Bomb Cyclone and its Effects on Harvard - 12
A Novella
3
I remember the year before I was accepted. It was December then too. Lily was at ease with everything, her looks, her grades, her future. I was rotten au gratin with everything that smelled of “I.”
A car. The idea of Getting in a Car - in the front seat - was novel to me. Always having gone into a car in the back seat - most of the time – this was a novel proposition. What is more, it was a “lightning blue” Mustang. And it was this year's model. So a new lightning blue Mustang. With dark leather seats. Just feeling was a riot.
“Is this your car?” I ask Lily. Pointedly asked Lily.
“My parents bought it for me.” Again the a wide divide between a rich, and merely a well-to-do home. Her parents could just buy, and give it to her - whereas such an act would be never even thought of in my house. She wrote wasn't rubbing my nose in it - it was just hers, and she pulled out a key and wrote the ignition. And started it. It was a wonderful feeling to be as free as this.
“When did your parents buy it for you?”
“Over the weekend.”
“Was there any special reason for them to do so? A fight between them that they wanted you to be quiet about?”
“No, nothing like that. They had promised by me a car on the New Year's Day.”
The car moved out to the curb and she looked both ways before driving away. “... anyway,” she continued, “There is a great deal more to tell about Harvard.”
“Why would you still be interested? Aren't the recommendations secret?”
“Far from it, if you know what goes on in Byerly Hall – you just need to make a connection.”
“Byerly Hall?”
“Where admissions happen. You see one-third of the admitted students are for big donors. One-third are for legacy - both parents having gone to Harvard. That means that the rest of us are only one-third of the admissions slots.”
“Still searching for the gospel verse describing the kingdom of God as filled with CEOs.”
“I do not know anything is fair, it is just the way it works.”
Nodding. “Princeton makes excuses for the screw-ups that Harvard makes to implement Yale policies sold by Stanford and made at the UofC. The axis of Ivy.” Wanting approval I fetchly looked for a sign That I had garnered some. It was clear that none was forthcoming.
“And, of 1/3rd, there are professors who have interest in having certain people get in. Mostly because they know that if a particular student gets in, they will have a source of labor. That is the deal.”
“Everything else just as fluff?”
“Of course, we talking about 2 people with a 4.0 GPA and absolutely unblemished scores, one does not have a noticeable reason - and one has a professor pushing - who you think is going to get it?”
“Point taken.” It is like having Trump in office - no one is going to risk their neck on getting him out - even though the majority knows he is a buffoon.
“So what is your reason? Why did you want me to come with you?”
“My dad's friends with a professor - what I wanted to know is the right choice to go to Harvard.” Just a short distance from my parent's house, when she stopped the car.
“Anyway, Sai feels bad about what happened. He implied the same story that you came out and said. So, he pushed on his professor. If you were good enough to get in - but nothing special - is professor would sure that he would push for you. Does not mean get in, but at least it gives you a chance.”
“Because he had read some of my pieces.”
“Yes, he read some of your stuff - and you are extremely bright. When you want to be - which does not seem as often as it should - you have a gift for picking words.”
Flustered at this – my head does seem to think so.
“So what next?”
“Here is the problem, we need to get you an interview. Then we need to make sure that Sai's professor pushes. And we need to make sure that no other forces come into play.”
“Like Charles and Lukas?”
“Like Charles' dad - particularly.”
“He could get me kicked out?”
“It is keeping other people out. If you were a star, someone who was going to get a Pulitzer prize - or something - you would have a chance. But you are not in a league of talent. Or at least no one sees you in that light.” She had turned to look at me, there was a matter-of-fact look about her - taking her word was given.
“But that should not be a problem so long as you are Charles' girlfriend.”
“While at the party, there is a different side to him. One I did not like. He is too arrogant.” Which is saying something, because Lily was no stranger to arrogance.
“So you are going to Harvard?” She just smiled. “What is the plan.”
“For me? I’m in. You need a few pushes.”
“Speaking slowly to me like I am a pet.”
“Sai's professor needs to interview you. And I do not need to remind you, you have on your best behavior.”
“I know. Same deal - you have to ace the important moments. But anyway - you know, and I know, that is not the real problem.”
“We are trying to use more expensive lions.”
Then looking at my watch: “Let us give me back to my parent's house.”
In a moment the car was going again, and she turned into my parent's driveway.
Coming in through the back door, there were lights on. Nor was there a sound in the house. A ring from me came in. It was from Lily. Opened it up - it just had “Sai” and a telephone number. There was no question but it was going to be erased.
Upstairs, after piling my books out - turned to the folded pages, and began reading:
Even the words are different, it was like taking a trump speech and making it somewhat better, but then 4th grade was the determined note on his excellency's prose à gogo.
This was in the same typing as the 1st set, but it was worlds apart in terms of vocabulary and ease of writing. So either, it was a redraft, making numerous corrections as it went, or it was someone else looking out the 1st attempt, and dictating this new version. In my mind it was possibly later, that is the typist banged out the 1st draft and then had someone else look at it. And make corrections, but I did not know that this was the case.
What was obvious was that the pages were a story, in several drafts – guessing with two authors. However, it is still the question as to why keep all of the drafts, in the attic, for this long. It was a not-fine short story, though it had at least some potential as a senior effort. Perhaps that was the best that Nebraska University students could do at that age - though reeling at a teacher, reading endless drafts like this. It brought a sharp point to how much the professor was bogged down with. Though 'bog' would not be a word that someone in the middle of the country used - there were no bogs on the great plains, even in the middle of pastiches of rivers.
Then from behind me, from the window, came a great splash of headlights - and it was obvious from their illumination that they were from my mother's car, not my father's. Putting away the sheaves of paper, I wanted to meet my mother in the kitchen, but it was not yet time to voice my unhazarded guess. That she was the one who had ferreted the papers, and it was for a reason which had meaning today.
Grab as one can, the meaning eluded me. Down to the kitchen, I went.
Then she appeared at the rear door, and her eyes were surprised to see me.
“What are you doing here?” There was suspicion but not a deepness to it.
I fetched the phone from my pocket. “You will be wanting this.”
“If you do not mind my saying so, that is suspicious. Normally you would delay my getting control of your phone.”
“Better to give it to you than to my father.”
This mollified her slightly.
“So what is going on?”
“Nothing.” It was a dark black nothing.
“I might have believed that when I came in, but I do not now.”
It seemed an excuse needed to be concocted. Unfortunately, there was nothing in my head that would work. Once again we stared at each other. There was something in her eyes. Eventually, she would come to some conclusion, which might be worse than telling her.
This was a day of decisions.
“You never told me enough about your university experience.”
“That is sudden. Why do you ask?”
“It seems a blank spot in your history, which needs to be addressed, don't you think?”
“Yes, but why do you think of it now?” Her interest was piqued.
A meaningless phrase would not be appropriate here. But capturing somewhat of the truth without revealing its nature was difficult. Wishing that James Bond was the greater part of my reading, I struggled to find veracity without completing the real truth. We stared again.
“I do not think I want to talk about this.” She finally declared it was she who was declaring out of this conversation. Qui court deux lievres a la fois, n’en prend aucun.
Again, bourrée out – with the 2nd rhythm on eights. Completing a quick move to the stairs, faking a move to homework - which at this point was the plan. Pemberley, rewritten by a modern sleuth, was trivial compared to the events that my parents kept hidden from me. But the edge in her voice told me something, though not yet what.
But it was the “not” that was the dominant negative, now in place. Never beware so much, when naked lies the truth. Venus in furs with whips - and retroflex nasal, no less. In cerebral Norwegian nutria - ah hehe ho-ho, to the ninny norm.
Naively, a lighting sigh came nonsuch, numerically naked.
And it was not pretty, running people's lives never is.
Especially, perhaps particularly, if you must in the end, achieve victory.
She looked at what she wrote, and Immediately tore it to shreds. This the novel drew her writing, but not the inspiration. And it was that lack, rather that presence, that made her penned sway. Why could she be a writer, finishing clean sentences that stood out even a distance? What was it that made a writer? She had taken classes, but they talked about what a novel was, not the person behind the mask.
It was the person who you had to become. Because that person wrote the novel, not the professor who praised it, from a distance, with help from the 1st great reader who discovered it. Perhaps one could compose a book on the 1st great readers who pointed out to their innumerable others, that they had a genius - hats off to Schumann. Actually, one could begin with Schumann and Chopin as the 1st. She wondered if there was an earlier reckoning which she could do. But that is a volume, a volume of nonfiction. But at least there would be a few who would read it.
However, if I could write such prose - but it would have the less than bloated, otherwise it would just be a dissertation, among many she had undertaken. The problem was his dissertation never amounted to anything. Which is why they stacked up, and dared anyone to, not just read, but remember as well. It is time you cannot get back, ever again. And when you are young this is less noticeable - almost unnoticeable. But noticed none the less. And it is not a novel.
That would leave a stain, a conflagration of the soul. To be someone other than who one was, and set out a novel, not a story - which some people confuse with the capital “N”. after all there are only so many stories which can be told, the Greeks made a point of this in their retelling of Homer in many different guises. Especially Euripides, whose polytropic sense of wonder put him above all of the others - especially Medea, who had finally been seen after 2000 years as a great drama, in hindsight. The Greeks rated it as among his best, and it took two millennia for the Westerners to realize that in the middle there was a break, with the 1st half cycling backwards. It was a triumph, it the flat plain of A Squared in Episcopal roots, though delivered in a Congregational allure. Gone with the Presbyterian simplicity, and the Baptist downpour. All the mainline churches in one bucket, a bucket of blood.
Joseph Campbell was the mono-mythic center, whose Infinitely pliable and eruditely arcana treatise: Hero With 1000 Faces she had consumed over and over again since it was pointed out to her in a Junior seminar in mythology – whose professor would have waxing poetic, but he waned prose. Simply the breath was astounding, but it is the welter of details which astonished, a universal and revolutionary Transformation which underlies almost all of history and creation-story itself – Christ, Islam, Buddha, Sumera and others, In this the teacher found that underlying mood. It was round – like a globe. And analog between science fact and fiction, both without and within. A discovery in inner space lit to outer.
There was some there, but she did not know what it was.
Embargoing of oil, boycotting the dollar are simply meta-rituals of magical of forgiveness. Magical in its nature, but realistic in its action.
This is a phase of living – the shortness of field Elysium – which is all too short, fallen into disrepair and disrepute – to be forgotten. Underline the understanding, for it too - will be unique.
And falling uproariously ubiquitous belief in Ubik, on the Uther-side.