So how to explain to Wes, in my fifteen-year-old world, this complex, shameful, hateful, desperate, lonely, and confusing relationship with the one person who was always supposed to be on my side, standing up for me, supporting and defending and nurturing me? For none of these was she doing, and none of these was she even attempting. Yet to the outside world, she seemed to be your average, every day mother. Well, not exactly average. In the world I know now, the world of my grandmother years, the world that’s gone way past what I knew as a child, these things are talked about, written about, discussed on TV and played by famous actresses in movies. Everything is out in the open now. But in those days, when I was a teen, what happened in people’s personal lives was considered private and even if you wanted to talk about certain things, you couldn’t. It was like some unwritten law prevented everyone from bringing up certain topics. So outside of a few politicians and reporters, no one knew about John Kennedy’s affairs or that certain famous people were alcoholics or drug addicts or had sexual preferences for little boys or little girls or abused their children. We were all protected from these images. The world was cleansed for us. Except inside the home, inside the family, inside the lives of people, yes, there, these things went on and no one talked about them.
The moon had risen higher by then and was moving beyond the windows to a position in the sky that put it over the roof. Our eyes had become used to the dim light in the Social Room and we sat huddled together on one corner of the couch, Wes with his arm around me, my feet tucked in between two of the couch cushions. Wes had waited patiently for me to answer his question about the letter from my father but I didn’t know how to begin.
“Just tell me,” he said, and ran a finger down my cheek. “Whatever it is, it can’t be all that bad.”
“The letter I got just said my mom is in the hospital and I’ll have to go to my aunt and uncle’s for Thanksgiving. That’s all.”
“Well, that’s not so bad, except about your mom being in the hospital. What’s wrong with her? I mean is it serious?”
“You don’t understand,” I said and shook my head. “She’s in the hospital again.”
I knew he didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, wouldn’t understand. How could he? How could anyone? I couldn’t understand it and I’d been living with it ever since I could remember.
“So it is something serious then? I’m sorry. But she always got better before, right? So she’ll be okay. I mean she got out of the hospital before, right?”
I shook my head again. “How can I explain it to you? It’s not like she’s sick the way you think. It’s not that kind of hospital. She’s not physically sick.”
“Well, what is it then?”
“She gets funny.”
“Funny how?”
“Not right. Not herself.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t. You can’t. No one can. So let’s not talk about it anymore. Let’s go to the dance.” I slid my feet out from between the cushions and slipped them into my shoes.
“Wait a minute.”
I turned to Wes, hoping this tension would go away and never creep between us again. And then I hated my mother. For making me feel this way. For all those times she made me feel wrong when I had no idea what I was wrong about . . . just that I was wrong. It was a terrible thing to be punished when the authority wouldn’t or couldn’t tell you what the crime was and makes you suffer as if you had done something simply because the authority, whoever that is, has the power and control over you. It might be easier to understand if there was a profit motive involved. Or if there was the threat of anarchy. We were heading into a time when that threat would be used as an excuse for all sorts of mischief and damage. But that was a government. Not a mother.
I remember being shut up in my room before breakfast until after dinner with nothing to eat or drink because I had done something. I don’t remember ever doing anything that would warrant such treatment. I was neither a thief, nor a drug user, nor promiscuous; I did not talk back or wreak havoc on the house or burn things in my wastebasket. I lost a watch that my mother had given me in second grade. I was sure there was some retribution for that. On her birthday, I once gave my mother a beautiful, very fine cashmere scarf that was large enough to be a wrap. It had delicate crewel stitching of flowers and birds at the ends. I think it came from India. I was thirteen at the time. She opened the box, lifted out the scarf, looked at me with a kind of scowl on her face and said, “I don’t need anything like this.” With that she put it back in the box and handed it back to me. I think that hurt more than all the screaming and punishments.
So it wasn’t going to be easy to explain to Wes why my mother was not like his.
“Explain it to me. I want to know. Where do your aunt and uncle live?”
“Oh what’s the difference? I have to go there for Thanksgiving and that’s all there is to it. My dad won’t be home and my mom will be in the hospital. So I can’t go home.”
“How do they know how long she’ll be in the hospital? I mean when my brother had his appendix out they told us when he would be able to come home. So how come they don’t know with your mom?”
“Will you just let it go for now? I’d rather be at the dance than think about all this stuff.”
I stood up and was about to walk away when Wes said, “I thought you trusted me. I mean at the trestle and all.”
So I turned around, and in the fading moonlight I looked at him, but his face was in shadow and I couldn’t tell if he was angry or what.
“I did trust you. I do trust you. I just don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, Wes, you can’t possibly understand. You have this nice normal family with this nice normal mother. You have everything just right. And I . . .”
“You what?”
“I don’t. Okay? I just don’t. Let’s leave it at that.”
EIGHTEEN
The Last Dance
THAT NIGHT HUNG OVER US LIKE THE RISING HALF -MOON, half-bright and glowing, half-dark and unfathomable. We held hands walking to the gym, in sync and out of touch at the same time. I longed to be back at the trestle, in his arms, no need for words, only the clanging metal above as the train thundered along. The closer we came to the gym, as I heard music over the loudspeaker, a feeling of dread enveloped me. Wes squeezed my hand. I knew he was trying to reassure me and I also knew he had no idea what I was facing, nor could he possibly unless he moved into my house as a small child and grew up with all that I had experienced.
Just before we got to the gym steps and the dance monitors who would be watching our every move to be sure no signs of physical affection occurred between us, he put his arm around me and kissed my cheek.
“I do understand,” he whispered but to me it seemed more a whisper of uncertainty, as if he was trying to convince me— or himself—of an intimacy that I had never acknowledged. A part of me had closed off years before I ever met Wes and no one could have opened that door in those years. Touching my body was allowed. Touching my hurt was off limits, even to myself. The safer course was a cynicism that I wore like armor, and a knowing sophistication that was only as deep as the milieu I had been born into rather than anything I felt I had accomplished on my own.
I guessed he was trying to see inside my world beyond Foxhall and maybe that was enough. At least for that evening, at that time, for where we were. Still the feeling of impending doom that had settled inside me didn’t lift. At that moment, I thought it meant the inevitable would overtake us, that time away from each other—even a short break—would irrevocably untie the connection we had and I would be left floating. At fifteen, every little word, or touch, or glance carried such import that it could shatter the moment into tender fragments or imbue it with a kind of ecstasy.
The others were in the gym already. Daria and Tim huddled in a far corner in some replica of dancing, determined to make the most of the last dance before Thank
sgiving break. Tim would go home to Beverly Hills and Daria to Southport, Connecticut, to what I considered her cushy life, where I believed she had at least a Beemer waiting for her in one corner of a five-car garage situated just to the side of the pool and barbecue pit. Over Christmas some of us would get together away from school, especially the ones who lived in or near New York or whose parents welcomed school friends to stay for a few nights. We’d all go to shows or just hang out in the city. But Thanksgiving was known as family time so when we scattered we’d stay apart four days. Four days away from prep school seemed like an eternity once you’d become acclimated to your friends and the school routine. I guess it was like any regimentation—army or jail—where you became part of the mill, each cog working in its own way inside the machine of life in an enclosed system, institutionalized, in our case within a privileged class of elites, although Quaker life was expected to be anything but elite. We weren’t like the kids at Exeter or Choate, especially in the early sixties before those schools went coed and we wouldn’t be together at all, girls and boys. That was one of the reasons we, or our parents, had opted for Foxhall. That, and what was deemed a “family” atmosphere, inclusive and supportive.
Wes and I joined the group, milling around at the edges of the floor. Stocky was working on Jan at the moment, a big push to get her alone one more time before the break. Brady and a senior named Michael Keating had just broken up. I wasn’t sure why, but that left Brady open and Stocky was also making moves on her when Jan wasn’t paying attention. He may have been crude but he was buddies with all the cool boys, so we let him dog us around and every once in a while he managed to get somewhere with one of the girls. He could be charming, if obvious.
Faith had come to the dance with a really sweet boy name Steve Lippincott. He was from a fourth-generation Foxhall family and came from Quaker bluebloods. Jan whirled and dipped out on the dance floor with Josh Lichtenstein, one of a small group of Jewish boys from New York, and a Foxhall dancing star. This was the only place she ever even talked to him. He looked completely absorbed in whatever combination of ballroom dances they were blending. I knew Jan didn’t care about him particularly because she’d said, “He’s a good Saturday night partner as long as we’re in the gym.” We’d laughed and moved seamlessly to some other thoughtless barb about someone else. Much later in life, Josh would run one of the biggest corporations in the world and be worth a few billion dollars. But in the gym that night, his gift was dancing and that was all we cared to know.
The gym was crowded for this last dance before we’d part. The music was sweet. Lots of kids came stag and stood around the edges of the floor in groups, just hanging around or talking as best they could above the music. After the dance was over at nine, there would be a movie in the Assembly Room, a serious movie about murder and racial prejudice. The title was Sapphire. At Foxhall we were rarely treated to entertainment that had no social message. We were supposed to think about the ills of the world and what we could do about them. A large part of being a Quaker means practicing faith in tangible ways. We were supposed to be activists for the greater good. Which was why, that morning, without telling anyone, I had surreptitiously taken a pen to the posting board outside Bleaker’s office where notices were taped or pinned for everyone to see, and signed up to work in a Philadelphia soup kitchen over Thanksgiving break. It was easy. I pulled off one sign up sheet and wrote my name and placed it in a box in the dean’s office. If accepted, anyone who volunteered would be bussed there and put up at a local Quaker family’s house for the holiday. I didn’t yet know who else would be going. Not any of my friends, I was sure of that. Probably only exchange students or kids who’d come from countries where Thanksgiving meant nothing or were too far to fly there and back for only four days. Definitely not Wes. I liked to think all the education about Quaker values was making me a better person. In truth, after my father’s letter, I didn’t want to face going to my aunt and uncle’s house, to see the brave faces they’d put on for me, to think about my mother being sick yet again, away at a holiday, our home disrupted (for the umpteenth time) by her inexplicable illness, my needs shunted aside and everyone focused on her and her problems.
At the movie, Wes and I sat together way in the back of the balcony. As soon as the lights dimmed he put his arm around me and began to rub the back of my neck. It was nine-thirty on Saturday night. We would leave Foxhall on Wednesday morning. On Monday and Tuesday I had tests and papers due. This was the last time that Wes and I would be together until after Thanksgiving break. I still felt a distance between us. I wondered, there in the dark with the movie credits rolling by up on the old screen—apparently it was a British movie, which was kind of a novelty, and a re-cent release, another novelty for us—if I had put up this space between us or if it had happened on its own. Or, a much worse thought, if Wes was pulling away.
As the sensation of his fingers on my neck spread down through my body, it occurred to me that he had never mentioned the mattress room, never said he could get the key or asked me to meet him there. I turned to look at him but he was watching the movie. I reached up and twined my fingers through his but he seemed not to notice.
I leaned close to his ear. “Do you want to leave?”
He shook his head. And then . . .
“Do you?”
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to feel close to him. I wanted him to feel the same way I did. I wanted not to feel this crushing sense of something being over. I wanted not to feel.
“Yes.” I said it with a nod and started to get up. There was no one sitting near us so no one noticed when we picked our way to the aisle and slipped out the door.
After the dark Assembly Room the light startled me like a camera flash. I blinked and leaned against the wall. This was a weird space outside the balcony. At either end of it was a door leading to one of the girls’ halls. There was also a fire door to the stairs leading either up to the fourth floor, or down. On the level below us was the Social Room. But up here, there was nowhere to go in this no man’s land so we stood there getting accustomed to the bright light.
“Well?” Wes finally said.
The air felt heavy, or maybe it was my limbs, or my heart. I cleared my throat and said, “Let’s go to the Social Room.” My voice sounded strange, like something was wrapped tightly around my neck. Either Wes didn’t notice, or I was imagining it. Or maybe he did notice but chose not to say anything. These thoughts built a kind of panic of what ifs. But I had made a decision and I would follow through with it so we pushed the fire door and headed for the second floor.
The Social Room was empty.
“Everyone must be at the movie,” I said.
Wes slumped down in a cushy old armchair. He stared at his hands, which he had placed on his knees. I turned off the overhead lights leaving only the standing lamps on, which gave me more the sense of a living room and less of an institutional feeling. Then I sat down in a chair near Wes and leaned forward.
“Wes,” I began.
“Look, you don’t have to say it. I’ll make it easy on you. Anyway, I’m leaving early on Tuesday to catch a plane so we don’t even have to see each other after tonight if you don’t want.”
“You’re leaving Tuesday? Everyone else is leaving Wednesday morning.”
“Yeah, well my mom made some arrangement for Thanksgiving up in Sonoma so I have to fly to San Francisco a day early.”
I hated it when Wes seemed far away, when he got a certain look on his face. It was a combination of worry and isolation, a slight knitting of his eyebrows and a downward cast of his eyes, his shoulders set hard and it felt to me like he had some invisible barrier around him. I had noticed it the first time after he’d started walking me to study hall—we’d meet at the door to Bedford Hall which had the biggest classroom and thus was the designated study hall—we had developed a routine. He arrived first and stood to the side of the doorway off the concrete path beyond the arc of the outdoor light and I would come ar
ound from the side of the building because my dorm faced the side of Bedford. Concrete paths crisscrossed the campus connecting dorms, gyms, academic buildings and the paved road that led from the street outside campus. This road snaked around the buildings and off down the hill behind the dorms and skirted the edge of the woods then came back up on the far side of campus behind the outdoor graduation theatre and met up with another road in and out of the school. The whole thing formed a big circle, which also connected to parking lots, the infirmary, and the back of the kitchen where trucks backed up to a loading dock for deliveries.
As I came around to the front of Bedford—we had to meet in front because the side doors were locked at night— Wes would slip his arm around my waist and pull me to the tall bushes and we’d kiss and he’d sneak his hands under my sweater or jacket and feel my breasts. He called it getting his just desserts for coming out at night. We both found it hard to concentrate after this.
One night I said, “We shouldn’t do this. What if we get caught?”
“Who’s going to catch us? No one’s going around poking in the shrubbery.”
I giggled at the word shrubbery and he leaned down to kiss me again.
“But it makes it hard to concentrate on studying.”
“For me, not for you I’ll bet.”
He was wrong about that. And he seemed able to turn it off when it came to actually getting the books open and homework done.
The Other New Girl Page 12