If I Forget You Read online

  Margot, 1991

  There was never a question that Margot would go anywhere but Bannister. Her father went to Bannister and her mother went to Bannister. Her sister, Katherine, graduated a year before Margot arrives. Their parents met there. Her father is on the board. The field house that opened a few years before has his name on it: The Thomas W. Fuller Field House.

  Her whole life, it seems, her parents took her to Bannister every fall for at least reunion, and with Cricket also choosing Bannister, Margot arrives on campus with a familiarity that most students do not have. There is a logical order to life that has been laid out for her, though Margot, unlike her sister, has chosen to question it every step of the way. She pushes against the strictures laid out for her. She tries to find the invisible walls that a girl of her station in life is not expected to walk into and she runs through them.

  Some of it is just youthful acting out, the predictable behavior of a spirited girl who is the daughter of wealthy parents. At Stoneleigh-Burnham, a small school in western Massachusetts where all the girls boarded their own horses, she was expelled as a sophomore for literally letting the horses out of the barn during commencement, all those beautiful majestic Thoroughbreds, many of them more costly than four years of tuition, wandering around confused and startling the parents and grandparents of the graduates on a sunny day on the green.

  A year later, she was sent home from a Swiss school for accepting in the mail a package of marijuana from a friend she knew from the Vineyard. Her parents sent her to an outdoor leadership program for wayward girls in Wyoming, half horse camp and half boot camp, and Margot got caught in the tent of a male instructor. He was fired and she was sent home three days in.

  Once, the summer before college, her parents flew to New York for a dinner. Margot had the Jones boys over, as they were known, two brothers from her summer circle who both went to Deerfield during the year. With the house to themselves, they got into the liquor cabinet and into the fridge, and a few beers and a joint led to shots of tequila. Neither of the Jones boys really interested her—they were both handsome, although short—but Margot was drawn to their energy, their recklessness, and she was at an age when these things fueled her, the fierce intensity of now.

  They were outside, behind the house, looking past the wild-crafted landscape to the open ocean. The sun was still summer-high in the sky, though the evening was coming on. The night was warm and there was little wind. Twenty feet off the beach was one of her father’s prize toys, his Boston Whaler, which could sleep four.

  “Dude,” one of the Jones boys said, “that is such a sweet boat.”

  And as such things happen, that small germ quickly grew into a full-blown idea. There was a party the Jones boys knew about over on Nantucket, a bonfire out on the point of Madaket Beach, some thirty miles away, but that fast bitch, as one of the boys said, could get them there in about an hour.

  “You know how to drive that thing?” Margot asked.

  “Fuck yeah,” the older of the two Jones boys said. “In my sleep.”

  And here was the beauty: the rippling blue-green ocean; the bright, warm sun; the big white boat cutting through the chop like a knife through warm butter, and the entire island becoming clearer behind them as it receded; Margot, sitting in the bow and pulling her cardigan around her against the wind while she looked back and saw the high bluffs of Aquinnah rising up like great sand castles to the sky.

  At one point, the younger of the Jones boys, lighting another joint and bringing it around, first to Margot and then to his brother behind the wheel, said, “Dude, make sure you don’t miss Nantucket, or we’re heading all the way to Portugal.”

  The three of them laughed heartily at this, and Margot, high from the tequila and the grass, began to think that sounded pretty damn good, just pointing east and going and going until they ended up in another country. For a brief second, she entertained the idea of her parents’ reaction when they saw the boat gone and it didn’t return. There was something delicious in the idea of her father’s anger, her mother’s harsh disappointment, her sister, always so judgmental, saying “I told you so.” But of course this was madness, as the boat had enough gas to get them to Nantucket and back certainly, but not much beyond.

  And this, the inviting of trouble, suddenly nagged at Margot, a pin piercing the balloon of her good time, and she shouted to the Jones boys above the waves, “We can’t stay long, you know. We have to be back before my mom and dad. Way before midnight.”

  “It’s cool,” the younger Jones said. “We’ll make it work.”

  Out on the water, the sun was going down and the ocean was brilliant and the boat was fast as it steamed across the sound, Nantucket Island visible now, a hunk of brown in the early-evening light against the starboard horizon. To the right, a ferry chugged slowly toward the mainland, and out and about small fishing boats sat still as toys in the distance.

  Soon they were approaching the island, and as it came into view, the younger Jones broke out the tequila again and they each did a shot, this time straight from the bottle. The boat slowed now and they followed the curve of the island from offshore, and they cheered when they saw Madaket and the fire they’d come for. It was suddenly dusk, grayish air where it used to be clear, and the younger said, “Dude, you know where the shoals are, right?”

  “Yeah, man, I got this,” his brother said, and a moment later, as if on cue, there was a sickening sound, like metal being sawed through, and then the whole boat lurched suddenly forward and Margot instinctively grasped the railing to stop herself from going over.

  “What the hell, Jones?” she yelled, and now the sound they heard was at once overwhelming and wrenching and she wanted to cover her ears, but she was afraid to let go of the railing. Then another sound followed it, surprisingly congruent, a symphony that had suddenly reached its bridge, and now there was the sound of roaring water, as if somewhere below a thunderstorm had struck, a downpour falling off the side of a house invisible to her.

  “Oh fuck,” one of the Jones brothers said, and she didn’t know which one and it didn’t matter, for she had been at sea enough to know what this meant. The boat came to a complete halt and started, ever so slightly, to list to the left.

  The engine was off and the three of them were looking over the side. In the growing dark, the shoal was clearly visible and the jagged rocks were right below the surface. Margot was too afraid to cry yet, but she knew the boat was sinking.

  “What do we do?” she yelled. “What the fuck do we do?”

  “We swim,” said the older Jones.

  Margot looked to the beach, maybe a quarter mile away. This was the craziest thing that had ever happened to her—her father’s boat, which cost more than most houses, pierced in the hull and about to sink into the ocean off the coast of Nantucket. She had been in trouble before, but never like this.

  They were young and fit and experienced swimmers from summer after summer on the island, so the swimming was the easy part. Swimming toward the beach shortly became like flying with the wind at their backs, pushing them in and in until they were walking with their soaking wet clothes in the high surf.

  Turning around, they saw the dark had now fully crept in, and with the boat’s running lights off now, it was if the Whaler had never been there, just the endless slap of the sea.

  At the beach, the party was full of kids who moved in their circles; some of them Margot knew and some she didn’t, but they were all kids from various boarding schools, versed in the same lingua franca. Once the incredulity died down, one of the boys who lived closest to the beach offered to give her a ride in his jeep back to his house so she could make the call she dreaded.

  It was a practiced call and one Margot had made before. It was not her father she called, or her mother, though by making this call, she was in effect calling both of them.

  Kiernan, her father’s assistant, answered on the second ring. His strong South African accent was unwavering even as she told him mos
t of the truth, skipping the tequila and the joints but otherwise keeping her account accurate. She knew that it was now out of her hands. And she also knew, from experience, that there was not much anyone could do to touch her.

  * * *

  In the end, as it is always does with the rich, propriety won out. Kiernan cleaned up the mess she’d made, as he was paid to, as he always cleaned up messes, she supposed. Discreet calls were made to the sheriff. No one wanted to make a fuss.

  The boat was retrieved, repaired, and eventually replaced with a new one her father wanted even more. The Jones boys were temporarily banned from her house, and she was told she wouldn’t be able to do all the things she usually did for the remainder of that summer, but after a week it was like it had never happened, with the exception of one conversation with her father a few weeks before she was set to depart for college.

  This was on the Vineyard in August. The day was gray, with leaden skies, and cool for the season, the wind roaring off the sound and causing the American flag flying above the patio to wrap tightly around the pole and shake in the breeze. Margot’s mother found her in her bedroom and told her that her father wanted to speak with her downstairs. Margot sighed but knew better than to protest: Her father, when he wasn’t leaving the management of her to others, didn’t ask for things, but expected them.

  Her father was on the glassed-in porch, sitting in a white wicker chair, his face in profile as she approached, staring out at the endless gray sea. He wore a white polo shirt, tan chinos, and Top-Siders without socks. He turned to Margot when she reached him and gave her a half smile and motioned to the chair across from him. Margot sat down.

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” her father said.

  “About?”

  “Bannister,” her father replied. “It’s coming right up.”

  “Two weeks,” Margot said.

  “Yes. I don’t think I have ever said this to you before, or not like this. Between you and your sister, you are the one who is more like me, you know. You take risks. You have that spirit. That energy that can be your greatest strength or your greatest weakness, depending on how you use it. But the similarities between you and me when it comes to Bannister end there. You know what I mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” Margot said.

  “Bannister wasn’t a continuation of this life for me,” her father said, using his hand now to sweep out around the room. “I didn’t come into it with all the advantages you have. I was going there to kill it and I wasn’t coming back. I decided I was going to hit the ground running on day one and never look over my shoulder. I knew what I wanted. For me, it was never about money. It was always about freedom.”

  Margot had heard this all before. How her grandfather had spent his life selling textiles to hotels and hotel chains, a job he was ill suited for, and one that was unceremoniously taken away from him on his fiftieth birthday. How hard it had been for him to find other work and how her own father, at the time, sixteen years old, had worked three jobs to try to help them keep their small ranch house in Poughkeepsie, New York, an effort that turned out to be in vain. How this life lesson had steeled him to become the man he would eventually be, et cetera, et cetera.

  “I have always given you everything you have wanted. And I have tolerated, some would say to a fault, the mistakes you have made. But Bannister is different. It is the place that showed me the path to my own freedom. I have a lot of influence there, as you know. But this is your chance. This isn’t high school anymore. You can’t flunk out and have it be okay because there is another school. If it doesn’t work out, your life will be very different, you know what I mean?”

  Margot shrugged as her father’s gaze lowered to her own eyes. “I think so,” she said, just wanting this talk to end.

  “Do you?” her father said. “Let me be clear. If it doesn’t work there, if you make the wrong choices, your life will not be easy. You will have to find a way to support yourself. Some shitty job that means getting up really early in the morning. I know you think I won’t do it, but I will. Do you understand now?”

  Margot looked at her father. “I get it,” she said.

  His face softened. “Okay,” he said. “It’s going to be the time of your life. I would give anything to be there again.”

  Her father looked away from her then, back out to the sea and the leaden clouds. Margot rose to her feet, knowing she was dismissed.

  * * *

  And so Margot arrives at Bannister with her father’s words echoing in the back of her mind. And for the first time, something clicks for her, and perhaps it is as simple as the fact that Bannister sits at the center of the many different concentric circles she already knows. She knows other freshmen from Vineyard summers. She knows others from boarding school, and still others from boarding schools that friends attended. Some she recognizes from New York. They are all no more than one degree of separation, it seems, and for a time, Margot moves with ease through that first year, surprising even herself by staying out of trouble, and perhaps it is the culture itself that allows her to do this, less of a college that first year and more one great extended party, classes, for her, something one must endure to get to the real action, the nighttime.

  On campus, Margot is welcome everywhere, especially at the grand old fraternities that line the hill above the long, slender lake. Margot wraps herself in the social fabric of Bannister, rather than swim against it, and in phone calls home she can tell her parents are pleased with this, and for a time she does not care.

  Margot gets the coveted invite to all the fall formals, nights when she and Cricket dress like grown-ups, and within the incongruence of frat houses, where the smell of stale beer and ratty furniture stands in contrast to the young students in their cocktail clothes, they move sideways through the crowds, practicing for the life of New York socialites that is their fate.

  Margot finds a boyfriend—a sophomore named Danny, an attacker on the lacrosse team. He is a Theta Delta Chi, like her father was, and is square-jawed, stout, and fit, with a perfect head of curly hair. His nickname is “the Face,” the result of an episode in which, during a game of pickup lacrosse on the quad, he was smiling at girls sitting and watching nearby rather than paying attention and completely missed a pass intended for the basket of his stick. It instead caught him square in the eye and he began to yell, “My face! My face!” It is also a nod to his obvious handsomeness and is only slightly ironic.

  One night she arrives at Danny’s frat house. She often spends the night here, since he has his own room and Margot shares one with a girl from Sri Lanka who never seems to leave the room other than for classes and has made it clear in her own passive-aggressive way that Margot is not to have anyone else in her bed.

  As she comes through the main door, the familiar smell of beer and men hits her. She hears the sound of voices and the television in the large living room. A game is on. Margot comes into the room and a group of boys are on the couch watching football. Jeff, one of Danny’s friends, nods to her and says, “Danny is in the poolroom.”

  “Thanks,” Margot says. “Who’s winning?”

  “Giants, baby,” one guy says.

  Margot walks past them and into the large study, where the pool table is. It is dimly lit, and when she comes in, two figures are standing next to the pool table, Danny and a well-dressed man, tie askew, holding a pool cue in one hand, his other arm dangling around Danny’s shoulder, talking closely to him. Her father.

  It is a startling intrusion into her young life. Why is he here? How could he be here?

  Danny and her father look up at the same time. Margot takes in the glasses of scotch on the rim of the table, half empty, and the two of them smile at her as if this is an entirely normal occurrence.

  “Here she is,” her father says cheerfully.

  “Dad, what are you doing here?”

  “What does it look like?” her father says with a laugh. “Shooting some stick with my friend Danny here. Showing him
how it’s done.”

  Danny smiles that dimply smile. “Mr. Fuller refuses to let me win any games.”

  “Call me Tom, will you? Christ, we’re brothers.”

  Margot holds it together to ask her father if she can talk to him alone, outside. Her father gives Danny this goofy smile and says, “Uh-oh,” as if to say, I am in trouble now, and she hates him for it. She hates him for this whole thing, for tumbling into her life like this, at this moment when she is learning to fly and at a time when she has done exactly what he has asked.

  For his part, Danny just gives her a look and shrugs and then goes back to considering the pool table, the lay of the balls scattered across the felt.

  Outside, a waxing harvest moon casts a blanket of silver on the long lawn in front of the big brick house. In the half-light, she is struck again by how handsome her father is, his close-cropped gray hair and the line of his jaw and those feral pale eyes. All her life, Margot has heard this from her friends, how hot her father is, and she knows it is a big source of his power, what allows him to lead others the way he does, but also what allows him to bully his way through the world.

  They stand close together, huddled like lovers. It is another of her father’s techniques. He eliminates space to intimidate. Margot says again what she said inside. “What are you doing here?”

  “I had a meeting with the president. Decided to stop by the house. I don’t know what you’re so upset about.”

  Margot is afraid she is going to cry. She doesn’t want to. It is hard, this act of holding it all back, but the thing about fathers is that they have this ability to reduce one to an earlier state, to a time when a daughter first realizes her dad exists as a man in his own right, someone with a life that transcends her and her mother and the family. That there are lives he lives she knows nothing about. That he is capable of cruelty and people fear him.

  “Hey, hey,” her dad says. “Come on now.”

  Margot looks up at him and in the dark she bites her lip.