“I discussed my paper topic with Professor Willem!” Carlos said suddenly. “A week ago!”
Professor Willem was not in the room. He was an adjunct, or what passed as an adjunct at Roarke, which meant that he came in one afternoon a week from Dartmouth to teach the Shakespeare seminar, and a seminar on Milton and Spenser.
“All right.” Alcock got to his feet. “I’m going to stop this now. Carlos, Eli, come with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere with him,” Carlos said.
“This is a community issue,” John-Peter said. “We need to process it as a community.”
Alcock was nodding. “Without question. But I’m going to talk with these two first. I suggest we end the meeting now.”
“Dude,” Carlos said, glaring at Eli, “I didn’t steal your notes! I didn’t take your book! I can’t believe you. This is fucked.”
“Let’s calm it down,” Professor Alcock said. “We’re going to talk about it.”
“But it isn’t true.” Carlos looked very close to tears now. Harrison stole a glance around the room. Heads were down, almost to a man. Gordon alone seemed to be staring at Carlos. “I insist on the right to hold my accuser accountable for this.”
“We’ll get to that,” said Alcock. “For now, though, let’s call it a night. Everyone, I appreciate it won’t be easy, but I strongly suggest that we leave this until we can convene with more information. Good night, all.” And he left, preceded by Eli and followed, a moment later, by an unsteady Carlos. The room was like a tomb. For the first moment, anyway.
“Holy fuck,” said somebody.
“Let’s not,” said John-Peter.
“No way Carlos did that,” said Gordon.
John-Peter said: “Gordon. We are not going to discuss this. You heard him.”
“He must believe it, though. Eli must. Why else would he say it?”
Harrison looked around. Belatedly, he realized that he was the one who’d spoken. This was how he realized which side he was on. And that there were sides.
“Bullshit, Oppenheimer.”
“Guys.” John-Peter was losing the battle.
“I’m going out to the barn,” said Tony.
A few of the others went with him, and they didn’t come back till after Harrison had gone to bed.
Chapter Fourteen
The Gift to Be Simple
In which Sally Oppenheimer experiences rapture by furniture
Sally had hoped her roommate would invite her to Ellesmere while they were both at home for the winter break. Rochelle, however, seemed to parry her many questions about the town, its history and culture, and whether she planned on visiting her old school and meeting up with her friends. Finally, Sally resorted to an outright request. “Hey, you know what would be fun? I could come out to Ellesmere. See where you’re from.”
“I beg to differ,” said Rochelle. “There is nothing remotely fun about Ellesmere.”
“Sure, but I’d love to visit you. I’ve never been to any part of Long Island but the Hamptons.”
“Consider yourself lucky,” said Rochelle.
Sally didn’t feel hurt, exactly, but she recognized an impasse. Besides, she wouldn’t have considered allowing Rochelle to enter the Oppenheimer home or experience her own family, with its unacknowledged siblings, including the one who lived in the dormitory next door and the one whose absurdly late appearance screamed family crisis.
Only three weeks after their return to campus, however, Rochelle announced that there was a problem at home, and she had to head back to Long Island for a couple of days.
“What kind of problem?” Sally asked.
“Oh, it’s the house. Too boring to go into. Mom just needs me back for a little bit.”
“Should I come with you?” Sally said.
Rochelle looked up from her laptop.
“That’s kind of you to offer, Sally. But no.”
The next morning, a storm over the Finger Lakes dumped a locally modest foot of snow over the Cornell campus. Sally walked Rochelle through that to the bus station and watched her board the eight o’clock to New York. Then, unsure of what to do with herself, she trudged back to Carol’s Café for breakfast. The room wasn’t crowded. She took the table she and Rochelle often chose, under a poster advertising Cornell’s study abroad program in Florence, and bought coffee and a strawberry yogurt. A girl at a nearby table was texting on her flip phone and weeping at the same time. She kept pushing her dark hair back behind her ears, but let the tears fall, undisturbed. Sally didn’t know her. She didn’t know anyone else in the café, either. Five months into her life as a college student and she felt as if she hadn’t met a soul.
The cafeteria overall was emptying, as everyone stomped off to first-period class. Sally had a class of her own—the introductory earth sciences course she was taking for a distribution requirement—but something kept her from getting to her feet and out the door. The next time she looked, the weeping woman had also gone—off, presumably, to text and cry in a less public place—and Sally was the only one left. She continued to sit, looking down at her cold coffee and what was left of her strawberry yogurt, and wondering what it was about this gray Ithaca morning that made it feel so different from any other gray Ithaca morning. But of course this was obvious, even to her. The day was different, and not in a good way, because the diminutive Ms. Rochelle Steiner was on a Peter Pan bus, bound for Port Authority and the mysteries of Ellesmere, Long Island, return unknown.
Gone, in other words. Not here, with her, in other words.
And then, long past time, something began to really break through, something that had been working away at her for months, and Sally Oppenheimer caught an accurate glimpse of her own situation, its dimensions and far-reaching implications. Oh, and her situation was precarious, indeed.
One thing she and her brothers actually did have in common was that none of them had ever formed an attachment to another person that might, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered romantic. Lewyn, of course, was a basket case in general when it came to other people, though he had moped after that famously beautiful girl a class behind them in high school. Harrison had lost his virginity to a Walden classmate he considered deeply inferior in every way (it had been the girl’s idea, he’d made sure to tell them; she had even provided the condom!), but naturally he’d never considered this any form of a relationship. Sally herself had felt only twice that hand-in-the-guts disturbance, that sickening catapult into the unknown, first with the counselor during her first and only Pinecliffe summer, and once in that folk art museum where she’d been stalking our father. In both cases the experience had been almost instantly replaced by an equally powerful wave of horror and loathing. So not much baggage, no! And now, in addition to that, there was a brand-new fucking problem, and it was too close for her to ignore, and it was vast, and it consumed worlds.