It was no use, thinking had gone. Barbara hurt and ached now: at her best, possibly, she
could not have pursued the matter. It wasn't her sort of thing, not like it was Terry's.
Terry could settle down, not mannishly of course, but settle down with a relaxed attitude
that at least indicated the absence of body concerns from mind. Chin on left palm, right
hand scribbling notes in swift, efficient shorthand, she exuded concentration, isolation. A
wall existed around her. At the other end of the room
52
by contrast, Barbara sat twisted and twined around her chair like a vine. Her legs were
crossed and recrossed, foot hooked behind ankle. Her hands willfully played with things on
her desk. She brushed her hair out of her eyes three times a minute, it seemed like. She
looked at words and understood them and then forgot them the moment she passed to the
next paragraph. She could not structure and comprehend wholes. Movement, pleasure,
warm and direct human contact and joy were her world, not this one of contemplation. At
times of absolutely forced study--exams, term paper deadlines-she even had the notion to
speak out, yell, dance, sing, throw something to break the holy quiet. "What's the use,
Terry? I mean, really like what's the use? How can you just sit there and grind like that?
What's the difference between us?"
Snagged, touched by a memory, Barbara drifted, recalled clearly, saw their room in the
dormitory with Terry studying that way, Terry dressing, Terry doing her small wash. Terry
moving in and out with her selfpossessed assurance. It was so momentarily vivid that there
even seemed to be a faint superimposition of this room at the Adams' upon the old one at
the university, Barbara lying in the one bed here, then a curious light/time effect, and
finally Terry moving about on the other side of her bed in their room not ten feet away.
What if it was really like that and not simply imagined? The daydream begun and
interrupted this morning, began again.
"Terry?"
"Terr-ee-e-e ... T" Terry said.
"They didn't let me go," Barbara said unnecessarily.
Terry said nothing.
"I don't think they're going to let me go until they have to."
"Maybe not." Terry was beginning to get ready for bed herself. She was a plain, not to say
an awkward looking girl, but she bad beautiful copper-colored hair
53
and enviable green eyes. Now, on her side of the room, she turned to Barbara, tipped her
head, swung her hair away, and undid her earring. "What're you going to do?"
"What can I do?" Barbara was miserable. "What would you do?"
"I don't know." Unhelpfully, Terry swung her head the other way and unscrewed her other
earring. Turning to her dresser, she opened the top drawer and dropped the jewelry in her
hand into a small, laquered box. "In the1irst place, I wouldn't get into such a fix."
"That's right."
In ordinary conversation with all guards up, Barbara would have objected, but in this
privileged, shorthand conversation of the imagination, she automatically _ yielded ground.
"That's right," she said more thoughtfully, "but why? What makes you so smart?"
"Nothing." Terry shut the drawer. "It's not me, it's you. You're a square, Barbara." She went into
the bathroom and stood, taking off her makeup.
"You wouldn't have taken the job here."
"Um hmnn." Terry pulled out a tissue, wrapped it around her forefinger and began to wipe
away her lipstick. "If I needed the money, I’d have gone out and gotten a real job in the real
world. That's number one." She twisted her jaw unglamorously and wiped lipstick from the
other corner of her mouth. "You're a dreamer, a dropout. You try and slither through by taking a
job way down here in the country-friends of the family-for nickles and dimes because it doesn't
make you change your mind about anything. You're going around wrapped up in white cotton.
You're playing little, rich, middle-class mother. It's like a vacation with pay, and if you can just
keep it going like that, Ted or somebody else is going to come along and really make you one,
and you never will have had to face up."
Barbara agreed. It wasn't as if Terry hadn't said very much the same thing before; it was just
that Terry really said it more diplomatically than Terry imagined.
54
"And if I did take that kind of job"-Terry leaned toward the mirror, eye-to-eye with herself as
she dabbed-"what would the difference be?"
"The children would be afraid of you. They wouldn't do this."
Terry threw the tissue in the toilet and pulled out another. "That's right"-she wrapped it
expertly around her finger-"and why?"
Well, Barbara didn't know. But she did.
"That's what I mean when I say you're a square."
Terry pulled back from the mirror and finished off with a few deft swipes. "You go around
with everything hanging out, Barb, and what hangs out looks like sweet, simple affection.
You make yourself be nice, and you think that if you keep on being that way and don't do
anything to the world, it won't do anything to you."
"What's wrong with that? If I like people, why shouldn't I show it?"
"Because you don't like them." Terry dropped the tissue in the toilet again and turned on
the taps in the sink. Standing in her slip, flat-footed, un-made-up, she pulled down her
washrag from the bar and spread it out beneath the running water. "You tum everybody
into little Disney puppy dogs and pussy cats. You like them for what you make them and
not for what they are with warts on. You make everybody want to act out for you, and it
isn't comfortable."
"I like to see ... I like to try and see what's good in people," Barbara said stubbornly.
"Everybody else goes around seeing the warts as you call it, so why isn't it nice to see the
good for a change?''
"Right-schmight. If somebody's ticked off, they want to be taken the way they are--ticked
off. They don't want to have to play-pretend for you." Terry pulled out her complexion soap-
the hopeful soap she called it-and began lathering her face according to the rules
prescribed in all the womens' magazines. "For example"-she worked at her forehead with
rather short, strong fingers-"you think of me as your smart roommate who knows
everything in the world to get you out
55
of jams. Right? I mean, that's all I am. And the fact I just might be lonely or in need of
cheering up or worried about finding a man just doesn't get into your idea, right? You
miniaturize me and take the sweet part. Where 'serious' begins, you leave off."
"That's not true-"
"And if the boys smile at you, you like to think they're being friendly, and when they want
to put their hands on you it's not because they really want to take you to bed." Terry
plunged her face into handsful of water. "Barb, you're square."
Barbara said nothing.
Terry pulled down her towel and began to pat her face dry. "I mean, when did we ever
talk? The minute I say something that bothers me, I can just begin to see it coming-some
kind of blip goes off in your head. Your mind begins to wander. You change subjects and go
back to something stupid and safe. You just sort of slide away." Terry tossed the towel back
on the bar. Tomorrow, she would be sorry she hadn't spread it out to dry evenly, but just
now, she forgot it. Whatever good qualities she had were at least somewhat offset by the
fact that she was also sloppy.