The Tailgate (4 page)

Abandoned her.

Half the crowd was cheering, the red half. Harvard's quarterback, Blood Dellman, had completed a seventeen-yard pass for the first down. Dabney bowed her head. Something was still off. Why this gnawing sense of insecurity? Why did she feel the need to mentally list all of her accomplishments and reassure herself of her own value? And why, at this particular moment, when she and Clen were finally together, did the memory of her mother leaving have to steal in—the one thing certain to make her feel worthless?
Goddamn it—tears were now blurring her eyes. This was ridiculous and uncalled-for. Dabney did not do drama. Along with Most Popular, Smartest Girl, and Most School Spirit, Dabney had been voted Most Comfortable in Her Skin on the senior class superlative page.

Dabney raised her head in time to see Jocelyn leave the stadium. She didn't look at Clen or Dabney. Her eyes stayed forward, her chin raised, her camel-colored cashmere wrap flowing off her like cool water. Dabney gazed at the empty seat Jocelyn had left behind with the kind of relief one felt upon having an aching tooth pulled.

A minute later, Clen stood. “I have to go to the john,” he said. “And I might get a Coke. Do you want one?”

Dabney stood. “Yes,” she said. “I'll go with you.”

“You stay here, please, and enjoy the game,” he said. “Protect our seats. I'll get you a Coke. Anything else?”

“No,” she said. She sank down into her seat. She thought,
He's going out there to see Jocelyn. To smoke a cigarette with Jocelyn.
He smoked cigarettes now. It was no big deal, except he hadn't told Dabney, and he told her everything. Or he used to. Probably he was ashamed about it. But Dabney understood that he was under a lot of pressure with the newspaper, and pressure led people to smoke.

Dabney watched Clen head up the concrete steps, out of the stadium. She redirected her attention to the game, but she could only focus long enough to watch Blood Dellman—whose given name was William Youngblood Dellman, a young aristocrat just like everyone else—throw an interception, which the Yale cornerback returned for a touchdown.

The blue half of the stadium was keening.

Advantage Yale.

Suddenly, Dabney heard her name being called, and she saw Mallory and Jason picking their way across rows of people—
sorry, 'scuse me
—toward her. Jason took Clen's empty seat and Mallory took the empty seat next to him.

“We found you!” Jason said. He seemed ecstatic about this fact, as though their plan all along had been to meet up, but Dabney knew this had not been their plan. “Where's the big guy?”

“I don't know,” Dabney said. “He went to get a Coke or something, I guess.”

They all watched Yale kick the extra point.

“This sucks,” Jason said. He stood up, cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Come on, Harvard, you pussies!”

Dabney looked past Jason at Mallory. Mallory was so cold, her lips were blue.

“Are you having fun?” Dabney asked.

Mallory shrugged. “No,” she said.

No, Dabney wasn't having fun either. She admired Mallory for just being able to admit it. Maybe that was the Montana girl in her. Dabney had inherited the Puritan stiff upper lip, but today it wasn't doing her any good.

Mallory said, “I think Jason likes you.”

“What?” Dabney said. She looked up at Jason, mortified that he might have overheard this, but Jason was wholly absorbed in the game.

“I think he, like, like-likes you,” Mallory said.

Dabney was impressed that Mallory had managed to use the word
like
three times in a row and still make sense.

“No, he does not. Don't be stupid. You're beautiful, Mallory. He likes you.”

“You were gone for, like, five minutes and then he wanted to try and find you. We've been searching for, like, half an hour. And he kept telling me how you loved the idea for his thesis.”

“Oh my God,” Dabney said. She did
not
love the idea for Jason's thesis; at best, she thought it might make an amusing party game at four in the morning while drunk or stoned.
Which is better: original or cover?

“And when he was eating your sandwich?” Mallory said. “He was making
noises.
It sounded like…like he was having an
orgasm.
”

“You have to stop,” Dabney said. Jason was standing right between them, although she could tell he wasn't paying attention. He let out a loud, piercing whistle for something that happened on the field.

“I'm serious,” Mallory said. “You somehow managed to steal my boyfriend.”

“I did no such thing!” Dabney said.

“I really like living with you,” Mallory said. “But I don't want you to ride home with us tomorrow.”

Before Dabney could respond with the obvious question—HOW WILL I GET HOME, THEN?—Jason plopped down into the seat between them and wrapped an arm around both Dabney and Mallory. “How are my best girls?' he said.

Dabney stood up. “I'm going to find Clen,” she said.

She headed up the stairs toward the concession area. Jason did
not
like her. Or rather, he liked her, most people liked her, but he was not interested in her romantically. Possibly he thought she was smart or interesting or a good cook. Jealousy was making Mallory irrational. Dabney had not
stolen
her boyfriend! She erased from her mind the time when she had driven Jason to visit his sister at Tabor Academy and he had noticed Dabney chewing on her pearls, and he had, gently, removed them from her mouth and arranged them back around her neck. His hand had lingered on her clavicle for an extra second or two. Dabney had laughed and said, “Thanks, Preppie.”

Now she would be stuck here in New Haven, unless she could either talk Mallory out of her nonsense or find Clark from Owl. How would she ever find Clark?

There were many scary things about new places, the scariest perhaps being all the people Dabney didn't know. So many people. On Nantucket, Dabney knew nearly everyone; she had known most since she was born, and those she didn't know knew her father, or her grandparents, or her great-grandparents. Even at Harvard, now, in her second year, she knew approximately one out of every four people she saw. But here at the Yale Bowl she faced a mass of unrecognizable humanity.

Until she spotted Clen and Jocelyn.

They were standing together, an island in the shifting sea of red and blue. Dabney blinked. Jocelyn had her arms around Clen's neck, her fingers were deep in his thick, dark hair. He looked like he was trying to pull away; his hands were on her shoulders but he seemed to be trying to keep her at bay rather than bring her closer. Dabney's eyes saw a green cloud, like tear gas, hovering above them.

Well, she thought, they weren't a perfect match. Green clouds like that were a very bad sign.

Clen was telling Jocelyn something, she nodded, then she said something and Clen shook his head and said, loud enough for Dabney to hear it,
I'm sorry, Joss. No.

Jocelyn slapped him.

Slapped him. Dabney was close enough to hear the sound it made. Close enough to feel the sting, and although Dabney did not do drama she could say without much exaggerating that it felt like Jocelyn had slapped her heart.

Clen remained still. He didn't move, except for his eyes, which somehow found Dabney's in the crowd. He said something to Jocelyn and moved toward Dabney.

She thought,
What have you done?

She wanted to run away, but where would she go? She reached into her pocket and rubbed the silver dollar.
Be a lucky charm for me,
she thought.
Please!

In the stadium, the crowd cheered. Something had happened. Dabney no longer cared what.

Dabney couldn't imagine how Clen would explain himself. She certainly did
not
expect him to smile. But that was what he did. He grinned at Dabney and reached for her hand and said, “I have good news.”

Dabney stared at him. Her hand was numb; it was like it wasn't even attached to her body. She thought of the paper hands Clen had sent in a letter. She had done as he had instructed and placed them on her shoulders when she felt lonely. She was such an idiot.

“And what,” she said, “would that be?”

“I don't have to work at the
News
tonight,” he said. “We can go to Mory's, like we planned.”

A small part of Dabney felt cheered by this news. She thought,
The lucky charm worked!
Now, her only regret was that she'd returned the sultry black outfit to Solange.

But who was she kidding? There would be no Mory's—no ice-cold martinis, no colossal shrimp cocktail, no dancing to Sinatra.

“You never had to work at the
News,
” Dabney said.

“I…yes, I did.”

“No, you didn't. I heard what Henry said, Clen. The only person on deadline today is the sports editor. You were never on deadline, you made it up. You lied to me. You had plans with Jocelyn. Are you dating her?”

“Not dating her,” he said.

“She had her hands in your
hair,
” Dabney said. “She lit you a cigarette. She looked at me like I had a raging case of hives, and she just slapped you.”

“She was angry.”

“About what?”

Clen blew air out his nose. This was what he normally did when he was upset or frustrated; Dabney had seen it hundreds of times. She knew him so well. For the years they were in high school, she knew every book he'd read, every record album he owned and his top three favorite tracks on each; she knew every movie he'd seen, she knew about every fight he'd had with his mother, she knew what he would order off any menu, she knew he sneezed in threes, she knew the way his face looked when he was sleeping. She would have said there was nothing she didn't know about Clendenin Hughes, but she was wrong. It was natural, she supposed. They were in college, they were forging identities. When Dabney had gotten into Harvard and Clen Yale (he had been rejected from Harvard, and Dabney hadn't applied anywhere else), people said it would be healthy for them to be separated, to have some space. Space: 140 miles. Space: Room to lie.

“Tell me why she's angry,” Dabney said.

“Because,” Clen said.

“Because why?”

“Because she asked me to go to this alumni event tonight, a formal thing, a dinner dance thing. Her parents are in town, apparently, and her father is top of the masthead at the
Wall Street Journal,
and…I told her I'd go. I thought for sure you were going to cancel on me, Cupe. You always cancel. But then you showed up and I do love you so goddamned much, but it's hard being apart, and I do get lonely and Jocelyn is persistent, she doesn't hear the word
no,
she's used to getting what she wants.”

“And she wants you.”

“I guess so,” Clen said. “But I told her. I mean, I was
clear
that I'm taken. I belong to you, Dabney Kimball.”

And yet, he had planned on leaving her for seven or ten hours while he went to a formal alumni dinner dance thing with Jocelyn and her influential parents. Dabney caught a glimpse of herself in Clen's dorm room, lying on his bed, sniffing his pillowcase for his scent. She would have read
Franny & Zooey
for the umpteenth time and tried again to figure out why Franny never made it to the football game with Lane Coutell, why she never took a bite of her chicken sandwich, but felt okay enough to smoke seventeen cigarettes in a forty-page story. She would wait, thinking how dedicated Clen was to the newspaper while in reality Clen ate bloody prime rib and stroked Jocelyn's long hair and tried to sound impressive for Jocelyn's father. Dabney felt sorry for the girl who waited alone in Clen's dorm room, but that girl was not her—because she was leaving.

Jealousy, cheat, trust,
like like-likes,
red and blue, Harvard, Yale, Spizzwinks, Whiffenpoofs, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the transcendentalists, Handsome Dan, nearly fifty Yale graduates killed in World War II. People had problems, Dabney thought. Her father had fought in Vietnam, and he came back different. Dabney's mother couldn't handle it.
She didn't leave because of you, honey. She left because of me.
Dabney's father had told her that once, when they were duck hunting.

But she did leave me, Dabney thought. Her own daughter, her only child.

There was a game taking place on the football field, and there were, Dabney supposed, other games being played here in the Yale Bowl.

She turned away from Clen. He said, “Wait a minute, where are you going?”

Back to Jason's car, she thought, even though Mallory didn't want her. To find Clark from Owl. To find a pay phone. She would call Solange and go back to Cambridge. Or she would call Dr. Donegal and go back to Nantucket. Where was she going? Anywhere but here.

She started walking and people rushed past her, so many people, they swallowed her up, making her invisible. If Clen didn't move right this minute, she knew, he would never find her.

It's like setting foot on another planet, where no one is familiar and I do not know the rules.

Yes, Dabney thought. That was it. That was it exactly.

Elin Hilderbrand does her best writing on the beaches of Nantucket and St John and on the charming streets of Beacon Hill in Boston. She has three magical children who beg her not to sing along to the radio or dance in public.

 

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