Prep

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  I knocked on the door to the room Martha and I shared, in case she was changing clothes. “Come in,” she called, but before I could reach for the knob, my mother had stepped forward, pulled her glasses down to the tip of her nose, and was peering over the top of them at the photographs taped to our door. She pointed, her finger touching the photo, at one of Martha and me side by side in a swimming pool, gripping the side so only our arms and shoulders and wet heads were visible. “Now where was this taken?”

  “At Martha’s house.”

  “When were you there that it was warm enough to swim?”

  “Right before school started this year.”

  “That’s not your striped bathing suit, is it?”

  “I was borrowing one of Martha’s suits.”

  “I didn’t think it looked like the striped one, but‑”

  “You can come in,” Martha called again from the other side of the door, and I called back, “Two seconds.” I looked at my mother. “Any other questions?” I wasn’t even being sarcastic, not completely, but when her eyes widened, I could tell I’d injured her.

  “Must be nice having a pool,” my father said. He said it the same way he’d said he wouldn’t mind meeting a senator, and I felt my irritation with him blossom into genuine anger.

  I opened the door. Martha was sitting on the futon, folding laundry and setting it on the trunk we used as a table, and, as we entered the room, she stood. With my parents still behind me, I flared my nostrils and rolled my eyes. Martha smiled at my expression, but then she turned it into a smile for my parents’ benefit, walking toward us with her arm extended. “It’s great to finally meet you,” she said. She shook their hands and asked them about the drive and what they thought of Ault so far.

  “It’s just so pretty,” my mother said.

  Martha nodded. “Sometimes when I’m walking around I want to pinch myself because I can’t believe I get to live in such a beautiful place.” Was this true? I felt that way myself, but Martha was more accustomed to fancy things than I was. Maybe she was being polite‑truly polite, not bare‑minimum‑polite like Nancy Daley.

  “Martha, Lee told us about you being elected to the discipline committee,” my mother said. “What a big honor.”

  “Thanks,” Martha said, and I said, “She wasn’t elected. She was chosen by the headmaster.”

  “That’s what I meant,” my mother said. “I think it’s terrific. Your dad must be real proud.”

  For several seconds, no one spoke.

  “Didn’t he go to Ault, too?” my mother said, but her voice was thinning with doubt. “I thought‑”

  “No, he did,” Martha said. How had my mother known that part, when had I told her? And why had she felt the need to bring up any of it? So this was where I got my tendency to hoard information about other people, though at least I knew better than to mention the information in front of them. “But it’s funny, actually,” Martha was saying, “because my dad didn’t have the greatest time here. It was when it was still all‑boys, and I guess there was a lot of hazing. When it came time for me to apply to boarding school, he was like, you can go anywhere except Ault. And of course Ault is the place I ended up liking the best.”

  “I’m glad to know Flea isn’t the only one who disobeys her parents,” my father said.

  Martha laughed. “Flea?” she repeated. “You never told me that one.” To my father, she said, “I can’t imagine Lee being disobedient.”

  “Then you have a very weak imagination, Martha.”

  At this, she really laughed. It would almost be worse for Martha to like my parents than not to like them. If she did, then for the rest of the weekend, every time all of us were together I’d be waiting for her positive impression to crack. Not that it should crack, not that I thought badly of my parents, but if one of my classmates liked them, even Martha, it would probably be‑I could see it now, watching her talk to them‑because they seemed “refreshing,” or perhaps “authentic.” Precisely because they were disheveled, because my father used colorful expressions, because they’d driven from Indiana. But anyone who saw my parents as cute would surely be disappointed. My father in particular had his own ideas and appetites, and he was not like a lamb in a petting zoo who would not bite back.

  “Martha, you don’t play soccer, do you?” my mother said.

  Martha shook her head. “Field hockey.”

  “That’s what I thought. Do you have a game this afternoon, too?”

  “Everyone has games today,” I said.

  “Will Martha’s game be at the same time as yours, Lee? Because, Martha, we’d love to get to see you”‑my mother made little quote marks with her fingers‑“ ‘in action.’ ”

  “That’s so nice of you,” Martha said. It was difficult to imagine her parents suggesting they attend one of my games, and impossible to imagine them having done so within the first ten minutes of meeting me. “My game’s at two‑thirty, and, Lee, when is yours?”

  “Around then. And they’re at opposite ends of campus. Sorry, Mom, but I don’t think you’re going to see Martha unless you want to go to her game instead of mine.”

  “There’s an idea,” my father said.

  “Mr. Fiora,” Martha said. “Be nice.” So she had indeed decided she liked him‑we needed to get out of the room as quickly as possible.

  My father perched on the edge of my desk and picked up a women’s magazine. “Glad to see you’re hitting the books, Lee. Ah, what have we here‑” He flipped the magazine around and held it up so we could see it. Across both pages, in huge red letters, the headline read, “Oh, Yeah ! How to Have the Best Orgasm Ever.”

  “That’s gross, Dad,” I said. “Put it down.”

  “Gross? Whose magazine is it?” He was grinning and I thought that maybe this was the part where things turned‑this was when my father revealed himself to Martha to be a pervert. (Not that he was one; just that this was when it would seem like it.)

  “Let’s go to the schoolhouse,” I said. “Come on.”

  “ ‘Ho‑hum sex?’ ” my father read. “ ‘We’ve all been there. Sure, the first few months of a relationship are blissful, but pretty soon‑’ ”

  “Dad,” I said. “Stop it.”

  “ ‘‑Pretty soon you’re wearing sweatpants to bed, and he’s trimming his nose hair in front of you. Face it‑’ ”

  “I’m leaving,” I said. I yanked open the door‑I couldn’t even look at Martha‑and I heard my mother say, “Terry, she wants to show us the rest of the school. Martha, you’ll have to forgive‑” The door shut. I leaned against the wall, my arms crossed, and waited for them. When they emerged, my father’s expression was one of boyish guilt, as if he’d done something inappropriate but charming. I turned and began walking.

  “What?” he said, and then, to my mother, “What’s the big deal? It was her magazine.”

  I remained a few paces in front of them as we headed down the steps, crossed the common room, and went back outside. I could feel my mother straining to catch up with me. Still behind, she said, “Lee, Martha is just a delight. Now, I’m sure you’ve told me before, but does she have brothers or sisters?”

  “She has a brother.”

  “And is he older or younger?”

  “Mom, who cares?”

  “Well, Lee, I care,” my mother said softly, and then‑not softly at all‑my father said, “Watch how you talk to your mother.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “Watch how you talk to me.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Forty yards away, the terrace in front of the schoolhouse was crowded: men in blue blazers, a woman in a pink plaid wool suit, a woman in a green straw hat with an oversized brim. It was almost ten, and the sky was cloudless and cerulean. The other parents’ voices sounded from this distance like the hum of a cocktail party.

  “Lee?” my father said. His tone was one of cool anger, but underneath the coolness‑I knew my father far too well‑there was a catch of excitement.
This was the thing about my father, that he didn’t defer to place or situation. Have it out with me here? In front of all these people? Sure. No problem.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  He was silent for a few seconds, then said, more quietly than before, “Nothing. Yeah, I’ll bet nothing.”

  On the terrace, my father picked up nametags for both of them while my mother and I stood by the refreshments table; she had taken a Danish and some orange juice. “You really don’t want any?” She held the plastic cup toward me for the third time. “It’s fresh‑squeezed.”

  “I told you I just brushed my teeth,” I said.

  None of us spoke much as we made our way through the schoolhouse‑the main hall with the rows and rows of desks, a few of the classrooms, the auditorium where guest lecturers spoke (Martin Luther King, Jr., had spoken at Ault once, which was something that tour guides were supposed to tell prospective applicants; what they were not supposed to say was that at the time King had visited, there hadn’t been a single black student enrolled in the school). My mother asked questions, and I answered them neither curtly nor at length. I found myself drifting from the present moment, thinking first about the soccer game, how I’d definitely be put in because Ms. Barrett played everyone on parents’ weekend, and then thinking of Cross Sugarman. My crush on him had not, of course, ended the evening I’d cut Aspeth’s hair. For twenty‑four hours, I’d thought I didn’t like him at all, and then we’d passed in the dining hall and abruptly I’d liked him again exactly the same amount. The afternoon before, I’d seen Cross and his parents. He had been wearing a jacket and tie, and when our eyes had met, he’d lifted his chin slightly in acknowledgment, which was not something he usually did. And I’d thought that it was because of his parents, how in some way their presence made us closer, or highlighted what we had in common‑that we were both Ault students and that all these tall, well‑dressed grown‑ups milling around campus were not.

  In the mail room, my father said, “So this is where my letters come?” and I knew that he’d forgiven me, or at least that he was willing to pretend he had.

  “I hardly have room for all of them,” I said. “They might have to give me a second mailbox.”

  “Just as long as they don’t charge you extra,” my father said.

  And then it was time for lunch. We were hurrying back to the dining hall, but this time it was packed. Mr. Byden made some remarks and the parents laughed and then Reverend Orch said grace and we sat down. There was roast chicken, and pasta salad with black olives and red peppers, and rolls. On either side of me, my parents tore into it.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” my mother said.

  “No, I am.” I took a bite of the pasta, which was soft and oily.

  When we’d been looking for a place to sit, we hadn’t seen Martha or her parents, which was a relief, and I’d spotted some empty chairs at a table where two freshmen, skinny boys in glasses, were sitting with their parents. Then we were joined by Mrs. Hopewell, one of the art teachers, who had thin messy hair and watery eyes and usually wore a paint‑covered smock over her clothes‑for lunch, she had on a batik print dress‑and who was rumored to smoke pot with her husband, a carpenter who didn’t teach at Ault and wasn’t at lunch. Mrs. Hopewell was manageable, the whole table was manageable‑being surrounded by people whose opinions didn’t really matter to me, I’d gotten lucky.

  As my parents spoke to the boys’ parents‑the boys’ names were Cordy and Hans, and one of them, though I couldn’t remember which, was a math prodigy‑I scanned the dining hall until I located Cross. He and his parents were at a table with his roommate, Devin, Devin’s parents, Reverend Orch, and Dr. Stanchak, who was head of the classics department.

  “Psst.” My father was cupping his fingers sideways in front of his mouth. “Is that the senator? Two o’clock.” My father nodded toward a table to our right. “The guy with the alcoholic’s nose.”

  “Jesus, Dad.”

  He wasn’t whispering, or even talking that quietly.

  My father laughed. “Am I right? Looks like a real glad‑hander to me.”

  “I have no idea who that is,” I said. “But Robin Tunniff isn’t sitting at that table, so I really doubt that’s her dad.”

  “Well, where is she?”

  I glanced at the tables in front of us‑the Sugarmans and Reverend Orch were sharing a hearty laugh‑then turned around and looked across to the other side of the dining hall. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You swear?”

  I looked him in the eye, because this time I could. “Of course I swear.”

  But then, when we went up to get dessert from the long table where the salad bar usually was, stocked now with cookies and brownies and a coffee urn on either end, I saw Robin and, next to her, an otherwise nondescript man wearing a tie dotted with little American flags. It was just my father and me‑my mother, after eating the pasta off my plate, had declared herself stuffed‑and it seemed actively unkind to deny him the sighting. This would be my concession to him for the weekend, the gesture that proved I was not a rotten daughter after all.

  “Dad,” I murmured, and I nudged him.

  He’d been pouring cream into his coffee, and some of it dripped over the lip of the cup onto the saucer. “Hey, there,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “Quick. The thing we were talking about‑alcoholic nose. But this time the real thing.” I looked back at Robin Tunniff’s father, and I sensed my father following my gaze. “The tie,” I said.

  “Gotcha.”

  We stood quietly in the hubbub, staring at Senator Tunniff, and I could feel my love for my father. This was one of the best things about family, how you knew each other’s shorthand.

  And then he’d set down his cup and saucer and was striding around the end of the table. He was quickly beyond the point where I could have grabbed his blazer, though I probably wouldn’t have anyway. “Oh God,” I said, and a mother standing next to me looked over, and our eyes met, but she did not say anything. I started walking, then stopped again a few feet behind him.

  “… a great admirer of yours,” I heard him saying, and they were shaking hands, the senator and my father.

  My father’s back was to me. I could see only the senator’s face, and Robin looking blankly between them. The senator appeared utterly genial. They spoke for perhaps thirty seconds, then they were shaking hands again, and my father set his left palm against the senator’s upper arm. The senator laughed, and I wished that I had never come to Ault, or that I’d been born a different person, or that at the very least I could lose consciousness immediately but not in a way that would be disruptive, not, say, by fainting and collapsing to the ground‑more like by simply vanishing.

  When he turned away from the senator, my father almost bumped into me. His expression was one of distracted exuberance, and I wondered if it had actually meant something to him to meet this man, if he had not simply been trying to anger or embarrass me. He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “Good guy.”

  I was speechless. Or at least in this context I was. It was better to suspend my fury until we were out of the crowd.

  “I’m going back to the table,” I said.

  “Let me grab my coffee. And pick up a brownie for your mom, will you?”

  “She doesn’t want anything.”

  “Trust me, she’ll want a brownie.” He chuckled, and I thought maybe my father did not understand me at all, that if he did he’d be contrite. He’d done it on purpose, but he’d still be contrite.

  Back at our table, Cordy’s parents were standing to leave, and Mrs. Hopewell and Hans’s parents were already gone. I couldn’t tell if Cordy’s parents had been waiting for my father and me to return or if they’d have taken off then anyway, leaving my mother at the table by herself, peering around with her wide eyes. I hated them all at this moment, the indifferent students and faculty and the inconsiderate parents and my own family, for being somehow reliant on kindness that wasn’t
extended.

  While we ate dessert, the dining hall cleared out. My father broke a sugar cookie in two and dipped half into his coffee. “Tell your mother about my new friend.”

  “Tell her yourself.”

  “Who?” my mother said. “What are you two talking about?”

  “Dad just accosted Robin’s father.”

  My mother looked confused.

  “You know how there’s a girl here whose dad is a senator?” I said. “Well, Dad just went up and started talking to him.”

  “You were the one who pointed him out to me,” my father said. His tone was still merry.

  “I wouldn’t have if I’d known you were going to bother him.”

  “Bother him? Lee, for Christ’s sake, he’s a public figure. He likes meeting people.”

  “You have no idea what he likes!” I cried. “You’ve never seen him before. You’ve never even heard of him. And here he is, trying to have a normal weekend with his family, and you go up and pretend to‑”

  “You need to relax.” My father’s tone was no longer cheerful. He turned to my mother and said, as if I wasn’t there, “He was a real stand‑up guy. Not a phony.”

  My mother nodded, and I watched them both, my entire body tensed.

  “You’re insane.” I made sure to say it calmly.

  My father looked at me. “Beg your pardon?”

  “You’re totally insane. You talk to this guy for two seconds, then you act like you’re old friends. Why do you even care? Do you think it proves something that you talked to him?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” my father said. He dipped the other half of the cookie into his coffee cup.

  I had already taken a breath before continuing to speak, but as I watched him, I felt a sudden draining of momentum, a pull from this instant that we were hovering in. He was looking at me expectantly, holding his cookie a few inches above the cup, and the bottom third of the cookie, which was stained a darker tan from the coffee, was beginning to decompose, threatening to fall off into the liquid below. It seemed heartbreaking, it seemed unbearable, that I was aware of this and he was not. It seemed heartbreaking that he liked the taste of a sugar cookie dipped in coffee, that it was a treat to him. The small rewards we give ourselves‑I think maybe there is nothing sadder.