And what about someone like Thalia, so clearly smitten with you from the moment she stepped onto campus? I don’t know if she talked about you to everyone else, but with me she brought you up constantly. I was, after all, someone who must have inside information. Or at least my connections to you were a convenient excuse for her to say your name.
That fall, there was a joint choir concert with Northfield Mount Hermon in New Chapel. A mass, or something else long and classical, and for whatever reason—maybe because, as Priscilla Mancio pointed out, there was always a dearth of singing boys—you not only conducted half the concert but also performed as a soloist when the NMH guy conducted. You swayed your whole height with the music, an oscillation that started at your wide-open mouth and ended at your feet. You were so lost in it, so exaggerated in your rapture, that I thought at first it was a joke. But Thalia, behind you in the soprano section—I saw the look on her face. It wasn’t just admiration; she looked nervous for you, deeply invested in your success.
Naturally, the rumors about Thalia and some teacher transferred onto you. They also transferred onto Mr. Dar, and onto Mr. Wysockis, her tennis coach. Perhaps because Thalia was the kind of person to touch any man she was talking to on the shoulder. We believed it all, if only so we’d have gossip. (I certainly contributed to it, sharing with Fran and Carlotta every time I came to your classroom and found her already there, sprawled on the couch with her shoes off.) It was for the social clout of gossip that we also spread—and even believed—stories about teachers with crushes on students, teachers who’d check out girls’ legs. But they couldn’t all be true, and as the years passed I came to understand they’d been immature fantasies, related to our certainty that the world revolved around us.
I thought of the Follies rehearsal senior year when we were all called out of the theater by Bendt Jensen, our Danish exchange student. You might not remember Bendt, who was only there one year; the reason I remember him myself is that he was gorgeous, an unquestioned fact. A swoop of blond hair that looked drawn on, a chin cleft.
Bendt was late to rehearsal that night, and when you asked why, he’d stood there, embarrassed and wide-eyed, and explained that there were, he didn’t quite know how to say, but there were . . . lots of little UFOs outside? And as soon as the words were out he reddened, but everyone was ready to believe him, already out of their seats, already jumping off the stage, you calling after us with fake upset that masked your real upset.
We tumbled outside and stood on the steps, on the sidewalk below, staring out at the empty hill behind the theater, the one where the off-season baseball boys would play Wiffle ball. It was still the tail end of summer, but late enough that full New Hampshire dark had descended.
“There were—” Bendt said, and he seemed to try, unsuccessfully, to laugh at himself. “There were like a hundred little—I don’t know what—there!”
And he pointed in triumph to the sudden illumination of dozens of tiny flickering lights at the forest’s edge.
“Dude,” someone said. “You’ve never seen fireflies?”
Apparently he hadn’t. Poor Bendt had never even heard of them, was completely new to the idea that a living thing could illuminate like that. I remember, in the hilarity that followed, thinking that I understood. That, my God, if you’d never known something like this existed, yes, your mind would jump to the nearest, strangest, most terrifying associations.
“They light up to attract mates,” someone said, and explained that what we were seeing was essentially a firefly nightclub. We ran around until we caught a few that we could show Bendt up close. Max Krammen smashed one on the sidewalk and spread the glow with his sneaker as we all screamed at him to stop.
We filed back in to find you still at the piano, which Thalia leaned on like a torch singer. She alone had stayed back. Carlotta was in Follies that year, singing “Adelaide’s Lament” in a campy New York accent undercut by the Virginia one she couldn’t shake. She whispered, before I went back up to the booth: “Someone was doing a mating dance of her own.”
Back in the dorm later, the story stretched to include (had we seen it or not?) the details of your cheeks burning red, you wiping at your neck as if to rub lip gloss off.
If we believed at all that you returned her affections, why didn’t we tell some adult? The truth is that even if you’d kissed Thalia right there in rehearsal it never would have occurred to us to say something, just like we never would have turned in Ronan Murphy for having more coke in his room than a Colombian drug lord. Not because we were honor-bound, but because it seemed like just one of the many secrets of the world to which we were now privy, secrets we were supposed to be cool about. And because maybe we knew, on some level, that our assumptions would melt away under examination.
When I still taught at UCLA, I used the firefly story in lectures as an example of the uncanny valley—although I have to admit it’s a terrible one. Sometimes I used it to illustrate the way our brains fill gaps, the way we use what references we have. Sometimes it was about false assumptions.
It wasn’t lost on me—though I never included this detail—that Carlotta and I had done the same thing, looking at you and Thalia and filling in the lurid details that would make the best story later.
We thought we knew, so we became certain we knew. It became as real to us as those lightning bugs, their mating dance at the tree line, our laughter, Bendt’s good-humored relief, our feet hitting the earth as we raced to catch them for him, bringing him miracles in our cupped hands.
13
My students were supposed to show up the second day with plans for their first episode—an idea of someone to interview, a couple of paragraphs of introductory script, names for their podcasts. They’d all done more than enough work. Plus, they were awake and hydrating: entire bottles of water on the table! It struck me that while I might have been happier going to school with this sweet band of Gen Zers, I’d likely have failed out, the only kid showing up fifteen minutes late with wet hair, mouthful of bagel, term paper lost in her computer. Even today, after my bad night’s sleep, I felt two steps behind them all.
Jamila’s intro for her financial aid podcast was the strongest, although she talked at warp speed, would need to slow down for recording.
I said, “They still do senior convocations, right? Are you working with a coach for that?”
“Not till spring term.”
“Didn’t they used to be, like, half an hour?” Britt asked.
“Yes,” I said, “and we worked on them all year. What are they now?”
“Ten minutes.”
I stopped myself from gasping. I didn’t want to be the old lady who couldn’t stand change. Instead I told them my convocation was on veganism.
“Are you still vegan?” Alder seemed excited, and I hated to disappoint him.
“I’m still vegetarian,” I said. “Which, let me tell you, the dining hall has improved a lot on that front. On everything, really. That omelet station this morning? We’d have died. They promised one vegetarian option every meal, but half the time it was fried fish.”
I can’t fathom what I ate for a whole year of veganism in the New Hampshire woods. I know I found vegan cream cheese at the health food co-op in Kern, stored it in the minifridge Donna Goldbeck was allowed in her room because she was diabetic. I’d dip vending machine Fritos in the fake cheese. In the dining hall I ate salads, PBJs. I’d take white rice, add soy sauce, dump on scallions, microwave it, call it stir-fry.
Do you remember how you thought it was funny, sitting at your desk while I practiced my speech, to eat your pilfered dining hall cookie in front of me? “Mmmm, Bodie, you know what makes this so good? The eggs and butter.”
When it was Britt’s turn to present her intro, she sat forward, scanned the room to make sure everyone was listening.