Mother May I(63)

Lexie was real. Lexie was right there.

Trey went to the registrar’s to finagle a copy of Lexie’s schedule. To his chagrin he learned that the student intern already had a couple of copies printed out, and he was happy to slip one to Trey for five dollars. He was a dorky nobody, non-Greek, with no idea who Trey was.

He said, with a sly grin, “You’re the third guy who’s come by to get this, and that’s just today.”

Trey waited outside every one of her classes. She never showed, even though her scholarships depended on her grades. She didn’t show up in the dining hall for her shifts either. She hadn’t, a cashier told him, for more than a week. That floored him. He knew she had no other way to eat.

He finally found her by accident, very early one morning. He’d tamped down his drinking, and he was getting up early and running every day, ridding himself of his beer belly. The soft pooch in the single shot he’d seen was a tiny shame that stacked on top of his others like a cherry.

Lexie came scuttling out of her dorm building as he jogged past. She had a big black garbage bag slung over her shoulder. Already thin, she’d lost weight, moving from gamine to gaunt. Her eyes were dull, her skin was broken out, and her pale hair was janked back in a greasy pony.

“Lexie?” he called.

She turned, and when she saw his face, she froze, then shot him a look of such pure pain and hatred that it stopped him in his tracks.

“Leave me alone,” she said in a fierce, low voice.

“Lexie—” he started again, but she talked over him.

“One of those little-sister bitches you pal around with gave the pictures to the dean. I know it was a girl. He accidentally said ‘she.’”

He knew then she’d lost at least some of her scholarships. The morals clause. He felt a weird surge of chivalry. For a moment, he thought, I’ll get my parents to help her. Pay the gap in her tuition. They had the money. What would it mean to them? But then he imagined them seeing that same shot he’d seen. His mother surely knew that trio of freckles on his hip, from when he was little. He couldn’t stand the thought of his father’s disappointment or, worse, his mother understanding, even vaguely, why he owed Lexie Pine help. The words died in his throat.

She’d already turned away and started off, the bag jouncing against her back.

“Can I carry that at least?” he asked, jogging to catch her.

She stared at him, eyes widening in surprise, and then rage contorted her features. Furious tears rose in her eyes. She dashed them away one-handed, chest heaving with savage breaths as she worked to calm herself. When she finally got herself enough under control to speak, her eyes went blank and dull. She spoke in a fast monotone.

“Do you have any cash? I can’t go home. My mom . . . my mom will . . .” She flushed an ugly red. “I want to go stay with my cousin Angela in Memphis. I think she’s in Memphis. I need money for the bus.”

He pulled out everything he had in his wallet and passed it over without counting, his face as red as hers.

“Thanks,” she said, clipped and unironic, and then she turned and left him there.

He still wanted to carry her bag. Drive her to the bus station. Buy her a ticket on his Visa. But he could not make himself follow her.

He went home and started grunt-pumping beer, belly and reform be damned. At some point Spence found him, and when he caught Spence up on everything that had happened—Ansel, the pictures, Lexie’s exit—Spence started drinking, too, silent and sorry.

The whole day was lost inside a blackout drunk, but apparently at sunset Trey showed up at Maura’s sorority house with a ring he did not remember buying, holding up a boom box that was blasting Peter Gabriel. The next morning he was hungover and engaged.

He mostly felt relieved. His life was back on track. Maura had a path mapped out, tidy and morally upright. He’d stepped off it, and everything had gone weird and wrong.

Their law-school acceptances came in. For the most part, it was yes across the board. The one exception was that Trey and Maura got into Stanford and Spence didn’t.

Trey had a strong, immediate intuition that Stanford was the school for him. Period. He didn’t say Lexie Pine’s name as he made this decision. He didn’t even really think it. But perhaps he felt the ghost of her pushing him west. It was a prestigious choice, so Maura was an easy sell. She was thrilled he’d consider it after Spence got his no.

He worried Spence would fight him on it or be angry. He couldn’t let it get ugly. Spence was family, and they would one day work at the same firm. He framed Stanford as what Maura wanted, and Spence was surprisingly cool. Maybe he wanted a break from Trey, too. He’d felt something for Lexie, and he had failed her. Trey was part of that.

“I’ll miss you, cuz, but I get it. You have to follow the pussy,” he said. “I’m going to stay at UVA, I think. I’ll see you back at home.”

That was that. Trey and Maura got married after graduation and spent the summer roaming Europe, exactly as she’d wanted. He didn’t think about Lexie often, and when he did, the accompanying shame made him shove it away. He never considered what had become of her, or at least not realistically. He was young, and he had grown up wealthy; he didn’t have the context. In his head she’d faced the consequences he would have had to face. Embarrassment. An angry parent. A different, maybe less impressive school. He was not from a place where people got only one shot or were allowed only one mistake. In his world there were infinite chances.