They proceeded toward the kitchen, and I followed like a lost puppy.
“Mom.” Rudy stood in the threshold of the kitchen. Mrs. Golden pivoted, a wet serving spoon in her right hand. “This is Thomas. Thomas, this is my mom.”
Mrs. Golden’s face froze then unfroze in an instant. A speck of gravy dripped off of the spoon and onto the floor.
“Thomas.” She swallowed then smiled, setting the spoon on the stovetop. “Very nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Golden.” He reached out to shake her hand. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“It’s our pleasure, of course. Rudy,” Mrs. Golden tilted her face toward her youngest daughter. “Why don’t you introduce Thomas to Daddy while I finish dinner?”
Rudy and her mother locked eyes, but I couldn’t read the particular silent language they spoke.
“Jillian, do you mind helping me set the table?”
Me? I shot Rudy a look. Already, I was failing as a lifeline. She didn’t meet my gaze.
“Sure, I don’t mind.”
While I set out china plates and shiny silverware (which side was the fork supposed to go on again?), I questioned my presence in the Golden house that day. Why was I always intruding where I wasn’t exactly welcome? Probably, I thought, I should have just stayed at home.
At five past five, we gathered around the table to eat. I sat in the absent Marta’s seat between Mrs. Golden and Kent. Thomas sat beside Rudy on the opposite side of the table. Mr. Golden, of course, sat in the chair with the armrests, the head of the table.
“Shall we pray?” Mrs. Golden held out her open palms and I clasped her hand. When I touched Kent’s fingers, my heart beat a little faster. Stop, I thought. Just stop.
We bent over the table, and I closed my eyes while Mr. Golden expressed his gratitude for his blessings, his family and his health. Sometimes, I forgot completely about his heart attack. Then we went around the table one at a time and said aloud one thing we were particularly thankful for this year. Rudy said she was thankful to have a great, caring boyfriend, to which Mr. and Mrs. Golden shared an almost imperceptible worried look. To make up for it, I said I was thankful to have such a wonderful second family, but Mrs. Golden only rewarded my remark with a watered down smile.
If I couldn’t buffer successfully, at least I could eat heartily. I dug into the mashed potatoes first, piling them into a steaming mountain on my plate.
“So,” Mr. Golden cleared his throat. “Thomas. I’m not sure that I know your parents. What does your father do?”
“My mom is a lawyer. She mostly represents clients in ACLU cases. And my dad runs a bike shop.”
“Motorcycles?” Mrs. Golden said, holding her fork aloft.
Thomas shook his head. “Bicycles. He’s really involved with triathlons.”
“That’s cool,” Kent interjected. “I’ve got a buddy at school who just did his first Ironman this past year.”
“Rudy’s brother is in law school at the University of Missouri.” Mrs. Golden smiled indulgently at Kent.
“Nice. How is it? I’m planning to go into law myself.”
“Thomas applied to Yale,” Rudy countered.
“That’s very impressive,” Mr. Golden said. He did not sound impressed.
“That’s great,” Kent said.
I speared a piece of turkey and shoved it into my mouth.
“Law school’s been tough. It’s a lot of work, but I’m sure you know that already, with your mom being a lawyer. What type of law do you want to practice?”
The conversation went on like that for the entirety of the meal. Kent and Thomas held a polite conversation, while Rudy and her parents interjected intermittently with thinly veiled jabs at one another. I ate enough food for two people. When Mrs. Golden brought out dessert, I served myself two slices of pie and ate them very, very slowly.
“Rudy,” Mrs. Golden said when we were finished. “Will you and Jill please help me clean the table?”
Kent and I were the only ones who had cleaned our plates. Half pieces of pie still remained in front of Thomas, Rudy and Mr. Golden. Mrs. Golden hadn’t taken dessert.
“But mom, I have a guest.”
“The men can watch television in the den while they wait.”
Another eye battle. Rudy looked away first.
“It’s no problem,” Thomas said agreeably. “Or I can help clean up, if you’d like.”
“Thank you for offering, Thomas, but Rudy can do it herself.”
In the kitchen, for the first time ever, I wanted nothing more but to teleport back to my own house. I would gladly sit with my parents while my mom frowned upon my large helping of food and my dad peppered me with “helpful suggestions” for my college essays. I would even ask for extra helpings of my mom’s crappy gravy. I felt for Thomas, sentenced to spend time in the den with Rudy’s dad. At least he had Kent. Between Rudy thrusting dirty dishes in my direction and Mrs. Golden grabbing them, dripping wet from my hands, I had no relief.
I was exhausted when finally, twenty long minutes later, Rudy kissed Thomas goodbye and shut the door behind him, but that was barely the beginning.
“Ruth Ann, what was that about?” Mrs. Golden stood stiffly behind us in the foyer, her arms crossed over her ample bosom. “How could you not at least be courteous enough to prepare us for this evening?”
“I knew you’d be like this,” Rudy exploded instantly, throwing her hands in the air.
So this is why I’m here, I thought. She’d planned for this all along and dragged me into it on purpose, to soften the blow.
“Be like what, exactly? Be concerned about who you spend time with?”
“What’s there to be concerned about, Mom?” Rudy crossed her arms, matching her mother’s stance precisely, though she stood several inches taller than Mrs. Golden. “He’s a perfect gentleman, he’s going to Yale, he’s never been in any trouble. Tell me, what’s wrong with him.”
“Nothing’s wrong with him, Rudy. Don’t make me the bad guy here, I never said anything bad about the boy.” Her voice trembled, like she might cry. I stared at the tips of my boots and I stood, invisible in the middle of the foyer, willing the tears back up into Mrs. Golden’s tear ducts. “It’s just that you have to be careful; you have to be aware of how you’re perceived. You’re young; you don’t understand how the world works yet. I’m sure he’s a lovely boy but he’s…” Mrs. Golden opened her mouth and paused. “It’s just that he’s…”
“It’s just that he’s black, right?” Rudy spit from her mouth, her cheeks pinched like the word had left a bitter taste on her tongue.
I felt my own jaw slacken, the space between my lips open up.
“It’s not like that, sweetheart. Don’t make it out to be that way.” Mrs. Golden reached out her hand and Rudy slapped it away. The slap rang out around us; the shot heard round the world. Mrs. Golden drew her hand into her chest, her mouth open in offense. She looked at Rudy like she was a terrible creature, not the daughter she’d raised from a baby.
“Don’t patronize me,” Rudy said.
“Ruth Ann, come here. Now.” Mr. Golden’s voice was loud and firm when it issued from out of the den.
Rudy turned and stormed out of the room, leaving me alone with her mother in the wake of the slap. After a moment, when Rudy’s muffled voice rose above her father’s in the den, Mrs. Golden looked up at me, her eyes wounded and sad.
“Jillian, it would probably be best if you went home now,” she said softly.
“Right,” I mumbled. “Thank you.”
Do you remember the first time, as a kid, when you realized adults weren’t always right? That afternoon was mine. Sure, I could admit my own parents made decisions I disagreed with all of the time, but I trusted Mr. and Mrs. Golden, I respected them, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t really formulate a situation where what they’d said – and how they’d acted – that afternoon could be right. Walking back home in the cold chill of nighttime, it
was hard to form the word ‘racist’ in my mind and associate it with Mr. and Mrs. Golden. Would I date a black guy? I wondered. I liked Thomas; I thought he was hilarious and sweet, but I couldn’t see myself kissing him. I didn’t think he was cute. Was I being racist? I didn’t think so, but suddenly I couldn’t be sure.
Rudy never told me the things that were said between she and her parents in the den. I asked, but she always skirted the issue, rolling her eyes and saying how ridiculous her parents had been. But if a little bit of my respect for Rudy’s parents disappeared that day, I think it would be fair to say that a lot of Rudy’s died. She didn’t look at her mom as warmly, and she and her father stopped their subtle joking over the dinner table. There was a hardness, a near-tangible distance between them now. They started to look at her, their youngest daughter, as an adult. They all saw each other through disillusioned eyes.
Rudy didn’t break up with Thomas, and her parents never said another bad thing about him in my company, but he didn’t come back to her house again.
13
Senior Winter
“Where are you going?” Deena hissed from several feet behind us in the dark parking lot. She was crouching, as if doing so would somehow give her cover in the wide-open space.
“Inside,” I whispered.
“I thought Michael had the key?”
From her pocket, Rudy extracted a single, thick golden key. She held it up for Deena to squint at. “Come on.” She shrugged one shoulder toward the school and we started walking briskly.
The Ogden senior prank was sort of a tradition. Every year as spring drew nearer, the administrators and teachers began their annual warnings: senior pranks would not be tolerated. All students should behave according to Ogden’s etiquette code, especially members of the senior class, as they would soon be departing to the real, adult world (this part I especially didn’t understand. This was an elite college preparatory school; we all had at least four more years of partying and coddling and safety ahead of us in college before we were thrust into the reality of adulthood).
Mostly, the tradition of the senior prank was an Ogden legend.
“Everyone’s always saying the senior prank’s some big thing, but look at the classes before us,” Rudy said between bites of her lunch in the yearbook lab one afternoon in December. “Sophomore year they just threw water balloons at us for fifteen minutes.”
“Did they even do anything last year?” Deena asked.
No, I thought.
No one else could remember.
“It’s stupid,” I added. “Nothing ever happens, the senior class just hypes it up to make the underclassmen feel like they have to do something spectacular.”
Justin Patridge looked up from whatever he was editing furiously at his desk. “Not true. They used to do awesome pranks, before everybody turned into pussies.”
“Like what?” Rudy dotted the question mark in front of her with her fork.
“Well,” Justin moved out from behind the desk and scooted toward us in his fancy editor’s chair. “My dad went here twenty years ago. When he graduated, their class carried the principal’s car from his house to the middle of the student parking lot.”
“They carried it?”
Justin nodded. “That was back when the principal lived in the Quarters.” Years before, the principal of Ogden would live with his family in a pretty, old-fashioned stone house right next to the school. Like a Catholic priest in a rectory. Ten years ago, they converted the Quarters into administrative offices for the school because really, who wanted to live where they worked? “They took off the tires and put it up on blocks and saran wrapped the whole thing. My dad says it was pretty sweet.”
“Isn’t that illegal?” Deena furrowed her eyebrows. “Did they get arrested?”
“Nobody caught them.”
We sat for a moment in quiet admiration.
“That’s awesome.” Rudy broke the silence. “We should do something like that.”
“You want to carry Dr. Foakley’s car three miles?” Justin laughed.
“Not that exactly, just something similar. Something as good as that.”
She had that spark in her eyes, I noted. That hitchhiking spark from years ago.
“Like what,” Deena said. “They have cameras now. We can’t exactly show our faces.”
“The cameras aren’t that good,” Rudy said. “They can’t ID faces, and we could wear hats.”
“And ski masks,” I added with a smirk. “Like burglars.”
“What if we break into the school?” Rudy perked up.
“And do what?”
“Camp out in the principal’s office,” Justin said, swiveling back and forth in his chair.
“Yes! That’s perfect,” Rudy exclaimed.
“What’re we going to do, break a freaking window?” Deena, ever the good girl, crossed her arms over her chest defiantly. “That’s a terrible idea.”
“Maybe we can find someone with a key,” I said, aligning myself firmly on Rudy’s side.
“That’s an idea,” Justin said. “I bet I can find someone.”
Deena rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“Don’t worry, Deena,” Rudy reached out to pat her on the head. “We won’t make you come.”
The idea grew and expanded during the final two weeks of the semester, and on the last day before Christmas break the plan was firmly in place. Michael Denalby, whose aunt was a secretary at the Ogden front office, would secure a key to the building. Thomas researched the school security system and found the cameras weren’t monitored when no one was in the building; largely, they were used for figuring out who had sideswiped whom in the student parking lot and for bragging rights on prospective student brochures. The school wasn’t even alarmed. Who’d have thunk?
We would wear jeans and our hooded Ogden senior class sweatshirts, for irony and for anonymity. The plan would go down on the last day of winter break, the night before we returned to school for our final semester, and we planned to leave Dr. Foakley a surprise when we left early in the morning, before any school employees arrived.
There were thirty of us committed to the plan. We parked on the school’s side street and met in front of the building at precisely 12:30 in the morning.
“God, I thought you’d never fucking show up,” one of ten hooded figures whispered huskily when we reached the front doors. It was Michael.
Rudy ignored him, racing up the steps with the rest of us close behind. I was freezing – we all were – in just our sweatshirts and jeans against the twenty-degree chill. Ice lingered on the edges of the sidewalks and handrails. Rudy’s hand was quivering as she jiggled the key in the lock.
“Jesus, hurry up,” Deena muttered. “Somebody’s going to see us.”
At last Rudy got it unlocked, and we shuffled into the school’s front lobby. It was dark and eerie and barely warmer than it had been outside. Apparently they turned the thermostats way down when the school was closed.
“This is so creepy,” Amelia Young, an odd but interesting girl who wore converse sneakers and red lipstick and had been admitted to a top art school for the next year, ran her fingers over the shadowed bust of Frederick Ogden, the school founder. Someone flicked on the lights and we all froze, squinting and shielding our eyes. Deena squeaked and stumbled back toward the door.
“Chill out,” Michael said. “It’s me.”
“Turn those off,” Thomas said. “You could see them from the parking lot.”
“You guys are too uptight. Pull the sticks out of your asses,” Michael scoffed, but he turned the lights off anyway.
I looked around us, at the blackness of the arched ceiling stories above and the shadowed staircase ahead of us. To my right, the dark depths of the front hallway stretched into oblivion.
“Well, are we going?” An anonymous girl voice whispered. The disguises were working freakishly well. I could hardly recognize anyone – we were just a circle of cult members, our faces shrouded by th
e hoods of our sweatshirts.
“Let’s wait a minute, in case anyone else shows up,” Justin said.
They did. In droves, actually. Within five minutes there were forty-two of us crowded into the lobby, squashed onto the three long stone benches or pacing the floor nervously, speaking quietly to one another. I counted heads while I stood beside Rudy, chewing the inside of my cheek.
“What the hell are we going to do with all these people?” I whispered.
“The more the merrier, right,” she whispered back. “They can’t arrest us all.”
At one o’clock, Michael led the parade toward the front offices, the rest of us stepping lightly behind him in the dark. In front of the office we huddled close to one another, shoulder to shoulder.
“Shit.” Michael turned the door; it didn’t budge. “It’s locked.”
“There’s a keypad,” someone whispered.
“Does anybody know the code?”
There was a brief moment of silent contemplation before someone spoke up.
“I was an office aid last year. Try 10-02-58,” Eliza Oltman said quietly. “It’s Dr. Foakley’s birthdate; that way the secretaries remember when to bring him cards.”
There was a smattering of nervous laughter.
Why hadn’t we consulted an office aid before now, I wondered. Perhaps we hadn’t planned as elaborately as we should have.
The code worked. Michael swung the door open, and we all pressed into the small office space. Of course, the principal’s office was locked too. We were ill prepared indeed. And there was no keypad for that one. We scoured the office, pulling open every unlocked drawer and searching under the cabinet shelves, behind the doors and on the bottoms of the secretaries’ swivel chairs for a spare key, but nothing turned up. We were screwed.
“What the hell do we do now?” Michael said, his voice rising one level above a whisper. Deena shushed him immediately, and he tossed up his middle finger in her direction.
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