13. Q&A, Part II #2
Mav slaps his hands on the table. “I followed Amanda to Wolfeboro, and the school happened to have an opening for a college counselor, and that’s how I ended up in the boarding school life: I chased a girl.
Then an opportunity for each of us opened up at the Colbert School, so we moved to Massachusetts and started our family.
” Mav pauses. “It was my intention to be at Colbert forever—or at least until the boys graduated. Augie and Evan are identical twins. They’re third-formers. ”
“Awww,” Charley says, and then, because it feels like what’s expected, “Do you have a picture?”
Mav reaches into his leather satchel (Royce refers to it as Mav’s “man purse”) and pulls out his phone, which masks the buzzing of Charley’s own phone.
Someone is calling her? Maybe Beatrix (if she was really desperate) but more likely Charley’s mother, once again wanting to apologize for not coming to Family Weekend.
Fran claims she has “too much going on” with putting people’s gardens to bed for the upcoming winter—but Charley knows she’s just unwilling to leave Joey alone for the weekend, and Charley has been crystal clear that Fran is not to pull a stunt like she did last year and bring Joey to Tiffin.
Charley is actually looking forward to a Family Weekend without any family. What a relief! She won’t be alone—East’s mother, Lori Litavec, is coming from Los Angeles to see Tiffin for the first time, and Lori has invited Charley to join her and East for dinner at the Wooden Duck.
Mav passes his phone to Charley. The twins are his screen saver—two identical boys with mussed blond hair, pink cheeks, and muddy cleats, fresh off the lacrosse field.
“Cuties!” Charley says. She has a follow-up question about why Mav is now at Tiffin instead of Colbert, but there’s no graceful way to ask it.
Mav must intuit this because he says, “Off the record, Amanda became Head of School at Colbert, and shortly thereafter, we split. We couldn’t both stay, so I was obviously the one to leave. I was lucky to find a position at Tiffin. I see the boys every other weekend.”
Charley murmurs, Oh good—is this good?—but types nothing because it’s off the record. She scrambles for another question because she can’t end on this note.
“Do you mind sharing some of your personal interests?” Charley says. “Ways you spend your free time. Hobbies? Obsessions?”
“Obsessions?” Mav says. “Am I allowed to have those?”
Charley’s face grows warm. Did he think she meant sexual obsessions?
“I like to read, as I told you. And I’m excited about starting our art appreciation class. Next week, we said, right? Wednesdays at seven?”
Charley blinks. In her memory, they decided to punt until after Family Weekend and more importantly, until after college essay final drafts were due for the sixth-form.
“Wednesdays at seven sound good,” Charley says—except they don’t.
Monday and Wednesday nights, Mr. Ewanick teaches a class at the community college in Capulet Falls, which makes those the best nights for Charley and East to sneak up to the roof of the chapel.
Charley can’t tell East that she’ll be cutting their time in half by going to Art Appreciation on Wednesdays instead.
She’ll have to see if Mav can change the night, otherwise Charley will bow out, claiming some kind of conflict (but what conflict?).
She can’t worry about it now, she needs to finish up here, and her phone is buzzing with another text.
“I guess you might call the way I feel about Bruce Springsteen an obsession,” Mav says.
“Bruce Springsteen.” Charley types this in, hitting the keys extra hard to indicate finality.
“You know who Bruce Springsteen is, right?”
Charley says, “I do, of course. A singer.” She nearly adds, My mom loves him—because when Charley thinks about Bruce Springsteen (which she never does), it’s as her parents’ music. Bruce Springsteen is old.
Mav laughs. “A singer? Well, I guess you could say that… or you could say he’s the greatest rock star who ever lived. Do you know the song ‘Jungleland’?”
Charley shakes her head.
“You have to listen to it. It’s an anthem.
And ‘Racing in the Street’ as well, though Amanda claims that song has a strictly male audience.
” Mav, once again, pulls out his phone. “What’s your number?
I’m going to send you these songs. I don’t mean to sound grandiose, but Springsteen is a modern-day Shakespeare. He’s a bard. A storyteller.”
Charley hesitates. Mav wants her phone number.
He’s… what? Going to text her the songs?
Maybe the rules were different at Colbert, but at Tiffin, only dorm parents text.
Regular teachers—and Charley assumes the college counselor as well—use email to communicate so everything stays properly documented.
But Mav has his phone out waiting, so Charley rattles off her number.
Mav’s fingers fly over his phone, then Charley hears the swoosh sound.
“Check to see if you got them,” Mav says.
Charley pulls out her phone as it buzzes. “I got them,” she says—and at that second, a figure appears in her peripheral vision.
It’s East.
“Oh, hey,” Charley says. She glances between Mav and East and says, “Mr. Maverick, this is Andrew Eastman. East, this is Mav.”
Mav leaps to his feet and shakes East’s hand. “The elusive Andrew Eastman! You know, I’ve been hoping you’d stop by my office.”
“What for?” East says. “I’m not applying to college.”
“I was hoping you’d rethink that?”
“Nope, not gonna happen,” East says, and Charley winces because his tone is kind of dickish (fully dickish if she’s being honest). To Charley he says, “I’ve been looking for you. Calling, texting… why didn’t you tell me you were here?”
“I did,” Charley says, which is a lie. She didn’t mention anything about the interview, Mav, or the Grille. When East asked what she was doing after dinner, she said she had some stuff to work on and that she’d meet him at the Sink at eight.
It’s now eight thirty, East has been looking for her, and he sounds like a controlling—or at least possessive—boyfriend in front of Mav, whose opinion of Charley matters.
(He has to write a sparkling recommendation letter!) Charley has been vigilant about maintaining her own identity; she doesn’t have to report her every move to East, except that’s what they’ve been doing since school started—sharing the minutiae of their days.
It’s highly unusual that Charley kept this interview a secret and is now blatantly lying about it.
She looks between East and Mav and feels like she’s caught in a love triangle, but that’s insane.
The real tension is that East is choosing to not apply to college, and he’s making Charley feel weird that she is applying, even though that’s the exact reason why she, and everyone else, is at Tiffin in the first place!
She slides out of the booth. “Thank you for your time,” she says to Mav. “The article will be out on Friday.”
Mav gives her an uneasy smile, and she worries that he, too, senses how awkward this is.
“Listen to those songs I texted you,” he says. “And let me know what you think.”
“I definitely will,” Charley says. Thanks, see you, bye. She can’t get out of the Grille fast enough.
On their way to the Sink, Charley doesn’t apologize or explain, nor does she reach for East’s hand like she normally would. She is shook by what just happened, though she can’t figure out why.
Before they enter the Sink, East stops and turns to her. “What was that?”
Charley says, “I was interviewing him for the Bulletin.”
“Oh, really?” East says. “Who gave you that assignment?”
Fuck, Charley thinks. “I know college isn’t important to you,” she says. “But it’s important to me.”
“This isn’t about college,” East says. “You gave him your number? He texted you songs?”
Charley narrows her eyes. You had Bergeron’s cell phone! she wants to scream. You hooked up with Bergeron on a Harkness table in the Schoolhouse! But Charley doesn’t want to make this a tit for tat. There’s no comparison here.
“He’s obsessed with Bruce Springsteen,” she says.
Much to her relief, East laughs. “Of course he is,” East says, and he takes Charley’s hand.
Assignment, Boarding School Lit, Mr. Rivera: Write a poem or vignette about an aspect of boarding school that has special meaning for you.
“Harkness Society” by Taylor Wilson
Hurried tiptoes
Hushed creaks
Hands-on learning—
Harkness Society
Daring corridors
Dark classrooms
Don’t get caught—
Harkness Society
Trembling thighs
Tongues intertwining
Textbooks slid aside—
Harkness Society
Lustful laughter
Lacy folds
Lab report due, but whatever—
Harkness Society
Mahogany grain
Mine for tonight
Member for life—
Harkness Society