I managed to talk to Mr. Levin, but listen: Dorian used to do it in class, for Christ’s sake. I came into world history one day, soon after he started the whole gag, to find that he’d written I’m so wet for you, Dorian—BK on the board. “Bodie!” he said. “Bodie, why would you do that? You know you could just slip a note in my backpack. I feel violated, Bodie.” When Mr. Dar arrived, Dorian said, “Mr. Dar, Bodie’s sexually harassing me. Look what she wrote.” His voice made it clear he was joking, so Mr. Dar chuckled, and the note stayed on the board most of class until he needed room for his notes on Suleiman the Magnificent. He turned to me, eraser in hand, and said, “Mind if we scrub your love letter, Miss Kane?” I can’t remember what I did—grimace and give a thumbs-up?—but I remember the writing remained visible, ghost words behind the history notes.
Mr. Levin confirmed that Granby’s admissions standards had risen. “The top kids were always bright,” he said. “Like you. But the bottom—there were kids who foundered.” It was kind of him to forget I’d nearly failed geometry, spent class typing notes into my TI-81 and passing it to Geoff Richler as if he needed to borrow my calculator, whereupon he’d delete my message, enter his own, hand it back.
If you don’t remember, Geoff was the kid who’d get up at colloquium and juggle oranges as he made announcements about yearbook, ignoring the catcalls. On the short side, with freckles and, by junior year, thick chin stubble he called “a gift from my Semitic and prehistoric forefathers.” His dad was significantly older than his mom （Geoff had stepsiblings old enough to be his parents）， and after they’d dropped Geoff off freshman year, they left New York for a retirement community in Boca Raton. Geoff seemed vaguely humiliated by the situation, even as he played up his stories of four p.m. social hours, bland barbecues with ancient neighbors. He’d caddy in the summer and write masterpiece letters to his Granby friends, cartoons in the margins.
Since Geoff was on my mind, I asked if Mr. Levin remembered him. I brought him up partly as an antidote to Dorian Culler, a reminder to myself that not every boy at Granby had been a jerk. “We struggled through geometry together,” I said, when really Geoff swung an A despite our note-passing, and grew up to be a noted economist.
Geoff essentially lived in the Granby darkroom. The nearest Rite Aid was in Kern, so Geoff processed film not only for the yearbook and the Sentinel but had a side hustle for kids who wanted personal shots developed. Even photography students had to sign up on the darkroom schedule, but Geoff finagled a key and unlimited use in exchange for maintenance. I’d find him there during free periods or after dinner. I’d perch on the table and we’d talk, red light illuminating our faces like campfire.
Mr. Levin said, “I remember every student. You’d think my brain would be full after thirty years, but no.”
“I don’t even remember last year’s students,” Fran said.
“Quiz him!” called one of the young teachers from the end of the table. “We should go get, like, the 1970 yearbook!”
Mr. Levin cleared his throat and asked exactly how old they thought he was. A ruckus, then, of laughter and teasing. Mr. Levin was born in 1962.
One woman at the table coached crew, and was thrilled to learn I’d rowed. “I wish you were here in warm weather!” she said. “We’d get you out with us!”
It was in that same dining hall that Karen King and Laura Tamman had stopped me with a survey, the first week of school. They asked how much I’d grown in the past year. “Not much,” I said, bewildered, and they seemed unduly pleased. They asked if I considered myself a leader or follower, if I was a morning person. Then Laura said, “You’d be perfect for crew.” I hadn’t arrived early for preseason—had signed up for PE instead, not understanding that PE was for hard-core smokers and kids with heart issues, that preseason was when everyone bonded and forged friend groups. I told them I’d never been in a boat and my arms weren’t strong. I didn’t add that crew seemed like something for girls named Ashley. I didn’t add that I was overweight （only a bit, but enormously so in my mind） and worried I’d tip the boat.
“No one has experience,” Karen said. “That’s the beauty.” She said I’d have a year to row novice, with and against girls who’d never rowed before. She explained it was about your core and legs. She got me out of PE that afternoon to try the erg, which turned out to be a rowing machine like the one in the Robesons’ basement. The crew girls were hilarious and tough, kids who made fun of the sports where you hopped around in a tiny skirt. Within the week, I found myself rising at dawn to ride the Dragon Wagon to the boathouse down at the wider, deeper part of the Tigerwhip, found myself holding my breath as I climbed into the boat with eight other girls, wondering how easily this thing could capsize, found myself rowing three seat and then, as they discovered I had rhythm, four seat.
Part of what I loved was the escape from campus. A boat was a place where no one could reach you, a place where some boy couldn’t slide into your path to make you a prop in his joke. Even when the boys rowed past us, all we’d do was holler or chant; we didn’t have to drop everything to watch them, which was the usual expectation. （Do you remember, for instance, the fake Woodstock that Marco Washington and Mike Stiles set up on the quad? They hauled couches from the dorms, used extension cords for guitars and stand mics. I joined the audience to listen to their terrible playing because it was the thing to do. Just as Open Dorm nights were for girls to feign interest in boys playing video games. Just as the only sporting events with full stands were for boys’ teams. At the time, what rankled was the idea that we were supposed to see these boys as the stars, to fall at their sweaty feet. What bothers me now is those boys internalizing girls as audience, there only to act as mirrors, to make their accomplishments realer.） But out on the boat, we were neither watchers nor watched; there was only the sound of water and of our cox’s voice calling for a power ten, only the muscle burn, only cold air on wet skin.
By spring I was signing up again, this time for sprint season, and then I was in it for life. Or at least till senior year, when I flaked out in every way—when I quietly dropped to 115 pounds, when I stopped going to calculus, when I smoked ten cigarettes a day and started mixing Tylenol and vodka. I got in the boat that first week of sprint season and couldn’t do it, quite literally couldn’t pull my weight. I dropped off the team, blamed it on senioritis. But in college I sometimes subbed in for practice, and in New York and LA I joined rowing clubs. When I think of Granby, I see the Tigerwhip and the Connecticut before I see campus itself. I see Robin Facer’s back, her braid swishing as she rows. I see us celebrating at Stotesbury for not embarrassing ourselves, pelting each other with M&M’s in the hotel hallway.
This current-day coach pointed out all the crew girls she could see in the dining hall. “There’s one,” she said, indicating a tall girl by the sandwich station. “There are three, those three together.”
I said, “I love them at first sight.”