An Uncommon Education (40 page)

The dean continued to confirm information; I think she was hedging a bit. Finally, she addressed Jun. “Have you prepared any sort of explanation, a defense against the accusation?” She looked almost afraid to hear what Jun would say, somehow vulnerable to Jun’s own culpability. I suppose she was, though when a student faltered it was kept quiet. “Is what Miss Wilcox says of you true?”

Jun shook her head. “No,” she said simply.

Dean Silas did not wait long to see if Jun would elaborate. She nodded and stood up, turning her back to us, to the scene outside her window. “I understand your father is in town,” she said quietly. “Both of your parents.”

Jun confirmed that this was true. The dean turned back around and studied her. “You’d be surprised at how many women come here to please their fathers,” she said conversationally. “I imagine they might even leave to do the same thing.”

Jun’s expression did not change. The dean returned, again, to her papers. Her mood shifted.

“Miss Feinstein,” she said. “You mean to tell me you have no firm recollection of Jun’s whereabouts for”—she looked down at her sheet—“nearly twelve hours, even though you were roommates?”

“Jun and I are friends,” I said, my tone suddenly petulant. I was uselessly angry that the statement alone couldn’t convey what it meant to me. “We’re roommates, but I never felt . . .” I paused, fearing that everything I said might be useless, too. “I never felt I needed to know where she was all the time.” I looked at the dean. “I didn’t think it was my business to know where she was at all times,” I said more firmly. I thought of the late night when I first spoke with her, how it had been the fact of her in the rain in the middle of the night, her open displacement, that had drawn me to her. I realized that we had grown to trust each other not because we had been the greatest of confidantes, but because each of us honored in the other what she couldn’t even name herself.

By this time Dean Banks had risen and offered Tiney another tissue, seeing that the first was saturated. All eyes were once again on the gruesome display. “It’s nothing,” she said from behind her hand. “I’ve had them since I was a kid. When it gets cold quickly.”

“Miss Wilcox”—the dean’s tension was shifting from one to another of us, like a ball in a maze—“you and Jun were friends before this incident. Am I right?”

Tiney nodded obediently.

“You were even roommates first year, is that correct?”

Another nod.

“And both members of the Shakespeare Society, as are you, Miss Feinstein,” she said, looking up at me before turning back to Tiney. “As is Miss Page. Are you sure no one else had access to the bag with the examination in it besides Miss Oko?”

As she answered in the negative, I began to realize that Tiney must have left her study session with Jun and gone directly to the library, waited until no one was near Jun’s carrel to hide the exam there, and then returned to her room so as not to disrupt her own roommate. She would have had to have acted with speed and deliberation. She would have had to be unflinching.

Tiney was providing a dutifully false account of her actions. She held up the new tissue to her nose, muffling her voice. “Believe me, I didn’t want to believe that my good friend might have done such a thing, but I had no choice. I’ve tried to imagine how it could have been anyone else but her, Dean Silas, but I can’t. To me, it wasn’t just a breach of the honor code, it was a personal attack.” Jun had gone pale, but showed no other reaction. I felt the room grow quiet in response to her. The full weight of Tiney’s accusation had struck, or maybe it was just the composed way in which she’d delivered it. It wasn’t clear and it doesn’t matter. But at the time I wanted, desperately, to know who else in the room, behind those silent faces, knew what it was that Tiney was doing. Everything she said was crude and transparent, but no one could object to it. It appeared too much like fact.

I think, to this day, that the dean suspected Tiney right until the end, maybe even knew that what she did was driven by some bottomless jealousy of Jun, one that even Tiney might not have known the depth of. But Tiney’s status as an exceptional scholar among exceptional scholars had made her almost untouchable: She was the sort of student who lives at the top of the academic food chain, a place where people float, at so many great institutions, virtually undisturbed.

Jun clenched her teeth, stiffening her jaw. It was hard to see the life in her at all. She looked coolly unsympathetic. I had a sudden need to call out, signal her, let her know how she was being seen, that her face revealed nothing that might save her. I had the irrational urge to reach out; I envisioned myself gripping her shoulder, her face turning toward me, the dawn of realization coming over her, a softening in her eyes.

“She’s lying,” I said. It took a moment for the dean to realize I’d spoken. “She’s lying,” I repeated.

No one said a word. After a moment, the dean cleared her throat. “Miss Feinstein,” she began.

I didn’t wait for her to finish. “It can’t be true.” I stood up. “Think about it. Where is there a smudge on Jun’s record, where is there any indication that she’d need or want to cheat? Why isn’t something being said for that? Why isn’t who she is defense enough?” I was tumbling forward, trying desperately to find a hold, trying to find something to say that would be enough to bring it all to the great, grinding halt that just wouldn’t come. I knew, even before I spoke again, that my words would seem empty. “Miss Wilcox is lying,” I began again. And then I caught Jun’s eye.

She looked indescribably poised yet absolutely alone. Her expression did not change as she returned my stare. She had asked that I respect her decision and instead, I was standing before her and everyone else, insisting that I could save her. She fixed her gaze on me, its directness as clear as any flood of emotion. She had wanted nothing from me but for me to take my seat. I finally did.

The dean spoke. “Miss Feinstein,” she said sadly, “please refrain from any more outbursts. Miss Oko,” she continued, “have you anything else to add in your defense?” Jun shook her head.

“I have no proof,” she said, “if that’s what you want.”

The dean sat back in her chair, ready to distance herself from us all. “Apparently none of you has anything at all to support any of this, do you?” she asked, though she did not seem to be expecting an answer.

Tiney’s nose had stopped bleeding, and the sun was now pouring into the room. She sat with the tissues hidden in her hand, waiting for some kind of cue. I guessed the meeting had come to an end. It was becoming clear that each of us had exhausted what she had to say. Dean Silas and Dean Banks spoke quietly with one another.

“It looks like this will have to go to trial after all,” Dean Silas said when she turned around. Her face began to reorder itself. “You’ll all be called, of course. You’ll be receiving the appropriate papers in the mail. They’ll be certified. You’ll have to sign for them,” she trailed off, her voice disengaged. Then she stood, giving us a thin, practiced smile. “For the time being, Miss Oko, you will have your library and extracurricular privileges suspended. Should you need materials to study for your final exams, you will have to send a friend with an approved list.” She looked at me and nodded. She was more comfortable now, making arrangements, sending us away. “Miss Oko,” she added, waiting for Jun to look up, “your past performance at the college is meaningful. Miss Feinstein was right to direct us to it.” She waited another beat while Jun stared back at her. “I would suggest you not disregard it, either,” she finished. Jun thanked her before picking up her bags to leave. Dean Silas remained immobile. Tiney left just after, looking theatrically somber. I watched them go.

The dean’s voice startled me. “Miss Feinstein. Did you ever decide what it is you intend to do?” She forced a smile.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What?”

Her smile broadened. It seemed that once Jun and Tiney left the room their concerns went with them. “When we met earlier this year you were struggling a bit. Do you remember?” she asked kindly. “I notice your grades haven’t improved.” I looked at her, realizing that my grades were the furthest thing from my mind.

“No,” I said slowly, “they haven’t, have they?” Then I turned around and walked outside, hoping to catch Jun again before she left.

She was retrieved by a black car that had been waiting outside the building. I think I asked her how she was; I’m sure she answered something, but both of us had our eyes on that car. It was a rich, plasticky-looking thing, and it hummed off down the wet road.

I don’t know how long Tiney was behind me before I noticed she was there. She had a cigarette in her fingers, and after a while she lifted it to her mouth, the thin line of smoke extending upward. She was taking me in. There was a small trickle of blood just beginning again on one side of her nose. She caught me looking at it and wiped it away quickly with her sleeve. “You know,” she said, dropping her cigarette and putting it out with the toe of her boot, “Jun and I used to be close.” She shoved her hands into her pockets and scrunched her neck into her coat, making her pale head look as exposed and foreign as a turtle’s. “I trusted her.” To my surprise, there were tears beginning to stand out in her eyes, and I wondered how she’d brought them there.

“Why?” I whispered. My words caught in my throat.

She blinked but didn’t answer, her eyes open wide, innocently, as though capable of reflecting any expression. “She made me trust her. She made me think we could have a friendship. But we didn’t, did we?” She smiled ruefully. “It’s every man for himself, isn’t it?”

A
few days later, I returned to our room to find Jun sitting at her desk, working. My first thought was to wonder if, had I moved back in earlier, I would have summoned her earlier, too, brought her back sooner. I smiled, and she grinned back. There were bags beside her bed. When I opened the closet to hang my jacket, it was empty of her things.

“What about the trial?” I said to the vacant hooks and hangers.

She waited until I turned back around. She was dressed in dark pants and a blouse, her hair pulled back against her neck. She looked older and more refreshed than she had at the pretrial. “I’ve decided to skip it,” she said, as if speaking of a party or some other passing event. She clenched something in her hands, maybe it was a pen, maybe some other inconsequential object. “My parents and I have decided it would be best to bow out gracefully. Tokyo University has agreed to my transfer.”

I thought back to the beginning, to where we’d come from. I wanted to know, suddenly, everything about her that I didn’t already know. I wanted to tell her what I’d learned about Teddy, and my mother, and to find the words to all the other questions I hadn’t yet asked her. I gathered my thoughts, ready to spill, but as I looked at her she began to smile, curiously, as though about to ask something herself. And, I’ve frozen my memory there, on her welcoming, questioning face.

Twenty-Nine

M
rs. Rosenthal’s apartment was on the third floor of a small apartment building, one of a row of them that lines the part of Beacon Street that runs through Brookline. The street spans several towns, including and ending in Boston.

For some reason the sight of her name printed so matter-of-factly on the mailbox surprised me: Chava Rosenthal. I pressed the black call button, and it was several moments before the buzzer unlocking the door responded.

The elevator up to her apartment was ancient, with two doors: a standard, mechanical inner one and a latticework metal one on the outside. The latter needed to be pulled aside and folded in on itself to get to the other one, and the procedure was clunky and laborious. By the time I was finished with it, Mrs. Rosenthal was standing at her open doorway, waiting for me.

She was already an older woman when I knew her as a girl, and she did not look much different. She still wore a dark skirt and a long shirt, but her gray hair was uncovered, tied low in a loose bun. She lifted her hand to it, self-consciously.

“I am not as observant as I once was,” she said.

The apartment itself was sparsely furnished. A threadbare couch and easy chair, a foldable dining table, a television with a standing tray beside it. No paintings or photographs on the wall, only two snapshots on a modest bookcase: one of Teddy, one of her husband. I had to stop myself from walking across the room and picking them up to peer into them.

She stood nervously just by the door. “Please, sit,” she said, gesturing toward the couch.

She walked into the galley kitchen and retrieved a small plate with stale, store-bought
rugelach
. They had been filled with apricot preserves, which had congealed from sitting out too long. “I don’t cook so much anymore, either,” she said, apologizing. Her vagueness touched and disarmed me. How long had she been living here alone?

She sat down across from me. “You are prettier than you were as a child,” she said. “I see a little of your father in you now. Not so pale.”

The light coming in from her window was hot and hit the couch just where I was sitting. She had no curtain, but there was an ancient venetian blind half dangling from it. I stood up and played with it until it hung straight, then lowered it, cooling the room.

“Thank you,” she said. She had lost some of her accent.

Several more moments passed. Neither one of us touched the food. The only sound was the large, mechanical clock ticking on the bookcase, beside the photographs.

She was the one to speak first. “Your mother did not tell you?”

I shook my head.

She nodded. “A mother’s job is never easy,” she said sympathetically. “Were you angry?” she asked curiously.

I nodded, looking at her. I forgot for a moment that she hadn’t carried him. I had been searching her face for traces of his.

“It was so strange, how you children went on,” she continued. “I thought you both were crazy, for a while. I often thought to myself, children are not supposed to love each other like that.” She shook her head.