570
FRANK CONROY
Guy's anger should have tipped me off, but it didn't. Wearing
his galoshes and his overcoat I went to the Greens's without realizing
why they had sent me.
It was no secret that I wanted to go along to the training school
at night, to sleep on an extra bed somewhere. For months mother
put me off, but when she realized I would never get accustomed
to
staying alone she gave in. She was tired of dealing with me, tired
of
my complaints and my silences. (Alternative unconscious motivations
for her change of heart: one-she felt guilty about me; two-she
decided to show me something that was worth being afraid of, namely
the worst men's cottage, to which Guy was assigned the night I
tagged along.)
We drove slowly down the steep, twisting road to Southbury,
our headlight beams traversing back and forth across the snow. Guy
leaned over the wheel, craning his neck to watch for the cut-off
through the black truncated trees. "It's along here somewhere."
"We have to pass that boarded-up farmhouse," my mother
said.
"Here it is." He applied the brakes slowly and the tires pulled
against the sanded road. We were entering the grounds through the
back, saving a mile. The car bumped along through the woods for
a few hundred yards and then emerged at the top of a hill.
The Southbury Training School spread below us like a toy
village
in a Christmas display. Small dormitories disguised to look like sub–
urban homes were spread evenly over a square mile of stripped and
graded hillside. Halfway down, the two administrative buildings rose
into the air, their white cupolas lighted by floodlights. Weaving
across the hillside in every direction were the lines and curves of a
network of private roads, described in the darkness by chains
of
street lights winking on slender poles.
Guy edged the Ford over the lip of the hill and the bumpy
dirt
road changed immediately to a smooth, carefully plowed asphalt
ribbon. We rolled along silently, watching the powdered snow drift
across the surface of the road under the headlights.
"There it is," my mother said as we approached one of the
dormitories. "Number twelve."
Guy pulled up in the driveway. There was a brass knocker on
the front door, and a mailbox, and a green metal tube on a stand
