An Uncommon Education (36 page)

“Cool,” I said, when I really wanted to ask her why. But she disappeared before I could and I was left standing alone outside. I would walk home, I finally realized. I could walk home. I heard the door slam behind me and someone grabbed me by the wrist. Tiney.

“Where’s Jun?” she demanded. Her makeup was still on, the tan of the base paint making her horribly orange, like a poorly veneered puppet. But it wasn’t just her skin; her features were strangely contorted. Was she drunk? Part of me hoped that she was.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

She dropped my wrist. Her eyes were nearly shut, narrow with disdain. I wanted to look away, could not understand what had made her so angry, or fearful, or something else. Maybe I was going to be sick after all.

“Ann said she was here with Elena,” she hissed, under her breath, away from me.

“I don’t think she was,” I said, then felt suddenly I should be clear. “I don’t know where she is, Tiney.”

“My name is Amanda,” she spat. “Applications for the LSE Summer School are due tomorrow, Monday. We’re supposed to proof each others’ . . .” She trailed off. “We’re supposed to meet at ten in the morning tomorrow.” She caught herself on this last statement, made it sound halfway normal, as though she was just worried about getting something done, about some deadline.

She turned to leave. “Tell Jun we’re meeting tomorrow at ten,” she said, over her shoulder. “Don’t forget.” She knew I was in no shape to be entrusted with her message. I tried to shake my head but she was intent on impressing her fury on me. “I’m not going to lose my spot at LSE because of her,” she told me. “London School of Economics,” she pronounced carefully, her enunciation patronizing. There was something about her manner that was sobering me up, and I remember thinking at the time that it must have been the sharpness of hate. Looking back, that’s the funny thing. I remember thinking she just hated me. It didn’t occur to me that such vitriol could have nothing at all to do with me, that such profound emotion must run far deeper than any single relationship ever could. At the time, though, I remember thinking about saying something else to her, if only because I wanted so badly to defend myself, but she had already turned away.

Part V

Twenty-Six

T
he following Monday I was glad the play was over. We were heading into the end of the semester, and final preparations around campus gave our world an unusual sense of order. I straightened my desk, did my laundry, fussed about our room until it looked cleaner and more together. Jun came in, nodded approvingly, told me she was glad she had a little woman to take care of things around the house, and checked the messages. Keigo had called for me. Jun made a show of gathering what she needed and walking from the room, gesturing theatrically toward the telephone on her way out.

Keigo and I made plans for me to come to Harvard. I was excited and preoccupied, wondering what might happen between us. I managed to push Weingarten from my mind and tell myself that I could start anew, and Keigo was all I could think of for one blissful day, before the phone rang again early the next morning, this time for Jun. It was her father.

“Naomi.” She said to the phone after she hung up. “Grandmother Oko died.” I told her I was sorry, but she kept speaking. It had been a fatal stroke, she explained. She and Keigo would have to be at the airport the next morning; of all the kin, they were the closest to New York. She observed that Keigo and I would have to make plans later. Her deep calm was unsettling.

She had finished packing before the sun came up, zipped her bag shut, and called a cab. I went out to wait with her. The cab was there quickly, one of the few cars on campus that early on a Tuesday morning. Keigo hopped out, making a fuss about how he would be in touch with me. I nodded, urging him to get going. I watched the cab take off unhurriedly.

J
un and Keigo were gone for only a few days, but it was during that time that most of the irreversible events of that semester transpired: an early round of auditions had been held for the next fall’s production of
The Tempest
, to be directed by Ruth; Tiney had attended and I had not; she had been cast as the inconsequential Francisco—she really was never much of an actress, she could never surpass her steely exterior; she had been awarded the coveted Natalie Bolton Faculty Prize in Econometrics and attended a department party given in honor of exceptional students such as herself; and she had taken the time to carefully word an accusation of cheating and intellectual dishonesty against Jun.

Later I realized that the official letter incriminating Jun would have been sent in late April, made its way to the dean’s desk that same day and, after an initial review, would have been formally dated April 27, 1995. It was handed to Jun the next afternoon, shortly after she had returned to campus.

I wasn’t brought in until my own letter arrived through campus mail the following Monday. I think this explains why although I had breakfast with Jun the day she returned, and although she was bright with the details of everything but the funeral, I saw almost nothing of her for the next few days, only saw her sleeping at night in the bed across the room from mine. I received my letter on May 1st, which is also when Elena Page received hers, and the two of us were to meet with Jun, Tiney, the associate dean, and the dean, in an attempt to avoid trial, before the end of the week.

It’s best to put it simply, though I still haven’t come to terms with it well enough to think of it that way. There are papers I still have with dates, there are even college records, but it has never ceased to be an understanding I can only enter into slowly. Though in certain terms it was easy enough to follow; Tiney had been more ruthless than most of us could have imagined, and Jun had stood, unwittingly, in her way.

From a strategic standpoint, Tiney was wise to wait until long after midterms to make her accusation, though she claimed this was because she was so shocked to have discovered what she did, and so unwilling, at first, to believe this about someone she considered a friend and confidante. By waiting, she achieved two things: a general fuzziness about the chronology of the events she was claiming to have transpired, and an impression in the dean’s mind of her own reluctance to rat her friend out. Both aided to build her hollow credibility, the way a skyscraper goes up at an astonishing speed, both because it is so tall and because it has no core.

The facts, as Tiney told them, were as follows: there had been a midterm examination for sophomores with which she, as TA of Professor Chang’s class, had been entrusted. The exam had been given to her for proofreading a week before it was scheduled to be administered. Although she was not supposed to remove it from her office, Tiney claimed to have made the regrettable mistake of bringing it home with her to do the work—her room was far more comfortable, better lit, anyone might understand this—with the intention of returning it in the morning. Unfortunately, as she claimed, while studying together for their own examinations—Tiney had trusted Jun in every way—she had mentioned that they’d have to cut their studying short because she was eager to finish her proofreading work before morning, when she needed to get it back to Professor Chang’s office. I laughed when I first heard the details, sure they would seem as ridiculous and staged to everyone else as they did to me.

In a calculated twist of events, Jun’s lover happened to be preparing for said examination and, sure enough, the examination was not in Tiney’s bag when she looked for it after Jun’s departure later that night. Tiney claimed to have developed reluctant suspicions, forced herself to go to the professor and the dean, explained that the exam was missing, that only one other student knew she had removed it to her room, and that Elena Page, a struggling economics student, stood to benefit from Jun’s theft. The Chief Justice (a student-held and -elected position) was asked to make a search of Jun’s private study carrel at the library—a privilege afforded select juniors and seniors heading toward a thesis—and the exam turned its dutiful face up within a stack of papers, inanimate and undeniable.

I
was asked to attend the upcoming meeting as a character witness for Jun. When I received my letter, I opened it in our room, sitting on my bed after I read the request and its accompanying details for hours, waiting for Jun to come back to our room. I watched the afternoon light sweep its slow way out and stood up only once, to turn on the lamp. I studied the ceiling, my hands, the sounds of the dorm. There was nothing to do with that awful time of waiting. I must have shut my eyes just before Jun came in, because I wasn’t yet asleep, but the sound of the door opening startled me. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was just past midnight.

Jun froze when she saw the lights were on. She stood with the door half open for a minute, so I had to study her shadow, wondering if she’d back out. I knew she didn’t want to talk to me. We both knew Tiney was lying, but the shame of having been targeted, the extra attention around her, had made her retreat into a shade of herself. It was an added cruelty, to force a public argument. I was suddenly embarrassed that I had waited for her as I did.

Neither of us spoke when she decided to walk in and close the door behind her. I made myself wait until she was ready to talk. I was holding my letter, and watched her glance at it before putting her things away.

“It’s not all that bad,” she said finally, sitting on her bed. Her hair had grown so long by then that she only ever wore it back, exposing her face more than the stylish bangs and cut she’d had for most of the time I’d known her. Her forehead was the most open part of her, wide and smooth.

“How can you say that?” I asked quietly. She frowned, shutting me out, pretending to be occupied with the mundane details of putting her things away and getting ready for bed. I repeated my question, but she wouldn’t look at me. It began to dawn on me that she fully intended for it to be her affair, not mine, and it angered me, that she wouldn’t ask for help, that she intended to face it alone, to be noble, to sink right in front of me without uttering a word.

“It’s a complete lie,” I reminded her.

“That’s not what matters,” she said, finally. She leaned against her desk, avoiding eye contact with me. “There is more than any one given truth at a time, and some are less important than others.”

I threw my covers off. “You sound like a fucking ascetic, Jun.” I was suddenly so angry that my hand was shaking as I picked up the envelope the letter had come in. I tore it, then tore it again. Jun reached over and put her hand on mine. I understood why she favored silence, but her stoicism was unbearable. The void of feeling was too great, it echoed the truth she spoke of: that there was nothing she could say that would erase what was already done, the stain that was already upon her. She’d have to work with or against it, but it was already there.

She walked to the window, the furthest spot from me in the room. “The exam was where she said it was,” she said.

“The college will weigh your denial, Jun. It’s why they’ve called me in, and Elena, too. They’ve heard of framing before.”

Jun turned to me, a broad smile on her face. “The college is not what matters, Naomi.” She stood, staring me down with her smile. “My parents will hear of it.” Her smile collapsed. “My father will know.”

“That you’re innocent,” I tried to complete the statement I wanted her to make. But she was always the stronger player.

“That I was dating Elena.” Only her lips moved. “Even if he knows I’m innocent, that is what will be most damning for him, and the news will arrive in an underhanded way.”

“Your father is a man of the world.”

“The private rules of a family are more important than that.”

“Are those your family’s rules, or your father’s?” She just looked at me. “What does Keigo think of this?”

“Do you actually think I would tell him?” Jun asked, her face holding the mild frown of genuine amazement. “Does anyone in this country have a sense of how a family works? Or are you just self-important enough to think that your personal opinions really matter?” She didn’t say this to be cruel. The cruelty was in what I didn’t want to believe. My parents and I listened overmuch to one another because there was no one else around. Everything Jun said or did seemed to be sculpted by the generations before her. I hated their careful work, and her for folding herself into it so completely. I’m sure she hated me just as much then, too. We were each trying to convince the other that what she held on to was not secure.

“The college seems to think so,” I said, indicating the paper she held. “They expect someone to speak in your defense.”

She tossed the paper on my bed. She looked me in the eye. “There’s nothing left to be said.”

It took a few days for the slow descent of whatever it was that blanketed the accusation in confidentiality to create the paralyzing silence that Jun had wanted. The college asked me not to mention anything to anyone. Keigo called a few times, for me, but I couldn’t talk to him, Jun’s silence clamping my own volition into place as well. I saw nothing of Elena, and Tiney only in passing. The whole situation was so surreal to me that when I did see Tiney, it was like seeing an effigy of someone; her practical existence almost hard to believe. She had a blue scarf that spring and she wore it everywhere. If I caught a dot of blue from away I wondered at what seemed like puppeting, if she was now everywhere near but quick to vanish.

T
he meeting between Elena, Jun, Tiney, and me was set for May 5th, a Friday. The campus was still decorated with poles and bright ribbons for the annual May Day celebration, another residual tradition at the college. I always felt baffled by the strips of color that hung from the trees, having only seen pictures of the celebration in a book on old holidays for children before coming to Wellesley. But there were no longer any dancers around the maypole at the college, just a campus picnic and the wide swaths of ribbon carried up into the breeze every now and then, the poles themselves grounded prettily near major entrances on campus. The ice on the lake had melted and a few wild blossoms were emerging in the afternoons and wilting overnight. For the rest of that day and the one after it, Jun continued to avoid me. But I woke her up early that Wednesday morning. I shook her just after the sun came up and she rolled over. I don’t think she had been sleeping.