Читать книгу The Sixth Form - Tom Dolby - Страница 9

Why boarding school? Why now? Ethan had prepared numerous answers to these questions, expecting that he would be asked to explain himself the moment he arrived at Berkley as a transfer student to the senior class, known as the Sixth Form. The hubris, he now realized, of assuming anyone would care! His fellow classmates were burdened with the minutiae of high school life: athletic uniforms that were unflattering (everything was always too baggy, or too tight), unusual growth spurts (Evan Douglas had gained four inches over the summer), absurd rumors (a Fourth Form girl had become a kleptomaniac and was said to have hundreds of tins of lip gloss in her bedroom—if she liked you, she would share), haircuts (Robbie de Sola had clipped off his beautiful dark locks), students who hadn’t returned after summer break (where were they?), summer flings (Tina Palmer had done it in her parents’ Southampton bedroom with a townie).

Ethan knew people arrived at the school at various junctures for different reasons: They needed an extra year of credits before college and would help beef up the hockey or football team (or occasionally, the music or drama program). They had been kicked out of another, equally prestigious institution (there weren’t really any better schools than Berkley—it had always been ranked in the top five, according to those who knew about such things), and had been admitted as a last-minute favor, usually with the help of a letter from a member of the board of trustees. They had been dissatisfied at home.

Though Berkley was generally not the type of school where young people in trouble enrolled—those institutions were further down the ladder, more akin to military academies and the like—a fair number of young people in trouble still ended up there. Or perhaps, Ethan would wonder, as he heard stories of his fellow classmates sharing cigarettes in the shower at 2:00 a.m., or stumbling drunk down the hallway in the middle of the afternoon, still in school uniform (coats and ties, always, for the boys), the trouble found them after they arrived.

But nothing so thrilling as having been expelled had happened to Ethan. He wasn’t a rebel, or a slacker, or a drug addict—he could only faintly recall the last time he had broken a school rule. (It would have been in the sixth grade when, unable to catch, he had been so afraid of playing touch football that he hid in the school library during PE for an entire semester. It had garnered him an F on his report card, the only one he had ever received. An F! His parents laughed it off: he, a professor of engineering and she of literature, were not the type to care about such quotidian matters as grade point averages. They were of the rare breed who only cared if their child was learning.)

His parents’ house in Palo Alto was ten minutes away from campus and it had been too easy to fall into the same patterns he had followed since grade school: walking home directly after classes, not socializing with his peers, spending hours in his bedroom reading, finding himself alone on a Saturday night. His social life had improved, certainly, in his first three years of high school; he shuddered to think about what he had been like as a freshman (geeky glasses, pimples, faint mustache—why hadn’t his father noticed it was time to teach him to shave?). He had been on a few dates with girls; he had friends whom he would see occasionally, though he suspected they felt the same sort of ambivalence toward him that he felt for them. He could have managed his last year of high school at home, but he and his parents knew he needed to move on.

The other element was his mother’s illness that had enveloped their little house. The official word was that she was in remission, though there was always the danger of the cancer metastasizing. Ethan suspected that she and his father hadn’t been telling him everything in recent months. He wanted to be there for her, but he also longed to escape the reality of it. It had been discovered seven years ago, the epithelial carcinoma on the outer surface of one of her ovaries. He knew these details by heart, from his mother reciting her condition, early on, at the dinner table after each appointment with her oncologist. At first, Judith treated it distantly, as if it were a work of literature they were discussing, or a trip they would be taking to a foreign country: the different methods of treatment, the chances for survival (A doxorubicin liposome injection? How fascinating!). Lately, though, she had become bored, and she appeared to want to shield her son from the details as much as possible. She would go to her chemotherapy, lying in the infusion center for hours with a needle in her arm; the doctors would cut away at her organs (every time she was hopeful, though her optimism gave way to pragmatism, as each operation was not wholly successful). She didn’t give up: there had been radiation, clinical trials, experimental therapies. Judith Whitley, an internationally recognized expert on feminist literature—her critical study of Simone de Beauvoir was considered a classic—was wasting the last years of her life being shuttled from appointment to appointment. Ethan couldn’t believe that this was what it meant to be in remission.

While he was afraid his mother’s condition might further deteriorate, his parents had felt it was more important to get him out of the house. And so he was cast out, armed with promises of regular phone calls and the understanding was that were anything, God forbid, to happen, he would be notified immediately, and could fly home. From the mountain of catalogs, Ethan had picked Berkley, the school with the enormous arts wing, the place where the director of admissions had assured him that he would fit in. He remembered a conversation he had had with his mother about it, as he readied himself to file his late application the previous spring. He would be lonely, he would miss his parents, he would feel the perpetual heavy stone of despair in his stomach.

“There is no logical way you can convince yourself that this will be easy,” his mother had said. “Sometimes you just have to do things without thinking about them.”

While studying several evenings later, Ethan received a phone call at the dorm. There was always the possibility of news about his mother’s health, a prospect that sent a quiver to Ethan’s gut as he padded down the hall’s worn carpet in his moccasin slippers.

“Ethan? It’s Hannah, from the other day at the tearoom.” He faltered for a moment. Hannah, the teacher? He wondered why she was calling him, how she had gotten his number. She must have looked it up in the school directory. Being called like this made him feel naked, exposed. He leaned back against the hardness of the wall, felt the greasiness of the phone’s receiver in his palm.

She continued speaking. “I’m making my blueberry cobbler again, the one you liked. I thought maybe you’d like to come by my place tomorrow and have some.”

“Sure, that would be great,” he said, though he wasn’t certain it would be anything resembling great. He thought of a way out of this awkward invitation, of the prospect of visiting this woman alone at her house. “I could bring Todd.”

There was a pause on the line. His eyes ran along the hallway, quiet at this hour. The corridor master’s doorway was half-open, but no sound came from his study.

“I have a better idea,” she finally said. “Why don’t you come alone?”

He started out for Hannah’s place around six the next evening, just as his classmates were finishing sports and heading for the dining hall. He had followed her directions past the school cemetery and across the golf course. The course surrounded the school property, and was a buffer of green between the main campus and the lake. Ethan had never walked across it before; the freshly cut grass was spongy beneath his sneakers.

After reaching its end, he walked down a short wooded path toward Hannah’s house, white clapboard trimmed with green and black. In front of the house was a little garden; a set of well-worn wicker furniture sat on the porch. Ethan wondered what Hannah had done to be assigned such a nice place. Most of the younger Berkley faculty—and many of the older ones as well—lived in small apartments, not homes that could comfortably house a married couple, not to mention a child or two.

Ethan stepped up to Hannah’s front porch, carefully wiping his feet on the doormat as he knocked several times. She opened the door, a bright bundle of energy and light. He examined her outfit; she was wearing stylish jeans and a white minidress top, making her look like she could be in her late twenties. It was something she could never wear to class, an ensemble that surely wouldn’t meet the scrutiny of the head of the English department.

“Hurray! You came!” she said, pulling him inside and shutting the door. “Come in, come in!”

Ethan looked around the hardwood-floored room as he took his coat off and let Hannah hang it on a hall stand. To the left was a kitchen area with a stove that gave off the aroma of spices and sweet things baking. Toward the back, in front of an entire wall of bookshelves (painted white, but meticulously trimmed in birch bark), was a rough-hewn oak dining table that seated four, a potted cluster of ivy in the middle. On the right was the living room area, outfitted with two giant club chairs, a sofa upholstered in a navy and cream toile, and a leather trunk that served as a coffee table, all arranged around a fireplace. Two doors on either side of the wall of bookcases led to other rooms. Through a doorway in the middle was a staircase to the second floor, presumably leading to Hannah’s bedroom.

“This is it,” she said. “Where all the madness happens. Have you eaten dinner yet?”

Ethan shook his head.

“You must be starving! Do you want me to make you something? Before the cobbler, that is.”

Ethan didn’t want to impose. “What did you have in mind?”

“How about a croque monsieur and a bowl of soup?”

Ethan cocked his head at her, confused.

“It’s a ham sandwich, with melted cheese. You’ll like it.” She paused, smiling at him. “What would you like to drink? I just brewed some iced tea.”

Ethan shrugged. “Sure.”

Hannah brought him a glass of iced tea and fixed him a bowl of vegetable soup from a pot that had been simmering on the stove. She motioned for him to sit on a stool at the island in the center of the kitchen.

“So you like to cook,” Ethan said, after taking a sip of iced tea. Stupid, stupid, he thought.

“It takes my mind off the writing. Off grading papers.” She motioned to several stacks of student essays that were sitting on the table near the wall.

“I hope I’m not keeping you from your work.”

“Not at all,” she said, looking up from the ingredients for his sandwich. “I enjoy the company.”

Ethan’s eyes dropped down to her hands as she created the meal for him, slices of ham and Gruyère cheese on top of two pieces of bread, a dab of Dijon mustard, copious amounts of butter. She worked feverishly, her hands shaking slightly, as if this were the last meal she would ever serve.

To avoid staring, Ethan examined the elaborate iron rack that hung over the island and displayed an assortment of pots, pans, and baskets. He smiled as he realized that woven into the iron were actual tree branches and brambles, making it look like a forest was growing in her kitchen.

Once she was done assembling the sandwich, Hannah methodically placed it on a small metal tray, which she slid into a toaster oven. “Are your mother and father coming for Parents Weekend?” she asked, as she wiped her hands on a dish towel.

The yearly event was a week away. Ethan’s father had been scheduled to give a paper at an engineering conference in Chicago; when Ethan told him that it would conflict with Berkley’s annual weekend for parents to visit, his father offered to cancel, but Ethan refused to let him. His mother would have come, but she was on deadline with an essay for an academic journal, and Ethan didn’t want to get in the way of her work. He had played down the importance of Parents Weekend to them, though he knew that nearly everyone else’s parents would be there.

“No,” he said, taking a spoonful of soup. “My father has to go to a conference.”

Hannah started washing her hands. “What about your mother?”

“She can’t make it,” Ethan said quickly.

“Who are you going to show around the school?” she asked.

Ethan shrugged again. “No one, I guess.” He looked down, as his face warmed. He couldn’t wait for that weekend to be over.

“Too bad,” Hannah said.

He turned slightly on his stool to look out at the rest of the room. The sun had set, and the view of the golf course through one bank of windows and the lake through the other had turned into masses of blue illuminated by pinpricks of light. Without the glow of the school in the distance, he and Hannah could be anywhere.

She handed him his sandwich, the melted cheese dribbling deliciously onto the plate.

“You may want to let this cool for a moment,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” She headed to the door leading upstairs. Ethan stepped down from the stool and took a proper look around the room. He was drawn to the fireplace’s mantel, where there was a collection of framed pictures; many were black-and-white photographs of people he imagined were Hannah’s relatives. There were two pictures of a boy (one on a street corner; another in what looked like a forest), perhaps a few years younger than he was, in small silver frames. Strangely, they were the only photographs in color. He wondered who the boy was, what he was doing on Hannah’s mantelpiece.

As he heard her coming downstairs again, he quickly went back to the counter and started eating his sandwich.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Hannah asked him as she entered the room.

He shook his head as he analyzed the taste of the ham and the cheese and the Dijon mustard, tangy in his mouth.

“I want to have children so badly. Bundles and bundles of them. Couldn’t you see kids running around this house?”

Ethan carefully wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “I guess so.” He didn’t understand why Hannah was speaking to him so intimately when he barely knew her.

“So,” she said, leaning forward, “I can tell you’re not like the other guys here.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re smarter, more serious.”

He faltered, unsure of what to say. The idea that this woman whom he barely knew could so quickly dissect his personality was terrifying.

“Don’t be upset about it,” she said, patting his arm. “If it weren’t for students like you, I don’t know what I’d do. After a while, you realize this school just churns kids out like a machine. I want so much for you guys to experience things, but there’s only so much time in the day. You know a faculty member actually said that to me once? ‘We have to tire out the kids enough each day so they don’t get into trouble at night.’ Isn’t that the most absurd thing you’ve ever heard?”

Ethan nodded, appreciative of her candor.

“The school just wants its students to learn enough so they can get into college, and so their parents keep paying the tuition. But I probably shouldn’t be prattling on about such things.”

“Don’t worry about it—it’s not like I have anyone to tell.”

Hannah smiled. “It must be difficult, coming all the way from the West Coast.”

“I guess so,” Ethan said. “I do miss my parents.” He paused. “It just seems—this is going to sound weird, but I guess I was raised differently from a lot of the kids here. I didn’t grow up with as much money. Or at least, what my parents do have, they don’t spend on the same things.” Ethan took another bite of his sandwich, and felt a sense of relief. Since his arrival at Berkley, it was the first time he had admitted this to anyone.

Hannah started cleaning the kitchen, putting the soup into a plastic container and wiping down the countertops.

“So you could use some more cash?” she said, from over her shoulder.

He cringed at the boldness of her statement. “I guess.”

She turned around, pink sponge in hand. “Why don’t you come work for me?”

“Doing what?”

“See all those books?” Hannah pointed to the library on the far wall of her living room. “They need to be organized. There are even more in my study. I can pay you, say, eight dollars an hour?”

“I don’t know,” Ethan said. “I’m pretty busy with everything.”

“You don’t play a sport, right? So you’ve got Wednesday and Saturday afternoons off.”

It made him uncomfortable that she knew his schedule; then again, it was public knowledge, available on the athletic bulletin boards outside the dining hall. “Can I think about it?”

“Of course,” she said, pausing to brush a crumb off her sleeve. “Take as much time as you need.” She flashed him a quick, soft smile. “You know, it would be great to have you. I could really use a guy around here.”

Todd was sitting alone in his room that night, stoned, when he heard a knock at the door. His eyes darted around the room as he made sure there was no incriminating evidence: no bong, no lighters, no stash. Any number of people could come knocking at this hour—his adviser, his corridor master, one of his teachers. And Berkley’s no-chance policy was clear: get caught with drugs, and you would be expelled.

“Come in,” he said, attempting to modulate his voice so he sounded clearheaded.

The door opened and Ethan stuck his head in.

“Jesus Christ, Whitley, I told you not to knock! Only faculty knocks on doors. You scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry,” Ethan said, shrugging.

Todd could feel Ethan looking around the room, his eyes running over the liquor ads he had tacked up on one wall and the batik tapestry on another. As Todd lay back on his bed, Ethan started chattering on about some kind of job for Hannah. Todd found his attention wandering. He examined some stubble on Ethan’s chin, a dark spot he had missed shaving. Todd thought about how he only had to shave once a week; even then his whiskers only sprouted in pale blond patches.

Ethan poked him. “Are you high? You seem totally out of it.”

“Yeah, sure, you want some?” Todd giggled.

“I’m okay,” Ethan said.

“I got plenty. And I can get more from Laura.”

“That girl at the tearoom? You shouldn’t be buying from her. The lady who owns the place could get in a lot of trouble.”

Typical. Todd couldn’t understand why Ethan was so concerned about propriety, about rules. He narrowed his eyes at his friend. “What do you care?”

“I just think you’re taking a big risk,” Ethan said.

“Isn’t that what life is all about?” Todd asked. “Taking risks?”

“I don’t know,” Ethan said. “It doesn’t seem worth it.”

Todd swung his legs around and sat on the edge of his bed. “At least come have a cigarette with me.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Just try it.”

Todd led Ethan down the hall to the bathroom. He opened the window a crack and sat on the tiled sill near the showers, expertly pulling out two cigarettes from his pack, lighting them both, and handing one to Ethan.

Ethan took a puff and attempted to exhale, the smoke sputtering out of his mouth in ridiculous clouds.

“Next time, we’ll do the real stuff,” Todd said. He felt a shiver as he thought about getting stoned with Ethan. What would he be like if he were high? Todd imagined Ethan stoned as a more advanced version of him, a relaxed Ethan, an Ethan who would open up to him.

“I don’t do drugs,” he said.

“That’ll change soon.”

Ethan looked at him, clearly worried, his long eyelashes fluttering slightly.

“Relax. Don’t you want to experience more in life?” Todd asked.

“Why does experiencing life have to mean doing something illegal?”

“It doesn’t,” Todd said. “But sometimes it’s more fun that way.”

Ethan nodded. A long ash dangled from his cigarette.

“Your ash,” Todd said. “You need to tap it out.”

Ethan awkwardly flicked the ash into the shower’s ventilation grate.

“There’s something I wanted to ask you,” Todd said. “You can say no if you want.”

Ethan nodded.

“I need help with my college essays. Would you be okay reading them for me, maybe giving me some tips?”

“Sure,” Ethan said. “No problem.”

“Can I do something to repay you? Anything you want.”

“I don’t know,” Ethan said. He attempted another drag on his cigarette, this time inhaling more skillfully. “Actually, there is one thing. I have to do this assignment for art class. We have to draw someone, do a portrait. I don’t have anyone to sit for me. Everyone else is having their friends do it, but I wasn’t sure who to ask.”

“Sure, I’ll do it,” Todd said quickly. He liked the idea of Ethan drawing him. “When would it be?”

“Maybe the week after next? After Parents Weekend, definitely.”

“Are your parents coming?”

“No,” Ethan muttered. “They can’t make it.”

Todd looked at Ethan with what he was sure was an expression of pity, though he quickly tried to temper it.

“Do you want to come to New York with me?” Todd asked. “I’m staying at my mom’s for the long weekend.” Todd mentally ran through the preparations he would need to make; Ethan could sleep on the pullout couch in his room. They could go drinking together. He felt as if he were about to pour liquor and sin into this pure vessel. He, Todd, was tainted. He had long ago been sullied by the pot, the alcohol, the cigarettes. He had the sense that even if he did clean up his act, the dirt would remain.

Todd saw Ethan’s eyes widen as he comprehended the invitation. “To New York? With you? I, well—sure. Yes. New York. That sounds great.”

Ethan then did something that, for him, was unusual. After exhaling a long stream of smoke, he grinned.

The next evening, as they did on most nights, Todd and Alex headed for their usual spot, the Bones office underneath Slater Dormitory. As one of the publication’s senior editors, he had a key, and he knew the room would be free at this hour. The two slipped into the dorm’s side entrance unnoticed, and unlocked the door to the small room. He shut the blinds and pulled out the blanket he kept in the closet, laying it down on the floor.

He knew there should be more to it than the physical, and in the beginning, there had been. He and Alex had been in love, or so he had thought when they had started seeing each other late last spring, as much as he had a concept of what love was. Now the fun they had been having together had been replaced by the pressure of obligation. It was difficult, though, to give up something that was so easy and comfortable.

The worst part about it, Todd realized, as Alex moved up and down on top of him and his bare backside dug into the scratchy blanket, was that he wasn’t completely there. In his mind that night, as he was inside her, he was having sex with someone else.

Later that night, Todd nearly collided with Ethan as he ran up the stairs to his room on the fourth floor of Slater.

“Did you do the English reading?” Todd asked, though he knew what Ethan’s answer would be. Ethan had probably already finished Pride and Prejudice and written the required essay on it. Todd, as usual, had fallen behind. He asked Ethan if he could meet him in his room after they both took showers.

Todd had a routine to his ablutions, a ritual he would complete after having been with Alex. After checking in with his corridor master, he stripped and wrapped a towel around his waist, avoiding the disgusting stickiness around his crotch. The bathroom on the fourth floor only had two single shower stalls, and both of them were occupied. He could wait, or he could go down to the group shower on the third floor. He felt something pull at him. Ethan would be there now.

Todd walked down to the third floor and entered the bathroom. He hung up his towel on a worn metal hook and stepped into the shower room. Ethan was soaping himself at the middle head. Todd turned on the other nozzle and Ethan looked up.

“Oh,” Ethan said, squinting without his glasses. “Hey.”

“No hot water upstairs,” Todd said.

Todd started lathering himself, but he couldn’t help looking at Ethan’s body. He knew that was what guys did, checking each other out like dogs. It was important to know how he measured up. It wasn’t just penis size. How did his muscles compare? Did he have more or less hair than his peers? Who had the body of a boy, and who had the body of a man?

Todd let his eyes graze over Ethan; without his glasses, Ethan wouldn’t know he was looking. For someone who professed little interest in sports, his friend was surprisingly muscular. He had mentioned that he liked to work out when he could, and claimed to do one hundred push-ups and sit-ups each morning. He had the body of a man, Todd decided: dark bushy tufts under his arms, with prickly hairs that led down from the V of his chest, past his navel, and toward his pubic area. Todd’s own body hair was blond and sparse, and it shamed him, made him feel like a child.

Todd felt his face grow hot, even under the running water, as he stared at Ethan’s groin.

He realized, with shock and disgust, that he was hard. He turned away from Ethan, faced the wall, and waited for him to finish his shower while he tried to make his erection go away. He focused on the cracks between the tiles, on the mildewed grout, on the drain in the corner that was sucking down the soapy water. Anything not to think about it. Anything but this. Not in front of Ethan. Anything but this.

Todd couldn’t get it out of his mind: that night, as he lay on his bed in his boxers, the lights off; in chapel the next morning; while he was peeing. Perhaps it wasn’t a physical thing. While Ethan was a good-looking guy, he didn’t possess any of the natural surety and grace that Todd’s other classmates did. Though he was well built, his body was ill-proportioned, as if it had been created from assembling a series of disparate parts and calling them a man. No, Todd’s attraction to Ethan had little to do with looks. Todd sensed something else in him that he felt missing from his other friendships: Ethan was to him the person he hoped he might someday become, a person who wasn’t merely book smart, but who wanted to understand the world, to go below the surface. Perhaps this was because Ethan had two professors for parents; Todd wondered if people grew up smarter in an environment like that. While his own mother was a writer, she had never been intellectually inclined, preferring the bubbling company of others to the solitude of a book. Todd wanted to absorb some of the intelligence, the wisdom of Ethan Whitley, simply by hanging around him, by soaking up his aura. Maybe that was what it was about. He wanted Ethan to become his friend, to draw him into his life, to fill that gap that had been empty for so long.

He realized, though, that getting close to Ethan was a bit like chasing a scared animal. He could hold out his hands, and it would go running away. If he pretended not to care, nothing would happen, either. It was a matter of coaxing, bit by bit.