But now, since I’d opened Pandora’s box, I might as well keep searching. It was alarmingly easy to find people, to skim at least the basics of their lives.
Khristina Gura, Thalia’s original roommate, was living in Florida. I found Bendt Jensen, whose Danish posts Facebook translated into semi-comprehensible political spiels. I found Asad Mirza, who was working as a comedy writer and whose work I’d seen without knowing it. Rachel Popa taught math at a private day school in Boston. That one shocked me; I’d imagined her married to a senator, maybe working in fashion. Benjamin Scott, our valedictorian (the one whose grades I’d requested upon his death), covered LGBTQ issues for The Washington Post. Dorian Culler wasn’t on Facebook, but he was easy to find via Google: a labor lawyer who seemed to represent not corporations but unions. The sight of his face gave me chills, but his work looked legitimately important.
The ruling class of Granby ought to have grown into the entitled ignoramuses who ruled the country, the ones whose influence outstripped their intelligence. Instead they almost all seemed lovely.
Well, sure: We’d all had Dr. Meyer for English, slamming 1984 on the table as he talked about power. Dana Ramos made all of us sit still and look at plants. Mr. Levin told us all the same stories about the Greek geometers and about paying his way through college as a busboy. It was entirely possible (it slowly occurred to me) that my empathy and tenacity were not what had gotten me through Granby, but were things Granby had given me. Things it had meted out to anyone willing.
How many times did I have to learn the same lesson? You’re not special. And that’s okay.
I ended up back on Robbie’s Facebook, staring my way into the profile picture where his arm circled his wife, his fingers digging into her hip as if he feared she’d be washed away by the waves behind them. I remembered Robbie waiting for Thalia after Follies practice, waiting for her after Camelot rehearsal. He’d be there on the steps of the theater, alone or with a friend, studying or not, ready to walk her back to her dorm.
But—and I’d forgotten this—sometimes, on the spur of the moment, you would move Follies rehearsal down to Lower Campus, have them practice under the arch outside Old Chapel. It would get dark around us as I took notes for you about blocking. I don’t think Robbie ever showed up there.
I hadn’t understood till then how sound travels differently at night, but I’d sit on the Old Chapel steps with my clipboard, and when you arranged the singers in a ring, their voices were rounder: lofty and silver. Like singing in the shower, if the shower were limitless.
“Who are you singing to?” you asked once. Sakina answered, “The last row.” No, no, they’d misunderstood. You meant who is your character singing to, even when the word you never appeared in the song, because although Follies was essentially a talent show, it had been conceived as a revue, and whether they were singing show tunes or madrigals or Mariah Carey, they were supposed to be in character.
You said, “I want you picturing the listener so hard I can see them.”
Someone asked, “What if you’re singing to yourself?”
“No one ever sings to themself,” you said, and this prompted a barrage of protests. What about Maria in The Sound of Music, twirling through the hills?
Finally you said, “If you don’t get it, just sing to Bodie. She’ll be in the booth anyway. Confess your love to Bodie, tell Bodie you dreamed a dream, tell her you’re the model of a modern major general.” And you grabbed my shoulders, made me sit in front of the arch as sole audience. As if all the reasons I wore black and hid backstage were utterly lost on you.
Kwan Li, up next, actually did it, locked eyes with me as he sang “All I Ask of You,” his voice already remarkable. Then Graham Waite stood with his guitar and, instead of singing “Blackbird,” started in on the Tom Petty song about growing up in an Indiana town. I thought that was the whole gag until he got to the chorus. “Last dance with Bodie Kane!” he sang; it rhymed and everything.
Do you remember this? Laughing till tears escaped, applauding Graham, asking if anyone had ever sung that to me before. No, I admitted. It was a good joke, and I laughed with everyone, flattered that Graham remembered I was from Indiana. But I knew already exactly what would happen: For the rest of the year, people would sing it to me in the hallways, in the dining hall, and I’d have to find some way to react.
“Okay,” you said finally, wiping your face, “less literal, next time, but that’s the idea.”
An hour had passed, and I was still staring at my laptop. I must have looked like someone doing intense and stressful work; no wonder everyone had steered clear of my table.
We’d believed there were ghosts in Quincy Hall and Gage House. We’d believed Mr. Wysockis and Ms. Arena were dating, until he announced his engagement to a woman we’d never heard of, a grad student at UVM. We’d believed we were practically grown.
I walked to film class weighed down with the cold, and the laptop in my backpack, and the winter coat I was growing to hate. This was how I’d trudged through four years at Granby: uncomfortable and ungrounded.
It’s hard to describe the dizzy headspace I was in, except to say I no longer had any sense of what was true—about Jerome, about Robbie, about Omar, about you. I didn’t know if Yahav still loved me. I couldn’t figure out who knew more about what happened to Thalia: me now, or me at barely eighteen. My adult self, looking back with experience and perspective, or my raw teenage self, both jaded and na?ve, taking everything in fresh.
This wasn’t even a question of believing a survivor, as Thalia had never said anything about you. Well, and she hadn’t survived.
34
Junior year Feb Week, I stayed on campus.
Halfway through college, I mentioned “Feb Week” to someone at IU and then explained I just meant February break, and still she looked at me like I was nuts. There was some origin story about the school saving money on heat, but in reality it was a vacation about second homes and special invitations and pressure from the oldest Granby families to keep it on the schedule.
This was when I learned that it wasn’t just the ski team who skied, that everyone around me had grown up casually gliding downhill. Skiing wasn’t entirely a class signifier, though; for some it meant childhood trips to Aspen, but for the New England kids it might have meant a local mountain with gravelly snow, used gear, a few PE credits.
I’d never been invited to anyone’s ski house, and I had no interest in, or funding for, school-sponsored educational trips to the Galapagos or the Everglades. Freshman year I’d flown back to Indiana and spent a cold week watching daytime TV and avoiding the Robesons. Sophomore year I’d stayed in the dorms and hung out with Fran, and that was our plan again junior year. Just us and a handful of international kids. Even the financial aid students, even the ones who’d never skied, would, if popular enough, tag along to someone’s place in Vermont just for the hot tubs and drinking and sex. (At least, this was the picture painted by stories I heard; in retrospect I imagine it was mostly hungover cartoon watching, juvenile conversation and heartbreak, logistics around the ordering of pizza.)
That week in 1994, Fran and I were thrilled to have the dorm VCR essentially to ourselves. We watched The Shining and Wait Until Dark and part of the box set of Twin Peaks—anything to help us channel the vibe of the nearly empty campus. I’d just started to appreciate film, and the Hoffnungs’ movie collection was a treasure trove.
One night, we broke the horror-and-suspense streak to watch the Disney Robin Hood, and decided, halfway through, to paint our nails. I went back to my room for polish and when I opened the door, Thalia was on her bed, arm flung over her eyes, Granby duffel on the floor spilling clothes.