He was leaning over me with one hand set on my shoulder. I folded back my arm and reached for his hand, and he let me take it, squeezed my own hand once, then dropped it. “It’s still early,” I said. I wasn’t whispering and my voice was whiny, and gravelly from sleep.
“I’ve got to leave.” That’s all he said; he didn’t give a reason.
My questions clamored forward. Where have you been? What did I do? Are you coming back? Please come back because I don’t think I can stand it if you don’t. Had this visit been probationary, I wondered, and had my behavior disappointed him?
“Okay?” he said, and he pulled the sleeping bag up around my shoulders and patted the top of my arm once more. Of course it wasn’t okay. But he left anyway, and when I was alone, I thought of how many times I’d wondered if things were awry between us, if I was displeasing him or he’d lost interest. All those times, I’d suppressed my impulse to ask, and I was glad I had because maybe asking would have hastened the end. And because-I understood this now-you really didn’t need to ask. When it was over, you knew.
The reporter from The New York Times was named Angela Varizi. Hearing the word reporter, I had imagined a man in his fifties, gray and balding, in a dark three-piece suit, but when I entered Dean Fletcher’s classroom, which was where she was meeting students for interviews, she looked younger than thirty. She was sitting at the head of the table, and when she stood to shake my hand, I saw that she had on jeans-a violation of Ault’s dress code when worn in the schoolhouse-and cowboy boots and a white button-down shirt. Her straight hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had a gap between her front teeth. She definitely wasn’t beautiful, but there was something open and intense in her face-she did not seem apologetic about the fact that she wasn’t prettier. When she shook my hand, her grip was firm.
I was missing my second-period class in order to be interviewed. I knew, from a memo Mr. Byden had sent out, that Angela Varizi had met Mario Balmaceda, a junior, before me and that after me was Darden Pittard.
“Have a seat,” Angela Varizi said.
An image flickered through my mind of giving a blow job to Cross in this same classroom and I winced, though I couldn’t have said if it was with disgust or longing. I sat on the side of the table opposite where we’d been that day.
“Will anyone else be here?” I asked. “Not other students, but will there be a teacher to make sure I don’t say anything bad?”
Angela Varizi laughed. “Do you often say bad things?”
“Sometimes I do.”
“I like you already,” she said. “And the answer is no. Either the administration trusts you guys, or they vetted you so I don’t get to talk to any malcontents. Now let’s get some of the nitty-gritty stuff out of the way first. You’re a senior, aren’t you, and you’ve been here all four years?”
“Yeah.”
“Remind me where you’re from.”
“South Bend, Indiana.”
“Gotcha. I’m meeting with so many of you that I’m starting to get your profiles confused, but now I remember you.”
Who had provided Angela Varizi with a profile of me, I wondered, and what exactly had it said?
“You’re the one going to the University of Michigan, aren’t you? Congratulations.”
“Well, I applied to Brown, but I nearly flunked precalculus last year, so I didn’t really expect to get in.”
She nodded, jotting something in her notebook.
“You’re writing that down? Has the interview started?”
“Lee, whenever you’re talking to a reporter, you’re being interviewed.”
“I thought reporters used tape recorders.”
“Some do, but a lot of us who work for newspapers choose not to. We often have such tight deadlines that there isn’t time to transcribe tapes.”
“Sorry to have so many questions,” I said.
“Ask them at any time. And you can call me Angie, by the way. Now let me ask, how do your parents feel about you going to the University of Michigan?”
“They’re happy. I’ll be a lot closer to home.”
“Are they Michigan alums?”
“No. My dad went to Western Indiana and my mom started college but then she didn’t finish because they got married.”
“What do your parents do?”
I paused. “I’m sorry to keep being like this, but I don’t really understand what my parents have to do with the article.”
“Here’s the deal. You and I will talk and talk, and then the article will come out, and I’ll have quoted you for a paragraph or two. You’ll think, why did Angie leave out all my other brilliant insights? But a lot of what I’m asking is for context-it won’t be in the article, but it’ll inform the article, if that doesn’t sound completely pretentious.”
“My mom is a bookkeeper at an insurance company. And my dad is in sales.”
“What does he sell?” Angie’s head was down, and she was writing again. Her voice was neutral; it seemed as if she would react the same to anything I said.
“Mattresses,” I said. “He sells mattresses.”
She didn’t gasp, or clasp her chest. Instead, she said, “And he works, what-in a chain or in an independent store?”
“It’s a franchise, which he owns.”
“Gotcha. And tell me about siblings.”
“My brother Joseph is fourteen, and my brother Tim is seven.”
“Will they go to boarding school as well?”
“I don’t think so. Joe is already the age that I was when I started here. And it’s just not that normal for people where I’m from.”
“So why did you go?”
I’d developed two standard answers to this question, which I varied depending upon my audience; I decided to give Angie both. “This is a much better school than the public high school I’d have gone to in South Bend,” I said. “The resources here are incredible-the caliber of the faculty and the fact that the classes are so small and you get all this individual attention and your classmates are really motivated.” As I said it, I imagined this being the remark that Angie quoted-it was definitely my most eloquent so far. “The other reason is that I had a sort of dumb thirteen-year-old’s idea of boarding school,” I continued. “I’d gotten it from TV shows and Seventeen magazine, and I thought it sounded really glamorous. So I did research and applied. My parents thought it was weird, but when I got in, they let me go.”
“Just like that? They didn’t need more convincing?”
“No, they needed convincing. But our next door neighbor, my mom’s best friend, Mrs. Gruber, is an elementary school teacher and she thought this was a great opportunity and went to bat for me. In the end, my parents said I could decide.”
“All this when you were thirteen years old?”
I nodded.
“Not bad. You must have been a lot more mature than I was. Now let me ask you this. It’s no secret that boarding school is awfully pricey.”
I could feel myself blushing, my heart rate picking up speed. It seemed impossible that she would ask what it appeared she was about to ask. It would just be so-obvious.
“Ault is, what, twenty-two thousand a year?” Angie continued. “What I’m wondering is how much of a factor the cost was for your parents when they were deciding to let you go.”
My cheeks were burning.
“Does the question make you uncomfortable?” Angie asked.
“People here don’t really-” I paused. “Money isn’t discussed.”
“Talk about the elephant in the living room!”
“But that’s why,” I said. “People have so much, so it’s like nobody needs to mention it.”
“Do you see differences between people who have it and people who don’t?”
“Not really. We never use cash for anything. For your textbooks, or if you’re taking the bus into Boston, you just fill out a card with your student number.”
“And then your parents pay the bill?”