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By Root 548 0

my roommate), Bill, Jerry, Rob, and I had been on the varsity baseball team since our sophomore year. Stephen, among us, was truly gifted, the one who would have gone to college on a baseball scholarship—a better college than he deserved, I might add, since he was only an average student, sliding through mostly on his dazzle and debating skills. As you can imagine, this was a constant source of tension between us, I being the plodder, the one who did all the reading, probably three or four days before it was due. But we were tight despite our academic differences. Stephen was unique, a guy who could see the bigger picture, who made us think. And, of course, we all wanted to be him. Handsome doesn’t really do him justice. The word is too static, I think. His face could come alive in an instant, and his smile was truly encompassing. You wanted to be standing somewhere within its perimeter. He had money, which not all of us did (Kidd wasn’t that kind of school). His father had made a fortune in the early years of telecommunications and had an enormous house in Wellesley. I believe it had seven bathrooms. His father had divorced and remarried a younger woman—Angelica, I think her name was. She was only ten years older than we were, which was always slightly disconcerting (I may have had a crush on her my freshman year). It was in Stephen’s father’s house that I had my first drink (decidedly not Stephen’s first), sneaking down one night during our junior year and unlocking his father’s liquor cabinet and together putting away nearly a fifth of Jack Daniel’s. Not sure I’ve ever been that sick since.

Bill and Jerry were roommates. You remember Bill from the two skiing trips with the kids. At school, Bill was quiet and unassuming, while Jerry was “in-your-face” long before we even knew what the term meant. He was a terrific sinker-ball pitcher, though, and if he could keep the ball down, the other team couldn’t get a hit out of the infield. When Jerry was at school, he was half a blowhard, half a genuinely inquisitive kid. I always hoped the genuinely inquisitive kid would win out, but I met him about five years ago in New York for lunch and was disappointed to see that not only had the blowhard won out but it had taken over like a virus. I’m not sure much has changed, since I just saw him pull up to the inn a few minutes ago in a stretch limo. I thought it was the bride- and groom-to-be until Jerry, with his long neck and gangly limbs (now cosseted in expensive tailoring), stepped out of the car. For all his braggadocio, though, he’s the smartest among us, and I look forward to seeing what he does to the mix tonight.

Rob, a tall, skinny kid, played right field, but probably shouldn’t have. We didn’t know it then, but he was headed for Juilliard on the strength of his virtuosity at the piano. I’m sure once he got in (it took him two or three tries after we graduated from Kidd), they told him he could never catch a ball again. I wonder now if he even follows the games. He was an insane Red Sox fan. It’s a miracle, really, that he didn’t jam a finger during his time at Kidd. It happens all the time.

The other three from our group at Kidd were girls (women now, obviously): Agnes, Bridget, and Nora. Of the three, I know Bridget the least. She was a year behind us—around because Bill was there. If Bill was quiet and unassuming, Bridget was mute, deaf to anything but Bill’s voice. They were the ur-couple, the pair you knew would stay faithful all through college and marry the day after graduation. I’m not sure what happened—well, I guess Jill happened, didn’t she?—but I remember being shocked when I heard Bill had married someone else.

Nora, I know fairly well. She was Stephen’s girlfriend and always in and out of the dorm when visits were permitted, or on the sidelines at the games. If Kidd had been the kind of school where one elected a prom king and queen (Kidd was so low-key, we didn’t even have a prom), they’d have been the pick. I think Nora must somewhere have a penchant for difficult, dysfunctional men, however. By the spring