Page 108 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

with an early rape scene—had been ordered. The faculty were in a bit of a tumult trying to figure out what to do next, while we students thought it was hysterical.
As I sat talking and laughing with some kids from my dorm, I saw Diane Dunn, a phys ed teacher, making her way through the crowd. Dunn was also a counselor at the sailing camp I went to every summer, so I’d known her since I was a little kid. To everyone else at Walker’s, she was Miss Dunn, which I found impossible to wrap my head around. At camp she was Dunn and I was Trump, and that’s what we continued to call each other. She was largely responsible for my having decided to go to this boarding school, and after I had been there for only two weeks, she was still the only person I really knew.
When she waved me over, I smiled and said, “Hey, Dunn.”
“Trump, you need to call home,” she said. She had a piece of paper in her fist but didn’t give it to me. She looked flustered.
“What’s up?”
“You need to call your mother.”
“Right now?”
“Yes. If she isn’t home, call your grandparents.” She was speaking to me
as if she’d memorized the lines.
It was almost 10:00 p.m., and I had never called my grandparents so late,
but my dad and grandmother were both in the hospital pretty frequently— Dad due to his years of heavy drinking and smoking, and Gam’s tendency to break bones fairly often because of her osteoporosis. So I wasn’t really worried—or, rather, I didn’t think it was anything more serious than usual.
My dorm was adjacent to the auditorium, so I went outside, crossed the oval lawn between them, and climbed the two flights of stairs to my floor. The pay phone hung on the stairwell wall on the landing right next to the door.
I placed a collect call to my mother, but there was no answer, so I dialed the House. Gam answered and accepted the charges—so the emergency wasn’t about her. After a quick, muffled “Hello,” she immediately handed the phone to my grandfather.
“Yes,” he said, brisk and businesslike as usual. For a moment, it was easy to believe that there had been a mistake, that nothing was really wrong. But then something had been urgent enough for me to be pulled out of the auditorium. I had also seen the way Dunn’s eyes had widened in panic as