The Expectations

by Alexander Tilney

  Tim put down his paper cup. “No.”

  “Too much pressure.”

  Tim felt a rise of affection and forgiveness for his friend. “Are you sure, though? I mean, I remember you playing the semis against Addison Garner”—they both laughed about Addison’s long bangs—“and just seeing you playing a whole different game from him. It would be too bad if you didn’t…” Tim could see Ben was flattered but put off, and he didn’t know which part of what he was saying was having which effect.

  They pretended to be adults and kept sitting in the front window of the coffee shop, watching people walking from their cars to the other stores in the strip. Tim wasn’t bringing up going to HMV, and Ben let it go; he didn’t want to worry about spending money on CDs. They should have gone sledding. Ben didn’t think he was good enough at piano anymore to jam with Tim, and squash was off the table, so what else did they have? What was their friendship other than methods of passing time in the same place? Along with everything else, they both felt relief when it was time to go.

  Christmas Eve approached. They bought a tree and hung ornaments on it, but no presents went underneath. On Christmas morning Ben got two Tintin books and a travel backgammon set. His parents said they had already exchanged presents.

  The night before Ben was going back, he and his dad went to the movies, but Helen didn’t want to see Dumb and Dumber and so she let them go and started reading her book.

  When she was sure they were well gone she went up to Ben’s room and saw his closed-up duffel. She held a packet of lemon squares wrapped in two layers of Saran wrap and a layer of tinfoil, and she paused there for a few moments in the darkness of the room. The duffel was somehow like his face when she had dropped him off to meet Tim, busy with not-knowing her, and she felt the anticipation of missing him and wanting him to come home again. She went to one knee over the duffel and unzipped it partway, starting to slip the lemon squares inside, and then she saw a gleam. She looked closer: their three-quarters-full bottle of Old Grand-Dad.

  She smiled in the darkness, absorbing this lie. He was smart. She would bet they’d had that bottle for a dozen years. How could she let him go up there again without any assets? She pulled the zipper closed, stood up, and turned her back on the duffel, and when they got home that night she handed Ben the lemon squares packet directly and said she hoped he liked them and hugged him around his uncushioned rib cage and went upstairs to bed with her throat tight.

  11. The Light of Setting Suns

  THE FIRST EVENING BACK, WRESTLING HAD A THREE-HOUR practice. Simon was there and trying to act as though nothing was different. Ben was relieved that he hadn’t been kicked out for a thing that Ben was partially responsible for. They did all the same drills and everyone said the same things, but Weber had lost faith in them after the Dragon, and making eye contact still seemed too hard to manage.

  Ben was amazed at how glad he was to see Ahmed again back in the room. His hair was neatly trimmed and parted, and it was shocking that it looked intentional again. For a short moment each of them looked hard at the other one to see if their arrangement was there behind the eyes. Instead of hugging they traded a handshake and then Ahmed asked him how his break had been. There was something more careful about Ahmed; his smile was more subdued and his voice quieter. Ben saw this new quiet even when Ahmed was turned away, occupied with his shoe trees or three-ring binder.

  Ben imagined the conversation Ahmed had had with his father; maybe it hadn’t even come up between them after that first arrangement. Or maybe it had blown apart how they imagined the Underhills of the world to be. Would Underhill ever let himself be so vulnerable? Or could Underhills always expect this kind of service from those around them?

  Ben expected to feel relieved as he walked around campus. Money was settled and he could finally get back to the things he should have been attending to the whole time: girls, excelling, the right path. But at dinner the first night the group around Hutch seemed suddenly cemented with Ben outside: disposable camera pictures had come back of them getting wet in Kyle’s room a week before break, and all of them had several nicknames for the others, each a differing degree of insult. But they just called Ben “Ben” or “Weeksy.”

  There in the dining hall he sat with them and laughed, and wondered when they would find out that Ahmed was paying his way. He remembered the whiskey he had brought back, and wished he could put it right out on the dining hall table. Hutch looked at Ben and said, “I spent all break hoping Ahmed’s dad would withdraw him. Fuck.”

  The next morning as all the students streamed out of Chapel through the grit on the path, someone arrived at Ben’s shoulder. In the sun off the snow after the chapel’s darkness, Ben had to stare for a moment before he realized that it was Markson, who was now leaning into him gently and then away.

  “I know I should probably keep my mouth shut, but I had to check with the Bursar.” He smiled. “You must be so relieved! What did your parents say?”

  “Apparently a deal came through,” Ben said, and smiled as well. After a moment Markson raised his eyebrows to invite him to continue, but Ben just said, “How was your break?”

  “Ah, good,” said Markson, the light in his face turning inward. “I was in New York.”

  Ben was relieved for this something-else to talk about. “Is that where you’re from?”

  “No, I’m—I’m actually seeing someone there.”

  Ben looked again: this was what new love looked like in Markson’s face.

  “So, ah, we obviously, we don’t get a ton of time to see each other, so it was great. It was great to have some time there.”

  “That’s great,” said Ben, and they smiled.

  “I’m happy the tuition thing worked out. I was worried for you.”

  Ben forced a smile, but there were no other words he could bring to his mouth.

  After another minute of quiet they waved and parted ways—Markson to the Schoolhouse and Ben to the Math Building.

  Ben saw Rory coming down the adjacent path, and expected him to walk right past as usual, but he came right for Ben with defiance in his face.

  “We got someone else.”

  “What?”

  “Price recruited someone new, a British kid, Gray Dalton. You were good for here, dude, but this kid is good in England.”

  Rory seemed to expect him to crumble at hearing this, but instead Ben shrugged. “I’m not playing squash. I don’t care, man.”

  “Bullshit. I know you. When you see him play it’s going to kill you.”

  “I guess I just won’t watch him play, then.”

  As he walked away, Ben tried to sense the whole campus again to see if he could feel this other player, and then he caught himself.

  * * *

  Ahmed still wore the Marlboro Racing hat whenever he wasn’t wearing the Russian earflap hat, and Ben resigned himself to the idea that Marlboro Racing was now lost. To the benefit of other boys, etc., etc.

  The January days surrendered early, and streetlamps softened the landscape. A check arrived from his dad for sixty dollars, with a note that just said, Pizza. Ben kept going to wrestling practice, even won an away match against another absolute beginner from Deerfield, but several nights a week he had the urge to go to the squash courts to take a break from working. Then he remembered the new kid, and Price. He hadn’t seen either of them around campus, but then on Wednesday there was a home match scheduled against Milton on the new courts, and as Ben walked past the courts to the gym, he saw people’s sweaters pressed against the glass of the doors at the top of the gallery, and heard the noise of the cheering even as he kept walking. Squash ended up beating Milton 6–3, and Gray was the lead story on the front page of the Colony, the SJS paper. He had lost only three points during the entire match, and the paper had a quote from the Milton number one: “That was awful.”

  Ben wondered whether he could just stop showing up to wrestling without anyone missing him. Ahmed stayed toward the top of the pack on the
JV squash team and kept winning matches against kids from other schools. In the Dish the kids moved with the thrum of a healthy hive, and in classes Ben sat back and let the conversation wash around him. He let himself get used to his spot toward the outside of Hutch’s circle. He saw Alice in the halls a few times, and they stopped and talked and Ben managed to wrap up the conversation without making a fool of himself.

  One time she said, “Hey, there’s this thing: I’ve been doing a photo project for a little while. Like I started it toward the end of last year.”

  Ben nodded.

  “Would you ever come sit for me?”

  “It’s like portraits?” For an instant Ben thought she was asking him to help her set up the equipment.

  “Yeah. Portraits sounds so ritzy, but yeah, I’ve been taking pictures of people. Think about it.”

  “Sure, I will,” he said, meaning he was agreeing to sit for a photo, but he heard that it meant he would agree to think about it. He began to think he should go to her room to visit her.

  In the common room after Seated, Hutch teased the girls he knew, and they rolled their eyes but laughed, and the boys with him wanted the same response but were too timid to say anything potentially disagreeable to the girls, and so they seemed to go up on tiptoes with the effort to get closer, to take part, like young dogs preparing to put their feet up on a new person’s shirt. Ben tried to hold himself back from doing the same thing but he knew he was only partially successful.

  Ben finally saw Gray across the common room; it had to be him. He was tall, like a long brushstroke, with close-cut black curly hair and a maybe-I’m-putting-you-on smile. Gray had several people around him, maybe excited about an English accent, but Ben didn’t need to care.

  Hutch kept talking about Ahmed. “St. James is in decline. The administration is trying to, like, mass-market the school, make sure it’s safe for new money to send their kids here for the stamp of approval.”

  Ben stayed quiet, hoping it would just dissolve away, but then Evan squinted and said, “Yeah, but what can we do? I mean, if the upper-formers are willing to have things go to shit, how can we do anything about it?”

  “Desperate times, man. We have to lead the charge. We have to make it clear that not only can’t you act that way, but the rest of the school in good conscience can’t let it stand. Once we remind upper-formers how it’s supposed to work, they’ll take up the flag.”

  “All right,” said Evan. “So what are we going to do?”

  Hutch turned to Ben. “What do you think, man? What would work on him?”

  Ben wished he could close his eyes and have them forget he was there. “He already feels really bad about it. He told me he wished nothing had happened to Ennis. Yes, it sucks, but it’s on the administration.”

  “But see, that’s especially not good enough. Even if the administration doesn’t understand, everyone else has to understand that if you cross authority, you’ll regret it. That’s our responsibility to maintain. My dad would be appalled if he knew shit like this was going on. And people just forgetting so quickly.”

  And most people did in fact seem to have forgotten what the problem with Ahmed was supposed to be, and more than a few started to think of him as a funny curiosity. But a core number of guys still turned their shoulders from him when they passed him on the path. Ahmed seemed to be reaching for his old buoyancy, and he joined the robotics team.

  In their room, imagining Hutch just outside in the hallway, Ben again started to give Ahmed a little more guidance. Maybe cuff links weren’t always the best idea. Maybe it was time to replace the Coach leather satchel with a JanSport zip-up backpack. Before, Ben would just wince as Ahmed stood in front of the hot lunch options for a minute and a half, inquiring politely whether each one contained any pork while the server and the students in line behind him seethed, but now he tried to take Ahmed aside and explain why people might object. He began to sit with Ahmed at lunch if he could be reasonably sure they wouldn’t be seen, working bits of slang into the conversation.

  In his head Ben began to think of general wisdom he would want to write down for Ahmed if he ever had the chance, his own version of the Companion. It would be a good idea for Ahmed to visit Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, an apartment on Park Avenue. The apartment of someone who disdains Park Avenue. A concert of sixties and seventies rock or bluegrass. Eventually he should branch out from squash and learn or at least try tennis, sailing, canoeing, cross-country skiing, downhill skiing, jogging, fly-fishing, hiking. Hiking was good and didn’t demand much practice. It was important not to complain while doing any of these things, but Ahmed hadn’t ever seemed to be much of a complainer. And anytime you were in any kind of contest with anyone, you had to laugh off any defeat or victory no matter how important it actually was for you. This could work, Ahmed could get this.

  And then, about ten days into school, Ben saw Ahmed and Tommy Landon together again, leaning against the wood paneling in the Schoolhouse hall. Instantly Ben could tell that they were talking about getting high. Ahmed almost always stood with his chest out, but now the two of them hunched conspiratorially.

  Tommy looked up and scanned the hallway, and then Ahmed looked up and scanned the hallway in exactly the same way. Ben moved his gaze to the dull brass doorknob on the closest classroom. Tommy and Ahmed straightened up and began walking away together, turning left down the short flight of stairs to the south exit.

  That night back in the room, while Ben stared at his first trigonometry problem set and Ahmed tried to read “Tintern Abbey,” Ben looked up and said, “So I saw you hanging out with Tommy Landon today.” Ahmed gave him a look that Ben wouldn’t have thought him capable of a month before.

  “I can be with whomever I want.”

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t. What’s he like? What do you guys do?”

  “We see each other. What do you and I do?”

  “We live together, Ahmed.”

  “Well, Tommy and I go to the same school. So we are together at some times.”

  “All right.”

  Over the next several days it got colder and colder, and Ben saw less and less of Ahmed. Every night Ahmed came into the room late, after Ben was lying in the dark looking into the phosphorescence, and he began sleeping until the absolute last minute before getting up for Chapel or class. Then he began sleeping through Chapel, and then Ben would see him with Tommy and Tommy’s friends near the power plant when he definitely had class scheduled.

  Before Christmas, Ahmed had asked Ben for some of his music to listen to, and Ben had made him a long, careless tape of the Allmans, Stones, Kind of Blue, and some Blues Traveler as a required nod to music from their own decade. Ahmed hadn’t mentioned it since then, and now that Ahmed was pulling closer to Tommy, Ben intensely wished he had taken it more seriously.

  “Hey, Ahmed, did you listen to that tape I gave you?”

  Ahmed took his robe from the hook on the back of the door without looking around.

  “Yes, it was very good.”

  “What did you like the best?” Ben heard his voice from outside himself, and for the first time he had the feeling adults have when trying to relate to children.

  “I liked the first song.”

  “The Hendrix?”

  “Yes. That was very good.”

  “Cool, I’m glad you liked it. Let me know if you ever want more.”

  Ahmed turned to look at him and smiled. “Yes, I will.”

  “I’ve got tons of stuff I could give you.”

  “Yes, definitely.”

  Ben started asking Ahmed if he wanted to go to the movies the Film Society screened on Friday nights, or to the Den to play Street Fighter on the old arcade coin-op, or to study not at Kuyper Library but in the smaller, less hectic stacks of the Art Library. Ahmed agreed to go to the Den and to study a few times, but most of the time he had something else to do. Even as he started to miss Chapel and a class here and there, he still came to squash practice every day.
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  When he saw Ahmed and Tommy together, Ben kept expecting Tommy to wear a mocking expression, like the grin of a child teasing a dog, but it wasn’t there. Tommy and his friends looked like they had been given some new kind of kite. And, impossibly, the Marlboro Racing hat was starting to look cool again.

  To applause, Ben brought the Snapple bottles of Old Grand-Dad over to Hutch’s room for crank time on a Tuesday, and he had a careful two shots.

  “Tommy’s making such a huge mistake,” Hutch seethed. “He thinks he can bring Ahmed up, but it’s just capitulating. I bet Ahmed’s paying for all their shit. I bet that’s the only reason they keep him around, just using him for his money.”

  At Seated, Ben kept putting his hand in front of his mouth to contain any smell, and everything was more glowing.

  When Ahmed came into the room early on a Thursday night—8:07 p.m.—relief washed through Ben; he hardly ever saw Ahmed before eleven anymore. Ahmed placed his backpack on his desk. Ben suddenly felt sorry he had suggested that Ahmed switch away from the satchel. This maroon backpack with the black padded shoulder straps seemed so bland.

  “Ben? You enjoy writing papers?”

  “I don’t think anyone enjoys it. I don’t mind it, I guess.”

  “I do not like it at all.”

  Ben laughed. “No?”

  “No. Mr. Twombley keeps telling me I am getting closer, but I do not really know what I am trying to get closer to.” Ahmed stopped and was quiet for several seconds.

  Ben started, “Do you—” and then thought about whether this would make him an employee, but Ahmed’s face brightened to a near-satire of someone seizing on new hope. Ben began again. “Would you ever want me to…look at something sometime?”

  “That would be very good. I would like that.”

  “All right. When’s your next paper due?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “What’s it about?”

  * * *