In six weeks the bail bondsman foreclosed on the bail deposit. We didn’t see Malcolm again all summer. In September, I returned to Briarwood.
Part 3
9
The Thayers had always sent their sons to Briarwood. Their name could be found on athletic plaques and school trophies dating back a hundred years. After an American president and an infamous literary laureate, they were Briarwood’s most illustrious alumni. They controlled the private banking house of Bechton & Thayer. Their scientific foundation was world famous, and there had been several prominent appointments from the family to the foreign service.
In my junior year, Christopher Thayer came to Briarwood. I already knew Ethan Thayer, Christopher’s older brother, from the senior class. Ethan was captain of the hockey team and a tennis star and vice president of the student council. I’d always had a crush on Ethan — more social than erotic. He was tough and sporty (though slight of build), oaken blond and occasionally prim. He played guitar, like I did, and I’d sat with him many mornings at breakfast and talked about music, or sometimes about baseball. Ethan was one of my favorite people, so I was naturally excited to learn, on my first day back from summer, that his kid brother Chris would be coming to our school.
There was a rumor running about school, that first day, that the second Thayer heir had been expelled from Whitehaven Academy for an unknown but reputedly heinous reason. The rumor added spice to my curiosity.
I was happy to be back at school. Though the shocks of the previous summer were past, my soul still resonated with fear and resentment. As I stood on Governor’s Hill, removed from the urban ghetto, I felt more than ever that I had returned to an enchanted forest, a world of unreality. And I was relieved.
Briarwood was most beautiful in autumn. Autumn is the most sensuous season, I believe, the most rarefied and vivid. People associate the spring with rebirth, but for me that attribute has always best described the autumn, the time to return to school. Briarwood had begun to determine my life cycle. There was the traditional fine blend of colors — reds and browns and yellows — so potent in its ability to infuse my mind with new hope. There was also that fresh, New England snap of cold in the air. This is what I loved, what I’d missed. My lungs drank in the cool air hungrily, like a long deprived connoisseur.
For straight boys, the first days of school were drudgery. If I tried hard, I could sense their regret at the summer’s passing, their reluctant adjustment to the new school year. But imagine me, my queerness in full bloom, back among this abundance of t-shirted adolescents. I was teeming with eagerness. I could not have been happier.
I strolled around the campus and watched all the first-day-back activity. There was the usual bustle of moving into dorms — roommates helping each other with trunks, stereo speakers hefted onto shoulders, spindly new boys dragging duffel bags up flights of stairs. There were administrative duties also, such as registering for classes and checking in with Dean Press. After moving all my belongings into my room, I went over to Chase Hall to take care of these errands.
Out of curiosity, I looked at the posted list of room assignments and was thrilled to discover that Christopher Thayer had been assigned to room with T. J. Adams in the Milburger Dormitory. I was already eager to see T. J. to find out about his summer and to tell him about mine. Now I had to talk to him at once. I ran out of Chase Hall, across the quad, and up the stairs of Milburger.
I burst into T. J.’s room without knocking. A boy was there alone, looking out an open window, his hands tucked under the flaps of a blue wool blazer into the pockets of white corduroy trousers. This was Christopher, I assumed. He was blonder than his brother and a bit more fully built. His amber eyes shone in natural affinity with the autumn sun. He turned towards me, startled, and took his hands out of his pockets.
“You must be looking for Jerrett Adams,” he said after hesitating a moment.
“You mean T.J.,” I said excitedly, short of breath from running up the stairs. “I’m looking for T. J.”
“That’s right, T.J. I think he’s in the gym.”
“Oh,” I said. I tried to think of something to say. I certainly wasn’t going to just turn and leave. I could only think of the obvious. “You’re rooming with T.J. this year?”
“That’s right. My name is Chris Thayer.”
I didn’t think to introduce myself. I stepped backwards and stumbled over a box of record albums. I tried to act calm but my composure was fast escaping, like the air from a punctured balloon. I felt schoolgirlishly silly and I’m sure I showed it. That this was Ethan Thayer’s younger brother alone was enough to throw me. That this wispy, amber-eyed boy, the same age as me, sat on the board of the Thayer Foundation — yes, it was exciting. But there was more here than just good looks and a formal birthright. There was a palpable charisma, an immediate effect: a regal timbre in his speaking voice and a glowing coolness about him that filled the room, that trailed behind his movements like an invisible attendant.
He sat down on his desk and put his foot up on a Briarwood school chair.
“Be careful, guy,” he said in delayed response to my near fall moments earlier. He smiled an almost forgiving smile of recognition, as if my stumbling and fretting were a commonplace reaction to his presence.
“You’re Ethan’s brother, right?” I said, still reeling and short of breath.
Chris ran his fingers through his matted yellow hair. “Yep. You know my brother?”
“Yes,” I said. “We play guitar sometimes.” I stood there shifting my weight from foot to foot, feeling silly and naked.
“You play guitar?”
“Yes.”
“Cool. My brother has been playing a long time. Who do you like?”
“B.B. King. Guys like Son House.”
“I know Son House. Cool. You like Steven Stills?”
I lied. “Yeah, a little.” My eyes roamed over objects in the room that I recognized as T.J.’s — his tennis racket, his collection of folk music. “Well, I’m going to try and find T. J.”
“Okay,” he said, chuckling softly, his eyes lingering on mine as I turned to leave.
I stepped outside the room, and leaned against the wall in the hallway. The full effect of meeting Chris came over me slowly, as slow as a marijuana high. Suddenly it was deepest summer again. I felt as though I’d been sitting in the sun for hours. Though I’d been hyperventilating with excitement just minutes before, I walked slowly back to my room and took a nap.
I saw T.J. that night after dinner. He was standing by the bulletin board in the lobby of Chase Hall, intently poring over lists and announcements. I was so excited to see him I practically mugged him.
“Hi, T.J.,” I said.
“Hi, Peter,” he said softly. He gave me the impression of being deliberately cool.
“I met your roommate today.”
“He told me. He said a black guy came over acting like a nut. I said that must be Givens.”
“He said I acted like a nut?” I asked, faking a punch to T.J.’s stomach.
T. J. ignored my punch. “He said you were acting nervous.”
I was happy to have made some distinct impression on Chris, even a bad one. I stopped and took a good look at T. J. His face was summer-reddened and his brown hair was lighter than I remembered. He was taller, but no heavier. He looked very handsome; just the slightest touch of manliness had begun to show in his features, though he still looked very much a boy. I grinned, remembering our sex from the spring before. I figured he knew what I was thinking, but he just looked at me curiously.
“Did you have botched brain surgery this summer? You have this retarded look on your face.”
“My summer was terrible,” I said matter-of-factly. “I’ll tell you all about it later. Tell me about your roommate.”
T.J. shoved a pushpin into the bulletin board with his thumb. He concentrated on the pushpin and didn’t look at me. “His name is Chris,” he said, and walked away.
I saw Chris
Thayer again the next evening at the Headmaster’s Tea. Mr. Chase had invited a group of seniors and juniors to a dinner celebrating the completion of his new house. T.J. told me he was also invited, and so was Moonshot Lewis.
I left my dormitory around six o’clock and walked down the winding road at the school’s entrance, through the woods to a clearing near the base of the hill. A year before this space had been a parking lot for school-owned vehicles. I stood for a moment and conjured up a memory of a gravel lot littered with oil cans, a dented green shell of a school bus, and piles of firewood stacked against ancient, rusted mechanical equipment. Now a neat, small wing of the Headmaster’s new house jutted abruptly out of the woods. The wing extended into a square white mansion, large enough to hold at least twenty rooms, still partially hidden on its sides by trees and brush. Two students were standing by the back doorway. I walked past them and found my way to the dining room.
It struck me with distinct intensity now how different this world was from the world I’d been in only two days before. There were several faculty members there with their wives, including Dean Press and his wife and his daughter Lisa. Mr. Chase greeted me warmly and welcomed me back, beaming. Mrs. Chase held out her hand and murmured a tentative welcome. I never thought Mrs. Chase liked me.
The faces at the party seemed bright. There were a lot of teeth, and lots of fluid, proper chatter and restrained laughter. The laughter seemed inhibited, like a small child under a parent’s watchful care, not allowed to wander into the street or stray too far from home. White skin blended with white, gray, blond, or light brown hair into a cream-colored collage. I felt a pang of antipathy, a bit of haughtiness, having endured my brother Malcolm’s criminal rampage. I had seen more of life, I thought — I was street smart. But stronger than this pride or minor resentment was my desire to fit in here, my desire to escape. I waded into the sea of white. Something happened to me in those first few minutes. It was as though I forgot everything as quickly as it happened. I forgot what I felt the moment I felt it. Or maybe I didn’t feel at all, but I’m sure I must have, I just forgot it — instantly. The wires had been pulled; I had become disconnected from some deep organic truth I would not accept.
The Headmaster wanted to speak separately with the Fifth Formers before dinner, so we all gathered in his study. Mr. Chase gave us the traditional welcome back, and then revealed his “true purpose,” which was to convince us all to apply to Dartmouth, his alma mater. He introduced his friend and college roommate, Miles Trefir, a professor of history there. Mr. Trefir showed slides of the campus and told us how much he loved the traditions of Dartmouth, the same traditions, no doubt, he claimed, as Briarwood.
I couldn’t concentrate on Mr. Trefir’s talk. Chris Thayer was seated across from me, and my attention was drawn fiercely to him. He was twitching restlessly, the fingers of one hand pressed against his lip, the other hand cupping his elbow, as he shifted through a cycle of momentarily comfortable positions on the couch. He looked handsome and bored. His wide, quizzical eyes scanned the Headmaster’s study like spotlights. “He looks just like a prince,” I thought.
Afterwards we gathered in the dining room. For dinner we had lobster in white sauce and a chefs salad plate, followed by peach tarts and Earl Grey tea. I sat next to T.J. and Moonshot. I’d never realized the two of them were such good friends. They seemed to have a lot to talk about, so I kept quiet and enjoyed my meal. Chris Thayer was seated at the corner of the table, next to Mrs. Chase, who was monopolizing his attention.
Mrs. Chase was usually a stark, unnerving woman — small, brittle, and bony, with watery blue eyes that presumed dominance. With me she had always seemed, behind her grace, suspicious and disapproving.
Tonight, however, she appeared thoroughly won, both charmed and slightly awed by the Thayer heir. Chris flawlessly managed table talk with the adults at his end of the table. His voice was soft and regal and his manners facile. A crinkly, wincing smile — ambiguously mocking but decidedly charming — kept flashing into his face throughout the meal.
After dinner, we were given a tour of the house. Mrs. Chase led us through a maze of short hallways and tucked alcoves to the northern wing of the house, which looked out spectacularly over the Green River valley. Then we walked back around through several interconnected rooms. These rooms — mostly meeting rooms and guest quarters — were draped and painted in beiges and grays, or black and white, and scantily adorned with pieces of white porcelain and small oil paintings, all by the same artist. The paintings were all similar — white-capped, faceless maidens in telling, quiet poses against streaks of yellow and green plant life. Mrs. Chase told us that the rooms on the first floor would be kept in readiness for visiting parents, school trustees, and guests. The Chases and their two daughters lived upstairs.
After the talk we were served cocktails on the patio. I had a melon punch and circulated through the faculty to make small talk. I’d come to pride myself on my ability to sustain conversations with the faculty. I was so sincerely absorbed by whatever utopian ideal we were trying to enact, out there on the patio, that I’d disconnected from the truth that this was painfully vapid, and must have seemed equally so to whatever adult I’d cornered and trapped into playing his masterly role. I even ambled up to Mrs. Chase, whom I usually avoided, to make small talk. I secretly must have wanted to pump her for information about Chris Thayer. Or at least to share with her our mutual, evident fascination with him. She glowered at me through her watery eyes, and I went to get some more melon punch. I noticed T. J. and Moonshot were standing out on the grass, still giggling.
I had to go to the bathroom, so I stepped away from the party and back into the house. Chris and his brother Ethan were together in the Headmaster’s study. Chris was nodding, and Ethan was whispering into his ear.
I walked past the study to the bathroom. When I came out, I got lost and wandered down a hallway and then past a staircase. I turned a corner randomly, and I’d come in a back door to the Headmaster’s study. Chris was alone in the study now, seated on a beige, tweed couch that matched the color of his corduroy pants. His legs were crossed at the knee, and he was fiddling with his shoestrings. His eyes were vacant. I stood for a moment and watched as he sat back and nestled into the corner cushion. Seated at an angle he seemed almost invisible, lost in the soft lamplight that reflected off his skin and yellow hair.
“Are you coming back outside?’’ I asked.
“No, it’s too boring.” I sat down across from him and sipped my drink.
“You going to Dartmouth?” he asked, grinning as if the suggestion were absurd.
“Maybe. My name is Peter.”
“T.J. told me. Peter Givens.”
“Your roommate is insane, in case you haven’t noticed yet.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“Where’s your hometown, Chris?”
“My hometown?” He stirred as though he didn’t understand me. “Oh, Pound Ridge, New York. Ever hear of it?”
I told him I had. My friend Mark Fix kept his horse at the stables in Pound Ridge.
“I used to work at the stables. I bet I know his horse.”
I tried to laugh at this but couldn’t. I was irritated because decorum required that I restrain my seething curiosity. My impulse was to tie Chris down and dissect him. “Did you know T.J. before coming here?” I asked.
“No.”
“The reason I ask is you called him Jerrett yesterday instead of T.J.”
“We have some mutual friends. I must know his family from Martha’s Vineyard or someplace.”
“His father’s name is Jerrett Adams.”
“T.J. is — yeah, he’s kind of interesting. I’m glad, I have him for a roommate.”
I smiled blankly when he said this. Chris had a quality that seemed to slow down my reactions and, again, I had the feeling that I was basking in the sun. We were quiet for a moment. I was afraid I was boring him. Just then T.J. and Moonshot barged noisily into the study. Moons
hot sat on the couch next to Chris. T.J. sat on the arm of an easy chair, then slid down into the seat.
“What are you guys doing in here?” asked T.J.
“What’s up, buddy?” said Chris, perking up at the sight of his roommate.
T.J. was a little breathless. He tossed his head back and ran his hand through his hair. “I can’t believe Givens is giving up a chance to suck up to the faculty.”
“What were you guys laughing about out there?” I asked.
“VCPs,” said Moonshot.
“I was telling Ron this house was bogus, all these rooms for the VIPs. So he says, ‘Where are all the rooms for the VCPs?’” T.J. was talking to all of us but looking straight at Chris.
“Virgin Cherry Poppers,” said Moonshot.
Chris looked surprised for a second, and then smiled. “I definitely need to check into the VCP room.”
“You better check in quick, ’cause there won’t be any left when I’m done,” said Moonshot.
Chris got excited. “Sorry, guy, but you’re looking at the East Coast all-time champion cherry popper. And I already have my reservations.”
“Chris, this is my buddy Ronnie Lewis,” said T.J. “We call him Moonshot. Moonshot, this is Chris Thayer.”
Chris turned and shook Ronnie’s hand. “How did you get the name ‘Moonshot’?”
“It’s a long story,” said T.J.
Just then Dean Press came into the study. “Fellas, you can either Join the party outside or head back up to campus with me, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” we all said in unison. We got up and said good evening to the Chases. Then the four of us piled into the dean’s station wagon and rode back up to our dorms.
That night I lay awake thinking about Chris. He’d surprised me at the dinner, horsing around with Moonshot and nodding out at the Headmaster’s talk. Ethan would never behave like that. But Ethan would never have been kicked out of Whitehaven, either. “Very curious,” I thought.
The Color of Trees Page 11
