“We’re going to change this right now.”
I’d never seen this version of my mother before. Mom could be arctic in her expectations, but she was never a pushy broad.
Mrs. Fenn, ever mild, followed us back down the muggy hall and peered into the gloaming of Room 9. What she said next was the last thing I expected:
“Yep, I agree with you. Let’s just go on up and make a change.”
And like that, I had a sunny single on the top floor, right near my friends. The third former who’d originally been assigned my room got the storage space. She never knew what she’d lost. I could not believe what I had gained. Not the real estate—though that was wonderful, I had room for a dresser and a chair—but a sense that the school would comply.
“All right, then,” said Mom, hands on hips, looking around the bright surfaces. “See? Things are looking up. Things are going to be different now.”
This sort of vague injunction to fortune was the closest we came to talking about what had happened. I felt it would be cruel of me to raise it, and besides, here Mom was with a motel room in Concord, spending two whole days shuttling me back and forth from campus to town. At a housewares store down by the river she bought a spring-loaded curtain rail and hung little sheers over my twin dormer windows, which had a view of the quad. I missed the meadow and wondered about my ingratitude. Her ministrations made me feel newly vulnerable, as though the impression of plenty might invite attack.
Take the room. Mrs. Fenn’s willingness to give it to me didn’t seem to emerge from her own measured constitution. I sensed some precondition, and though it was ostensibly working in my favor, that it existed at all hardened my defenses. It proved there was indeed an entity on the other side of the scrim, an adversary I was going to be wrestling with all year. Who was it? The rector? The trustees? Some composite figure of priests and lawyers? I sometimes imagined I’d caught a glimpse in certain features of the landscape, such as the thrust of the chapel tower and the occasional downspout gargoyle. This anodyne body of history and power, previously blind to me, was now, I knew, aware. And angry.
Mom watched me skid my school-issue dresser across the floor until it sat as close to the door as possible, perpendicular to the entry. I moved my bed alongside the wall behind it. When I opened the dresser drawers, the door to my room slammed into them and opened no further.
“Won’t that drive you nuts?” asked Mom. “Your door is going to bang into those drawers all the time. What if a friend is coming to say hi?”
I didn’t tell her. It would have caused her heart to seize in her chest. Instead we went into town and bought a bright wall calendar to attach to the back of the dresser. I told her I would lie in bed last thing at night and count the days.
“I will, too,” she said, soft tears now finally in her eyes. “Goddammit, I will, too.”
Those first days, life at school came together. My room, my dorm, my friends. Soccer and singing. I ordered up mountains of books and articles from the thrilled librarian at the desk for my ISP. Scotty returned from Philly. I buried my prescription for my throat deep in my footlocker, a large bottle filled at the pharmacy at home so nobody would know.
To the world, as to myself, I attempted to appear blasé. I remembered the dismissive hauteur of those senior girls back in my newb year, and sometimes I wore that cloak now, shivering into it and shivering out. It wasn’t really in me to be cruel. I advocated mercy for the third former from the Upper East Side who walked into Meg’s room after sports and helped herself to face cream—an unimaginable crime in the days of our youth. We considered ourselves gracious and nuanced. The newb was let off with nothing but a firm scolding (which seemed to shock her nevertheless). But sometimes I also pretended not to see these young girls from my dorm, passing them on the way into meals or to Chapel. I saw them abort their greetings, just as I had, being met with blind eyes, and I pretended not to see this, either.
I wondered what they knew. I wondered what anyone knew.
Then, a few days into our return, Scotty invited me after supper to the Tuck Shop for ice cream. I nestled on the bench opposite him and raised my spoon. It was all the same—the warm night, the meadow air, sweet Scotty there—and I was stronger now.
Scotty said, “Hey, Lacy, I’m going to have to stop, you know, hanging out.”
My spoon was still aloft. But I was very cool.
“You’re breaking up with me?”
“Yeah.” He winced, and then smiled a bit.
“Why?”
I was almost inured to surprises by now, but this one got me. Scotty had written back over the summer. It took a few weeks, but a note had arrived. If you’d smashed three cellar spiders on card stock it would have been more emotive (love, Scotty), but he wanted me to come visit—our mothers worked it out, with the result that I had spent three August days floating around in a little boat with an outboard motor at a summer paradise called Thousand Islands.
I threaded worms onto his hook while Scotty drank beer and smoked. His older brother was a phantom of cool, delivering pot and beer, sometimes pizza.
