Indecent: A taut psychological thriller about class and lust. Corinne Sullivan
apt, to me, for dog shows). What the Vandenberg boys had, I’d finally decided, was exemption. Freedom from liability or failure.
Lockport didn’t have old money, or new money, or much money at all. The closest thing my high school had to aristocracy was Melanie Hoffman, who boasted a BMW and two real Gucci bags thanks to the chain of drug stores her father owned. My knowledge of galas and debutantes and high teas came from Jane Austen and the Brontës. In the first week of classes, when Chapin nodded to a student walking by and whispered to me, “Paris Hilton’s cousin,” I immediately reached for my phone to take a picture, and she slapped it out of my hand, snarling, “This isn’t Disney World, Imogene.” Vandenberg boys fascinated me, and I studied and dissected them like characters from a reality show. They were formidable and foreign. It seemed impossible that I could belong to it all, that such fine young men could be mine.
In their suit jackets and ties, the students seemed less like boys and more like men, informed and opinioned and—more than likely—experienced. Their smiles spoke of privilege that I had never known, and it wasn’t because they attended a school with nine athletic fields, a 100-acre nature laboratory, and one of the world’s most important collections of early American art. It wasn’t even because they attended an institution that comprised the bedrock of an earlier American establishment, with alumni including Astors, Vanderbilts, Tafts, and Kennedys.
It was because they were given a uniform that assured their place in the world: that place being The Very Top.
_ _ _
The game was going well, up until Clarence Howell—the skinny third year who had his pants pulled down during our first practice—broke his nose. We were up by two when a Brunswick attacker’s swinging stick met with poor Clarence’s face mask. The snap was audible, the blood everywhere. The referee blew his whistle, and Larry and I ran out onto the field.
“You alright, Howell?”
Clarence removed his helmet and looked up at Larry, blood bubbling from his nostrils. “I don’t think so, Coach.”
“Should I call an ambulance?” I pulled my phone from my back pocket. “I mean, we should call an ambulance, right?” I looked at Clarence. His hands were clasped over his face, blood leaking through his fingers. Embarrassingly, I felt myself starting to tear.
Larry grunted, though whether it was in agreement or because of some phlegm stuck in his throat I wasn’t sure, and then he squinted at me. “Are you crying?”
“No.” It came out more indignant than I intended.
Over his clasped hands, Clarence’s eyes were wide and desperate.
“Well, go on,” Larry said.
I dialed with shaky hands. Soon enough, Clarence Howell and I were sitting in an ambulance, on our way to Greenwich Hospital.
We sat in silence side by side, me looking out the window, Clarence holding a thick cloth towel up to his gushing face. In this close proximity, I could smell the sweat that had dried on his skin, salty and endearing. It was my first time alone with one of the students, my first time deliberating how I was supposed to talk to them. It felt silly to ask where he was from and how he liked school with blood gushing from his face. Every once in a while he snuffled, adjusting the towel. It was not a time for small talk, I decided. We were on a mission. I used this logic to justify my disinclination to speak.
Clarence surprised me by speaking first.
“It’s probably for the best anyways.”
I turned to look at him. “Sorry?”
He lowered the towel, his mouth sticky with dried red blood. “I said, it’s probably for the best anyways. You know”—he gestured to his nose—“this.”
“Why do you say that?”
“C’mon, Imo—er, Coach Imogene.”
“Imogene is fine.”
“Okay. Imogene. You can tell that the other boys don’t really like me, right?”
It was obvious to me then the way it hadn’t been before—the way the back of his neck was always scruffy and unshaven, the way he was afraid to look anyone in the eye, his dirty shoelaces and his cheap nylon shorts and the haggard backpack he carried around with a pencil sticking through the hole in the bottom. There was a reason the other boys didn’t like him, and it wasn’t because his breath smelled like tuna fish and he sometimes got distracted during practice by a leaf floating through the air or the tweet of a bird.
He didn’t come from their world.
“Well, do you like playing lacrosse?”
Clarence nodded and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
“Then you shouldn’t worry about what those other guys think. You should just enjoy it.”
He squinted at me, considering. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Really?”
“Why? How old did you think I was?”
“I dunno . . .”
“C’mon, how old? Twenty-five? Thirty?” I shoved his knee. Something about the touch felt unnatural, flirtatious even, and I quickly drew back my hand. No touching the students in any way.
His eyes flickered, and red blossomed up his neck. “My age.”
“But why would—”
“You just—the way you let Duggar boss you around on the bus . . .” He looked down at his shoes.
“Do you all think that?” My tone, again, was unexpectedly indignant, unrecognizable.
“Sorry,” he told his shoes.
“It’s okay.” I felt my anger release; it wasn’t him I was angry at, after all. “I don’t exactly fit in here either, you know. This whole world, it’s new to me.” I hesitated. “So maybe . . . maybe we can sort of figure it out together.” I wasn’t sure what I was offering him, only that I felt the need to offer him something. I felt strangely responsible—not because I had denied him a new backpack and a trust fund and the easy confidence that comes with money—but because, knowing he’d been denied those things, I could no longer regard him without pity. Even I, the lowly teaching apprentice, had used him unthinkingly as a scapegoat for my frustration; I couldn’t imagine how the other boys used him.
Clarence looked up at me. “Like friends?”
I felt a little sick suddenly, as though I’d been caught in a lie. “Yeah. Sure.”
“You’re nice, Imogene.” He said this mechanically, without surprise, as factual as his being on scholarship. Imogene Abney: Nice.
“You’re nice, too, Clarence.”
He grinned widely, and then put his hand to his nose. “Ow.” But he kept looking at me.
The ambulance stopped; we had arrived at the hospital. An EMT came around and opened the back door. Clarence stood. He turned and looked back at me with a hangdog smile. “Come with me?”
I imagined us sitting together in the waiting room, perhaps for hours. I was already feeling regretful about offering my friendship—what else might I thoughtlessly promise him in that time? “I need to get back to campus,” I said. “I’m sorry.” Clarence looked as though he might cry. The EMT called me a cab. As I rode back to Vandenberg, I wondered how it was that, being around a bunch of high school boys, I felt younger than ever.
_ _ _
Chapin spent most of her nights out. I’d never joined her—of course, I’d never been asked to—but I desperately wanted to know where she went. Sometimes she brought guys back; I would hear her headboard beat steadily again the wall, her breathless screeching—“Oh, god! Oh, Christ!” When I’d pass by her open bedroom door the next day, she’d