by Anita Shreve
“We’re looking for him,” Mike said. “He, too, will be asked to write out a confession.”
“What about the girl?”
“I’ve already spoken to her,” Mike said.
“And so . . . ?” J. Dot asked.
“And so what?” Mike asked in return.
“And so did she tell you it was her idea?”
“The conversation she and I had is privileged,” Mike said. “For the moment.” He felt on shaky legal ground here.
“No one else will see the confessions?” J. Dot asked.
“No one else will see them,” Mike said. “And I would rather that you kept this whole fiasco to yourselves for several days. I see no need for this incident to come to the attention of anyone outside the walls of Avery. After viewing the tape and thinking about it, I believe that this matter can be handled internally.”
Mike slid the paper and pens across the table. Rob looked at them as if he were being asked to sign his own death warrant. J. Dot picked up the pen and began to flip it back and forth so that it made a beat upon the desk.
“None of us will leave this room until I have those signed confessions,” Mike repeated. “I will be sitting here the entire time you write. What you did was an unspeakable act, with the most serious of consequences.”
J. Dot squared the sheet of lined paper in front of him. Rob still hadn’t moved or said a word.
“And here’s what I would personally like to know,” Mike said, hitching himself forward. “Why?”
J. Dot curved his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. Rob — the boy whom Mike had once greatly respected — slowly bent his forehead to the polished mahogany desk.
Mike’s nerves were still frayed, even though it had been more than an hour since he had locked the confessions in the safe. He had read the documents first. J. Dot’s had been defensive, emphasizing once again that the entire episode had been the girl’s idea, that she had come after them, that she was drunk when she first spoke to J. Dot at the dance. At no point in his confession had J. Dot taken any blame upon himself.
Rob’s confession had also been brief but not at all defensive. It read like a police report. He named the specific amounts he had had to drink and where, the time they had all left the dance, approximately how long they had remained in the room, and precisely how he had had sex with the girl. There was no attempt to blame the girl or anyone else. He had signed his document Robert Leicht, ’06. Mike was certain the signature had simply been a reflexive gesture, not a defiant one, for surely Rob would have known that he would not now graduate with his class.
After Mike had locked the documents in the safe, he had sat for a time. Though he had quite justifiably allowed his anger to rise to the surface, inside he had felt nothing but panic. J. Dot, he could care less about. The sooner the boy left the school, the better. But Rob, prior to the incident, had done nothing but contribute to the school academically and athletically. He had raised the school’s profile by getting into Brown early. Mike didn’t know Rob well, but what little he did know, he’d admired. Rob would be expelled and his acceptance to Brown withdrawn, and what would the boy do then? Such promise destroyed in an hour of dangerous foolishness. And for what?
And Silas . . . Mike could hardly bear to think about Silas. He so wanted Silas not to be on the tape. If only the cameraman or woman had not shown his face. But Silas had been there. He was culpable. The loss to him would be considerable. He, too, would be expelled. His relationship with Noelle, assuming it had survived that Saturday night, would be in tatters. And Mike could not imagine how Silas would be able to remain in that house with Anna and Owen. Again, Mike thought that he must call Anna, and soon.
Mike turned in his desk chair and looked out the window. He thought of the years he had been at Avery, of all the students he had watched graduate. He had had to deal with dozens of disciplinary problems, but nothing quite like this. He thought of Silas and Rob and J. Dot. He thought of Anna and Meg and Owen. Mike had not written out a confession, but he knew that he was culpable. Indirectly to blame, but to blame nevertheless.
Laura
On Wednesday morning, my roommate left the room early. When she returned, she was in a state. She shut the door to our room, but she didn’t ask me to leave. I was studying. Honest to God, sometimes I think she didn’t even know I was there.
The first call was to a friend. I really don’t remember a lot about this conversation, because my roommate often did that, made calls while I was in the room, clearly trying to study. But that was just her. I think I first began to pay attention when I heard her say, “But how did the tape get out?” I thought she was talking about music, except that her voice was a little frantic, and then she said, “Oh my God, my parents are going to kill me!” I turned around to look at her, and I swear she looked right at me, but I know she wasn’t even seeing me, she was just seeing the person at the other end of the line, or else she was picturing how mad her parents were going to be. I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about, but now I was paying attention. I heard her say, after that, “What am I going to do?” and “You think?”
She talked for about ten minutes. Mostly she was just listening to what the other person had to say. Once in a while, she would say, “Oh God, do you think so?” I also remember her saying, “What’s the name of that drug anyway?” and “If this doesn’t work, I’m dead.”
I couldn’t imagine what was going on. When she clicked her cell phone shut, I turned around. “Are you OK?” I asked. She opened her cell phone and dialed a number. “What?” she asked me. I asked her if something was wrong. But by then the person at the other end had answered the phone. My roommate immediately started to cry. I was shocked. She really was crying. Or, if it was an act, it was amazing. She could hardly get her words out. Crying and hiccuping and everything. She bent over the phone as if she had stomach pains. “Mom,” she got out between sobs, “I’ve been raped.”
I was stunned. This was the first I’d heard of any rape. I know I was sitting there with my mouth open. Someone knocked at the door to our room, and my roommate made a frantic motion with her arm to get rid of whoever it was. I went to the door and told my friend Katie that I was on the phone with my mother and that I’d come over when I was done. I went back and sat on my bed. I just stared at my roommate.
I heard her say there were three boys, two seniors and one postgrad. That it had happened on Saturday night. That she hadn’t said anything to anyone because she was scared. She hadn’t been to a doctor. It wasn’t important. She wasn’t going to go to one, either. No, she didn’t know the boys. They all ganged up on her. And there was something else. There might be a tape.
I could hear her mother screeching from across the room.
“I didn’t know it was being filmed!” my roommate wailed. “I was drugged.” Then she cried. She didn’t want to tell anybody. No, no, no, she wasn’t going to tell the RA on duty. She was just letting her mother know, just in case she heard something about it. No, she wasn’t hurt physically. At least, she didn’t think so. And all this time, she’s sobbing and crying and snot’s coming out of her nose, and she’s pleading with her parents to come get her. She hates the school, she says. She just wants to go home.
Finally, she hung up the phone. I handed her a tissue. “Are you all right?” I asked.
She sniffed. She blew her nose. She got up to look in the mirror and dabbed under her eyes.
“I’m fine,” she said.
I swear to God, that’s what she said.
Noelle
It is May, just before dark. For the first time in weeks, the air isn’t chilled at the edges. All day, the students have been playing Frisbee on the quad. Silas has to play baseball for his third sport, but he is not good at it and doesn’t take it seriously. Sometimes he gets to start at second base, but mostly he sits on the bench. He has a good arm and is a natural athlete, but he can’t hit the ball very well. He could take extra batting practice, but Silas doesn’t re
ally care about baseball. Silas loves basketball. He would play basketball every season if he could. After practice and after supper in the dining hall, we sit outside on the lawn until it starts to grow dark. The windows are open in the dorms, and from time to time we can hear voices and music, and sometimes a shout.
We sit close together, with our legs stretched out in front of us. I lie back on the grass. All spring, Silas and I have been looking for places to go so that we can be alone. We don’t say that’s what we are doing, but it is. Most of the time, we sit in Silas’s car. In the good weather, we lie on the grass. All day I have been thinking about the fact that my roommate has gone home for the weekend and won’t be back until Sunday night. I have never committed a major rule violation, and I’m wondering if I have the nerve. The backs of my shorts and T-shirt are growing wet from the dew, and the temperature is dropping fast. Even in early May, nights in Vermont stay cold.
I stand and hold out my hand.
When we round the corner of my dorm, Silas must guess where I am headed, but he doesn’t say a word. Would we both be suspended? I tell him to wait by the door while I go inside and check out the student lounge. No one is in there, and the television isn’t on. Everyone wants to be somewhere else tonight. I open the door and beckon Silas to follow me. He takes off his shoes, and my eyes widen. Maybe he does this at home all the time when he arrives later than he told his parents he would. I remember his room at the top of the stairs. I lead Silas up my own dorm stairs, making as little noise as I possibly can. Silas puts his hand on the small of my back, and I sway from lack of balance or excitement.
When we reach the next stairwell, I motion for him to wait. I run ahead to my room, unlock my door, and leave it open a crack. Then I signal through the glass-and-wire windows of the stairwell door for him to come. He runs along the hallway and slides inside my room like a soldier on a mission. We both start to laugh, though we are trying not to make any sound.
There is only one reason I have brought him to my room, and we both know what it is. Silas pulls me to him and kisses me hard. We have never made love, and I am a little bit afraid of it. I am a virgin. I don’t know about Silas. He once asked me if I had ever been with anyone. I said no, and I could see relief on his face.
I lead him to the bed and pull down the covers. The room is only slightly messy, because my roommate cleaned her side before she left. I lie down on the bed. I don’t know how to do this. I have watched a thousand people pretend to make love on television and in the movies, but I think that in real life, it doesn’t happen like it does on the screen. I still have all my clothes on. Silas stands over me and takes his cell phone and his wallet out of his pockets and puts them on my bedside table. He starts to unbuckle his belt, but then he stops, as if he thinks I might mind. He slides into the bed beside me, and he has to cradle me in his arms, because there’s really room for only one person.
We lie motionless for minutes. I wonder if he is waiting for me to give him permission, but I am afraid to say anything. Maybe this is all he wants to do: just hold me in my bed. Maybe he is a virgin, too, and doesn’t know what to do next. In the TV shows and movies, the girl always swings on top of the boy, her hair falling at the sides of her face, and takes off her shirt or his, but I am pretty sure I could not do that right now.
Silas finds my mouth and kisses me. He slides his hand under my T-shirt. I can feel him trying to undo my bra with one hand at my back, and I can tell he is having trouble. I wait for a minute, and then I raise myself up and unhook my bra myself. He helps me with my shirt and my bra, and then he unbuckles his belt. He pulls it through the loops in one tug and then unzips his jeans. He slips them off so that now he has on only his shirt and his boxers. I am wondering if I remembered to lock my door.
I discover that making love is not one moment or two. It is a hundred moments, a hundred doors that open, doors to rooms you have never been inside before. The first time Silas touches me between the legs is a door. The first time I touch his nipples is a door. All the open doors seem momentous and important, and they all feel good. None of the doors seems any less important than the final door, which really isn’t the final door at all, because there is always the door after that, and the one after that. How Silas looks at me, for example. How Silas covers me. Even the soreness is a door, one I have never been through before. That, more than anything that happens that night, makes me feel like a woman. I lie in Silas’s arms, feeling the soreness, and I think that I have crossed over into being a woman.
Silas does not talk when he makes love, and I am glad for this. I am glad that he doesn’t tell me that he loves me. It would feel like payment, like something I had earned. I would rather that Silas said it to me on the trail up the mountain, or on the grass of the quad, or on the way to physics class.
When we have gone through almost all the doors, and I am lying in his arms and feeling sore and thinking I am a woman for the first time in my life, Silas’s cell phone buzzes. The buzzing is shocking in the silence, and for a moment, I think we have been discovered. But in the next moment, I know exactly what the buzzing is for. Even before Silas opens his phone, I know what the message will say.
Come home.
A lamb needs birthing.
Silas
The last time I took you up this path, it was just before the summer break, and I let you walk in front of me, and I watched the way you walked, and you asked me if I ever hunted, and I knew I couldn’t lie to you and so I said I did, and you were upset, and you asked me what it felt like to kill a bird and watch it fall from the sky or to kill an animal running on the ground, and I couldn’t answer you, and then you asked me if I had ever killed a deer, and I was ashamed even though I hadn’t ever been really ashamed about that before, and I told you I had, and I could see you shudder a little in front of me, and I remember that afternoon, you moved slightly away from me when we were sitting on the rock so that we weren’t touching, and I knew that I should not try to touch you that afternoon because you had to get the deer out of your system, and I told you how I felt, that I didn’t want to do it again, and it was the truth, but I am not sure if you believed me. And the day was so fine, and I could see the house and the car, and I wanted to hold you and tell you that I loved you, but I knew that you would always associate whatever I said with the deer, and so I didn’t, even though the words were bursting inside me and I wanted to. I knew it, and I wanted you to know it. I was afraid that something might happen, something might come between us, and I might never get to tell you. I was afraid of that for a long time.
But I did tell you and I am glad of that, I am glad that you knew how much I loved you.
And now this thing has come between us, and there will never be a day when it is not there, and no matter what I say, there will be the picture of me on the tape doing things to that girl, and I know that you will never be able to get the images out of your mind, they will be there forever, every time I touch you, every time I kiss you, even when I am just sitting in a room and I look over at you, any time you could be picturing the thing that happened on the tape and it will be like something harsh and ugly is always in the room with us, is always in your mind, and nothing could ever be any good between us again, and that is the hardest part. I could go to jail, I could stand the humiliation, I could even let my father hit me if he wanted to, but I couldn’t bear to look into your eyes and see the tape running, I just couldn’t.
Mike
In September, four months before the scandal broke, Mike had knocked on Anna Quinney’s door. In his arms, he had a half-dozen bottles of very good wine that he was delivering, because that evening Anna was hosting the first meeting of the parent-teacher association. At that time, Mike considered himself something of a wine connoisseur, and he prided himself on having on hand for any school-occasioned social event only the best. He doubted that many of the parent volunteers would know the difference between a good red or white versus a poor one, since most, by geographical necessity, were pare
nts of day students and therefore tended toward the lower strata of the economic spectrum. Anna smiled at Mike when she opened the door. She exclaimed over the bounty, and there was some discussion then of where to put the box, which bottles to take out first, and which bottles to put in the fridge. When Mike had set the bottles where she wanted them, he stood in the middle of her clean and tidy kitchen, empty cardboard box in hand, wondering if he should leave. He hesitated, however, and Anna, perceiving his hesitation, asked if he would like a cup of tea. Never having confessed to Anna his dislike of tea, Mike developed on the spot an urgent thirst. He said that was precisely the thing he was wanting at that particular moment. He set the box on the floor, shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the back of a kitchen chair. He sat down while Anna put the kettle on.
He watched her as she fetched the cups, the sugar, and the creamer. She had on a scoop-neck blouse, belted over a gray skirt. He thought she must have dressed for her meeting ahead of time to accommodate his visit. Through the fabric, he could see a white slip with lace on its bodice. He hadn’t before realized she had so trim a waist. She usually wore sweaters or overblouses that hid her figure. Or possibly it was only that he had not seen her in some time, since he seldom had any reason to visit the families of the students in the summer. He and Meg, during their monthlong break before administrative duties resumed, had gone to the south of France and rented a villa. It had been a remarkable time-out between them and had filled Mike with optimism. He had hoped that when they returned, the tension and the bickering that had characterized the last six or seven years of their marriage (indeed, had characterized most of the marriage) would get their own time-out. That fond hope, alas, had not survived the long layover at Charles de Gaulle. He wondered if Anna and Owen ever took a vacation and, if so, how the animals were cared for. Clearly Anna had been baking, since the dining table was arrayed with platters of appetizers, and he could see on the counter, waiting their turn, plates of brownies and lemon bars and tarts with berries. Mike wouldn’t have minded one of those lemon bars, but he would not ask Anna to undo her careful wrapping.