Best Man Page 6

  One particular instance stands out as the most vivid among my memories of that summer. On the afternoon in question, when she came back to the house after swimming, I heard Cynthia tell someone that she was going up to take a nap. I raced as I had never raced before, knowing that I had to be in place before she reached her room. It was one thing to crouch silently and watch, but even for someone with my skills, the creaky boards in that crawl space would not have permitted me to go from my own room to her room without her hearing. As it turned out, I had been there less than five seconds, when her door opened.

  Cynthia undressed slowly. She was looking into the mirror, acting as if she were performing in front of an audience. But she had no way of knowing I was watching.

  It was my first experience with a girl. Together, yet apart.

  * * *

  11

  Prep School

  At some point during my final year in primary school, a decision was made regarding my secondary school education. I often have described the choice as my own, but I suspect it was really a family decision, and I am no longer certain that I had much, if any, input.

  In September of that year, Uncle Christopher came to Washington for a series of meetings with officials at several federal agencies, and he stayed at our home. Subsequently, application forms were mailed directly to me from the admissions office at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. At the time, many considered Andover to be a feeder school for Yale University, and I suspect there was some family expectation that I would follow that pathway. But my own experience, supported by publicly available data, makes it clear that Andover graduates went on to a variety of collegiate experiences, matriculating at a wide range of the nation’s finest institutions.

  In view of my childhood background and elementary schooling, one might have expected to find that I had attended one of the fine Catholic high schools in the Washington area. Georgetown Preparatory School, for example, has long enjoyed a sterling reputation for educating young men. On the other hand, my Catholic upbringing, and Georgetown Prep’s Jesuit association may have been precisely the reason why Uncle Christopher wanted me to move away for my high school years. I have no recollection of any specific discussions, however.

  While still maintaining the values and traditions of the Christian faith, including required attendance at daily Chapel services, Andover welcomed students from various religious denominations, even providing a small chapel for Jewish students and arranging for Roman Catholic Mass to be said in that chapel on Sunday mornings. This was significant because widespread tolerance of Catholics and Jews had not been achieved in the United States at that time, which was less than a decade after John F. Kennedy’s hard-fought Presidential election.

  As I think back to this time, the exposure to others from mainstream Protestant backgrounds, both fellow students and teachers, would have been considered a valuable asset for an aspiring young man. It would have been deemed an essential credential by some for admission to the most prestigious colleges and universities, and no less necessary for subsequent entry into the world of business at one of the best firms. That world did not offer easy entrée, and prerequisites often included family connections, wealth, the careful guidance of mentors, and the prestige bestowed by a degree from an Ivy League school. I am certain Uncle Christopher was well aware of these things.

  • • • • •

  Eighth grade was a whirlwind for me. I don’t mean that it was academically difficult, because it wasn’t. I was facing a shortage not of ability but of time, and that was a commodity I had not yet learned to manage.

  At the start of the school year, my mother announced that I should find a part-time job. Of course, I had no idea how to do that, but she helped by asking around. She spoke with the manager of the local grocery store, and he responded by offering to hire me for an hour each day plus a half day on Saturdays.

  Mr. Miller was a good person to work for. He was pleasant, and he was fair. He expected me to work for the wages he paid, and I responded accordingly. Mostly, I helped the other workers by moving things, unpacking boxes, and throwing spoiled food into the trash bins out back. Sometimes, I think the other workers may have left their least favorite tasks for me to do, but that was okay. I was eager to help out.

  Working after school cut into my free time, and I didn’t get to hang out with Angela as much. But we still had Saturday afternoons and parts of our Sundays when family obligations allowed. Even those times were reduced as winter came, because the library closed at noon on Saturdays, and it was too cold to just walk around outside.

  School took more time, also. As I said, it wasn’t really hard, but the teachers began to assign more homework. I think they wanted to prepare us for high school. And preparation for high school became the real challenge.

  I recall my astonishment when I received my first package from Andover. My mother didn’t know much about it, and the teachers at my elementary school didn’t know about it either. This was thirty years before the Internet became available, so I went to the library. The librarian helped me find additional information, and I was both shocked and exhilarated by what I found.

  This would be much more than an opportunity for education. It would be a chance to escape the narrow confines that had been my life until then. Not that I was unhappy, because I loved my mother, and I liked my school, and my job, and of course, Angela. But going away to school would give me the chance to take off. To soar like an eagle.

  I signed up for and took the Secondary School Admission Tests, which turned out to be not at all as daunting as suggested by their name. They were just tests. Not unlike many other tests that I had taken. And the questions didn’t seem that difficult, an opinion that may have reflected the many hours I had spent in the library reading whatever I could lay my hands on. I never thought of myself as brilliant, but I began to appreciate that I was fairly smart.

  I filled out the application forms, and I gave my portion of the application to my school principal to be completed and submitted to Phillips Academy. This step was new to everyone and generated a remarkable amount of confusion. Then there was the interview with an alumni representative. Phone calls were made, although I remain uncertain who made them and to whom. Nevertheless, I received a letter in the mail advising me to appear at a location in downtown Washington on a specific day in January.

  He had been in the class of 1917, which meant that he had begun attending Andover more than forty years before I was even born. When I met him, he seemed correspondingly old. His office was extremely fancy, with thick carpets, wood-paneled walls, and soft leather chairs. I learned that Lee, Toomey & Kent was an important law firm in Washington that specialized in tax law. I didn’t appreciate the location before I arrived at 1200 Eighteenth St., N.W., but as I approached the address from the bus stop, it sank in very quickly. It was only a few blocks away from the White House. I concluded that anyone who worked that close to the President of the United States must be very important.

  The interview must have gone well, and I remember the old man smiling very nicely when he shook my hand to say goodbye. I didn’t hear anything further until a letter arrived in the mail two weeks later offering me admission. I do recall my mother being in a very good mood during those weeks.

  The question of tuition had been bothersome to me, as I knew my mother did not have the financial resources to pay for an expensive private school. I even had the sense that the modest cost of tuition at my Catholic primary school was somehow beyond her comfort level and was somehow mitigated by her volunteer work at the church. The tuition at Phillips Andover was by no means modest, and the brochures indicated that total costs were nearly $4,000 per year, about half of which was the tuition.

  My mother told me it would not be a concern, and I did discover in the application materials a statement that they would “admit each year the best 250 candidates regardless of their ability to pay tuition.” The explanation following that statement suggested that I might
receive some combination of scholarships, loans, and part-time jobs to pay for my education. Nevertheless, I am unaware that any such assistance was ever provided by Andover. At the time, I was not concerned with such details, and after I graduated, they no longer mattered.

  • • • • •

  The summer before my first year at prep school was much like the summers that preceded it. I had my part-time job at the grocery store, I spent time at the public library, and I hung out with Angela as often as I could.

  My experience of observing Cynthia’s striptease the previous summer had no effect on my relationship with Angela during this time. We remained best buddies, and no hint of romance existed between us. I think that was a simple matter of biology. I still looked like a boy and my voice had not yet deepened, and she also seemed to be just another kid.

  I recall that we both were concerned about what the year would bring. I was off to New England, and she would be attending the Academy of the Holy Cross in Kensington, Maryland. It was a Catholic high school for girls, situated just across the District line. Previously, we had thought we would remain close in high school as we had been in grade school.

  There were no tears when we said goodbye, and I had little sense that I would miss Angela any more than the other things that were part of my daily life in Washington. My mother, my home, my school, my job at the grocery. It wasn’t sadness I was feeling, but a keen awareness that everything was about to change. Permanently.

  • • • • •

  My mother went with me to Andover for my matriculation at the end of that summer. At the time, I hadn’t really made much of the coincidence, but we first visited Uncle Christopher on Martha’s Vineyard. In retrospect, the two of them were very comfortable with each other. It was reasonable, as they had known one another for many years.

  After departing Webster House, we all drove to Boston and stayed overnight at Uncle Christopher’s home. I thought nothing of it the next day, when he quietly told her to leave her suitcase unpacked. That she could worry about that when they returned after they dropped me off at school.

  When we arrived on campus, I learned that Uncle Christopher was no stranger to Phillips Academy Andover. He pointed out several buildings by name, and he drove directly to my dormitory. I didn’t want to ask, but it was obvious to me that he was an alumnus.

  It didn’t take long for my classmates to notice the car we drove. “That’s some set of wheels your dad was driving,” Brad Waterhouse offered the same afternoon.

  I probably said something like, “You think so?” I was also thrown a little bit off stride by him referring to Uncle Christopher as my dad, but I let it go.

  He was still focused on the car. “C’mon, man. A Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3? Does he let you drive it?”

  “Not yet. I’m working on it.”

  That ended the exchange with Brad, but not the growing recognition that my schoolmates were far more familiar than I with money and influence. It was daunting at first, but I learned quickly. Plenty of both could be found at Andover, although the money was often hidden. It might not surface until a vacation when it was time to return home.

  Several times I caught rides with other boys into Boston, where I would then travel to Washington by train, or in a few cases, stay in Boston to visit my Uncle Christopher. Other boys lived closer than my mother, and their parents might drive up to fetch them in a shiny late-model car. But the class distinction was never greater than in those instances that a boy was met by his father’s chauffeur. A long black limousine, driven by a man in uniform.

  Andover provided an opportunity for me to once again develop a literary alter ego. The character was no longer Holden Caulfield, though. In the year or so before prep school, I began reading modern fiction, and I took a particular liking to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Not just his fiction, but his life. I identified with him.

  We shared many similarities. According to the biographical facts I found, Fitzgerald, like I, had a middle class upbringing, although his might have been a bit more upper class. His mother received financial support through an inheritance and funds provided by an aunt. In my case, it was an uncle. We both attended Catholic schools before college, although Fitzgerald’s prep school was Catholic as well. I even discovered that he wrote a secret memoir as a boy.*

  And I also identified with some of Fitzgerald’s characters. My favorite book was The Great Gatsby, but Timothy O’Connor was totally different from Jay Gatsby. That’s not who I was. Andover was full of Gatsby-types, boys from families that were rich, and well educated. I thought I was more like Nick Carraway. Well educated, but definitely not rich.

  Nevertheless, like both Gatsby and Carraway, I anticipated going to an Ivy League college. Not Princeton like Fitzgerald, but Yale, like Carraway. In another point of difference, I had no expectations of ending up a tragic figure like the characters in Fitzgerald’s novels. In that way, I was more like Fitzgerald, himself. I was convinced, that I already had discovered my talent for creating a fiction.

  • • • • •

  My first year at Andover dramatically expanded my view of the world. Three examples will suffice. I alluded to the many other students who came from moneyed families and their familiarity with influence. There was a boy a couple of years ahead of me whose father was a U.S. Congressman from Texas, and before I graduated, his father was appointed as the Ambassador to the United Nations. His subsequent career was extraordinary by Washington standards. Gerald Ford appointed him as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the American people elected him as the 41st President of the United States. However, I’ve long thought that the former post was the more important.

  Another example from that year was provided by the illustrious men who were invited to speak to the student body. Exposure to important business and government leaders, often graduates of our school, was a tradition at Andover.

  One such person was William Sloane Coffin, Jr.,* the Episcopal clergyman who had gained national attention in those years as an activist and leader in the civil rights movement and in the protests against the war in Vietnam. He was an important part of the pipeline to Yale, which was considered by many of us as the only acceptable college to attend. In addition to being a graduate of both institutions, he was the longtime Chaplain of Yale University.

  It was in that latter role that he spoke to our student body during my first year. He was a marvelous speaker, and even the most conservative among us came away from his presentation with a belief that the war, if not entirely wrong, had at least been a mistake. He spoke, not only from his religious and ethical training, but also from his first career stop after military service, a four-year stint as a CIA officer.

  The third example I will share with you is the one that almost certainly had the greatest impact on the student body during my time at Andover. It was the merger with Abbot Academy, a process that many of us at the time simply referred to as “the merger,” which would make our school coeducational.

  In retrospect, I think the considerable angst we experienced during those years was unavoidable. It may have been quite different for the alumni and the faculty, who were losing part of their cherished tradition, but for my fellow students it had a lot to do with girls. We were at the age when we began to notice them, and it was probably much better for our interactions to happen under the watchful eyes and guidance of the faculty.

  • • • • •

  Athletics played an important role in my prep school experience. This began my very first week on campus, when I took the swimming test required of each new boy. It turned out to be rather easy for me, and I swam the required distance fast enough that the swimming coach himself approached me and said that I should try out for the team.

  There I was, on campus for less than a week, and I was actively being recruited for one of the school’s elite sports teams. I wrote about this to my mother and to Uncle Christopher, and I believe they were both quite proud of me.

  As it turned out, I
chose not to pursue swimming as one of my sports. Instead, I decided to ski in the winter season and row crew in the fall and spring. I decided to focus my attention on individualized sports. This allowed me to compete with my most important rival — myself. My goal was always to improve. Always to exceed my previous personal best.

  * * *

  12

  Summer Vacations

  My first year away at Philips Andover changed me. Strictly speaking, the changes were not caused by the school but by time, for it was during that year that my body went through an even greater change than my mind. The most obvious example was my voice. I left Washington the previous summer as a boy, and I returned nine months later speaking with a voice almost that of a man.

  At times, I could barely believe it myself. Where had my voice gone? The voice that had been with me for as long as I had been speaking. And who was this new person I could hear? Someone who, if not a bass, was at least a baritone. I was relieved that my discomfort with the change had dissipated by the time I came back to Washington.

  It was only a surprise to those who had not heard it for those months, and my mother had grown used to it during our weekly phone calls. Sometimes she heard the new, grown-up voice, and on other occasions, she talked to the same Timothy she had known for so many years. And, of course, there were the embarrassing conversations, when both voices would make an appearance, coming and going of their own volition, with no warning and no apparent reason.

  There were also physical changes. My shoulders had begun to broaden, my face was less round, showing some angularity in the chin, and I had grown several inches. But the biggest change, or at least the most important one, was hair. Not so much the hair on my head, although this was the time when the Beatles had begun to influence fashion in that arena. Instead, I refer to that most important change in hair as boys become men. Body hair. Facial hair. Places that men have hair and boys do not.