betrayer, glaring at him so hard I forced him to lower his eyes.
The Hayes School, now coed but in those days exclusively for boys, prided itself on its instruction in manly sporting arts and values. Hayes boys, we were taught, played fair and true. Hayes football players never shirked a tackle, Hayes basketball players always leapt for heaven, and, in the boxing ring, Hayes boys gave all with honor and heart.
Mr. Jessup came over to check my mouthpiece and gloves.
'Everything okay?' he asked. I nodded. 'Best now you do like Mark, shadowbox a little to warm up,' he advised.
I nodded again, then stood and joined Mark, flamboyantly shadowboxing around the ring. Then Mr. Jessup beckoned us to the center to instruct us in the rules.
'Three two-minute rounds. Compulsory ten-count on a knockdown. Break when I tell you. If either of you wants to stop, say so and it's over.'
Mark and I nodded.
'Good! Now come out swinging. May the best man win!'
Mark and I briefly touch gloved hands, Jessup stood back, then Mark and I began to fight.
I don't remember much about the bout, have no memory of particular blows. But I do remember they came fast and hard, and that after a slow start, to my surprise, I began to give as good as I got. There was ebb and flow; at times I became the aggressor, pursuing Mark across the ring. Other times he backed me against the ropes with a flurry of hooks and jabs. I remember Jerry encouraging me while offering me water during the breaks. I also recall Robin Fulraine yelling taunts from the opposing corner. At one point, I remember connecting a right and feeling great satisfaction as Mark's eyes clouded and blood spurted from his nose. I wasn't aware of how bloodied up I was myself till the second rest period when I looked with shock at the red towel in Jerry's hand.
'You're a mess, but you're doing great,' Jerry assured me.
Mr. Jessup came over.
'You okay?'
I nodded.
'Good! Terrific fight,' he said, then moved away.
If I had managed to hold my own in the first two rounds, things fell apart for me in the third. Perhaps it was exhaustion, also Mark's superior athletic ability. Whatever the cause, I realized I was getting beaten. Then suddenly, I remember, I felt my legs give our from under me as I was rocked by a terrific blow to the chin. I fell to the mat. I remember Mr. Jessup giving me a ten count as I struggled to stand up, then shaking my gloves and staring deeply into my eyes while motioning Mark back. I remember standing there stunned, barely able to raise my gloves, as Mark attacked, hitting me in the stomach, then letting loose with a vicious blow to my lower belly that sent me down again.
I remember writhing on the mat in pain and blood, feeling I was going to throw up. It was so obviously an illegal blow, Mr. Jessup should have stopped the bout right there. Instead he methodically counted me out, yanked me up, then raised Mark's arm in victory. Then amidst cheers from the crowd, he instructed us to shake hands… which we did.
Later in the locker room, Jerry beside me while I bent over a sink trying to stanch a cut on my lip, several kids came up to say I'd gotten a rotten deal, that after the low blow Jessup should have stopped the fight and called a draw. Better still, Mark Fulraine came over to apologize.
'The low blow was an accident. I don't fight dirty,' he said solemnly. 'I still don't like that picture you drew,' he added before going off with his friends.
Still later, showered and dressed, crossing the empty gym, I remember watching as a school janitor mopped our blood off the white rubber cover they used to protect the mats.
Contrary to schoolboy mythology, Mark Fulraine and I did not become friends. But after our fight he showed me decent respect, his way, I guess, of saying he was sorry for what he'd said. Suddenly more kids seemed to like me, too. On Graduation Day, there was an exhibition of my sketches in one of the hallways of Lower School. Several boys made a point of introducing me as ‘class artist’ to their parents.
I've been drawing here in the gym for nearly an hour. Now, hearing the sounds of kids returning from soccer practice, I put down my pencil and examine my work. I've got the fight down pretty well, I think. Rather than depicting myself as victim, a role I dislike, I've drawn Mark and me as equally fierce competitors. I also have Mr. Jessup as he appeared to me that day, aloof and out of touch; Jerry, my friend, rooting for me in my corner; and Tim, by betrayer, half turned away, treason in his eyes. But it's my depiction of the audience I like best, their intense interest in the outcome, enjoying too the suffering and debasement of the loser.
As for Mr. Jessup, though he never acknowledged that he'd refereed unfairly, in class he continued to praise my work. Still I soured on him. I assumed he'd favored Mark because of the Fulraine family connection to the school. It was only later that I found out that Mrs. Fulraine had hired him that spring to give private tennis and boxing lessons to Mark and Robin, and that, in the early days of their romance, those coaching sessions served as the pretext for Tom to visit the Fulraine estate, where, afterwards, while the boys frolicked in the family pool, he and Barbara Fulraine retreated to her bedroom to make frantic, illicit love.
Tom Jessup had a secret. I was convinced of it. There was something different about him that spring, the way he spoke and moved, which, perhaps because of my hurt over his betrayal, I was eager to understand. The sincere and boyish young schoolmaster, previously so generous and kind, seemed somehow to have changed.
Almost immediately upon his arrival the previous autumn, our new French teacher had become one of the most popular instructors at Hayes. Young, eager, not jaded like the older masters, he had that rare teacher's gift of making a foreign language come alive. Though a conscientious objector, he hadn't fled the country but had served heroically as an army medic in Vietnam. After discharge, he'd worked his way through State, majoring in romance languages. In short, a man I could admire.
But in the spring, his teaching went flat. It was clear that whatever was going on in his interior life was not concern over the education and coaching of pubescent boys. Until the Flamingo shootings the following August, I had no idea why he'd changed. Then it was all over the newspapers, his affair with Barbara Fulraine. The most surprising part of their story, at least to Jerry Glickman and me, was the news that they'd met at Hayes the preceding April on Parents Day.
In September following the shootings, when school resumed for the new term, that meeting became a subject of endless speculation. Jerry and I, then new seventh graders, spent hours going over the events of that day, trying to imagine how it had occurred. We remembered Mrs. Fulraine. Even if nothing dramatic had followed, it would have been impossible to forget her, she was so beautiful, gracious, and glamorously dressed.
Fortunately for Hayes it had been a beautiful spring day; the previous year Parents Day had been rained out. Flower beds were in full bloom; playing fields shimmered green beneath the afternoon sun. The cars – shiny station wagons, splendid Jaguars, Mercedes, BMWs, a Rolls or two. Parents wandered the campus, fathers in tweed jackets, mothers in gaily colored frocks. Mrs. Fulraine, we recalled, wore a sleeveless off-white linen dress that glistened in the light.
The purpose of Parents Day was to give parents an opportunity to see the school in action, visit classes, view scheduled sporting events, and most particularly meet with those in whose tender care they had entrusted the education of their sons. Teachers were primed not only to discuss schoolwork but also their students' moral progress, the true and underlying purpose, our headmaster often proclaimed, of a Hayes education.
I recall standing to the side that day as my parents discussed me with my favorite teacher, Miss Hilda Tucker, who had guided and encouraged my interest in art throughout my Hayes career.
Mark's younger brother Robin was in fifth grade. His homeroom teacher was Mr. Jessup. Thus it was natural that Mrs. Fulraine seek an audience to find out how Robin was doing. Replaying the swirl of events that afternoon, Jerry Glickman and I recalled the two of them speaking quietly somewhat apart from the crowd of parents, teachers, and boys, with a greater intensity and for a longer span of time than normal between a mother and
