Chapter 1
David,ā my mother said, āweāre here.ā
I sat up straight as we passed through the main gate of Harvard Yard in a caravan of unassuming vehicles, rooftops glaring under the noonday sun. Police officers conducted the stammering traffic along the designated route. Freshmen and parents lugged suitcases and boxes heaped with bedding, posing for photos before the redbrick dormitories with the shameless glee of tourists. A pair of lanky boys sailed a Frisbee over the late-summer grass in lazy, slanted parabolas. Amid welcome signs from the administration, student banners interjected END ECONOMIC INEQUALITY, SILENCE IS VIOLENCE, and YALE = SAFETY SCHOOL.
A timpani concerto pounded in my chest as we made landfall upon the hallowed ground that had been locked in my sights for years. Weād arrived. Iād arrived.
āFor the tuition weāre paying,ā my father said, carefully reversing into a spot, āyouād think they could give us more than twenty minutes to park.ā
My parents climbed out of the car and circled around to the popped trunk. After tugging in vain at my door handle, I tapped on the window. āWhereād he go?ā I could hear my mother ask.
āIn here,ā I shouted, knocking louder.
āSorry, thought you got out,ā my father said following my liberation. I checked in under a white tent teeming with my new classmates and received my room key and a bulky orientation packet. As we approached Matthews Hall, a girl emerged from the building. Seeing our hands were full, she paused to hold the door. I stepped inside and my orientation packet slid off the top of the box in my arms.
āThanks,ā I said when she stooped down to get it.
āYou wouldāve been completely disoriented,ā said the girl, smiling, her nose streaked with contrails of unabsorbed sunscreen.
āShe seems nice,ā my mother said encouragingly as we shuffled upstairs to the fourth floor. The doors were marked with signs listing the occupants and their hometowns, stamped with Harvardās Veritas shield. Beneath these were rosters of previous inhabitants, surname first. My roomās read like an evolutionary time line of American democracy, beginning with a procession of gilded Boston Brahmins, gradually incorporating a few Catholics, then Goldbergs and Jacksons and Yangs and Guptas, and, in the 1970s, Karens and Marys and Patricias. My mother was impressed to discover an NPR correspondent on the list (Iād never heard of her). In fifty years, I thought, Iād humbly recall this moment in career-retrospective interviews, insisting that never in my wildest dreams did I imagine my name would someday be the one people noticed.
For the time being, though, I knew it didnāt quite emblazon itself across the heavens like a verbal comet. David: blandly all-purpose, a three-pack of white cotton undershirts (CREWNECK, MEDIUM); Alan, an ulcerous accountant in Westchester circa 1957; then Federman, long a sound for the first vowel, an entity who is hardly here, or maybe he just leftā Wait, who were we talking about, again? It was as if my parents, upon filling out my birth certificate, couldnāt be bothered. Tap is fine, they always told waiters.
But now my ID card read David Alan Federman, Harvard Student.
My roommate, Steven Zenger, had yet to arrive. I claimed the front room, envisioning it would lead to impromptu visitors, a Ārevolving door of campus characters popping in, lounging on my bed, gossiping late into the night.
My parents took my student card and fetched the remaining stuff as I unpacked. After setting down the final box, my lawyer father checked his watch. āThirteen minutes,ā he announced, pleased with himself.
āSeven minutes to spare,ā my mother, also a lawyer, chimed in.
Through the door the hallway hummed with the chatter of other families.
āWell,ā said my mother, surveying the room. āThis is exciting. I wish I were starting college again. All the interesting courses and people.ā
āAnd I bet youāll be beating the girls off with a stick,ā my father added. āThere are a lot of late bloomers here.ā
My mother scowled. āWhy would you say something like that?ā
āIām just saying heāll find his tribe.ā He turned to me. āYouāll have a great time here,ā he said with the hollow brightness of an appliance manual congratulating you on your purchase.
āJust be yourself,ā my mother advised. āYou canāt go wrong being yourself.ā
āYep.ā Sensing more imperatives and prophecies, I opened the door to let them out.
āJust one little thing, David,ā she said, raising a finger. āSometimes when you talk, you do this thing where you swallow your words. I did it when I was younger, too. I think it comes from a place of feeling like what you say doesnāt matter. But itās not true. People want to hear what you have to say. So try to enunciate.ā
I nodded.
āIt helped me before I spoke to think of the word ācrisp,ā ā she said. āJust that word: crisp.ā
After our own swift hug, my mother prodded my father into initiating an avuncular, back-patting clinch. They seem comfortable enough with my sisters, but for as long as I can remember, my parents have acted slightly unnatural around me, radiating the impression of Good Samaritan neighbors who dutifully assumed guardianship following the death of my biological parents in a plane crash.
The door swung shut with a muted click. My bereft mattress and bookcase and motionless rocking chair stared at me like listless zoo animals. It was hard to picture people gathering here for fun, but a minute later someone knocked.
It was my mother.
āYour ID.ā She held out my student card. āItās very importantāyou canāt open the door without it. Donāt forget it again.ā
āI didnāt,ā I said. āYou guys did.ā
I resumed unpacking, yanking the price tags off a few items. Earlier that week my mother had dragged me to the mall, where Iād decided to adhere, for now, to my usual sartorial neutrality of innocuous colors and materials. It would serve me these first few weeks to look as benign as possible, the type of person who could be friends with everyone.
I was standing inside my closet, hanging shirts, when the door flew open and my roommate bounded into the room, his equally enthusiastic parents in tow.
āDavid!ā he said. āAlmost didnāt see you. Steven.ā He walked over with his arm puppetishly bobbing for me to shake.
āIf I look different from my Facebook photo, itās because I got braces again last week,ā he said. āBut just for six months. Or five and three-quarters now.ā
All hopes I had of a roommate who would help upgrade me to a higher social stratum snagged on the gleaming barnacles of Stevenās orthodontia. He would have fit right in at my cafeteria table at Garret Hobart High (named for New Jerseyās only vice president), where I sat with a miscellaneous coalition of pariahs who had banded together less out of camaraderie than survival instinct. We were studious but not collectively brilliant enough to be nerds, nor sufficiently specialized to be geeks. We might have formed, in aggregate, one thin mustache and a downy archipelago of facial hair. We joked about sex with the vulgar fixation of virgins. We rarely associated outside of school and sheepishly nodded when passing in the halls, aware that each of us somehow reduced the standing of the otherāthat as a whole we were lesser than the sum of our parts.
While Stevenās mother fussed over his roomās dĆ©cor, his father uncorked a geysering champagne bottle of hokey puns and jokes. āMatthewsā became āmath-use,ā so now āstudents can finally find out how learning math will help them later in life!ā When his son remarked that the Internet in the dorms was free, Mr. Zenger chortled uncontrollably. āFree!ā he roared, clapping his hands. āI didnāt notice that when I wrote them a check last month! What a bargain! Free Internet!ā
After a prolonged, maternally teary farewellāMrs. Zenger smothered even me in her arms and assured me I was about to have the best year of my lifeāSteven invited me into his room. Nestled into a bean bag chair, he linked his hands behind his head, his Ācollared shirtās elbow-length sleeves encircling Āhangman-figure arms.
āThereās no lock on my door,ā he said. āSo feel free to come in whenever you feel like hanging out.ā
āOkay,ā I said, lingering at the threshold.
āSo what are you majoring in?ā he asked. āI mean concentrating in,ā he threw in conspiratorially, now that we were in on the secret handshake of Harvard parlance.
āWe donāt have to declare until sophomore year, right?ā
āYeah, but I already know Iām going to...