All Loves Excelling by Josiah Bunting, III

• Read an Excerpt

Read an Excerpt

From Chapter 1:

Just before eleven, on a warm and feathery September morning, one of the Bahringer family vehicles arrived at the Alumni Gates of St. Matthew's School. Look at the sign, said. Joey Bahringer, who was driving. Look at it. WE COME AS BOYS WE LEAVE AS MEN, it proclaimed.

''Well, it used to be a school just for boys, said his daughter Amanda, more nervous now than she had been on the long drive from home.

But you know, her father declared, these places went co-ed much better than girls schools did. The thing is, a lot of nice girls will come here. But you can't get a good cross-section of boys to go to girls' school. You know what I mean? Look at that one kid over there. Big kid! There appeared, on Mrs. Bahringer's side of the Range Rover, a tow-headed boy, tall and muscular. He looked in on them. Welcome, he said, Welcome to St. Matthew's. What's your name? A silver nametape on his blazer identified him as Toby.

Tess Bahringer turned around and looked at her daughter, who stammered her reply: Amanda. Amanda Bahringer.

The boy looked at his clipboard. He looked up at the mother, then at Amanda. All right. Amanda Bahringer. Post Graduate—a PG. Morison Dormitory, Room #23, third building on the left. Good luck, O.K.? He withdrew, shuffling to the next car in line. Joey Bahringer eased the car forward. Tess and Amanda stared at the larger scene that now unfolded before them.

It was a bright tumult of purposeful activity, set in a large oblong quadrangle enclosed by eight three-story buildings and a Chapel, or some sort of assembly hall, at the far end. Within this broad space of grass, in luminous array, lay the pride of the automobile manufactory of three continents. Hundreds of cars were being unloaded. Smart gleaming Grand Cherokees and burnished Land Cruisers, bulbous Expeditions, wolfish silver Lexuses alongside chunky Suburbans and Tahoes large enough to hold the contents of a small house. There were gigantic Navigators, understated Saabs, Jaguars, Explorers, Audi A-6s and a single scarlet Durango, all with their doors and bays agape, disgorging the cargo of American adolescents: bright blankets, stacked luggage, wicker hampers, laptops, lacrosse sticks, skates, speakers large and powerful enough to electrify gymnasiums; dangling irons, bins full of notebooks, blow-dryers, wastebaskets with horses painted on them, NORTH FACE jackets...

Immediately in front of the Bahringers, getting out of their cars at the same time, two fathers talked into cell phones, one small enough to be concealed in the man's palm. Both fathers looked out over the dormitories at the hazy smudges of the Tuscaroras in the distance. One barked angrily into his phone, consulting a gigantic gold wristwatch. The other gesticulated suddenly, then clapped his phone shut and waved weakly at the Bahringers—who, he saw, had been looking at him.

Imagine if it rained opening day!

Imagine! What're you, a sadist? This is bad enough. Joey Bahringer had begun thinking about the labor of unloading and carrying and listening that lay before him, not to mention the long drive back to Long Island later, perhaps much later, that afternoon.

Can you make it down to Westchester by 6:30, you leave here by 3:00?

I don't know, Joey answered. We're out on the Island.

They got a program, too. We have to go to that.

Tess and Amanda were at the rear of the Range Rover, taking things out. Two boys, one of them Toby, helped.

My daughter's scared to death, Joey confided to the other father. Hi, Joey Bahringer.

Max Buck. Mine too. I don't care. She makes it into Princeton, Penn, this time next year, I'm easy with it. You like the Range Rover?

Yeah, I do. It's the Four Zero. A real mountain goat.

Sure is.

See you later, said Joey. We still got a lot of stuff to move.



Twenty-six grand a year, and they got her in a tiger cage. You see the room, Tess? Amanda's assigned room in Morison was a single, austere and meager in its furnishings. A fire ordinance on the inside of the door warned against hanging flammable materials on the walls; another, signed by a Student Council two years earlier, forbade any decoration of a racist, sexist, or otherwise demeaning character. There was a battered desk, and, tucked under it, a straight-backed chair. The bed was narrow, like a nun's, its mattress thin, lumpy, and stained. An odd mullioned window—odd because the window began at the floor and rose almost to the high ceiling of the room—offered a narrow view of athletic fields, and, beyond them, woodland and hazy grey skyline. The room smelled like pine disinfectant.

It struck Tess Bahringer as Spartan and purposive: appropriate to its place and function, perfectly suited to Amanda's need in her new venture. The Bahringers were enrolling their daughter at St. Matthew's to recoup a disappointing senior year at Lawrence High School.

Tess liked the room, approved of the narrow chamber stripped down to its essentials, unencumbered by any of the girlish clutter of Amanda's second-floor room at home. This was not all. The building itself was almost as old as St. Matthew's, founded in 1844. Generations of students had lived here, had sent their own children, indeed their grandchildren, to live and learn here. Tess sensed that simply living in such surroundings would do something more for Amanda then merely teaching her how to concentrate and helping to get her into Dartmouth College. It would confer some dim if inarticulable advantage, some membership, some network...well, Tess didn't know exactly what it was, but it was an opportunity that she had never had, and she and Joey did not intend to pay over large amounts for their daughter to live in circumstances of luxury.

They carried up the last of her things: a cello, a scale, her new computer and printer, a crate full of running shoes and athletic gear.

I'll get as aerobic as you are, I keep this up. Where you want the desk, baby?

Right where it is, Daddy, it's O.K. where it is.

I can put it in front of the window. This is some view.

Joey—Tess cut in—she'll concentrate better with the desk where it is.

There was a rattle at the door and a bustling sound out in the hallway. Max Buck, the father who had wondered how long it took to get to Westchester, appeared with his daughter Sumner and his wife.



We've got to get over to the Chapel. They have a welcoming address from the headmaster in five minutes.



From Chapter 31:

Sit down, dear.

Amanda did so, eyes down, obliging and silent. The quiet economy of the way she moved across the room, just short of prim, the way she sat, folding her hands in her lap, the grave and frank expectancy of her expression, all pleased Miss Rodman. Amanda was always self-possessed; she seemed well-bred. And yet—Miss Rodman had seen a thousand girls at St. Matthew's—this self-possession could be an artifact of effort and contrivance. Sometimes it seemed almost wooden. Was it the consequence of preparing for disappointments, years of family disciplining, of small acts of intimidation?

Amanda wore a dark tartan skirt whose hem was almost at her ankles, and a heather cardigan that might have been cashmere fifty years ago. She was surely a handsome child.

I have your mid-semester grades. Here.

She handed Amanda a narrow green form and waited for her reaction to it. They might have been doctor and patient, facing each other across a low table in the doctor's office and preparing to discuss a bleak medical diagnosis and possible courses of treatment. The document presented Amanda's weighted GPA. Her grades and grade point average: 3.352; 40th in a class of 106; and, under these, a single word, SATISFACTORY, next to a heading that said: Private Tuition—music (Piano).

You look sad, dear, are you? Been sleeping enough?

I don't know. I guess I am. I suppose I could have done better. Yes, I'm sad. And then she added—the words just broke free, escaped—What do you want me to say?

In your case you may say that you have worked with an application and discipline that are the envy of all Morison. No one who works as you do should feel anything but satisfaction. These are the habits that will sustain you for a lifetime. You seem tired, are you? We are a bit of a pressure cooker, aren't we, dear?

Yes, I'm tired. Amanda ran her thumbs up and down the form, as if trying to erase the grades and numbers.

Eating enough?

Amanda looked at the wall behind Miss Rodman. The plaster was cracked near the molding. A huge colored photograph of a toucan, a bright weird bird, strange for its setting like everything else in the apartment, hung from the wall.

Let us start with the bad, shall we? Always best to face the bad first, unflinchingly. If you start the day with a terrible hangover, the day gets better as you go along. See? So face it as a wise man should, and train for ill, and not for good. The ill first. A 'C' in Pre-college Algebra. He says you haven't a clue. He says failure is not likely, however, so that's something. You won't get an 'F' for the term if you continue to work. You can do that with certain maths—skate hard, just fast enough to keep from falling through the ice. Do you see what I mean? So. No 'F' if you work.

No 'F'if I work!

She had gotten to her, for the first time. Hadn't really meant to, but had. No. You remain quite safely in the C range, and never have to do maths after you leave St. Matthew's. In ten years you'll have people do that for you.

A 'C' will kill me at Dartmouth.

You don't know that. You don't know what they'll do. Their selections are quite unpredictable.

I know. Amanda was sure she knew. She never should have come here. All these kids her own age, twice as smart as she was, twice as fast, twice as good at something, twice as gifted. The School loved to lob the word around: gifted. And none of them, not even the Asian ones, worked any harder than she did. She had a sudden picture in her mind of Daniella, gliding through the woods, gliding as if sailing on ice; she thought of the boys who did the math answers in their heads and left hour tests after ten minutes.

Oh, you know, do you? Perhaps you're a clairvoyant. I pass to A.P. Latin. Beta-Plus, very creditable, and with smashing comments. He calls you determined and meticulous and he says—I quote—'The symmetrical precision of her handwriting is a treat in itself.' He says you are reliable and maniacally industrious. The world is run by such people. Your vaunted Housman was a meticulous classicist. No one approached him. Look at Lord Curzon.

Who?

Used to be Viceroy. Dr. Passmore loves him. I am going to smoke.

But Amanda barely heard her. All at once she felt herself drowning, overwhelmed in the thick hopelessness and cruelty of her fate. No matter how hard she ran or studied or played or swam, it was never enough. It was like a wall of water, a huge wave curling over you and swallowing you up.

Use this Kleenex. You are far too hard on yourself. Pull yourself together! Let me continue. U.S. History—A.P. An Alpha-Minus from our friend Mr. Steele. He gave only two 'A's and two 'A-Minuses.' Comment: 'I have always liked this girl. No hyperpole, careful preparations, comments always on point, as reliable as a Swiss clock.' Amanda, Amanda!—Miss Rodman reached across the coffee table and took one of the girl's hands in her own—That is rare praise from Mr. Steele. He's a tremendous judge of young people!

A.P. Biology. B-plus. The same comments. Here is one: 'No one works more systematically, more carefully in the lab.' And for the last, the best, a bright brave flag of alpha, a straight A from our dear Headmaster. He says you are an angel, and that if Housman wrote poems about girls instead of boys, you would have been what he was talking about. Want a sentence? 'I suspect this lovely girl will be a poet. Her understanding of Housman and Hopkins is intuitive and complete. She has a scholar's serenity. She radiates a quiet confidence...' You see what your headmaster thinks of you. That's worth every silly SAT score laid end-to-end from here to the moon.

Quiet confidence, Amanda thought.

Does that make you feel better?

No, it did not. The poetry course wasn't A.P. No one took it seriously at St. Matthew's or, probably, at Dartmouth....



...and so a 'C' and two 'B-pluses,' and an 'A-Minus' and an 'A.' If your most recent SATs lift you over 1300 then I should have thought Dartmouth would be quite do-able. Miss Rodman looked at the door to the study, and Amanda turned to see what she was looking at.

A healthy glowing girl, just shy of stout, her hair in a symmetrical, perfectly-prepared French braid, taffy blonde hair pulled back from her temples with such force that it seemed to make her eyes stretch farther from each other, looked at them brightly.

Ah, Sumner Buck, come in, come in. Amanda and I were just finishing up. I've good tidings for you, dear. Good-bye, Amanda. Courage, mon vieux. How are you, Sumner? Sit right over here. The phone rang. Let me take this, don't mind the smoke...

Closing the door, Amanda could make out two words, both Miss Rodman's: Princeton. Calculus. If she had taken Calculus, she would have failed even if she'd stayed up all night for a month. The ice could have been a foot thick, and still she'd have fallen through.



From Chapter 37:

At the end of the long Christmas vacation, well into bleak January, Tess returned her daughter to St. Matthew's. They drove up in the Range Rover, traversing a landscape that seemed featureless, almost polar, that swallowed them up as soon as they crossed the Hudson and turned north. The family vehicle, its British Army green usually polished to dazzling iridescence, now wore the battle-dress of a grim northeastern winter—streaky grime that told of long suburban drives, that marked the car as functional, not merely ornamental.

Mother and daughter fought. The pre-St. Matthew's daughter had been prim, obliging, and demure, and her mother almost prissy with displays of solicitude—perfect models of family grace and harmony. But no longer. When they walked together through the shiny mall concourses, fulfilling Christmas rituals of shopping, holiday lunch tete-a-tetes, visits to beauty salons, fixtures with friends, the daughter skittered ever-so-slightly away from her parent, like a leashed dog that cannot bear to be too close to its master. Mother's and daughter's eyes did not engage when they sat opposite each other in restaurants: Amanda's head constantly shifting to the menu, to the edge of the table, to the faces of other patrons being led to their tables, to her meager pile of bean sprout and penne.

On the trip north they slid hopelessly into little abraded disagreements about trivial things. The disagreements escalated with a speed and fury that stunned them both, rocketing forward in shouting, outraged insults, these followed by earnest re-arming silences: the two sides in truces collecting their wounded and contriving fresh forays, new tactics. And if the arguments were provoked by trifles, the fighting, re-ignited, was sustained by deep, vicious forays and counter-attacks aimed ultimately at breaking the very wills and souls of the combatants.

A-man-Da, Tess pronounced, as if shushing an exasperating child. A-Man-Da

You called me stupid! Call me anything, but don't call me that!

I'm sorry, darling. I am sorry. You are anything but stupid. We both know what your abilities are, and you're anything but that. Do you want to stop? We can stop in two or three miles. Did you read any of this during the break? Tess pointed to a book on the seat titled Roman Poets of the Silver Age.

Yes, let's stop.....



They resumed the drive.

What's the other paperback?

Poetry.

By?

Hopkins.

Oh, yeah, you told me. The Headmaster's seminar. And who's the other one he teaches?

A.E. Housman?

So how's that going?

It's not a 'how's it going' type of thing. That's not how a poetic sensibility operates...

Don't be crabby, Amanda. Don't be snotty with me.

O.K. On the first day of class, this girl, Testy, asks him why we should read it? And he goes, it will make your life fresh and sweet. You just won't run around making money? You know what I mean?

Don't obsess on this stuff, Amanda.

I'm reading Anne Sexton, too.

This time next year, we won't be on this interstate. We'll be on 1-93, whatever, the one going to Hanover, New Hampshire. Hold that thought.

Just below Albany they turned west for the last hour of the trip, the sun shining directly in their faces. The snow lay crusted, violent in its brightness.

Did you get your Colgate application mailed in? You could have done it on your computer, on Macapply or Collegelink.

I'm amazed you asked me that. You have one goal. I have one goal. It's in Hanover, New Hampshire.

All right! A bit self-consciously, Tess used her husband's athletic phrase: the Knicks won, all right! She reached over again, patting Amanda on the knee. When do you hear from all of them?

Around the end of March. April 1st. Hamilton a little earlier. Sometimes Mr. Arnett knows before then. He'll give you a hint if he wants to, but he's not supposed to. So I could find out about Dartmouth late in March. They mail the letter to the house, not the school. He wants me to add Emory to my list.

Where is that?

Atlanta, Georgia.

Atlanta?

What's wrong with that?

You just said it yourself—let's not lose sight of the object of the exercise. Your shot at Dartmouth is better than ever. Look what you've done with your SATs! You're in the mid-1300s

That's still low for them.

Your mid-terms were good. Maybe not great, but good, and improving. If a kid applied to my college with an A.P. Latin, I'd let her in.

It all depends on my finals.

When do they start?

January 29th. We're the only school that still has them after Christmas.

What's Mr. Arnett say? The academic piece is the main thing, right?

He doesn't say anything, really. He's very careful.

It's funny, I don't worry about it any more. I feel good about it. He can spin what you've got, he can package you just right for them.

Package me?

Are you feeling O.K.? Daddy said he heard you being sick at your stomach a couple of nights ago. That little bathroom, the way the house is laid out, you can hear everything. It sounded like you were throwing up. Do you have your medications? Did you get refills?

Something I ate.

You look a little thin.

Not that thin, I'm fine.

No, not that thin. You can stand on your head for two and a half weeks, Amanda. Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage in eleven days. We're doing a campaign for the Crane Writers' Memorial. So you can do what you have to do for a couple of weeks. There's no way you're going to get turned down if you do what you have to do. They all like you.

All but Mr. Carnes.

Forget him. He's a peasant. Here—take one of these zinc lozenges. Keep you from getting a cold. How was your visit with Dr. Mitchell?

O.K. I like him.

Meaning?

Everything's O.K.

He didn't give you anything?

Mother.

No. Tell me, Amanda. I'll call him myself when I get home.

Celexa. It's, like, Paxil. It's more of an all-purpose medication, they can use it for anti-anxiety, it's not that big a thing. It has a low side-effect profile. If you're stressed.

Tess looked straight ahead. They weren't far from the interstate turn-off. She understood that this was not a good time to get into the discussion that the new medication invited. It was not comfortable. She was more-or-less certain Amanda knew that she had been on Paxil and other things during her own troubles. It was just not something she felt comfortable pressing Amanda about.

There're times at school when I just need...

I understand, sweetie. You're no different from anyone else. My only advice is, minimum use consistent with need. And this is only short-term.

Daddy seemed fine. His work is going well.

Fine.... .





From Chapter 43:

.... Amanda, dear heart, are you all right? We're terribly concerned. The nurse called to say you'd be stopping by.

She told me to. She stood before Miss Rodman and the Headmaster, Dr. Passmore folded heavily into a corner of the sofa, the fire crackling directly in front of him, the dog Gretchen at his feet and the hallmaster at her desk. Seeing them stare at her, perhaps solicitously, though you could never truly tell what they were thinking, she brought her hands together, left hand clasping two fingers of her right. She said I should check in with you, you know? Hi, Dr. Passmore.

My dear.

She told me, here's a young lady who's simply worn down, trying to do too much. She said you were dehydrated, maybe.

That's right, maybe I am.

Well, your great admirer is as vexed about these things as I am.

It appeared that Miss Rodman had a drink, some kind of cocktail, on the desk in front of her. It was a clear tan liquid, and there was a cherry at the bottom.

I'm sorry you're vexed. Amanda imagined the word meant they were worried about her. I'll be O.K.

Forgive me, dear child, but how does one get dehydrated in January? Winter is icumen in, but one is merely baked in the central heat. Do you study hard enough to sweat, dear?

Oh, Carlisle.

No. Work out. Run.

Not outside, surely.

No, in Gibbon, in the Catamount Room. They have fifteen apparatus, including ten treadmills.

Passmore, for whom the word treadmill existed only as a metaphor for exhausting but pointless activity, nodded and beamed. Every time you gave him information new to him, he beamed. Mustn't overdo it, he managed. I should have thought you'd sail through the examinations. You already know more Hopkins than I do. She's a wizard, this child, Dorothea...

Golly, I'll say. Well, Amanda, you are plainly restored and your own best place right now is in #23 Morison, tucked up in your own room, your own bed, snug as a bug in a rug, sleeping for ten hours and then eating a big breakfast. No windmills to tilt at and no treadmills to run on. What made you go to the nurse in the first place?

My heart was like, fluttery?

And what'd she say?

Worn down and dehydrated?

Right, then, off you go, dear.