'striking,' the family 'perfect,' had given way to snide and vaguely accusatory ones of the ilk of mom sez: not my kid.
Though there was only a poor beer bottle to suggest the presence of alcohol, and no real evidence of drugs at all, psychologists on 43i the evening news spoke oi dysfunctional families, the phenom- gg cnon of denial, pointed out that addictive tendencies were often ' passed from parent to child. It was a hard blow. Mrs Corcoran, leaving Hampden, walked through the crush of her old pals the reporters with her eyes averted and her teeth clenched in a brilliant hateful smile.
Of course, it was unfair. From the news accounts one would have thought Bunny the most stereotypical of'substance abusers' or 'troubled teens.' It did not matter a whit that everyone who knew him (including us: Bunny was no juvenile delinquent) denied this; no matter that the autopsy showed only a tiny percentage of blood alcohol and no drugs at all; no matter that he was not even a teenager: the rumors – wheeling vulture-like in the skies above his corpse – had finally descended and sunk in their claws for good. A paragraph which blandly stated the results J| of the autopsy appeared in the back of the Hampden Examiner. But in college folklore he is remembered as a stumbling teen inebriate; his beery ghost is still evoked in darkened rooms, for freshmen, along with the car-crash decapitees and the bobby soxer who hanged herself in Putnam attic and all the rest of the shadowy ranks of the Hampden dead.
The funeral was set for Wednesday. On Monday morning I found two envelopes in my mailbox: one from Henry, the other from Julian. I openedjulian's first. It was postmarked New York and was written hastily, in the red pen he used for correcting our Greek.
Dear Richard – How very unhappy I am this morning, as I know I will be for many mornings to come. The news of our friend's death has saddened me greatly. I do not know if you have tried to reach me, I have been away, 1 have not been well, I doubt if I shall return to Hampden until after the funeral How sad it is to think that Wednesday will be the last time that we shall all be together. I hope this letter finds you well. It brings love.
At the bottom were his initials.
Henry's letter, from Connecticut, was as stilted as a crypto gram from the western front.
Dear Richard,
I hope you are well. For several days I have been at the Corcorans' house. Although I feel I am less comfort to them than they, in their bereavement, can recognize, they have allowed me to be of help to them in many small household matters.
Mr Corcoran has asked me to write to Bunny's friends at school and extend an invitation to spend the night before the funeral at his house. I understand you will be put up in the basement. If you do not plan to attend, please telephone Mrs Corcoran and let her know.
I look forward to seeing you at the funeral if not, as I hope, before.
There was no signature, but instead a tag from the Iliad, in Greek.
It was from the eleventh book, when Odysseus, cut off from his friends, finds himself alone and on enemy territory: Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.
I rode down to Connecticut with Francis. Though I'd expected the twins to come with us, instead they went a day earlier with Cloke – who, to everyone's surprise, had received a personal invitation from Mrs Corcoran herself. We had thought he would not be invited at all. After Sciola and Davenport caught him trying to leave town, Mrs Corcoran had refused to even speak to him. ('She's saving face,' said Francis.) At any rate, he'd got the personal invitation, and there had also been invitations – relayed through Henry – for Cloke's friends Rooney Wynne and Bram Guernsey.
Actually, the Corcorans had invited quite a few people from Hampden – dorm acquaintances, people I didn't know Bunny even knew. A girl named Sophie Dearbold, whom I knew slightly from French class, was to ride down with Francis and me.
'How did Bunny know her?' I asked Francis on the way to her dorm.
'I don't think he did, not well. He did have a crush on her, though, freshman year. I'm sure Marion won't like it a bit that they've asked her.'
Though I'd feared that the ride down might be awkward, in fact it was a wonderful relief to be around a stranger. We almost had fun, with the radio going and Sophie (brown-eyed, gravel-voiced) leaning on folded arms over the front seat talking to us, and Francis in a better mood than I'd seen him in in ages.
'You look like Audrey Hepburn,' he told her, 'you know that?'
She gave us Kools and cinnamon gumballs, told funny stories. I laughed and looked out the window and prayed we'd miss our turn. I had never been to Connecticut in my life. I had never been to a funeral, either.
Shady Brook was on a narrow road that veered off sharply from the highway and twisted along for many miles, over bridges, past farmland and horse pastures and fields. After a time the rolling meadows segued into a golf course. shady brook country club, said the wood-burned sign that swung in front of the mock-Tudor clubhouse. The houses began after that – large, handsome, widely spaced, each set on its own six or seven acres of land.
The place was like a maze. Francis looked for numbers on the mailboxes, nosing into one false trail after another and backing out again, cursing, grinding the gears. There were no signs and no apparent logic to the house numbers, and after we'd poked around blind for about half an hour, I began to hope that we would never find it at all, that we could just turn around and have a jolly ride back to Hampden.
But of course we did find it. At the end of its own cul-de-sac, it was a large modern house of the 'architectural' sort, bleached I cedar, its split levels and asymmetrical terraces selt-consciously bare. The yard was paved with black cinder, and there was no greenery at all except a few gingko trees in postmodern tubs, placed at dramatic intervals.
'Wow,' said Sophie, a true Hampden girl, ever dutiful in homage to the New.
I looked over at Francis and he shrugged.
'His mom likes modern architecture,' he said.
I had never seen the man who answered the door but with a sick, dreamlike feeling I recognized him instantly. He was big and red in the face, with a heavy jaw and a full head of white hair; for a moment he stared at us, his smallish mouth fallen open into a tight, round o. Then, surprisingly boyish and quick, he sprang forward and seized Francis's hand. 'Well,' he said.
'Well, well, well.' His voice was nasal, garrulous, Bunny's voice.
'If it's not the old Carrot Top, How are you, boy?'
'Pretty good,' said Francis, and I was a little surprised at the depth and warmth with which he said it, and the strength with which he returned the handshake.
Mr Corcoran slung a heavy arm around his neck and pulled him close. This one's my boy,' he said to Sophie and me, reaching up to tousle Francis's hair. 'All my brothers were redheads and out of my boys there's not an honest-to-god redhead in the bunch. Can't understand it. Who are you, sweetheart?' he said to Sophie, disengaging his arm and reaching for her hand.
'Hi. I'm Sophie Dearbold.'
'Well, you're mighty pretty. Isn't she pretty, boys. You look just like your aunt Jean, honey.'
'What?' said Sophie, after a confused pause.
'Why, your aunt, honey. Your daddy's sister. That pretty Jean Lickfold that won the ladies' golf tournament out at the club last year.'
'No, sir. Dearbold.'
'Dearfold. Well, isn't that strange.1 don't know of any Dear folds around here. Now, I used to know a fellow name of Breedlow, but that must have been, oh, twenty years ago. He was in business. They say he embezzled a cool five million from his partner,' Tm not from around here.'
He cocked an eyebrow at her, in a manner reminiscent of Bunny. 'No?' he said.
'No.'
'Not from Shady Brook?' He said it as if he could hardly believe it.
'No.'
'Then where you from, honey? Greenwich?'
