for eight months the previous year. My parents sat next to Charlie’s attorney, listening to recordings of me gossiping about boys and parties with my middle school pals. Then came the recorded drug transactions—scores of them.
Ollie admitted to my parents that she had noticed Charlie handing off packages to cars that came up our driveway. My father made inquiries and discovered that the son of some people he knew in Grosse Pointe—another college coke dealer—had reduced his own sentence by tipping off the Feds to Charlie.
After a protracted trial, Charlie got off with a large fine and probation. No prison sentence. As for the media coverage that my parents had feared, it never materialized. TheMarines, it seemed, had done the trick. And Charlie still had his four-year tour of service ahead of him.
I sealed my last application inside the envelope along with my finished essay. Everyone else in the family had gone to the airport to pick up Charlie, even my father. My brother was on leave for the Christmas holiday from Camp Pendleton, where he’d been stationed after boot camp.
Outside, I walked in the dark down the winding, snow-covered driveway toward our mailbox, the four envelopes snug in my gloved hands—envelopes addressed to Choate, Groton, Taft, and Brooks. The sky was blacker than I’d ever seen it, and I crunched along the tire tracks in the snow until I came out into the street, where the mailbox stood. As I pulled it open, I imagined myself throwing open the gates of my life. A great wave of hope swelled within my chest. Soon my story would be out in the world. I imagined its debut as a loud, crashing sound, like the aftermath of a bomb. I wondered if anyone else would notice the explosion.
FRANCES STROH, 1982
(by Eric Stroh)
C arrying my trunk and an Oriental rug, my mother and I climbed the cement stairs of the dormitory to the second floor and found my room, a tiny cell with flimsy metal-framed bunk beds, two dressers, and two desks. Old lead-paned windows looked out onto the green rolling hills of western Connecticut, punctuated by clusters of oak trees and, beyond them, the school’s perfectly groomed athletic fields.
We unrolled the rug across the gray cement floor, instantly brightening the room.
“Cool rug,” said a narrow-faced girl wearing a man’s felt hat. She’d come in and sat down on my trunk unannounced. “I’m Jen.”
“Jennifer Victoria Fairchild?” I said, shaking her hand. I’d gotten the school letter with my roommate’s name the week before.
“That’s me,” she giggled. She went over to the bottom bunk and unrolled a poster: Bob Marley smoking a cigar-size joint. “Where should we hang this ?” she asked.
My mother shook her head with resignation, pushed my trunk into a corner, and gathered her purse.
I laughed, feeling a spike of excitement. That poster represented a whole uncharted world. I had smoked pot only once, in eighth grade, but I’d never actually been high. I was determined to change that this year, in spite of my parents’ warnings that pot led to “harder stuff.” Now, of course, they could point to Charlie as an example, but I wasn’t like Charlie; I was smarter than he was—I was sure of it—I could break the rules and still come out on top.
Soon my mother would get into the car and drive away and everything would become possible. My heart quivered at the thought of her leaving. She would worry, I knew, but only for an hour or two. I would miss her; I would miss a lot of things, and yet my whole life, I realized, had been preparing me for this moment. I saw my childhood spinning away from me like so many lackluster previews before the feature itself. I looked around at the blank walls of our cell. “Anywhere,” I said.
“There are other cool posters we can buy in the Village,” Jen said. “Taft charters a bus to New York for long weekends.”
T he campus of the Taft School, founded in 1890, was made up of old neo-Gothic
Ollie admitted to my parents that she had noticed Charlie handing off packages to cars that came up our driveway. My father made inquiries and discovered that the son of some people he knew in Grosse Pointe—another college coke dealer—had reduced his own sentence by tipping off the Feds to Charlie.
After a protracted trial, Charlie got off with a large fine and probation. No prison sentence. As for the media coverage that my parents had feared, it never materialized. TheMarines, it seemed, had done the trick. And Charlie still had his four-year tour of service ahead of him.
I sealed my last application inside the envelope along with my finished essay. Everyone else in the family had gone to the airport to pick up Charlie, even my father. My brother was on leave for the Christmas holiday from Camp Pendleton, where he’d been stationed after boot camp.
Outside, I walked in the dark down the winding, snow-covered driveway toward our mailbox, the four envelopes snug in my gloved hands—envelopes addressed to Choate, Groton, Taft, and Brooks. The sky was blacker than I’d ever seen it, and I crunched along the tire tracks in the snow until I came out into the street, where the mailbox stood. As I pulled it open, I imagined myself throwing open the gates of my life. A great wave of hope swelled within my chest. Soon my story would be out in the world. I imagined its debut as a loud, crashing sound, like the aftermath of a bomb. I wondered if anyone else would notice the explosion.
FRANCES STROH, 1982
(by Eric Stroh)
C arrying my trunk and an Oriental rug, my mother and I climbed the cement stairs of the dormitory to the second floor and found my room, a tiny cell with flimsy metal-framed bunk beds, two dressers, and two desks. Old lead-paned windows looked out onto the green rolling hills of western Connecticut, punctuated by clusters of oak trees and, beyond them, the school’s perfectly groomed athletic fields.
We unrolled the rug across the gray cement floor, instantly brightening the room.
“Cool rug,” said a narrow-faced girl wearing a man’s felt hat. She’d come in and sat down on my trunk unannounced. “I’m Jen.”
“Jennifer Victoria Fairchild?” I said, shaking her hand. I’d gotten the school letter with my roommate’s name the week before.
“That’s me,” she giggled. She went over to the bottom bunk and unrolled a poster: Bob Marley smoking a cigar-size joint. “Where should we hang this ?” she asked.
My mother shook her head with resignation, pushed my trunk into a corner, and gathered her purse.
I laughed, feeling a spike of excitement. That poster represented a whole uncharted world. I had smoked pot only once, in eighth grade, but I’d never actually been high. I was determined to change that this year, in spite of my parents’ warnings that pot led to “harder stuff.” Now, of course, they could point to Charlie as an example, but I wasn’t like Charlie; I was smarter than he was—I was sure of it—I could break the rules and still come out on top.
Soon my mother would get into the car and drive away and everything would become possible. My heart quivered at the thought of her leaving. She would worry, I knew, but only for an hour or two. I would miss her; I would miss a lot of things, and yet my whole life, I realized, had been preparing me for this moment. I saw my childhood spinning away from me like so many lackluster previews before the feature itself. I looked around at the blank walls of our cell. “Anywhere,” I said.
“There are other cool posters we can buy in the Village,” Jen said. “Taft charters a bus to New York for long weekends.”
T he campus of the Taft School, founded in 1890, was made up of old neo-Gothic
Similar Books
