Thank God, Momma arrived in no time, bearing a tray with the aroma of a freshly roasted turkey, which she set before Daddy along with an old carving knife and fork and a sharpener. The aroma! A single look at the crisp but still moist skin covering the bird’s mighty breast, and even a person who had never seen such a thing before would know that here was perfection. Then came Daddy’s part, thank God, providing a further reprieve. Daddy stood up and started sharpening the knife on an old-fashioned sharpening rod. It made a rasping sound that brought Buddy and Sam right out of the kitchen to catch the show that Daddy was so very deft, so precise at, the way he first cut the skin that held the thighs and drumsticks tight against the carcass and then found precisely the crucial point where the thighbone joined the hip. He severed the joint with a single, seemingly silken strike, causing the thigh to fall away cleanly, and then he began carving the breast into slices as big and intact and yet as thin and even as you could possibly ask for. The boys were agog at the craftsmanship of it and couldn’t wait for the part where Daddy started on the other side of the breast, because he would always sharpen the knife on the rod again, and they loved to hear the rasping sound and see the way Daddy flourished the sharpening rod and the knife like a performer. Laurie said, “Bravo, Mr. Simmons!” and the others oohed and laughed and clapped, which made Daddy smile. Meantime, Momma brought out the “mystery,” which had a sweet, exotic aroma, and the boiled snap beans, which didn’t have much of an odor themselves, but the diced onions in vinegar that went over the snaps had a smell that was sharp and sweet at the same time, and then came the cranberry jelly that Momma made herself and the pickled peaches she always pickled herself late in the summer—and the aroma of the peaches was sublime, and their taste was “ambrosial,” which was a word Momma loved—and everybody was making a big fuss over Momma and her cooking.

No sooner had the applause for Momma as chef crested than Mrs. Thoms turned to Charlotte and said, “Charlotte, how is the cuisine at Dupont compared to this?”

Charlotte said, “It’s—it’s—” She was trying to think of the right word, le mot juste, but it wasn’t that at all. It was the pain it caused her to have to enter the conversation, to have to emerge from the shell she thought she had begun to create about herself. The words she sought were whatever would answer the question and shut it down and not suggest any follow-up. “It’s—there’s no comparison. Nothing compares to Momma’s cooking.” She smiled to try to show that she was keeping things light—and she herself could tell that somehow the smile flopped about, disconnected from lightheartedness or amusement.

Mrs. Thoms was not to be put off, however. “Oh, I can understand that. I’m sure nothing actually does compare to home cooking, not when it’s this good. I guess what I mean is, how would you rate the food in general at Dupont?”

“It’s not bad.”

Silence. Her response, or lack of one, had created an awkward silence.

“Just not bad?” said Mrs. Thoms, soldiering on.

Charlotte thought and thought, mainly about how toilsome it was to have to talk…to anybody about anything, especially anything to do with Dupont. Aloud she managed to say, “More or less.”

“More or less?” said Mrs. Thoms.

Silence. It was so bad that Charlotte realized she had to force herself to do something…anything. She finally managed to say, “I eat all my meals at the Abbey—the dining hall.”

She didn’t want to mention even the name of a building at Dupont. Everyone at the table wore a look that said, “And therefore?”

It was torture, this being forced to talk. “I mean, it’s mostly the same.”

Everyone looked baffled. With an agonized frown she said, “What about you, Laurie?”

“What about me what?” said Laurie.

“I don’t know…Do you eat all your meals in the same place?—I guess.”

Laurie gave her an ironic cross-eyed look of the sort that asks, “Are you trying to mess up my mind—or wot?” She drew a blank from Charlotte’s face. After a dreadful pause Laurie said, “Well, our dorm has its own cafeteria, but there are a lot of restaurants.”

“There must be a lot of restaurants around Dupont, too,” said Mrs. Thoms, looking at Charlotte.

“There are,” said Charlotte—it was so painful, forcing the words out—“but they aren’t included in my meal plan, not even the one in the middle of campus. I always eat in the dining hall.” Please! I don’t want to talk about Dupont!

Mrs. Thoms looked across the table at Laurie, Momma, and Mr. Thoms, and said, “Now, I think Charlotte’s getting around a lot more than she lets on. A sister of a sister-in-law of mine has a daughter who has a friend who goes to Dupont, a senior—as a matter of fact she’s the president of one of the big sororities—and she knows who Charlotte is. In fact she seems to know a lot more about Charlotte than Charlotte knows about her, and Charlotte’s a freshman.”

Charlotte saw Momma break into a smile, no doubt because this meant that her little genius had already established a presence on campus. A presence, all right—Mrs. Thoms was looking at her and smiling, too—but could it be with some sort of twisted Sarc 3 cruelty? Could it be that…Death was speaking? This woman was now going to tell it all…for the perverse joy of watching the insect squirm!

The reply came from the mouth of a panicked girl. “I don’t see how! I mean, I’ve never even met her. I’ve heard of her—she’s the president of her sorority and everything, but I don’t know her. I wouldn’t know her if she came walking in that door. There’s just no reason in the world why she would even know my name! I don’t have anything to do with her or any friends of hers or the kind of people who would—”

She stopped. Too late, she realized they were all looking at her in a funny way. Now they would all think there was…definitely something going on here, wouldn’t they? She had to say something that showed that this wasn’t important and didn’t disturb her. “She must have me mixed up with somebody else.”

Of course that didn’t help at all. Mrs. Thoms said with a chuckle, “Well, is there somebody else from Sparta, North Carolina, who’s a freshman at Dupont?”

Charlotte was speechless…and in greater panic. Why would Lucy Page ever mention Sparta? Because they had told her about this naïve hick freshman who kept snapping at people with her “Sparta—you never heard of it” put-down. And why would Mrs. Thoms say that? Because she knew the whole story and was set to torture her with it, drop by drop—in front of her family.

Charlotte looked at Mrs. Thoms in sheer fear. Consciously she realized that she should hate this woman who had come into her home for the perverse pleasure of humiliating her in front of her parents and her two little brothers, who were probably listening in from the kitchen. But Charlotte Simmons no longer had any right to take the moral high ground. She was too worthless to pass judgment on another person, no matter what she was doing.

The silence lengthened in a baffling way that made everybody at the table, the panicked one was sure, realize that they had all at once been confronted with some unspeakable state of affairs.

“I just don’t know,” Charlotte said finally. But why had she said it in such a timid little voice? So she added a smile—which made things still worse! What had she done but call yet more attention to her guilt?

She slogged on. Everybody was dying to hear all about the fabled Dupont, which to them obviously was Olympus, Parnassus, Shangri-la, and the peaks of Darién all rolled into one. What were the teachers like? “They’re fine,” said Charlotte. She wanted to leave it at that, but she saw six people staring at her with shortchanged looks on their faces. So she added, “…except for the T.A.s.” She immediately regretted the emendation. Who were they? What was wrong with them? “They’re graduate students. There’s nothing wrong with them. They just don’t know very much about the subjects.” Surely—there must be some brilliant teachers there? “There are,” said Charlotte, and that was the end of that. How did she find living in a coed dorm? “You sort of get used to it—” And that was the end of that. And the girls shared bathrooms with the boys? “You just sort of deal with it the best you can.” And that was the end of that—in her mind—but the grownups wouldn’t let it alone. Wasn’t it embarrassing sometimes? “Not a whole lot, as long as you keep your eyes on the tiles in the floor and the enamel in the basin and don’t look in the mirror and don’t listen to anything”—and that was as much as she cared to say about that. Did she see much of the athletes on campus? “No.” And that was that, except Momma reminded her that she had told Buddy and Sam that she knew a basketball star. “That’s true, I do know one, but I wouldn’t call him a star.” She left it at that—but who is he? What’s his name? “He’s called Jojo Johanssen.” What was he like? “He’s nice.” That was all, nice? “Well…he’s about as bright as the bottom of an old skillet.” She declined to elaborate. What was her roommate like? “She’s all right.” Just all right? “I hardly ever see her. We have different schedules.” Daddy put on a big grin and said that Buddy wanted to know if she had a boyfriend, but he never did hear the answer. Polite chuckling all around the table.