A Perfect Stranger

by Roxana Robinson

  At the football game the McArdles were taking us to, I knew there would be boys—college students, a different brand from the smooth-cheeked boys at Lawrenceville. These would be older, thicker, and more daring and advanced; they would know more, they would be more full of that coarse interesting life that had so far eluded me. And my body had begun to look sexy on its own, I knew that. I was now fifteen years old, and that’s what fifteen-year-old bodies do.

  We got out of the car and put down the tailgate. It was a clear sunny day, cool, the air with a brisk edge of excitement. Mrs. McArdle opened up the picnic hamper. There were egg salad sandwiches and pretzels and cookies, and big thermoses of martinis for the grown-ups. The Braithwaites came over to our station wagon, and some other people.

  “This is Karen’s roommate,” Mrs. McArdle said, introducing me to Mr. Braithwaite. He was thickset and ginger-haired, with rough skin and corrugated seams down his cheeks. He smiled at me.

  “Boarding school, eh?” he said and shook his head cheerfully. There was a friendly gleam in his eye. “Hated boarding school. Only thing I liked about it was playing ice hockey. Hated every minute of it besides that.”

  I smiled at him. I knew you were supposed to hate boarding school. At the beginning of each semester we made chains of paper clips, one for each day until the next vacation. We hung them in our rooms and took off a clip each night, as though we were all longing to go home, where our real lives were. The other girls talked about the parties they would go to, once they were home, and I would smile, listening, as though I knew what they meant. But I didn’t look forward to going home, to my dark cold room in the corner of what had been the hayloft. I knew I would see no one there but my small ignorant family, in that wintry northern darkness. My father might or might not be speaking; either way there would be no parties of my friends, for my age. For me the holidays were blank and desperate spaces, blank holes cut out of my year in the real world.

  “What do you think?” Mr. Braithwaite now asked me, conspiratorial. “You hate school?” He smiled at me. He was standing quite close; he held me in his gaze. He seemed interested in me, in my opinions, and I was grateful.

  I smiled back. “I don’t hate it,” I said. “It’s not so bad.”

  Mr. Braithwaite held my eyes a moment longer, smiling into them. I was aware of his friendly, tweedy bulk, the weight of his body near mine. I saw his wife look over at him from where she stood, a glance; he saw it too, and he raised the silver beaker he held. The sides of it were beaded with cold sweat from the martinis. “Well, good,” he said, smiling. “Cheers.” He moved away.

  Karen and I were the only people our age there, and we talked mostly to each other. Karen knew more than I did, of course, about the world she lived in. She was much more sophisticated than I was, which irritated me. I felt I deserved to be more sophisticated, since I cared so much more about this world than she did, and it was frustrating that I was not.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Karen said in a conversational way. Delicately she set the entire half of egg salad sandwich in her mouth and chewed solemnly.

  “Where shall we go?” I asked.

  “Anywhere but where Mr. Braithwaite is,” she said. “One more martini and he’ll be shoving us up against the side of the car.”

  I was hurt by this: this was my friend she was talking about, the man who took such an interest in me. I was also hurt to learn that he was unfaithful to me.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  We walked across the field; the ground was damp and springy, and the grass green and live underfoot. The autumn sun was warm on our faces. Around us people were smiling and calling to friends, carrying picnic hampers and plaid blankets. The women were in neat bright wool suits and low heels, the men in tweed jackets. It seemed busy and complicated, like one of the paintings we had been studying at school. It was like a medieval market scene where everyone was full of life and purpose and color, a scene that looked at first just like a pattern, a kind of mosaic, but then if you looked closely you could see that each of these little blotches of color was a real person, doing something important: the baker was carrying a tray of rounded loaves, the woman was leaning out the window, the dog was licking something up from the cobblestones. It was a place where everyone had their own little scene to act out, but everyone’s scene was a harmonious part of the whole, blending into it, everyone’s gesture was made in exactly the right place for the composition.

  Karen and I made our way, from the milling group of grown-ups, toward the football stadium, which we could see looming above the low horizon of parked cars. We were surrounded by color and movement and expectation, moving along as part of a throng. Throng: I liked that word. It was completely separate from my own life up until now. My parents could never be a part of a throng. Now—my own doing—I was.

  Karen and I, of course, were in our own bright wool suits and stockings and low heels. Our hair was bright and freshly washed; we felt ourselves glinting in the sun. Everyone in this crowd seemed to know each other; we had all practically been introduced. We all had connections to one of these schools or the other, we were all part of the same throng.

  There were college boys all around us. We could feel their presence, we could feel them looking at us; we smiled at each other, at nothing in particular. Two boys who were walking near us started talking loudly, for our benefit.

  “Jesus, Jackson,” the taller one reprimanded his friend, “you’re going to drop that. You’ll disturb these young ladies.” He looked at us, ostentatiously reassuring. I didn’t look straight at him, but I saw him.

  “You’re going to drop it, Jack,” he said, now more confident.

  “You carry it then,” said Jack, holding the bag out to his friend.

  “Please,” said the tall one theatrically, closing his eyes and declining, holding his hands up, palms out, in an absolutely-not gesture. The tall one had reddish brown hair, crumpled and wiry, bold dark eyes, and wide cheeks. He was handsome in a greedy rushing way. The shorter one—who was too short for me but not for Karen, who was much shorter than I was—was the better looking of them, with thick dark hair and heavy eyebrows.

  “Okay, then, shut up,” Jack said, taking the bag back against his chest. The taller one turned to me and smiled.

  “Going to the game?” he asked, brilliantly.

  I smiled back.

  We talked to the boys until it was nearly time for the game to start. The taller one was Brad, and they were both at Yale. I didn’t care about the game, I had no interest in watching people hurtling around rupturing ligaments. Still, the game was why we were here. I understood the ritual: the game was today’s center. It was the excuse for everything else: the bright wool suits, the thermoses of martinis, the electrifying eye contact. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t part of it, couldn’t admit I didn’t care. We said good-bye and made a plan to meet at halftime. We were in our seats with the McArdles by the kickoff.

  “Where were you?” asked Mrs. McArdle, smiling at us.

  “We met some friends,” Karen said, frowning vaguely into the distance. And it was sort of true. Brad and Jack were now friends of ours, it was just that they hadn’t yet been friends when we’d met them.

  “Anyone I know?” asked Mrs. McArdle.

  “No,” Karen said, looking bored. “Some guys from Yale.” The game started, and everyone began to yell. We were sitting on the Dartmouth side, and instead of watching the disorganized capering on the field I looked over at the Yale side, trying to distinguish Brad and Jack from the huge crowd. Of course I could not: I hardly knew what they looked like close up, let alone across a football field. But I was already thinking about Brad, the proprietary boldness of his dark glance, the attractive greediness of his presence, his burly shoulders.

  “We don’t have a chance,” Mr. McArdle said philosophically. “We never do against Yale. It’s always a rout at New Haven.” He was a small man, with an easy, self-deprecating manner.

  “Who did you use
to win against?” Karen asked.

  Mr. McArdle shook his head dolefully. “No one,” he said. “We never won. That I can remember. They were all routs.”

  We all laughed. Mr. McArdle was always like this, yielding and pleasant. It seemed that he took nothing personally, or seriously, and this made me feel oddly safe. He would never fill the room with black gloom over the question of the picture plane.

  We were all watching the field, and I wondered if Karen and her mother were thinking about the game. Mrs. McArdle had been coming to these games for years, making egg salad sandwiches and thermoses of martinis and carrying the plaid blanket and sitting in the cold for four hours. What had she thought about? It was a little like going to church, which I had done with my grandparents. You were part of a crowd, dressing up, sitting down, all taking part in a grand spectacle. But did you have to think about it the whole time? Because I could not keep my mind on the play for an instant. On the field the ball appeared suddenly in the air, arcing up over a disheveled group of figures. The crowd roared. The ball disappeared again, and the figures ran in circles. The crowd roared again.

  “He’s useless,” Mr. McArdle said sadly. Then something else happened and Mr. McArdle was suddenly on his feet, cheering, along with everyone else on our side.

  At halftime Karen and I stood slowly. Karen thrust her arms out stiffly and yawned.

  “I think we’ll go stretch our legs,” she said.

  “Have a good time,” her mother said.

  The boys were where they’d said they’d be, which was good: Brad was tall, he was strong, and now I knew he was reliable.

  “Here they are,” Brad said, his eyes taking possession of my face as we came up. “I told you they’d be back.” He was talking to Jack but looking only at me.

  “So what do you think of the game?” he asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s like all football games,” I said. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “You don’t understand football?” Brad said, acting surprised. “All right, I’m going to explain it to you. Brad’s going to teach you about football.” He draped his arm around my shoulders, to give us privacy. “Now,” he began. He dropped his head down, close, next to mine. I could smell his hair.

  I didn’t know what Jack and Karen were doing. I was watching Brad’s black eyes, and he was watching me. I don’t know what he said about football.

  We were back a little late after halftime, sliding into our seats just after the kickoff.

  “Sorry,” Karen said, but her mother just smiled at her and turned back to the game. Mr. McArdle had the silver beaker in his hand, and it was freshly beaded with chilly drops. He had become more animated, and he had things to say to the players.

  “You’re a bum!” he called after the ball appeared again and vanished. He said to the crowd around him, “He’s a bum! He can’t catch!” The crowd seemed uninterested in him; everyone had their own points of view, and they all seemed more animated now. The afternoon was drawing down, the shadows were beginning to spread in long liquid pools across the field. The wind was picking up, a sharp chilly presence against our faces. Brad and Jack had offered us drinks from the bottles they carried; Karen and I had each taken a daring sip. It was bourbon, they said: I felt a quick burning shock in the back of my throat. In the stadium, Mr. McArdle kept the thermos at his feet. He took sips from the beaker, and periodically he refilled it from the thermos. When someone ran down the field, Mr. McArdle raised the beaker in the air, his arm stretched up straight in stiff salute.

  Yale won hugely. It was a rout, just as Mr. McArdle had feared. As the game drew to an end, as the irrational clock on the big board went into its last mystifying revolution, the crowd grew more and more excited, in a loose, unfocused way. It no longer seemed as though anyone cared about the score or the play, only about the idea of the game, and its ending. That idea had taken over the whole stadium, and everyone seemed to be drawn into this swift rushing current. As the clock ticked backward toward zero, a hum of response mounted, voices chanted with it, and when the clock finally stood at 0:00, a big roar rose up from the stands. People began to swarm out onto the torn-up field, a loose swirling crowd, apparently in a hurry, for some reason, though there was nowhere for them to get to.

  We did not hurry. We folded our blankets and gathered our things together, and finally we stood to leave. By then everyone was standing, but no one was moving, the exits were clogged. Karen and I stood, waiting, impatient though not showing it. Brad and Jack were going to meet us at the bottom of the stairs and walk us back to the car.

  “God,” Karen said, rubbing the side of her nose with distaste. “These people are not moving.”

  I said nothing. I didn’t want to draw dangerous attention to our impatience. It seemed to me that anyone would see it for what it was: an illicit longing for an unsanctified rendezvous. I wasn’t sure exactly what the McArdle rules were, though I knew how my parents would have felt.

  We were standing in single file. Mr. McArdle was behind Karen, and he answered her, though she was not talking to him, really, and was facing away from him.

  “You in a hurry, Kar?” he asked.

  She did not answer. She rubbed the side of her nose again, looking around the stadium with a neutral gaze.

  Mr. McArdle turned to his wife, behind him.

  “She in a hurry?” he asked. “She have an engagement?”

  Mrs. McArdle shook her head vaguely, not looking at him, and after a moment Mr. McArdle turned back and stood facing Karen again. She still did not look at him. The line began to move, and we shuffled forward.

  The boys were waiting for us at the bottom of the staircase. I saw Jack’s face, looking up into the crowd. At first I didn’t see Brad, and I felt a dip of anxiety. Then I realized that the dark spot next to Jack was the top of Brad’s head. He was bending down over something, and I saw his face come tilting swiftly up, something in a paper bag held to his mouth. Then his face went down again. In another moment his face was turned up, like Jack’s, to the crowd. They were looking for us. I felt Karen’s hand give my ribs a swift pinch, and I nodded. I didn’t know what to do, but she took the initiative.

  When we grew closer, Karen said casually, “There are our friends.”

  Her parents said nothing, and I thought they hadn’t heard. We moved forward slowly. Brad began to wave comically, his big hand flapping back and forth as though he needed to get our attention. Karen and I gave discreet flips of our hands.

  “Who’s that?” Mr. McArdle said.

  “Those are our friends,” Karen said. “I told you. They’re from Yale.”

  “Yalies are bums,” Mr. McArdle announced. It was impossible to tell if he were joking, as he had been before the game, or if he were serious. His voice had an edge of angry impatience to it. Karen didn’t answer him, and he put his hand on her shoulder from behind. “Find someone from Dartmouth.”

  “Sam,” Mrs. McArdle said, mildly reproving, “Karen doesn’t have to find someone from Dartmouth.” She sounded amused. “Look, there are the Townsends.” She waved at someone further along.

  Perhaps Jack thought she was waving at him. He waved now too, expansively. Then Brad waved, in slow motion, his whole body rocking with his gesture, reeling like a robot. And then Jack waved like a puppet, holding his hand up stiffly and flapping his fingers, a fixed grin on his face. I giggled nervously at this display. I didn’t know if the McArdles were watching or what they thought of it. Was what we were doing permissible? I could not imagine my own parents allowing it, but then I could not imagine them here at all, inching along in this crowd, my father’s white mane towering over everyone, his brow knotted in concentration, and my mother following behind him, her manner vague, and her long skirts catching on the edges of the bleachers. God knew what they’d have brought as a picnic: wheat bran and raisins.

  When we were close enough, the boys called out to us by name. We smiled at them, descending the metal stairs in the press
of people, but we didn’t answer back. “Don’t act cheap,” my mother would have said. “Don’t draw attention to yourself.” What my father would have said, his eyes fixed on me, I did not allow myself to imagine.

  When we reached the ground, Brad and Jack were there, grinning.

  “Hola,” Jack said, raising his fisted hand in an exuberant salute.

  “Hi, guys,” Karen said. Delicately she swept a lock of hair back from her face. “These are my parents.” She turned sideways, so that her father now stood face-to-face with the boys. I was surprised to see how short Mr. McArdle was, next to them. He stared hard at them, but his gaze seemed slightly unfocused.

  “Mom and Dad,” Karen said, “Jack Tompkins and Brad Farlow.”

  “Hello,” Mrs. McArdle said at once, stepping smoothly forward and shaking both their hands. Mr. McArdle stood looking. The boys shook hands, smiling, with Mrs. McArdle. Then Karen, not waiting for her father to speak, stepped ahead, almost brushing Jack’s shoulder with hers. I moved over next to Brad.

  “We’ll meet you at the car,” Karen said to her mother, and I saw her mother nod. Her father was now looking at Karen in that same focused but unfocused way, and his mouth was set in a belligerent line. He looked as if he were about to speak, but we didn’t wait to hear him.

  We headed into the crush of the crowd. Brad put his hand under my elbow to steer me. I felt his fingers close tightly around my flesh, exquisitely warm, proprietary, cherishing, steady. He leaned close to me, from behind, and spoke into my ear.

  “So what did you think of the game?” he asked, as he had earlier. His breath was tickling, invasive, and I ducked my head.