Asa, as I Knew Him (10 page)

The Choate-bound boys grabbed their suitcases and ran for the stairs, turning at the top to wave to Reuben, who had to wait for the shuttle to North Station. He was standing alone in the space the three of them had carved out, between two sunbeams. He put his tennis racquet up in front of his face so he looked like a dog in a pound, or a prisoner pressing on his bars. “Live it up!” he yelled. “Give ’em hell!” Then he
raised the racquet high and served an imaginary ball in their direction. The crowd pressed them down the stairs to the track, where the air smelled of steam and hot metal and winter was on the heels of the breeze that funneled into the tunnel.

Toward the end of October, when the days had been truncated by the turning back of the clocks, Asa returned to his triple after European history to find a letter from Reuben. It was a four-line note that read:

Dear Asa, I’m taking five courses and playing soccer. I’m flunking four of them but still counting on you as my Harvard roommate. Come up and cheer for me next weekend when we play Exeter. I’ll meet 11:20 train on Saturday.

R.

How like him to assume I’ll come, thought Asa, but already he’d begun to tally up his clean socks and consider what books he’d take to study on the train. He rummaged on top of Parker’s desk to see if he had also gotten an invitation, and was happy to find he hadn’t. Parker was wearing a bit thin on Asa. He insisted on smoking in their rooms, which was grounds for expulsion, he made piles of clothes at the foot of his bed, which smelled long before he got around to taking them to the laundry, and he was under the spell of Baudelaire, whom he quoted unceasingly in French. Harrison Grey, the other roommate, had exchanged his seersucker suit for gray flannel but was as dull as ever. He was dull-witted as well, and had to study hard; every evening he sat with a straight back at his desk and read while Parker tried to distract him.

“Paris change! mais rien dans ma mélancolie n’a bougé,” Parker would intone, flinging open the windows that gave onto the peaceful Connecticut fields. Then, standing behind
Harrison’s flannel back, “Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère.” None of this had any effect on Harrison, who took German not French, but it drove Asa to the library for peace.

In the library Asa daydreamed. He preferred to read lying down, and to write his papers late at night, so there was little for him to do in the library. He thought about Reuben. At first it seemed he was thinking about the summer; he remembered the glittering water and the feel of the canvas chair against the backs of his knees, and contrasted it with the beige spiky trees clustered outside the long library windows and the mahogany chair where he sat and watched those trees lose their leaves. But in his thoughts Reuben was always sitting in a deck chair beside him, and they were planning escapades, or parties, exchanging stories about girls (something they never did in reality), getting to know each other. For Asa had realized that they didn’t know each other. Friendship in his little gang consisted of Parker and Asa vying for Reuben’s attention and thinking of subtle ways to exclude Roberto. Asa wondered: Did Reuben know he was the focus and that this kept the others divided? Asa decided that Reuben might not only know this but have manufactured it himself. On the other hand, it was possible that he was oblivious, as he pretended to be. But didn’t that oblivion contain a sort of natural arrogance and pride, which took for granted rivalries and jealousy? Perhaps that was why Reuben had gravitated to Jo; he could have conversations with her. But Reuben lying blond and warm on the deck of a boat with Jo had not been seeking a conversation. Asa remembered Jo’s hand on Reuben’s bony wrist in the car, and the mixed-up taste of Jo’s mouth—the conversations those two had were silent, also of a sort Reuben couldn’t have with Asa.

Asa tipped his chair back and watched rain moving in over
the tops of trees. He wanted someone to talk to about how he felt watching trees in the rain, which was sad and delighted and hollow, as if his insides had become a receptacle for emotions that floated in the air, looking for a resting place. Parker looking at trees felt he was Baudelaire; what Asa wondered was how Reuben felt. Did he ever stop to look at trees?

So the invitation was opportune, because Asa needed to know more about Reuben. He packed his changes of socks and Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
, put
The Mayor of Casterbridge
in the pocket of his cashmere coat, and set out early on Saturday morning by train, which sped along the flat, frost-encrusted lower New England seashore stirring flocks of small gray gulls with its approach. At the Back Bay Station he was a tourist waiting for the shuttle to North Station and another train to take him further up. This train passed through still mill towns where long, black factories with broken windows hunched empty. Asa had enough history to know that only fifty years before, cousins of his had overseen cousins of Reuben’s as they bent over looms in these mills. Or was he mistaken, and did Jews not have cousins? His impression of Jews was that like his own class they were a small group given to marrying each other and avoiding outsiders; such behavior led to a multitude of cousins. He decided to ask Reuben about the family arrangements of Jews.

At Andover everything looked exactly as it looked in Wallingford. There were white houses ringed around a common thick with beeches and oaks; there were fewer than seven shops, and those sold either food, books, or pharmaceuticals; there were handsome dogs sporting on the brown lawns. Waiting for the train to stop moving so he could descend, Asa had a moment of envying Roberto, who had all of Harvard Square to prowl through on his way to and from school.
Why was it a privilege to be hidden away in these sleepy country towns?

Reuben was leaning against the side of the ticket booth. For once he was dressed correctly, in a blue-gray tweed jacket, blue tie with white stripes, white shirt, and charcoal-gray pants. His clothes were of excellent quality and excellently tailored, but he seemed to be wearing a costume. Asa stopped at the top step and looked Reuben over, wondering how he managed to appear oddly dressed in what was, after all, the term-time uniform of everyone the two of them knew. It was the sneakers, Asa decided. Reuben wore once-white sneakers so old that his little toes popped through on both feet. Asa wore cordovans his father had bought him in tenth grade, which he hated because the color reminded him of slaughtering chickens with his grandfather. His father had said, as when he’d bought the cashmere coat, “These will last for the rest of your life.” It appeared he was right. Asa’s cordovans trod the grimy steel steps of the train down to the platform and went to Reuben’s side.

The game began at one, so they went immediately to the dining hall, where a number of people said hello to Reuben. Asa hoped to be introduced but wasn’t. Then Reuben put Asa in an armchair in the library, gave him instructions to the playing fields (the grounds were enormous, far larger than Choate’s), and hurried to his pregame strategy meeting in the locker room. “Sit on the right side,” he called from the door, “that’s our side.” Asa read
The Mayor of Casterbridge
for a while and fell asleep. He had been up at six, and was accustomed to rising at seven-thirty; that tiredness combined with the lulling movement of the train, which persisted in his body, the chicken pie filled mostly with potatoes, and the deliberate unrolling of Hardy’s plot to stupefy him. He slept for a long
time. When he woke up the sun was lower, brighter, and shining in a different window. He pulled out his pocket watch: three o’clock. Over the tops of trees, muted by the carpets in the library but clear and high, yells came from the direction Reuben had pointed him in hours before. Asa jumped out of his chair and began formulating excuses. I’ll just tell him I couldn’t get through the crowds to him, he thought. The first order of business, though, was to find out who’d won the game. Then he could make his way to the locker room with congratulations or comfort.

He put on his coat and went outside under the elms flanking the library to overhear the news. It was clear that Andover had trounced Exeter. The yellow buses at the foot of the great lawn, which had brought the Exeter team and boosters, were filling with quiet pairs of boys; shirt-sleeved Andoverites were doing handsprings and somersaults on the stubbly grass. Asa went up to some boys standing near him who were describing the game play-by-play to each other, relishing their favorite moments.

“Can you tell me how to get to the locker room?” he asked.

“You from Exeter?” Everybody looked at him intently.

“No, Choate. I’m a friend of somebody on your team.”

“Who?” The one asking didn’t relax his suspiciousness, although the others seemed prepared to go back to their game review. He peered through his gold rims as though he suspected Asa of being a spy.

“Sola,” said Asa.

“What position does he play?” Gold Rims, Asa could see, had decided to make sport by grilling him. This was precisely the question he hadn’t wanted to be asked, because he hadn’t a clue to what position Reuben played.

“Oh, leave him alone, Bowditch. I know Sola, he’s left wing,” one of the calmer boys said. “The gym is about three
minutes that way, and the locker room’s on your right.” He pointed past the library. “Tell him he made a terrific goal there, at the end.”

“Thanks,” said Asa. He buttoned his coat up and set off, pleased to have gotten two unexpected and useful pieces of information. He could congratulate Reuben on his goal.

But when he got to the locker room and saw Reuben stripped and shiny among all the others, he didn’t want to lie. Reuben asked how he’d enjoyed himself, and Asa said, “I fell asleep and missed the whole thing.”

“Wonderful,” Reuben said. “Just the thing to do. Not worth watching anyhow. It’s fun to play, but I don’t bother going to games I’m not in. It’s cold and boring.” He combed his wet hair back from his forehead with a small tortoiseshell comb that had a gold edge and looked as if it belonged to a woman. “Hold on a second, I’ll be dressed and we can go have something hot.” He winked; Asa wondered if he had a booze cache somewhere and supposed so.

“That’s a very nice comb,” Asa said. Some demon motivated him; he knew it would be the wrong thing to say. Sure enough, Reuben’s face became blank and stiff.

“Thanks,” he said, and slipped it quickly into the pocket of his pants, which were still hanging in his locker.

“Was it your mother’s?” Asa persisted. He amazed himself; he couldn’t imagine why he was pursuing this dangerous topic, but his resolve to “get closer” to Reuben and to find out about Jewish family affairs seemed to justify snooping.

“Forget it,” said Reuben. “Go outside and wait for me.” Asa obeyed. Reuben kept him waiting fifteen minutes as punishment. Asa used the time to formulate more invasive questions, which he resolved to ask late at night, when Reuben was tired. Who was your mother? he would ask, and, Why is she never discussed? What is your father really like? and,
Who is Grace? How much money do you have? Where are your cousins? Do you have grandparents? How many kisses, and what besides kisses, have you and Jo exchanged? Do you prefer Parker to me? When he reached this question Asa realized he probably wouldn’t ask any of the questions. He resolved not to be petulant. After all, he, not Parker, was waiting for Reuben. He wondered why the answers to these questions interested him as much as they did.

He thought perhaps the way to find the answers was to confide in Reuben; after all, their ignorance extended both ways. Reuben didn’t know about the whore in June, or Mrs. Thayer’s two stillborn children, one before, one after, Asa. These two pieces of information didn’t seem as thrilling as the information Asa was looking for, but that might be because he possessed them already. Maybe Reuben would find them valuable. He could only offer them and see what happened.

It was dark and chilly outside on the northern wall of the gym, facing the fields and woods whose feathery outlines Asa could no longer see. He had a sense of having traveled north, and this made him long for New Hampshire. Thanksgiving would be at his grandparents’ farm as usual, and he had a vivid memory of tramping through icy mud in the morning to fetch eggs for breakfast from under the warm hens. He liked the cleanness of winter, the way the air was purified and thinned until it became nearly painful to breathe. He took a deep breath, waiting for the minty sharpness of the air, but October was too early for that. And then Reuben came out, with a mist of heat around him and his jacket open, and took Asa’s arm, so that Asa’s solitude was melted. They walked arm in arm back to the dining hall through the moist leaves that clung to the paths.

This time Reuben introduced Asa to a few of the people who greeted him in the food line. But he steered them to a table in the corner that was unoccupied except for a thin, pale-brown boy bent over a plate of steak and potato. This fellow, who rose as they approached, was too tall for himself—his cuffs had not kept pace with his arms, and he wobbled when he stood, so Asa imagined he’d shot up five inches overnight and hadn’t adjusted. All his features were watered-down hazel and looked unhealthy; his hair was slicked sideways with an unguent that gave off an unpleasant glow, his eyes were bloodshot, and his face was nicked and chipped from acne. Instead of a tie he wore a red polka-dotted ascot. To Asa’s surprise, Reuben clapped this character on the shoulder and introduced him enthusiastically.

“Kuhn,” he said, “meet Asa Thayer, my companion in Cambridge. This is Jerry Kuhn, without whom Andover would be unbearable.”

Asa looked at Jerry Kuhn and wondered how he could improve Andover so much, then looked around the dining hall, wondering what had to be improved. It was a larger, more pleasant dining hall than Choate’s, because it was older and therefore had wood paneling, two chandeliers, and decent refectory tables. Choate had in the past five years been given an anonymous million and spent it on building a few new, ugly buildings, one of which was a dining hall with pastel walls and Formica-topped tables for easy cleaning. Asa much preferred this, which was an inflated version of his dining room at home. For that matter, it wasn’t very different from Reuben’s dining room. As to Kuhn, Asa couldn’t imagine what he had to offer. He felt himself sinking into a sulk, but was unable to stop it.