“Around then. And they’re at opposite ends of campus. Sorry, Mom, but I don’t think you’re going to see Martha unless you want to go to her game instead of mine.”
“There’s an idea,” my father said.
“Mr. Fiora,” Martha said. “Be nice.” So she had indeed decided she liked him-we needed to get out of the room as quickly as possible.
My father perched on the edge of my desk and picked up a women’s magazine. “Glad to see you’re hitting the books, Lee. Ah, what have we here-” He flipped the magazine around and held it up so we could see it. Across both pages, in huge red letters, the headline read, “Oh, Yeah! How to Have the Best Orgasm Ever.”
“That’s gross, Dad,” I said. “Put it down.”
“Gross? Whose magazine is it?” He was grinning and I thought that maybe this was the part where things turned-this was when my father revealed himself to Martha to be a pervert. (Not that he was one; just that this was when it would seem like it.)
“Let’s go to the schoolhouse,” I said. “Come on.”
“ ‘Ho-hum sex?’ ” my father read. “ ‘We’ve all been there. Sure, the first few months of a relationship are blissful, but pretty soon-’ ”
“Dad,” I said. “Stop it.”
“ ‘-Pretty soon you’re wearing sweatpants to bed, and he’s trimming his nose hair in front of you. Face it-’ ”
“I’m leaving,” I said. I yanked open the door-I couldn’t even look at Martha-and I heard my mother say, “Terry, she wants to show us the rest of the school. Martha, you’ll have to forgive-” The door shut. I leaned against the wall, my arms crossed, and waited for them. When they emerged, my father’s expression was one of boyish guilt, as if he’d done something inappropriate but charming. I turned and began walking.
“What?” he said, and then, to my mother, “What’s the big deal? It was her magazine.”
I remained a few paces in front of them as we headed down the steps, crossed the common room, and went back outside. I could feel my mother straining to catch up with me. Still behind, she said, “Lee, Martha is just a delight. Now, I’m sure you’ve told me before, but does she have brothers or sisters?”
“She has a brother.”
“And is he older or younger?”
“Mom, who cares?”
“Well, Lee, I care,” my mother said softly, and then-not softly at all-my father said, “Watch how you talk to your mother.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Watch how you talk to me.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Forty yards away, the terrace in front of the schoolhouse was crowded: men in blue blazers, a woman in a pink plaid wool suit, a woman in a green straw hat with an oversized brim. It was almost ten, and the sky was cloudless and cerulean. The other parents’ voices sounded from this distance like the hum of a cocktail party.
“Lee?” my father said. His tone was one of cool anger, but underneath the coolness-I knew my father far too well-there was a catch of excitement. This was the thing about my father, that he didn’t defer to place or situation. Have it out with me here? In front of all these people? Sure. No problem.
“Nothing,” I said.
He was silent for a few seconds, then said, more quietly than before, “Nothing. Yeah, I’ll bet nothing.”
On the terrace, my father picked up nametags for both of them while my mother and I stood by the refreshments table; she had taken a Danish and some orange juice. “You really don’t want any?” She held the plastic cup toward me for the third time. “It’s fresh-squeezed.”
“I told you I just brushed my teeth,” I said.
None of us spoke much as we made our way through the schoolhouse-the main hall with the rows and rows of desks, a few of the classrooms, the auditorium where guest lecturers spoke (Martin Luther King, Jr., had spoken at Ault once, which was something that tour guides were supposed to tell prospective applicants; what they were not supposed to say was that at the time King had visited, there hadn’t been a single black student enrolled in the school). My mother asked questions, and I answered them neither curtly nor at length. I found myself drifting from the present moment, thinking first about the soccer game, how I’d definitely be put in because Ms. Barrett played everyone on parents’ weekend, and then thinking of Cross Sugarman. My crush on him had not, of course, ended the evening I’d cut Aspeth’s hair. For twenty-four hours, I’d thought I didn’t like him at all, and then we’d passed in the dining hall and abruptly I’d liked him again exactly the same amount. The afternoon before, I’d seen Cross and his parents. He had been wearing a jacket and tie, and when our eyes had met, he’d lifted his chin slightly in acknowledgment, which was not something he usually did. And I’d thought that it was because of his parents, how in some way their presence made us closer, or highlighted what we had in common-that we were both Ault students and that all these tall, well-dressed grown-ups milling around campus were not.
In the mail room, my father said, “So this is where my letters come?” and I knew that he’d forgiven me, or at least that he was willing to pretend he had.
“I hardly have room for all of them,” I said. “They might have to give me a second mailbox.”
“Just as long as they don’t charge you extra,” my father said.
And then it was time for lunch. We were hurrying back to the dining hall, but this time it was packed. Mr. Byden made some remarks and the parents laughed and then Reverend Orch said grace and we sat down. There was roast chicken, and pasta salad with black olives and red peppers, and rolls. On either side of me, my parents tore into it.
“Aren’t you hungry?” my mother said.
“No, I am.” I took a bite of the pasta, which was soft and oily.
When we’d been looking for a place to sit, we hadn’t seen Martha or her parents, which was a relief, and I’d spotted some empty chairs at a table where two freshmen, skinny boys in glasses, were sitting with their parents. Then we were joined by Mrs. Hopewell, one of the art teachers, who had thin messy hair and watery eyes and usually wore a paint-covered smock over her clothes-for lunch, she had on a batik print dress-and who was rumored to smoke pot with her husband, a carpenter who didn’t teach at Ault and wasn’t at lunch. Mrs. Hopewell was manageable, the whole table was manageable-being surrounded by people whose opinions didn’t really matter to me, I’d gotten lucky.
As my parents spoke to the boys’ parents-the boys’ names were Cordy and Hans, and one of them, though I couldn’t remember which, was a math prodigy-I scanned the dining hall until I located Cross. He and his parents were at a table with his roommate, Devin, Devin’s parents, Reverend Orch, and Dr. Stanchak, who was head of the classics department.
“Psst.” My father was cupping his fingers sideways in front of his mouth. “Is that the senator? Two o’clock.” My father nodded toward a table to our right. “The guy with the alcoholic’s nose.”
“Jesus, Dad.”
He wasn’t whispering, or even talking that quietly.
My father laughed. “Am I right? Looks like a real glad-hander to me.”
“I have no idea who that is,” I said. “But Robin Tunniff isn’t sitting at that table, so I really doubt that’s her dad.”
“Well, where is she?”
I glanced at the tables in front of us-the Sugarmans and Reverend Orch were sharing a hearty laugh-then turned around and looked across to the other side of the dining hall. “I don’t know,” I said.
“You swear?”
I looked him in the eye, because this time I could. “Of course I swear.”
But then, when we went up to get dessert from the long table where the salad bar usually was, stocked now with cookies and brownies and a coffee urn on either end, I saw Robin and, next to her, an otherwise nondescript man wearing a tie dotted with little American flags. It was just my father and me-my mother, after eating the pasta off my plate, had declared herself stuffed-and it seemed actively unkind to deny him the sighting. This would be my concession to him for the weekend, the gesture that proved I was not a rotten daughter after all.
“Dad,” I murmured, and I nudged him.
He’d been pouring cream into his coffee, and some of it dripped over the lip of the cup onto the saucer. “Hey, there,” he said.