“Aren’t you going to ask me anything?”
“About Matthew’s pass, do you mean?”
“Matthew’s...” Amanda’s brow knotted. “How...?” She leaned forward slightly. “Did he... did he tell you?”
“No, I figured it out for myself. Why else would you leave the dance so suddenly?”
“Well, he didn’t really do anything,” Amanda said.
“All right. I’m sleepy, Amanda. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, all right?”
“All right.”
The room was uncommonly dark. The night was almost moonless and the shade was drawn and Amanda sat up in bed and stared into the darkness and saw nothing and felt only a need to discuss this with Gillian, and yet she waited, waited until she was sure Gillian was asleep, and then tentatively she whispered, “Gillian?”
“Mmmm?”
“He said you seemed older.”
“Mmmm.”
“It was really a mistake to go to the dance with him.”
“Mmmm.”
“A soldier, I mean. And twenty-six.”
“Mmmm.”
“Gillian, he kissed me.”
“That’s nice. Amanda, go to sleep.”
“Do you kiss a lot of boys?”
“Yes. Mmm-huh.”
“Do you let them...?” Amanda paused. The room was silent. “Gillian?”
“Mmmm?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
Across the room, lying naked in her bed with the covers pulled to her throat, Gillian suddenly felt all sleepiness leaving her. She listened to her roommate breathing in the darkness, and the room was suddenly very small, and she felt a tenderness wash over her, and at the same time she thought, Oh God, why me, why must I be the one? and she lay in the darkness for several moments longer, breathing evenly and half tempted to pretend she was already asleep, and yet feeling this tense uncertain need coming from across the room and threading its way cautiously through the darkness, and feeling very very old all at once.
“Amanda?” she said.
“Yes?”
“What did he do, honey?”
“He touched me, Gilly. My breast.”
“Were you frightened?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like it?”
“No. I got out of the car.” The room was silent. “Gilly?”
She knew what was coming. She lay in bed staring up at the darkness and she thought, I must be careful, she is so young, I must be very gentle, oh, she is so goddamn young.
“Gilly, do you... Gilly, do you let them? Boys? Touch you?”
Gillian took a deep breath. “Yes, Amanda.”
“All of them?”
“No,” she said. “Not all.”
“But... but you don’t like it, do you?”
Now here we are, she thought, here we are, and how can I tell Amanda that yes, I do like it, how can I tell that to Amanda and hope she will understand it, and not, not, oh God, why did it have to be me, why isn’t her mother here, why aren’t mothers around when you need them most?
“Gilly? Do you like it?”
“Yes, I do.”
“But Gilly, it’s so... so private. I mean, it’s so personal. Gilly, you don’t really like it, do you?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Gilly, Gilly, I feel like crying.”
“No.”
Amanda was suddenly silent. The room was pitch-black.
“I never have, Amanda,” Gillian said.
“I didn’t ask.”
“But I never have.”
“All right.”
“But I will,” Gillian said. “When I want to.”
Again the room was silent. There was something in the silence. Something of youth and of innocence, gone and about to go, something of girls and of women, and a touch of familiar friendship, and a touch of strangeness, and an intimacy bred of this familiar strangeness, so that the two girls in the Connecticut night felt a kinship they would not have known were they truly blood relatives, a kinship bred of the lonely dark hours of the night and the silence of the room and the tiny sound of evenly spaced breathing. For those moments in the silent room, they were closer than sisters, closer than mother and daughter, and they heard each other without speaking.
After a long while, Gillian sighed and said, “I think I’m going to leave Talmadge, Amanda.”
“What? What did you say?”
“Talmadge. I don’t think I’ll be back in the fall. I’m not getting enough here. I’m too far ahead of them.”
“It’s a wonderful school. You can’t mean—”
“It’s only a school, Amanda. It’s only make-believe. There’s too much to do in the real world.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m not sure I know what I mean myself. I just have a feeling that I’ve learned everything I can learn here, that this is no closer to the theater, the real theater, than... than... Siberia is, I guess. And I haven’t got much time. I really haven’t. I can’t afford to waste any of it here with a bunch of silly kids who are only doing make-believe stuff. Don’t you feel that way, Amanda?”
“No, I... I never thought of it that way.”
“Because there’s so much out there, Amanda, do you know what I mean? Don’t you ever get the feeling that there’s so much out there to do and to see and to know? Amanda, don’t you ever pass an apartment building and look at all the lighted windows and wonder who lives up there, and sometimes feel so sad that you don’t know them, that you’ll never know them? Amanda, I could cry when I think of all the people there are in this world that I’ll never get to know. In Talmadge alone, for God’s sake, in New York millions of people rushing along the streets, busy, busy, with their own worlds, and I’ll never even know them well enough to say hello, or even to smile as I pass them. And then I think of China, and I wonder how it is to be Chinese, and I wish I could speak Chinese and Italian and Russian, and I wish I could read all the books there are, and listen to all the music, and know all the people, walk down the street and say hello to everybody, just hug everybody as if they were part of my family and I’m very glad to see them, we haven’t seen each other in a very long time, and we have all sorts of things to tell to each other, and we’re not strangers the way everybody is — don’t you feel that, Amanda? Don’t you want to know people?”
“No. No, I’ve never—”
“Never, Amanda? Never?”
“But, Gillian, you can’t know everyone. You can’t expect to.”
“No, I know, I know. I can’t do that. But that’s why... don’t you see, Amanda? I just... I think of somebody out there who is like me and who I will never meet. And it makes me sad. He’s out there, and I don’t know who he is, and I’ll never get to know him, and I just feel that if we knew each other, if we got to know each other, we could be so rich, don’t you ever feel that way? I know it’s silly, but I know he’s there, maybe he’s a Frenchman or something, and maybe I’ll pass him on the street and we won’t even say hello or smile, we just won’t know each other, and he’ll be the person, he’ll be the one, Amanda, the one person I really should know. I get scared when I think of it. I get absolutely terrified. Suppose I should live out my life, and I die, and I never get to know this other person who is also living out his life, and he’ll die, too, and we’ll never have known each other, never.”
“But why do you have to leave school, Gillian?” Amanda said. “I don’t understand that. I don’t see how leaving—”
“I’ve just got to get out of this fake place and stop pretending to be an actress. Don’t you see how that can fool you, Amanda? Don’t you see how all those dopes on the college newspaper think they’re big-shot reporters or columnists when all they’re doing is writing drivel that’s fake and not anything that has any worth by the standards of the real world? Amanda, nobody cares what’s happening in college. It isn’t real. It just isn’t real.”