Blood Sisters_ Vampire Stories by Women - Paula Guran Page 0,149

any more all-nighters than the rest of us. Gradually he learned to write first drafts, which she then edited meticulously; you’d see them huddled at a table in the library, Kelly looking grim, Ron looking earnest and genial and bewildered.

She taught him everything. How to write a simple sentence. How to study for an exam. How to read a paragraph from beginning to end and catch the drift. How to eat without grossing everybody out. How to behave during fraternity rush. At a time when the entire Greek system was the object of much derision on our liberal little campus, Ron became a proud and busy Delt; senior year he was elected president, and Kelly, demure in gold chiffon, clung to his arm.

We gossiped that she taught him everything he knew about sex, too. That first year, before the mores and the rules loosened to allow men and women in each other’s rooms, everybody made out in the courtyard of the freshman women’s dorm. Because Kelly said they had too much work to do, they weren’t there as often as some of the rest of us; for a while that winter and spring, I spent most of my waking hours, and a few asleep, in the courtyard with a handsome and knowledgeable young man from New Jersey named Jan.

But Ron and Kelly were there often enough for us to observe them and comment on their form. His back would be hard against the wall and his arms stiffly down around her waist. She’d be stretched up to nuzzle in his neck—or, we speculated unkindly, to whisper instructions. At first, if you said hello on your way past—and we would, just to be perverse—Ron’s innate politeness would have him nodding and passing the time of day. Kelly didn’t acknowledge anything but Ron; she was totally absorbed in him. Before long, he had also learned to ignore us, or to seem to.

Kelly was moody, intense, determined. Absolutely focused. I knew her before she met Ron; they assigned us as roommates freshman year. There was something about her—besides our age, the sense that we were standing on a frontier—that made me tell her things I hadn’t told anybody, hadn’t even thought of before. And made me listen to her self-revelations with bated breath, as though I were witness to the birth of fine music or ferreting out the inkling of a mystery.

In those days Kelly was already fascinated by women who had died for something they believed in, like Joan of Arc about whom she read in lyrical French, or for something they were and couldn’t help, like Anne Frank whose diary she read in deceptively robust German. I didn’t understand the words—I was a sociology major—but I knew the stories, and I loved the way Kelly looked and sounded when she read. When she stopped, there would be a rapturous silence, and then one or both of us would breathe, “Oh, that was beautiful!”

After she met Ron, things between Kelly and me changed. At first all she talked about was him, and I understood that; I talked about Jan a lot, too. But gradually she quit talking to me at all, and when she listened it was politely, her pen poised over the essay whose editing I had interrupted.

Ron seemed as open and expansive and featureless as the prairies of his native Nebraska. I was convinced she was wasting her life. He wasn’t good enough for her. I could not imagine what she saw in him.

Unless it was the unlimited opportunity to play puppeteer, sculptor, inventor. I said that to her one night when we were both lying awake, trying not to be disturbed by the party down the hall. She was my best friend, and I thought I owed it to her to tell her what I thought.

“What is it between you and Ron anyway?” I demanded, somewhat abruptly. We’d been complaining desultorily to each other about the noise and making derogatory comments about some people’s study habits, and in my own ears I sounded suddenly angry and hurt, which was not what I’d intended. But I went on anyway. “What is this, a role-reversed Pygmalion, or what?”

She was silent for such a long time that I thought either she’d fallen asleep or she was completely ignoring me this time I was just about to pose my challenge again, maybe even get out of bed and cross the room and shake her by the shoulders until she paid attention to me,