Bradstreet Gate: A Novel

by Robin Kirman

  “Is there something you haven’t told me, Mom?”

  She’d refused to admit it right away—your father would be furious—but finally, after Charlie pledged not to let on to his father that they’d spoken, after he’d threatened to walk out if she didn’t say what was the trouble, his mother confessed.

  “There was an incident in Fairbanks. A fight with a fellow soldier. This soldier, it seems, was a homosexual. Luke had seen him harassing some local boys. He was only trying to protect them and then, well, he lost his temper. He went too far. The soldier had some, I guess, pretty serious injuries.”

  Charlie could hear his father’s voice in hers, his father trying to make the facts flatter Luke rather than incriminate him. “Are you saying Luke was discharged? Was there a court-martial?”

  “I don’t think it got that far. The only thing we need to know is that Luke’s home now and needs our support and our respect. You have to believe he was trying to do right.”

  When Charlie returned to campus that fall, Roger asked if he’d been sick. Skinny to start with, he’d lost another ten pounds. He no longer put care into his clothes and he’d stopped attending Salient meetings. Georgia was the only one who could roust him from his room, but when he went with her, he went in a spirit of defeat. Their relationship would never amount to more than a friendship, clearly. He’d missed his chance to make her see him as a potential boyfriend, a mate, a man; he’d been too timid, afraid of losing her completely, and duped by her efforts to keep his desires in line. “I mean, who the hell wants to be pounced on?” she’d announced (speaking of some other foolish boy’s mistake). “Longing is all about deferral—don’t guys understand this?”

  So he’d suppressed every urge to touch her or otherwise make his feelings known, and he even believed—because she meant for him to believe—that his patience would be rewarded: her arm began winding around his waist as they walked back from dinner, her head dropped against his shoulder as she read beside him on his couch. Such gestures were required to compensate for his frustrations, but as those frustrations multiplied, and Georgia’s encouragements with them, the tension grew too great. At the junior year spring formal she’d sat lounging on his lap; her thighs parted above his knee, her hair swept to the side, baring her shoulders. As she’d rocked backward to say something, he’d kissed her neck, and she’d laughed, shaking her hair, as if some strange object had accidentally brushed against her: a passing moth, a falling leaf.

  Of course he understood her intentions (decided in an instant) to behave as if what she’d felt hadn’t been his lips. The reflex expressed their lie so plainly, he couldn’t keep pretending any longer. For Christ’s sake; he wanted Georgia and she didn’t want him. Face it and move on, he’d told himself that spring, and still, almost two months into senior year, he couldn’t resist meeting Georgia when she called, nor could he muster enthusiasm for the other girls that Jasmine kept bringing around. The latest was Pam, Jasmine’s roommate, a petite chemistry major with a short top lip and nasal voice.

  —

  Charlie would be joining Pam that night, Roger informed him, at the last possible moment. The two of them were already dressed in their suits.

  “Hang on. You didn’t mention that part.”

  “She’s a resident of Adams; you’re there as her guest; otherwise you can’t go.”

  “Maybe then it’s better if I don’t.”

  Roger ignored this: crossing to Charlie’s closet, he removed the hanger draped with Charlie’s ties. “Pick one, and do it quickly.”

  In fifteen minutes they were due to meet their dates at Apthorp House, the master’s residence.

  —

  When Charlie and Roger arrived, Pam and Jasmine were already waiting for them: early, as only girls hopeless about seduction would allow themselves to be. Under her open jacket, Pam wore a long, pink cotton dress that Charlie didn’t consider the least bit stylish. Too sweet on shapeless, sexless Pam—though, on Georgia, worn with her loose curls and boots and buttons opened at the top, it would have had appeal. Jasmine and Roger had dressed up, too. She was in floral print; he, in tweed. How unfortunate. At least Charlie thought he looked all right: he’d selected his tan suit for the evening, along with a blue shirt and coral tie. His outfit was more suitable in warmer months, but it was the only one he had that befitted a dinner with someone of Rufus Storrow’s reputation.

  Apthorp House was an imposing, yellow-painted, three-story home, far too large for a single tenant. Jasmine rang the bell and a man came to the door: in his forties, with red hair and green eyes. His posture was precise; his proportions, elegant—lean torso, narrow nose, and pointed chin. A blue vein divided his high forehead, a mark of distinction, Charlie thought.

  “Gentlemen, welcome. Ladies, please.” Storrow’s voice was deep, with a faint, gentlemanly southern drawl. He shook hands with the men and bowed to the young women, who seemed unequal to his graciousness. “Don’t you all look sharp.”

  Storrow was the one, though, who looked sharp, dressed in navy trousers and a red and white gingham button-down. Bright and sporty—a style perfectly suited to his lithe frame: this was grace, Charlie thought, watching Storrow, full of easy vigor even while hanging up coats. A permanent ruddiness shone in his cheeks, as if he’d just risen from doing push-ups.

  “Fantastic. Feel at ease. The others are in the sitting room.” Clapping his hands, Storrow led his guests from the foyer.

  The house was prefurnished, with heavy mahogany and leather chairs fixed with gold buttons; an equestrian painting hung on one living room wall, a football banner from the ’20s on another. A different tenant might have been oppressed by the stale pomposity of the arrangement, but Storrow seemed right at home. All he’d done was add his books, a big black box of a TV, and a set of barbells that occupied one corner of the room.

  The students were strewn across two couches, sipping ginger ales. Charlie knew only one of them by name: Gerry with a G, thin and pale, with black hair long in front, so that every few seconds he was forced to sweep it, wearily, out of his eyes. Gerry had a show on the campus radio and a small-time drug operation, dealing in pot and coke out of his off-campus apartment. An odd figure to turn up at such a dinner, but he’d lived in Adams sophomore year and maybe he’d seen a chance for fun in a meeting with the new straitlaced housemaster. Gerry had brought a friend along, it seemed: a redhead girl with cat-eye glasses, whom Charlie recognized from the offices of the Perspective, the liberal journal just across from the Salient in the basement of Thayer Hall.

  The rest of the guests were strangers. It always surprised Charlie to come across students he didn’t know, when he’d dedicated so much time at school to acquainting himself with all of his classmates. Anybody who’d escaped his notice must be well under the radar, which these remaining three appeared to be: a heavy-set Hispanic boy who stared down at his feet; another boy in a ponytail and army jacket; and the Goth girl draped around him on Storrow’s couch, her legs in torn fishnets.

  Storrow introduced the couple first. “This is Troy. And Sandra, his drag.”

  The girl jerked upright. “What did you call me?”

  “ ‘Drag.’ ” Storrow hastened to explain. “It just means the young woman you’re with.” He went on with introductions, recalling every name with the tense determination of someone taking an exam: “Rebecca, who prefers to be called Becca, and, last but not least, Adams’s own chess champion, Miguel Xavier Santina—did I say that right, Miguel?”

  The chubby boy gave a tense nod and Storrow clapped, excusing himself after a moment and jogging off to finish preparations in the kitchen.

  Gerry watched him go: once he was sure their group was safely unsupervised, he rose and made for Storrow’s bookshelf. The redhead followed, and Pam occupied the open spot left alongside Charlie. While she chatted him up—after the dinner, she and Jasmine were going for Scorpion bowls at the Kong—Charlie listened in on Gerry at the shelf, reading off the titles, seeking out the mo
re embarrassing items: “Expert Expat, Training for the Iron Man, Becoming Your Own Hero.”

  “He could be back any minute,” Roger warned, but Gerry wasn’t listening; he’d spotted something higher on the bookshelf: a framed photograph, color, from the ’70s, to judge by the faded ink, showing ten or so men in swimsuits, arms enlaced. The men looked close in age to those gaping as Gerry took the picture down, but unlike that motley set, each of these was white with short-cropped hair. Storrow stood at the center, rounder in the cheeks than he’d become and smiling wide. Stripped of the carefully pressed clothes, pale torso pink from sun, he looked somehow vulgar, too healthy.

  The redhead pointed to the bottom of the picture. “It’s signed here: ‘Riefenstahl.’ ”

  The sort of remark, thought Charlie, expected of someone whose closest glimpse of soldiers was in screenings in Film Theory.

  His associations were different; in the photo were boys like the ones who’d walked in uniform through his hometown: the same shorn hair, the same mixture of obedience and aggression, of arrogance and innocence. Was that the Hudson behind them? He thought it might be, which would make Storrow a West Point man.

  He didn’t bother to reveal this knowledge, doubting it would impress anybody here but him. Certainly this photograph hadn’t warmed these kids to Storrow. In a community that valued uniqueness above all, such a scene of homogenous camaraderie could seem unfashionable, even a little poor.

  Whistling sounded from the hall; Gerry replaced the photograph just as Storrow reappeared, coming to stand before his guests. His glance darted from one student to the next. After a nervous moment, Charlie realized he was counting.

  “Well, friends, looks like we’re it,” Storrow concluded. “Flu going round, you know: more food for us. Hope you’re all hungry—sorry for the delay.”

  “Maybe you could use some help?” Charlie stood to join him before Storrow made off again. The man was doing all the work for the meal himself, while his guests lounged in his home and idly snooped; Charlie wanted no further part in their behavior and had more interest, anyway, in getting to know his host.

  He and Storrow entered the kitchen, its countertops crowded with bowls of cherry tomatoes, pearl onions, button mushrooms, cubes of tofu, meat and fish. Skewers sat inside a glass at one end: a do-it-yourself dinner, from the looks of it. Probably that had been Storrow’s vision: all hands together.

  If so, he wasn’t complaining; the man seemed pleased enough to have Charlie along for company, there to keep him from feeling he’d shirked his social duties.

  “Take your jacket for you, Charlie?”

  Storrow fitted each of their blazers, neatly, over adjoining chairs, and both men came to stand at the sink, folding back their cuffs. They washed their hands, Charlie’s freckled wrists alongside Storrow’s. The man kept his nails clipped and clean, like Charlie did, in contrast to most of his schoolmates, who might be scrupulous when it came to translations of Latin or physics problem sets, but often neglected to brush their hair or change their socks.

  It was becoming clear to Charlie what a rigorous sort of man Storrow was, how disapproving of sloppiness or half measures of any kind. That his party was a few guests short seemed enough to disturb him: he clearly put effort into these meals. Another housemaster would have boiled up vats of pasta, but Storrow had invested time, shopping, dicing, and setting out these items to be placed, one by one, onto skewers. Those guests outside might not appreciate it, but that wasn’t the point, Charlie thought. Men like Storrow lived by their own standards.

  “Where you from, son?” Storrow began their chat straightforwardly, displaying an adherence to etiquette.

  “Long Island. Garden City. I doubt you’d have heard of it, it’s small.”

  Storrow considered, his thin brows knitted. “Isn’t that near Mitchel?”

  “Right.”

  “You’re not an army brat?”

  “My dad used to work on the base, and my brother just left Eielson.”

  “A zoomie?”

  “Engineering technician.”

  “Important work,” said Storrow, nodding. “The planes wouldn’t take off without them either.”

  It was the first Charlie had spoken of his brother since the summer, and the first he’d thought of him without a knot forming in his stomach.

  “My family’s also got a history of service,” Storrow said. “Three generals and a field marshal.”

  “Long gray line, huh?” This was a term for West Point grads, a phrase Charlie was grateful to have picked up from his reading.

  Storrow set down the skewer in his hand and looked across at Charlie, grinning. “Actually I’m the first from Hudson High—how’d you make me?”

  He preferred not to admit the truth, to allude to that photograph passed around in the next room. “People talk.”

  “Not me, on my honor.” Storrow raised his palm. “Oxford taught this country boy some manners. Don’t want to sound like a ring-knocker.”

  And what was a ring-knocker meant to sound like? No doubt just like Storrow: tossing out institutional slang, taking every chance to allude to those illustrious academies that had produced him. It seemed the man was still rather in awe of his own progress, still living out an ideal he’d defined for himself: a striver like him, Charlie thought, and also in his way, probably a romantic.

  The two men went on chatting for some time, lingering together over their work in the kitchen, while other guests came traipsing through, on occasion, asking for a napkin, or more ice, or making perfunctory offers to assist. Finally, Jasmine appeared to coax Charlie back outside. He’d been neglecting Pam, and Jasmine meant to put an end to it, even if that required leading Charlie by the elbow.

  “My drag,” Charlie quipped on his way out.

  Back in the living room, he found the others absorbed in hushed conversation; he asked Roger what he’d missed.

  “Stupidity, that’s all.”

  Apparently, Gerry had managed to scope out the house and discovered that several upstairs doors were locked. A man didn’t do that unless he had something to hide, right?

  “Or else,” suggested Roger, “he just doesn’t want a bunch of strangers poking around his underwear.”

  And what exactly did everyone imagine a middle-aged Law and History professor would be hiding?

  But Storrow wasn’t any ordinary professor—not in the minds of these Adams students, anyway. According to the kid in the army jacket, Troy, Storrow had done his military service in the late ’80s in Afghanistan and Pakistan—so obviously that meant covert work with the mujahideen. After law school, he’d specialized in the law of war-based detention—still, the Pentagon routinely sent him to bases around the world to advise on special cases involving military prisoners. God only knew what sort of things the man had seen—and been required to keep quiet—though if Storrow really did have things to hide, Charlie thought, then he was doing a pretty lousy job of it.

  So much speculation—Storrow must be contributing somehow to the rumors. Certainly it was a provocative choice to appear at once so open and so closed, to invite students into his home and then lock doors. If Storrow wasn’t actively trying to get people to talk about him, at least the way he announced his entrance into a room, loudly whistling, stood as a sign that he was in on the game.

  As Storrow strolled in, his guests grew silent.

  “Chow’s on,” he announced, holding up a steaming tray.

  —

  Dinner was served at a creaking, circular wood table. Storrow waited for the guests to help themselves and took his own food last, lining up three skewers. He fitted his napkin at his neck and sat very straight, chair pulled in close. For the next half hour or so, he ran the conversation like he ate the food off his plate, dutifully making his way around. One by one he addressed his guests, focusing his interest on a single pursuit—Jasmine, orchestra; Miguel, chess; Gerry, radio—as if he’d challenged himself to memorize a fact about each student. Good stuff, well, i
sn’t that the max.

  Not far into the meal, the discussion was already threatening to falter, when Troy turned to Storrow with a question.

  “About your military service.”

  “If you think that’s of any interest.” Storrow smiled and rolled his eyes; in an instant, he’d grown playful, overcome his rigidity. “What’s on your mind, son?”

  “You were in Kuwait during the war?”

  “No—Kuwait, no. Saudi Arabia, that was all, only for a few weeks. And strictly in my capacity as a legal adviser to soldiers on the base—whatever else you may have heard.” Storrow chuckled and hunched forward, at attention. “I’m afraid to even ask.”

  It took Troy a moment to realize that Storrow was asking.

  “What I heard? That you were there to oversee aspects of detention, deal with POWs.”

  “Deal with how?”

  “You know, interrogations.”

  Storrow’s hand went to his chest, in a weak gesture of shock, while his eyes shone, inviting conjecture. “Nothing so exciting, I’m afraid; I was just the stiff quoting Geneva regulations.”

  “All about the rules, right?” Gerry put in sharply. Until then, Charlie noted, Gerry had been uncharacteristically reserved. “Geneva, Hague, Georgetown Student Handbook.”

  The remark seemed to catch Storrow off guard; his smile fell and he turned, with all the rest, to look at Gerry, who sat with his chair tilted, so that it rocked on its back legs.

  “A friend of mine knew her well,” Gerry continued. “Suzannah Bell. The girl you had expelled.”

  Storrow untucked the napkin from his collar and dabbed at his chin. “Not that I intend to get into it here,” he said sternly, “but if a student is going to come to my class high on drugs, if she’s going to flaunt illegal behavior—”

  “She claimed you went out of your way to follow her.”

  “She claimed. All right she claimed. A girl like that.” Abruptly, Storrow left off and rose to begin collecting plates. “Anyway, I think we’ve talked enough about me. What say we move onto dessert? I can’t offer you coffee, I’m afraid, just cheese and fruit. House rules: no caffeine, no booze, no boodle.”