When I’d sat, I turned to Sin-Jun. “Your parents aren’t here this year?”
She shook her head. “Too far.”
“I guess especially if they’ve been before,” I said. When they’d come from Seoul our freshman year, Sin-Jun’s parents had taken me out for dinner at the Red Barn Inn, which was, apparently, the only restaurant between the Ault campus and Boston that most parents could abide. The dining room had been filled with Ault families, and many of the parents seemed to know one another independently of their children; they lingered by each other’s tables, called out to one another in joking tones. When Mr. or Mrs. Kim spoke to me, I had a hard time concentrating on what they were saying over the background din, and when I responded to their questions about where I was from and whether I liked Ault, I didn’t know if my answers made sense. Mrs. Kim had a dead front tooth and bright, shiny red lipstick, and she ate approximately a tenth of the food on her plate and didn’t ask for a doggie bag; Mr. Kim was balding and smelled of cologne and cigarettes. They both spoke fluent, heavily accented English and were both short. Like most Ault parents, they were rich-Sin-Jun’s dad owned a bunch of running-shoe factories-but they were Korean rich, foreign rich, and that was not at all the same as New England, or New York, rich. Most of the other parents resembled one another: The fathers were tall and thin and had gray hair and rueful smiles, and they wore suits. The mothers’ hair was ash-blond and they wore headbands and pearl earrings and gold bracelets and black cardigan sweaters with gold buttons over long plaid skirts, or else-the skinny ones wore this-pantsuits in beige or charcoal, with silk scarves around their necks. (Also, the mothers had names that made it hard to imagine they’d ever held real jobs: Fifi and Tinkle and Yum.) In addition to dining at the same restaurant, they all stayed at the same hotel, a swanky Sheraton on I-90; they rented separate rooms for their children, and according to rumor, all the kids staying there, which was most of the kids in the school, got trashed and ended up skinny-dipping in the indoor pool, or making out in the hall by the ice machine. The Kims had not invited me back to the Sheraton, but, honestly, I wouldn’t have wanted to go-Sin-Jun and I probably would have gotten in our beds and just lain there in the dark, listening through the walls to the thumping and shouting of other people’s good time. Sophomore year, Martha invited me to go to the Red Barn Inn for dinner with her parents, and I went, but when she’d invited me this year, I’d declined and only in the moment of declining had I realized how much I’d hated it all along.
“My father think of coming, but my mother say plane ride make her so tired,” Sin-Jun said.
“When you’re flying from Asia, it’s worse coming west to east,” Nick said. “When I got back from Hong Kong, I slept for like a week.”
I didn’t respond to Nick’s remark, and neither did anyone else. I finished cutting my spaghetti, set down my knife, and wound noodles around my fork.
“Lee,” Maria said, and I looked up from my plate. “Your parents aren’t here, either?”
“They’re coming tomorrow.” Immediately, I felt a welling anxiety that someone would ask why they were arriving late-after all, the headmaster’s welcoming tea had occurred that afternoon-and I would not want to admit that they were driving, not flying, from South Bend. (“All the way?” someone might ask. “What is that, twelve hours?” and I would have to reveal that in fact it was eighteen.)
“Just make sure they come after our game is finished,” Rufina said. “That’s something no parent should see.” Though we were juniors, Rufina, Maria, and I all still played on JV soccer.
“It is the first time for your parents to visit, yes?” Sin-Jun said.
“Besides when I started here,” I said, though only my father had dropped me off.
“Dude,” Nick said. “I’m so happy my parents aren’t coming. My brother goes to Overfield, and it’s parents’ weekend there, too.”
“What, they like your brother better?” Rufina asked.
“The official reason is that he’s a freshman so it’s his first parents’ weekend. Not that I’m complaining.” Nick grinned. “Really.”
Everyone laughed, including me-over time at Ault, I’d realized that it was an act of aggression not to react to a situation as everyone else was reacting, a request for attention-but I felt surprised. Didn’t Nick feel guilty, wasn’t it a betrayal to insult people you were close to in front of people to whom you weren’t close? On sitcoms and in movies, a casual antipathy for your parents was the norm-men dreaded going home for Christmas, women wrangled with their mothers over wedding plans-but such scenarios bore no relation to my own experience. I knew my parents so well, they were so real to me: the sound of their car pulling into the driveway, the smell of my mother’s mouthwash, my mother’s red bathrobe and the brand of her cottage cheese, and the way my father could burp the alphabet and carry both my brothers, one under each arm, up the stairs at the same time. How could I speak of my parents casually, ever, at all, unless I was not really thinking of them but thinking only of the words my mom and my dad?
“You know why I like parents’ weekend?” Maria said. “Because the food is so much better. Not this”-she gestured toward the few limp noodles resting in watery marinara sauce on her plate-“but like tomorrow, the lunch is going to be so good.”
Rufina snorted. “And then all the parents can say, Ault takes such great care of its students. I am so glad we decided to send little Teddy here.” Rufina was speaking in a snooty accent on top of her normal accent; the overall effect made her seem cheerfully goofy, not bitter as I suspected I would have if I mocked Ault. She turned to Maria and said in her normal voice, “You think they’ll have those brownies again? Those were good.”
“We went to the tea at Mr. Byden’s,” Maria explained.
“Until we got kicked out for wearing jeans,” Rufina added, and they looked at each other and laughed.
I, of course, had not attended the tea; it was meant to welcome parents and I hadn’t yet had any parents on the premises. I was not real friends with either Rufina or Maria, but I’d always felt a mystified admiration for the way they seemed not to care what people thought of them. They didn’t seem to feel either beholden to Ault for its gifts-they were both on scholarships, and wasn’t a scholarship, in essence, a gift?-or worshipful of its conventions. But there were two of them and only one of me and you could not act irreverent alone, not really. Plus, while I could pass, their ethnicity made their status as outsiders definitive.
“Hey,” Nick said. “My brother just sent me this Pink Floyd CD. You guys want to go to the activities center and listen?”
“Maybe,” Maria said.
“What about you?” Nick looked at Rufina, and I wondered for the first time if he was interested in her. Surely he didn’t want to be her boyfriend-Ault guys almost never went out with minority girls, and if they did, it was some geeky guy and some Asian or Indian girl, never a black or Latina girl from a city and definitely never with one of the bank boys. But maybe Nick thought Rufina was pretty, maybe that explained his presence here. Because it was, in fact, kind of odd that Nick Chafee was hanging out with a group of girls like us. Even if his own parents weren’t visiting, it seemed he ought to be at the Red Barn Inn with the parents of a friend.
“You want to, chica?” Maria said, and she poked Rufina’s upper arm.
“Ouch,” Rufina said. Maria poked Rufina again, and Rufina said, “Quit it or I’m reporting you for roommate abuse.” Then she laughed loudly, with her mouth open. The intensity of the laugh so exceeded the exchange that had prompted it that I realized that Rufina must be happy. I had never thought of her as happy before, and I wasn’t sure when it had happened, whether her mood was temporary or permanent. I wondered, did she like Ault? Her complaints aside, did she feel as if the school belonged to her? I had a sudden memory from our freshman year of sitting next to her on a bus returning from an away game. It was early November, a bleak day of gray skies, and because the score had been close-from the second half on, Ault had been losing by only one goal-the coach had kept us both on the bench for the whole game. At first we had talked a little, and cheered for our teammates, and sometimes stood and walked around or stretched, to stay limber in case we got subbed, but it was so cold that after a while we simply sat there-Maria had been on the bench, too, and a couple other girls-and huddled together wordlessly. When the game ended, I didn’t care that we’d lost. Back on the bus, still in my uniform, I took a seat next to Rufina, and my body seemed to thaw and expand. Riding down the highway, the trees on either side brown and bare, the grass dead, the sky nearly white, I was able to submit to the moment, this interval of time. Back on campus, I’d have to navigate the chaos of the locker room (because I hadn’t played in the game, it would seem unnecessary to shower, but I wouldn’t want to be observed not showering) and then the separate chaos of dinner, and then there would be the empty time to fill in the dorm before bed. That wouldn’t be a lull when I could space out because I was where I was supposed to be, because something, if only our return to campus, was being achieved and all I had to do was wait; in my room, I was responsible for myself, the choices were mine. I leaned my head against the back of the seat and listened to the sounds of the bus, the intermittent crackle of the driver’s CB, the voices of the few girls not either sleeping or reading, the shadow of music that was someone else’s Walkman playing an unrecognizable song. The bus seemed the best place for me to be in this moment-not a great place, I wasn’t enjoying myself, but I’d have had a hard time naming anywhere better. And then beside me, I felt a shaking, and when I turned, I saw that Rufina was crying very quietly. She was looking out the window, and I could see only part of the left side of her face, which was flushed and streaked with makeup; back then, when she’d first arrived at Ault, Rufina had worn a lot of makeup, even during games-mascara, and black or purple eyeliner. Her right fist was clenched and held in front of her mouth, and she was heaving slightly. How long had she been crying? And was I supposed to say something or pretend I didn’t notice?