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Authors: Neil Gordon
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desperately to keep himself remembering.
But of course it was gone: beyond a vague lament, a trace of anxiety so deep as to seem permanent, there was nothing left but the voice of the horse-girl, low, accented, filling his ears.
The horse-girl was Scottish, and wanted him to ride with her the next day. He was meant, he thought, to accept: that was why the Wrights had called to invite him as soon as they’d heard
that he was on the island. With an effort, he focused his attention on her. She was perhaps twenty-five, he thought, and projected a vague impression of wanting to fuck.
He answered noncommittally, and then everyone was rising for dinner, Aunt Mary waiting for him to help her up. The Wrights’ house had been rebuilt in the fifties, entirely with materials
and labor donated to Sarah’s husband by the Fall River Carpenters’ Guild, which he had defended pro bono during a spectacular series of strikes in the late forties. And although the
guild had long ago been busted to pieces by Reagan, the Wrights had changed nothing in the house since it was built: they dined on a Wakefield table off Fiesta ware and Bakelite cutlery in front of
the sliding doors to the green lawn that sloped down to kiss Menemsha Bay.
Talk was political, in a way Dee was long familiar with from his father’s dinner table: it was as if these were people who had emerged from a long hibernation, woken for the first time in
many years by the new administration. Washington was alive for them again. Jack Wright, next to Dee at the top of the table, whispered conspiratorially about Dee’s coming trial. Farther down
the table he heard talk of Haiti, national health care, and affirmative action.
And Dee’s mind fighting away from there, fighting for the quiet to piece together what had happened that summer, long ago, and why it now seemed so to matter.
4.
The last summer they had been together had been after his freshman year at Cornell. And then, it was as if she had disappeared. Or rather, not disappeared—three years
younger than he, she had gone nowhere. Except from his consciousness, completely. As if, after his sophomore year, he had shed his identity.
It had been a willing metamorphosis, encouraged by fear. In fact, Dee Dennis had nearly failed to go to college at all. Edward Treat Dennis had assumed his son would go to Dartmouth, but
Dartmouth had turned Edward Treat Dennis’s only son down flat, an affront to the powerful alumnus taken only after very serious debate and, to the admission committee’s relief,
justified by the same response from every other college in the Ivy League. The problem was, Dee Dennis had not been a good high school student—in fact, he had been a very poor one, devoting
his last couple of years at Exeter exclusively to dealing eightballs and ounces of pot, disturbing the peace while under the influence, and being arrested for same at regular intervals, causing his
father to scramble in his Rolodex time after time to fish his son out of his legal entanglements. He had been such a poor student, in fact, that for a moment there it had seemed that Dee was not to
go to college at all. But at the last minute Dee’s uncle, a generous contributor to Cornell and an intimate of its president, had stepped forward, and that institution had decided to accept
David Treat Dennis, Dee, on an informal probation.
A wise decision, on a number of levels. Edward Treat Dennis was a fine friend for a university to have, and that friendship would serve Cornell well for years to come. As for Dee, during his
sophomore year—by which time he had started having fun—it became evident that the university’s faith in him was to bear real fruit.
Four years at Cornell led to a summa cum laude degree and early acceptance to Harvard Law School.
So far, so good.
This shit, he had found over four years in Ithaca, was not as difficult as he might have thought.
He was allowed, for instance, to drink: wine at Lion Hall
But of course it was gone: beyond a vague lament, a trace of anxiety so deep as to seem permanent, there was nothing left but the voice of the horse-girl, low, accented, filling his ears.
The horse-girl was Scottish, and wanted him to ride with her the next day. He was meant, he thought, to accept: that was why the Wrights had called to invite him as soon as they’d heard
that he was on the island. With an effort, he focused his attention on her. She was perhaps twenty-five, he thought, and projected a vague impression of wanting to fuck.
He answered noncommittally, and then everyone was rising for dinner, Aunt Mary waiting for him to help her up. The Wrights’ house had been rebuilt in the fifties, entirely with materials
and labor donated to Sarah’s husband by the Fall River Carpenters’ Guild, which he had defended pro bono during a spectacular series of strikes in the late forties. And although the
guild had long ago been busted to pieces by Reagan, the Wrights had changed nothing in the house since it was built: they dined on a Wakefield table off Fiesta ware and Bakelite cutlery in front of
the sliding doors to the green lawn that sloped down to kiss Menemsha Bay.
Talk was political, in a way Dee was long familiar with from his father’s dinner table: it was as if these were people who had emerged from a long hibernation, woken for the first time in
many years by the new administration. Washington was alive for them again. Jack Wright, next to Dee at the top of the table, whispered conspiratorially about Dee’s coming trial. Farther down
the table he heard talk of Haiti, national health care, and affirmative action.
And Dee’s mind fighting away from there, fighting for the quiet to piece together what had happened that summer, long ago, and why it now seemed so to matter.
4.
The last summer they had been together had been after his freshman year at Cornell. And then, it was as if she had disappeared. Or rather, not disappeared—three years
younger than he, she had gone nowhere. Except from his consciousness, completely. As if, after his sophomore year, he had shed his identity.
It had been a willing metamorphosis, encouraged by fear. In fact, Dee Dennis had nearly failed to go to college at all. Edward Treat Dennis had assumed his son would go to Dartmouth, but
Dartmouth had turned Edward Treat Dennis’s only son down flat, an affront to the powerful alumnus taken only after very serious debate and, to the admission committee’s relief,
justified by the same response from every other college in the Ivy League. The problem was, Dee Dennis had not been a good high school student—in fact, he had been a very poor one, devoting
his last couple of years at Exeter exclusively to dealing eightballs and ounces of pot, disturbing the peace while under the influence, and being arrested for same at regular intervals, causing his
father to scramble in his Rolodex time after time to fish his son out of his legal entanglements. He had been such a poor student, in fact, that for a moment there it had seemed that Dee was not to
go to college at all. But at the last minute Dee’s uncle, a generous contributor to Cornell and an intimate of its president, had stepped forward, and that institution had decided to accept
David Treat Dennis, Dee, on an informal probation.
A wise decision, on a number of levels. Edward Treat Dennis was a fine friend for a university to have, and that friendship would serve Cornell well for years to come. As for Dee, during his
sophomore year—by which time he had started having fun—it became evident that the university’s faith in him was to bear real fruit.
Four years at Cornell led to a summa cum laude degree and early acceptance to Harvard Law School.
So far, so good.
This shit, he had found over four years in Ithaca, was not as difficult as he might have thought.
He was allowed, for instance, to drink: wine at Lion Hall
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