America America (12 page)

O
NE MORNING SOON AFTER THAT,
I carried a clean shirt and a pair of long pants with me to the Metareys’, and at lunchtime when I came in from the grounds I showered in one of the guest rooms and changed into them. When I was done, Mr. Metarey came downstairs to take a look, and he returned a moment later with a tie. I hadn’t mentioned anything to my parents.

When we emerged together, June Metarey and Christian were in the hall. “Needs a woman’s eye,” Mrs. Metarey said. “Let’s have a peek.” She was wearing heels—she didn’t look like someone who could fly a plane.

“You look very nice,” said Christian.

I smiled and touched the tie.

“Liam—” said Mrs. Metarey.

“He’s been working,” answered Mr. Metarey.

“Wait right there, young man.”

I heard her quick footsteps on the stairs, and when she returned a few moments later she was holding a pair of shoes.

“Mother.”

“They’re Andrew’s,” June Metarey answered, holding them up. “He won’t mind.”

“I don’t quite believe this,” said Christian. She touched my elbow. “Your shoes are fine. Andrew would tell you to wear whatever shoes you want.”

“And Andrew didn’t fit in at Dunleavy,” said Mrs. Metarey. “Did he?”

She examined them, then quickly brushed their tops and set them down next to me. They were loafers—not new, but buffed to a dusky brown that made me embarrassed for my own black school boots, which I had just wiped in the guest room with a washcloth.

“A little big,” she said, “but they’ll work.” She reached inside one. “Decent pair of socks, too.”

“Oh, please, Mother.”

“Corey’s got socks, June. He doesn’t need And’s.”

“Liam.”

I sat down, took off my boots, and pulled Andrew’s socks on over my own. They matched the loafers, and two pair made a decent fit.

“Shoes make the man,” Mrs. Metarey said then. She knelt down on one knee and brushed the shine again with her sleeve.

“Oh, nonsense,” said her husband.

“It’s something Daddy taught me,” she went on, speaking to me. She was leaning on the dark red Persian runner that ran the length of the hallway. “In his business, he had to be able to judge character.” She looked up at my face. “That’s always what he looked for. The details. Cheap shoes to give away a decent suit.”

“More nonsense.”

“I appreciate this, Mrs. Metarey,” I said. The only other time she’d spoken to me had been on the sailing trip.

“God bless him,” she answered.

“Thank you.”

She looked up again.

“I meant Daddy,” she said. She rose from the rug. Then she added, “But God bless you, too, Corey.”

Then Mr. Metarey stood before us. “Just answer all his questions with the truth,” he said. “You have a lot to be proud of, and that will be evident. Your dad’s quite a tradesman. He was an enlisted man in the U.S. Navy. You’ve done well at school and certainly for me. I even hear you’re a good soccer player. Now, that’s an unusual game.”

“I learned it in the neighborhood.”

“Indeed you did. Indeed you did.”

“Look at you,” Christian said, stepping back. “You’ll do great.”

At precisely one o’clock Liam Metarey led me into a side room. There, the man from Dunleavy was sitting in a dark blue blazer at a large desk beneath a landscape oil of the Carrol Valley. His loafers were just like the ones I’d borrowed from Andrew. He motioned me into the chair across from him, and when Liam Metarey had left the room, he filled his pipe, tamped it down, and said, in a way that made me think he was amused, “Welcome to school.”

I needed no scholarship, as it turned out. Mr. Metarey was going to pay my way. And Mr. Metarey was the one who must have told my parents, for when I came home that day, my mother already knew. It surprised me that she seemed pleased. I think I’d expected her to forbid the whole thing when she heard it. My father, too. But neither of them did. Instead, when I came in the door that afternoon in my muddy field pants, holding the duffel at my side, my mother greeted me in her apron and said, “First thing, I’ll take you to Brownlee’s for a set of new clothes.”

“We’ll all go,” said my father.

And so my life, as though it hadn’t changed enough already, changed again.

TWO

I

M
Y CONFIDENCE ABOUT
D
UNLEAVY
, as it turned out, was fleeting. By the time we reached the bus station in Islington, in fact, it was gone; and it was not even a memory by the time I was picked up at the outdoor Greyhound stop in Highton, New York, just two hours later, by the Dunleavy school van, a dark, wood-paneled station wagon driven by some kind of groundsman with what I mistook for an English accent. By then I felt dreadful.

I’d begun my slide down into the state of introverted self-consideration that would hinder me for the next two years—for the next six, even—a halting apprehension that settled over me the moment I set foot in the peculiarly echoing hewn-stone halls of that school. Over my entire first year it would find expression in what I would soon begin to think of as my masquerader’s hitch—a hesitation that gripped me whenever I spoke or even moved in the presence of my classmates. It only loosened its hold when I was on the soccer field—I discovered there that I was one of the better players at the school—or on my long vacations home, when, as I stepped off the bus in Islington each December and May, it slid from me again, like a cloak I’d forgotten I was wearing.

Imagine the cold immensity that a boarding school can seem to a newcomer, let alone a boy from a different world. The mysterious traditions. The haughty upperclassmen. The buildings themselves, which at Dunleavy were built from coarse-split, dark gray stone that rose four stories in a show of institutional imperviousness. Imperviousness to effort, to brilliance, even to surrender. In the hot fall the walls were cool and in the winter they were ledges of ice. The interior of my own hallway ended in a circular run of stairs that was faced inside with the same dark stone, and the tens of thousands of boys who had descended the steps over the decades had blackened the casework with their handprints and worn the footway as though by a steady flow of water. This willingness of the school to bear only the imprint of the multitude of us, never of any single one of us, might have been the bleakest facet of the whole place; and although it took me years to understand this, I also think I was in some way aware of it from my first moments on the grounds, standing by myself at the head of the semicircular entrance drive of the headmaster’s house as the groundsman drove away behind me. I still remember the feeling.

On the fields beyond, the football team was drilling; at the edge of the woods, the track team was running laps in a single mass; through an open window I heard what sounded like an orchestra playing, and I could see the movement of bows. I don’t think I’d ever felt so truly alone. Even today, with our interns at
The Speaker-Sentinel
, I try to remember the sensation. Dunleavy’s refusal, thirty years ago, to take away any portion of our manic hope or our private suffering, while at the same time showing us daily the magnitude of our storied antecedence, must be every bit as much a problem today for any kid whose ambition takes him beyond his rank—for all the Trieste Millburys out there, and all the Corey Sifters, too—no matter how gamely they hide it.

At the main building, a secretary came outside, ushered me in, and showed me into the waiting room; after quite a few minutes there at the window, watching the football team run blocking dummies backwards across the end zone, I was finally called in by Mr. Clayliss, the headmaster. He pointed to a chair across from him, then pulled a file from a stack. “You’re Liam Metarey’s boy,” he said.

“Well,” I said. “I work for him.”

He blinked at me across the desk.

“He’s not my father,” I explained. “If that’s what you meant.”

“No,” he answered, looking back down at the file. “I know he’s not.”

“I’m grateful for what he did.”

“Young man,” he said. “I don’t have any reason to think you’re not. However, we’ll see about that. You’re starting here as a junior. We’ll see how well Franklin Roosevelt did in preparing you for that.” He shuffled the papers together and closed the file. “Mr. Metarey’s got himself involved in politics now, I see.”

“Yes, sir. He’s one of the men in charge of Senator Bonwiller’s campaign.”

“Don’t see why he’d want to do that.” He looked across the desk at me, blinking again. “You’re in Wilcott,” he said at last. “Third floor south. You’ll be rooming with Highbridge. Doors lock at nine. Not ten after nine. Not five after nine. You’re caught smoking—cigarettes or
anything else
—you’re on your way home.” He stood. “That’s what happened to Highbridge’s first roommate, in case you’re wondering. Clear enough? A boy’ll take you up there now”—he gestured at the door. “Welcome to school, Sifter.”

Highbridge’s first name turned out to be Astor, a combination I couldn’t have made up myself but that I read on the nameplate a few minutes later as I stood outside 318 Wilcott. I peeked through the narrowly opened door at a set of pale, noble features gazing up at the ceiling from the pillow. Astor Highbridge. He hadn’t seen me yet. I stepped back until his chinos came into view, then his boat shoes, sprawled from the end of the mattress. He wore them without socks: I realized I hadn’t even considered all the ways I wouldn’t fit in at Dunleavy.

In the hallway, although I could hardly bring myself to do it, I bent down and scuffed my new loafers.

Behind Astor were two small windows looking into a tree, and between them a poster of Carl Yastrzemski waiting for a pitch. I was glad to recognize Yastrzemski even if I despised the Red Sox. I looked closer. The background was out of focus but a left-hander in a blue cap was on the mound: it might have been Sam McDowell. The Indians had no doubt lost that day. I stood at the crack in the door surveying what I could of my new room: a dark green rug flecked with gray and gold, a dull brass trash basket, the corner of a desk piled with books, the toe-ends of a pair of cleats. I turned around. In the hallway behind me, all our names were cut into black laminated stock in orange letters above the doors; I don’t know how long I must have been standing there, gripping Liam Metarey’s duffel and studying the names, before I heard, “You must be Corey, man.”

The door had opened and he was offering his hand.

“And you must be Astor Highbridge.”

“
Astor
’s plenty, man,” he said. “Come in. Nicer in than out.” Then he added, “Barely.”

I held the duffel in front of me. The room was just large enough for the two of us to move past each other. One of the beds had no sheets.

“That’s yours,” he said. “In case you were wondering.”

“I figured.”

“Kind of bleak, then, huh?”

“I guess so.”

“It gets better, man. Don’t worry. I’ve done two years already. Not eligible for parole.”

And that was my introduction to Dunleavy.

Later, I understood that he’d even left me the good bed, hidden from the door and closer to the windows; but at the time his generosity was lost on me. My mind was too raw. His white shirt was old and worn, and the sleeves hung loose around his wrists, but when he reached to open one of the windows I saw that the cuffs were embroidered with the tiny letters
AH
. I turned my own duffel so he could see the front. I didn’t want to unpack it, of course—not in front of him or anyone else. I only wanted to be alone.

Astor sensed this, I think. He said he was just setting out on a walk. A moment later, he returned to tell me that bedding was distributed from a closet near the dining hall and that he would be glad to collect mine for me—the first of hundreds of kindnesses he would show me over the year. I didn’t want to tell him that a good part of my duffel was taken up by the sheets my mother had washed and ironed that morning, so I asked him to take me along. As we walked the stone path toward the linen commissary he said hello to half a dozen other students, who appeared to be older. His brother, he told me, was a senior.

“Clayliss give you a nice welcome?” he said to me as we made our way across the grass quad.

I looked sideways at him.

“Oh, sorry, man,” he said. “Only kidding. Don’t worry. That’s how he is with everybody.”

“He mostly warned me about stuff.”

“Not five after,” Astor said. “Not ten after.”

“A cigarette and you’re on your way home.”

“A cigarette
or anything else
, man.”

We both laughed.

“That’s what happened to Sturgeon,” he said.

“Sturgeon was your roommate?”

“Yeah, Sturgeon hated it here. He
wanted
to go. It’s cool. I respect the man for it. And I’m glad to have
you
instead.”

“Thanks, Astor.” Behind Mr. Clayliss’s office was the laundry—in the distance I could see a line of students stretching out the door—and I wondered suddenly if there was a charge for picking up our linens.

“Actually,” I said, “I’ve got my own sheets. My mother, like, might have even ironed them.”

“Oh, just use the school’s, man. They use bleach to kill the fleas.” He chuckled. “Kidding,” he said.

“I figured.”

“But at least it’ll save you the trouble, right?” Then he patted me on the shoulder and said “Clayliss,” again, chuckling dismissively. We walked past the administration building and he nodded toward the window. “Clayliss is a real throwback, man.”

“Like, five hundred years back,” I offered.

“Yeah,” he said. “Like, five thousand five hundred.”

We were at the laundry shack now. I took a place at the end of the line, my hands in my pockets.

“Got to take off now, man,” he said. “But you’re cool from here.” He stepped closer. “And don’t worry,” he said quietly, “tuition covers everything.”

T
HE HEADLINE DIDN’T COME
the next morning, as June Metarey said it would; but it did finally appear, two months later: The
Buffalo Courier-Express
, October 3rd, 1971.
SENATOR-ANODYNE TIES PROBED
. A short piece buried at the end of the news section, which I found in the Dunleavy library’s week-old copy of the paper. The page trembled in front of me, while outside the window my classmates filed across the frost-tipped grass to the breakfast hall. A single paragraph. All it said was that the state’s attorney general had summoned a grand jury to investigate Senator Henry Bonwiller’s ties to a Wyoming oil drilling company named Anodyne Energy. That was it. There was no byline. Nothing to make me think Glenn Burrant had anything to do with it. As I stood there, I heard the door open behind me in the library. I closed the paper quickly and walked out into the chilly morning.

I
WAS ON THE SIDE LAWN
of the house, setting up folding chairs for Senator Bonwiller’s press conference in the morning, when Christian appeared on the gravel turnaround, out of breath.

“There you are!” she gasped. “Come on, Corey, hurry! We’re going up with Mother!”

“We’re going where?”

“For a spin. In Aberdeen White! Come on, Corey—run!”

This happened over Columbus Day, when I was home for the first time from Dunleavy. For the whole weekend I’d been working at the Metareys’, and at night I’d been sleeping in my own bed, and it was such an unexpected relief to be doing both things that a kind of giddiness had entered me. It was the anniversary of the UAW strike against General Motors, and in the morning Henry Bonwiller was going to be speaking about his labor record; it wasn’t going to be much of a press conference, but under the small tent in the side yard I was snapping open quite a few rows of chairs, anyway, just in case more reporters showed up than Mr. Metarey expected.

“Oh, please, Corey!” Christian panted. “That’s enough. Leave them for later. Mother’s going to take off without us!”

Aberdeen White was Mrs. Metarey’s second plane, a big, twin-engine Beechcraft that she used for bringing in guests from the coast. When I told my parents about it later in our kitchen, my father set down his can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and went to the window, where he pulled up the shade and looked out at the sky; my mother, who’d been washing dinner dishes at the sink, stopped scraping and rinsing. Finally she moved next to me at the table.

“Do you think you might have called us before you went along?” she asked.