That I didn’t expect; my façade slipped. “What? Why?”
“It’s not you, I hope you realize that. It’s … well, it’s me.” He laughed a little, hearing the cliché.
“Did I—”
“It’s not something you did,” he said quickly. “This isn’t about the midterms.” He looked to the door, making sure it was closed. “I fear that being around you makes me act a bit … inappropriately. You make me forget myself.”
He stared at me, waiting for a response. I didn’t know what to say; finally, I decided on, “What did you tell Ms. McNally-Barnes?”
“Nothing! Well, no, I told her it was your choice—I hope you don’t mind. I just said you wanted the chance to work with another teacher so you could get a fuller experience.” Dale looked at me almost sadly. “I’ve had a great semester with you, and you’ve been a wonderful help. I just feel this is the best choice right now. For me.” He nodded definitively. “Yes. This is for me. I’m sorry if that sounds selfish, but this is something I just have to do.”
I nodded, too. “Okay.”
“Good! Good.” He stood and stuck out his hand. Uncertainly, I took it, and we shook hands across the desk. “Of course, you’ll be with me for the rest of the semester still, and it will be strictly professional. And I’ll always be happy to provide a reference or offer advice in the future.”
We were still shaking hands. I tugged back a little, and he released me.
“This is something I just have to do,” he repeated.
“I know,” I said. I smiled and wished him a good weekend and left the classroom, wondering why I felt so disappointed.
* * *
Despite the fact that Thanksgiving was less than two weeks away and most of the boys would be heading home to see their families, that weekend was Homecoming Weekend, and alumni—as well as parents and siblings (many of whom, the fathers and brothers anyway, were alumni)—were invited to campus for the last football game of the year. Friday night, a black-tie dinner was held in the dining hall—the most anticipated meal of the year, from what I’d heard. Saturday, after the game, there was a tailgate—or, rather, a disguised networking opportunity—with burgers and dogs. Sunday was high tea. My parents had been invited as well, had received the invitation in the mail—“Should we come?” my mom had asked. “No, no, that must have been a mistake,” I lied. “Students’ parents only.” I didn’t want them there, and not just because I was twenty-two and still embarrassed of them—that was something I’d hoped to have outgrown by that point. Every weekend felt like a possibility, a promise, for me to be with Kip, and Homecoming had already stolen one of the last precious weekends before Thanksgiving from me; why unsettle it further with more foreign invaders, with my parents?
The only redeeming aspect of Homecoming Weekend: I would get to see Kip’s parents.
After meeting with Dale, I changed into a white button-down and black pants and joined the other apprentices in the dining hall. We would serve as caterers for the event, a choice that felt both debasing and thrifty. “With a five hundred million dollar endowment, you think they’d be able to hire a catering staff,” Babs sniffed as the kitchen head—Rube, a flamboyantly gay graduate of the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park—handed out bow ties for us to wear.
The meal, however, was elaborate: three kinds of meat, three kinds of fish, bisques and salads and sautéed vegetables and a dozen dessert options and what I imagined to be very expensive red and white wines. We were allowed to make up a plate before setting up the dining room, and I ate more than I thought myself capable of consuming, ate until I felt sick and sluggish and hurrying around the dining room for the rest of the evening seemed impossible.
“Hungry?” Chapin asked, watching as I dragged one last forkful of dark-meat chicken through mashed potatoes and peas and stuck the whole mess in my mouth.
I swallowed without chewing more than twice. “I guess so.”
The truth was I barely remembered eating any of it. All I could think of was the possibility—the desperate hope—that Kip would introduce me to his family. It was, in my mind, pivotal: Introduce me, and he truly cared about me. Fail to introduce me, and he never did.
Though the dining hall was large enough to comfortably seat all the students and faculty and staff during a regular meal, extra tables were brought in to accompany the guests. I aimed a few tentative smiles at the girls as we shuffled tables around the room, but they—even ReeAnn—offered little more than grimaces back. Raj I couldn’t look at; we hadn’t spoken since he’d caught me in the Perkins stairwell nearly a week before. I knew he hadn’t told—I couldn’t even be sure that he had told the other girls; perhaps their grimaces were actually smiles distorted by my neuroses, perhaps everything was at once much better and capable of being much worse than I could ever imagine. But then what was he waiting for? Was he giving me a window of opportunity to explain, to save myself, or would anything I said only further incriminate me and convince him to act? I chose to do what I did best: avoid, evade, pretend nothing was amiss and that I would always be safe.
“Cupcake, anyone?” asked Rube, coming out with a tray.
Everyone else demurred. I ate two, first licking off the frosting, then peeling off the foil wrapper and eating soft sugary cake from the bottom to the top, and finally pinching the crumbs from the bottom of the foil. Soon, all my energy was focused on my roiling stomach, as I’d hoped would happen.
* * *
The students and their families and old crabby-looking alumni (“Trustees,” Chapin hissed in my ear with something like reverence, sounding strange coming from her mouth) filed into the room at six. I stood towards the back with the rest of the apprentices, waiting for our cue to circulate with wine. Technically, we weren’t supposed to serve the students, but if their parents okayed it (and most would; I imagined most of the boys came from households where liquor with dinner was as common as water), we’d have no choice but to consent. The bottle of Argentine chardonnay that I held perspired in my hands. My dinner had settled in my stomach like viscous lava, churning as I watched the door. I felt ill—Nervous? Humiliated? Who could be sure?—at the thought of serving him, his mother, his father; at the same time, a manic need to be near him possessed me.
Chapin poked me in the hip with her own bottle. “Too many cupcakes?”
“What?”
“You look like you’re going to barf.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t look away from the door. “I’m fine.”
She watched the door with me; she knew who I was looking for.
Clarence entered the room, his mom and dad looking exceptionally old, like grandparent-old. His father had too-long gray hair and small round tea glasses, worn without irony. His mother wore a long jean skirt with running sneakers, her gray hair plaited down her back. Clarence eyed the room desperately; unlike the other boys, no one was calling for him to join their table. His father lifted the giant Nikon around his neck and snapped a picture. My heart hurt for Clarence.
“Hey.” Chapin nudged me. I turned away from Clarence and followed her gaze to the door.
Mr. Kipling was deeply tanned, barrel chested, surprisingly short. Mrs. Kipling, in a green cocktail dress, had the loose upper arms and faintly distended gut of middle-aged women, but was laughing, dark-haired, beautiful. A taller, fuller, hairier version of Kip held the mother’s elbow—Adrian Kipling, visiting from Yale—and Kip followed up the pack, grinning and proud.
“I didn’t know he had a brother,” Chapin said. “Why don’t you go for him?”
I’d known he had a brother, of course. I’d looked up his profile, looked through his pictures. Though he was a senior, he was older than me, having just turned twenty-three—“He was held back in kindergarten for sniffing too much glue, the retard,” Kip had told me once. He played football at Yale, was a wide receiver. He’d already been awarded a Fulbright-Clinton Fellowship to study in Nepal after graduation. There was something untruthful in his face. I didn’t
have any interest in him.
I laughed nervously. “Yeah. Hah.”
Rube came up behind us, making me jump. “Perambulate, perambulate,” he said, twirling his finger around.
We set off in different directions around the room. I hated this, serving strangers—not because it was demeaning, but because I feared them. The students were intimidating enough; teamed with their parents, they were invulnerable. The parents themselves were even more terrifying. The mothers wore pearls, diamonds, shawls, huge rings on bony fingers, pointy shoes on bony feet. The fathers looked disgruntled, ready to pick a fight. I feared spilling, I feared interrupting, I feared their attention. The trustees looked the scariest, scowling at their empty plates. I stuck to the shabbiest-looking parents, the kindest-looking—“Would you care for chardonnay? Chardonnay, sir? Ma’am?” All the while I worked my way towards the table where the Kipling family sat with the Parks and the Keatings.
Finally I was a table away. The tables, rearranged in a tight configuration to accommodate the new guests, were so close that being a table away meant being close enough to reach out and touch him. Kip’s back was to me. Mr. Kipling was telling a joke, laughing prematurely. “So I told him—heh, heh—I told him he could go ahead and stick it up his ass!” Kip and Adrian laughed uproariously. “Frank,” Mrs. Kipling chided, but she couldn’t hide her smile. Mr. Kipling was red in the face, obviously pleased.
They were happy, I decided. I watched Kip laughing, grinning conspiringly with his father. They were happy and affectionate and close. They were the kind of family to whom Kip could introduce one of the Vandenberg teaching apprentices without further explanation. I took a step closer. I thought about what I could open with, something generous, something teacherly. So you must be pretty proud of your oratorical champion, huh? Hey, how do you feel about potentially having another Bulldog in the family? My tongue felt like a block of wood. I couldn’t pretend to be less than I was, not in front of the people who knew Kip best.
I wanted to be at that table more than anything. I wanted to be sitting beside Kip, not as his teacher, not as a guest, but as his. I wanted to be as much his as the fat shiny watch around his scrawny wrist.
“Merlot?” Chapin materialized over Frank Kipling’s shoulder, standing between him and Kip. Though less than a foot away, she didn’t turn to look at me, didn’t seem to be aware of me at all.
“Please.” Mr. Kipling gestured to his glass. “Now what’s your name?”
She filled it with a practiced hand. “Chapin Dunn.”
“Dunn. Dunn. Your grandfather wouldn’t happen to be…”
“Yes, sir, that’s him.”
“You don’t say!”
I didn’t know who Chapin’s grandfather was, and I didn’t particularly care. I watched her eyes flit over to Adrian as she talked, his eyes zeroing in on the two open buttons at the top of her shirt, the outline of a red lace bra through the sheer fabric. I was being punished, I knew, for my failure to act, for my failure to do as Chapin had advised me. Before Kip could see me, before I could give him the chance to either receive or rebuff me, I slipped back from the table, back into the bustle of the room. I turned to the table nearest me to find Clarence and his parents, sitting with what looked like the families of two first years. His father was taking pictures of the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and next to him, his mother was pressing the prongs of her white gold fork into her palm, testing the sharpness.
I approached. “Wine?” I asked dumbly.
The parents all shook their heads. Clarence waved. “Hi, Imogene.”
I waved back. “Hi, Clarence.”
“Mom, Dad, this is Imogene.” He gestured to me, and his parents turned to look at me and smiled, and his mom said, “Oh! Imogene! We’ve heard so much about you,” and I wondered what exactly Clarence had told them about me.
“Clarence told us about all the time you two spend together.” Mr. Howell wrapped his arm around his son’s shoulder and squeezed, and Clarence blushed, embarrassed and obviously pleased. “We’d love to take you out to lunch tomorrow, if you’re free.”
I looked between Mr. Howell and Mrs. Howell and Clarence and suddenly, horribly, I knew what was happening. Clarence had led his parents to believe I was his girlfriend, and it was because Clarence himself believed I was his girlfriend. It seemed absurd to me, impossible even, but then the moments that had led to Clarence’s presumption spooled before me like a movie reel: the ambulance ride, the drawings, the coffee dates. The shared bus seats (though Clarence’s seat was always the one available). The promise I’d made (though I still wasn’t sure what exactly I thought I could offer). I felt a mix of confused and indignant; I’d simply been nice to him, a friend, but he had misconstrued my good intentions and crafted a fantasy. “Clarence is a great student,” I blurted. “I’m busy tomorrow, unfortunately, but please enjoy your evening.”
All three Howell faces fell. Behind me, I could hear Chapin loudly say, “And it was so nice to meet you, Frank.” She knew I could hear her; it scared me, suddenly, just how much she knew. I turned my back on Clarence and hurried away.
Back in the kitchen, I grabbed Chapin by her elbow. “What was that about?” I asked.
“What was what about?”
“That.” I gestured to the room outside, to the families, to one family in particular. “Why did you…?” The question was too embarrassing to finish. Why did you prevent me from meeting Kip’s family? Why did you stop my fantasy from playing out as it was supposed to?
Chapin heaved a sigh and put her hand on my shoulder. “I was trying to protect you, Imogene.”
I shrugged her off. “From what?”
“Do you really need me to say?”
“Yes, apparently I do.”
Another sigh. “From disappointment.”
“You don’t think he would have introduced me?”
“I don’t think he cares about you the way you think he does.”
Rube passed between us, oblivious to the tension. “Perambulate, ladies, perambulate!” he sang.
Chapin picked up a new tray of glasses and smiled sadly at me. “I’m sorry, but I’m right.”
I crossed my arms, feeling childish. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember ever asking your opinion.” Self-righteousness overrode self-censorship; my disappointment was all consuming, and I didn’t give a second thought to my words.
“Real friends don’t wait to be asked their opinions,” Chapin said. She turned and walked out of the kitchen. After another minute, I joined her, staying as far away from the Kiplings as I could.
* * *
The Homecoming game against Brunswick School was an annual event, the cause of much excitement the next morning. I heard the band playing through my bedroom window, heard happy whoops as boys and their families made their way towards the stadium. I’d gone to the first two football games of the season; I’d worn my blue-and-yellow striped Vandenberg scarf, purchased from the bookstore, had sat with the other apprentices and cheered along with them. Back then, I’d cared about participating, about being seen. But by November, I made excuses not to go. For the Homecoming game, when ReeAnn knocked on my door, I called, “Food poisoning. Sorry.”
“Too many cupcakes,” Chapin sang back as she passed by my door. Even she was going to the game; I overheard her telling ReeAnn in the kitchen that Frank Kipling, a friend of her grandfather’s, had invited her to sit with him. She said this too loudly; she knew, again, that I was listening.
It was unseasonably warm out, a beautiful day. I wished it were overcast, raining, snowing even; it felt wrong to sit indoors when it was so nice out, guilt my parents had instilled in me during childhood. It was the same sort of guilt I felt when I slept past ten, when I napped longer than thirty minutes during the day—any way in which I misspent or squandered my time. Of course, that guilt had become increasingly easier to ignore.
I opened my laptop. I thought to go to Betsy Kenyon’s profile page, as I usually did, but instea
d I went to Kip’s. I was surprised to see that his status was active; he was online. Before I could think better of it, I messaged him. I didn’t feel the need to be cautious anymore.
Why aren’t you at the game?
He messaged back right away. About to leave.
I felt giddy for having received a response, light-headed even. Is Chapin with you guys?
Who’s Chapin?
She’s another apprentice.
Okay.
It occurred to me suddenly, alarmingly, that the conversation wasn’t going well. I felt frantic to save it. I haven’t seen you in a while.
My parents are here.
I was talking to a stranger. I figured, it being Homecoming Weekend and all. Haha.
A pause. Then, Gotta go.
His status went inactive. I stared at my screen, feeling the contents of last night’s dinner churn in my stomach anew. I’m not sure how long passed before my phone vibrated on my bed. Chapin, I figured.
But it was Kip. My parents are going back to their hotel after the game, before the post-tailgate. You should stop by.
I thought it best to clarify, as nothing seemed clear anymore. By your room?
Yeah.
A moment later, You were right, your friend is here. She’s trying to flirt with my brother. Too bad he has a girlfriend.
I lay on my bed and smiled at the ceiling with my phone cupped over my chest, willing the game to go by faster.
* * *
I dozed, and when I woke, it was dark. I felt panicked for a moment before I remembered how early darkness had begun to fall; it was still before five. Off in the distance, the band was playing the Vandenberg fight song, which meant we had won. I didn’t care. I pulled on my shoes and brushed my teeth and walked the familiar path to Perkins, to Kip.
I’d never gone during the day, had never been desperate enough to risk it, but with everyone lingering after the game for the tailgate I felt safe. That’s why it felt comical, inevitable, a punch line to a joke, when I opened the door and Raj stood before me.
“Imogene,” he said.
I didn’t speak.
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