The Tailgate (2 page)

“Clen,” Dabney said. “What's wrong?”

“You're definitely coming this weekend, right? There's no chance you're going to cancel?”

Dabney would be lying if she said the thought hadn't crossed her mind a thousand times. She had lain in bed for over an hour the night before, panicking about the trip. Despite the carefully prepared picnic and the curated outfit, Dabney's overwhelming urge was to head back to Nantucket for the weekend, the way she always did. She sometimes thought of herself as a humpback whale. She could hold her breath for the four and a half days a week she spent in Cambridge, but eventually she would have to come up for oxygen. Nantucket Island was her oxygen. It was the only place she felt safe, healthy, whole. The weekends the year before when Clen had come to Cambridge had been torturous, despite his presence, simply because Dabney had to stay on campus instead of going home. Two of those weekends she had actually gotten sick, and Clen had spent hours at her bedside, reading and bringing her soup from the dining hall.

But now that Clen was expressing doubt, Dabney redoubled her fortitude. She would go to New Haven, no matter what.

“Yes,” she said. “I'm definitely coming. We're leaving at seven thirty in the morning. I'll be there by ten, just like I said.”

“Okay,” Clen said. “Because some things have come up.”

Kendall emitted a loud, exasperated sigh. Dabney turned around and forced a smile at Kendall, holding up a finger indicating she would just be
one more minute
. The hall clock said 3:53.

“Like what?”

“I have to cancel dinner at Mory's,” Clen said.

“Why?” Dabney said. She felt a sharp sting of disappointment, and not only because she wouldn't get to wear the fabulous borrowed black outfit or carry the debutante purse. Mory's was a legendary Yale supper club. Dabney had envisioned cold martinis and shrimp cocktail, and dancing to Sinatra between courses.

“Turns out, I'll be on deadline,” Clen said. “I have to go back to the paper right after the game.”

“You're
kidding
me,” Dabney said. “I thought we agreed I was staying over? What about the post-game party at Morse? Are we doing that?”

“We can go for a little while, I guess,” Clen said. “I don't know how long I'll be at the paper, though, Cupe. It might be late.”

“So you're telling me I'm on my own?” Dabney said. “You're leaving me after the game and you won't be back until late?”

“It's work,” Clen said. “I'm writing a big story.”

It's work, Dabney thought. He was writing a big story. It was a college newspaper—granted, the oldest newspaper in the country—but how big a story could it be? Dabney didn't want to be the kind of girlfriend who complained. Clen had wanted to be a journalist his whole life; it was a consuming passion, and wasn't that one of the things she loved about him the most? Nevertheless, a part of her wanted to scream:
Screw the deadline! I have finally mustered the courage to travel to New Haven and you should have CLEARED YOUR PLATE!
Clen knew Dabney would not do well with being
left alone
for…what? Seven hours? Ten hours?

She flashed back to her eight-year-old self at the Park Plaza Hotel.
Where's my mama?

Your father's on his way,
May, the Irish chambermaid, said. Then she sang to Dabney—“American Pie,” in a lilting accent.

Clen must have realized this news would be a deal-breaker, and that once he announced that he had to work, Dabney would cancel altogether.

He
wanted
her to cancel, she realized.

Kendall cleared her throat. The clock said 3:58.

“No problem!” Dabney said in a false, chipper voice. She would not let this flare up into a loud, messy, emotional brouhaha for Kendall and the other students on the floor to appreciate. “You do what you have to do. I'll see you tomorrow at ten at the east entrance, okay?”

“Okay,” Clen said. His voice still held a strain of uncertainty, she thought. What could this mean?

“Okay,” Dabney said. She paused, waiting for him to say it first.

“I love you, Cupe.”

“And I you,” Dabney said. “Bye-bye.”

She replaced the receiver at 4:00 on the nose. “It's all yours,” she said to Kendall.

Her small overnight bag contained her nightgown, toothbrush, clean underwear, and a pink oxford shirt for Sunday. Dabney had returned the black outfit to Solange with a heavy heart.

“I won't need it after all,” Dabney said. “We aren't going out.”

“Merde!” Solange said. “How come?”

Dabney shrugged. She was too dejected to explain.

Solange, realizing this, pulled the silver dollar out of her grandmother's cocktail purse and pressed it into Dabney's palm. “Take this though, okay? You can give it back to me on Monday.”

Dabney placed the chicken salad sandwiches and the rest of the picnic in her laundry basket with some strategically placed ice packs. She took one of the valiums Dr. Donegal had prescribed for emergencies. The silver dollar was deep in the front pocket of her jeans.

She was ready.

Jason had a sign in the window of his Camaro that said
Yale Bowl or Bust!
Mallory was already in the front seat working the radio when Dabney climbed in. Mallory was wearing a crimson Harvard hooded sweatshirt and she had woven crimson ribbons through her blond hair. There was a cooler of beer in the backseat, a fact that Dabney might have found alarming—for the past few years the most popular public service announcement had been DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE—but all around them, cars were similarly decorated and cans of Miller Lite were being waved out of windows, and strains of very loud Tears for Fears competed with even louder Spandau Ballet. It was a tornado of crimson red fun and Dabney was in the swirling middle of it. This was a novelty; in going home to Nantucket every weekend, Dabney had missed much of college party life. She occasionally went to a party at Owl or Porc on a Thursday night, but that usually meant a disjointed conversation with a couple of upperclassmen/guys/boys about whether Simone de Beauvoir was a genuine intellect, or just a slut. Dabney was always back in her room by midnight.

Now, Dabney let herself be swept away. She reached over the seat and grabbed a Budweiser from the cooler.

“Yale Bowl or bust!” she cried out.

“Whoa there, sister,” Mallory said. “Easy now.” She settled the radio on “The Boys of Summer,” which was a pretty good choice for Mallory.

Jason said, “I like seeing your wild side, Dab.” He grinned at her in the rearview mirror.

Mallory swatted Jason's arm. Dabney cracked open her beer and sucked off the foam. She hadn't eaten any breakfast; the only thing in her stomach was the valium. Jason pulled onto the Mass Pike.

“Better Be Good to Me,” Tina Turner.

“Material Girl,” Madonna.

“Change this, please,” Dabney said. “This song makes me ill.”

“Summer of '69,” Bryan Adams.

“California Girls,” David Lee Roth.

“He ruined a perfectly good song,” Dabney said.

“Agreed,” Jason said. “You know, I was thinking of writing my thesis on the phenomenon of the cover song—which artists enhanced the originals, which artists desecrated them, which artists equaled them. Do you think that's meaty enough?”

Like many athletes at Harvard, Jason was an American Studies major, which was another way of saying “anything goes.” But a thesis about
cover songs?

No, Dabney thought. However, her brain had been hijacked by the valium and the beer, and so the answer that came out of her mouth was, “Yes! That's so creative. It will definitely get approval.”

Mallory said, “I hate it when you guys talk over me.”

Dabney said, “Oops, sorry, you're right.” She sank low in the backseat, resting her legs over the cooler.

“Careless Whisper” by Wham!

Something was up with Clen, but Dabney couldn't figure it out. It wasn't as though she had expected a parade, but yes, she had expected a parade. She had expected dinner at Mory's, she had expected Clen to hold her arm proprietarily and introduce her to everyone he knew.

My girlfriend, Dabney Kimball.

She had not expected to be left to her own devices for seven or ten hours.

“What are you guys doing after the game?” Dabney asked.

“I figure, get drunk before the game, take a flask into the game, nap in the car, then go find the parties,” Jason said. “But we're leaving tomorrow morning at ten o'clock sharp. I have a paper to write on Mark Twain.”

“Ten o'clock sharp,” Dabney confirmed.

“You must be excited to see Clen,” Mallory said. “You guys go, like…months. I'm impressed by the level of trust.”

“Trust?” Dabney said.

“Me too,” Jason said. “I mean, you're both in college. Does he ever worry that you're going to cheat on him?”

“Cheat?” Dabney said.

“Do you, like, have an understanding?” Mallory asked.

Dabney wasn't sure how to answer this. Words like
trust
and
cheat
didn't really apply to Dabney and Clen. They were melded together; they were, essentially, the same person in two different bodies. It would never occur to Dabney to cheat, and she knew Clen felt the same way. They did have an understanding, which was that they were an unsplittable unit. After college, they would get married.

“Don't You Forget About Me” by Simple Minds.

Dabney finished her beer, crumpled the can, and closed her eyes.

She awoke as they pulled onto Yale's campus. As far as the eye could see, there was an ocean of blue and red.

“Wow,” she said. “Wow.”

People were everywhere. There were the current students, who came in one of the two palettes, and then there were older alumni—couples in their early thirties with kids in strollers and retrievers on leashes, middle-aged couples with sullen-looking teenagers, and older couples, the men wearing blazers and school ties, the women in wrap dresses and sensible shoes. There was no reason for Dabney's anxiety; what she was witnessing was continuity and tradition. The Harvard-Yale game had been played since 1879. Watching the alumni now was like watching different versions of herself and Clen—ten years from now, twenty years, forty years. They had already decided that, no matter what was happening in their lives, they would attend the Harvard-Yale game. Years the game was held in Cambridge, they would root for Harvard, and years it was held in New Haven, they would root for Yale. Presumably Yale would, in time, feel comfortable and familiar to Dabney. Safe. Not like now.

“East entrance,” Dabney said. “That's where I'm meeting him. Where is it? Do we know where it is?” She felt her angst mounting, straining against the muting effects of the valium like a bulging tummy against a girdle. She did not like new, unfamiliar places. They terrified her. The only person who halfway understood was her friend Albert Maku, who came from Plettenberg Bay, South Africa.

Were you afraid to come to Harvard?
Dabney asked him.

Yes, afraid, very afraid,
Albert said.
It's like setting foot on another planet, where no one is familiar and I do not know the rules.

Planet New Haven was overwhelming, even for sane people like Jason and Mallory.

“Jesus,” Jason said. “I'm just going to park here.”

“Is this near the east entrance?” Dabney said.

“I don't know,” Jason said. “But it's a parking lot and there are other Harvard cars here. This is where we're parking.”

Dabney squeezed her eyes shut and wished that she had taken a ride from the guys at Owl. Clark, who wore horn-rimmed glasses in a perfect imitation of Clark Kent, had promised to hand-deliver Dabney to Clendenin. Now, Dabney would have to find him on her own, while lugging her picnic-in-a-laundry-basket.

She climbed out of the car and smoothed the legs of her jeans, straightened her pearls, and took a deep breath. Clen was here. He was at the east entrance. All Dabney had to do was find it and she would be safe.

She looked down at her penny loafers. They were resting solidly on earth.

Jason and Mallory offered to walk with Dabney, which really meant that Jason offered. Mallory seemed put off by Jason's show of gallantry; in fact, she seemed downright jealous, huffing under her breath that she didn't see why they had to do this, Dabney had gotten into Harvard, she could find the east entrance herself. Jason forged ahead, undeterred. He was carrying the laundry basket, which got him a lot of attention.

“Hey, man, you looking for the Wash 'n' Dry?”

“No, man, it's a picnic,” Jason said. “Chicken salad, the best you ever tasted.”

“I don't know why you would say that,” Mallory snapped.

“It
was
really good,” Jason said. “I gave you a bite.” He offered Dabney a look of apology. “I ate one while you were asleep. I didn't want to stop at Burger King.”

“No problem, Preppie,” Dabney said.

They stopped and asked a young man in parachute pants for directions. He pointed them the right way

“Clen better be on time,” Mallory said. “Because I'm not waiting around.”

Dabney scanned the surrounds. So many people.

“Cupe!”

There he was, standing alone, wearing his brown corduroy jacket with the fake shearling collar. He'd owned that jacket forever.

Dabney ran to him.

She was safe. Clen was real and strong and warm; he had a body and eyes and a voice. He had shaved. He smelled like himself. He picked Dabney up off the ground and the days and weeks and months that she had pined for him evaporated. He was her oxygen. She could breathe.