Fall (32 page)

Fear, eh?

Not fear of me.

No, no.

“I know you’ve got problems with my sweaty clothes and stuff. But I’ve gotta say. After your constant fuckin workouts you smell like a pair of balls. A really wet and dirty pair of balls.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And your books over there. Your little house of books.”

“I’ll have a shower.”

“Have a long one.”

Do you trust him?

I don’t know.

You say he’s your best friend.

Yes.

Do you think he would confide in you? If he did something wrong? Do you think you could get him to be honest?

I don’t know.

I hadn’t thought about trust in any abstract way. I either liked someone or I didn’t, and trust was some sort of concomitant.

I am writing all of this down because I wish to be more than a lonely collection of other people’s perceptions. Trust has something to do with that. It’s a product of perception; it isn’t something fixed or solid, it floats in the cloudland of assumption. When trust is removed, when there is some sort of betrayal, it feels like something permanent has been dislodged, but it is only the pain of a shift in perception. Suddenly the world is not as you assumed it to be, and trust is among the casualties of that shift.

Did I trust Julius? Did Julius trust me? We were no longer the people we had assumed each other to be. The pain of betrayal had nothing to do with an abstract concept of trust. It was the result of realizing I might have been wrong. I might have assumed he had perceived me in a way he never had.

“You hang around. You’re always around. I don’t just mean in the room. You’re always right fuckin’ there, whenever I turn around.”

I thought of all the times I’d stood behind him at the sink, all the silent assumptions I’d made. It hurt so much to think that I’d been wrong to put myself so near.

I sometimes thought that I could simply tie him down in the bed. Lean over him and tell him to rest while I filled his shoes for a while. Make him contemplate things as I had done while I stepped out to greet the world. Make him aware of me so he could be more aware of himself, or perhaps more aware of himself so he could be more aware of me—the outcome would be the same.

I see people when I walk at night. Whoever you are, in your living room, your middle age, the space you call your own. I’m the thing you didn’t look at. I am everything you’ve chosen to ignore. The lump on your leg. The frown in the window behind you when you leave. Everything you can’t believe you uttered. I’m the rime at the edges of your belief that the person you love will never be able to hurt you.

I asked Julius if he ever remembered the occasion one year earlier when we played soccer together in gym class and I passed him the ball to score the winning goal. He couldn’t recall.

But in gym class that January we wrestled. And I felt so much larger than he was. The rest of the class gathered around the mat. Most of them cheered for him because I was never great at the sport. I was known for “fleeing the hold,” because my instinct when attacked is not to commit. Julius had me on the mat, and I remember feeling a strange intimidation despite knowing that I was stronger. I was not in my body as I thought I might be. I gave him a good fight, certainly, and he struggled, but he was behind me, on top of me, and I went quite limp. This can be a good strategy, but somehow it wasn’t an act of will. When he rolled me over for the pin I saw his face, his smile. He was winking at me, intentionally mocking my eye. The rest of the class was laughing.

As the questions gathered that January, I wondered who I was. I didn’t know whether I was lying to Sergeant D’Arcy or not. Daily demands seemed to keep my eyes forward.

I know now that I was only comfortable when I was with Ant. So comfortable with him and so uncomfortable with Julius that we occasionally talked about switching rooms. He talked about trying to convince Chuck to move in with Julius. The school had a policy of not allowing room changes except in extraordinary circumstances. We were to learn to get along with our roommates, to see our way through discomfort and disputes.

But circumstances were extraordinary. By now the change to the school was universal. Everyone was afraid. Everyone was quiet. Not once in my years at that school had it ever been so quiet—not even the week that forty boarders were quarantined with the flu. I think about my state of mind at the beginning of that year, my quiet first weekend alone, my dragging my fist along the walls of empty hallways. Anticipation, fear, solipsism, and anger; the school as a whole had now become my earlier self. I had propagated, bloomed; it was me.

Every door was locked at six. Everyone was vigilant. No wrong could get in as long as cracks were sealed with lies.

“Let’s liven this place up,” said Ant, and we did.

We broke into the linens room and there were later complaints of stains and smells on the week’s clean sheets.

Every building is me. Its breath is mine. Swell my shoulders and the room is mine.

We stole bags of road salt from the utilities shed, snuck into the gym at night, and spread the salt over the middle of the floor. We ran at it and skidded in our shoes, destroying the varnish and scarring the wood. “I want to shred his fuckin’ legs,” I said. Ant thought I blamed Julius for the atmosphere of the school.

I didn’t know what Sergeant D’Arcy was doing with the information I was giving him, aside from playing us against each other and trying to make me feel guilty. But information escaped the school.

As I’ve noted, it was unsettling to find the outside world intruding—all the police, embassy officials, lawyers—but it was inconceivable nonetheless that even more would take notice. Inconceivable that there would be any publicity about what was happening. But on January 23rd an article appeared on the front page of the newspaper, a story that then appeared nationally. I have the article at home in a drawer with old coins and some mints I love—an English brand now defunct, so I am loath to eat them.

The article seemed strangely amusing at first. It focused equally on Fall’s disappearance and the link with the U.S. embassy.
Girl missing from prestigious school, son of the U.S. Ambassador, etc.
What I found amusing was the portrayal of our school. Adjectives like “leafy” and “exclusive” and a list of famous alumni; the more these words accumulated, the more I realized they were simply not describing our school. There was a photo of the main building from an angle I could not work out.

I read the article more hungrily than I had ever read anything. I felt, in a way, like people were taking notice of me, personally, even though I was not named (as Julius and others were). All the surface
details producing an idea of the school rather than the school itself. I suppose there was nothing amusing about it.

I might have felt that I wasn’t really there, except I read that the ambassador’s chauffeur had been fired for irregular use of the limousine. The article said no more about it, but I recalled my conversations with Sergeant D’Arcy. I imagined that my mentioning the chauffeur had caused the sergeant to question Julius, and probably to involve his father. I expect I was right to imagine that, and at the time it made me feel powerful.

I twitched some nights, dreaming of boxing.

Once the outside world became involved to that extent, the school sealed its doors even tighter. We were instructed at assembly, for the good of our school, the good of the community, for the privacy of families involved, not to talk to anyone beyond the doors about these matters. Indeed, we were encouraged, among ourselves, to find other things to talk about.

All of this because a girl was gone. I knew she had meant so much.

Ant had decided he wanted to go to a male-only university. There were a few choices in the U.S. and one small college within a university in Canada. He spoke about the purity of it. Girls poison friendships, he said.

With the school sealed tight and the air so manured with suspicion, it was inevitable that the Masters organized a room raid.

I had never witnessed an inspection so complete. During prep one night, when they could be certain that everyone was in his room, they interrupted the quiet and called us all out. We were told to stand in the hallway and to wait. When we emerged from our room I was surprised to see more than one Master involved. Normally room inspections were silent, individual affairs conducted while we were in class. Things would be confiscated; occasionally there would be punishment, rarely severe. Once the inspection was under way I looked down the other hallway and saw the same going
on there, where there were actually daytime teachers involved. I learned later that the Head Master himself was there.

It was a painstaking business that went on beyond Lights Out. One Master would search each room, filling individual garbage bags with forbidden or questionable objects, and he would staple each bag and a piece of paper to it, marking the room number. There was cynicism and nervous laughter among all of us in the hall, a curious quiet when a student was called back into his room to answer questions with his door shut.

Julius and I didn’t look at each other. I had vaguely expected something like this inspection for a while, so I had taken one of Julius’s little bags of marijuana out of his hiding place and put it on top of his books (which I knew he never shifted).

A building of boys whose secrets would be exposed. Upstairs, Edward’s gargantuan collection of pornography was reportedly marvelled at more than anything. The youngest boy on the Flats was discovered to own rubber sheets and have a bed-wetting problem which he had hitherto been able to conceal.

Ant’s knives were found and he was gated. The police took the knives for tests.

In the room which Julius and I shared, two Masters went to work, spending more than half an hour making a mess of everything, saying “Whose is this? Whose is this?” to every drawer and surface. Somehow they didn’t find Julius’s marijuana. Among my possessions, at the back of my desk drawer, they found Fall’s last letter to Julius, which I had never given to him. I had focused on incriminating him and had forgotten about that note. I don’t even know why I had kept it, except perhaps as something to look at later when I wanted to understand people.

114C.

114C.

I think I’m gonna show you that hot dog again.

Don’t.

I can’t remember where the bedroom is.

I’ll just have a nap with my coat on she says.

Un.

Un un I ss

T
HERE WAS LITTLE
doubt that the room raid was organized by the police. None was present from where I could see, but it seemed a neat solution where everyone could be searched under the rubric of school policy. The investigation would benefit.

Even from this distance I continue to believe that Julius had known the raid would happen. Not even a cigarette of his was found.

I didn’t sleep very well that night. Julius had decamped to his father’s house. Somehow, despite our soured relations, despite my fear of what he must be thinking about my having kept Fall’s note, I missed his presence in the bunk above.

Sergeant D’Arcy questioned me the next morning. I was kept back from class.

That’s quite a note they found in your desk.

Yes.

Pretty personal.

Yes.

So why did you have it?

I don’t know.

You’ve had a night to think about how you would explain this, and that’s the best you can do?

Yes. I really don’t know. I can’t remember what I was thinking.

You remember every hour in the day, Noel. Every book here on your Counsellor’s desk. But you don’t remember why you have that note?

I remember several reasons, I just don’t know which one is pivotal.

Let’s find out.

Have you spoken with Julius?

Why?

I don’t know. I just wanted to know what he thought.

Whether he suspects something?

What’s to suspect?

I guess he could think you were hiding other things. Is that what you’re worried about?

I’m not hiding anything. I just wonder what he thinks about my having the note. Did you let him read it? I’m sorry I never let him read it.

You’re sorry? Tell me why you had the note.

I was taking letters back and forth between Fall and Julius. I told you. And I guess it was starting to annoy me. I don’t think I saw it clearly last term, but maybe I felt like they were just using me. Maybe it kind of annoyed me so I figured I would keep it, or throw it out or something.

And there were no more notes after that because Fall went missing.

I guess I thought about giving it to him. A few times. I wanted payment of some sort. Thanks, or something.

Recognition.

I don’t know.

We have all the notes that Julius wrote to Fall. They were in her desk. Did you read those as well?

No. How could I get into her room?

You didn’t read any other notes?

I only read that last one.

They’re pretty simple notes. Meet me here, meet me there. Some goofy stuff. Not worth keeping. The one you kept of hers—that was interesting. I can see why you kept it. They were supposed to meet that night, remember? Fall says “by the tree at five.” But Julius says he never knew.

I don’t know why I kept it.

This brought me back to when I was a kid, you know. I remember my cousin Naomi was looking after me when I was eleven or so. She wasn’t a lot older. Eighteen. I kind of had a crush on her. And I overheard her talking
to her boyfriend that afternoon on the phone. In a way I’d never heard her talk. Kind of sexy, right, Noel? Disappointing somehow. And I was angry. Is that how you felt?