I feel I should add that this punishment is regarded as lenient considering the suspicious nature of the circumstances and the continuing tendency of your daughter and her roommate to flout the authority of the prefects on their hall and to ignore completely the rights of others living with them in the dormitory unit. I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt regarding the marijuana incident, but only because they are both excellent students, and expulsion in their senior year might do irreparable damage and might seem cruel and unusual punishment. I doubt there is anything malicious in their dormitory behavior, but they are after all each of them seventeen years old, and one must see that it has been thoughtless and less than considerate to those with whom they live. They have received much guidance from both prefects and dormitory teachers, apparently to little avail.
We are disappointed that this problem has persisted, and has reached its apparent culmination in the flouting of the school’s primary rule. Again, we are willing to grant your daughter and the two other girls the benefit of the doubt, but if you can be of any help in reaching Melissa in this situation, we would appreciate it.
Sincerely yours,
Jamie stopped at her dorm first, not expecting to find her there so early in the afternoon, and not surprised when he didn’t. At the registrar’s office, he looked up her program, and then walked across campus toward Radley Hall, where she had an English class. It was just 2:00 P.M., and the old clock in the chapel steeple was chiming the hour. The day was clear and crisp, the campus — except for its shoveled walks — still snow-covered from Sunday’s blizzard. He saw her coming out of Radley with two other students, a boy and a girl. Lissie was wearing blue jeans, boots and a pea jacket. The jacket was open, a striped blue-and-orange muffler, the school’s colors, hanging loose over her blue crew-neck sweater. She spotted him when he was still some distance away from her, and came running down the walk toward him, her books clutched to her chest.
“Hi, Dad!” she said, and hugged him, and then kissed him on the cheek. He returned the embrace, but he did not kiss her. He hadn’t yet decided whether to play the stern father or the understanding pal, but he felt he ought to appear somewhat distant until he had all the facts.
“I got a letter from Mr. Holtzer today,” he said.
“Yeah, there was a copy in my box,” Lissie said. “Is that why you’re here?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“You could’ve called, you know. This isn’t such a big deal.”
“I think it’s a big deal,” Jamie said.
“Yeah? Well, maybe we ought to talk about it then.”
“That’s exactly what I’d like to do.”
“Okay, you want to go have some coffee?”
“Sure,” he said.
They walked in silence to the student dining room on the boys’ end of the campus. The classes at Henderson were co-ed, but the dorms were discreetly separated by a stand of pines through which a single path wound through a deliberate maze. There were two student dining rooms; most of the girls preferred eating in the one near the boys’ dorms. The dining room was sparsely populated at a little after two, a handful of students scattered at the long oaken tables, coats and parkas slung over the backs of chairs, sunlight streaming through the leaded windows, books strewn on tabletops. Lissie went to the coffee machine and came back to the table where he was waiting. She put his cup down before him and said, “Okay, let’s talk.”
“What happened?” he said.
“I hope you know I wasn’t smoking pot,” she said.
“I would hope not.”
“Well, I wasn’t. And neither was Rita Cordova, I don’t think you know her.”
“How about Jenny?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Yeah, she was smoking.”
“Holtzer’s letter...”
“I know. She lied to him.”
“What happened to the ones who were smoking?”
“They all got expelled.”
“Where was this?”
“At Ulla’s house. Her parents got stuck in Hartford, because of the storm.”
“Who’s Ulla?”
“Captain of the soccer team, Ulla Oftedahl, I think I introduced her to you once.”
“Big Brunhilde type?”
“Yeah, that’s Ulla.”
“So you were lucky,” Jamie said.
“How do you figure that? I wasn’t smoking any damn pot, how do you figure I was lucky? I’m restricted to campus for a month, and I wasn’t even...”
“What about this problem in the dorm?”
“I don’t know about any problem in the dorm.”
“Holtzer’s letter...”
“Holtzer is full of it,” Lissie said angrily. “There’s no problem in the dorm.”
“Then why have the prefects and the dorm teachers been giving you guidance?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Yeah, what?” Jamie said.
“Dad, there isn’t any problem, believe me. It’s just that Jenny and I get bored out of our minds every now and then, and we try to create a little fun for ourselves, that’s all.”
“What kind of fun?”
“Though I don’t respect her for lying the way she did. She almost got me and Rita in serious trouble. Because Mr. Holtzer suspected Jenny was lying, and he thought maybe we were lying, too. It’s just that Miss Larkin saw the other kids smoking, you know, the ones who got expelled, and Jenny had the joint in an ashtray when Miss Larkin walked in, so...”
“Who’s Miss Larkin?”
“Head of the phys ed department. And coach of the soccer team. If you want my opinion, nobody would have got kicked out if Miss Larkin hadn’t been so pissed. Because Ulla was captain of the team, you know, and she didn’t expect her to be smoking pot. So everybody suffered because the party was at Ulla’s house. One of the guy’s fathers — Bobby Brecht’s father — donated five thousand dollars to Greenleaf last year...”
“Greenleaf?”
“The new arts center. And he got kicked out, too, can you imagine? After giving the school five thousand dollars? Boy,” Lissie said, and shook her head.
“What about this fun in the dorm?”
“Well, it was Jenny and I who named all the dorms.”
“What do you mean, named them?”
“Well... Abbott Dorm is Attica, and Ogden Dorm is Ossining, and Allister is Alcatraz, and our own dorm... those are all prisons, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And our own dorm — Lorimer — is Leavenworth, and Sutton is San Quentin... can you think of anything for Riker Dorm?”
“You’re kidding,” he said.
“No,” she said. “Huh?”
“There’s a jail on Rikers Island.”
“Where’s that?”
“Just off Bruckner Boulevard, in the Bronx.”
“Really? Jesus! Rikers Island! Wait’ll I tell Jenny! Anyway, that’s what it was all about.”
“Your naming the dorms after prisons.”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s all.”
“Yeah. Because it sort of caught on, you know.”
“Uh-huh. And that’s why the prefects and dorm teachers were giving you guidance.”
“Well... yeah. I guess.”
“What else, Lissie?”
“Nothing. That’s all.”
“Holtzer’s letter said...”
“Well, you know him, he’s an asshole.”