Susan Reynolds—Robert Mallory

Susan Reynolds—Robert Mallory is a possible attraction whose significance emerges through Bret Ellis’s watchful, often uncertain narration. Susan is still dating Thom Wright when Bret begins to read her changing manner and appearance as signs of interest in Robert; her planned party for Robert intensifies that suspicion. The relationship remains partly conjectural, but its possibility becomes a pressure point in Susan and Thom’s relationship and in Bret’s effort to distinguish what he observes from the story he fears he may be inventing.

Context: Susan and Thom’s Established Relationship

Susan and Thom had been together since their sophomore year and, by the summer before senior year, were among the most popular students at Buckley. They were wealthy, conspicuously attractive, and so accustomed to moving together that Bret describes them as a unit. Their relationship had lasted about two years, though Bret retrospectively marks the fall of 1981 as the point when one of them ceased to be in love, setting in motion a series of painful events.

Bret’s closeness to Susan makes him a particularly attentive observer but not a neutral one. Her closest male friend since seventh grade, he had long been secretly in love with her and had also been infatuated with Thom. He believed Susan knew something of his feelings, while their friendship continued without an explicit discussion of them. By September 1981, he sensed a wariness in Susan and a vague weariness with her relationship. That background makes his later interpretations of her attention to Robert inseparable from his own attachments and fears.

Signs Bret Reads as Attraction

Bret’s first concrete interpretation centers on Susan’s presentation at school. He notices that she wears a more stylish, gauzy version of the required white blouse, leaves several buttons open, and raises the hem of her skirt. He reads these choices as deliberate and decides they are not meant for Thom but for someone else—possibly Robert. The observation is specific; the conclusion about whom Susan hopes to attract remains Bret’s inference.

That distinction becomes explicit when Bret considers what he actually knows. He has heard from Debbie Schaffer that Susan likes Robert, but he has not witnessed the two of them together in the early weeks of September. He recognizes that he may be constructing a narrative from limited evidence and worries that his suspicions are becoming paranoia. Nevertheless, he asks Susan why she is organizing a party for Robert. Her response does not confirm an attraction: she dismisses his question, then tells him that they are only at school for one more year. Bret takes the party, her appearance, and that remark as mutually reinforcing clues, but the account does not establish Susan’s motive as fact.

The Party and a Relationship Under Strain

Susan postpones her party for Robert until the third Saturday in October. When she tells Bret, their conversation also turns to Thom’s planned college visits. Susan challenges Bret’s assumption that Thom will attend UCLA, explaining that he is going to look at colleges in the East, including Syracuse, the University of Connecticut, and Boston. Bret believes the trip is primarily intended to please Thom’s father, who hopes Thom will study nearer to him, but Susan’s response makes Bret aware that she does not regard Thom’s future at UCLA as settled.

Bret reads the conversation as sullen and resigned rather than excited, and he thinks Susan is distracted by a problem larger than the recent death of Matt Kellner. He connects her mood to a disclosure she had made in Westwood two weeks earlier: her feelings for Thom had begun to show fissures. The account links this dissatisfaction with the possibility of a new attachment, but it does not establish that Robert is already Susan’s partner or that the party marks a definite romantic turning point.

The Song as Bret’s Interpretive Frame

A song Susan and Bret share, playing in her car as they sit in the senior parking lot, gives Bret a framework for understanding the change. He hears its longing and uncertainty as an expression of Susan’s position: she is dreaming of a new love while still involved with Thom. In his reading, Thom is the person already present, while Susan seems to be waiting for someone else. He eventually identifies Robert as the figure who may be drawing her away, although he had initially wondered whether he himself was the source of the disruption.

The song does not independently verify Susan’s feelings. Its force lies in how it organizes what Bret has already noticed: her earlier admission of dissatisfaction, her questions about Thom’s college plans, and her altered appearance. Bret also recognizes a mismatch between their perspectives. He believes Susan may be imagining that the relationship could end before or after senior year, while he sees no evidence that Thom shares that expectation. The music thus makes the suspected triangle emotionally legible to Bret without resolving its uncertain facts.

Consequences and Limits of What Is Known

The possibility of Susan’s attraction to Robert matters because it coincides with the weakening of her relationship with Thom and changes how Bret reads their friendship. He keeps returning to whether Susan and Robert have met privately, whether her party is evidence, and whether he is mistaking conjecture for knowledge. Her statement that there is only one year left at Buckley can be heard as a reminder of their approaching departure, but the scene supplies no explicit explanation of what she intends by it.

Later, Thom asks Bret whether Robert is gay and suggests that this might explain Robert’s problems and time in an institution. The question shows that Robert’s sexuality is being speculated about by the students, but it does not confirm Susan’s attraction or explain her intentions. At the end of Bret’s retrospective account, he recognizes that his feelings for Susan were shaped partly by her seeming unattainable; he believes that an actual relationship might have been more painful than the possibility he preserved. Susan’s connection to Robert therefore remains an uncertain but consequential thread, filtered through a narrator whose affection for her both sharpens his attention and complicates his certainty.