Page 112 of What Boys Learn
“I think Curtis has been covering up a lot of things. And I think he’s been interested in Benjamin since he saw him at the pool, or maybe even before that.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I’m not saying he’s a pedophile. I think he’s too much of a womanizer to be interested in a boy that way. But he’s fixated on Benjamin. He doesn’t just want to mentor him. He wants to mold him.”
But mold him how? To what end?I couldn’t articulate my discomfort. Robert had already called me paranoid. Maybe I was. But even paranoid thoughts are sometimes justified.
Robert said, “He might just be a psychologist who knows society isn’t fair to troubled boys. And isn’t that the whole point of the book he’s supposedly writing?”
“The book! I started reading a chapter, and it’s unhinged. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. I found a message from his editor in a long document of back and forth emails, along with an unfinished response he seemed to be cobbling together for a lawyer, in case the publisher sues him to get the advance back.”
“Why would they ask for it back?”
“Because they’ve decided not to publish the book. Curtis is a star author no longer.”
Peggy Keller was the editor’s name. I’d only started skimming her email when Robert finally returned my call.
“I’ll tell you what,” Robert said. “I’ll see if I can locate information about Curtis’s father so you have an address at least. You go back to your analysis of his imploding career.”
We hung up. I pulled up the Keller memo.
Dr. Campbell,
You’ve always been provocative and we appreciate both your expertise and your ardor. But the chapters on sexual development and the chapter you’ve titled “Reconsidering Pathologies” are problematic. Given the increasingly strident nature of your editorial exchanges with Margaret, and given also that your agent has informed us you may no longer be working together, I took it upon myself to phone you personally, but you haven’t replied to my messages.
It’s one thing to suggest that adolescent experimentation is normal. It’s another to suggest that girls exist to serve as vehicles or objects for the actualization of boys’ or men’s fetishes and fantasies, including risky ones. Surely you don’t think that a guide meant for parents should encourage the acceptance of the behaviors you are describing in graphic detail. It’s one thing to establish the frequency of certain kinks in the adult population, but you seem to be advocating for something that goes beyond sexual diversity, toward nonconsensual behaviors punishable by law—in a book about children, Curtis. Children.
We originally asked for a revision of chapters 9 to 11 but based on your last email and lack of communication in the weeks following, I think it’s time to consider terminating our plans for this book. I’ve cc’d your (former?) agent and our lawyers. I hope you’ll supply an agreeable time and date for a call, as I’ve already requested twice in the last month without receiving the courtesy of your reply.
“Hello? Professor Rosso?”
I tore myself away from the scathing publisher letter. Ayako stood in front of my desk, with Mei Ling behind her, already back from lunch. Technically, we still had five more minutes, but every last international student was already present. Over the next hour, we’d be watching the presentations they’d prepared for their parents about life at Grove.
“Can I go first, please?” Ayako asked.
“Certainly. Mei Ling, do you want to dim the lights for us?Dimas in make them a little lower?” I pointed across the room, to get the concept across.
A minute later, Ayako’s slideshow, titled “Why I Want to Attend Grove This Fall,” began to play. After several slides showing summer students doing chemistry experiments, gathered around a Virgin Mary statue, and playing field hockey, I started sneaking glances at my phone under the table.
Robert hadn’t known Curtis’s ex-wife’s name, but after a few searches I found her,LISA CAMPBELL, posed next to Curtis in a local society column photo. On a different website she wasELISAin a photo from a Chicago charity ball,ELISABETHon a North Shore doubles tennis ranking site, andE. V. CAMPBELL, proud mom ofVADA, on the home page of a real estate firm where she evidently worked in the early 2000s.
Glancing up, I directed Ayako, “There’s no hurry. Try to read your slides more slowly.”
A Vada seemed easier to track down than a Lisa/Elisa/Elisabeth, or so I thought. But on YouTube and TikTok I found plenty of Vadas, all the wrong age. I focused on the ex-wife again, restricting the search to the last five years, but that turned up nothing. If she’d remarried, she might be using a different surname. I’d find some way to contact her. I just needed more time.
On the screen at the front of the room, Ayako’s presentation had gone full montage—a scrapbook-like page of dozens of tiny photos, the expected product of a girl who couldn’t resist cramming all of her new friends onto at least one messy slide.
I looked down at my phone again. No more searches, especially now that Ayako was finished and her fellow students were clapping. I looked up in time to see Ayako’s final slide—one elegant, centered photo with the wordsTHANK YOUat the bottom.
I put my hands together to clap, but then I recognized the girl in the photo. I froze.
Mei Ling was asking me something. She wanted to give her presentation next. Her words were white noise. Ayako’s slide was still on the screen. Those braces. Those bangs. There was no doubt.
“Actually, I think some of you need a bathroom break. Ayako, can you stay here a minute?”
When everyone else was out of earshot, I asked Ayako why she used that photo as her final slide. Her eyes widened, like she’d been caught cheating on a test.
“You’re not in trouble,” I said. “It’s just that all of your other photos are of international students from the summer school.”
She looked down. “We don’t wear the uniform yet. She wears the uniform.”
“Oh,” I said, doing my best to mask my surprise with admiration. “So you just found a photo online of a girl wearing a typical Catholic school uniform.”