The Snow Garden (8 page)

     “Wait-listed,” Kathryn responded. Randall was flossing hard enough to draw blood, and she realized for the first time that he seemed on edge. “You?” she asked.

     Randall rolled his eyes. “This again?” He was bouncing on his heels.

     “I'm just curious,” she said, smiling solicitously.

     “Let’s not play this game.”

     “Why? You always win.”

     “Kathryn, you’re at the eleventh-ranked school in the country. Why do you need to keep mulling over your rejection letters?"

     “Thirteenth,” Kathryn corrected. “And who are you to talk? You were five minutes away from going to NYU to be near . .. what’s his name? Adolph!”

     “Alex,” Randall corrected, staring at his reflection, his blue eyes darkening at the mention of the ex-boyfriend Kathryn had heard so much about that he seemed practically mythical. “But I like how you can never remember his name. I’m trying to forget it too.”

     “You never told me the whole story.”

     “What’s to tell?”

     “Here!” she said, handing him a cigarette. He furrowed his brow. “It’ll chill you out.”

     “I don’t need to chill out.”

     Kathryn shoved the cigarette back into the pack. “Come on, Randall. You have a mad, passionate love affair with a marine five years older than you and he leaves you to go guard an embassy! I can see you running down the pier waving a hankie in the air as his ship pulls out of port."

     “Actually, I dropped him off at JFK and asked him not to write.”

     Randall reached over and removed the cigarette she had offered him only moments ago. “Careful. They’re not imported,” she said. He popped it into his mouth. “You turned me into a smoker, you know,” she added.

     “Liar,” Randall said.

     “It’s true,” Kathryn protested. “Before I met you, I would smoke maybe one or two when I was drinking. But then you made it look so ...
sexy!”
She squeezed his side and he leaped back, twisting her offending wrist. Kathryn held her grip and Randall, giggling, continued to try to pry it free. They had almost two-stepped into one of the stalls when the bathroom door swung open. Their laughter abruptly ended when they saw Tran staring back at them, a six-foot-two former Atherton Eagle defensive lineman and their resident advisor, who would clearly rather be crushing the skulls of quarterbacks then watching over freshmen. He did it for the free dorm room.

     “Are those cigarettes?” Tran asked.

     Randall tossed his into the nearest sink.

     “They better just be cigarettes,” Tran added.

     “Sorry. You got us. It’s crack," Kathryn told him.

     “Put it out,” Tran ordered.

     “Just kidding. It’s not crack.”

     “Out!” Tran barked.

     Kathryn nodded and made no move to extinguish the cigarette. “Kathryn!”

     “I don’t want to clog up the sink.”

     Randall couldn’t contain his laughter. Tran let out a defeated groan and let the bathroom door bang shut behind him.

     “Behold the power of steroids,” Kathryn muttered, popping the cigarette back into her mouth.

     “Has anyone ever told you that you have a problem with authority?”

     “Just my parents,” Kathryn responded, sucking one last drag and moving to a stall.
And look what happened the last time I kept a secret 
from them?
she thought, and then tossed the cigarette into the toilet, flushing it with one foot on the handle before she could answer herself. “Speaking of which, have you talked to yours lately?” Kathryn asked. 

     “No. Why?”

     “I got an E-mail from my father. About Thanksgiving.”

     Randall groaned, a little theatrically, Kathryn thought. “I think I managed to wiggle my way out of that one,” he said.

     “It’s only two weeks away. God, it’s like a cruel trick, making us go home this soon.”

     “Why don’t we go to Boston?” Randall asked.

     Kathryn turned, surprised. “Are you serious?”

     “Yeah,” Randall turned from his reflection to face her. “It’s only an hour by train.”

     “Where will we stay?”

     “I’ll ask Mummy and Daddy to get us a hotel room.”

     Kathryn furrowed her brow. “Will they?”

     “Of course,” Randall said defensively. “If I point out how many hours of my childhood were spent in the care of a nanny who didn’t speak my language.”

     Kathryn laughed. The idea was appealing. Thanksgiving had been a vague concern in the back of her mind for several weeks, but after receiving the E-mail from her father it had turned into a nagging worry. The ease with which Randall had offered her a way out made her slightly giddy. “I’ve only driven through Boston on the way here. What will we do?”

     “Whatever we want,” Randall said casually.

     Kathryn met his gaze. “Poor little rich boy.”

     Something flickered in Randall’s eyes and his smile weakened. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that... . It’s just like, well, hey, let’s go to Boston! I wish everything could be so easy.”

     “It isn’t," Randall said, tone clipped. “Ever.”

     Brittle silence settled and Kathryn felt a strange mixture of defensiveness tinged with guilt. She knew that Randall’s parents and their money was a touchy subject. Randall told tales of being locked in his parents' Park Avenue apartment, shuffled between stuffy private schools and after-school clubs his parents had enrolled him in without his consent and tended to by an endless succession of indifferent nannies and incompetent baby-sitters, but throughout his war stories he employed just enough self-conscious sarcasm so as not to seem arrogant, while painting a picture of his parents’ wealth as oppressive, as his mother and father’s best tool for keeping him at arm’s length. But whenever she made reference to it, the result was an awkward stop in the conversation. 

     “Do you want to go?” Randall asked, turning from the sink.

     “Yeah. Randall, look, I really didn’t mean anything.”

     “Kathryn, forget about it.”

     Randall was almost to the bathroom door when he realized she wasn’t following. He turned.

     “I mean, who am I to talk. It’s not exactly like I’m on financial aid.” “You don’t need to apologize, Kathryn.”

     The abruptness of his tone belied his statement, and Kathryn found herself staring at him with growing bewilderment. He let out a defeated sigh and slumped back against the door. “I came here to get away from them. And I had to work really hard to do it. Money didn’t help me. Not once. You have to have more than money to get away from a man who’s so used to getting what he wants that there isn’t any room for his son ... or his wife ... to want anything.”

     His eyes had wandered away from hers and she stared at his face for several seconds; his expression was plaintive. Obviously he was visualizing the parents he rarely talked about, but whom Kathryn had formed a mental picture of down to the last detail. Mrs. Stone (Randall had never said her first name) was a fading debutante and the beneficiary of several well-performed plastic surgeries, as well as the unwilling recipient of Randall’s sharp wit. Her picture of Mr. Stone was more vague, but Randall’s description had just augmented it: a taciturn corporate something or other, in sharp contrast to her own father, whose warmth and openness had become more obtrusive as Kathryn had become an increasingly private teenager. She had trouble imagining how this stern, silver-haired caricature reacted as his son began to wear tight, designer clothing that advertised the curves of his ass, outfits that played leather against metal.

     “I know it sounds so stupid,” Kathryn said falteringly. “But a lot of us here have things ... and people ... we would rather leave behind.” 

     His eyes met hers again, and his smile was warm. “Isn’t that called ‘running’?”

     The idea of returning home for Thanksgiving once again stabbed her stomach, and she shook her head, “No” she said. “It’s growing up.”

     Randall had gone from gazing into space to staring at her so intently it disarmed her. “You’re so pure, Kathryn.”

     “Oh, shut up!”

     “I’m serious.” His face wore a faint but appreciative smile. “I envy it.”

     The naked compliment made her uncomfortable and she furrowed her brow as she met his stare again. “No one else here has what we have,” Randall said softly. “At least that’s what I think.”

     Part of her was stricken by the suddenness of the statement, but another part of her yearned to believe it was true. After only two months of friendship, she couldn’t imagine a night at Atherton without at least several hours in his company, and during those hours they had become experts at completing each other’s sentences. They had become the pair that went everywhere together, knew more than anyone together. Meeting Randall had suggested that maybe all men her age didn’t use their seemingly God-given self-confidence to erect a facade that hid the frightened and careless little boys they really were. Randall may have had confidence that bordered on stupidity, but at least he sometimes used it to show her the little boy he hadn’t outgrown yet.

     Without thinking, she crossed the tiled floor and rested her head against his chest. He held her. After several seconds, she found herself taking stock of all she hadn’t told him, all he had to intuit. Someday, just not today, she would tell him why she needed to know him, because the last man she had cared this deeply for had taken everything she had to offer, and almost given her death in return.

     He kissed her on the top of her head. “Time to sleep,” he said in a baby voice.

     She grunted. “My dreams have been screwed up lately.”

    “Nightmares?” he asked.

     She nodded, one ear rubbing against his T-shirt.

     “I’ll tuck you in,” he said, grabbing her hand and leading her out of the bathroom.

     She was grateful he didn’t ask her what the nightmares were about, but she remembered her last one by the time they were at the door to her room. “Hey,” she whispered. “I read your story.”

     “And?”

     “I loved it.”

     He nodded as if that were the answer he was expecting. This bothered her. “But it’s kind of cruel to leave your reader hanging like that.”

     “What do you mean?” he asked, his jaw tightening.

     “Well, so the boy derails the train. Destroys the entire town. Then what?”

     Randall’s eyes glazed over slightly, and she guessed she had mildly offended him.

     “I don’t know,” he said. “It would be another story.”

     She kissed him on the cheek. “You should write it,” she whispered.

     “Maybe I will,” he said with a flickering smile, before heading across the hall to this room.

Randall lay awake listening to the steady rattle of the heating vent and to Jesse’s breaths lengthening into snores. Condensation blurred the window panes. Stockton Hall was eerily quiet, and Randall fought the urge to look at the digital clock as night turned into a sleepless early morning. In darkness, the cinderblock cell in which he lived seemed to expand slightly, shadow gave more distance to the space between the foot of his bed and the glimpse of Jesse’s naked back above the sheet.

     He shut his eyes and imagined Kathryn fast asleep across the hall. But for some reason she was suffering from nightmares, so he guessed his image of her sleeping soundly, her mouth hanging slightly open against the pillow like a little girl’s, was a little too envious.

     He opened his eyes just in time, before the image of Kathryn asleep in her bed could be replaced by the photo of Lisa Eberman he had seen on the desk of Eric’s office and memorized. She was standing on the bow of a sailboat, looking back at the camera as if she were annoyed by the lens and drawing her wind-whipped black hair out of her face with one hand, blue water stretching out behind her.

     In the beginning it had gone so well. But how could he have planned for this?

That October afternoon, he had been halfway to the ATM machine on Brookline Avenue when he spotted Eric standing on the corner, so he slowed his steps. When he saw Eric was headed his way, he stopped, made a sharp left, and deftly slid his card into the reader before deliberately punching in the wrong code. The machine beeped loudly. Randall looked into the reflective glass above the machine and saw Eric notice hi
m,
his step faltering. Randall angrily punched in another code without even looking at the keypad and the machine beeped again in protest. Randall slapped an open palm against the side.

     “Fuck!” he cried, maybe too loudly. He tightened his face into a scowl and ripped the card from the machine, turning and almost walking straight into where he knew Eric was standing.

     “It looks like someone’s put you on a budget,” Eric said, and Randall could tell from the tight expression on his face that he had hooked him the other night, even if he had left without another word after admitting that he had followed Eric home.

     Randall let out an exasperated sigh and whipped his wallet from his pocket. “I’ve got, like, eight hundred pages to read and all I wanted was some coffee, but my
parents forgot to
...” He trailed off, and Eric arched his eyebrows, either wanting him to continue or alarmed by his display.

     If only he knew, Randall thought, before returning to his act.

     “They forgot to make the deposit. Remembering isn’t their thing.”

     “What is their thing?” Eric asked, amused.

     “Drinking.” Randall answered flatly, meeting Eric’s stare.

     Eric’s laughter had an edge to it. “I’m sure I can lend you the . . .” Eric’s hand barely made it to his back pocket by the time Randall cut in, reaching out and grabbing Eric’s wrist firmly. “No. Please. You can’t borrow money from a professor. Isn’t that some kind of rule?”

     The mention of rules and professors lit something in Eric’s eyes, and Randall saw it and thought this might end up being easier than he had first
thought. A
current passed
between
them, and Randall noticed some small crack in Eric’s decorum, revealing more than the man had allowed himself to show in their previous meeting. Randall tried to keep his eyes from wandering the length of Eric’s broad frame to where the collar of his shirt was open, free of the tie he probably wore all day, revealing the stubbly terminus of the five o’clock shadow extending down his neck.