Ellen
You wait for the call in the night. You’ve waited for years. You’ve imagined the voice at the other end, officious and male, always male. You hear the words, but you can’t form the sentences. It’s bad luck to form the sentences, so you skip to the moment when you’re standing by the phone and you’ve already heard the news and you wonder: How will I behave?
Will you scream? It seems unlikely. You are not a screamer. You can’t remember the last time you screamed out loud. Will you collapse then, knees buckling, holding on to the wall as you go down? Or will you, as you suspect, simply freeze, the paralysis immediate and absolute, likely to last for hours, because to move is to have to make a life after the phone call, and you can’t possibly imagine how you will do that.
But the call doesn’t come in the middle of the night — it comes at ten thirty on a Wednesday morning. You’re rushing out the door because you’re headed to the dermatologist’s for a routine appointment. You’ve taken a personal day off from work so that you can fit all of your doctors’ appointments into one day. You have already been to the dentist, and after this next visit, you will head to the gynecologist. It takes thirty-five minutes to get to the dermatologist’s office, the appointment is at eleven, and Dr. Carmichael is remarkably punctual. Your son is a million miles away from your thoughts just then, safely tucked away in a school in Vermont, cosseted by people for whom you have come to have enormous respect, with whom you have happily entrusted him. You have your keys in your hand, your coat is on, it’s freezing outside, it has been for weeks, and the counter is a mess, but that’s all right because you’ll have time to put away the junk mail and the cereal bowl and the carton of orange juice when you get home, and so you think that maybe you should just let this one go, let the machine take it. But then you wonder, What if it’s Dr. Carmichael’s office, and she’s canceling, and I’ll have driven all that way for nothing? And so you pick up the phone.
At first when you hear the voice (yes, male; yes, officious), you think to yourself that you’ve gotten off lightly, that this was your phone call and your child didn’t die on a highway, and perhaps your voice is a bit too . . . relieved. But then there is an awkward pause at the other end of the line, after which you actually hear all the words that don’t belong in your universe, words from which you have gone to great lengths to isolate yourself: “Your son has been involved in a major rule violation of a sexual nature.” You say, “I don’t . . .” and “It’s not possible . . .” and “I don’t understand.”
The voice at the other end is patient, has perhaps been anticipating your confusion, almost certainly has anticipated your distress. The voice repeats the unwanted bulletin, and you sit, hard, on a bench just beneath the wall phone, a bench designed for this purpose, for talking on the phone, though surely no one ever had this particular conversation in mind. You want to ask, Are you sure? and Isn’t there some mistake? and Are you certain?, but you know already it is useless to ask such questions because no one in his right mind would deliver this news to the wrong mother. In fact, you realize that you are probably the last to know, that others are better informed, that conversations have already been had and digested, that conclusions have been drawn. You could ask for details, but you understand that the story might be too . . . shameful . . . to be discussed over the telephone. It is then that it becomes very clear to you that the only purpose for the phone call, besides informing you of the “incident,” is to get you into a car driving north and west as soon as possible.
For a few minutes, you sit on the bench, your keys in your hand, the paralysis having settled in. You stare at the kitchen cabinets, and you think, Rob. A series of pictures emerges one by one. An upturned face, the light glancing off his fat baby cheeks, two teeth visible above a glistening pink lip. A wet, naked toddler caught up in a football hold, your son fresh from the bath and giggling. A fragile face, surrounded by the fake fur of his snowsuit hood, standing next to a melting snow fort. Your love for your son feels unbearable. And then you know why these innocent images have come to you at this moment, for innocence is what is lost now. Now that you have gotten the phone call.
You wonder if you should call Arthur at work, but then you immediately reject that idea because you know it will take him almost an hour to get home, and you can’t wait that long. The trip to the school will take nearly four hours, which is a kind of living hell all by itself. You also know that if you call Arthur, he might call Tommy, your lawyer, and you understand instinctively that that is the wrong thing to do now. You have to see your son alone first.
You stand up. What do you need? The answer is, very little. Just your coat and your purse, both of which you already have. There is nothing preventing you from getting into your car except a quick trip to the bathroom, during which you notice that your hands are shaking.
By the time you get to western Vermont, where will Rob be? Will he have been kept waiting in the headmaster’s office all that time? Will he be in his room, under some kind of house arrest? Will the police have been brought into the matter? These are all questions you might have asked on the phone, had you had your wits about you, which you did not and still don’t.
You get into your car and back out of your driveway and make the turn onto the street, and immediately a new set of pictures darts in front of you like small boys on bicycles. Rob in a helmet on a skateboard, his sleeves comically chopped short. A face, barely visible amid a nest of stuffed animals on the floor. A boy with a bad haircut holding up his Cub Scout handbook, his yellow neckerchief crooked, his smile achingly proud. Under normal circumstances, you crave these pictures, because you can’t remember everything, no mother can remember absolutely everything, and sometimes you worry that if it weren’t for the photo albums, you’d have no images at all. And how long before you won’t even be sure in what year a photograph was taken? But now? Now, the pictures are confusing you, because you just need to think.
You remember that you have forgotten to call the dermatologist. You wonder briefly if she will charge you for the missed appointment. Your cell phone is in your purse, you could make the call now, but the thought of fishing out the phone, finding the number, all the while trying to drive, seems just too hard to do. And what exactly would you use for an excuse? My son is in the worst trouble of his life?
You drive northwest. You have an image of driving not to visit your son but simply to be driving away. To drive and then to stop. A motel. Another city. Anonymity. Freedom. It is a familiar fantasy, one that you have had since you were seventeen. You have never indulged it, never once gotten into a car and driven just to see where the road would take you, stopping when you felt like stopping, no destination, no time constraints. There have been moments in your life when such a thing might have been arranged. And yet you have never done it.
As you drive, you think about how you have only thirty dollars in your wallet, which means that you will have to stop at an ATM. You wonder how far apart the ATMs are in western Vermont. You wonder if your son is crying, if he has cried at any point during the incident. You think about how clean you are, about how you have scrubbed for your appointment with the dermatologist. You think about the little mole that has just popped out on your abdomen, the one you now won’t be able to ask her about, and just your luck, it will turn out to be malignant. Your right knee aches, and you try to move it slightly, even though you still have to press the gas pedal. You think you might have to find a room for the night, that the meeting with the headmaster might take some time and there will be no thought of heading back. And then you wonder if your son will be staying the night with you, if he has already been expelled from the school. The word explodes in your brain — expel, expelled, expulsion — and something harsh rips through your chest.
If Rob has been expelled, someone will have to call Brown. You remember the day, early in the Christmas break, when the fat package arrived in the mail. You called to Rob, who was upstairs in his room. You handed him the envelope on the s
tairway, and he buckled at the news. You had never seen him so relieved and proud all at once. You grabbed the camera from the shelf in the kitchen and snapped a picture you knew even then you would treasure for the rest of your life. Rob, his head thrown back, laughing as he held on to the torn envelope.
You exit the highway and move on to Route 30. You realize you are driving too fast. The school was your idea, and Arthur will remind you of this. You had heard that the drinking in the public school was ubiquitous, epidemic, and it frightened you. You remember a dinner party at Julie’s house. A conversation. A friend of a friend leaning toward you and saying, “Have you ever considered? For his junior and senior years?” An idea took shape and blossomed. Arthur was wary; Rob, slightly intrigued. You told yourself you wanted to save your son.
You all took a day off and visited the school in western Vermont. The landscape was exhilarating, the school seductive. You imagined yourself there, and you saw how a similar fantasy might begin to take shape inside your son. You stoked the fantasy: a superior education, a better chance of getting into a good college, home on weekends, not so far away, great skiing. Small moments caught your son’s attention, and you noted them. A poster announcing the impending visit of a well-known writer. A girl with long, slim legs perched atop a stone wall. A gym with two basketball courts. Dorms that looked like those of a New England college. Arthur was impressed, though he was baffled by your willingness.
You wanted your son out of harm’s way, you told him. It was that simple. Even if it meant having to give him up.
Was that all? Or did you see in front of you a series of endless negotiations, a constant need to be watchful, the fear that your son might become a stranger? Did you picture a night when your son would come home drunk and lie about the drinking? When he might make the mistake of thinking he could drink and drive? There was something in your son that you saw, something he may not even have recognized in himself: risk intrigued him, drew him.
Miles merge into hours. You have to use the bathroom, and so you stop at an inn. You are hungry, but you can’t take the time to eat now. You walk briskly to the car.
You go up a mountain and down the other side. You think about how you rented a ski house last year and how Rob came on weekends with his friends. You remember where they slept, the meals you ate together. You imagined that even after your son went to college, you and Arthur would still rent the ski house. Rob and his new friends from Brown could come on weekends.
When you see the sign for Avery, anxiety tightens your chest. You make your way through the village — past the general store and the church and the courthouse — and turn in at the gates. You pass the playing fields, empty and sodden this time of year, and then the gym. You remember all the basketball games you have watched. You wonder if you have seen your son play his last game.
When you park your car on the quadrangle, your hands are shaking so badly that you can barely get the car keys into the zippered pocket of your coat. You walk steadily toward the granite building that holds the headmaster’s office. Your eye instinctively goes to a window, and you wonder if you will see your son staring out, the small eyes waiting for you the way they used to when you had to leave him at the babysitter’s.
You enter a gracious lobby that looks more like the living room of a house than the administrative center of a school. The headmaster’s office is in the far right-hand corner. You approach the receptionist, who knows you already and who says, before you have even opened your mouth, Your son is in the conference room. He is waiting for you. She gestures.
You walk across a Persian carpet, resisting the urge to run. You note the wood paneling, the portraits of past headmasters, the lovely windows through which you can see the mountains in the background. There are people in other rooms. There is an unnatural hush.
You arrive at a doorway. A boy is sitting in a chair in a corner. He looks up at you. You don’t recognize the boy. It is always this way. He is always older than you have remembered. But this is different.
He is sitting with his elbows on his knees, his head bent. When he glances up at you, he does not immediately stand. There will be no crossing of the room, no brief hug, no smile. His collared polo shirt has come loose from his belt. His face is a slightly uneven landscape of pimples and patchy spots of facial hair. His eyebrows are thicker than you recall. His eyes look tired, and they are pink. You wonder if he has been crying.
You speak to him. You say his name.
Owen
Owen was selling the farm. It stuck in his craw selling the land to the school, so he was waiting. He wanted to sell it to some young couple like he and Anna had been once, but no one wanted the burden. God knew you couldn’t make any money at farming anymore.
Once, he and Anna had had forty registered Romney sheep. Premium breeding stock. Scrapie-free, the fleeces were. Anna would send out the fleeces to be spun into yarn, and then she’d do the dyeing herself and sell the skeins at farmer’s markets. Soft, prizewinning fleeces, they were.
One lamb each spring would be sacrificed for the table. Always a male. Owen and Anna made most of their money selling the other lambs for breeding. Those and the pigs. Everything had a place and a purpose on the farm, even the dogs.
It was beautiful country.
But the farm, it didn’t look the way it used to.
It had been Anna’s idea, Silas going to the school. Owen had thought — well, what did it matter now what he had thought then? He had thought the public high school would be just as good, but then they cut the music and the arts programs, and you couldn’t even pay for them. There were no teachers to teach them. The public school did at least have sports, but Owen didn’t want to think about basketball right now.
The farm had once been beautiful. The Green Mountains on one side, the Adirondacks on the other. Owen didn’t know of a more beautiful piece of land anywhere. Silas had once loved the land. Owen’s family had owned it for three generations. Anna’s family came from up north, by Burlington.
Owen blamed himself. If he had said, when Anna was thinking about the school . . . But he didn’t want to think about that, either.
Someday Owen and Anna would have to leave Avery, but it would hurt him to do so. In Avery, it was still the 1950s, or maybe even earlier. When Owen drove through the village and along any of the roads, he often felt like he’d got stuck in time. Sometimes you saw a satellite dish or a new pickup truck, but they seemed more like visitations from another planet than part of the town. There was Peet’s grocery store, the library, the courthouse, the church. There was a gas station connected to Sally’s Qwik Stop, where his sister made the best doughnuts in western Vermont. There was no bank, no ATM, no drugstore. For that, you drove across the state line into New York, but only when you absolutely had to.
Sometimes tourists would come through and check out the maple products and the Carhartt overalls and the woven place mats. But what they usually came for was a copy of the local real estate paper. They’d see a ten-room farmhouse on twenty acres for the price of the cramped one-bedroom they had in Manhattan, and an idea would get hold of them, usually only for as long as it took to cross the county border. Once in a while, though, a young couple would give in to the dream and buy and renovate one of the dilapidated farmhouses in the hills, only to discover, when the kids were in school, that a ten-hour weekend commute to a second home wasn’t really what they’d had in mind. In another few years, a postage-stamp picture of the farmhouse, looking spiffier than it had a half decade earlier, would appear in the local real estate paper, the turnover good for Greason, the only real estate agent in town.
The church had a minister who lived in the parsonage next door. There were a few row houses, some of them occupied by teachers and staff from Avery Academy. The houses were a holdover from the days when Avery was a mill town, manufacturing chairs from the acres of forest that had once dominated the landscape. The chairs, which were a type of ladies’ rocker, were called Avery chairs and were hard to f
ind now.
Greason had a Cape Cod cottage where he had his business. Bobby Peet lived above his own store. Aaron Davidson, a clerk of the court, lived with Gerri Burton, a court stenographer, at the edge of town in an old Victorian. Vicki Thornton had three small kids. She cleaned for the school. Natalie Beck worked in the dining hall. Eric Hunt, who had an apartment in one of the row houses, did landscaping at the school. Ask any one of them, and they would tell you the same thing. Silas Quinney had been raised right.
Owen hated the school now, but most people in Avery couldn’t hate it. If it hadn’t come along just as the chair factory was moving south, there wouldn’t be any Avery at all.
For Owen and Anna, though, Avery had never been its village. Avery was its land. Where else did you have a view of not one but two mountain ranges with a river valley in between? The soil was not rocky, like it was in New Hampshire, and it wasn’t covered with dark and dense forest, like it was in Maine. Mostly the trees around Avery were yellow and red maple that let in the light in summer and turned pink and gold in autumn. Bobby Peet once allowed he made half his yearly income off the leaf-peepers during the first two weeks of October. Owen used to hike up the path out back of his own house, the setting sun spreading in a nearly blinding fan through the trees. On days like that, with the air clear and bracing, he felt healthy simply breathing. He could always smell in the air wood smoke mixed with leaf debris and something else — wax, maybe, or pumpkin.
Silas, he was a hard worker. One time, when Anna and Owen were up to Canada looking at a ewe for breeding, and Silas was alone, he had had to birth fourteen piglets all by himself. Anna and Owen had not expected the sow to go so soon, or else they’d never have left Silas on his own. It was freezing, and the sleet was coming down, and Silas called Owen and said, What do I do? and Owen told him just to catch the piglets and make sure that old sow didn’t roll over and crush the babies. Owen pictured Silas on his knees trying to catch those slippery little buggers, and all the time the sow trying to bite him. The boy was only sixteen then. That sow, she was ornery, meaner when she was birthing. Silas saved twelve out of the fourteen that night, which was a good haul. When Owen and Anna got home, they found Silas in the barn, covered with muck and blood and a shit-eating grin. Owen knew the feeling.