Chapter Text
The truth was, Nora didn't know if she wanted to go to college. People assumed that she did – they thought she'd be going with her cousins, or they hinted in tones of compassion that no doubt she could get a scholarship to State. Everyone knew she couldn't pay for college. That much, at least, was fact, not assumption.
Mrs. Young, the guidance counselor, was puzzled to know quite what to do with Nora Worth. Surprisingly, Nora did not seem as enthusiastic as you might expect her to be – after all, everybody said she was a great scholar.
"It's February, you know, Nora," she said. "I do understand this is a very difficult decision, but I'd encourage you to start making some serious progress in your applications."
"I'm not sure I want to go to college," Nora said.
"You shouldn't worry too much about the – um, the financial end of things. I know that's a concern for some students. You do realize, Nora, that with your grades there are scholarships and grants available everywhere? I should be able to help you find some that you may not have realized were open to you."
"Well, yes, but actually my SAT scores aren't that good –"
"I'd just hate to see you miss out on these opportunities. Many top schools have an application deadline. Were you aware of that?"
Top schools! Nora sighed. "Yes, I am –"
"I'm not trying to pressure you, Nora, but everyone in your class has made plans for next year, even those who are just going on to the community college." Mrs. Young lowered her voice confidingly. "And we know that you can aspire higher than that, don't we? Now, fortunately, a lot of late application deadlines aren't until May, so that shouldn't be a problem for you – but you should finish your application right away so you don't have to wonder if all your classmates will be leaving without you."
"All right – thanks for talking with me, Mrs. Young."
"I just want you to understand how important this point is for you," Mrs. Young insisted.
Nora squirmed inwardly. "I do understand, and thanks again."
Gratefully, she heard the bell ring distantly. She didn't think she could stand under the pressure of any more friendly persuasion. As it was, she'd barely time to get to her locker before English, and she was already too late to avoid the blast of noise and inexorable crowds. She'd hoped to have time to gather her thoughts after the meeting. The very idea of college made her stomach flip. She disliked high school enough – any one else would have called it hate – and wasn't college just a bigger, more demanding, more sophisticated kind of high school?
English was her favorite class at the moment, since they were doing Henry James. Steinbeck came next and she knew she was going to hate Steinbeck. She'd already tried reading East of Eden at the library and it had depressed her so much she had to go home and devour half the Anne books before she regained equilibrium. But alas for Nora's troubled spirits, today English dragged on with all the momentum of a cruise ship on dry sand. Unfortunately Nora was the only soul in the classroom who happened to like "The Real Thing" and Nora herself was still thinking about college, her thoughts roiled up and her emotions disordered. She sat mutely through the endless deadly silences as Mr. Thompson tried to extract from his stolid class any sign of comprehending the underlying theme of seeming versus reality.
Home at last, Nora fled straight to her room, half-ashamed of the instant feeling of relief that Ruthie was still at band practice. The closed door muted the banging and shouting of her younger brothers playing soccer in the dining room, and an empty room and a closed door were the closest approximation to solitude and silence anyone might expect to find in the Worth house. She snatched at the nearest Dickens and collapsed backwards onto her bed.
"NORA! DINNER!" screamed several voices, snatching her from a London debtor's prison with an unpleasant jerk. Dinner was best eaten as quickly as possible, and Nora usually retired back to her room after it was over, on the plea of homework; though in truth she usually spent most of the night guiltily rereading a hundred pages of Alcott instead of a hundred pages of World Culture: Social and Political Implications. Tonight, however, her mother halted the retreat as Nora gathered her dirty dishes from the table.
"Nora? Don't throw your potatoes, Abby, sweetie. Your father and I want to talk to you after dinner." Correctly interpreted as applying to herself and not the scowling Abby, this last announcement sent a creeping dread through Nora's heart. She guessed instantly that Mrs. Young, with admirable concern for her students, must have called her parents to inform them that Nora was dawdling with her college applications. She'd only just survived that meeting, but a serious talk with her parents was sure to make her cry – she could feel the threatening prick of tears behind the bridge of her nose already.
"So, Nora," began Mrs. Worth when the rest of the company had retired from the table (though only to the family room just behind them, not out of earshot if it were not for the argument Justin and Mark were having over the chore of doing the dishes) – "Nora, we want to talk to you. We need to discuss college with you." She serenely ignored the crash of something from the kitchen. Mrs. Worth was unshakeable in her own way.
"You know Megan and Jessie are going to Douglas University – that's where Tim and James go, too. And then we got such a nice call today from Bill Bayfield – It would be so nice for you to be there with them. You could, um, help each other with your schoolwork and things. Wouldn't that be nice? Very generous, isn't it? We owe so much to your uncle Bill --"
Nora looked at her blankly. She had no idea what her mother was saying.
"Bill offered to pay for your college education," interrupted her father impatiently.
Nora moved her hands and then put them back in her lap. Her mother's meanderings must have confused her – she hadn't just heard what she thought she'd heard.
"– all of it, but only if you go to Douglas," continued her mother without a pause. "You must go there, he said. You know how he loves his old school – but that won't matter, because you wanted to go there anyway. Such a shame for you to be separated from Jessie and Megan, you used to get along so well when you were kids. And Tim and James are such nice boys – at least, I don't know them very well because they're not around very often anymore, but everyone says they're very good kids, and they were so well behaved at Bill and Elle's wedding, so handsome in their little tuxes. Of course that was years ago now, but they are very nice boys. I do think Bill is kind, when you're not even his blood relation, although you are a niece by marriage, but not his first marriage, and he has his own kids you know –"
"Not crying now, are you, Norrie?" shouted her father. "Come on, girl, you want to go to college, don't you? Always reading –"
Nora found that everything was made easy. She wrote a very stiff and half-hearted essay on her application, all about the great beauty of learning and how it tied in to the goodness of humanity and how humbled and awed she was by both. She hated herself for writing it. Mrs. Young suggested that she write about being the first person in her family to go to college, but Nora absolutely refused to do that. It wasn't even true: both her aunts had gone to college, and all her cousins were going, and her own mother could have gone too, if she hadn't fallen quite so madly and stupidly in love. But no – she shouldn't have thought of her mother as stupid. Trucking was a perfectly respectable profession, and her father had worked very hard before the accident, and she knew that her parents were proud of having a child going to college.
All the same, how else to account for her mother's choice? Both her aunts had found what Nora's books might have called good marriages: Aunt Doris to a well-respected author and scholar, Dr. Phillip Graham; and Aunt Elle to the wealthy and widowed Bill Bayfield. Her own mother's match with an uneducated truck driver was a family embarrassment to this day, as Nora knew very well despite the fact that no one talked about it.
But of course she didn't say any of those things to Mrs. Young. She just thanked her for the advice, and wrote her prim little essay. And she was accepted instantly. Nora wondered how it worked: did Uncle Bill just casually call up the admissions department and give instructions? Or maybe they already knew, with the speed of rumor: "The Worth application is to be accepted." She imaged the entire staff of Douglas University whispering her name to each other–but that was really a bit too depressing, not to mention paranoia-inducing.
At least Mrs. Young was happy; her advice had borne such glorious fruit! As a matter of fact everyone was happy but Nora. Her parents were pleased, obviously; and her sister Ruthie was in awe. And Nora was made to call Uncle Bill Bayfield to thank him for his generosity. She had for some reason always disliked phone conversations – so awkward when the other person answered and you couldn't be quite sure who it was, and then you had to improvise and no matter what you said, you sounded childish – but of course it would be terrible to seem ungrateful. She did realize that Uncle Bill was being incredibly kind. So she called and Uncle Bill was happiest of all.
"Very glad I thought of it – so much better for everyone. No, it's no trouble at all, Nora. Of course I don't expect you to pay me back, don't be ridiculous. I know what a good education will do for you: I feel confident you'll be the kind of person who can take advantage of it. And I expect you to be a good influence on my girls."
He said this half-jokingly, but Nora was not amused. She was the last person in the world to have any influence over Megan and Jessie. They despised her – understandably. Nora had fairly good grades in most subjects, not that it was very difficult to get them at her school, but that was about it. She had no accomplishments and no friends. Jessie, on the other hand, was a top volleyball player and set to be the valedictorian at the elite private school the cousins attended. Megan was an honor student and on the prom committee and held some kind of class office, Nora could never remember exactly what. She had heard it so many times she'd started to block it out. Yes, they were so very likely to listen to her.
As a matter of fact, she was completely shocked when Megan called the next week, and Jess the week after that, and one or both of them at least once a week for the next several months.
"Nora, did you get that letter about class schedules?" Jessie would ask. "Who do you have? Dad says to switch to Dr. Jones for Intro to History, then."
It didn't take long to figure out that they were being instructed to call her. Nora could imagine her Aunt Elle's honey-slow voice: "Now girls, call Nora right away, and make sure she knows about it too."
She was even assigned the same dorm as her cousins, not in the same room, thank goodness, but next door to them. She couldn't help but wonder if Uncle Bill had something to do with that, too. The rooms were doubles, and Nora's assigned roommate was a person called Jacqueline Cadwell. There was a phone number on the slip that came in the mail, but Nora decided they might as well just get to know each other in person. It was bad enough calling people she knew for awkward conversations; she wasn't going to call some random girl from halfway across the country, just to introduce herself. What could they possibly say? You were better off knowing as little as possible about your future roommate, Nora concluded, since you weren't allowed to switch roommates in the first semester. She hardly dared to hope that they would end up being friends; it was enough to pray that they'd at least get along.
In a way it was a relief that Uncle Bill and Aunt Elle offered to take Nora to college, since it was only forty minutes out of their way. Nora was sorry to miss out on having her parents move her in and tour the campus and kiss her good bye – but it was a theoretical sorrow, based on Nora's ideal of what going off to college should be like. In reality she knew her father would have been loud and embarrassing and would have criticized everything from the dorm floorplan to the convocation speaker. And her mother would have insisted on bringing all her siblings, and then she would have been too busy making sure Abby didn't wander across campus to really say goodbye properly.
Of course there was enough room, as Uncle Bill said jovially, for Nora's stuff in his new Escalade, since Tim and James were each driving their own cars. And sure enough, her meager pile – two duffel bags, some boxes with her books and desk supplies – seemed small enough beside Megan and Jessie's furnishings. For a minute it almost looked as if there wouldn't be enough space after all.
"I've got plenty of room in the Volvo," her cousin James said. "I left most of my things at the house over the summer. That mini-fridge could go in my back seat, and probably those computer boxes too."
"Thanks, James," said Uncle Bill. "All right, that looks like everything. Ready to go, Nora?"
"Call us when you get settled," said her mother, hugging her. "Abby, honey, come here. Say goodbye to your sister. Justin, give her a hug."
Nora was crying. She couldn't help it; she had meant not to, but it wasn't a thing she could control, much as she would like to. "Chris – Ruthie – you have to email me every day –"
"Aw, Norrie, stop worrying," said Chris. "You stay out of trouble."
She smiled, trying to wipe her streaming eyes. Chris was her favorite brother.
"They're waiting for you," pointed out Ruthie practically. "You'll see us at fall break. Go on."
It was true, everyone was standing by the cars, with fixed smiles, trying not to look impatient. Nora climbed into the Escalade. She waved through the open window until they turned the corner.
Douglas was a four hours' drive away, and Nora sniffled at intervals almost the whole way. She despised herself almost as much as she could see Megan and Jessie were despising her, but it was impossible to stop. College was going to be awful, she could feel it.