Chapter 18 #3
It wasn’t until the next week when Morgan’s parents sat him down on their springless couch and explained that Doug Cody wanted them to send him somewhere called Deerfield Academy, and he was willing to cover all the expenses.
He was an alumnus and board member of the school, and he explained how they had scholarships for kids like Morgan.
Kids who were bright but didn’t possess the necessary resources to attend a fine institution like Deerfield.
“It’s like a school for the gifted or something,” his father said.
And so it happened that Morgan stepped foot onto Deerfield’s campus in the summer of 1999 for orientation. He never saw Doug Cody again.
From the outset, it was clear to Morgan, and everyone around him, that he didn’t belong.
From his coarse Outer Cape accent to his single blazer, there was little doubt he was a scholarship kid.
The students were generally nice about it, but Morgan could sense a quiet distancing, especially in his dorm, as if his very presence meant others couldn’t be themselves.
They had to curtail their talk of skiing in the Alps or summering in the Hamptons around him.
They had to lend context to every conversation when he didn’t recognize a neighborhood in Manhattan or a Caribbean island.
In short, they pitied him—but not enough to be his friend.
None of this bothered Morgan particularly, or at least he never let on about it.
Only one time, during the ninth grade class photo, did he falter, slipping away from the other students, embarrassed by the haircut his stepmother had given him at home over break.
He knew it was a gift, him being here—a thousand-, no, a million-in-one chance—and he intended on making the best of it.
And while Doug Cody had thought Morgan was bright, Morgan had his doubts after the first semester.
His classes were demanding, his teachers rigid and unforgiving.
They doled out reading at an endless pace, tearing his essays apart as if they were paid in spilled red ink.
Still, Morgan kept on—determined to prove himself worthy of the scholarship.
And so it happened that he lived in the library and fell in with the international kids, who, while rich, didn’t seem as intent on keeping him on the outside.
When the year ended and the summer came, when everyone else was heading off to internships and far-flung European countries, Morgan decided to stick around and take a job at the summer camp.
It paid good money, and it would give him time to prepare for next year, which was somehow supposed to be harder than freshman year, but really, he couldn’t bear to go home.
He was afraid of how much he’d changed and what his parents might think of him, but mostly, he was worried they’d set him back somehow.
Slowly but surely, he’d started to make his way in this new world, and he didn’t want them limiting him, as terrible as that sounded.
He stayed on campus all summer with nothing but a box fan to keep cool.
By the time the fall semester of his second year ended, Morgan was pulling straight A’s and catching jealous glances from classmates when teachers commended his contributions in the classroom.
His comments were insightful and perceptive in Harkness discussions in English; his scores set the high mark in math and science; his oration skills were nuanced and powerful in speech class.
He tried out for the rowing team and didn’t make it, but at least he tried.
Girls started paying attention to him, and for the first time in his life, Morgan understood what confidence was.
As junior year approached, Morgan doubled his efforts, shunning all distractions real and imagined.
By now, he’d come to experience some manner of popularity, and while he’d once been ignored, he now found himself the object of attention, not just of girls, but of boys, too.
In particular, a group from the boys’ lacrosse team who lived on his floor in the dormitory took a liking to him and invited him to various social gatherings, but he politely declined.
Princeton and Harvard were now chief among his priorities, and having tasted academic success, the singular joy of learning deeply and fully, he saw no goal more worthy than the pursuit of knowledge.
Not even 9/11 or the subsequent war in Iraq could distract him.
By the end of his junior year, with stellar SAT and ACT scores in his back pocket, Morgan allowed himself to dream of what college life might look like.
So, it was to his immense surprise and distress when the headmaster called him into his office and informed him that he was being dismissed from Deerfield Academy for drug possession and violating the school’s honor code.
Morgan had only spoken to Mr. Hech once before, when he’d needed to draw on his financial-aid funds early for an additional textbook.
He was a severe-looking man with a thin mustache.
He wore a black vest and carried a pewter pocket watch.
Upon delivering the news, he peered at Morgan through his black-rimmed glasses like an owl watching its prey.
Morgan maintained his innocence, but Mr. Hech said he’d already made up his mind.
The evidence was overwhelming. Eyewitness testimony from two other boys saw him slip the drugs into Logan Baxter’s bag prior to his being apprehended.
And there were others willing to go on the record about Morgan’s scheme to frame Logan.
“You’re lucky we aren’t involving the police in this matter. Deerfield has been more than generous in the matter of your finances. It is deeply disappointing that you would feel the need to take even more from a school that’s already given you so much.”
Years later, Morgan would berate his younger self for sitting in silence, for not protesting more, for not demanding an appeal, some sort of hearing, but in that moment, it seemed the entire institution was against him, and what did he know about institutions and power?
Panic and confusion gripped Morgan. He saw no possible recourse. It was their word against his, and who was he? “But what will I do? I can’t go home.”
“You most certainly will. As for what you will do—well, you should have considered that before you decided to partake in this little plot of yours. Now, will your parents be picking you up, or do we need to arrange your transportation home?”
Morgan was given twenty-four hours. He moved about the room mechanically while he packed his single duffel bag.
Paralyzed by deciding which books to bring home, he left them all on his bookshelf.
What use did he have for them now? In a stupor, he shuffled down the hall of his dorm.
A taxi idled outside. When he emerged with his luggage, the cabbie popped the trunk and gave him a head nod.
From the back seat, Morgan looked out at the campus.
He didn’t know whether to commit the image to memory or look away and make it easier to forget the place entirely in the years to come.
The lacrosse team was practicing on the main field when Morgan drove by.
The team stopped and watched him go; Logan took off his helmet and waved goodbye, his toothy grin terrible and careless.
Morgan spotted Jonathan on the sidelines, his face ghostly white, his lips thin and quivering.
What followed was a time when Morgan cared not what happened to him, so great was his despair.
With a formal dismissal from Deerfield Academy, he stood little chance of gaining admittance to another school of its caliber, and even if he could have, who would pay for it?
He often thought about contacting Doug Cody and pleading his case, but whenever he sat down to explain himself, he was overwhelmed with shame and anger.
In some small way, he blamed himself…for what, exactly, he didn’t know.
Morgan eventually gathered himself enough to finish out his senior year at the local public high school.
His parents never got the full explanation of why he never returned to Deerfield to finish his education.
He told them the scholarship had run out of money, and they took this as the truth because things like scholarships and boarding schools were impenetrable black boxes to people like them.
When the National Guard set up a table in the entryway of Morgan’s high school, he found himself stopping and talking with the spokeswoman.
She wore green fatigues and spoke enthusiastically about the benefits of serving one’s country.
Morgan didn’t care much about serving his country, but he couldn’t stand the idea of sticking around home, working for the family business.
He took a pamphlet and gave the woman his phone number.
Six months later, he was stationed with an artillery battalion in Iraq fighting for freedom, working hard to forget about the last four years of his life. After being discharged, he met Siobhan, and Lacy was born soon after.
“I hadn’t thought about Deerfield in a long time,” Morgan says, leaning back on the sofa. “But I can’t forget their faces, even if I wanted to.”
Cece wants to reach out and hold him, but what right does she have? It all makes sense now. The books, the mysterious and captivating ways in which he never seemed to add up. Even though she’s played no part in the demise of his dreams, she can’t help but feel responsible somehow.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s not really the kind of thing that comes up in conversation.”
“I guess not,” Cece says, her voice low and tremulous. “I’m sorry for what they did. It’s unforgivable.”
“I made my peace with it,” Morgan says, “at least until I saw you with him.”
“I think I’m beginning to understand what a terrible judge of character I am.”
Morgan smiles bitterly. “We all have our prejudices. God knows I’ve got mine.”
Cece feels complicit, guilty by association. The betrayal is too great. How could they ever come back from this? How could Morgan look at her and not see Jonathan’s face through the taxicab window? She’d thought there was hope—a chance at reconciliation—but that all seems impossible now.
She’s taken up enough of his time, not just now, but this entire summer. What has she brought him other than uncertainty and the pain of old wounds reopened?
“I should go,” she says and stands abruptly.
Morgan looks up at her from his seat on the couch.
Bernard only follows Cece with his eyes, hesitant to leave the comfort of the rug. Cece tugs on his collar, but he is unmoved.
Morgan is standing now, hands on his hips. “Why’d you leave him?”
Cece wishes she could say it was because she can’t be with someone who did what Jonathan did; she wishes she could claim moral outrage.
But deep down, somewhere mysterious and frightening, Cece knows the incident at Deerfield, and perhaps her entire weekend there, crystalized what she’d known all along and had been unwilling to admit.
She would have led a privileged, comfortable existence with Jonathan, but a dull one—filled with all the trappings of living but none of its truth.
It was the kind of life Cece desperately wishes she could convince herself not just to want, but to inhabit, wholly and happily.
But if the summer has proven anything, it is that she’s as stubborn as she is foolish.
She attaches Bernard’s leash. “I couldn’t imagine a future together.”
Morgan nods and looks at the floor, as if the wood grains might reveal some deep and unknown truth between them. “Where’ll you stay tonight?”
A cool breeze sweeps in through the open windows. Outside, cicadas thick, their calls furtive and longing. “Richie put me up at a motel until I find a place of my own.”
How did it get so late? Where did the time go?
Cece reminds herself to breathe, ears buzzing, throat tight. “I know it’s too late, but I’m sorry,” she says. “I was afraid…of how you made me feel. It was selfish, hoping I could just keep you in my life as a friend even when I knew, deep down, what you wanted…what I wanted…I just wanted—”
“Why not stay here?” Morgan says, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world, as if they’ve just met for the first time at the Whaler, when Springsteen had played on the jukebox, when they’d walked around the neighborhood, cocktails in hand, Bernard tugging on his leash, Morgan beside her, forever patient, forever there.
At first Cece says nothing because she’s misheard him. Magical thinking, fantastical optimism. After all this—he wants nothing to do with her. She wants nothing to do with her! And then he’s close, arms around her.
“I didn’t think that was an option.”
“You’re thinking again,” Morgan says, his beard teasing and prickly against her cheeks. “That’s the problem.”