But while we were together, it held.
Because he was a male tri-varsity athlete of a certain sort—football-hockey-lacrosse, with weight room and sprinting records, and an easy, popular way about him—he had heard all the news about me.
“Scotty dumped me because of something Wyler told him,” I said, early on in our relationship. We’d have been talking in the meadow, or walking the long footbridge toward Chapel, or sitting on the porch of his dorm while the air was still mild.
“I heard that,” said Alex. “What an idiot.”
“Apparently Wyler said something about the coach telling them I was sick.”
“That’s true,” said Alex.
I got vertigo in moments of revelation like this. The collision of shame and rage spun in me like a cyclone, an unholy storm. But I tried to keep my voice light. “Was it Matthews?” I asked. “Gillespie? Buxton? What did he say?”
“Oh, Lace.”
“No, please.”
Alex put his head down. He had a wide, masculine jaw, and I could see its outline even when he ducked his face. “I don’t care,” he said, and took my hand. “You know I don’t care.”
“What did he say?”
Alex sighed. “They asked if anyone had ever been, you know, intimate with you. I guess some guys said yes. And then they said that anyone who had should head to the infirmary to get checked for…diseases.”
I didn’t ask anything else. Alex wasn’t looking at me, and I didn’t look at him. The bile in my throat burned, and it felt, in that moment, like a betrayal by my own body. See? said the pain. You are sick. They weren’t wrong.
I had the scene from last spring in my mind, these young men out on the lacrosse field, sprawled in the sunny grass, helmets in their hands and sticks by their sides, and their mentors issuing their warning in low tones. Or it might have been in some coach’s apartment: men’s bodies on sofas and chairs, the loose, sophomoric gathering marked by a surprisingly sober moment. And then these boys had threaded campus with the warning about me. I imagined their jokes, the innuendo, the bluster. It infected everyone and everything, so that I could never enter a room and not wonder who was thinking about my body and considering me either dirty or dangerous.
“But you really don’t care?” I finally asked Alex, unbelieving.
He raised his head. He was angry, and I thought I’d pushed him too far. Of course he cared. My reputation, my history at the school, caused him shame and embarrassment. He’d just been ignoring it, and I’d forced him right to the heart of what was abhorrent about me, and now he’d turn on me too.
“Don’t ever do that,” he said. “Not ever again.”
I was already starting to sob. I’d have to leave school if Alex broke up with me—it would be the loss too great. I was almost afraid to speak. “Do what?”
“Think I’m like those guys. Those schmucks. Do not ever.”
I gave him my word.
A curious thing happened. By the start of hockey season, the campus had become aware that we were an item, and Alex, for the first time in his life, was benched. The coaches wouldn’t play him. There seemed no reason. Alex talked to Bill Matthews, who had recruited him. Matthews had a problem with Alex’s skating, his stops, his turns, his stick handling, his slap shot. Or he had no problem, or he was just working out the lines, or Alex was overreacting. Mr. Ault took time off from work and came up to New Hampshire to try to sort it out. Alex spent extra hours in the weight room, missing Seated Meal and earning detentions. He sent me home early so he could get a good night’s sleep. Mr. Ault was reduced to headshaking scowls. Nothing added up. How could Alex demonstrate his worth if they never played him? A fourth former took his spot on his line. Matthews couldn’t seem to explain the problem in a way that could be addressed. A school change was discussed. The pounding, jocular crash-greetings I observed when Alex came across his teammates, or they him, started to lose their force. At first these players called me Hockey Yoko, but that quickly stopped—they understood that Alex’s performance on the ice had not changed. They lowered their eyes and set callused palms for long moments on Alex’s shoulders.
After Thanksgiving I paid a visit to Ms. Royce, who had asked every returning member of the varsity girls’ hockey team to drop by her apartment after supper because she was gearing up for the coaching season. She put Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” on the stereo in her little apartment, and tittered with us cool sixth formers about how she shouldn’t do this, but wasn’t it a great song? I told her I’d be sitting out the season, and she was unkind. “You’re leaving me in the lurch,” she said, which was ridiculous—we all knew I was a terrible hockey player. “I’m disappointed in you. That’s a mistake. What are you going to do?” Even my friends showed their surprise.
Avoid the rink was the answer; work on my ISP; gain a little too much weight; walk Raspberry through the snow. Try
