Nearly a full month passed before J.R. III invited my parents to dinner at his home in town. He told them the affair would be business mixed with pleasure. They accepted and were picked up by a chauffeur and driven to their host’s waterfront property, a now legendary landmark in town, and where he still resides today. There, over drinks and hors d’oeuvres, Roarick got down to it, submitting his proposal. He had one-hundred prime acres in town; it was good land with great possibility, he told them. It needed some upkeep - a little mowing, planting, painting, rebuilding - but it was nothing a few dollars couldn’t take care of.
“I see your school on my property,” Roarick told them. “Think of it as your own playground. Do what you know how to do, however you want to do it, with no interference from me.”
This was a real offer. A once-in-a-lifetime offer. They knew Roarick could make it happen - a few phone calls, probably; maybe a meeting with his accountant over coffee and brandy. They knew, running on romantic grandeur and the fumes of flower power, that they could bring their tenuous vision to light, that they could play the parts of academic and therapeutic luminaries until they paid their dues for real and could legitimize their positions as overseers of their own school. For now, though, they thought, hell yes. Toasts were made that evening. Hands were shaken. A deal was sealed.
Either Rollie had the pool table inside the pavilion re-felted, or else he bought a new one. Cupping my hands against the window and peering into the rec room, I can’t tell. But the felt used to be green and now it’s a deep, flashy red. Who knows if they do this anymore, but when I was a kid, the HAS would have an annual pool tournament in the spring. Faculty versus students. And every year the Old Man would drag me to the event as though it was a red-carpet gala. During the walk over from our house, he’d talk about the student players like they were first-round draft picks from some elite billiard squad. The entire affair bored me to tears. I’d always end up slumping in one of the sofas and removing a paperback from my back pocket. Then I’d quietly read next to some melancholy kid who’d stare off into the void with an agonized expression on his face. The loud crack of the pool balls would occasionally jar me. So I’d look over at the Old Man, who was often eliminated after the first round, but still liked to rally around the action that would dominate the room. He never seemed to notice, or mind, that I wasn’t part of it. On our walk home, he’d talk about the student who won - he always saw to it that the stubby little gold trophy went to a HASER - as well as all of the close shots and lucky breaks. Never, though, did he comment on my apathy.
It was only until I was older that I was able to fully appreciate the pavilion. When the school shuts down for vacation - two weeks around Christmas, two in March, June, and August - the student body goes home. Rollie encourages the kids to use this time to employ whatever coping strategies they’ve learned in therapy. Who knows the ratio of success stories to catastrophes during these reprieves, but I do recall my father getting frantic phone calls from parents, pleading with him to allow their child to return early. The Old Man, firm in his conviction that families need to weather the acrimony until the break is over, never relented. This, for me, was a God-send. It meant the campus would be deserted. I took full advantage of this. The pavilion, as far as I could see, was the only real perk the school could offer me. Rollie would thus give me my own key, allowing me access whenever I felt the desire to shoot pool or play some foosball with friends. We’d throw back some shitty second-rate beer while reveling in having the place to ourselves. Though my disgust for the HAS was known among my peers, I was nevertheless conflicted when one of them, Pete Slattery, spat a wad of phlegm on the pavilion’s floor one evening.
A far more memorable time was when I brought along Tiffany Luster, a doe-eyed, busty brunette with a killer smile and a penchant for fellatio. Hardly a neophyte - even at just seventeen - she was rumored to be something of a teenage prodigy in this realm. And though Erin, my first, was my only other means of comparison - she had broken up with me our senior year to date a University of Connecticut soccer star - I felt I had no right to challenge such an accolade.
Suddenly, in the midst of my pornographic musing, I’m tapped hard on the shoulder. Turning around, I’m face-to-face with a short, pudgy woman with shoulder-length hair and a red bandana wrapped around her forehead. She wields one of those long police flashlights, and even though daylight has fully emerged in a quiet, catlike furtiveness, she clicks its black button on and off, shining a sharp sword of light off to her side and into the overhanging branches. A walkie-talkie dangles from her side, pulling at her too-tight jean shorts, which are bursting with pale, pasty flesh. This, clearly, is the Old Man’s top-notch security.
She stares me down, pressing me with a wiry, loathsome look. I catch a glance at her shadow, a bulbous tar spill that grows out from behind her, making a mess of the cement walkway.
“And your business here is what exactly?” she asks. “In other words, can I help you with something?”
“I was just looking around,” I tell her, smirking over her truculence. “Reminiscing, really.”
“This campus is private property,” she tells me, holstering her flashlight. “In other words, you can’t be here.”
I tell her she’s doing a hell of a job in keeping the place safe from crazy people. Then I add that they could hurt the other crazy people. She finds none of this amusing, so I relent and tell her I’m Rollie’s son from Chicago.
“We’ll see about that,” she said, lifting the walkie-talkie from her side. “In other words, stay put.”
She calls what she refers to as home base, asking that they contact the boss to see if he’s expecting his son. When she’s done with the call, she continues to stare at me. This time more pensively, like she’s trying to place whether she’s seen me before. Gone is the hard, distrustful look. Clearly she believes me. But she has to follow procedure, I’m sure. After a few moments, a man’s voice comes back to her, saying it’s okay, adding that Rollie is at home and has been waiting for me; he wants me to walk over, the voice tells her. She clips the walkie-talkie to her side and continues to turn the flashlight on and off.
“I didn’t know Rollie even had a son.”
I nod and walk past her, apologizing for any trouble I might’ve caused. When I’m barely a few feet away, she calls out to me:
“Chicago, huh? I’ve never been before. I hear it’s a fun city.”
I stop walking and wheel around to face her.
“It’s not,” I tell her, shaking my head. “In other words, it sucks.”
The Old Man is standing on his front porch, drinking from a bright, yellow mug, staring out at the road, which runs parallel a couple hundred feet away. He’s dressed for the day, wearing a pressed black short-sleeved shirt, khaki pants, and a black tie, which has dripping silver beads of water as its pattern.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he asks, setting the mug on the railing. “Snooping around like a goddamn cat burglar after what this place is going through. Do I need to tell you how on edge my staff are? And the kids? You know better than to sneak around like that. Louise was gonna call the cops, you know. I should’ve had her shoot you.”
The Old Man looks good. Tired, maybe. And certainly worried. But fit and healthy. His skin has already turned to that pie crust brown it turns every summer, even after only a few days of digging around in his gardens. It looks like he’s dropped a few pounds since I last saw him four years ago. I wonder if he thinks it’s a shame that it’s been so long. I wonder if I do, too.
“You look good,” I tell him, my voice laden with surprise.
I begin to think about my own appearance and what’s changed in the last few years. I now wear glasses, which I tried to avoid for some time, and I wear my hair a little shorter than I might’ve when Rollie
last saw me, convinced this will make imminent graying less apparent.
He offers me some green tea, which I refuse, so he takes me on a tour of the campus. I have neither the heart nor the energy to tell him I’d just completed my own private one when Louise, in all her chubby glory, came upon me at the pavilion.
As we start walking around the place, things begin to emerge from their dusky a.m. withering and come to life. There’s a maintenance man pitching a freshly painted sign in front of the Minnie House, which bears the dormitory’s name in straight, neat, yellow letters. His name is Diego and the Old Man introduces me, calling me his long lost son from Chicago. Diego, smiling - I can tell his English is shaky at best - offers his hand, which I accept before we move on.
“We’ve had the inside of every dorm updated. New bathroom fixtures; new carpets; mostly new furniture, too.”
A young woman, probably in her early twenties, wearing tight black shorts and a long-sleeved shirt, is race-walking on the narrow road that cuts through the heart of the campus. She’s wearing earbuds, and I can hear the bass and drums of her music as she flashes a smile at us and moves briskly past. The Old Man tells me her name is Carrie; she teaches math and resides at the Helen House.
Each dormitory has two staffers, both of whom are also teachers. They work in the dorm on a rotating schedule; the first will be on duty one night, fielding complaints, breaking up fights, pleading with wired, rambunctious insurgents to close their eyes and go to bed - as well as work the following morning, having similar responsibilities - before switching with their counterpart. Weekends, where the staff clocks in dozens of weary hours, function the same way: one weekend on, one weekend off. It seems like a grueling schedule, which is probably why the turnover rate is so high. Teachers stick around, on average, two to three years. Any more than that and there will be a need to start usurping the kids’ meds: one for you, two for me…
The Old Man continues to point out improvements and additions. The gym floor was stripped and refinished. A small plot was cleared behind the Helen and Minnie Houses, where a Gazebo has been installed. A new garden of impatiens here. A new walkway there.
“We’ve even got t-shirts now. And take a guess what it says on them?”
“School’s mission statement.”
“You’re a goddamn clairvoyant.”
“Seems like you’re spending a lot of dough on the place. Too much, maybe.”
Since he doesn’t own the school, every improvement made, every nickel spent, every headache and backache endured, is strictly in the name of J.R. III.
“It’s money well spent.”
What a saint he is. Just like some superhero or fairy-tale character. Do for others no matter the cost. Be selfless. Be righteous. Be magnanimous. What lessons. What inspirations. We’re not living in one another’s worlds. We never have, either.
Money is something we don’t often talk about. And though I know he’s not hurting, and never has, I couldn’t say what he’s worth. He lives simply. The car he drives and the clothes he wears are modest. He doesn’t travel or gamble or make unwise investments. He could easily splurge and buy a villa in St. Thomas, or maybe that ‘59 Thunderbird he’s fantasized about over the years. None of this appeals to him. Decadence. Self-reward. These do not register with the man.
“Well, I suppose when you’re collecting $100,000 per student, you can afford to buy a few new windows or desks or gallons of paint. Right?”
Ignoring my comment, he puts his hand on my back - the first physical contact we’ve made since seeing one another - and eases me into resuming our tour. We walk behind the Joni House, where two female students are crouched by the bulkhead door, smoking cigarettes and talking in low whispers. Rollie steers me in their direction. They don’t extinguish their smokes when we approach them. One of the girls is pretty with straight, shoulder-length hair and high cheekbones that look to be chiseled from white slate. She clutches a pack of Marlboros and a chrome lighter. The other girl is a behemoth with a long face and dark, brooding eyes.
“I see Alyssa here is a fine influence on you, Desi,” the Old Man says.
The girl I imagine to be Alyssa - the attractive one - rolls her eyes and exhales a steady stream of smoke. The large girl, Desi, at least makes an effort to show her shame by hiding the lit cigarette behind her back.
“Does Tennille know where you girls are?” Rollie asks.
“She thinks we’re taking out the trash,” says the pretty girl, still smoking. “She’s clueless.”
Rollie puts his hand out and asks for their cigarettes. They both stand up. Alyssa takes a final drag before dropping the butt and handing over the pack and the lighter. Desi extinguishes hers into the ground before flicking it behind her.
“A real nasty habit,” says the Old Man, crushing the pack in his hand. “And something I think we’ve spoken about one too many times. I think we need to look into that nicotine gum. It worked for your pal Sloane.”
Alyssa, I realize, is staring at me. She asks my father who I am. He again introduces me as his long lost son from Chicago. He tells her that I’ll be working at the Hundred Acre School for the time being. She stares another moment and then tells me I should go back to Chicago.
“Haven’t you heard there’s a killer on the loose?” she asks. “And it could even be a HAS student. Who the fuck knows, it could even be me. Or Desi.”
Desi’s mouth turns into a fleshy, oblong hole as she shoots her friend an incredulous stare.
“Smoking and swearing,” says the Old Man, his voice filled with stern affection. “Going for Miss Congeniality again this year, Alyssa?”
The girl rolls her eyes and tells him she’d rather go blind and insane. The Old Man wishes the girls a pleasant morning and says he’ll see them at breakfast. As we turn away, Alyssa calls out to me, addressing me as Rollie’s long lost son from Chicago:
“I was serious about what I told you before. You should go back to Chicago. I would.”
The girls turn away and walk around the house and out of sight. My father and I continue our walk. He tells me about both students. Desi, the heavy one, suffers from severe depression and has struggled with a school phobia her entire life. When she was in eighth-grade, she tried to stab one of her teachers with a broken test tube; that was two years ago.
“She’s made a lot of progress.”
As for Alyssa, she has a clinical diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.
“It means she’s impulsive as hell. And she struggles with interpersonal relationships. Rapid mood changes - you name it.”
The Old Man adds that she’s attempted suicide a handful of times. On the upside, he tells me proudly, she has yet to make any attempts while a student at the HAS, which has been for just over eight months.
“You can imagine how our recent tragedy is affecting these kids,” he says. “They’re kids who need stability and safety. This has really fucked with them. We’re naturally concerned that some of our good work might be undone. And we’re going to do whatever it takes to see that that doesn’t happen.”
As we approach the Winnebago, Rollie asks if I notice anything different about it. I study it for a moment before shaking my head. The tires, he tells me. They’re new. He laughs at himself for the purchase, but adds that he no longer has to refill the air every few weeks.
“Looks pretty good,” he said. “Doesn’t it?”
Carefully running his hand along its side, he mentions that he has it washed every week or so by Adam and Matt, two handy students who regularly try to coax him into letting them get under the vehicle’s hood. Scoffing, he tells me how the boys swear they can restore it to running condition. My stomach suddenly grumbles, which reminds me I haven’t eaten
anything since a granola bar a few hours earlier.
“When’s breakfast?” I ask, looking at my watch.
Tolerating Rollie’s passions - his students as well as nostalgia over my mother - will be sufferable only with a plate of food in front of me. He scrapes something off the Winnebago with his fingernail before we move along towards the baseball field, where we stop in front of the yellow police tape. My father puts out his hand as if to say here you have it.
“The coroner’s report isn’t in yet,” he tells me. “So nothing’s official. But I have a friend downtown and he’s hinting at a strangulation. We’ll see.”
He curses a bit and says a prayer for the dead girl, Nicole D’Ambrosio.
“One hell of a way to begin the summer, don’t you think?” he says.
“I don’t even know what to say.”
“Listen,” he says, putting his hand on my back, “what’s that thing about bad luck coming in threes? Because we had something happen here a few weeks ago with one of our dorm staff, a guy named Dimitri.”
We continue our walk as he launches into the story of his former employee, Homer House dorm staff and English teacher, Dimitri Ames, a young man he hired five months earlier, right after the new-year. He was just out of college, the Old Man tells me, and a talented kid: He’s a skilled martial artist; plays the piano; lacrosse; and is an expert sailor and fisherman.
Everybody’s Out There Page 5