by Ron Irwin
And then it started to rain. Hard. The clouds that had been sitting fat and heavy over the school just opened up, and I kept walking along, the rain warm and humid on my face. It was over in a few minutes but by the time I reached Channing’s, the pathway down to the shed was practically a river and part of the site was yellow-brown clay.
I looked in and saw that Channing had started to move his stuff into the shed; an old desk, a stack of pictures and his file cabinet. He had divided the back part out and his gardening tools and crap were out there, bags of fertilizer and the spades and the pitchfork and everything he’d need. It was a good shed. Solid. The basics were there and I’d started from nothing. Just a frame, a badly built one at that.
“What are you doing, Carrey?”
It was him. He was standing on the porch. I could just see his outline behind the rusted screen of the door. He looked out at me tentatively, as if I was some sort of official come to investigate his outbuildings. “It’s customary to knock on the front door when you visit somebody.”
“I wasn’t visiting.” I started making my way through the mud and over the wet grass until I was at the foot of his sagging stairs. “You called. I came.”
“Indeed. Come inside and get dry.” I was struck again by how dilapidated his kitchen looked. He opened the freezer door and I heard him rattling ice cubes, scraping trays against the gaseous frost. “Do you drink, Carrey?”
“If you’re buying.”
Channing grunted and poured me a shot of whiskey in one of the glasses he kept on top of the freezer, threw ice on top of it, and passed it behind himself. “Make it last, Carrey. I give this to you with complete deniability attached.”
I knew if I had one sip I’d feel it. Good. I sipped. Channing poured scotch over the ice cubes in his own glass, set the drink down on the counter, looked at it. “The picture in my office was taken at Gales Ferry. I was in six-seat. They moved me back from the stroke. We won by half a boat length. Not clear water, but enough to break them. It was one year before an Olympic year. Back then the selection was different. Much more arbitrary. We didn’t have the machines you have. Nothing, really, except boats.”
“You were the power seat.”
“We were snot nose brats. I’ve timed your boat. On good days you people could have taken us on the short run, just the four of you. Two men smoked on my freshman team, if you can believe that.”
“Did you go to the Olympics?”
“It was a different time, Carrey. I wanted to go to Henley, and we did, and we won there as well.”
“And then?”
“I believed I wanted to work. I went to law school at Harvard. Practiced law, briefly.” He smiled. “I was never disbarred. Or sued. I despise those rumors but at times they are useful. No, I simply quietly left the profession to teach. And coach. There was nothing untoward or dishonorable about it.”
“Thank you for telling me. I’ll keep mum about it.”
“I would appreciate that.”
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small card, no bigger than an index card, folded in half. It was cream colored, with a single crimson stripe across the top. He pushed it toward me but I didn’t open it. I looked at the embossed, heavy paper, then back at him. “What is it?”
“I am the messenger of greater things, Carrey.”
I unfolded it.
Charles,
Please ask Mr. Carrey if he would be interested in joining us next year.
I knew the signature, which wasn’t really a signature, just the printed first name of the Harvard coach.
“They know I’m interested. They’ve known for a year.”
“You deserve it, you know.”
“It’s because of you.”
“They’d seek you out.”
“They have no idea what happened on that bridge. Not really. I’m not sure they’d want any of us if they did.”
“Listen to me now, Carrey. Connor Payne was a prodigious rowing talent, one of my best, but a very troubled young man. I coached that boy for four years and I am deeply saddened by his death. I am angered by it. But I am not surprised by it. Do you hear me? And you should know that there was only one note sent to me from Cambridge. This one.”
“What about the others?”
“Neither Perry nor Wadsworth applied, it seems. And our Ruth has already said yes to New Haven. Much to Harvard’s eternal dismay.”
“What should I do?”
“No, Carrey. This is up to you. This is your decision alone.”
I looked at it again, then folded it along the crease. Channing waited. He did not look impatient, merely curious.
“Can I keep this?” I asked.
“You may.”
“It will be something to have.”
“They’ll be sorry to lose you. Do not be overly hasty in your decision, Carrey. What you have experienced has been very trying. Understand what you are turning down. Perhaps you need to take some time. You might feel differently after the summer.”
“I know what you’re saying, Mr. Channing, but I really think I may be finished with this sport.”
“Possibly you’ll change your mind.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I am obliged to remind you that you do not need to row if you accept their invitation, Carrey. Harvard is, in the end, an institution of learning.”
“I don’t work that way. You don’t either.”
He gazed out at the darkening mountains, at the land that had been here long before the houses, and the school. “Let’s drink to arcane principles.”
We stood on his porch drinking from those two old tumblers, a pretty hefty shot of whiskey each. He was doing it to give me time to reconsider, I knew, but I had made up my mind. I kept the letter, read it again, alone, in my dorm room, and then mailed it to my father. Years later I’d find it tacked up over his workbench, next to the debt I still owed him for the scull. My father would attach it using carpentry pins, one pounded into each corner. It would still be there when I cleared away those tools for good.
34.
I realized by the time Ruth and I walked into the dining hall that she had seconded me to be her date for the evening. I didn’t mind. Most of the other alumni were with their spouses. Toddlers lurked in the corners, bedtimes looming. They had set up two bars and there were sections of tables for each year. Ruth and I headed straight for one of the bars. She ordered a double scotch, I ordered a beer, and we stood at the periphery of three classes of Fenton students getting oiled up for the weekend. It was an oddly formal affair because half of the people there had never been to Fenton. There were a number of overdressed wives with strollers and portable bassinets and unfamiliar-looking men with Kangapouches for babies who had come with their alumnae wives. The drinks were served in plastic cups with the Fenton crest, and there was a surprisingly good selection of booze for a school that frowned on drinking. Ruth scanned the crowd, the plastic glass half up to her lips.
The headmaster was filtering through the alumni, in a khaki suit, smiling, genial, more of a salesman than I remembered him from years back. He also seemed smaller, and of course, older. He made his way around to Ruth and me and didn’t miss a beat. “Rob Carrey and Ruth Anderson. How have you been?”
“I’m surprised you remember us, Headmaster.” Ruth smiled at him as she said it and he gave her a look.
“Well, it would be hard to forget you both, now, I suppose. Did either of you go on to row in college?”
I shook my head, and Ruth, after a moment, shook hers. “I decided I didn’t want to worry about my weight anymore.”
“The coxswain’s lament,” he said.
“The protest of the compulsive anorexic, actually.”
His eyebrows shot up for a moment. He looked at me, rose on his toes, as if trying to match my height. He had rowed for Fenton as well, and had rowed at Princeton. “I’m surprised you chose to stop rowing, Rob. I remember you had big plans.”
“I t
ried some other sports.”
“I see. I always wished I had been good at other sports as well. I would actually like to play golf better than I do.”
“I hear it’s easy to pick up,” Ruth chipped in. She gazed at him, as if sizing him up. “What kind of alumni have our class been?”
“Your class has been very loyal. Very supportive of the school.”
“I don’t see many of us here today.”
“This is an awkward time in people’s lives. They have children, they are in the middle of their careers, time is precious. They return to the school when things have reached a more even keel.” His gaze swept the room once, hopefully, and then returned to her.
“When they have something to show for it, you mean.”
“That’s perhaps one way of putting it, yes.” He seemed to sigh. “I have been writing about John Perry this week. I have been trying to say something about his character.”
“You can say he was a very kind person.” Ruth looked at the headmaster evenly. “You can say he was a fine oarsman.”
“He went on to Penn State. Did either of you ever hear from him?”
“He went to U Penn, Headmaster.” Ruth looked at me as if for confirmation, then said, “We never really spoke after Fenton. I think everybody lost touch.”
“U Penn? Yes, of course. That’s correct.” He lifted himself on his toes again, as if physically registering the mistake. “He did not row, I learned.” The headmaster looked skyward. “The other boy from your year, Wadsworth, he did. He rowed at Williams. For two years. And the boy who joined you in the middle of the season, Mr. Leonsis, he rowed on the first four in Henley, after you graduated, and then went on to Trinity College in Hartford. I think he captained the team there.”
Ruth swirled the ice in her glass. I sensed her move slightly closer to me. I glanced over at her and thought I saw color high on her cheeks, her eyes a little brighter. I wanted to reach out and steady her, just touch her elbow so I’d be there for her. The headmaster looked at each of us, then at the room. “It’s sad that the tragedy of your year probably colors your memory of Fenton.”
Ruth giggled then. Really giggled, and took my arm, her fingers slipping down my forearm, as if to ensure I’d heard. Then she laughed, loud enough so that a few of the older alumni looked in our direction amiably, wondering what the joke was. She covered her mouth and looked away. “God,” she gasped. “Sad.” She squeezed my forearm then, hard, dug her nails into me.
He looked at us, from one to the other, and smiled. “Well, I hope this weekend helps bring you closer to the school.” And he walked away. Ruth watched him go, the man’s shoulders slightly rounded, looking for another group to descend upon, finding it only a few yards away from where we stood, two couples with strollers. Without taking her eyes off him, Ruth said to me, “I need another drink. Dewar’s, on the rocks. Like, right now.”
* * *
It turned out most of the rowers from our year did come back, kids from the JV and club boats, as well as quite a few from classes that were not officially part of the reunion—rowers from a year or two behind and ahead of us who remembered John with affection. I had simply not recognized them, but as the night wore on, and dinner was served and speeches made, a few of them stopped by our table, all of them with drinks in their hands. I was able to put the names to the faces only after a while, and most of them wanted to see Ruth anyway, who had gained a degree of notoriety as the only girl to ever cox the Fenton God Four. I also realized, with a sudden rush of admiration for his living memory, that almost all of the guys on John’s football team had shown up to pay their respects. He was well loved.
The rowers there had all gone on to row in college, it seemed. Harvard. Naval Academy. Princeton, Cornell, Trinity, Amherst. Some had rowed out of places I did not even know had rowing teams, like the University of Colorado and Colgate University. We’d gained weight, as a crew. Lost hair. Become less intense. The dropouts, the people who quit the sport, were not in attendance. Save for Ruth and me.
Ruth enjoyed the attention. She was also becoming swiftly less and less popular with the wives and female friends almost all of these guys had brought in tow. Ruth’s angularity, her swift New York humor, the fact she was getting almost raucously drunk, and the fact she looked like a college student, really did not sit well with the more sedate crowd that had shown up for the chapel service—the women in muted pastels and sensible shoes and baby daypacks with lukewarm bottles in the expandable netting under the block initials.
At one point, one of the guys, Bruce Ferry, who was wearing the prerequisite khakis and boat shoes and a canvas belt with red lobsters on it, collared me. He was radiantly healthy, badly sunburned, almost bald, the skin under the wisps of his blond hair peeling. He pressed a beer in my hand and made a show of slipping an arm around my shoulders and conspiratorially whispering in my ear, “Are you here with her? I didn’t remember her being so good looking. I always figured she was kind of, you know, out there…” He looked at me significantly, raised his eyebrows over his glasses. Then he examined me again, carefully, as if suddenly noticing he’d been talking to the wrong person, a stranger who had appeared bearing the name of a long ago face. We were all giving each other those looks, age making us strangers to each other, the bonds of memory faded with time and adulthood and now drink. “You ever go to the Olympics, Carrey?”
“Not even close.”
“Connor used to tell us you were the only Olympian we were likely to meet. It pissed him off.” He glanced over at Ruth, who was talking to a rower from a year behind us named David Forester, who went on to Brown. Her hand was on his shoulder and David’s partner, a woman in long, tan slacks and a red halter neck top, was shifting her purse from hand to shoulder while Ruth laughed. “Where did you, you know, go to college?” asked Bruce.
“I sort of took time off after I left Fenton.”
He nodded, not listening, his eyes on Ruth, in good humor, backslappingly drunk. “Keep an eye on her, okay? She’s getting hammered.” He grinned. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, right Carrey?” He looked down at his watch—one of those luminous Timexes that I coveted—before scanning the crowd while he took a pull from his bottle. He set it down and sighed heavily. “I have to find my wife. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’re staying in town and we have the baby. Full house at the inn.” He shook his head, walked away, slinging his seersucker blazer over his shoulder. I slid next to Ruth, who gave me a look and set her head gently on my shoulder, still looking at David, who was telling her something about property prices in New York since the crash. David looked at me and nodded once. It made me feel like an outsider to their clan, and I guess I was, the hired gun, the mercenary they had needed for one year. Most of the others had been through four years together at Fenton.
Ruth was crunching the ice from her empty cup. “David’s been telling me he can find me a great one bedroom on the East Side for a song. We’re talking under a million. I’m so tempted. I need a change.”
David smiled, looked pleased with himself and reached into his blazer. He took out a silver card holder and proffered a card to her between his index and middle finger … a strangely inappropriate gesture that clearly annoyed the woman in red. “I’m really not kidding. Call me. Whenever, okay?”
He backed away from Ruth, responding, finally, to his date, who was tugging playfully but insistently on his fingers, drawing him toward her. Ruth watched him go, breathed out. “I think I need some air.”
The room was suddenly hot with the press of bodies. I watched as she licked her lips, arranged the cocktail stirrer, napkin, and plastic tumbler on a table beside us, took her purse methodically from the back of a chair, shook her hair back, and grinned up at me as if she had accomplished something. Her hand slipped under my arm again, and I was conscious of how small it was, how aristocratic. She held on to me while I guided her through the crowd, through the sixty percent of the reunion attendees who did not remember us, me clearing the way. W
e stopped at the bar and she pointed at the bartender, who looked at us quizzically, and then realized she was pointing at a bottle of white wine behind him. “My husband wants a bottle of wine, bartender.” The kid smiled, and I realized it was just some student from Fenton, or maybe a townie they had drafted in. Seventeen years old. He grabbed the bottle by the neck and set it between us, pulled out the cork before handing it to me along with two wineglasses. Ruth smiled at the kid and took my arm, waiting for me to part the crowd for her again. I wondered if she should be drinking. If I should, for that matter.
* * *
When we got outside to the porch where the smokers were, I noticed the headmaster standing on the grass, rising once again to his tiptoes as he spoke to two young women who were laughing, probably too hard, at what he had to say. They were new alumni, only five years out of Fenton, fresh from college, enjoying the novelty of drinking on the school property. Ruth let me watch them for a second, her lips were pressed together and she was breathing deeply. One hand was against the top of her chest. “Walk me somewhere,” she said, but she wound up leading the way, across the quad, past Middle Dorm and then North Dorm. We stopped so she could take off her sandals and she walked the rest of the way barefoot. The dining hall behind us seemed like a dark ship on a sea of blue-green night grass, lit up, full of strangers.
We were heading toward the Rowing Cottage, which had a station wagon parked in front of it. The cottage had been converted into faculty housing the year after we graduated. There were new steps leading up to the door and the whole building had been repainted a duck egg blue.
“It seems smaller,” Ruth said. “I can’t believe they let students sleep in a house right there on the water. Especially Connor. My God, the faith they must have had in us. That place has lawsuit written all over it.” She squinted at the cottage, stood straighter to see it.