Down the Shore (13 page)

O
rientation lasted two full weeks, and I had almost forgotten that we were here to take classes when they finally began. Clare and I had signed up for an art history course on the European modern movement, and on the first day, Prince William walked to the front of the lecture hall with half a dozen people in tow. He took what looked like careful notes while his entourage whispered and turned around to ensure that, yes, everyone was watching. The lecturer lost his patience halfway through the class and stopped to glare at them, the colors of Cezanne's apples cast over his face as he paused between the projector and the screen. He had just finished explaining that the phrase
still life,
in any romance language, translates to “dead nature.”

The School of Art History was the best in the UK, the reason the prince was here. He was one of the few second years who actually showed up for lectures after the first week. Grades, or “marks,” as Mary insisted we call them, didn't count toward your degree until your third year. Third years were scarce on the social scene as a result, toiling in the library stacks while their carefree academic children were playing in the streets, day drinking, staying out all night.

Clare and I had history of art and English lit together, but I took Econ 3001 alone while Clare stayed on the quad for private piano instruction. My professor was head of the School of Economics. He had been the chairman of finance in New Zealand before he was asked to resign because of his drinking. He lectured at Dartmouth after that, then McGill, moving from post to post and fleeing the fallout of his alcoholism with the same cross-continental leaps. He landed at St. Andrews, finally, and had somehow managed to sober up in a town full of bars. I had e-mailed him early in the summer, attaching a paper and my AP scores, and asking if I could place out of the entry-level courses. He replied an hour later, telling me to see him after the first lecture. I arrived early, took a seat near the front, and listened to the room fill up behind me. I looked around for Damien before the lights went down. He never showed.

When the professor had described the arc of the course and listed the exam dates, he told us that we might as well enjoy our only early dismissal of the semester. I made my way down to the lectern while he packed his briefcase.

“Professor Watkins? I'm Tom Alison. I wrote you about taking this course and you said to see you after class?”

“All right,” he said, scanning his enrollment list.

“I sent you a paper in August?”

“I was sent several papers in August, Mr. Alison. I'm afraid you'll have to be a little more specific.”

“It was on currency. The case for a gold target.”

“That was your work?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Is it all right if I take your class?”

“Yes, I'd say you're in the right place. How old are you, if you don't mind my asking?”

“Eighteen. Would you mind signing this for the registrar?”

“You know,” he said, uncapping his pen, “it's unusual for someone your age to be thinking about currency like that. There are traders twice as old as you who wouldn't understand what you wrote. You're wrong, of course, but it was a nicely articulated delusion if I remember correctly. I'm assuming this will be your concentration?”

I nodded.

“Tell me something,” he said, holding my form to his chest, taking it hostage. “If you don't mind my asking. What is it you'd like to do?”

“Hedge funds, eventually. Probably investment banking first. I'm not really sure.”

“That's the most awful waste I can imagine.”

“Well, thanks for letting me take your class.”

“Of course,” he said. “It's my pleasure. I wish you all the luck in the world.”

D
arling,” Jules called, as he opened the door to Kelsey's flat. “Your children are here.”

Raisin Sunday, an ancient St. Andrews tradition, took place during the first weekend in November. It was designed as a bonding experience for the fledgling academic family—breakfast at mother's house, followed by a long night out with dad. No one I asked knew where the name came from. The unofficial holiday had morphed, over the years, into a kind of loosely sanctioned shit show—six thousand students unleashed on the town after an alcohol-soaked breakfast, Monday classes canceled in advance. Residents stayed off the streets or left St. Andrews altogether. Clare and I had put on ties and jackets, per Damien's instruction, before we presented ourselves for breakfast.

The smell of bacon and burnt toast had almost masked the ashtray perfume of Kelsey's flat. Her long dining room table was draped in a patchwork of tablecloths and covered with dishes, glasses, carafes of orange juice, piles of pastry, and sweating bottles of sparkling Italian wine. I walked into the kitchen, where Kelsey, in high heels and a printed floral dress, was checking something in the oven.

“Can I help?”

“No,” she said, straightening up, smoothing her apron. “This is the one meal I can pull off on my own. Go sit down. Make yourself a drink.”

She planted a kiss just behind my ear, and slapped me lightly on the ass.

In the living room, Damien was mixing Clare a Bloody Mary that was mostly vodka.

“I blacked out around noon my first Raisin Sunday,” Damien was saying. “Lost half of an amazing pair of shoes and woke up in a bunker on the sixteenth hole. Not a good look. I'm not saying you shouldn't push it, but let's not be those people today.”

“To pushing it,” Jules said, looking straight at me. “Cheers. I'll drink to that.”

Clayton and Chantal showed up. A cork shot out of a bottle neck, glanced off the ceiling, ricocheted around the room. After two drinks, the alcohol under the sludge of tomato and spice had a constricting effect, as if it was dehydrating me and everything in Kelsey's flat. The surfaces, the sunlight shooting through the windows—it all seemed harder, brighter. I wasn't used to day drinking. My spine felt like a coiled spring.

“What do you have planned for the next generation?” Mary asked Damien.

“Football matches, afternoon tea with Jules, party at Will's place, the Westport. We can go back to my suite after that, if anyone's still standing.”

“How long do you plan on living in that awful hotel?”

“Until I find something to buy. Paying rent here is like burning money.”

“As opposed to what the Old Course charges.”

“Burns a little brighter that way.”

“Ah, to be a noveau riche American.”

“Watch it,” Damien said, with an edge in his voice that I had never heard before.

“Everyone sit down,” Kelsey said, balancing a baking dish in each hand as she swept into the room.

I was about to ask Kelsey what the dish was, but stopped on an inhale when I saw the way Jules was looking at me. I held his flat stare until he pushed back from the table, took the vodka off the sideboard, and asked if we were actually going to start drinking, or what. Shots were poured and passed around. Clare caught my eye, and I saw that he was choking back a smile to mask his excitement at this weird pageantry. There were catcalls from the street below, the voices of people who had started ahead of us. Kelsey stood up and raised her glass.

“To my wonderful children,” she said. “Happy Raisin Sunday. Put something in your stomachs, for the love of Christ. You'll need it.”

•   •   •

Because Clare and I had split a cab from Melville Hall, I didn't notice the shift in the town until we spilled into the street. The police were out in force, with light riot gear over the traditional white shirt, black tie, and navy sweater. They had orders from the university to step in only if students posed a danger to themselves or others, and they seemed relaxed and jocular, chatting and calling to one another over the tops of their Plexiglas shields. It was easy to see why the residents didn't stick around for this: ten til noon by my watch, and already the sidewalks were choked by roving packs of students, drinking openly, and dressed in costume, in pajamas, in unseasonable scraps of clothing. My outfit was starting to feel like a costume in a different way: I was pretending to be someone who got dressed up to get drunk at breakfast.

Down the block, one of our fellow first years was standing in the garden outside his mother's flat, preparing to drink from a long plastic tube connected to a funnel that was being held by his mother out of a first-floor window. I had seen this done at Princeton parties, but usually the drinker took a knee while someone poured beer through a funnel held above his head. The boy closed his mouth around the clear tubing that ran down from the spout. He tipped his head back, opening his throat as far as it would go just before his academic father poured off a full bottle of red wine, which filled the tube like blood inside a vein. The boy folded after four or five agonizing seconds, splattering red across the stone walkway as he hacked and choked.

“That's fucked up,” Clare said.

“Remember what he's wearing,” Damien told him. “He'll be fun to watch later on. We ready? Is everyone with us?”

Everyone was not with us. Jules and Kelsey were halfway down the block, locked in conversation. He had a shoulder against a high garden wall, while she was upright with her back to us, doing all the talking. They stood toe to toe after she stopped, which reminded me that I had no claim on her attention or affection that could lead to a tense silence like the one they were still sharing. I wanted something between me and Kelsey that could start a fight.

“Uh-oh,” Damien said from behind me. “Did you get someone in trouble?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about?”

“Is that about me?”

“Is what about you? Are we still playing stupid? Here, carry these,” he said, and handed me three bottles of Prosecco. “Let's go. They know where to find us when they're done.”

Done with what? I wondered. Had Jules caught the kiss she hit me with upstairs? I was losing the bottle trapped between my bicep and ribs, and dropped another bottle as I tried to catch it. The glass shattered, bubbles flaring up and then vanishing into the pebbled sidewalk as the wine bled out. Someone cheered. A policeman stabbed two fingers at his eyes and pointed to me from across the street.

We followed Damien to the athletic fields cut into a rise behind Andrew Melville, where three shockingly organized soccer games were under way. Across the first pitch, I saw a thickset middle-aged man moving through the crowd along the sidelines, dressed in vestments of the Catholic Church. A woman trailed behind him, wearing a long dress that laced up in the front and pressed her breasts together. I heard Mary explaining that the man was not actually a bishop, as he liked to be called, but an old queen who liked to dress up as a member of the clergy. The woman was a failed London actress who worked in a nearby castle now.

“One of those horrible places where they dress up in Renaissance costume and teach you to make bread,” Mary said, lighting a cigarette.

Jules was sitting on the sideline, prying off his wingtips. He replaced them with a pair of borrowed soccer cleats, laced those up, shed his blazer, and took the field. Someone had talked him into playing. He jogged backward to the halfway line, his eyes on the ball, regarding it with the same even intensity he had used with Kelsey, who was nowhere to be seen. I turned back to the game as a forward from the opposing team headed a long pass out of the air and beat a midfielder on the run. He was charging downfield now, dribbling, unaware that Jules was coming for him. In his trim gray slacks and crisp white shirt, Jules looked like a spectator who had wandered out onto the pitch. I thought: he'll never make it. I had underestimated his commitment. Jules laid down into a long-shot slide tackle, his left leg leading, his right leg underneath him like the bent arm of a paper clip. I winced, mostly for his clothes. He planted a hand in the grass as his foot connected, catching the ball and then the ankle of the opposing forward, who pitched into a somersault. Jules used the last of his momentum to pop back to his feet. He caught the ball before it traveled out of bounds, and then shot downfield along the sideline. His teammate was streaking into the penalty box, and Jules landed a pass neatly in front of him. The boy took a shot that glanced off the crossbar, shook his head, spat, and then raised his hand to Jules in salute. Jules didn't notice. A streak of dirt and grass ran down the left side of his body, broken by a stripe of clean white fabric where his shirt had come untucked. I had no idea that he could play. There were hands on my shoulders.

“May I offer a blessing to the first years?” the bishop said, when I spun around.

He was holding out his hand, and I was just Catholic enough to know that you were meant to kiss the ring. There was something wet and white in the corners of his mouth, and something inscribed on the ring's surface that I was too drunk to read. His complexion was paint-by-numbers splotchy, and a pair of thick, Coke-bottle glasses magnified his bright blue eyes. Clare, Mary, Clayton, and I joined hands with him and his companion. We bowed our heads.

“Da, quaesumus Dominus, ut in hora mortis nostrae Sacramentis refecti et culpis omnibus expiati, in sinum misericordiae tuae laeti suscipi mereamur. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.”

Clare raised his head and opened his eyes. He stared at the bishop. The bishop continued.

“Heavenly Father, we offer you these young men. May you enrich their hearts and their minds and may they walk in your way as they enter their life in this place. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”

“Amen,” his companion said.

Everyone was trying not to laugh except Clare, who was in no danger of laughing. Mary broke the tension by passing me a spliff, but I needed weed in my system like I needed a broken arm. I offered it to Clare, who took a quick hit and coughed it up.

“That wasn't a translation,” Clare said, through the smoke. “What he said after the Latin. What the bishop said.”

“What?”

“The Latin was the Prayer for a Good Death.”

“Are you sure?

“I took Latin for four years. Yes, I'm sure. Why would he recite that?”

“Who knows,” I said. “It's the least weird thing I've seen all day.”

•   •   •

The cohesion of our group was astonishing when you considered the hour at which we'd started drinking. People would peel off, vanish, and then casually reappear. I wondered if this was how families functioned, if all the members were subject to a force like gravity. When everyone but Kelsey was assembled, Damien announced that tea would be served shortly in the art studio Jules rented from the university. It was time to go.

The wind was blowing hard onshore, and the police seemed less relaxed now. We passed two students getting sick in the street on our way through town, a boy in an oversized flight suit, and a girl in her civilian clothes. Jules led us to the art department's administrative building on the Scores and unlocked the front door. We burst into the empty building and barreled down the stairs, breathing in the smell of dust and decomposing paper, the acrid fumes from oil paint and clay. There was music coming from an open door at the end of the underground hallway. The room Jules rented was divided into studio space splattered with paint and something like a living room. A Persian carpet—blood red, blue, and brown—covered one corner of the rough cement, bordered on adjacent sides by a leather sofa and a credenza that held a record player, speakers, and a cluster of liquor bottles like a model skyline. The particulars reminded me of Casey, and what he would have done with a space like this: nothing accidental, everything just so. Kelsey had changed into a slouchy loose-knit sweater, black leggings, and boots, and was moving around the room, prepping. She brushed past me to fill an electric kettle from the water fountain in the hall. People I had never seen before were filtering in, third and fourth years, friends of Jules's. In the corner, a janitor's orange mop bucket was filled with ice, beer, and wine. Someone put on “Sticky Fingers” by the Rolling Stones. It felt like we had retreated into a bunker while the world came to an end outside.

When the water had boiled, Jules lined up a set of chipped china teacups and dropped a tea bag into each. Damien produced a Baggie of gray powder from the inside pocket of his jacket, held it to the light between two fingers, flicked it twice.

“Anyone who doesn't want a dose, speak now or forever hold your piece.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“It's fairy dust. It's what'll get you through the night.”

“It's Molly,” Mary said. “MDMA. It's very good, if it's the batch from the Dutch boys.”

“Fuckin A, it is,” Damien said. “OK, show of hands: Everybody in?”

The doses were measured out with a tarnished silver coffee spoon. I stared into the steam from my cup, letting the tea steep, hoping the heat would burn off some of the drug. I had never done this. The bitterness of English breakfast gave way to the taste of a chemical whose first effect was to twist and contort every muscle in my face. Damien laughed.

“Holy shit, that's terrible,” I said.

Mary pinched my cheek and hummed the first few bars of “Spoon Full of Sugar” from
Mary Poppins.
We had never touched before, I realized, as she walked away.

Jules was sprawled on the couch, directly across from the folding chair I had dragged to the edge of the rug. I felt hands on my shoulders for the second time that day. It was Kelsey, and it seemed like she was locking eyes with Jules, their stares meeting somewhere in the space above my head. It took everything I had to keep from turning to see her face. I could smell her perfume and then I couldn't, like someone floating through warm and cool patches of a lake. Jules blinked and then raised his eyebrows, almost imperceptibly. I felt her fingernail graze the top notch of my spine as she tucked a tag back inside the collar of my shirt and walked away.