Mrs. Maxwell said, “I would like each of you to tell me your life story. Lee, you will go first.”
I laughed. But then I did it-I started with my mother going into labor in a swimming pool, told about how in kindergarten I’d insisted on wearing the same pair of brown rubber cowboy boots for the entire year, how I’d had an imaginary friend named Pig, what ages I’d been when my brothers were born. I got all the way up to Ault. They asked questions, but not cornering questions, and then our appetizers came-we’d all ordered appetizers, it had seemed to be expected-and then Martha told her story: how she’d thought she was dying when she lost her first tooth, how she’d won the spelling bee in second grade, all the snow days she’d had growing up in Vermont. The main courses arrived, and mine was roast chicken with mashed potatoes and cranberry relish; it felt like Thanksgiving.
We had dessert, too, all of us ordering different tortes and mousses and sticking our forks and spoons into each other’s food. Conchita’s mother was talking about things at home, people they knew, a wedding she and Conchita’s father had attended the previous weekend. “And here is a funny story for you, mi hija,” she said. “We have hired a new worker to help Miguel in the garden, and his name is Burro.”
“That’s his nickname or his real name?” Conchita said, and I caught Martha’s eye. A new worker to help Miguel in the garden? we repeated to each other.
We all had coffee, even me, though I never drank coffee at school, and then we kept talking, and another hour had passed, and it was the time we’d arranged for the limo driver to retrieve Martha and me; Conchita would stay overnight at the hotel with her mother. We stood and hugged Mrs. Maxwell before we left. Smashed against her enormous breasts, inhaling her perfume, I felt a kind of love for her; how lucky I was to have stumbled into this world.
In the limousine, as soon as the driver shut our door, Martha and I turned to each other. “Isn’t Mrs. Maxwell cool?” Martha said.
“It’s like she actually really wanted to know about our lives.”
“I’m so full right now. The lime mousse was incredible.”
“And that chocolate thing-if I’d eaten another bite, I’d have had to unbutton my pants.”
“How about the bodyguard?” Martha said. “That was wild.”
“What do you mean?”
“That guy at the next table. With the earpiece.”
I hadn’t noticed an earpiece, but it was true that the man had stayed as long as we had; I’d imagined that he’d stayed because he was entertained by our conversation. “Why does Conchita’s mom need a bodyguard?” I asked.
“I don’t know if she needs a bodyguard, but she definitely has one. Do you not know who the Maxwells are?”
I shook my head.
“Conchita’s dad is the CEO of Tanico.”
There was a Tanico station three blocks from my parents’ house in South Bend-long before we’d met, apparently, a piece of Conchita’s life had touched a piece of mine.
“There’s tons of stories about the Maxwells,” Martha said. “Starting with, I guess her parents’ marriage was a big scandal. Her mom had been the cleaning lady in her dad’s office. That’s how they met.”
“No way.”
“Yep. He was married at the time to another woman. Conchita’s mom was, like, nineteen, and she’d just emigrated from Mexico and hardly spoke English. This was big news back in the early seventies-when I mentioned Conchita to my parents the first time, they were like, ‘Not the daughter of Ernie Maxwell?’ ”
“Why? What’s her dad like?”
“There was a profile of him recently in Fortune. It used to be in the library until someone took it. But, apparently, his nickname is the Oil King. He comes from this family that’s been in the business for a while and they’d already made a lot of money, but he’s supposed to be ruthless and really successful. He’s really old, too. In the pictures in the magazine, he looks at least seventy, and he’s short and bald. He and Conchita actually look alike. Plus, he was wearing orange leg warmers.”
“Really?”
Martha laughed. “No, Lee. He was wearing a suit.”
“I’ve never heard Conchita talk about any of this.”
“She says stuff sometimes, but she plays it down. I think that’s why she came to Ault, to try to fit in. But it hasn’t been exactly like she imagined.”
Again, I felt the impatience with Conchita I’d felt when I’d seen the limousine. She could fit in if she wanted to.
“She misses her mom a lot,” Martha was saying. “No one here coddles her, which is probably the reason for all her hypochondria.”
“She’s a hypochondriac?”
“Well, she definitely doesn’t have insomnia-my room is right next to hers, and she snores like a trucker. I’m not saying she lies, though. Her reality is different from other people’s, but that’s why I get a kick out of her.”
“If she doesn’t have health problems, how come they let her have the phone and the big room and all that stuff?”
“Lee,” Martha said. “Come on.” She held out one hand and rubbed her thumb up and down against the other fingers. “Ault is probably salivating at the thought of all the science wings and art studios the Maxwells can build.”
At the time, it surprised me how openly Martha referred to the Maxwells’ money, and later, when I went to Martha’s family’s house in Vermont the first time, I could see that they, too, clearly were wealthy. But there were different kinds of rich, I eventually realized. There was normal rich, dignified rich, which you didn’t talk about, and then there was extreme, comical, unsubtle rich-like having your dorm room professionally decorated, or riding a limousine into Boston to meet your mother-and that was permissible to discuss.
“Would you ever room with Conchita?” I asked.
Martha made a grimace-not a disgusted grimace, but a guilty one. “She’s mentioned it to me, but it’s kind of hard to imagine.”
I glanced out the window; there was a taxi in the lane beside us. When I looked back at Martha, I said, “This might sound really weird, but can you imagine us rooming together?”
“Oh my God! I’ve been thinking that the whole day.” Martha was grinning, and so was I, and it was only partly because I wouldn’t have to room with Conchita after all. It was also because I knew right away, there in the limo that the Maxwells were paying for: From then on, as long as I was at Ault, I would never be alone. Martha and I would get along, our friendship would last. I felt certainty and relief. Years later, I heard a minister at a wedding describe marriage as cutting sorrow in half and doubling joy, and what I thought of was not the guy I was seeing then, nor even of some perfect, imaginary husband I might meet later; I thought immediately of Martha.
That night, back on campus, I passed Edmundo in the courtyard outside our dorms with his roommate Philip. “Hi, Edmundo,” I said. “Hi, Philip.” I tried to sound confident and in control-I didn’t want them pulling some trick like Matt Relman and his roommate Jasdip Chowdhury had, where Jasdip had shut his eyes while Matt killed Laura Bice.
“Hi,” Edmundo said, once again barely making eye contact.
His shyness emboldened me. “It’s a nice night, isn’t it?” I said.
“I don’t have you anymore,” he said. “I got killed a few days ago.”
“By who?” My pulse was racing. I’d been walking around obliviously, when I could have been eliminated-when my chances of getting to Cross could have been eliminated-at any moment by a person who wasn’t Edmundo.
“I can’t tell you,” Edmundo said, and if he had smiled at all, I’d have believed I could charm it out of him (weren’t shy, awkward boys just waiting to be cajoled by high-spirited girls?), but his tone and expression were serious. In fact, it didn’t seem like he particularly wanted to be talking to me at all. And I could feel from Philip a similar lack of interest, an impatience even. Was my status so low that even true and official nerds eschewed my company?