Philipp Meyer - The Son

But she couldn’t help it. Pictures didn’t capture the size of the buildings, which leaned ominously over the streets, ready to fall and crush her at any moment, if a taxicab didn’t get her first. The din of all the trucks and shouting people left her ears ringing and she had a rushing in her heart that didn’t go away until she was well north of the city, on the train to Greenfield, back among trees and pastures. There were a few stray cattle and sheep grazing in the distance, Holsteins and Jerseys, at least I know about that, she thought, it would be something to talk about with her new classmates.

THERE WERE NUMEROUS things that appealed to her about Greenfield. The old stone buildings with their steeply pitched roofs and tall ivy walls, the sunlight like a gauze across the landscape — what passed for summer was like winter in Texas — the dense forests and rolling fields at the edge of the campus. She had not known there were so many shades of green, she had not known there was so much rain and moisture on earth. The campus was only forty years old, though it might have easily been four hundred, the way the vines had taken over the buildings and trees brushed the windows in the breeze. In the few moments she had to herself each day, it was hard not to feel like someone important, as if she were only steps away from being swept up by some prince, or prime minister’s son, who, she now knew, would be English instead of Spanish, though other times she wondered if she did not want to be swept up at all, if perhaps she would be a prime minister herself — it was not inconceivable, times were changing. She could see herself behind a great wooden desk, writing letters to her loyal citizenry.

She did not have much time alone. The days were rigidly ordered: wake-up bell followed by breakfast and chapel, followed by classes, lunch, classes, athletics, dinner, and study hall. Lights out at eleven P.M., a monitor stalking the halls to enforce it.

Her roommate, a small Jewish girl named Esther, cried herself to sleep every night and at the end of the first week, when Jeannie returned from dinner, Esther and all her things were gone. Her father had owned factories in Poland, but he had lost everything to the Germans; the tuition check had not cleared. Jeannie was moved into a nicer room. Her new roommate was a girl named Corkie, who was shy but pleasant, and, unlike Esther, seemed comfortable at their new school. She knew everyone, though Jeannie sensed that she did not have many friends. Corkie had shoulders as thick as a cedar chopper’s, and she was tall, and she went about everything with a kind of resignation: to her long face that would never be pretty, to the red bumps above her lip, to her split and frazzled hair. From the way she dressed — in drab, frumpy clothes — and the inattention she gave her appearance, Jeannie thought she must come from a very poor family, and so she went out of her way to be nice, bringing Corkie desserts she’d smuggled from the dining hall, as she had once carried the buckets of clabber to her father’s vaqueros.

That Monday, when asked at lunch who her new roommate was, she told them Corkie Halloran.

“Oh, you mean the Mighty Sappho?”

That was Topsy Babcock. She was small and pretty with pale blond hair and skin to match, a smile that turned on and off like a traffic switch. Sometimes the smile meant approval, other times disapproval — she was not a person you wanted to disappoint. The others at the table laughed at Corkie Halloran, and Jeannie laughed with them, though she did not know why.

“She was at Spence but they say she was spending a little too much time with one particular girl, if you know what I mean.”

“They should have sent her to St. Paul’s — she would have fit in perfectly!”

Everyone thought this was hilarious. Jeannie just nodded.

THE NEXT WEEKEND Corkie invited several people to her parents’ house, which was only forty minutes from school. To Jeannie’s surprise, many of the people who had made fun of her at lunch went along: Topsy Babcock, Natalie Martin, Kiki Fell, and Bootsie Elliot. Jeannie expected some old jalopy, or perhaps a truck, but instead they were picked up by a uniformed driver in a seven-seat Packard.

Kiki said: “You’re the one who got stuck with that Jewish girl, aren’t you?” She was the dark-haired version of Topsy, though her hair was cut just below her ears, almost as short as a boy’s, and it was said she’d had a surgery to make her nose smaller. Since arriving at Greenfield Jeannie had spent more and more time in front of the mirror at bedtime, inspecting herself. Her nose had straightened considerably but her eyes had no character, they were the color of fog or rain. Her chin was pointy, her forehead high, and the scar across her eyebrow — which she had always been proud of because it was like the scars her brothers had — made her look like a man. It was a deep scar, you could not miss it.

“McCullough…” Topsy was saying. “That’s Jewish, isn’t it?”

The other girls tittered, except Corkie, who looked out the window.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m kidding. Of course it’s not.”

Jeannie was quiet the rest of the drive. There were very few houses. The roads were small and winding and yet they were paved. There were tall hedgerows, red barns, the ubiquitous stone walls. Everything was in shadow, the sun came weakly through the trees and the sky felt small and closed in. There was a chill in the air, though it was only September.

Topsy and Kiki and Bootsie had gone to primary school together; the others seemed to know each other in the same ways, she guessed, that she knew the children of the Midkiffs and Reynoldses. The second silent girl in the car, Natalie, had long chestnut hair and a large chest that she slouched to conceal. She made a point of looking out the window, not making eye contact with Jeannie, though, like everyone else, she smiled at whatever Topsy said.

It was a relief when the car turned into a stone gate and made its way up a long driveway with big trees on both sides. There were acres of grass, she had never seen so much green healthy grass in her life; she tried to calculate the number of head you could support here (an acre per head? It seemed possible) but knew better than to say this out loud.

At the top of the hill the house appeared. She began to feel embarrassed. It was not any larger than the Colonel’s house, but it was more grand, with arches and pillars and towers, dark granite, marble statuary, a look of weathering as if it had been standing since the time of kings.

“What does your father do?”

The girls all looked at her. Corkie gave her a look as well and she knew she’d made some sort of mistake. But it was too late. Corkie said: “He goes to his firm in New York and he plays racquets at the club and he rides and shoots a lot. And he works on his novel.”

“What kind of firm is it?”

“You know…” Corkie shrugged.

Bootsie Clark said: “Poppy’s father rides and shoots as well, I imagine.” Poppy was what the others had decided to call Jeannie. “He’s a cowboy. Isn’t that right?”

“Cowboys are hired men.”

“So what does your father call himself?”

“A cattleman.” She was about to add, but that’s not where our money comes from, when the other girls cut in:

“Does he go on those epic rides, then? Up to Kansas?”

“Those ended in the eighteen hundreds.”

“That’s too bad,” said Bootsie. “They looked very exciting.”

She was not sure if it was worse to respond or to let it drop. “They didn’t really drive them like in the pictures. They had to walk them or they’d lose all their weight.”

“How does Corkie’s house look?” said Natalie, changing the subject. “I guess yours must be bigger.”