Hildy, drilling shots that had previously been reflex actions. Hildy worked patiently, calmly, without irritation at herself, without relaxation of discipline.
“Although it disheartens me,” she said.
“I wish I could help you, the way you did me,” Ann said.
“You can’t,” Hildy said. “Not in this.”
“What about this junior match?”
“The juniors and seniors have each only two teams,” Hildy answered; or rather, did not answer, as Ann thought. “Because sports is not required in those years. So, those who continue to play are highly motivated.”
“Oh, dear,” Ann said. “How will we do?”
“I do not know,” Hildy said.
“Will we be horribly outclassed?”
“I do not know.”
“You aren’t making me feel any better about it,” Ann complained.
♦ ♦ ♦
Niki was away for two nights. During that time, Ann and Hildy grew into a chatty intimacy that surprised Ann. She had thought that Hildy was above gossipy, speculative, superficial conversation. She was delighted to be wrong.
They exchanged opinions of Miss Dennis. “I admire her,” Ann said. “Her life is clear and uncluttered. High.”
“Does she fear people?” Hildy asked.
“What do you mean?”
“When you say high—elevated?—you might also say she isolates herself. She builds around herself a wall, with knowledge and with age, to keep people away. It is not just with students, I think, but also with other adults. She is always alone.”
“Maybe she doesn’t like people close up.”
“Perhaps.”
“I mean, close up people aren’t—you notice body odors and little personal flaws.”
“You think she is protecting an ideal?”
“Or she sees through to the heart and doesn’t want to be distracted from the vision. I think she’s consciously chosen solitude, and she accepts the limits imposed by that choice.” But it could be fear, Ann recognized, a sense of insecurity, inadequacy. Could the Munchkin think she was inferior?
In the quiet darkness of the room before they fell asleep, Hildy said, “Do you think Ruth is Jewish?”
“Of course.”
“She does not say so.”
“Why should she?”
“Because she is.”
Ann switched on her light and leaned her head on one palm, to look at Hildy. “Does that bother you about Ruth?”
“Why should it? She is a good friend.”
“You make things so simple,” Ann said. “I wish I could.”
“You are not often sure of things, are you?”
“Not often. Not nearly often enough. Except what I’ve learned in school, I don’t think I’m sure of anything. Not like you and Niki.”
“You would like to be sure.” It was not a question.
“Life would be easier,” Ann said.
Hildy was looking at her, her eyes quizzical, but Ann knew that Hildy without her glasses could not see her, not as Ann understood seeing, and she did not guard her face.
“What does Ruth believe in?” Hildy asked.
“In one God. In the law. I guess.”
“The commandments?”
“Those, and the books of law. In the Messiah maybe.”
“Why do you say maybe?”
“Because I’m not sure if it’s only Orthodox Jews who still believe in the Messiah. Do you know about Orthodox and Reform?
”
“What does that mean?”
Ann started to answer, then stopped herself. “I was going to say it was like Catholic and Protestant, but you know what? I don’t know. I mean I know about it, vaguely, enough to catch references, but not really. I’d better take a religion course next year That sounds like fun anyway, doesn’t it? All I do know is that Jews don’t believe in the immortality of the soul.”
“If they do not believe in heaven, what happens to them when they die?”
“How would I know that, Hildy? How do any of us know?”
“Do you believe in it? In the immortality of the soul?”
“I’d like to. I’d like it to be true.”
“It is,” Hildy said.
This was forbidden territory, and Ann turned the light out again.
Hildy spoke out of the darkness: “But how is it that you should know that? Where I live, the sky is closer to the earth than it is here in the east. Closer than anywhere else.”
“That’s impossible, Hildy.” Ann said.
“I know, but it is so.”
What had Hildy’s life been, to make her so sure of things; Ann wondered, but did not ask. Maybe it was living on a farm, seeing things grow. Maybe when everything you did was important to the family life—milking the cows for instance—then you wouldn’t spend so much time thinking and worrying about yourself. Hildy always did what she thought was right, but she didn’t do just what she wanted. She wasn’t selfish, the way Ann and her family understood that word; and Niki too. What had Hildy’s life been, that gave her the confidence to know, without question, things that Ann and everyone else questioned. Except Niki, Niki didn’t question, so it couldn’t be just living on a farm, it must be something more. How could Ann find it out, so she could know? “What’s your family like?” Ann asked. “Hildy?” But Hildy was asleep.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Why does Bess not stand straight?” Hildy wondered, after a practice. “Why does she stand with her arms folded before her?”
“She’s overweight,” Ann answered.
“You also stand so.”
“I guess so. I hope that it minimizes my belly.”
“But it doesn’t.”
“You sound like my mother.”