J.T.

by John Nicholas Iannuzzi

  Right from the start, Ann adored Steve Boxer. He was an older man, three years older than she, and in the early high school years, that seemed a lifetime of experience. Ann’s one disappointment with Steve was that he had quit high school and was drifting from one dead-end job to another. The Gannon family tradition had always been to attend college. A high school dropout was a far cry from what Ann Gannon’s father expected for her, and Ann felt no differently. Yet she knew that Steve was intelligent, decent, thoughtful. He just never had the chance to know anything better than the harsh world of Avenue B.

  Steve was intrigued and pleased with this bright, pretty Irish girl from Second Avenue. When she started talking to him of finishing high school, getting a better job, going to college at night, she made it sound as though it could all really happen.

  Steve had always had a talent for drawing. He would often go downtown on Sunday mornings—by himself and later with Ann—to walk through the deserted Wall Street area, studying and sketching the huge stone buildings, the statues, the lintels, the setbacks, the gargoyles. Steve and Ann began talking about his going to drafting school and later, perhaps, becoming an architect.

  But the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor before Steve got started, and a Japanese fighter shot down his plane, and all their dreams were over. And Ann and the three children were alone. They moved into the Florida Flats with Ann’s parents, and later, when Ann started teaching, into their own apartment in the same building. Jim Fay, the Democratic leader from the Anawanda Club, on the next corner from the Florida Flats, talked to Monsignor O’Connell from Epiphany—Ann’s father being an Irish Democrat, her late husband being a war hero—and Ann began to teach. When her children were old enough to go to school, they attended Epiphany.

  Thus, Ann Gannon Boxer’s world revolved around three blocks in the city of New York, and around three children. Her hopes were pinned primarily on Marty. He talked of becoming an architect, attending Cooper Union, fulfilling his father’s ambitions and dreams.

  Marty had always excelled in sports, first in the sandlot over by Bellevue Hospital, and then in Stuyvesant High School. And when a scholarship from the Veterans of Foreign Wars post on Twenty-third Street became available, and the trustees of Browning College accepted him, Ann Gannon Boxer was in God’s own heaven.

  But she and the girls would be all alone now. She had come to rely on Marty so much lately.

  J.T. Wright was assigned to be Marty Boxer’s Big Brother at Browning. That meant that J.T., then a junior in the college, had to get in touch with Marty at home, discuss his upcoming residency at Browning, explain the traditions, help to indoctrinate Little Brother into the upcoming world, what clothes he would need, what books, answer any questions about Browning, and in general, make the transition into the Browning world easier.

  J.T. wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of being anyone’s Big Brother. He was far too shy to be as outgoing as he thought a Big Brother should be. He was sure, therefore, that he’d be too awkward to have any kind of rapport with a Little Brother—especially since his assigned Little Brother was attending Browning on an athletic scholarship. J.T. knew, from years of experience with his own father, that he had very little, if anything, in common with a football player. As he rode down to New York City on the railroad, J.T. kept thinking of what he would say, how he would greet Little Brother. They had spoken on the phone and somehow agreed that they should each spend a weekend at the other’s home. He had agreed to go to the city first and Marty agreed to spend a weekend, two weeks hence, at J.T.’s home in Millville. J.T. was imagining, as the train bounced and clacked toward New York, a gruff, coarse, beer-swilling football player. The image made J.T. cringe. His palms began to sweat as he stood in the concourse of Grand Central Station, watching the information booth, looking for Marty Boxer. Actually, J.T. was supposed to be at the information booth to meet Marty. But he took a position well removed from the booth and waited. He wanted to see Marty first, wanted to see what this Little Brother looked like, size him up. Although how that would change anything, J.T. didn’t know. He still had to meet Boxer, be with him, regardless of what he looked like when he first showed. But seeing him first would give J.T. a slight advantage, an edge, at least in his own mind, before he had to go over and introduce himself. And J.T. liked to have an edge.

  Hundreds of people were streaming by J.T. each minute, some on the run, some ambling, some staring up at the train schedule on the wall. He didn’t see anyone who looked like a football player waiting around. Then J.T. saw a tall, handsome young man in slacks and a sports jacket; the jacket looked new, as if it might have been bought for someone about to go off to college. The young man had a strong face and dark, curly hair. He was about as tall as J.T.’s father, and about as big through the shoulders and chest. But in that strength and size there was no sign of the beefy boor that J.T. was dreading. In fact, there was a delicate Botticelli quality to the youth’s aquiline nose, and something sensitive in the dark eyes. J.T. took a few steps away from the side wall near the ticket counter where he pretended to be reading a timetable, circling slowly, like a shark, toward the young man at the information booth. The young man now started to study J.T. They looked away from each other, then each sneaked another look.

  “J.T.?” said the tall young man cautiously.

  “Marty?”

  “Hi, J.T., I’m Marty Boxer.”

  “Hi, I’m J.T. Wright. Boy, that’s one hell of a dumb introduction.”

  They laughed and shook hands.

  “How was your trip?”

  “How can trips on the Central be?”

  “I guess you’re right. Let me take your bag,” Marty said, reaching down and lifting J.T.’s overnight bag.

  “I’ll take it. It’s not heavy.”

  “I’ve got it. You’re my guest,” said Marty. They started to walk toward the exit. “I’m sure glad to meet you. I’ve been looking forward to it.”

  “You have?”

  “Sure. I mean, going to Browning and all is quite a thing for me and my family.” He saw the quizzical look on J.T.’s face. “Well, you see, my dad is dead, you know, and, well, my family can’t afford to send me to college. My mom’s a teacher. Don’t let her bother you, by the way, if she plays you up like the big man on campus. I told her my Big Brother was coming down, and boy, she got all excited, got all the shopping done, cooked a big meal …”

  J.T. was studying this handsome young man. His enthusiasm and openness was real and engaging.

  “Anyway,” Marty continued as they reached Lexington Avenue, “when I got this scholarship to Browning, well, wow, I mean that was it, you know. My mother was so proud. She’s a schoolteacher, you know. I told you that already, didn’t I?”

  “That’s okay.”

  They were weaving through a stream of people coursing into the station. The evening rush-hour return to the suburbs was beginning.

  “Do you get to the city very often?” Marty asked.

  “No, not really.”

  “Where are you from? Home, I mean?”

  “Millville. I don’t imagine you’ve heard of it. It’s one of those quaint little towns in the country.”

  “Sounds nice. I love the country. Not that I get to it very often.”

  “Well, you’re going to come up and spend the day, I mean the weekend, with us. And when you do, you’ll have plenty of country. Of course, you’ll have to watch out for my old man. I’ll warn you about him now. He’s a sports freak. Big guy, like you, and when he heard my Little Brother was going to Browning on an athletic scholarship, he got as enthusiastic as you say your mom did about me. Boy, he’ll have your plate heaped to the ceiling every time you come over, and buy gallons of milk for you to drink. He wanted me to be a football player. I kind of disappointed him. I’m not exactly built like a fullback.”

  “Heck, with your courses and majors, my mom’ll do the same thing to you. She’ll probably talk your head off about school.”

  J.T. smiled a
s they stood on Lexington Avenue, surrounded by people rushing and bustling. They had struck up a friendship that welled up from somewhere inside of them, and hit just the right note.

  May 10, 1956

  “Hurry up, girls,” urged Courtnay Crawford, standing on a ladder, as she strung a long roll of red crepe paper across the ceiling of the student dining room.

  The large room, usually filled with the clatter of plates and the gossip and laughter of hundreds of college girls, was slowly being transformed with streamers, colored paper balls, and a mirror-faceted revolving globe, into a ballroom for the Junior Hop of Caldwell College, Class of ’57.

  “Do we have any more streamers, Courtnay?” asked Mary Sprain, who had just cleared a dance area.

  Mary, like most of the other girls, wore a plaid skirt, a button-down shirt, and a blazer with leather elbow patches. Most of the girls wore dirty white buck shoes.

  “If there are no more in the large cardboard box, then that’s it,” said Courtnay, who was chairman of the Dance Committee. She stretched to give more push to a thumbtack. She backed down the ladder, then looked around the room. A few girls were still placing candles, flowers, and ashtrays on the tables—the dean of women, with much misgiving, had relented about the ashtrays, but only for the girls’ escorts to smoke, and then only if it was absolutely necessary.

  “It certainly looks different now,” said Sandy Shields, a member of the committee, walking over to Courtnay.

  “I’ll say,” replied Courtnay.

  “Well, are you ready?” called Grace Ann Upham as she entered the dining hall. “Hey, this place looks great. Are you finished?”

  “Just about,” said Sandy Shields.

  “Well, then, let’s get moving if we’re going to watch rugby practice.”

  Grace Ann was eager to start out for their brother college, Benjamin Browning, an exclusive men’s school about ten miles down the road on the Hudson, to watch the last rugby practice before the big Founder’s Day game on Sunday. Founder’s Day at Browning and the Junior Hop at Caldwell were always scheduled for the same weekend, toward the end of the school year, signaling the end of classes and the last cram before end-of-term exams.

  “I’m ready,” said Marguerite Stevens, who had been seated at one of the decorated tables. She picked up her books. “Anyone want a lift?”

  “I do,” said Sandy.

  “Wait for me,” said Ronnie duPont, who was standing on a chair, retying a fallen streamer.

  Courtnay’s car was a new Corvette, painted a custom shade of coral. Her father had given it to her as an advance graduation present.

  “I’ll go with Courtnay,” Grace Ann called as the girls ran across the wide lawn.

  Marguerite Stevens and three other girls piled into Marguerite’s large, year-old Pontiac convertible. Marguerite pushed a lever and the top folded back behind the rear seat.

  “Last one there is a rotten egg,” yelled Grace Ann from the passenger seat in the Corvette.

  “You’re on,” Marguerite responded as she backed out of her parking space with the top still descending. She was closer to the exit than Courtnay, and as she backed out, her car blocked Courtnay’s.

  “You rat!” Courtnay protested.

  The girls laughed as the two cars, Courtnay’s right behind Marguerite’s, tore down the campus road. Courtnay tried to pass, but Marguerite’s car solidly hogged the road.

  “Hey, no fair.” Grace Ann, holding on to the top of the windshield, stood up and shouted in the streaming wind.

  The girls ahead waved goodbye to Courtnay and Grace Ann. They laughed as the cars accelerated along the road high on the west side of the Hudson. The surrounding hills were verdant, lush, bathed in warm spring sunlight as far as the eye could see.

  Courtnay blew her horn at Marguerite. The girls in Marguerite’s car turned around, their thumbs in their ears, wagging their hands and sticking out their tongues at Courtnay’s frustrated attempts to pass them. Just before the two cars reached the turn that led to an iron gate and the narrow, tree-lined road to Browning, they passed a shopping plaza. Courtnay shifted into low gear and gunned her car into the entrance of the parking lot. Marguerite, seeing Courtnay’s car in the rearview mirror, stepped on her accelerator. But the Pontiac was no match for the Corvette. Courtnay cut through an aisle of parked cars, aiming at the far exit. When she reached the exit, she was a car-length ahead of Marguerite and pulling away.

  Now it was Grace Ann’s turn, her hair flowing in the wind as she knelt on the seat, to stick out her tongue at Marguerite and her passengers. Courtnay slowed down almost to a crawl, hogging the center of the road, forcing Marguerite to follow at the same pace. Marguerite blew her horn. Courtnay retaliated, even louder, as the two cars made their way through the front gate of Browning.

  Benjamin Browning College had been built high on a plateau above the Hudson River. The campus was picturesque. Tree-lined paths wound between old, ivy-clad brick buildings. Interspersed with the old buildings, and designed to blend in unobtrusively, were some recently added contemporary buildings such as the Harris Library, donated by the alumni Harris Brothers of the investment banking firm of the same name. There were new dorm facilities for underclassmen, donated by an anonymous alumnus. The athletic fields were along the bank of the river at the foot of a sweeping, grassy hill. Downriver, near the George Washington Bridge, this rise was called the Palisades. But here, at the edge of the Hudson Valley, the embankments bordering the river were not so steep or dramatic. That was the way everything was at Benjamin Browning College: underplayed, subtle. There was no great show of wealth, no ostentation. The moneyed families who had been sending their sons to Browning for decades were secure in their old, enormous wealth, wealth, which they never flaunted but merely used as the foundation for the future giants of industry and banking. There were also scholarship students at Browning whose athletic prowess or intellectual potential overrode considerations of their lack of blue blood or old green money, and students whose families were involved in government. The families of these last were not rich, but they were powerful, the front-runners for the wealthy patrons who furthered political ambitions in return for government influence on behalf of big business and high finance. It was unseemly for wealthy old families to dirty their hands in the world of politics. To finance it, to watch discreetly as others accepted their support and did their bidding, was sufficient. And to accept at Browning the sons of the most powerful of their political surrogates was to ensure continued fealty.

  The girls parked the two cars at the top of the road that led down to the athletic field, where Browning’s rugby team was involved in an inter-squad scrimmage.

  “Is Marty playing?” Courtnay asked anxiously of no one in particular as she scanned the field. The girls walked toward the sidelines, where the substitutes and the coach were.

  “I think I see him in the middle of that, that …” Marguerite tried to think of the word.

  “It’s a scrum,” interjected Sandy, “which always sounds deliciously sexy to me.”

  Sandy’s outspoken ways always shocked the other girls. Although it was a woman’s secret, never revealed to men under any circumstances, the girls knew Sandy was physically passionate, sensual. Perhaps what shocked the other girls most was her candor. All the girls, whether or not they admitted it, were excited by the young men, their strong muscles, the touch of their rougher skin against their cheeks while they danced, their hard breathing in the dark, secluded paths leading back to the dorms. Sex had been quite a topic of conversation after Sandy came back one night, roused all her close chums, and revealed that she was the first of them to have had a man. The other girls had blushed with embarrassment, and then envy and curiosity set in. Sandy had to go into details many times to satisfy those who wanted to know just how it was done and how it felt.

  “There he is!” cried Courtnay as the scrum seemed to burst apart. Marty Boxer ran with the ball, and the spectators screamed encouragement. Then he lateraled t
o Roderick McDowell Watson.

  “He scored, he scored,” the spectators began to shout.

  “Hello, David,” Sandy said to one of the substitute players, as the girls reached the sidelines. She was not very interested in the game.

  “Hi, Sandy,” said David, flushed with enthusiasm for the score, which broke the tie.

  Sandy remained standing next to David, gazing casually out toward the playing field. There was a time-out now. The first-team players listened to the coach give instructions for defending their lead as the assistant managers distributed towels and water bottles.

  Other substitutes stole glances at Sandy standing next to David; two of them nudged each other. They didn’t know all, but they knew Sandy was as close to hot stuff as they could get, and they were curious and anxious.

  Sandy studied Marty Boxer as he wiped his face with a towel. He was one of the best-looking men on campus. Besides, he was a curiosity—an athletic scholarship student from New York City who had no idea who or what the families of any of his classmates were or did. Marty was totally common. Sandy watched the biceps in Marty’s arms flex and swell as he wiped his face and neck.

  Marty looked over at the girls and smiled. But he wasn’t looking at Sandy. It was Courtnay, wearing Marty’s ring on a chain around her neck, who had all his attention.

  “That was sensational, Marty,” Sandy called enthusiastically.

  Marty’s eyes shifted to Sandy for a moment. He smiled, then turned his eyes back to Courtnay. Marty was a very straight young man, and Courtnay was his girl.

  The coach called Marty to attention, and looked frowningly at the girls on the sidelines.