Chapter 4
We moved into October. The air shed its summer stickiness as the temperatures dropped.
I gave in to the rhythm of the semester and let it organize my weeks, pulling me along.
I taught my classes; I hung out with Safie, I hung out with Stephen.
He and I had recovered from the situation at the movie theater (and that is how I thought of it—the situation).
Or I had, and he had accepted my tacit plea that we not speak of it.
We did a weekend away in central Pennsylvania, at a cabin in the mountains Stephen booked for us, taking turns picking CDs for the drive out.
Stephen grilled and I mixed us drinks and we made a fire, reading until we were drowsy and going early to bed.
I worked in fits and starts on my book. My talk at Fall Fest loomed, a specter of regret.
Feeling ambitious, I had proposed presenting a new chapter, yet unwritten.
I thought the deadline would offer some momentum, but I felt stalled out, my attention watery and thin.
Tyler showed up each class with Kennedy.
They would arrive with coffees in hand just before the start and take their same seats toward the back.
Kennedy chimed in more as the weeks went on.
She was smart (majoring in Classics, I learned) with a funny, unexpected edge—I could see why Tyler liked her.
And she knew how to handle the boys and their egos.
She’d even gotten Constantine to back down.
One discussion, she cut him off, saying, “I really don’t think everything we read needs to be compared to Infinite Jest.” I would see her and Tyler around campus sometimes, always with Addison, the roommate.
They were a striking trio—they had a way of carrying themselves apart from their surroundings.
I’d never had that kind of thing in college, my friendships all felt somehow interchangeable.
Meanwhile, in class, Tyler always got caught up in his own thing, scribbling notes and scanning pages of the books for who knows what.
Despite his thoughtful showing that first day, he never again participated.
Many of his classmates stayed quiet, but this felt different somehow.
College students were so much more like children than they realized, just playing at adults.
And, like children, they were chemically attuned to their peers—for acknowledgment, approval, acceptance.
You could sometimes feel the anxiety of those needs fueling class discussions.
But with Tyler’s way of being alone in the room, it felt like he didn’t care about anyone else.
He was figuring it all out on his own. He never lingered after class, or showed up at my office with questions or concerns.
I got an email from him one afternoon, but it was only a forward, a message from the athletics department with a schedule of away games: Students’ first priorities are their educations, they should be held accountable for any missed sessions, we appreciate you working with them, and on and on.
When the class submitted their first assignments, Tyler’s stood out.
He was doing some real thinking. There was nothing superficial—he made keen, attentive observations.
And his writing had a light touch, unusual for his age.
Most of his peers struggled to string together a meaningful sequence of words.
The more competent ones, trying to sound smart, constructed complex, labyrinthine sentences, clauses opening upon one another like a series of corridors their author got lost within, so the meaning at the end bore no obvious relationship to where they’d begun.
Tyler’s essay carried no trace of effort, the easy flow of an intellect that felt no urge to prove itself.
The quality should have pleased me; it demonstrated a serious engagement with the course.
But I was strangely annoyed. I felt excluded from an experience he was having all on his own—it felt like it had nothing to do with me.
At the bottom of the final page I scrawled, Nice work, well written and conceived.
You might push the analysis a bit further next time.
The latter, I knew, was unkind: vague and impossible to apply.
I gave it an “A” and then in a rush added a minus and shuffled it to the bottom of the pile.
I was working at home one Thursday evening—well, working is an overstatement.
I sat in front of my laptop, staring at the screen, when I received a message from the library.
Another book I’d requested had come in. I jumped up, grabbed my jacket and keys, and headed out.
I had gotten what I wanted: a reason to give up for the night.
Campus had a muted gray quality of desertion, the stone-faced buildings tucked quietly back from the empty paths.
It was almost nine, I was rarely here so late.
I entered the library—hushed and practically empty, the lights tawny and warm.
A familiar, comforting musk washed over me: the sweet, pitched scent of softened leather and mildew.
All my life, libraries had offered sanctuary.
While other kids rejoiced at the end of school years, facing the interminable summers of my childhood filled me with dread.
My father found virtue in the mere fact of being outdoors and would cast me from the house, chastising my deficiencies of sun and air, my body a wan and wasting thing to him.
I would wander our suburban streets for hours.
I dragged a stick along, the knobby end catching against the rough asphalt, talking to myself.
I rejoiced when a summer storm would overtake the skies, driving us indoors.
My mother would load Cassie and me into the minivan—“I can’t be cooped up in the house with these kids all day,” she’d announce.
She’d drive us to the local branch of the library a few miles away.
We’d dash across the lot through torrents of rain and into the bracing cold of the air-conditioned rooms. During these years when they still got along, Cassie and our mother would settle into the upholstered club chairs by the periodicals, wordlessly passing magazines between them.
I spent the hours on my own, huddled on the floor in a low-trafficked stretch deep in the furthest stacks, books piled in my lap.
A student was alone behind the circulation desk, highlighter skimming photocopied pages.
I gave my name and she returned a moment later with the book.
I thumbed through it. It was an autobiography published in the 1940s.
Its author, a Chicago industrialist, lived a life less compelling than he imagined: I could find only a single copy in print, sent over from a university in Montana.
I was not interested in the author himself but the fact that a second cousin’s son was Nathan Leopold, the subject of the chapter I was currently struggling through.
In 1924, Leopold and his rumored lover Richard Loeb, just teenagers themselves, neither yet twenty, had kidnapped and killed a fourteen-year-old boy.
For decades the industrialist kept a daily journal.
After his death, his estate ended up with a sister, a philanthropist whose marriage took her to Columbus.
I had just learned that her papers had landed at Ohio State, his diaries among them.
I was planning to make a trip to the archives in the next few weeks to see if the diaries held some account of the trial, which had been closely followed in the media, but of which few firsthand accounts existed.
I hoped the autobiography might give a sense of where to begin.
I turned to place the book in my bag and saw the three of them, huddled around a long table heaped with backpacks, books, and papers: Addison, Kennedy, and Tyler.
Addison and Tyler sat side by side, Kennedy across from them.
They each leaned forward, heads close, deep in conversation; a rapt energy rippled off them.
Kennedy was talking, head bobbing in emphasis, hands like fins slicing through the small space between her and the boys, nodding along.
She finished whatever she was saying and shook back her hair without touching it, shiny waves across her shoulders.
Addison said something then, tipping back in his chair and spreading himself like wings, and made the group of them laugh.
A moment later, Tyler shot up, lifting his jacket from the back of his chair. He pulled it on and stepped from the table, leaving behind the papers arrayed before him.
I turned and hurried from the library, hoping I hadn’t been seen.
Outside, the black and quiet of night were a startling calm.
I stopped, halfway down the steps, unsure why I was rushing.
And then I found myself unable to move, my feet weighted in place.
I heard the whoosh of the door opening and then Tyler’s voice.
“Professor Lausson, is that you?”
I turned and squinted into the lights of the library entrance—framed by grand white columns on either side, the golden outline of him stuttered and fuzzed.
“Tyler. Hello.”
“It’s funny seeing faculty on campus so late. What are you doing?”
“I was just grabbing a book and—it’s such a nice night, I suppose I wanted a moment to enjoy it.”
“It’s gonna get cold soon. I hate it. We have winter in Charlotte, but not like here.”
“And you? Are you leaving?”
“Just taking a break.” Tyler glanced down at his hands, a pack of cigarettes in one, a small black lighter in the other. “I know we’re not supposed to smoke here. And I shouldn’t be smoking anyway. I just—”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not going to call the police on you.”