"Cigarette?" Alec asked, coming out of reverie.
"No. Let's say good-by to the theater and go."
They went down to the stage, each going to a separate wing. They walked toward each other, meeting mid-stage and shaking hands. Despite the sentimentality, or because of it, they were moved by the moment. It caught briefly, powerfully, the range of that life.
Raul had to take four finals; for the first three, he went. He took them with abandon, feigning nervousness. How he loved the calm that preceded the storm he would create. The last day would be the math final. A pity, he wrote in his diary, for it would intrigue me. He arranged with Jeff to go to his house for the night after the test. He asked his parents for permission, and they agreed. Westchester, Raul thought, that's far enough.
He dressed, familiarly, in black and went to Mike & Gino's. The group couldn't believe he was serious, but when he didn't leave with them, they were sure. Bill, before leaving, said, "That's it, then."
Raul nodded.
"I'll see ya," Bill said, a hand uplifted.
Raul returned the gesture. When left alone, Raul said out loud, "An odd generation that says good-by forever, as casually as a good night."
Jeff, Raul having revealed his plan, hurried down the hill after finishing the test. But they had to wait for Jeff's ride home. Eating lunch, listening to the old songs on the jukebox, Raul was intensely happy, boron hysteria.
They reached Jeff's house, and when they had been there barely an hour, Raul's parents called. Rafael Sabas, his red face vividly outlined in Raul's mind, yelled, "You're not going to that school any more. I don't care how much you plead with us, you're not going to waste our money like a spoiled brat. And I want you to come home immediately. Get the next train…"
Raul, who had been remarkably calm up to this point, rumbled with anger, "Wait a minute. I don't care if I don't go there. I want it that way. But I'll come home tomorrow…"
"Raul"—his father's voice mounted in anger—"you'll come home right this minute. Do you understand me? I'm your father, you'll do what I say. Come home immediately."
Raul's voice squirmed, each submissive note winning the night at Jeff's. Divided against himself, he couldn't stop the flow of fear that vomited out of him. To meet his father's contempt and arrogance with equanimity had, long ago, been an ambition that surpassed all others. Yet nothing, as his mind viewed it with horror and hate, could stop the constant submission to him. And when he was nothing more than palpable dust, he was allowed the night at Jeff's.
Jeff, who had watched with sympathetic, fearful eyes, asked, when he was off the phone, "You can stay?"
"Like my brother," Raul said, making no sense. "His whole life, like that. Lie, play the role, squirm— anything to win his approval, his good graces. To face him like a man, I'd give anything for it!"
Raul, for a few days, experienced great relief, but it was mixed with apprehension. Cabot—the top school on the East Coast, Raul used to say—had bred an insecure egotism in all its students. In one assembly after another they had been told that they were the leaders of tomorrow; they had been selected, by tests, from the crème de la crème. Yet in the same breath they were informed, with horrible calm, that thousands of eager students waited for their places: Cabot didn't need them. Whether the administrators knew it or not, this was brilliant psychology. Students who had been weeded out, usually for poor grades, felt, acutely, that any possibility of success was gone—they had failed in the most awful way. Those who graduated spent the rest of their lives getting the best: they went to the best colleges in their fields; got the best jobs; and made damn sure that this best of all possible countries stayed that way.
Raul's ego was not quite so invulnerable as to remain unscathed. Pragmatically, it made no sense to him. He was an actor and a writer. Two professions, if you will, that Cabot's prestige in no way affected. But he was surrounded by this sentiment of failure. His father thought he had failed, though he expressed it by worrying over Raul's supposed feeling of failure; Alec .did; his brother, though not displeased at Raul's dropping out, did. No one, indeed, had decent motivation for believing Raul had failed, and though he knew this, their feelings sank deeply into his consciousness. "Adolescence," Raul wrote in his diary, "is defined by the light in which others see it. Against his will, the adolescent is forced into the behavior others expect from him."
The school, in an unheard-of offer, said Raul could take a make-up test and all would be forgiven, though he might have to go to summer school.
A pause of a day or two followed, with Raul's father reversing himself: "They're being very nice to you, Raul. You take this opportunity." A threat lay behind that, lodged in his tone. Doubly a bum, when one refuses redemption. Alec and his brother also urged him. Only his mother kept silent. She had perceived two clear facts: it was too much money, and it did Raul no good. But with Rafael vetoing the notion, she said nothing.
Raul agreed, his soul made timid by the humiliation. His mother went with him, to speak to Mr. White.
When she had finished, he escorted Raul to a small math room where three other students were waiting. Raul took a seat by the window. The test, on a sloppy handwritten mimeographed sheet, was an old one. Ah, no trust, none at all.
It made him listless, looking at that sheet, unwilling to do it. It was a wet day; summer had been late in coming. The rain deepened the colors of the countryside. Raul carelessly skipped about, answering questions he could do quickly, yet it exhausted him. The overcast sky seemed ready to break: everything was transfixed in waiting, in momentous pause.
Suddenly his mind was active. He had told his mother not to wait. If White left the room… but it stopped there. White had to leave. Raul was in anguish that he might not. He seemed to stay there intentionally. That idiot staring into space.
White raised his head, puzzled that Raul was not working. "Are you finished?" he asked.
Raul mumbled no and bent over his paper. He would have to finish it now, he was forced to. He couldn't hand in a blank piece of paper. And as he thought that, White rose and left. Raul waited until he disappeared down the hall. He got up, placing the test on White's desk. The students looked up in curiosity. Raul left the room, walking calmly down the hall. There, other students glanced at him, seeming surprised. As if they all knew, Raul thought. He went down the steps, seeing White and hurrying out the doors. The sky was grayer, the wind ominous. Raul walked faster now to the hill. He laughed, saying to the sky, "Do you anticipate me?" And he ran, the scenery passing in a blur. He ran, and loved it, running faster. The sky broke loose in a torrential rain. Raul laughed with joy. Huskily he yelled to it, "You symbolic bastard."
He went so fast down the steep hill, he nearly fell. He ran wildly, totally drenched. He stopped at Mike & Gino's, grinning broadly, smiling at the empty booths as if the gang were there. The sky raged outside, drops of rain falling from the cuffs of his trousers to the floor, and he smiled at the quiet sounds of the empty place.
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