that we could be accused of using you.’
Uncle Charles is asking Coach White to ask the Dean of Athletic Affairs whether the
weather over scores would be as heavy if I were, say, a revenue-raising football prodigy.
The familiar panic at feeling misperceived is rising, and my chest bumps and thuds.
I expend energy on remaining utterly silent in my chair, empty, my eyes two great
pale zeros. People have promised to get me through this.
Uncle C.T., though, has the pinched look of the cornered. His voice takes on an odd
timbre when he’s cornered, as if he were shouting as he receded. ‘Hal’s grades at
E.T.A., which is I should stress an A
cad
emy, not simply a camp or factory, accredited by both the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
and the North American Sports Academy Association, it’s focused on the total needs
of the player and student, founded by a towering intellectual figure whom I hardly
need name, here, and based by him on the rigorous Oxbridge Quadrivium-Trivium curricular
model, a school fully staffed and equipped, by a fully certified staff, should show
that my nephew here can cut just about any Pac 10 mustard that needs cutting, and
that—’
DeLint is moving toward the tennis coach, who is shaking his head.
‘—would be able to see a distinct flavor of minor-sport prejudice about this whole
thing,’ C.T. says, crossing and recrossing his legs as I listen, composed and staring.
The room’s carbonated silence is now hostile. ‘I think it’s time to let the actual
applicant himself speak out on his own behalf,’ Academic Affairs says very quietly.
‘This seems somehow impossible with you here, sir.’
Athletics smiles tiredly under a hand that massages the bridge of his nose. ‘Maybe
you’d excuse us for a moment and wait outside, Chuck.’
‘Coach White could accompany Mr. Tavis and his associate out to reception,’ the yellow
Dean says, smiling into my unfocused eyes.
‘—led to believe this had all been ironed out in advance, from the—’ C.T. is saying
as he and deLint are shown to the door. The tennis coach extends a hypertrophied arm.
Athletics says ‘We’re all friends and colleagues here.’
This is not working out. It strikes me that EXIT signs would look to a native speaker of Latin like red-lit signs that say HE LEAVES. I would yield to the urge to bolt for the door ahead of them if I could know that
bolting for the door is what the men in this room would see. DeLint is murmuring something
to the tennis coach. Sounds of keyboards, phone consoles as the door is briefly opened,
then firmly shut. I am alone among administrative heads.
‘—offense intended to anyone,’ Athletic Affairs is saying, his sportcoat tan and his
necktie insigniated in tiny print—‘beyond just physical abilities out there in play,
which believe me we respect,
want,
believe me.’
‘—question about it we wouldn’t be so anxious to chat with you directly, see?’
‘—that we’ve known in processing several prior applications through Coach White’s
office that the Enfield School is operated, however impressively, by close relations
of first your brother, who I can still remember the way White’s predecessor Maury
Klamkin wooed that kid, so that grades’ objectivity can be all too easily called into
question—’
‘By whomsoever’s calling—N.A.A.U.P., ill-willed Pac 10 programs, O.N.A.N.C.A.A.—’
The essays are old ones, yes, but they are mine;
de moi
. But they are, yes, old, not quite on the application’s instructed subject of Most
Meaningful Educational Experience Ever. If I’d done you one from the last year, it
would look to you like some sort of infant’s random stabs on a keyboard, and to you,
who use
whomsoever
as a subject. And in this new smaller company, the Director of Composition seems
abruptly to have actuated, emerged as both the Alpha of the pack here and way more
effeminate than he’d seemed at