At dinner the first night, my father cut me off mid-sentence: “I do not want to hear how good Linley is anymore.” I was stunned. We were champions of excellence. We always admired performance. I thought he’d be as proud of Linley as I was. How could he not love that I was hanging with someone whose bedroom was basically a stop on the gondola? This was what they had wanted, I thought. Or had I now, with the convert’s zeal, fallen too far into my adoration? Where precisely on this wild chain of privilege did my father wish me to be?
The next night I followed Linley home to a party at another house, a chalet. We arrived there on skis, aimed at an elevated slate platform by the back door, and continued until our ski tips slid into the gutter-sized gap between the bottom of the platform and the snow. It was dark under there so I couldn’t see, but once I had wedged my rental skis in all the way to my boots, as Linley and her friends had, they instructed me to kick out of my boots and step up onto the slate. In my socks? Yes; the stone was heated. My skis disappeared. There was someone in a room down there who had pulled them in, to be sharpened and re-waxed for later.
Inside, teenagers filled a home movie theater. I couldn’t see anyone because the captain’s seats were huge. Names were thrown out—Oggie, Tyler, Tad. They were drinking beers as though this were a bar. Linley and I watched for a bit. We padded around the mansion in our warm socks. I don’t remember collecting my skis to return, but I felt guilty that the house crew had had to sharpen and wax rentals, as though unowned equipment was somehow beneath their efforts.
I knew better than to tell my dad about this even bigger house. By day, Mom and I met up with Linley and her mom. Our mothers hit it off. Linley’s mom was divorced from her father, but folks referred to him happily as “The Wallet.” Mom thought this was hilarious. Linley didn’t seem to care. Everyone was beautiful, and there was fresh powder on the mountain, and the air was delicious with the smell of burning pine. I was trying to work out how much of my new moneyed world I was supposed to inhabit—when was I adding to my family’s sense of stature, and when was I not?
My dad was a spectacular skier, so good that when he wore a blue ski suit, he’d have snake lines of skiers following him, thinking he was an instructor. And my grandfather had thought God lived in those mountains. Though I was clumsy and cold in Vail, I let my time on the mountain feel like the closing of a gap. I’m still learning, I reminded myself. I’m not very good yet. I’d stand up on my skis, lay them parallel, inhale deeply, and push myself down the fall line. One good stretch of balance would lead to a turn I couldn’t make. How quickly I lost control. I’d catch an edge, get catapulted sideways, and spread all of my limbs out in an effort to stop myself, losing equipment all over the mountain. It took long moments of stillness to inventory my body and make sure nothing hurt too badly. Snow up my sleeves, snow down my back, ice in my hair. Then, blinking, I’d hike back up for my missing ski or poles and try again. Linley and her friends waited for me but made no effort to help me down these treacherous patches. I was grateful. I’d have been embarrassed to be seen, and they’d have been embarrassed to see me. What I appreciated most of all was the assumption—which I inferred from their absence and my solitude on these double-diamond slopes—that I could handle myself just fine. I had no business being up there, but I’d sooner break a bone than admit that the gentler slopes were where I belonged.
We returned to a cold campus, but by the end of March you could feel the sunlight on your skin, and at night the ponds failed to freeze. Slush gave way to open water. The light of our street lamps reappeared on its surface. Before Seated Meal, Shep stopped right in front of me, made his rabbit grin, and asked, “Hey, you want to hang out tonight?”
I’d been practicing for this. I might even have made a little shrug.
“Cool,” he said.
The great doors opened, and people streamed by. Somebody thumped Shep hard to heave him forward into me, and by the way he smiled when we tangled I thought I could tell that he didn’t mind at all. I loved this far more than I loved the feel of his body.
“How about you come up to Wing?” he asked. I’d never been in that boys’ dorm. I had never been invited.
“Okay.”
“Because you have a roommate…”
He was right—she would have ruined conversation. I smiled.
He suggested 8 p.m. We separated to report to our assigned tables—like our seats in Chapel, seating at formal supper was always assigned. Twice a day the school wanted us precisely where they had placed us. (“That’s so they know you haven’t disappeared,” said Mom. There was a famous story about two students at Groton who failed to appear in Chapel because they were at Logan Airport on their way to the Bahamas. They spent three days on the beach and were expelled upon their return. Mom loved this story.)
I did not eat. I sat in that grand candlelit hall and looked down at the front of my dress in case I might catch myself becoming the sort of
