He shook hands with Nathan and Richard. They left.
It didn’t take long to pack. He was leaving most of his stuff at school for now, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to come back after Christmas.
“You got to come back,” Greg said. “Farnham’s returning. What about the play?”
“They can’t do that play now,” Thomas said.
“What about basketball?”
“I’m not playing basketball anymore.”
“What about your friends?”
“I have friends at home.”
“What about me?” Greg said. That stopped him.
“You’re the best roommate somebody could have,” Greg said. “They might stick me with a cracker.”
“Yeah,” Thomas said. “Well, I never said I was leaving for sure. I just said I might.” He added that if he did come back, he’d want to room with Greg—next year, too.
“Better give you this now,” Greg said. “Might not see you later.” He opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out a small box wrapped in green paper. “Happy birthday,” he said. “And Merry Christmas. You get screwed being born this close to the holiday.”
Thomas was embarrassed. He hadn’t bought anything for Greg.
“Yours isn’t wrapped yet,” he said.
“I know what that means,” Greg said. “Just open it.”
Inside was an old, brown leather-bound edition of Othello, small enough to fit in your back pocket and with tiny little print on thin crinkly paper.
“I found it at an antique shop in Montpelier,” Greg said. “Look at the title page.”
Inside he had written, SIXTEEN ON THE SIXTEENTH. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE REAL DIRECTOR.
“What do you mean, ‘the real director’?” Thomas said.
“You helped me a lot,” Greg said. “With the play. With other stuff.”
It was corny but nice.
Afterward he walked downstairs to check his mail. Inside his post office box he found Time magazine and five letters, all birthday cards: one from Mom and Dad and Jeff, who hadn’t known, of course, that he’d be getting home early; one from Barbara; one from Aunt Lynne and Uncle Rick; one from his father’s life insurance agent; one from Hesta.
He opened the one from Hesta first.
It was one of those Snoopy cards. He didn’t even bother to check the printed message. She’d written her own letter all down the inside of the card, both sides, and on the back. A lot of it was just ordinary news about school. It was the last paragraph that made it a birthday gift:
I’ve been thinking that maybe we should have a talk. My parents are having a Christmas party on the 22nd and said I could invite a few friends. Would you like to come? Maybe you could drive over, if you have your license by then.
She signed it, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HESTA. It didn’t say LOVE, but it said enough.
Life had the craziest plot Thomas had ever seen.
Epilogue
Thomas Boatwright stood in the wings and watched the stage before him. It was 10:30 P.M. on Saturday, March 5, the final night of the run of Othello, and they were doing the last scene of the play. His parents had come for the previous night’s performance, had brought Barbara and Jeff and Hesta, and they had returned to Washington after taking him out for a pizza and giving him good reviews.
It had been Benjamin Warden who insisted that they go ahead with the production after all. Montpelier School had been savaged by the events of the previous December, but it was an old school, a resilient school, and even the scandal of having a series of deaths on the campus was not enough to close it down. A dozen parents withdrew their sons before the Christmas holidays, and of those, eight reenrolled their children when school started again in January. Daniel Farnham returned with reputation unblemished to continue to teach and to direct the play. Thomas Boatwright returned to act in it. Benjamin Warden continued to write poetry and to head the English department, but he submitted his resignation as of the end of the academic year. He had accepted a position as writer-in-residence at Columbia University for the coming fall term, and he had recommended Daniel Farnham as his replacement.
The JV basketball team finished the season under their new coach, Kemper Carella, with seven wins and ten losses, including victories in their last four games. Thomas Boatwright had not participated. He was never going to play basketball again.
Greg Lipscomb and Horace Somerville had been fascinated to learn that the southern wall of Patrick McPhee’s apartment had been the old cooking fireplace for the kitchen, now sealed off, its chimney removed and rebuilt on the eastern part of the building.
Tonight Thomas was long dead as Roderigo, and he had retired to a seat backstage from which he could watch the actors without being seen by the audience. He felt old and grand in his satin Venetian costume and his false mustache. Mrs. Kaufman had died as Desdemona and Greg had just wounded Nathan Somerville as Iago.
Greg was magnificent as Othello. He was wearing a long white African robe and was barefoot. His voice was strong and limber as it easily ascended all the way to the light booth.
It was a tribute to his performance that every boy in the audience was listening quietly.
Now Othello pulls a knife from inside one of his sleeves and stops those arresting him from departing.
“Soft you,” he says, “a word or two before you go.”
It was all so familiar, and yet each performance was different from the one before. Tonight had been their best, Thomas thought.
“Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,” Othello says. As he speaks, his voice catches. He almost breaks down, but then he recovers, “. . . of one who loved not wisely, but too well. . . .”
Greg had never read the line that way before. He feels it, Thomas realized. He’s experiencing Othello’s anguish firsthand. And before he could stop himself, Thomas was weeping. It was so terribly sad to see what had happened, to see this great man undone by his own emotions.
Thomas understood passion now. Cupid’s arrow was not
