She had not expected the campus to be so large and quiet and leafy. The giant oak trees splayed their limbs like lazy gymnasts. She saw trees that might have been redwoods—tall and gaunt, pinpointing the sky. She ambled through a grove of what she thought—from their fragrance—were eucalyptus trees. Their peeling bark lay shredded at their feet, like ragged gowns.
It was a grand and lonesome place. But she wasn’t afraid of being alone. She was afraid of Yvor Winters, the prominent literary critic who would be her adviser. She had heard he was a curmudgeon and rationalist. What would he expect of her? She had made little progress on the reading list—seventy-five recommended books. There would be a test—but not until next summer. She knew some of the obvious books—The Great Gatsby, Moby-Dick—within the list of unknowns. But Humphry Clinker? Erewhon? She was sure that a more backwards bumpkin had never crossed the threshold of almighty Stanford University.
HOPEWELL, KY.
September 4, 1966
Dear Ann,
Glad to get your phone call and to know you are getting settled. I know you must be excited about all your new classes and your new apartment. That woman you rent from sounds like a character!
That neighbor of ours who always keeps squirrel on the table brought us some squirrels she shot, and I had a time cleaning out the buckshot. Back in the summer, she kept wanting to get some Indian peaches off of us and I told her, I’m sorry, but you come to a goat’s house to get wool. We ain’t had any Indian peaches in ten years. Oh, what I’d give for an Indian peach right now. The only peaches I could get this year were wormy. . . .
Love,
Mama
ANN HAD BROUGHT everything she owned, even her notebooks from college and her stamp collection from childhood. On a whim, while shopping at Macy’s for a skillet and a bath mat, she bought a new stamp album and a grab bag packet of stamps (a thousand for fifty cents).
She spread the stamps on her desk—a long table fashioned from a door. All afternoon, she played with them, engrossed, as if she were back in sixth grade. The countries were still mysterious, and the African countries had changed. Wars had obliterated some, brought others into being. There was something fragile and tentative about the very existence of borders and identities, she thought.
At the time, she would not have seen herself as young and naive, but years later she saw herself as even more innocent than she probably was. She blundered into anything promising, but when faced with a hard-banging hurdle—hitting a stump, her mother called it—she had a habit of escaping into mind-numbing pastimes. She hadn’t changed. She was always thinking of somewhere else.
On a cruise ship, there is nowhere to go but overboard. Her mind, though, can rewrite history. Or learn German. There are Zumba classes on the third deck. Those embarrassing moments of innocent youth can be obliterated. She shudders, a chill rippling across her shoulders.
SHE DIDN’T WANT to meet new people yet. Who needed them? As she sorted the stamps and placed them carefully into the new album, she lost track of time. She imagined traveling to Newfoundland, New Caledonia, New Zealand. Folding the delicate cellophane hinges and taking care not to glue the stamp to its rectangular berth, she felt like an entomologist, cruelly but patiently pinning a colorful assortment of butterflies. All day, the radio played. She heard “Sunny Afternoon,” “Sunshine Superman,” “Just Like a Woman,” and “You Can’t Hurry Love” over and over. On the weekend, she listened to Monitor Radio. Every evening at about six, an aroma of spices drifted into her kitchen. A man from India lived on the floor below.
Albert’s friends lived in a commune out in a redwood forest. There was time enough to look them up. Albert had told her about A. C. Skolnick (“Speedo”), who talked a mile a minute without repeating himself; about Spinning Jenny, who performed fluid dances in flowing, see-through nylon dresses; about Hungry Robert, who would eat anything and who had once imbibed a double dose of peyote and had to be talked down from a tree. Albert mentioned Freaky Pete, who you thought would shatter at a “Boo!” but who, with two tokes, became as relaxed as a sloth. And Albert seemed enamored of a girl who had thrown her clothes out a car window, leaped from the car at a stoplight, and paraded naked across Sand Hill Road to the Stanford Shopping Center. Albert also told her about Ned and Frieda, who outfitted a special tripping room in their house with large bright pillows inside multicolored silk panels hooked to the ceiling light and the door facings. The undulating colors breathed. California was the edge of the world, Albert had said.
Back home, a PhD was an unknown, as far-fetched as travel to the moon. It could have stood for Pursuit of Hound Dogs, she mused. As she sorted stamps, she felt courage simmering, like a chuck roast in her mother’s pressure cooker.
She met the man from India at the bottom of the exterior metal stairway. His name was Sanjay, a PhD student in chemistry. He wore a yellow Henley shirt appliquéd with a small alligator. They were standing outside his door. He made chitchat in good English.
“I have stamps from India in my stamp collection,” she said.
“You collect stamps?”
“It’s a regression to childhood while I’m waiting for school to start. Never mind.” She was embarrassed. “Your cooking always smells good.”
“I’m making biryani.”
“What’s that?”
“A vegetable dish. Won’t you join me?”
“Oh, no, that’s all right. Thank you. I have something already started.” A potato. A ragged iceberg.
“O.K., I’d love to,” she relented when he urged her.
Sanjay was sautéing cauliflower florets in a strong-smelling spice that turned the vegetable orange. A chemistry experiment? It was astounding to learn about his hometown, a city of over two million people, a city she had never heard of. She realized she had never met anyone from India.
The layout of his apartment was the reverse of hers, and his bathroom was lime green, the same degree of shrieking intensity as her burgundy bordello decor. His walls were apple green. His books were all on esoteric science topics. His shoes matched his belt, and his argyle socks had yellow diamonds to echo his alligator shirt. He served no meat. He offered her sparkling water and hot tea. He sprinkled cashews on the food. On the side, he served a dish of sliced cucumbers and yogurt with a pinch of something. Cumin, he called it.
She was surprised by how talkative she was with Sanjay. He seemed so nice, so cultivated—suave, even. He was orderly and confident. She thought of him as an adult, even though he was probably not much older than she. It came as a mild shock that a visiting foreigner from a poor country would be more educated and cultured than most people in her small town in Kentucky. She wondered if she felt even more out of place at Stanford than he did. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him.
THE PEPTO-BISMOL WALLS were shouting at her. With a gallon of iceberg white and a roller, she painted the walls. She left the pink margins at the top, not bothering with the expense of a paintbrush to fill in the gaps. If she pinched pennies, she wouldn’t have to get a roommate.
She went to see these movies:
Georgy Girl
Blow-Up
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Morgan!