Brad gave a single understanding nod. They sat in silence, listening to the ocean, and as the sun grew stronger, they removed their shirts, enjoying its warmth on their backs. “This is what we call,” Brad finally said, imitating their eighth-grade social studies teacher, “a classic conundrum,” they said in unison.
And that’s exactly what it was. Anton felt young, inexperienced, and lost. He had come to California hoping Bradley would say something that would help him make up his mind, but here was the thing—Bradley was as young as he was. He wanted to talk to his father, but how could David possibly understand what he was feeling when he wasn’t even sure what Brad really saw when he looked at him? What did Brad, what did all of them, see when they looked at him—the whitest black man in the world? Or the blackest white man? Which one was he? Whom did he want to be?
Without warning, Anton’s mind went to his birth mom. Maybe she could’ve helped him solve the riddle. And then he scoffed at his own irrationality. If she had just been a mother to him, he wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. As it was, he had only two black male friends at Harvard. And if he posited this question to them, they would look at him with contempt or, worse, incomprehension.
He felt a sudden sharp pain in his side and yelped. Brad had poked him in the ribs and was laughing at the indignation on Anton’s face. “Man, that chick’s done a number on you. I’ve never seen you mope around like this.”
“I’m not moping.”
“Tell that to your face.” Brad jumped to his feet, snapping Anton with his shirt as he did so. “Ah, enough of this shit. Come on, I’ll race you to the house. We’re having pancakes and bacon for breakfast.”
A WEEK LATER, he and Brad shared a cab to the airport to catch their respective flights. The lines at security were thankfully short, and they decided to grab a quick bite before heading to their gates.
They flirted with their waitress, a dark-haired woman in her thirties who told them she was a surfer, and they left her a generous tip. Then they stood, grinning at each other.
“That was quite a week, huh?” Brad said.
“Great. I needed it. Thanks for letting me crash at the last minute.”
“Any time. Well. See you back home in a couple of weeks. Dad said we’re doing New Year’s Eve at your place.”
“Sounds great.”
They hugged. Anton picked up his backpack, but Bradley lingered. “Hey,” he said. “Don’t make yourself crazy about the Carine thing. It will sort itself out.”
Anton made a face. “Yeah, well, we’ll see.”
Brad’s eyes searched his friend’s face. “When it’s time to break it off, if it’s time, you’ll know.”
“How?”
“You’ll just know.”
Anton chuckled to himself as he walked toward his gate. This was what he’d spent almost five hundred dollars to come to California for—to hear Brad talk like Yoda. Well, one thing was clear. It wasn’t time yet. The only thing he knew for certain after a week in California was that he was horny for Carine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In the end, it was a white man who came between them and broke them apart. His name was Henry David Thoreau.
For each of the four years that Anton had been at Harvard, he had made an annual pilgrimage to Walden Pond. He had first discovered Thoreau’s writing at sixteen, and it had opened up a world within him. He’d felt an immediate, almost mystical connection with a man with whom he shared little else—not race, or culture, not even a century. It was Thoreau who had introduced Anton to the idea that living a principled life was as much about what you didn’t do as what you did. That what you rejected defined you as much as what you embraced. As a junior in high school, Anton had written an award-winning essay comparing Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government” to King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” It was Thoreau who’d made him want to become an English major; he had never mentioned to his dad or Pappy that Thoreau was the real reason he had chosen Harvard.
Anton had first visited Walden Pond at seventeen. He and David had driven there and spent the day walking through the nearby woods, sitting by the pond, reading Thoreau’s writings out loud. They spoke but a few words to each other, but as they walked back to the car that evening, David had put his arm around his son’s shoulders, and Anton had felt his chest expand with love and gratitude for his father.
His motives for inviting Carine to Walden in the spring of their final year at Harvard were unclear even to him. He had spent the past year tormented over what to do about their relationship. His reasons for being with Carine were elemental, primal, beyond articulation. His reasons for wanting to break up with her were intellectual. And every day, the tug-of-war between head and heart was tearing him down just a bit more.
It was a cold day in March with a big, dramatic sky. The woods crackled and complained as they stepped over twigs and dead leaves. Many of the tree branches were encrusted in frost. Carine had to stop every few minutes to blow her nose.
“So what do you do when you come here by yourself each year?”
He looked at her, surprised. “Just what we’re doing.”
“That’s it? The same thing each year?”
“Yup.”