Page 8 of Endless Summer: Stories
The Tailgate
(Read withThe Matchmaker)
Dabney had no problem finding a ride to the game; everyone on campus owed her. Three weeks out, it looked like she would be driving to New Haven with two seniors from Owl, but she didn’t know how to announce this fact to Clendenin without making him uncomfortable. Though he tried to hide it, he clearly felt threatened every time Dabney mentioned another boy’s name. She and Albert Maku, for example, werejust friends,but Clen was jealous because Dabney, apparently, went “on and on” about how much she enjoyed Albert’s accent.
“I could never be romantically interested in Albert,” Dabney said with a laugh during one of their Tuesday-night phone calls.
“Why not?” Clen challenged. “Because he’sBlack?” Clen was studying journalism and was obsessed with probing issues.
“Because he’s Albert,” Dabney said. “You know Albert.”
“Yes,” Clen said. “I do know Albert.” His tone was accusatory, meant to emphasize the fact that Clen had traveled to Cambridge four times during their freshman year, had seen her dorm room and strolled her campus and met her friends, while Dabney had yet to visit New Haven even once.
There was a reason for that, one they left undiscussed.
But at the start of their sophomore year, Clen had announced that he would not set foot in Cambridge again until Dabney came to New Haven.
She had promised to come the third weekend of September and canceled, then promised again the long weekend in October and canceled, saying she had too much studying to do. Her father paid eighty dollars a month so she could park her car on campus. But every Friday afternoon when Dabney got behind the wheel of the Nova, it took her to Hyannis, where she caught the ferry home to Nantucket.
It was pathological; both Dabney and Clen knew this, but they did not speak of it. Or rather, they did not speak of itanymore.The topic was exhausted. What else could they possibly say? Dabney had been seeing a therapist since she was twelve years old, but aside from the fact that she had matriculated at Harvard, not much had changed since then. Harvard was a big step, and from this big step, Dabney felt, might be born smaller steps. Such as a trip to New Haven. But not yet.
November, however, presented a unique opportunity: the game. Clen had come north for the game the year before with a carful of his new friends from Morse, his residential college. It had been strange to see Clen among all those other… guys/boys/men—Dabney was never sure how to refer to males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two—piling out of the beat-up woody. Clen had been part of the group, right there in the scrum, although throughout high school he had been friendless except for Dabney.
She had felt oddly betrayed by his having these friends, by his new membership in a group, a place where he clearly belonged and fit in. The guys/boys/men were all tackling one another in Harvard Yard, holding each other in headlocks, calling one another raunchy names. Dabney had watched from the steps of Grays Hall, thinking,He’s become someone else.He had sounded the same in his letters and during their weekly phone calls from the dormitory pay phones. But in that moment, Dabney had seen that he was different.
After a while, he noticed her and trotted over. His bearing was more confident than she remembered, and he was growing a beard.
“Hey, Cupe,” he said. He kissed her deeply, theatrically, dipping her backward. The guys/boys/men whistled and hooted.
“So that’s her, Hughes?” one called out.
“Well, let’s hope so,” another said.
Dabney reached up to touch Clen’s face. “Beard?” she said.
“No,” he said defensively. “I just haven’t had a chance to shave. Deadline, deadline, deadline.”
Right—because, even as a freshman, Clen had secured a spot as a feature writer for theYale Daily News. He had been a superstar in high school—a “hundred-year genius,” their English teacher Mr. Kane had called him—and apparently his star shone just as brightly in New Haven. Dabney had been salutatorian to Clen’s valedictorian, although she had gotten into Harvard and Clen had not. But at Harvard, she found that her skills and intellect were average, nothing special. Her only standout talent was her matchmaking; she had already set up two couples in Grays Hall and had another potential match brewing. This hobby of hers was local legend back home and the source of Clen’s nickname for her: “Cupe,” short for Cupid.
The game, the game! It was the perfect opportunity for Dabney to visit New Haven.Everyonefrom Harvard was going. By the time the week of the game rolled around, Dabney was able to tell the guys from Owl that she had found another ride, one that would be far more palatable to Clen. She would drive to New Haven with her roommate, Mallory, and Mallory’s boyfriend, Jason, who was first line on the hockey team.
“Just like Oliver Barrett!” Dabney had swooned the morning after Mallory hooked up with Jason.
Mallory had looked at Dabney with the vacant expression that occasionally overcame her pale, pretty face. Once or twice a week, Mallory exhibited behavior that made Dabney question how she had gotten into Harvard. She was from Bozeman, Montana; that was, quite possibly, the answer.
“Oliver Barrett? FromLove Story?” Dabney prompted.
Mallory shrugged. She was tired and hungover; her impressive mane of permed hair was mussed from love gymnastics with Jason the hockey player. “Never seen it,” she said.
Dabney didn’t know why she felt surprised. She had found few of her classmates were versed in the classics. Like much of the student body, Mallory was more interested in Howard Jones andThe Breakfast Club.
Dabney later discovered, on a weekend when she gave Jason a ride to visit his sister at Tabor Academy, that Jason hailed from Ipswich, Massachusetts—just like Oliver Barrett!Dabney started calling Jason “Preppie.” Mallory didn’t like when Dabney used this nickname for her boyfriend, nor did she like it when Jason offered to take Dabney to the game. But, as Jason pointed out, he owed Dabney a ride.
Dabney thought that riding to the game with Mallory and Preppie would be fun. She would do it.
She would do it!
Every Monday afternoon, Dabney spoke on the phone for fifty minutes with her therapist, Dr. Donegal. These calls she took on a private line in the office for student life. Unlike Clen, Dr. Donegal never tired of discussing Dabney’s issue—a rare form of agoraphobia—or maybe he did, but it was his job. He couldn’t fix the problem—after eight years, they had learned it was something that couldn’t be fixed—but he helped Dabney manage it.
