ROBERT
With The Cure’s
Greatest Hits
and the soundtrack from
A Chorus Line
to keep me company, I make the drive from Woods Hole to Cawdor in record time. By 9 p.m. I’m on the main drag (no pun intended), surrounded by more than a hundred locals helping with the relief effort.
“Oh you’d like to volunteer? Grab a sandbag, young man, and pass it down the line.”
They welcome me without hesitation, without judgment. I bet this is what it’ll be like in Paris.
Thirty minutes later, I’m on Church Street standing shoulder to shoulder with a large woman named Silvie and her (also large) daughter, Rebecca. We stock gallon jugs of water and boxes of batteries into a van that will deliver them to residents who wait out the storm because they either can’t afford to evacuate or plain don’t want to.
I slam the van’s back doors and pat them twice, like they always do in movies, and I suddenly feel like I
am
in a movie—my own personal Scorsese epic (I’m the star, natch), a steadicam swirling around as I do my best James Dean… though I probably look more like James
Baldwin
. (A good omen for the scholarship.)
As the van drives off, I turn to say good-bye to Silvie and her daughter, but they’ve already moved down the road and are shoveling kitty litter into garbage bags.
I feel my iPhone 5 vibrate in my back pocket. As I begin to pull it out, I hear the familiar (ironic) ring tone of the DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince classic, “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” Without looking, I know exactly who it is.
“Hey, mom, did you get my note?” I say without so much as a hello.
“No, darling, what note?” she says, her voice slightly blurred by Sauvignon Blanc.
“Oh. I thought that’s why you called.”
“No, we just got back from the Visnicks’. Brennan took us out on his yacht…”
“It’s not a yacht,” I hear my father call out in the background.
“It was a very large boat,” my mother says, placating him. “Anyway,” she says to me, “where are you? Did you go into town to see a movie or something?”
“Mom. Read the note. It’s on the espresso machine.”
“What’s this note on the espresso machine?” I hear my dad say from the kitchen.
“Oh,” my mom chirps. “Your father found it. What’s it say, dear?”
There’s a pause as my father reads. I step off the busy street and duck down a narrow alley behind a hardware store, away from the noise. I hear some mumbles from my parents and the phone changing hands.
“Boy. Where the hell are you?”
“Hey, Dad. How was the party?”
“Don’t get smart. You left the
island
? You’re driving around in your mother’s car in Woods
Hole
, for crying out loud?”
“Actually… I’m in Cawdor. Volunteering.”
“You’re
what
?”
“Volunteering,” I say a little louder. “For the hurricane. You guys should think about evacuating by the way. The Vineyard may get a glancing blow.”
“Don’t tell me when to evacuate. And what on earth possessed you to volunteer in some redneck fishing town for a hurricane that hasn’t even
hit
yet?”
Luckily, I anticipated this question and have been mentally preparing my answer since I left.
“Anybody can pitch in
after
the storm, dad. And sometimes even
that’s
not enough. Look how long it took after Sandy to get things fully restored. But being here from the
beginning
? That kind of forethought and selflessness really stands out on a college application.”
Silence on the other end. I can tell he’s listening, considering, weighing the pros and cons. I close my eyes, grit my teeth, and say with as much sincerity as I can fake, “Especially Yale.”
“Hm,” he grunts. And I know I’ve got him. “Can’t say I like you taking the car without permission…”
“I couldn’t
call
, you were on a yacht—”
“It wasn’t a yacht. And let me finish.” He sighs with fatherly caution. “I’m not happy that you took the car without permission. But. I’m proud of you for taking initiative. Thinking outside the box. Grabbing the bull by the horns.”
“Gather ye rosebuds, win one for the Gipper, insert famous cliché here.”
“Okay, wise guy,” he says with a smile that I can hear over the phone. “You know what I’m trying to say. And I’m glad to see you’ve come around on Yale. You have the grades, Robbie.” (God I hate it when he calls me Robbie!) “You have the potential. You just need that little extra something. Do this. Volunteer. Be the best one up there. Make a difference. And then… write about it in your college essay. You do that? The fourth generation of Clintons will be attending Yale University, mark my words.”
“I will. Thanks, Dad. I gotta go. They need us to fill sandbags.”
“Okay. But be
safe.
And check in from time to time. Your mother worries.”
“I know.”
“And don’t stay through the storm. You’ve got the GL, so… before the rain even
starts
, you drive to safety. Then, when it’s all over, you can… go back if you want. Help with the cleanup and what have you. But don’t be stupid. You get out while the gettin’s good.”
“You know, one more cliché and you’ll break the all-time record for a five-minute phone call.”
“I don’t know where you got your sense of humor, but don’t ever lose it. It’s one of your best features.”
“Dad, come on. My
cheek
bones are my best feature.”
“Call your mother every couple hours, okay?”
“I will. Love you guys.”
“Mm. Be safe.” And then he hangs up. I don’t know if my dad has
ever
said the words ‘I love you’ to me. Maybe when I was very young, but I don’t remember it. Most sons don’t say it to their dads or even their mothers, but I’ve always said it. To both of them. I love you guys, love you, love you both. And my mom always says it back, without hesitation. But my dad? It seems to make him uncomfortable. That doesn’t stop me from saying it, though. Who knows? Maybe he’ll come around someday.
I pocket my phone and step back into the controlled chaos, looking for my next assignment. The number of people and slow moving cars making their way to higher, safer ground makes the street look like the lone exit lane out of a rock concert.
Suddenly a voice from behind me says, “Fancy seeing you here.”
I turn around, surprised to find my roommate from Choate standing on the sidewalk. He’s next to a packed station wagon with what looks like the cast of the Partridge Family inside.
“Hey… Mac,” I manage, attempting a breezy, casual manner, trying desperately not to visualize his goodbye hug twelve weeks ago. Man, he looks good.
James MacKenzie has not only been my roommate for the past three years, he’s also my only straight white male friend at Choate. (And I’ve basically had a ridiculous and unrequited crush on him for all three of those years.)
Mac came to Choate on a full scholarship—technically a need-based financial scholarship, but everyone knew he was poached from public school by our ruthless lacrosse coach to help turn our team’s losing record around, which Mac did, quickly leading the Wild Boars to two ESA titles and one New England Championship in two years. He was easily going to be All-State, maybe All-American, and get a full-ride at Chapel Hill or Syracuse. But he blew out his knee the day they won their second ESA. The “official story” is that it happened during the game, when he leapt from behind the crease for the winning goal in overtime and was slammed mid-air by two massive Exeter defensemen. He did hurt his knee that day, but the real damage was done three weeks later.
Most of the school had gathered for a monster end-of-the-year-bash at Freddy Parnez’s house. He was the lacrosse team’s hysterically funny, always up for a good time, 5’5”, 200 lb. goalie. They called him “the Jewish Jack Black.” And since his parents were loaded and never in town, the Parnez McMansion became our school’s de facto party location.
The Saturday after graduation, everyone was at Freddy’s, and I witnessed Mac smoking pot with some hot senior girls. They’d been egging him on all night, singing that seriously tacky song “Tonight Tonight” by Hot Chelle Rae. (It was all the rage back in May 2011, with that annoyingly catchy hook: “There’s a party on the rooftop, top of the world!”) The girls said they’d take off their shirts if Mac actually got on the roof—which he did in record time. Once up there, Mac sang the song back down at the girls like a victory chant, with most of the party standing around the front lawn watching. As Mac got to the “La, la, la, whatever,” the three girls who were hooting and hollering (and vying for who would get to sleep with him first, I’m sure) all lifted their shirts at the same time, showing off what even I must admit were six very nice breasts. Mac attempted to stop dead in his tracks to get a clear look but the centrifugal force from his rockin’ dance-moves didn’t get the memo, and he promptly fell thirty-five feet to the front lawn—tearing his left ACL in the process.
With his lacrosse scholarship dreams essentially dashed to bits, Mac became a little lost puppy. He spent most of our junior year searching for clubs and activities to round out his rather thin resume, because, let’s face it: when you think dozens of colleges are creaming their pants at the chance to offer you a full ride to play lacrosse, you sort of don’t need much more on the CV.
Standing face to face on Church Street as sweaty volunteers push by us on all sides, I’ve already got a pretty good idea about what Mac is doing in Cawdor—the same thing I’m doing: looking to give our college applications every possible edge. But I play dumb and ask anyway.
“What are you… doing here?” And looking so fit and glistening, I think, but manage to hold my tongue.
Mac explains in his charming homespun way that he was just driving by with his family, their station wagon crammed with supplies as they made their way to drier ground. Mac is from Stonington, the town directly to the east of Cawdor—and of course not only did I know this, but it was in the back of my mind when I heard where the storm was headed. So much so that on the ride in from Woods Hole, my mind was ever drifting to soft, out-of-focus daydreams about how this event might play out. In all of them Mac showed up kind of like this… with varying degrees of clothing. And his hair was sexier.
Now here he is—in the flesh, as it were—explaining that as his family inched slowly along the evacuation route toward I-95, Mac saw me in the crowd of helpers and yelled for his dad to stop the car.
“It wasn’t hard to spot the only black guy wearing seersucker shorts and white bucks,” he says, smiling at me.
“I’m that predictable, hunh?” I’m sure my cheeks would look red if they weren’t already chocolate brown. Pathetic, yes—I am fully aware that my feelings for Mac are hopeless and absurd. But doesn’t every seventeen-year-old have a crush on some highly unobtainable hottie? Mine just happens to also be my roommate. And white. My parents would be mortified. And they’re kind of okay with the whole gay thing, relatively speaking. But dating a white lacrosse jock with no money? Not cool in their book. But that’s my job, right? To piss off my parents?
While I’m pondering and pining, Mac turns back to the station wagon and grabs his backpack and duffle. After some debate with his family (Mac saying he wants to give back to his community; his mother saying she’s concerned for his safety), Mac assures them he’ll be fine—he’ll help out until just before the storm hits and then get a ride out of town with yours truly.
“Not to worry, Mrs. MacKenzie,” I pipe in. “He’ll be safe with me.”
Mrs. MacKenzie hesitates, staring at me with an expression somewhere between confusion and why-is-this-uppity-black-boy-talking-to-me. Just when it looks like she might say something, she sort of sighs and nods. She hugs her son, whispering loving words in his ear, thinking I can’t hear. But since puberty, I’ve learned how to act like I’m not paying attention and yet secretly eavesdrop on countless conversations. (If you live for gossip, you quickly learn this special skill.)
So as she pulls Mac into a hug, I hear her fiercely whisper in her New England working-class accent, “No goddamn way are you gettin’ yourself killed in a hurricane to help out some morons riding out another storm.”
Mac pulls out of the hug, and with his effervescent smile he says, “You know, mom, something like this would look amazing on a college essay.” (I knew he was here for the same reason I was.) “And this guy?” he says, wrapping a meaty arm around my shoulder. “This guy is eff-ing brilliant. If he’s here doing this—it must be a good idea!”
Oh my God! Could he actually like me… as more than a roommate? Is that why he had his family stop the car? Because he wants to confess his true feelings to me before the hurricane destroys everything we know and love?
I’m getting ahead of myself.
His mom looks over at me and I pretend to kick some sticks on the sidewalk for entertainment. She grabs Mac by the shoulders and says earnestly, “Your knee injury wasn’t just a blow to your lacrosse career—it was a real blow to this family. But we believe in you, James. So you volunteer your little butt off and get
another
friggin’ scholarship… cuz otherwise, it’s straight to your dad’s construction company after graduation. Understand?”
Mac looks surprised by his mother’s ruthless words of encouragement. But he smiles and hugs her again anyway. Mrs. MacKenzie slips back into the passenger seat and the family drives off (very, very slowly).
Mac turns to me with a big grin, claps his hands together, and says, “All right! Let’s get to work!” He flips his messy brown hair out of his eyes with a modest head flick—his signature move—and my pulse quickens. I fear he can hear my crush in every syllable as I tell him I’m glad he’s here.
But I press on and lead Mac over to the crowd shoveling kitty litter into makeshift sandbags. As I introduce him to Silvie and Rebecca, I can’t help but daydream again—now that he’s really here—and fantasize about us running in from the rain as it begins to fall, taking shelter together in a small basement with just a single flashlight, a blanket, and a can of franks and beans. Maybe I wasn’t being ridiculous before. Maybe he
likes
me-likes me. And he just told his mom he’s here to round out the college essay and follow my lead, but deep down he stopped because he’s kind of… into me?