THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 10, 2017
61
camp. But they had been good times.
Good enough---Rowan a small stranger
who'd arrive for the summer, dark-eyed
and bearing a Ziploc of vitamins from
Pam with detailed instructions for their
distribution. With his private ways and
ritualized habits, one summer obsessed
with a leather wallet some boyfriend of
his mother's must have given him.
R during the
movie, snorting awake with his
head on his chest. Ana laughed, a lit-
tle unkindly. "You snore," she said. "I
didn't know you snore."
"It's still going?" he said.The actors on
the screen had soft-looking moon faces;
he had no idea what was happening.
"We aren't even halfway through,"
she said. "You want me to go back?"
He shook his head, forcing himself
to stay awake. The movie finished to
violent trumpets, The End scrolling in
gilded, overblown script. She shut her
laptop in the middle of a horn blast.
"Bed?" he said.
She shrugged. "I might stay up."
She wanted to talk, he could tell,
itching for him to push back, probe for
the source of her discontent.
"I have to sleep," he said.
Ana rolled her eyes. "Fine," she said,
stretching out her pretty legs without
looking at him, her youth the ultimate
trump card.
A upstairs bedroom,
Richard took o his pants and raked
his fingers through the hair above his
belly. He left his boxers on, white swimmy
cotton that Ana hated, and pulled just
the top sheet over himself. Where had
Ana even found that movie, and what
logic had made her think he would like
a black-and-white movie? He was only
fifty. Or fifty-one. He fell asleep.
"Hey. "
Ana was shaking him, pushing his
shoulder. "Richard."
He recognized her voice, dimly, a rip-
ple on the water, but didn't open his eyes.
"Your phone," she said, louder.
"Come on."
I , she told him, an
incoming call, and she had ignored
it, except it happened two more times.
Richard sat up and took the phone,
dumbly: Pam. Three missed calls. He
oriented the time: it was only ten in
Santa Barbara. But . . here---Rowan.
Something to do with Rowan. He was
still half asleep, a bad feeling only be-
ginning to make itself known.
"Is everything O.K.?" Ana said, and
he started; he had forgotten her, the
stranger on the bed, staring at him with
her pinkish eyes.
He went down to the kitchen to call
Pam back. "Richard, Jesus," she said,
picking up on the first ring. "He's fine,
fine, totally safe," and Richard told him-
self that he had never thought other-
wise, though immediately his mind had
zoomed through a pornographic strip
of every evil thing that could have be-
fallen his son. "The school called---I
don't really understand, they aren't tell-
ing me anything. He's fine, but they
need one of us there. Some trouble, a
fight or something."
There was a pause. "I was sleeping,"
he said. "I'm sorry."
Pam sighed. "I can't get there until
Monday," she said. "Why do they have
these schools out in the middle of
nowhere?"
"But he's fine."
"He's fine. I guess someone got hurt.
He was involved, or so they said."
As a child, Rowan had not liked vi-
olence. He found the smallest corner
of every room and folded himself there.
"Have you talked to him?"
"He didn't say very much. It's hard
to tell."
Richard pushed a finger between
his brows.
"Those people at that goddam
school," Pam said, o on a tear. As she
talked, he spotted Ana in the doorway,
listening while trying to appear as if
she weren't, her eyes cast carefully down.
"I'll go up," he said, interrupting
Pam. "First thing."
Ana snapped to attention---here
was information that a ected her,
and she tried and failed to hide her
disappointment.
T at a forgotten
pace, quaint. He had taken the
train often when he worked for the
Treasury Department, ten years before.
The express, with regulars heading
straight to their usual seats. The train
rattled along with all the carnival heave
and hu . Passing houses, boxy and plain,
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