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Chapter 10

William Carter Jr.

New York City, May 2015

William Carter Jr. had spent much of his life in meetings. There were always meetings on his calendar, color coordinated into blocks of hours, half hours, and tens of minutes. He hated looking at the crowded schedule, so he generally had one of his three assistants call out the time remaining during his meetings. It was an effective, wildly performative aspect of the job. This among many other quirks became one of his signatures, so that everyone around him would hear “hard stop in five” or “two minutes remaining” with regularity.

Even William tired of the callouts at times, but it was incredibly useful when it was time for him to do press because it helped him to gracefully exit potentially invasive lines of questioning. Limiting his time with journalists meant that he could only share so much. Today, he found himself locked in to a thirty-minute sit-down with a reporter from Vanity Fair . This very junior professional, whom William thought of as nothing more than a kid, was writing a feature on his seventieth birthday, his legacy as a Black billionaire, and what that meant. William had been as agreeable as he could stand to be for about nineteen minutes when the questions, in his opinion, took a turn.

“Your father worked at the school that you attended as a boy,” the reporter said. “What was that like?”

“Ah, yes, my father was the head groundskeeper at The Galston School. He did that job until he retired, for about forty years. I didn’t have the typical boarder experience or relationship, especially since I got to see him every day. He taught me a lot about hard work, about dedication and pursuing goals.” William finished this statement while adjusting the watch on his wrist. Today he was wearing a simple yellow-gold Patek Philippe with a navy-blue face, the warmth of the metal complementing his complexion. He did this intending for the reporter to see and put this detail in the story that he was writing because the constant communication of wealth was just as important as the words he was saying.

“And how did you find the racial dynamics at Galston to be at that time?” he followed up.

“It was the sixties,” he said, surprised by the question but remaining placid. “So it was tense in a lot of ways, but I actually found it to be navigable. I never felt stuck or held back. There were people who definitely had prejudicial opinions, but I think they respectfully kept their distance, and so did I. It did not have any bearing on the education I received,” he said.

With that, William’s third assistant made an appearance, knocking and then popping her head into the office. “Hard out in three, so last question,” she said to the journalist.

William gave the reporter a closed-mouth smile. “Have everything?” he asked.

“Just one more thing,” the reporter said, sliding his recording device closer to William. “You established the Carter Foundation Scholarship to help provide educational opportunities to young Black students who might not get them. Why was that an important thing for you to do?”

William cleared his throat. He knew there were many ways that he could answer this question. He went with the first thing that came to mind. “You know, some of the schools that I attended showed me that there was a whole world that I’d never even known existed, and in that world, people were making connections, solidifying their futures. But if you never get the opportunity to be in that world, your future is pretty certain. For me, it’s about opening up possibilities. You never know who you’re going to meet at school. It could be someone who could change your life.”

The third assistant knocked twice on the door, and William rose to his feet and extended his hand. The reporter gathered his things and thanked him for his time before departing.

William was aware that there was going to be another meeting in a few minutes. There was always another meeting, but he stepped outside on the expansive terrace attached to his office to light a cigarette. He thought about his time at Galston, and though he told a version of what he wanted that reporter to know, most of it was actually true.

About a year after William Carter Jr. started at Galston, his father fulfilled a lifelong pursuit of his and became a homeowner. The new Carter house sat in the middle of a street peppered with multifamily units and a few simply designed properties, but it became a home that William Jr. barely knew. After he became a boarder, he spent only a single summer back in Roxbury, and while he studied hard and received top marks in his classes, his father’s good fortune had set him on a divergent path. William Sr. thought that he’d gotten everything that he wanted, while William Jr. began to see everything that he lacked.

In late August 1958, he arrived on campus with his parents and a single duffel bag clutched in his damp right palm bearing all his worldly possessions. He watched the buzzing of move-in day with rapt attention. William had never seen so much green. He’d also never seen so many white boys. He found himself staring at how they dragged their trunks and luggage and books with so much self-assuredness and confidence, all seeming to know exactly where they were going. His parents had tried their best to prepare him for what his new school would look like. They’d begun a series of discussions with him leading up to his departure that detailed the other students that he should expect to meet and the ways that he had to behave. They informed him that a survey would be issued to the other Galston boys in his year asking if they would accept having a Negro roommate, and that some people would select No . They said that he should try to make friends but be cautious, that rules would be different for him, and that it was imperative that he remain out of trouble for the next few years he’d be living on campus. His parents also said that this was an Episcopal school, and that religious expression might be a little bit different from the Baptist church he was used to, but it was all the same God.

William Jr. received his dorm assignment, and the Carter family was greeted and directed by a friendly redheaded upperclassman, who led them into a brick building and up two flights of stairs to room 468. William was relieved to see his roommate was a tall Black boy with a teeny-weeny Afro and some faint facial hair breaking through his acne-riddled skin. The boy smiled big and easy and extended his hand to William.

“I’m Russell. Russell Johnson,” the boy said.

“William Carter,” William Jr. replied as the air became just a little easier to breathe.

“Well, I guess no one wanted to room with us since we’re together,” Russell deduced with a careless shrug. William’s parents introduced themselves to Russell and asked about his family. Russell explained that he’d traveled here alone. He was from Newark, New Jersey, and his family didn’t have a car to make the trip. He was recruited by Galston to play football, which he was excited to do. Russell asked if William Jr. played a sport as well, to which William shook his head no and Russell cocked his head confused.

“I work here,” William Sr. said to close the loop on the mystery. Four pairs of brown eyes met to communicate the unspoken: We know we’re not welcome here, so there has to be a reason for an invitation.

“I think there’re at least five of us here, new, anyway,” Russell said. “There’s another Black guy on the football team—we’ve already been here two weeks for preseason—and there’s two more I’ve just seen today.”

In their future “real world,” William Carter Jr. and Russell Johnson would have such dissimilar interests and personalities that it was practically a conspiracy from the cosmos that they’d lived together for a time. Russell was charming, cool, good looking, and athletically talented. He could and would regularly “wing it,” allowing his instincts and intuition to guide him along when interacting with others. William was introverted, bookish, and self-conscious about his size and stature. William thought about things very far in the future. He liked preparation and only trusted himself once he’d mastered a skill that he studied and practiced. Anywhere else in the world, they might have been too different to get along. But at Galston, they became highly dependent on one another.

William Jr. was changed in many ways by Galston, and while he noticed that sometimes Russell would roll his eyes at the overly ceremonial culture, William liked it. Within a few weeks of his enrollment, he began to crave structure and formality all the time. He liked the dress code, the rules, the expectations. The more his teachers encouraged him, the more he acted in ways he thought would impress them. He wanted very desperately to be somebody, to command respect—and maybe a little bit of fear. He wanted to be treated the opposite of how he saw his father treated by his classmates as the help, someone meant to serve them, and that became another issue entirely. This he couldn’t say to anyone, which was why, after he’d amassed a significant fortune, he became famous for paying people in typically low-wage jobs triple the standard. This, like many things William Jr. would do, was motivated by guilt.

Though it was impractical for him to distance himself from his father, always on campus and with his same exact name (not to mention complexion), he still had to try. Everything was made just a bit weirder by the fact that his dad worked for his friends. He cringed when they would be doing laps in PE around the fields as his dad was happily mowing or painting lines on. His father would also know far more about his child’s life than any other Galston parent simply because he was present. William Sr. often knew about assignments, grades, or interpersonal drama among students before William Jr. did. Any attempt to minimize their connection was quite futile, so William tried his best to remain indoors and away from the grounds.

The memories of his father and boarding school were drowning him now that they had just been brought up. Part of the motivation for never addressing his past was that he would never have to think about it.

By the time he was ready to return inside, he’d smoked two cigarettes. Back in the office, he reached for the cologne that he stored in his top-right desk drawer, a custom blend made for him in Florence, and sprayed himself. He also placed three mints in his mouth and breathed in as they dissolved into tiny grains on his tongue.

His next meeting was with his head of security, who wasted no time in telling him that someone was attempting to access information that he was less than forthcoming about.

“Was it that kid?” William asked, referring to the twentysomething Vanity Fair reporter who’d left not twenty minutes before.

“That guy? Definitely not. If anything, he’s a fan. No, this is something else. We’re not really sure why anyone’s looking into your parents, but it’s cause for concern.”

“Can we kill it?” William asked.

“So far, sir, there’s nothing to kill,” he replied. “They seem to have accessed information that’s already public. We’ll keep an eye on it, but because someone accessed the housing record for your childhood home, we thought you should be aware. Also, there has been some interest in Kofi Asare.”

At the mention of that name, William became immediately alert. Masking his reaction well, William simply told his head of security to keep an eye on things before dismissing him, his gaze falling on his desk. He wanted nothing more than to smoke another cigarette to squash down the anxiety rising in his chest, but meetings were on the immediate horizon. It’s nothing, he told himself. Nothing to worry about at all.

William let this become his mantra for the rest of the day, relieved that the Vanity Fair reporter hadn’t the slightest clue about the real story he should be chasing.