Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
The last time that answering machine sent Will stumbling headlong into a panic attack, it was—God, nearly eighteen years ago, and Will reels a little to realize how old that makes him.
But he’d been seventeen then, which had felt at the time like a bright, worldly, professional age, the sort of age that certainly merited full access to the wonders of adulthood.
Thinking back on it from the ripe old age of nearly thirty-five, Will feels a bit sick about the decisions he felt capable of making at seventeen, but the wonderful and terrible thing about being seventeen is you don’t have to worry about things like that yet.
You haven’t quite been alive long enough to look out for your tricky patterns, or brace for unfortunate impact, or think through all the potential consequences.
Will hadn’t been thinking through all the potential consequences, for example, when he stopped in at his high school’s annual college fair, urged by his science teacher, Mr. Zajac, to at least consider it.
He hadn’t been bracing for unfortunate impact when he’d given that nice man at the Dartmouth table his home phone number, said it was fine to call whenever.
He would have been bracing, if he’d understood more at the time— Will might have been seventeen, but he wasn’t stupid.
He’d never have been so cavalier with the number if it had been, say, a military recruiter; Bill himself had, against Old Bill’s wishes, attempted to join the army in his own youth, and washed out quickly and entirely.
Old Bill had loved to bring it up and laugh, even years later, when Will was a boy.
Will didn’t know, at seventeen, that college was going to be such an issue.
He just didn’t know. Bill had never mentioned college as an issue.
Bill had never mentioned college at all, which, in retrospect, Will knows should have been his first clue that something was amiss.
Bill was like that, without middle gears, when it came to things that were bothering him—he either avoided a topic entirely or went way too far.
It was the last day of school, he remembers now; he can almost hear the strange cackle of nesting ovenbirds, their call oddly like someone crying “Teacher—TEACHER—teacher,” as he walked cheerfully home.
He’d been in a good mood, glad to be done with the hustle and grind of homework and classwork and petty teenage social dynamics for a few months, but his steps had gotten heavier and heavier as he’d approached the farm.
They always did, somehow, even on days when he was looking forward to being at home, as though the place had an internal gravity that drew him down to earth that much harder with every shifting step.
Regardless, his good mood had shattered when he’d gone inside. Bill had been standing there, next to the answering machine, the expression on his face a bitter harbinger of the approaching storm.
He’d said, “Will? You got something you want to tell me?”
Will had swallowed; God, that was a diabolical trap to set for anyone, but especially for a closeted teenage homosexual. The honest answer to that question would have curled Bill’s hair, so instead Will had said, “Uh. I’m…not sure. You got something you want me to say? ”
Bill had grunted instead of answering, and then pushed play on the machine.
“Hey, Will.” The tinny voice was only half-familiar; the college fair had been weeks before.
Will didn’t place it until: “This is Robin, from the Dartmouth admissions team—we met at the college fair last month. After our conversation, I took the liberty of poking around a little, on your end and mine. Obviously, it’s early days yet, and there’s a lot that would still need to happen, but it does seem like you’re exactly the kind of student we’re looking for, and I’d love for you to get the chance to get to know the campus better.
Maybe we could set up a visit? A couple of interviews, while you’re here?
You can call me back at—” But Bill cut off the playback before Robin could read off his number.
And just for a second, even with that storm cloud expression on Bill’s face, even with the glitter of malice in his eyes and the anger just in the motion of stabbing his finger down on the answering machine buttons, Will had felt good .
He’d felt wildly, crazily, beautifully, blissfully good, on top of the world, on top of the galaxy .
He’d talked to Robin for nearly forty minutes about the chemical structure of chlorophyll and things he’d like the chance to learn about in gene sequencing and the experiments he’d been running for years around the farm, and when nothing had come of it, Will had thought, Oh, well .
It’s not as though he didn’t have a life path intended for him, whether he thought he could hack that life plan or not; it didn’t matter if his teacher thought he should go to college, not if college didn’t think so.
But for that moment, in the foyer, even below the shadow of Bill’s thunderous mood, Will had thought: He liked me. And: He looked into it . And: I could go to Dartmouth .
And then Bill had said, his voice low and rumbling, a threat, “And where in the hell are you thinking we’ve been keeping a hundred thousand goddamn dollars to send you off to some fancy college?
” And suddenly Will’s joy, which had been spreading its wings to take flight, was stuck to the floor like an insect with a poisoned pin, barely a chance to thrash as it died.
Will can’t remember the argument now; he doesn’t have to.
It was the first time they had it, sure, but they had it many, many times.
Will wanted to go; Bill didn’t think that he should.
Will could figure out the money, get scholarships, take out loans, whatever; Bill didn’t understand why Will even wanted to go, what he thought he’d be getting by putting on airs like that, when what he needed to learn was here, and as soon as possible.
Will thought he might be meant for more than this; Bill thought this was exactly what he was meant for, had been born for.
Will didn’t think it was Bill’s choice; Bill didn’t understand why on earth Will thought he got any choice in this at all.
“It’s in your name,” Bill had shouted eventually; Will remembers that.
“William Josiah Robertson, same as mine, same as my father’s, same as his father’s!
And if you’re going to be William Josiah Robertson, by God, then you’re going to do as William Josiah Robertson does!
He runs this farm! He lives in this house! He doesn’t go to Dartmouth!”
“I didn’t ask to be William Josiah Robertson,” Will had snarled back, not that it had mattered. Not that it had moved the needle, or changed Bill’s mind.
It’s strange—not the way the memory washes over him, but the way it, and the emotion that Will knows is supposed to accompany it, judders on its usual track.
All these years, no matter how far away he got from the farm, no matter how many therapists he spoke to, Will has felt deep, grinding shame whenever he remembered this day, and all the other days like it.
Even knowing rationally that his father had been wrong, that Will’s intelligence and scientific aptitude would have left him unsatisfied simply following the family path, that it was Will’s life , and thus his decision to make…
still, unavoidably, the guilt. Still, Bill’s face would loom in his mind, spittle flying from the sides of his mouth as he bellowed about duty and family and what it meant to be a Robertson, as he explained that Will was selfish and impulsive and hard of both head and heart.
And part of Will, down to his bones, would whisper: Listen, buddy, not trying to bum you out here, but are you sure the old man doesn’t have all that right?
But today, that part of Will appears to be out to lunch.
Instead of hearing the old litany, choking abruptly for air in an ocean of outsized remorse, Will blinks and finds himself imagining himself , as he is now, standing at the answering machine, looking down at the gawky seventeen-year-old he once was.
Whatever internal mechanism is at work here, it’s fairly merciless in terms of the accuracy of the remembered pimples and blemishes, not to mention the way his ears wouldn’t quite fit his face for another four or five years.
Stick-skinny but with baby fat around his cheeks, wearing some band T-shirt he’d destroyed so thoroughly that it was totally unreadable, a tragically desperate attempt at stubble making a patchy appearance along his neck—not, Will realizes, a little stunned at the thought, someone any reasonable fully grown person could mistake for another adult.
As if in response to this thought, the imagined version of himself begins to shrink down; he’s fifteen, the horrifying at-home frosted tips as good as carbon dating, and then thirteen, his hair buzzed short after an unfortunate incident with some very sticky, over-boiled cider that had splashed onto the mill ceiling, partially dried, and then dripped at exactly the wrong moment.
Eleven now, and abruptly shorter, not yet having hit the growth spurt that, when it did come at twelve, still did not make him tall enough to satisfy his father—nine, wearing that weird lime-green bucket hat he’d found at a thrift store in Canton and decided was the height of fashion.