In honor of the more than ten friends who graduated college this past weekend comes a slightly different piece of flash fiction. Conversation inspired by them, location inspired by my cousin's wedding rehearsal dinner. I find it interesting and a good exercise to write from two perspectives - neither of which particularly hold. It's a good way to keep one's mind broad - to try to write convincingly from a side that doesn't have you fully convinced. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!
Argument, Summa Cum Laude
by Rachel Heffington
From this angle
the girl who had escaped to the shrubbery as I had –
presumably to quit the hot crush of the crowded party room –
appeared to be my height or a little taller. Instinctively, I glanced
down at her feet. She wore shoes with a small heel. Were she
barefoot, I would have the edge in height and this pleased me. I am
not a man who can spare many inches to the advantage of others.
I stepped off the
moss-grown walk onto the gravel circle, gave it a deliberate
crunch under my heel. She turned, startled, then smiled. Dusk bloomed
around her, blending the edges of her gray dress softly into the
drawing night.
I raised a hand in
greeting toward this charcoal-sketch of a stranger and wandered to fountain in the center of the gravel circle. No water in the
fountain. Nor had there been for some time if the collection of
cigarette ashes and dead leaves were an indication. I took careful
note of these things in an effort to ignore the presence of the girl.
I'd gone to the shrubbery to be alone, of course, and wished to
remain that way. But soon the smallness, the ridiculousness of we two
sharing the same neat-lawned, hedged-about patch of yard without
speaking bore down on me.
“Rather a crowd
in there, huh?” I ventured.
She, who had drawn
off a few paces, turned to me. “Yes, well, graduations are a thing
worth celebrating, I suppose.”
I drew a cigar
from my pocket. “Do you mind?”
She shrugged.
“Only if the wind turns my direction.”
Cigar clenched
between my teeth, I cupped my hands and touched a match to its end.
This business done, I drew on it and considered the girl. “You a
graduate of the grand old Class of '39?”
She smiled a funny
smile. Almost an angry smile. “I'm not.”
“Ah, so you're a
student then?”
Another smile
tinged with a diluted shade of fury. “Actually, no. I'm not a
student at all. I don't learn anything. Never.” She hugged herself
with a petulant toss of her head. “I've actually given up learning.
Stupid to learn anything these days.” Her hair, cut in a
blunt-edged bob, sat sharply dark against her heart-shaped face.
Defiance incarnate and a dimple in her chin.
I smoked hard,
processing what she had said and whether it was strictly sarcasm or
whether she might, on the outside chance, believe her own words.
“If you're not a
student or a graduate,” I finally asked, “do you mind me asking
why you are here?”
She scoffed. “Oh,
so it's only graduates or students who may attend the ceremony of a
good friend?”
“Look, if you
think that's what I meant...”
“Isn't it what
you meant?”
“I only meant –
”
“Yes, what did
you mean? You'd think a student would have enough brains
to know there must be a motive behind asking a question. Now speak
plain or I'll go inside. I'd much rather not be bothered by
impertinent young men just now, if it's all the same to you.”
She made my mind
whirl with the rapidity of her insults. How we'd gone from demure,
dusk-sketched dryad to seething shrew in a few sentences bewildered
me. Where'd it gone off? A fellow would never have done it. I wished
madly for the seclusion I'd left the party to seek. This was
why I referred gals to my older and younger brothers. This was why
I'd made it into manhood without so much as a second date with any one of them. Women were such complex creatures.
Heaven-sent, I'm
sure.
Beautiful,
undoubtedly.
Perfection in
human form.
But not something
you wanted to go trawling through just for fun, you know. They were
much too apt to land on you, claws out.
“Forgive me,
ma'am,” I said with a cold, polite bow. I flicked my cigar into the
empty fountain and watched it smolder against the skeleton of a maple
leaf. “It was not my intention to offend.”
“And who offers
his apologies?”
Her distinctly
different tone of voice jerked my gaze to her laughing face. She'd
dropped the shawl somewhat from her shoulders which were now bare to
the purple evening. Proud, aristocratic shoulders as if the dignity
of the world – and its riches – belonged to her.
“Don't you have
a name?” she asked.
Blood rush to the
tips of my ears, turning them scarlet. “Alexander Britton.”
“Madeleine
Vincent.”
How small her hand
felt in my big paw! Yet her grip was stronger than many fellows' and
the eyes that fastened on mine were a sensible, affable blue. Not
forget-me-not or violet or gray blue. Just blue, tending toward green
at the outer rim.
“You're Vince's
sister?” I asked, trying to reconcile she of the gray dress with
Roland Vincent, currently up to his crumpled necktie in a bottle of
bourbon.
“His cousin,
actually. And yes, I'm here because he got it into his head to try
for a tightly-rolled piece of paper which will henceforth allow him
to think himself cleverer than the rest of the family.”
“College hater,
I take it?”
“Not
particularly.”
Somehow, in that
way peculiar to strangers in a strange place, we came together and
started walking; we had now reached the far edge of the gravel circle
and had to turn back or cross the lawn to go on. Unhesitating, she
stepped onto the grass and we sauntered through the hedge via an
arched opening. Beyond the hedge lay a damp, meadow-like acre. We
made in the general direction of an enormous, many-limbed oak growing
in the left corner, nearest the party-house. Madeleine sat on an
board-swing hanging from the tree branch unfurling like an elephant's
trunk from the tree's heart.
“What's your
game?” she asked, suddenly.
I cleared my
throat. “I'm fair at baseball.”
“I meant now,
here. Why are you talking to me?”
“Because one of
you is much less terrifying to my nerves than three hundred of them.”
I jerked my head toward the house as a torrent of raucous voices
poured out an open window.
“And why don't
you walk on, alone?” she asked.
“Why didn't
you?”
“And ignore
someone speaking to me?” she marveled.
“Women have done
harsher things in the name of privacy.”
She sat on that
swing without swinging at all, which seemed equal parts nonsensical
and practical. I think it would have spoiled the effect if she'd gone
cavorting through the sky. Madeleine Vincent seemed, above all, to
relish her composure and balanced her girlhood (could she be older
than nineteen?) with the carriage of a Parisienne.
“I suppose
you're getting a degree?” she asked.
I nodded. “My
second, actually.”
“Ughhhh.” A
shiver.
“You do yourself
no credit acting like an idiot,” I cautioned. “I'm sorry to use
the term, but you don't even sound like a thinking adult when you
speak that way. If you so despise the educational system, you might
keep that opinion to yourself. If you choose to spout it for all the
world to hear, be prepared to be laughed at.”
She chewed her
bottom lip.
“There is
nothing,” I said, waxing hot as I familiarized myself with the subject, “more laughable than an uneducated person beating the
educated man over the head with her lack of education. There are
forms to be observed in lodging complaints against the system. I'd be
happy to instruct you in them if you so choose.”
“Look at him!
I've made the little toffee-nose angry!” she wobbled on the swing,
settling herself into it with a dangerous glint in her eyes.
“I only intend
to help.” Whatever slight interest her svelte figure had brightened
in me when I first saw her faded now to a weary sensation of having
to calm a petulant child before she set off the hue and cry.
“Is Vince...is
he all right?” she asked at length.
I shrugged. “Not
the worst in the lot.”
She looked off
toward the house. “He drinks too much.”
“Not more than
most.”
“He doesn't
study,” she said, pinning me with those blue eyes.
“Not many do.”
“He doesn't
apply himself at all, does he?”
I stuffed my hands
in my pockets. “We-ellll...not terribly much. But nobody does.”
“And he skips
classes often.”
“Everyone
skips classes, Miss Vincent. It's part of survival.”
“But he still
graduates? Acting like that he still graduates!”
Somewhere I
recognized I'd lost another battle. “Look, it's not like
that.”
“Isn't it?”
Madeleine shook her head and the sharp black bob swept her chin.
“That's what I hate. A person might work his whole life. A person
might read every book he could get his hands on. A person might splay
himself wide open for the sake of self-improvement but if he didn't
go to college and get a cap and tassels and a piece of paper that
says he's spent four years of his life skipping classes and boozing
himself, the world won't take him seriously.”
I stared,
slack-jawed at her. “You little minx! It isn't like that at all.
Most students work very hard for their degrees.”
“You just say
most people don't apply themselves.”
“That was
hyperbole.”
“You are
hyperbole.” Madeleine breathed very fast and a certain expression
flitted across her face as if she realized the flawed logic in her
comment.
“You want to
misunderstand me,” I said. “You do your very best to misinterpret
what I mean.”
“Oh, just shut
up, Mr. Alexander Britton.”
It was the first
time she had used my name and again that curious self-consciousness
filtered into her eyes. She banished it and the hardness returned.
“I'm not
interested in discussing it further. Look, we're here to congratulate
my cousin and his friends and...and you for achieving what you all
set out to achieve. I don't have to admire your pretension to
congratulate you, do I? Basic civility allows me to recognize that
four years devoted to any pursuit are, at any rate, four years of
devotion.” She stood and the swing banged against the back of her
knees. She took both my hands in hers. “Congratulations, Mr.
Britton. Use your education well. Now leave me, please. I'm
not ready to go in just yet.”
Nor was I but the
grand oak stooped over us, forbidding me to stay. A keen wind riffled
through the hedge-leaves and I shivered. “You're not cold?”
“No.” She sat
on the swing again.
“Well.” I
squinted at the party-house, pretending to concentrate on something,
though I barely noticed at what I was squinting. Anything to avoid
her gaze. “Goodbye, then.”
“Goodbye, Mr.
Britton.”
“Will I see you
later – at the party?”
She squared her
chin. “I think not. I don't belong among those people. I'll only
have this conversation with every other person in that room.”
Great weariness weighted her voice to a murmur. “I don't think I
have perspective to spare.”
Listening to her,
I felt myself becoming more and more depressed. I didn't want her to
despise me and the fifty-eight other people in the house behind, but
I could not see her angle.
I sighed.
“Goodbye.”
“So you said.
Please go away now. I'm tired.”
I did as she
commanded and once inside the hot, over-crowded house a feeling of
great moroseness fell upon me. Even the Manhattan a friend shoved in
my hand couldn't cheer me. I wandered to the back of the house where the clamor seemed loudest.
“Hey, Vince.”
He didn't hear me
over the shrill chatter of three girls in thin dresses wearing stolen
graduation caps. I waved him down instead and Vince, red in the face
and shouting with laughter, squeezed through the crowd to my side.
“Alex, enjoying
yourself?”
“Fine party.
Fine,” I lied.
“Great! Never
seen a crowd happier to be done with it all. To hell with studying!
To hell with finals!” Vince raised a brimming shot filled by one of
the girls, and the people nearest commended his toast with a rowdy
cheer.
I licked my dry
lips and tugged on his sleeve. “Met your cousin in the garden.”
“Oh, fine girl,”
he yelled. “Bit dramatic, but fine.”
“Funny bird,
seems to me,” I confided.
Vince's roving
eyes settled briefly on me with a look of extreme amusement. “One
of the funniest. Has funny ideas about society. Pretends to think
college is bull.”
“Yes. She,
umm...said so.”
He laughed rather
harder than necessary at this. “Look at your face! Bet she told you
she despises being kissed and she'd never travel abroad, not even if
someone else paid for it three times over. Little Maddy. Silly girl,
but sweet when she's in the mood.”
“Does she mean
any of it?”
The three girls
crowded once again around Vince; I could barely see his polished head
above the other party-goers.
“What?” he
roared.
“Does your
cousin really mean it – about kissing and college and travel and
all?”
“Ha!” he
laughed, and even though I couldn't see him for all the arms
embracing him, his intoxicated voice rose above the clamor: “Girl
doesn't mean a word of it! She tried for ten colleges and they all
turned her down. Silly little pigeon. Likes to spit in their eye,
now, every chance she gets.”
So that was it.
The irrational anger and the defiance and the childlike shame. I
looked down at my hand and realized I had rolled my cocktail napkin
like a diploma. I tapped it against my palm a few times, smiling.
Then, still smiling, I tossed it away and stalked back outside.
With any luck,
there'd still be a furious, blue-eyed girl sitting on the old board
swing.
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