Testimony

by Anita Shreve

  You shake the hair out of your face. The slanting light is in your eyes and giving you a headache. On the headmaster’s desk is a framed photo of the man at a younger age with a tall dark-haired woman. You have met this woman, the headmaster’s wife, once or twice, but you can’t, just now, remember her name.

  “What does expulsion mean exactly?” you ask.

  “It means that Rob will have to leave the school for the remainder of the year. He may reapply in the spring for reentry next fall. I would say his chances are very good for reacceptance. Mrs. Leicht, Ellen, your son is an excellent student, an exceptional athlete, and, apart from this incident, a good kid.”

  The mention of the good kid is nearly unbearable. You remember the Boy Scout, the skateboard rider, the baby fresh from his bath.

  “It’s just very, very sad that this has come to light,” the headmaster says, “and believe me when I say I am just as unhappy about this as anyone.”

  You doubt that very much.

  “I would advise, however, that you consider enrolling him in public school for the remainder of the year so that he doesn’t fall behind.”

  “He was accepted ‘early decision’ to Brown.” You hear the lament, inappropriate under the circumstances. A girl has been taken advantage of. Your son may be guilty of statutory rape.

  The headmaster winces. “The university will have to be informed,” he says softly.

  You fall back against the chair. “You just never think . . .” you say to him.

  You see the hours and hours of studying, the tests taken, the report cards proudly displayed. And for what? For this?

  “My son is guilty of statutory rape?” you ask.

  “Not technically,” the headmaster says. “In Vermont, sex with an underage girl is called sexual assault. I hasten to add that your son has not been charged with any crime. But as to the question of guilt, it is assured.”

  “The question of guilt?” you ask. “I don’t understand.”

  “Rob signed a written confession,” the headmaster explains. “This will be presented on Friday in lieu of testimony or the need to view the tape itself.”

  “Rob signed a confession?”

  You are aware of a certain parroting on your part, but your brain seems not to be able to process facts the way it used to.

  “It’s a simple document,” the headmaster says in a quiet voice, as if he suspects an imminent storm.

  “May I see it?” you ask.

  The headmaster hesitates. “It is full of details you may not wish to read. Not at this point.”

  Something in you resists the withholding of a document your own son has written, but again you see that the headmaster is right. You do not, just now, want to read the details of what may have been a sexual orgy. You feel your strength dissolving.

  You hear the headmaster get up from his desk and leave the room. He returns with a box of Kleenex.

  You sniff, and then you shudder. “Does this girl seem willing on the tape?” you ask, blowing your nose.

  “Yes,” the headmaster says. “Very.”

  You give a small sigh of relief, which the headmaster notes.

  “Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the seriousness of the event,” he says quickly.

  Something in you stiffens as you realize that you and the man in front of you may soon have reason to become enemies. “Did the girl . . . I don’t know . . . seduce the boys?”

  “Your son is eighteen,” the headmaster says, and you think you hear, for the first time, a note of anger in his voice.

  Colm

  I had stayed late at work, as I usually do. It was my beat then to monitor the small-town New England papers. We get 30 percent of our stories that way. I’m doing this online, of course, because you get the bulletins faster. So I’m scrolling through these phenomenally boring stories in the Rutland Herald — “Paintball Vandals Target Cemetery”; “Arson Blaze Closes School” — and I come to the police blotter for Avery. The police blotter is the most-read part of any local paper. Even more than obits. And I see these entries: Eighteen-year-old male student charged with sexual assault. Nineteen-year-old male student charged with sexual assault. Search instigated for eighteen-year-old male student wanted in regard to sexual-assault charges. It was the word student that interested me. First of all, it’s slightly unusual to list a person’s occupation in these blotters, and second, the word student in combination with the word Avery immediately brings to mind Avery student, i.e., Avery Academy. And I’m thinking, If this is really Avery Academy, and there’s been a sexual assault — and already I’m guessing the victim is a student — then this might be a good story. I don’t want to call this guy I know up in Rutland, because I don’t want to tip my hand in case he hasn’t noted the word student yet. So I call the police station in Avery. Even in these small towns, they always have someone on duty, though sometimes you have to wake him or her up at home in bed.

  Officer Quinney — technically chief of police — answers the phone. I identify myself, and I ask him whether he has in custody two suspects in a sexual-assault case. He’s reluctant to speak to me, and he sounds upset. He says he did, earlier in the night, and I ask who, and he says, No comment. I ask him if they have found the third student yet, and he says he can’t tell me, which is bullshit, because if there’s a search going on, the name is out there, but that’s OK because I can get that another way. So I ask him the victim’s name, and he says, No comment, again, but he’s pretty ticked off now, because I should know that he can’t give me the victim’s name, which, of course, I do know. But you see, not all questions are asked to elicit answers. Most of them are to get the person on the other line to talk, to say words, one or two of which are going to be revealing or cause a spark that sends you in a certain direction.

  I ask him if these students are from Avery Academy, and he says yes, which is a huge piece of news. I’m pretty stunned, actually, that he’s given me this, but I proceed as if he’s said nothing of interest. I ask him how he came to know about the case, and he says the parents of the victim of the sexual assault called him, and I ask him their names, and he gets pissed off at me all over again. But you never know when it might be worth it, because he might have said the name of a city where the parents lived or that they lived in Avery. Or anything. And he says he doesn’t have any more information for me, and he hangs up.

  So right away, I’m taking notes and Googling all over the place. I find out the name of the headmaster of the school — which, as we all know now, was Michael Bordwin — and I call him at home. He answers, and even though I can tell he was asleep, he’s instantly alert. You can also tell that he’s had a very bad day. Who is this? he demands. I identify myself, and he says he has no comment. I say, No comment about what? And he’s silent a minute, and I tell him that I know that two Avery students have been arrested in regard to a sexual-assault case, and he says nothing, and there’s my confirmation. I ask him if he has a comment, and I give him the standard line: it would be good for him to make a comment because the story is going to come out anyway and this is a chance for him to put his particular spin on it. I think he’s going to hang up on me, and instead he says, “This has been a difficult day for the Avery community.” And I say, “Why are only two boys in custody? Where’s the third?” And that must be when he realizes that I know practically nothing about what’s going on, and he hangs up.

  But that’s OK, because I’m already out the door and heading to my car. I know I’ll be in Avery before dawn, and I’ll go straight to the police station and demand answers. But the real reason I’m salivating is because I know I’m about to tap into the best possible source a reporter on this kind of a story could ever want. Students.

  Gail

  I want to make it clear that I am not commenting on this matter in a professional capacity, which is as a professor of law at the University of Vermont, but rather as a layperson who is familiar with Vermont law and who has been asked to review the case.

&
nbsp; I have seen the tape in question. At first glance, it would appear that some degree of sexual consent on the part of the fourteen-year-old girl is present. That she has been given alcohol or has administered it to herself is partially evident as well. She does not appear to be comatose or unconscious at any time during the event. If anything, she appears to be rather competent at what she is doing.

  But there were other, more important, factors present that night that should determine whether or not the law must become involved. The fact that there are three boys and one girl, not to mention the fact that all three boys are at least four years older than the girl, suggests, by its very nature, coercion. The perpetrators’ assertions, after the fact, that the girl seduced them, went willingly, or even instigated the entire episode are irrelevant. The moment the boys allowed themselves to be seduced — no matter how competent or incompetent the girl was; no matter how alert or inebriated she was — they became guilty of a crime in the state of Vermont. Coercion is not a difficult principle to prove. The law is very clear on this. A situation involving three boys, eighteen years of age or older, and one girl, fourteen, is most assuredly a case of coercion. There is a tendency when viewing such a tape to say to oneself, “She asked for it.” Under the law, it doesn’t matter whether she asked for it or not. The boys were of an age to say no and were obliged to do so. Because they did not, they were, quite rightly, arrested and charged with sexual assault.

  Other factors are of interest in this case as well and speak to a different issue. Upon viewing the tape in question, the headmaster called two of the three boys into his office and, without suggesting that they call their parents or a lawyer, demanded the boys’ written confessions for a disciplinary hearing that would be held later that week. This, too, was coercion of a most egregious sort. Knowing that few eighteen-year-old boys would willingly call their parents or lawyers about such a matter — for fear their parents might have to view the humiliating tape, if nothing else — the headmaster counted on the boys’ confessing, which they did. Clearly, there was an attempt here, on the part of the Avery administration, to keep the matter within the walls of the academy. Later that same day, I believe, the parents of the female victim called the school, demanding that action be taken. Before the Disciplinary Committee could be convened, the boys’ statements, which were tantamount to confessing to sexual assault, were handed over to the police. At the time of two of the boys’ arrests, neither had yet had access to counsel.

  One of the boys, the nineteen-year-old James Robles, has sued the school, alleging that the headmaster, Michael Bordwin, treated him unlawfully and unfairly. The case alleges that the school broke its contract with Robles when he was forced to confess to a crime without benefit of parental or legal counsel. In the absence of any legal representation, the school was obliged not to accept their confessions but rather to advise them not to do or say anything without counsel. The school did not do that, the suit alleges, primarily because the interests of the school were competing with the students’ best interests. While the boys, who were students, might not understand the necessity of having parental and legal counsel, the headmaster, not only older but more educated, most certainly did. In one of those strange cases of legal irony, the suit alleges that the boys were coerced into confessing. In ignoring the boys’ interests in order to promote its own, the school may well have committed a crime in the state of Vermont.

  Mike

  For Mike, this sense of agitation, of electrical impulses disturbing thought and movement, was new to him. Had he felt this way that fateful Thanksgiving dinner when he’d looked across the table at Meg? He’d been nearly twenty years younger then, and perhaps — like an aging pitcher’s — his body couldn’t absorb stress as well as it used to and therefore read as spikier on the meter. When he wasn’t remembering the way Anna had stood at the counter with her arms crossed under her breasts, he was thinking about the moment she had turned her head away, moved by something seemingly insignificant he had said. Or the way she had covered his hand with her own, surprising him. In his kitchen, he poured himself a glass of red, wishing to perpetuate that connection, however tenuous. He was relieved that Meg had a meeting and would not be home until nine, since conversation between them might have been impossible for Mike. Not that conversation between them hadn’t become, over the last year or so, more and more strained. Sometimes Mike wondered if Meg had found someone else. He supposed it was possible. More to the point, it seemed that a narrow dismissive streak in his wife had grown to an intolerable width. She occasionally appeared to be so irritated by Mike, she could hardly speak. He wondered what it was that annoyed her so. Perhaps she had imagined a happier marriage? Had he failed to fulfill her sexually? Or was it a simple wanderlust, the yearning becoming more urgent the longer it appeared they might be stuck in Avery, Vermont — possibly until retirement, a fairly horrifying notion for Mike as well? Mike was often tempted to ask Meg what bothered her, but on the few occasions when he had done this, she had named an irritant he had given little thought to or hadn’t known about — such as a series of dismal prospects for the volleyball team — or the question, to his dismay, had prompted even more exasperation, so much so that she would simply sigh or, worse, leave the room.

  He opened the refrigerator but was baffled by its contents. He had little appetite. He sat down at the kitchen table but immediately stood and paced. He thought of Anna. He wished he had made some physical gesture of his own in response to hers. He wished he had touched her. Would she now be regretting that touch? Would she be embarrassed? He wished he could call her to let her know.

  Know what? he wondered. That he cared? That he, too, had been moved when she had been? That it was taking all his will to refrain from calling her on the pretext of asking how the meeting had gone?

  His thoughts were adolescent, he decided as he moved from living room to kitchen to porch. He was married. She was married. He had brought the Quinney family into Avery Academy. He had a public position that an extramarital affair might compromise. She had a son. But it amazed Mike how little weight those perfectly sound reasons had when stacked up against the paradoxical promises of warmth and excitement, of comfort and risk. As the evening wore on — at an exhilaratingly slow pace, time seemingly having stopped for examination — the afternoon visit to the Quinney household began to throb with an incandescent brightness, obliterating shadows and marital responsibilities.

  Mike had never been unfaithful in his marriage. He had not even been seriously tempted. Something happened to a man, he had always thought, who was constantly around nubile teenagers: a wall went up so that the man would be quicker than most to shut off that part of himself that might normally respond to beautiful female flesh. That it had been Anna who had broken through that wall, and not an eighteen-year-old student or a twenty-three-year-old faculty member, spoke, he supposed, to a marginal sanity.

  But there was Owen. And there was Silas. And there was Meg. They existed and could not be ignored.

  He walked into the kitchen and poured himself another glass of wine, surprised to discover that he had drunk almost the entire bottle.

  The risk for Anna was tremendous.

  The risk for him was tremendous.

  He opened his cell phone and dialed the Quinney number. He prayed that neither Silas nor Owen would answer the phone. If they did, he would ask for Anna in a friendly and businesslike voice. He simply wanted to know how the meeting had gone. Parental involvement was an issue any headmaster might be expected to care about.

  Anna answered the phone.

  “I’ve liked you from the first moment I saw you,” Mike said at once.

  There was a moment’s pause. “You were upside down,” Anna said with what sounded like a smile in her voice.

  “You’re alone?” Mike asked.

  “Sort of.”

  “I’m . . .” Mike didn’t know how to describe his current state of mind.

  “You looked very funny,” she added, “hanging
upside down.”

  Mike smiled. He liked this lighter side of Anna. The flirting, the banter. He leaned against the counter with his eyes on the driveway. “Would it be safe for me to come over now?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Owen is there?” Mike looked down at his stocking feet. He had a hole in the big toe of the right foot. The sock would be thrown out. Neither he nor Meg knew how to darn.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll come tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Same time? To collect the bottles?”

  “We drank a lot tonight,” Anna said. “I drank a lot tonight,” she added, and he could hear it in her voice. A certain looseness in the consonants. He wondered how his own voice sounded.

  “The risk for you is tremendous,” he said, turning and putting his forehead to the cabinet.

  “I understand that,” she said.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like this,” he admitted.

  Anna was silent on the other end.

  “Come out now and meet me,” he urged recklessly.

  “I can’t.”

  “OK, tomorrow then. Owen will be away?”

  “Yes. A different trip. But yes.”

  Mike could see the headlights of Meg’s car pulling into the driveway.

  “I have to go,” he said quickly. He didn’t want to say the name Meg. “I don’t want to go, but I have to.”

  “Tomorrow then,” Anna said.

  Mike shoved the cell phone into his pocket. He ought to have prepared a little something for Meg to eat. If not a meal, then a snack that might do in lieu of a meal. He hid the empty wine bottle, opened the fridge, withdrew two blocks of cheese. He unwrapped the cheeses and set them on a breadboard. He was opening the lid of a jar of olives when Meg walked through the door.

  She slid her coat off and let it fall onto the floor. She set her briefcase on top of it. She flipped her shoes off.