Эд Макбейн: Love, Dad

“Hi, Dad!” she said, and hugged him, and then kissed him on the cheek. He returned the embrace, but he did not kiss her. He hadn’t yet decided whether to play the stern father or the understanding pal, but he felt he ought to appear somewhat distant until he had all the facts.

“I got a letter from Mr. Holtzer today,” he said.

“Yeah, there was a copy in my box,” Lissie said. “Is that why you’re here?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“You could’ve called, you know. This isn’t such a big deal.”

“I think it’s a big deal,” Jamie said.

“Yeah? Well, maybe we ought to talk about it then.”

“That’s exactly what I’d like to do.”

“Okay, you want to go have some coffee?”

“Sure,” he said.

They walked in silence to the student dining room on the boys’ end of the campus. The classes at Henderson were co-ed, but the dorms were discreetly separated by a stand of pines through which a single path wound through a deliberate maze. There were two student dining rooms; most of the girls preferred eating in the one near the boys’ dorms. The dining room was sparsely populated at a little after two, a handful of students scattered at the long oaken tables, coats and parkas slung over the backs of chairs, sunlight streaming through the leaded windows, books strewn on tabletops. Lissie went to the coffee machine and came back to the table where he was waiting. She put his cup down before him and said, “Okay, let’s talk.”

“What happened?” he said.

“I hope you know I wasn’t smoking pot,” she said.

“I would hope not.”

“Well, I wasn’t. And neither was Rita Cordova, I don’t think you know her.”

“How about Jenny?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, what?”

“Yeah, she was smoking.”

“Holtzer’s letter...”

“I know. She lied to him.”

“What happened to the ones who were smoking?”

“They all got expelled.”

“Where was this?”

“At Ulla’s house. Her parents got stuck in Hartford, because of the storm.”

“Who’s Ulla?”

“Captain of the soccer team, Ulla Oftedahl, I think I introduced her to you once.”

“Big Brunhilde type?”

“Yeah, that’s Ulla.”

“So you were lucky,” Jamie said.

“How do you figure that? I wasn’t smoking any damn pot, how do you figure I was lucky? I’m restricted to campus for a month, and I wasn’t even...”

“What about this problem in the dorm?”

“I don’t know about any problem in the dorm.”

“Holtzer’s letter...”

“Holtzer is full of it,” Lissie said angrily. “There’s no problem in the dorm.”

“Then why have the prefects and the dorm teachers been giving you guidance?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Yeah, what?” Jamie said.

“Dad, there isn’t any problem, believe me. It’s just that Jenny and I get bored out of our minds every now and then, and we try to create a little fun for ourselves, that’s all.”

“What kind of fun?”

“Though I don’t respect her for lying the way she did. She almost got me and Rita in serious trouble. Because Mr. Holtzer suspected Jenny was lying, and he thought maybe we were lying, too. It’s just that Miss Larkin saw the other kids smoking, you know, the ones who got expelled, and Jenny had the joint in an ashtray when Miss Larkin walked in, so...”

“Who’s Miss Larkin?”

“Head of the phys ed department. And coach of the soccer team. If you want my opinion, nobody would have got kicked out if Miss Larkin hadn’t been so pissed. Because Ulla was captain of the team, you know, and she didn’t expect her to be smoking pot. So everybody suffered because the party was at Ulla’s house. One of the guy’s fathers — Bobby Brecht’s father — donated five thousand dollars to Greenleaf last year...”

“Greenleaf?”

“The new arts center. And he got kicked out, too, can you imagine? After giving the school five thousand dollars? Boy,” Lissie said, and shook her head.

“What about this fun in the dorm?”

“Well, it was Jenny and I who named all the dorms.”

“What do you mean, named them?”

“Well... Abbott Dorm is Attica, and Ogden Dorm is Ossining, and Allister is Alcatraz, and our own dorm... those are all prisons, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And our own dorm — Lorimer — is Leavenworth, and Sutton is San Quentin... can you think of anything for Riker Dorm?”

“You’re kidding,” he said.

“No,” she said. “Huh?”

“There’s a jail on Rikers Island.”

“Where’s that?”

“Just off Bruckner Boulevard, in the Bronx.”

“Really? Jesus! Rikers Island! Wait’ll I tell Jenny! Anyway, that’s what it was all about.”

“Your naming the dorms after prisons.”

“Yeah.”

“And that’s all.”

“Yeah. Because it sort of caught on, you know.”

“Uh-huh. And that’s why the prefects and dorm teachers were giving you guidance.”

“Well... yeah. I guess.”

“What else, Lissie?”

“Nothing. That’s all.”

“Holtzer’s letter said...”

“Well, you know him, he’s an asshole.”

“Lissie... what else?”

“You’re gonna get mad.”

“Why? What’d you do?”

“Nothing. But you’ll think it was terrible.”

“What was it?”

“We poured hot tea all over Hillary Frankel’s bed.”

“You what?” Jamie said.

“See?” Lissie said. “I told you you’d get mad.”

“Poured hot tea...”

“Well, Hillary wasn’t in the bed when we did it.”

“But why’d you...?”

“She’s a creep, Dad. She’s always writing things on our door slate, wrong things, like pretending she’s Jenny and writing that I should meet her in the library after eight, or sometimes using boys’ names and leaving a dorm number we should call, like that. And whenever we have the extreme unction sign out...”

“The what?”

“The extreme unction sign. That’s if we’re studying, we tack this little red sign to the door, and it means you’re not supposed to knock or anything under penalty of extreme unction. But she always knocks anyway, she’s a terrifying creep, believe me.”

“So you poured tea in her bed.”

“Yeah, hot tea,” Lissie said, and grinned.

He was tempted to grin with her. Instead, he kept a stern look on his face, and said, “When was this?”

“Just after the Thanksgiving long weekend.”

“Was that the end of the episode?”

“Well, no, not exactly.”

“How, exactly, did it end?”

“We told all the kids on the dorm that Hillary was a marine — you know, a bed-wetter. We told them the tea stains were piss.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So naturally, Hillary figured it was us who’d done it.”

“Naturally.”

“And she went to the house mother, and she gave us a little talk.”

“Was that the only incident?”

“Well, no.”

“What were the other incidents?”

“One other incident.”

“What was it, Lissie?”

“Well... remember when we had that light snow last month?”

“Yes?”

“Well, what we did, me and Jenny, we went on a sort of panty raid, taking panties from all the rooms on our floor, and then carrying them over to Baxter House — that’s on the boys’ side — and arranging them in the snow so they, you know, spelled out a word.”

“Don’t tell me what the word was,” Jamie said.

“Yeah, that was the word.”

“Are we thinking of the same word?”