Chapter Ten
Designated Martyrs and Angelic Forms
In which Lewyn Oppenheimer hears an epic and unsettling story
His sister Sally—fulfilling her promise to herself, if not to our father—had refrained from checking in on Lewyn that very night of their arrival, and when Lewyn went to find her in 213 Balch Hall the following day, neither she nor her roommate were there. He felt thoroughly self-conscious standing at their locked door, on a long corridor of identical doors, in a women’s dormitory, in all of his own disheveled and possibly malodorous maleness. So he’d used the pen on the string to write a brief message on his sister’s whiteboard: Hi! I stopped by to say hello. L. She would know who L. was, he reasoned. He hoped she would know. But she didn’t return the visit or send an email.
They went off on separate freshman trips and after he returned to campus he went to Balch a second time, on the morning of Convocation, ostensibly to ask how Sally’s canoe expedition to the Adirondacks had been but really because the Freshman Week activities had left him feeling distinctly alone, which obviously was not their purpose, and this time she was home. The roommate （her bed had a heart-shaped cushion people had scribbled all over, and sheets with butterflies） was fortunately not there that morning, because the ensuing conversation, unpleasant as it was, would have been far worse in front of a stranger. It was nasty, brutish, and short, but even to Lewyn not entirely unexpected. “I just think,” his sister said, “that we should act as if we’ve left home. I mean, we have left home. And I’ll see you at Thanksgiving, I guess.”
So that was how it would be, apparently, and just to show her he was quite capable of getting along without her, Lewyn didn’t go to her room again. In the months to come he would only occasionally catch sight of Sally across wide collegiate courtyards, or a dining hall, and once in the first lecture of a massive intro psych course she then apparently dropped. He didn’t tell anyone he had a sister at Cornell who was also a freshman and who lived in the dormitory next door, and he only wished he hadn’t told his own roommate about Sally, something that happened on their very first night together in 308 Clara Dickson Hall, because what was Jonas （Lewyn’s roommate） going to think about the fact that this sister never stopped by once as the weeks and then months passed? Lewyn was prepared to imply that he and Sally met regularly outside the room, for walks or meals or parties, even, but in fact Jonas was quickly distracted by a full Cornell life of his own, and never brought it up again.
Jonas was a tall—very tall—and very pale kid from Ogden, Utah, who was studying to be a vet. “Large animal,” he clarified, that same first night, which only confused Lewyn. Practically the first thing he had done, on entering 308 Clara Dickson for the first time, was scoop up a small brown object called an “Idaho Spud,” part of the candy hoard Johanna had left for them, and actually crow with delight.
“Where the heck did you find this?” he asked. “My brothers said no way on the East Coast.”
Lewyn wondered if he should point out that Ithaca was far from any coast, but he didn’t want to come off like an ass. “We stopped at Cracker Barrel,” he said instead. “My mom went kind of crazy. Too bad it wasn’t booze,” he said bravely. “Right?”
“Oh, I don’t drink,” said Jonas. He had already torn open the brown paper and eaten half the spud. “Do you?”
Lewyn frowned. He wasn’t sure of the answer. Yes? Because there was no reason not to say yes. No? Because he didn’t, not really. Or he hadn’t. But he could, maybe, now, away from home. “Sure,” he said finally.
Jonas had traveled light. There was a shiny comforter on his bed, a pillow and sheets in basic white, and on the desk a stack of pristine textbooks: Color Atlas of Veterinary Anatomy, Diseases of Dairy Cattle, Large Animal Theriogenology. Taped to the wall above the pile, a single photograph of two parents and six children: all stick-lean, all pale, all yellow-blond and all with bright, bright white and even teeth. He was, it turned out, more than two years older than Lewyn, though this would not emerge until a couple of months into their cohabitation, but he did not seem overly burdened by relative maturity. He had an insatiable appetite for SpongeBob SquarePants, for one thing, and possessed a full DVD library of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which he was stunned to learn Lewyn had never watched. And while he was diligent in his veterinary studies he would also partake, with enthusiasm, of Cornell’s robust fraternity culture, dividing his early loyalties between Alpha Gamma Rho and Acacia. He was, by any meaningful standard, a reassuringly normal and inoffensive cohabitant.