The Expectations

by Alexander Tilney

  “That is not a satisfying answer.”

  “It is the answer you are getting.”

  * * *

  Ben found a slip in his PO box: it was time to schedule Spring Term advisor meetings. Markson held three consecutive evenings open and invited each advisee to his faculty apartment in Calder House.

  Markson’s door was propped open, and when Ben came to the threshold and looked in, he saw Tyler Reichenbach sitting in one of the armchairs near the door and Markson facing him from the couch. Tyler looked up and Markson turned and then smiled and held up one finger.

  When it was Ben’s turn to come in and sit down, he looked at the open door and heard other kids in the hall. He stood up again.

  “Do you mind if I close the door?” Ben asked.

  “Ah, we’re actually required to keep the door open. Faculty can’t have students in their apartments with the door closed.”

  It took Ben a moment to realize what Markson meant, and when it came to him he blushed and shook his head and sat back down. Markson laughed.

  “So?” Markson said. Ben so badly wanted to talk about Ahmed paying his tuition and now starting to hang out with Tommy.

  Instead he said, “Wrestling…It’s not…”

  “Ah ha.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, well, worth a try.”

  Ben didn’t want it to be resolved that quickly.

  “I’m also…” Ben could use the kind of problems that were possible to talk about. “Like the work, and the routine, it’s all—like I get to Saturday night, and before I can recover it’s already Sunday afternoon and I’ve got to do all my Monday work.”

  “You feel burned out.”

  “In a way.”

  “And are you interested in the work? In the courses you’re taking?”

  “I guess.”

  “Hm. Do you know Alice Morehead?” Markson asked. Ben nodded. “She’s working on a photography project. She had me come sit for a portrait. It seemed like she wanted to do it regardless of whether it would count.”

  “Yeah, I’ve sat for her.”

  “So can you find something to do that doesn’t count?”

  “I’ll try.”

  They talked about how he might try to get work done during Friday free periods to make Sundays a little easier, and even though Ben didn’t say any of the other things he wanted to say, he didn’t want to leave, either.

  * * *

  Into mid-February the thaw continued. Water ran down the paths and turned around the storm drains. Kids defiantly shivered in polo shirts and shorts above their wellies and Bean boots. The ice over the pond became cloudy, and long puddles formed in its depressions.

  It stayed warm for several more days, and a small hysterical fever broke out among the students. There was no way the warmth was going to last through spring. Until now everyone had securely braced themselves against the cold and dark, but suddenly they saw how much better life could be when it didn’t sting to go outside, and the dread of having to descend back into winter caused a spasm of unhappiness.

  Gray kept annihilating number ones at other schools. The Colony wrote two more articles about him, quoting another player coming off the court saying to a teammate, “I never want to play again.” The crowds at home matches became known as the Gray-lanx. Ben finally just stopped showing up to wrestling practice, and in his restlessness he started going to the courts to hit by himself when he knew for sure that the team was at an away match.

  At the beginning of the third week of the thaw, Henry Carter, a fifth-former in Gordon and the hockey goalie, was getting a blow job from his girlfriend, Hannah Burke. He pulled out and came on her face without telling her first, and they had never done that before. Hannah was a fifth-former in Paige, and, in response, she and the other Paige girls decreed a hookup ban on campus: if any girl was caught doing anything with her boyfriend, the Paige girls would make sure she either had a nervous breakdown or withdrew from school, or both. The ban would end whenever the Paige girls said it would end.

  Faculty felt that something had gone wrong. It took long minutes for Chapel to quiet down before morning announcements, kids began to miss classes, and there was even a shouting match in the Den over a game of pool.

  The kids who already hadn’t been hooking up with anyone felt delicious schadenfreude for a few days, but as the clammy humidity went on, even the teachers and staff began to bristle over little nothings.

  One afternoon before Seated, Ben came back to the room to find a note on the little table in front of the couch. His chest felt light for a moment and then it wasn’t for him. Across a piece of the buff stationery Ahmed used to write to his father, someone had written in blue ballpoint,

  The 27th works for everybody. Cool?

  That day was February fifteenth, a Tuesday, so the twenty-seventh was two Sundays away.

  The weather stayed warm, and over the next two weeks Ben saw three more notes, all with the same handwriting. He imagined Tommy in their room, looking at Ben and Ahmed’s things.

  We’re all set with the guy. Come by.

  There’s no problem having it all together, right? Let me know.

  We’re gonna do bus instead of car.

  On the Tuesday afternoon before whatever was being planned for the twenty-seventh, Ahmed swung open the door and strode into the room. Ben was there reading the Tintin comic book, The Seven Crystal Balls.

  “Mr. Twombley gave me a high grade on my English paper!”

  Ben looked at the outstretched page and saw that it was an Honors, the equivalent of a B. Ben made himself see the friendliness of the exchange after their pot standoff.

  “Ahmed, that’s so great.”

  “And look at the passage he circled here.” Ahmed flipped two pages and moved beside Ben. “This was the one I asked you about, the one I could not get to go correctly.”

  Ben looked. Ahmed’s father loved falconry, and Ahmed had wanted to draw a comparison between hunting with falcons and hunting for chestnuts in Wordsworth’s “Nutting,” but he hadn’t been able to make the sentences parallel until Ben had straightened it out.

  “That makes me so happy, Ahmed. I’m so glad.”

  “Thank you, Ben. I appreciate it very much.”

  Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  “We should celebrate,” Ben said. “Want to go into town soon? Get some dinner?”

  Ahmed smiled. “Yes, I would like that.”

  “Great. How about Sunday?”

  Ahmed’s smile changed. “Ah, Sunday. I can’t.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “I am signing out to go to Boston with Tommy and Graham.”

  “Oh, cool,” said Ben. “Getting dinner or whatever?”

  “Yes,” Ahmed said.

  They stopped talking.

  “How has squash been?” said Ben.

  “Everyone is thrilled and nervous about Gray. But I’ve been in the same place for a while. Still players on the team think I should lose to them. As though I am lucky every time I beat them.”

  “But you beat them.”

  “Some. But I am still on JV. Peter Rutherford, he always gets me by three or four points. And Price, he seems to never remember that I’m on the team. He seems to look at me as a visitor every time, someone visiting for every practice and every match.”

  “Would you want to play varsity?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, let’s go hit.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Why don’t we go to the courts? Maybe I can see something you don’t see.”

  Ahmed smiled a more guarded smile than Ben had seen before.

  “You would want to hit with me?”

  “Listen, head over there and start warming up and I’ll come in a few.”

  Twenty minutes later Ben came quietly up behind the court and for a few seconds watched Ahmed. Ahmed took his racquet back with some extra ceremony, but otherwise his strokes were simple and relaxed, and Ben saw the r
hythm of the smack off the front wall and the long slide against the side wall and the one-two bounce off the floor and the back wall and the new stroke falling easily through him. Maybe smoking pot didn’t harm his game; maybe it made it better.

  Ahmed shanked a ball and turned to pick it up, and in seeing Ben, gave a restrained smile. Ben’s smile looked true to Ahmed; not patronizing or reluctant, or like Ben was doing something owed.

  Without saying anything Ben changed into his court shoes, stepped through the door, and closed it behind him. Ahmed could see Ben showing off slightly, relishing the crisp volleys back to himself, but before going on for too long he knocked the ball gently over to Ahmed.

  “Want me to feed you rails?” Ben said.

  Ahmed nodded, feeling as though this would be beneath Ben but not wanting to contradict him.

  And so they hit. Ben placed the ball a foot out from the wall two steps in front of Ahmed, and Ahmed stepped in and hit the forehand simply, and Ben put the ball back in the same place. They did it on the backhand side.

  “Try bringing your racquet back even farther,” Ben said.

  Ahmed did, and it was awkward for two strokes.

  “Not just your arm; turn with your body a little more.”

  And Ahmed did, and they both could feel the ball spring to the front wall with new life.

  At that moment Ben remembered being on court with his dad so many years before. They were having a bad session. Ben felt like there wasn’t enough time to get his racquet back for each ball, and every part of the movement felt like a separate thing dropped into a sack and shaken, and he was near tears.

  “Ben.” His father held the ball and looked at him. “Don’t worry about being good. It’s fine to be having trouble. Just do the thing we talked about—try to hit the ball with the butt of your racquet and then turn your wrist like a doorknob—and don’t even expect the ball to get to the front wall. It’s not your job to hit a good shot. Your only job is to make that movement.”

  Ben was still young enough to think that his dad was the best squash player in the world. More than that, he murkily thought that his dad was squash, was the original source of the game. This act of releasing Ben from hitting a good shot had seemed vast.

  At some point later Ben suddenly understood that his dad was actually a fairly middle-of-the-road player, and then they played their first match where his dad wasn’t totally in control, and then inevitably and with some sadness Ben beat his dad, and then beat him while hardly ever losing control of a point.

  But the sadness was only ever on Ben’s side. Harry had never strived with such pleasure as when Ben finally pulled away from him. His son’s play became so much more complex, more creative and surprising. It was to Harry as though he had been paddling on a shallow river by unremarkable trees in midday light, and then that river had begun to deepen, and it deepened and deepened until toward dusk its movement had gained an ancient living gravity. Ben had sort of forgotten how much delight he had felt from his father on court.

  “All right,” Ben said. “Hit twenty more like that. Right, that twist. Good.”

  Ahmed felt his body moving in this pattern, and he felt some of the gratitude and belonging that he had always expected to feel with Ben. But he also tried to sense whether Ben was trying to move him away from Tommy, to take that from him.

  They switched sides back to the forehand.

  “What if you took the racquet straight back.”

  “Straight?”

  Ben held Ahmed’s racquet and moved it into the right shape. “Just quicker, simpler. See?”

  “I think so.”

  “Hit a couple.”

  He did, but this one seemed not to take as easily, and Ben could sense Ahmed getting slightly frustrated. Pushing him through this would maybe feel like getting even, but he tried to resist.

  “We’ll work on it next time.”

  “Next time, yes.”

  * * *

  The next day after fifth period, Ben caught sight of Tommy’s loose-knit rust-colored winter hat heading down the stairs of the Schoolhouse and went down the same stairs after him. Tommy was by himself, pushing through the heavy outside doors, and without really knowing what he was doing, Ben went through the same doors and started following him from a distance through the slush.

  Ben wanted to walk up beside Tommy and say something, but he had never spoken directly to an upper-former without being spoken to first. So he kept following. As he passed the Den, he saw Helena Rusk coming toward him, and he realized that she was one of the cusp-beautiful girls he had seen the first day, but now he knew her name, knew her reputation as really good at the oboe but not so bright otherwise. Very clearly she now knew more about how to regulate the attention that she acknowledged and paid out.

  Tommy walked behind the quad past the squash courts (already the Dragon was developing a patina over its bright grinder marks), and it was clear that he was heading along the tree-covered path back to Gordon, where he lived.

  As Tommy came out onto the lawn in front of Gordon, Ben paused at the edge of the woods and watched him go inside. He jogged up to the door and pulled it open. He had no idea which room was Tommy’s, but he heard gritty footsteps on the stairwell above him and so he climbed up two steps at a time, trying to make his footfalls as quiet as possible. On the second floor he was just able to see Tommy’s back foot as it disappeared into the last room on the right. Ben was quietly disappointed. He had half expected Tommy to be living in an unknown turret or gigantic basement somewhere instead of in just a regular room.

  Ben walked down the hallway toward the door Tommy had gone through. Taped to it was a postcard of the Vietnamese monk consumed by flame. Ben almost knocked, but then he caught himself—only faculty knock—and he was stuck standing there in the hallway, not prepared to go in but not able to leave.

  Then he heard footsteps coming up the stairs and he didn’t want to be caught there just standing in the hall, so he turned the knob and went inside. Tommy had a delay bookshelf immediately behind the door with a black-and-white poster of Jack Nicholson’s ecstatic face pressed up to the chopped-open gap in the wood.

  “Tommy?” Ben said softly after the door had closed behind him. There was no answer. Ben stepped around the delay and into the main part of the room. It was empty.

  The windows faced away from where the sun had started to set, and so in the late afternoon with no lights on, the space was gray-blue and very still, as though whoever lived there had been sent home.

  “Tommy?”

  Tommy wasn’t there. Ben looked over the room, and even though he could see the whole place in one view, he looked back and forth from the unmade bed to the pink stuffed couch over and over again, as though looking for misplaced keys. The stereo was on, but it was a McIntosh tube amp, and guys never turned them off because it took a while for the vacuum tubes to warm up properly.

  But there on the oval braided rug were Tommy’s dark brown docksiders with white soles. Ben wanted to kneel down and put the back of his hand up to the insides of the shoes to see if they were still warm. Then he did get on his hands and knees to check for Tommy under the bed. Four wide plastic storage bins.

  “Tommy?”

  Had Tommy gone out the window and climbed to the roof? Had Ben imagined seeing him come into the room? Ben got strangely afraid, as though the rules were different in this room; because Tommy was known to do so many drugs, maybe the room itself was inducing an altered state of mind. Ben looked at the books on the room side of the bookshelf: Cat’s Cradle, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Tale of Genji.

  Ben was about to leave when he thought to look in the closet. The couch was set across the closet opening, which a lot of kids did to maximize wall space and to leave a convenient place to set a bong out of sight. Tommy had hung a New Zealand flag over the closet opening, and Ben put a hand on the couch’s backrest and leaned over to pull the flag aside.

  As he did, a hand grabbed him around the wr
ist and shoved his arm away. Ben let out an embarrassing whoop and sprang away.

  “What the fuck?” Ben said.

  “What the fuck, you?” The flag still hung flat. “What the fuck are you doing in my room when you can see I’m not here?”

  Ben decided to be the kind of person who persists. He took off his backpack and set it on the floor. “Come out of the closet, Tommy.”

  “I’m not here.”

  “Seriously, Tommy. I’m not leaving, man.”

  “Well, I’m not coming out, so you’re going to have to come in.”

  “What?”

  “Get your ass in here, before someone comes in and wonders what the hell you’re doing in my room. Stop flailing.”

  Ben paused. Then he lifted his foot and was about to set it on the couch when Tommy said, “Are you stepping on the couch with your shoes on, man? Take that shit off.”

  Ben took off his shoes, climbed on the couch and straddled the backrest, then hopped his weight over, getting half jammed in the opening and tangled in the flag.

  “Jesus, what a flail.”

  Ben pulled himself clear of the flag and looked around. There were no hanging clothes inside the closet, and all the walls had been painted dove-gray. Tommy sat on an armless stuffed chair at one end, looking up at Ben with hard eyes under his black hair. The space was lit by a short string of Christmas-tree lights stapled along the molding.

  “Sit,” Tommy said.

  Ben turned around and there was an identical chair behind him at the other end of the closet.

  “Where do you put all your clothes?”

  “Under the bed. Why hang when you can fold? Now sit.”

  Ben sat.

  “What do you want?” Tommy said.

  “I want you to leave Ahmed alone.”

  Tommy laughed. “No. Why do you even care?”

  “He can’t keep up with you guys,” Ben said. “You, Graham, Morgan—you guys can handle your shit and still pass your classes and like function in front of faculty, but Ahmed can’t. He hardly goes to class anymore.” Ben knew he himself wouldn’t be able to keep it together if he started doing any drugs, and he wanted to ask Tommy how he had learned to do it.