Crying Wolf

17

After midnight, aboveground. Grace and Izzie left Plessey Hall to cross the quad, Nat continuing upstairs to his room, seventeen on the second floor. He stopped at the landing, looked out the window. Snow was falling, dark flakes blowing through cubes of light outside the dorm windows, through ovals of light under the Victorian lampposts on the quad. Grace and Izzie were about halfway across, both wearing ski hats with tassels, their gaits, their carriages identical, impossible to tell apart. One swept a handful of snow off Emerson’s bronze leg, flung it at the other. Then they were both running across the quad, chasing each other like little girls, and disappearing in the shadows; Nat thought he could hear their laughter, very faint. At that moment, with the laughter and all, he knew that everything was going to be okay.

It wasn’t that he was drunk-oh, maybe just a little from the cognac, much more from the fact of it being one hundred years old, and from the whole magical experience down there-but the realization that “everything” didn’t amount to much, so why wouldn’t it be okay? What was wrong? He made a short mental list. First came Izzie’s insistence on keeping their relationship secret from Grace. He would have to persuade her to change her mind. Her fear of Grace’s reaction was exaggerated, probably due to years and years of Grace’s dominance, now coming to an end. He reminded himself to learn the ending of the SAT story.

Second, there was Patti. She had to be told-no, he corrected himself-he had to tell her, and as soon as possible. First thing in the morning, even if it meant waking her: he would call Patti, tell her the truth. There was someone else.

Third, he had to catch up in biology. He hadn’t come all this way to miss classes. That was for tomorrow as well. In twenty-four hours he would be caught up.

There. He felt better, as he should have with only three problems in his whole life, the last one trivial; all solvable and solvable soon. Meanwhile, although he hadn’t really known what to expect at Inverness, any half-formed expectations had already been exceeded. He loved the place. Loved it, and knew he could do well. Not only that, but there were other kids from his town who could do well here too. He would make sure Mrs. Smith knew that when he went home for the summer. Mrs. Smith, and how she had brandished the Fourth of July special edition of the County Register at the sky: he understood her now.

Nat came to his door. A note was tucked under the brass 17. He opened it. A note written on economics department stationery, from his first-semester professor:

Nat-Your final exam grade last semester is being changed from a B minus to an A plus, a change that will be reflected in your course grade as well. I’ve reexamined your answer to the last question. I was looking for an analysis of capital and current account theory as it related to the hypothetical and since you didn’t give me that, I gave you zero. On reflection, and having conferred with several colleagues, I believe that your application of monetarist methodology is fresh, cogent, and quite defensible. Have you given much thought yet to your choice of major?

Nat loved Inverness. Had he ever been happier in his life? He was so lucky. He owed them-Mrs. Smith, Miss Brown, his mom; and all the others back home.

Nat opened the door. It was dark in the outer room, the only light coming from his screen saver, but not dark enough to hide the person sleeping under a blanket on Wags’s couch, still not picked up by the movers. Was it Wags himself, released or escaped? Nat found himself smiling at the prospect. But going closer, he saw it was a woman, her face turned away, her hair longer than Wags’s and curlier. He bent over. It was Patti.

Patti. Nat froze right there, and froze was the word, with that icy tingling in his fingertips. What’s she doing here? Answers came, none convincing: some vacation he didn’t know about, a school trip, an internship in an eastern city. To find out, all he had to do was wake her. He didn’t want to. He wanted to let her sleep, there under Wags’s afternoon nap blanket. To simply let her sleep, because nothing had gone wrong yet; to let her sleep before he told her the news. He noticed a small but bright red zit in that curved indentation on the side of the nose where zits liked to form.

“Patti?” he said quietly.

She didn’t wake up, didn’t stir.

“Patti?” A little louder, but only a little, not wanting to scare her, and no more effective. She was probably tired from her trip; had she taken the bus? The bus all the way from Denver? Nat remembered his last trip, a flight in a private jet with a black Z on the tail. He touched her shoulder.

Patti’s eyes opened. For an instant she didn’t know where she was. Then she saw it was him, and the look in her eyes changed completely. She smiled, a smile that could only be called sweet, as sweet, in fact, as he’d ever seen.

“Nat,” she said.

“Hi.”

She sat up. “Your hair’s longer. It looks nice.” Her hand moved, no more than an inch or so, as if she’d thought of touching his hair and reconsidered.

“I called you a couple times,” she said, “once from Chicago and once from… somewhere else. I can’t even remember, isn’t that weird? Especially since I was trying to take it all in.”

Like him, him until a little while ago, she’d never really been anywhere. Nat remembered the phone ringing while he’d been in the bedroom with Izzie. He had to tell Patti and tell her now. It would be too cruel to allow her another one of those sweet smiles. He forgot whatever it was he’d rehearsed, just opened his mouth and hoped something not too terrible would come out.

But Patti spoke first. “Oh, Nat,” she said, her voice suddenly unsteady. “I’m pregnant.”

Thoughts poured into Nat’s mind, first-whatever it said about him, good or bad-first came the knowledge of what Patti must have crossed out in her note: I missed my period. Then came more: it could only have been at Patti’s house, before Julie’s party, before the drinking. But they’d used a condom. That raised the possibility of some other guy. Man. Of some other man. Out of the question: he knew Patti, and she wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t him. It had to be true. Patti was pregnant and he was the… father. He squirmed from that idea, that word. But he knew there would be no getting away from it, he wouldn’t let himself get away from it, because he’d had a father, too; he’d had a father, briefly, a father who’d ignored his responsibility, who’d walked away.

“Nat?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you going to say something?”

He nodded. “How are you feeling?”

“Horrible.”

What was the name for it? It came to him. “From the morning sickness?” he said.

She smiled at him again, almost as sweetly as before. “Not that,” she said. “I feel great. My body feels great. Inside is where I’m so messed up.” Patti started crying, first just a silent tear or two, then, maybe catching some expression in his eyes, many more, and far from silent. “And now I’m messing you up too. The best thing that ever happened to me.” Or something like that. Nat couldn’t really tell because of the sobbing. He sat down on Wags’s couch and held her, awkwardly, sitting on the edge.

She leaned against him, leaned with all her weight, holding nothing back. “Oh, Nat,” she said.

He hugged her. If he’d been at all drunk before, physically or psychologically, he wasn’t now.

Her lips moved against his chest. “I can feel you thinking,” she said. Her voice vibrated through his skin. “What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” he said. But he did: he was remembering what had happened when they got to Julie’s party. Julie’s family had money, at least what he’d used to think of as having money. Julie’s father, brother of Mr. Beaman, Nat’s mother’s boss, was a pharmacist. They could afford to keep two or three horses in a barn behind their house. The loft had been turned into a guest bedroom. He and Patti had ended up there, in the bed where the vomiting incident happened. But before that, they’d been asleep. He’d awakened with Patti on top of him. She’d rolled off a moment or two later, saying she didn’t feel well. Had he been inside her? Had it happened then? He didn’t know. It was all vague, half remembered, half aware in the first place, the horses stirring uneasily beneath them the only sure thing.

“Are you mad at me?” Patti said.

“No.”

“Something, then.”

“No.”

“You’re thinking.”

“I’m not.”

But she was right. Thoughts like: Are you sure you’re pregnant? How do you know? Those remained unspoken: Patti wouldn’t have been here if she wasn’t sure. And: abortion. He didn’t even know where Patti stood on abortion. He assumed she was for it-he assumed he was for it-but they’d never discussed abortion, not the right and wrong of it. And then there was Patti’s uncle in Denver, a big red-faced Broncos fan who’d taken them to a game, bought them beer and hot dogs, screamed like a maniac at the ref; Patti’s uncle, the priest.

“Nat?”

“Yes.”

“What are we going-what should I do?”

He looked down at her: curly hair, pale face, blue-lit from the computer screen, against his chest, his shirt dampening with her tears. Her gaze shifted up to his, like a baby watching its mother. That was the image that came to mind, and he hated it.

“Do you love me,” she said, “just a little bit?”

He was silent.

“You don’t have to answer,” she said. “I’m sorry, sorry for everything.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he said.

She clung to him. “You’re such a good person.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is.”

He didn’t love her. There had been times last summer when he’d thought maybe he did; now, because of the contrast with what he felt for Izzie, he knew for certain he never had. He also knew she was wrong: he had to answer the question. “I don’t love you, Patti,” he said. He said it as plainly as he could, deliberately closing the door to interpretation, but at the same time he held her tight, as tightly as he ever had. Completely crazy, but he couldn’t help it.

Patti sobbed. Half a sob, really, cut off sharply through an effort of will he could feel in the muscles lining her spine. After that, they were silent for what seemed like a long time. Blue-lit snow piled up on the window ledge; his shirt got damper. Then it got no damper, and later less and less, almost dry again.

The chapel bell tolled. Patti yawned, the kind of big yawn impossible to stifle.

“You’re tired,” he said.

“A little.” So quiet, both their voices, but very clear.

“Then sleep,” he said. “It can wait till tomorrow.”

“You’re sure?”

“We’ll think better in the morning.”

“All right.”

He made her sleep in his bed. She lay on her back, under the covers, curly hair spread on the pillow. “You can come in, if you want.”

“That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Why not?” Patti said. “What could happen now?”

She laughed. That was Patti. He laughed too. At that moment, and just for that moment, he came close to something like love: more craziness.

Patti took his hand. “Nat?”

“Yes.”

“What’s gone wrong?” She wasn’t crying anymore; her face was puffy but somehow peaceful too.

“How do you mean?”

“People used to get married at our age. Settle down, have… kids, and everything was all right.”

“Not in my family,” he said.

She let go.

Nat took his sleeping bag into Wags’s room, lay down on Wags’s bed. Wags hadn’t showered enough, especially toward the end, Nat realized now, but he’d compensated with spray-on deodorant, some brand that smelled like evergreens and coconut. Nat closed his eyes; the evergreen-and-coconut smell, rising off the mattress every time he moved, grew stronger and stronger,

You want me to flunk out, don’t you?

Right. And then all this will be mine.

Nat rose, went to the couch in the outer room, tried to sleep where Patti had been sleeping.

At dawn he stopped trying, got up, shaved, showered, put on fresh clothes, tried to look fresh. Patti was still asleep, her face still peaceful, her breathing almost unnoticeable. He left a note on the bedside crate, laying a granola bar on top of it: Gone to class. Back by noon. N.

Nat went to the bio lab, made up the work he’d missed. Problem three, from the old set of problems, taken care of; the precious pre-med option preserved. Problems one and two were now buried under the new ones.

English 104. Izzie wasn’t there. The professor, handing back the Young Goodman Brown essays, said, “I’m a little disappointed with these. Only two of you-” She glanced around the table. “-one of whom is absent, identified the pathos at its core.”

“Which is?” someone asked.

“Page ninety-five,” said the professor, opening her book: “Referring to Goodman Brown: ‘But he himself was the chief horror of the scene.’ ”. Nat stuffed the paper in his backpack without checking the grade and hurried back to Plessey, taking shortcuts through the snow.

Izzie was at his desk in the outer room, playing solitaire on the computer. She turned as Nat came in. He went into the bedroom. The note and granola bar were where he’d left them, but Patti was gone, the bed neatly made.

Izzie was watching him through the doorway. “They went out,” she said.

“They?”

“Grace and… Patti.”

“Where did they go?”

“For food. She hasn’t eaten in two days.”

Nat glanced back at the bedside crate; perhaps it was just the empty wrapper of the granola bar that he’d seen. But no. And also on the crate, the little box from Assad and Son. Was that where he’d left it? He didn’t think so, and he’d certainly not left it open, as it was now, the gold number 8 and chain nestled in the tissue paper: never worn, as would be clear to anyone who looked inside. He thought of putting the chain on now; his fingers almost touched it.

“Do you want me to leave?” Izzie said.

He would have if Izzie had said anything like She seems so nice. But Izzie didn’t. “No,” Nat said.

They waited in the outer room, Izzie at the desk, Nat on the couch. “You went to English?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Did she give the papers back?”

Nat nodded.

“What did you get?”

“I don’t know.” He handed her the paper. She flipped to the back. “A,” she said. “I guess you were right about that chief horror line.”

“You used it too?”

“Of course.”

“Why of course?”

“Don’t you remember? We discussed it on the beach.”

“But I might have been wrong.”

Izzie shook her head. “I trust you.”

“You do?”

“Completely. I didn’t even know what the word meant until you came along.”

“You haven’t known me very long.”

“So? Just look at you.”

“What do you mean?”

“That chipped tooth, for starters.”

“That’s why you trust me?”

“And a million other things.”

“What’s number two?”

Izzie thought. She flushed, very slightly. “I’m not telling.”

They looked at each other, Izzie at the desk, Nat on the couch, but within touching distance in the cramped dormitory room. Nat could feel some force pulling them together, knew that at almost any signal from him, a word or gesture, they could be in the bedroom the next minute. He said no word, made no gesture. They both looked away.

Snow started falling again. It changed to rain. “I hate that,” Izzie said. And back to snow.

Nat checked his watch. “I’m going to look for them.”

“I’m coming.”

They searched the student union, the freshman dining hall, the snack bars, the Rat. They tried Grace and Izzie’s room, the Lanark lounge, the gym. Then they went off campus to the nearby coffee shops and delis where students gathered. It got colder and colder. They stopped at the bottom of the Hill, in front of a boarded-up building with a faded sign: The Glass Onion.

“Where else?” Nat said.

“The cave?” said Izzie.

“Why would she take her down there?”

“Who knows?” Izzie said. “But I’ll look.”

Izzie went down to the basement of Plessey to enter the tunnels through the janitor’s closet. Nat returned to his room. He checked his voice mail, his E-mail: nothing. Grace walked in, alone.

“Where’s Patti?”

Grace glanced at her watch. “Still at the airport.”

“Airport?”

“I took her there.”

“What airport?”

“She asked me to. She wanted to go home.”

“What airport?”

There was something strange in his tone, strange and new. Grace heard it too. “Albany,” she said, backing up a step. “It’s the closest one with connections to Denver.”

Nat was on his feet. The airport was thirty miles away. He flung open his closet, snatched all the money remaining in his shoe-$32-all the money he had until his next paycheck from the Alumni Office job.

“It’s what she wants,” Grace said as he left the room. And: “Departure’s in twenty minutes. You’ll never make it.” Down the stairs, out the main gate, into a taxi. It was only after he was on his way that he realized Grace was still wearing his Clear Creek letter jacket.

At the airport, Nat checked the first screen he saw. No mention of Denver, but a flight to Chicago, delayed by weather, was now boarding, boarding, boarding at gate eleven. He ran toward the gate area, stopping sharply at security. He’d forgotten about security.

“I need to see someone at gate eleven.”

“Gotta have a gate pass.”

“Where do I get it?”

“Back at ticketing.”

“But there’s no time.”

Shrug.

He raced back to ticketing, got a gate pass, went through security.

“Place your pocket change in the tray and try again.”

He went through again, this time successfully, and ran as fast as he could to gate eleven. Patti, now wearing jeans instead of her blue dress, was handing her boarding pass to the attendant at the ramp.

“Patti.” Too loud: the handful of people still in line all turned to him.

Patti stepped out of the line, not very steadily. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“Of course I came.”

“How?”

“Doesn’t matter. In a taxi.”

“It’s so expensive. Or did she-did Grace pay for you too?”

“Of course not.”

Patti flinched. He saw how pale she was.

“What is it, Patti?”

“I’m going home, that’s all.”

The last passenger started down the ramp. The attendant waited by the door.

Nat lowered his voice. “But we haven’t talked about anything yet.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“What do you mean? We have to make some decisions.”

“There’s nothing to decide.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not pregnant anymore.”

Nat’s first thought was that she’d lost the baby, had a miscarriage caused by stress, travel, not eating. Then came the second thought.

“The people were very nice,” Patti said. “Didn’t even ask for money, but Grace made a donation.”

“Grace?”

“She’s very nice too. I’ll pay her back for the ticket when I can. That’s how we left it.”

“Oh, God. Don’t go, Patti.”

“I’m going.” She looked right into his eyes, spoke without bitterness, with hardly any inflection at all. “I’m just not exactly clear on which one is the one,” she said, “Grace or Izzie? You don’t have to answer.”

“Izzie.”

Patti nodded. “Good choice.”

“Closing the flight, honey,” said the gate attendant.

Patti turned and walked down the ramp.

Peter Abrahams

Crying Wolf