[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

E
Renaissance pietà. The boy s limp hand has just loosed his discus, which
S
236
lies in the millefiori meadow beside the fatal, bloodstained discus of the
god. Oddly, perhaps, Apollo s grief-struck face is mine, some years young-
er, while the pale bloodied face of Hyacinthus is what Jeremy s must have
looked like when he was an adolescent.
 Toby and Kit won t be home for dinner, Jeremy said, hanging up the
phone.  He said they d be late. I said they d better not be. He bent forward,
stared at his hands.  They re growing up, boy.
 Mr Kent, I said, holding up his drawing,  this is vile.
For a moment, only a moment, he looked confused, grim, a little sick.
Then he grinned broadly.  Isn t it awful? When he smiles like that, despite
the beard and the grey in his hair I see the strapping stud I first became in-
fatuated with and then, an instant later, the man with whom I fell in love.
 Perfect for the book, though.
 Eamon will love it. I got up and went to him and crouched down near his
feet, took his hands in mine.  He has a fine appreciation of kitsch. Jeremy s
hands are large, long fingered, bony, and each has a sweep of fine dark hair
across its back, a small thing, something I find profoundly beautiful.
 You don t mind?
 What s to mind? Sort of flattering, actually, being mythologized.
He lifted his hands to hold my jaw.
 Jeremy, I said,  can I have a cookie?
SAFE AS HOUSES
O
U
T
D
O
O
R
S
Providence, Rhode Island and Boston, Massachusetts: April 1990
H
E
A
D
The boy s father was named Neil
DeVincenzo and when I pronounced his surname as if it were Italian
O
he corrected me; his son Jimmy was a sulky twelve-year-old brigand
who I suspected would be a real asset to the jayvee lacrosse team a V
prediction that pleased them both. I had known, as if by clairvoy-
E
ance, as soon as Neil DeVincenzo shook my hand when I met them
R
in the outer office before their campus tour, who he was. Having read
Jimmy s application, I knew mother and father were divorced and
H
she remarried, but not whether Jimmy didn t get along with his step-
E
father nor if he knew of his father s homosexuality which of these
might inspire his callous rudeness and show of stupidity; he also E
had a two-year-old half-sister and that might have been enough
L
cause. Having read the application, I knew he was not stupid knew
S
that his mother was a real-estate broker in Newport, her husband a
career Navy man, and Jimmy s father, Neil, a department-store ex-
ecutive in Boston. I knew there was enough money among them that
they wouldn t be looking for financial aid, but I would have known
this anyway, simply from the sharp double-breasted suit Neil wore:
all he needed was a diamond pinkie ring and a fedora to appear
the stereotype mafioso. In fact he was powerfully attractive and
his son held promise of becoming a real beauty. I liked the way Neil
DeVincenzo looked at me and it was this, his manner of sizing me
up, that made me know he knew as much about me, without reading
any applications, as I did about him.
With the various parts of Jimmy s completed application spread
over the desk before me, I took notes on a conversation I could have
repeated in my sleep, word for word, and attempted to have neither
question nor response appear rote. Both Neil and Jimmy had the
usual queries and comments, and Jimmy became less surlily with-
drawn as we continued. I am, in the end, good at my job. On the face
of it, the only aspect of the interview at all peculiar was that the sole
parent present was noncustodial. In any case, an interview carries
very little weight in my decision making although I suppose the
parents could find it more useful or crucial. I think of the interview
as a service to the applicants, which is why I like to provide lunch or
some kind of refreshment, and why I offer two different tours of the
campus, the first, which I lead, being the official tour, for applicant
and parents together.
By now we had reached the point where I would begin to speak of
tuition charges, fees, payment options, parental involvement and re-
sponsibilities matters best discussed in Jimmy s absence. I buzzed
Annie on the intercom and asked her to summon the guide for the
240
second tour, one of a cadre of upper-class volunteers who realized that this
kind of experience looked good on their college applications. I offered Jimmy
cookies and a soda while we waited, coffee for his father. When I came back
from fetching them, Neil DeVincenzo was peering at the four pen-and-ink
drawings of house on the wall.  These are nice, he said.
 Thanks. I gave Jimmy his Coke and paced the plate of cookies and Neil s
coffee on the table between the two chairs.
 This one s New England. Neil was inspecting the portrait of our Federal
Revival in Fox Point.  Not the other three, though.
The other three being two San Francisco Victorians an Italianate three-
decker and a Queen Anne row cottage and a concrete-and-stucco box in a
Mexican hill town.  We re transplants.
 We? Neil turned. He looked at the floor for a moment, or at his shoes,
checking that the cuffs of his trousers broke properly, then lifted his face
and presented me with a knowing smile.
Taking my own coffee, I returned to the chair behind the desk.  My lover s
an artist. I glanced at Jimmy, flipping through a copy of the school cata-
logue.  They re houses he s lived in, one in Mexico, two in California, one
here.
Annie knocked on the door and ushered in Jimmy s guide, Vik, one of our
scholarship boys.  Mr Pasztory, said Vik with a flash of startlingly white
teeth.
 Vik, good afternoon. I waved him forward.  Vik is a junior here, I told
the DeVincenzi.  He knows his way around, right? Nodding, with another
smile, Vik flipped his thick, straight, shiny black hair out of his eyes.  This
is Jim, and his father, Mr DeVincenzo. Jimmy had stood up, and three of
them shook hands, making polite noises.  You re a lacrosse player, aren t
you, Vik? So s Jim.
They had something to talk about as much as adolescents with three or
four years between them could converse so I sent the two boys off. Annie,
whose family is Italian, shook her head sympathetically and shut the door
behind her.
 I wish I had a tan like that. Neil gestured toward the closed door.  That s
one astonishingly beautiful boy. The look he turned on me was charming
and calculated, venal but somehow innocent.
 Vik s parents immigrated from Bombay the tan s built in. I brought you
some coffee. Sipping from my own cup, I regarded Neil DeVincenzo with a
similar attention to what he was giving me, feeling the nervous little thrill
flirtation always inspires, whether I intend to carry through or not, a prick-
ling in the palms of my hands and in my armpits as though I were sweating.
 You ve got good color yourself.
 Mine s from Sicily, couple generations back. Neil DeVincenzo laughed,
his teeth as white as Vik s.  Not the same. He came over for his coffee, but [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]