Janet, Fitger thought. Janet pulling some strings. “I don’t think students should be giving me presents.”
“Agreed,” Fran said. “It probably doesn’t happen to you often. If it turns out to be underwear, you should give it back.”
He unwrapped the package, which contained a decorative white hand towel embroidered with the words Thank You in slightly crooked blue letters.
“I think you can keep that,” Fran said, “but I wouldn’t put it in the washer or dryer. Okay, a few items of business while I have your attention. First, Dennis Cassovan claims that someone broke into his office.”
Fitger frowned. “Did they take anything? His computer?”
“Nothing was stolen. Or damaged. But he says someone got in even though he left the office locked, and some of the things on his desk—a stapler and a tape dispenser, I think—were rearranged.”
“No comment,” Fitger said. “What else have you got?”
“Next up: hate mail. I had Ashkir make you a file.”
What? They were getting hate mail? Was she referring to those asinine letters in the Campus Scribe?
No. She was talking about e-mail and letters through the U.S. post. “And let me clarify: we are not getting hate mail; it’s directed to you.” She handed him a yellow folder, explaining that department chairs often got hate mail; when she worked for the Department of Studio Art’s Fiamatu, he had received a series of voodoo-style sculptures from a former student who was offended by his critique of Howard Pyle.
Fitger leafed through the folder and skimmed the letters. The first was generic, blaming the department and the university for the problems of drug abuse, poverty, and latchkey children; the second accused Fitger specifically of contributing to “a nation of unemployables” who were graduating from college with “degrees in pseudo-academic claptrap such as Tie-dyeing Studies and Peruvian Film.”
“Who are these idiots?” he asked.
“Concerned members of the public,” Fran said. “Cassovan seems to be getting the word out; apparently there have been a couple of articles about our Shakespeare kerfuffle in the national press.” As for the hate mail: the best approach, Fran could tell him from experience, was not to respond. As he could probably imagine, she had occasionally been a target herself. Even members of her own family, when she was younger, had invented insults and embarrassing nicknames, calling her Thumbelina, or even Hop-o’-my-Thumb.
Fitger stared at her over the rim of his black glasses. “They shortened ‘Fran’ to ‘Hop-o’-my-Thumb’?”
“Being short isn’t a joke,” she said.
“Obviously not.” He shivered and buttoned his jacket because of the cold. “Do we have to save these? Can’t we throw them away?”
“We save them in case things…escalate. You know, blackmail, arson, threats, felonies. It’s always important to keep a record.”
He gave her the folder.
“All right, then, moving along. Let’s see.” She consulted a pad of paper. “Althea Mulligan over in Accounting still wants to drive a stake through your heart and tie your body to an anthill; and Marie Eland over in Languages called. She left a message about QUAP making test runs, sharpening its claws, she said, over in Theater. And then she asked if you were up for a drink sometime over the break. I looked up her photo in the faculty directory and said you probably were.” Fran added that, if or when QUAP directed its turret guns toward English, Fitger would need to keep an eye on his most vulnerable colleagues—the ones who might not look good under review.
Where to start, Fitger thought. The department was a funhouse of dysfunctional characters. Academia was, traditionally, a refuge for the poorly socialized and the obsessive; but English, at Payne, had a higher percentage of crackpots than most.
Fran picked up his Shakespeare scorecard. Who was he planning to talk to next? Glenk? West? Just FYI: he should not, under any circumstances, release Albert Tyne from sensitivity training. Maybe, instead, he could arrange to clear some of the hazardous debris, collected over a period of decades, from Tyne’s corner office.
“Not an appetizing thought,” Fitger muttered.
“Speaking of appetizing,” Fran said, “Franklin Kentrell revised the dates on his request for a medical leave. Was that your work?”
Fitger spared her an account of their dialogue in the basement men’s room. Kentrell, who had a ferret-like physique and a sidewinding way of traversing the halls, had taken to nodding to him, almost cordially, ever since. “Hand it over, I’ll sign it,” he said.
Fran produced the request, which had been submitted, Fitger noticed, on personal letterhead, with Kentrell’s initials—FCK—at the top. “Hm. Interesting monogram.” Fitger signed.
In the outer office, the phone rang. Fran answered. “Okay,” she said. “Yup. Yup, I hear you. And you think it’s just one? Or more than one? Hang on a second.” She put her hand over the receiver. “It’s Zander Hesseldine, in the basement. He has a mouse in his office. Possibly two mice. And judging from the tone of his voice, we’re dealing with some kind of phobia. He says it’s unreasonable that he should have to work among vermin.”
“I hope he’s not talking about me,” Fitger said. It was almost four-thirty. Would Marie Eland still be in her office?
On the phone, Fran asked how big the mouse was. Uh-huh. Was it gray or brownish? Tail ridged or smooth? Thick or thin? Putting her hand over the receiver again, she turned to Fitger. “He doesn’t want to think about its tail. But the tails of rats are much thicker. That’s why I asked.” She told Hesseldine that she and Fitger were coming down to take a look.
“Why do we both need to go?” Fitger asked. Perhaps, given Fran’s proficiency with the zoological world, it would make more sense for her to tend to this somewhat specialized issue while he made use of the time by returning some phone calls…
She pointed to the Shakespeare scorecard at the edge of his desk.
Ten minutes later, after peering behind Hesseldine’s bookcase and concluding that mice (some of the planet’s most reproductive creatures) had probably established a rodent base camp, Fitger promised—in the spirit of departmental comradeship, which he was certain Hesseldine shared—to find a solution to the problem soon.
TEN
Winter break at Payne began with a snowstorm. In the center of campus, wearing a size eighteen sundress and a military cartridge belt over one granite shoulder, Cyril Payne, founder and first president of his eponymous university, presided over the fleecy accumulation, directing his resolute stare down the frosted slope that led from the administration building all the way to the Soviet-style dorms. Only a few international students remained in their rooms during the vacation. A single, antiquated cafeteria offered these castaways once-a-day soup-line service, featuring a steam table of chicken parts, overboiled vegetables, and sugared fruit in plastic cups.
Two and a half hours away, in Vellmar, Angela Vackrey was in her bedroom, having told her mother she didn’t feel well and needed a nap. “It must be all the studying you’ve done,” her mother said. “It’s made your brain tired.” She tucked Angela’s hair behind her ear. Ever since Angela had gotten home, her mother was always touching her. She was hugging her, clasping her shoulder, stroking her hair. Angela tried to stand still and not flinch. Her mother had written to her all semester—actual letters, in envelopes with stamps, that arrived in Angela’s cubbyhole mailbox once a week. The letters didn’t say much—they were short and chatty—but each one thrummed with a subtext (Angela had learned about subtext in Professor Fitger’s apocalypse class) of desperation and need. Angela felt terribly guilty: her mother had sacrificed herself for Angela and now Angela was repaying her by discarding her like an old glove, going off to college and leaving her alone in the house with nothing to look forward to (her mother was almost fifty) but retirement and old age. But the more affection her mother showed her, the more fe
rvently Angela wanted to return to school, to get away.
There was a gulf between them, and being at Payne had helped to cause it—which was exactly what her mother had feared, that Angela would turn into a stranger and not fit back into the life they had always shared. Going home had felt awkward and stressful over Thanksgiving, and Angela had told herself that it would be better at Christmas; but she was wrong. It was exhausting, every day waking up and pretending to fit into the costume of her former self.
She had lied to her mother all semester. She hadn’t told her that she had dropped chemistry for a second English class, or that her roommate, Paxia, had never showed up. At first she had lied because she didn’t want her mother to nag or to worry: yes, she was fine, and yes of course she had made friends, all of whom were responsible, hardworking students, and yes, Angela would remember to put her education, not her social life, first. Angela had intended these lies to be temporary, a bridge leading to the moment when her life would assume its expected shape; but eventually they took on a life of their own, and she found that she had created a shadow existence. She began to respond to her mother’s letters with more detailed information about Paxia, who was majoring in neuroscience (she was so bright!) and had a funny habit of talking about her homework in her sleep. Paxia and Angela had become close; Paxia thanked Angela’s mother for the birthday wishes in December; she and Angela had celebrated by going out for pizza and root beer with a group of friends.
Angela stared out the window. It was true, at least, that she didn’t feel well. She was queasy and tired, and in the bathroom mirror her reflection looked alien or somehow inaccurate. Angela knew what this meant on the one hand, but on the other hand she still couldn’t believe it. It seemed impossible; it had to be happening to some other person—maybe to Paxia, who, if she had actually enrolled at Payne, might have woken from uneasy dreams in the middle of the night and come to sit on the edge of Angela’s mattress so that the two of them could confide in each other, Paxia promising to stand by her, both of them in tears. Angela had thought about writing to Paxia about her trouble, but what would she say? We haven’t met but I have been talking to you all semester and now I need to tell you that I am six weeks late and please help me, Paxia, because I think I am pregnant?
Paxia would know what to do. Technically, Angela knew what to do also: during orientation she had watched, embarrassed, with everyone else as two sophomores unrolled a purple condom onto a banana; and she had practically memorized the phone number of the campus health center, which was featured prominently on bright blue posters throughout her dorm. But the days went by and she never called or made an appointment. She should take a pregnancy test, to make sure, but she had put this off while studying for finals, and she couldn’t possibly ask for a test at the drugstore in Vellmar. She felt dazed, waking up a hundred times each day to this new, unwelcome knowledge, then gliding back to sleepy ignorance again.
Her mother would be so upset and so disappointed. She would flatten her lips into a thin, straight line so as not to say all the things both of them knew she would be thinking: that Angela shouldn’t have gone away; that she obviously hadn’t been able to handle being off on her own and had proven herself irresponsible and immature. She was a slut. Well, her mother would never use that word—Angela had never heard her mother swear—but that was the word both of them would be silently thinking. She was cheap. Immoral. Gullible. Careless. Sleazy. She was a whore.
But that was all wrong! Angela wiped her face on the flowered hem of her bedsheet. It hadn’t happened the way her mother might think. While it was true that Angela had had a beer (there was a party at the end of her hall, and someone had kept handing out red plastic cups), she wasn’t drunk; and when she saw Trevor, a member of her Bible study group, with his own cup in hand, she had been so relieved: here was a person she knew and might talk to, a person with values similar to hers. Trevor, who had been brought to the party by his roommate, looked uncomfortable and almost afraid. He was at least as shy as Angela—he stared at the carpet when he spoke—and she had invited him into her room in order to hear him over the sound of her dorm mates’ joyful screams and the insistent, thumping music in the hall. They talked about school and told each other about their families: Trevor had grown up as an only child without a father, too. Angela watched his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down while he spoke: it looked like a blade that was trying to work its way out of his neck, especially when he talked about his mother, who wanted the best for him but who got so angry sometimes; she had made Trevor change high schools twice, and—
At first Angela had thought he was going to sneeze, but he was trying not to cry, so she had reached for his hand and held it, and because his face was still contorted she had moved from the wooden chair by her desk and sat beside him, putting her arm around his shoulders, on the bed. Was this who she was? A girl who invited a boy she barely knew into her bedroom? But it had felt so good to talk to someone else who felt lost, so she leaned her head against Trevor’s shoulder and lay down with him on the bedspread; and because it was cold they got under the blankets, and while the party continued raging in the hall they held on to each other and started to take off their clothes.
She had smelled the plastic, medicinal scent of the condom when he tore a corner from the little package, and while she debated within herself whether it was too late to suggest that they stop (she had invited him into her bed; wasn’t that permission?), Trevor juddered, fixed her with a look of horror and hostility, and it was done. At least no one in the hall had heard them, Angela thought. Then she noticed that the condom had rolled itself up and slipped off somehow. She hadn’t been the one to secure it; perhaps it wasn’t as firmly attached as the demonstration model had been to the banana. Could it have been the wrong size?
Blowing her nose and peering around the eyelet curtains in her bedroom window in Vellmar, Angela saw her grandmother’s car threading its way down the snowbound two-lane, coming from town. Her mother and grandmother would make a pot of weak coffee in the kitchen and sit facing each other, sipping and doing the crossword and waiting for Angela to get up from her nap and come downstairs. If she told them the truth, they would never let her go back to Payne for her second semester. They would tell her she’d had her chance and made poor use of it, and now she’d have to drop out and stay home. Angela remembered reading somewhere that a lot of pregnant women had miscarriages in the first couple of months. It would be foolish to confide in her mother if that were to happen. She might have a stomachache for a day—even before it was time to go back to school—and it would be over. What a relief that would be. She would be able, then, to tell her mother that Paxia had transferred to another school, erasing the lies that had intruded between them. And, having learned her lesson, Angela would be happy and studious and confident; she wouldn’t need to tell Trevor what had happened and, dropping the Bible study group for choir or Pilates, she would learn to be outgoing at last.
But what if the stomachache didn’t come? She would have to go to the sexual health center and confess, to talk to a stranger. Maybe she could go at an odd hour or in the middle of the night when no one would see her. She could pretend she was asking questions for a friend. Angela studied her calendar. How much longer could she wait? A week would be safe. Probably two or three weeks. Outdoors, on the driveway, Angela’s grandmother, still recovering from a knee replacement, slowly removed herself from her car. A few days earlier, she had given Angela a card containing a fifty-dollar bill and a scribbled message: Happy Christmas and remember I am always here for you and so is Jesus!
Angela loved her grandmother and appreciated the money as well as the sentiment, but she needed someone to talk to who wouldn’t take her failure personally—and someone who had more up-to-date information about pregnancy than Jesus. She had considered talking to Brandi, her resident adviser, but that didn’t feel right, either. Brandi had a thick, whooping laugh and assigned every
girl on their hall a different nickname. She had called Angela “Glowworm” more than once.
The only person who came to mind as a possible confidant was her adviser, Professor Fitger—which was strange, because he was a man. Angela hadn’t spoken up much in his class, but he had given her an A on her final paper and twice he had told her that she wrote well and that she was smart. He had arranged for her to get an internship, which clearly showed that he cared. It would be horribly embarrassing to talk to him—Angela’s heart beat double-time at the thought—but he could definitely be trusted. She heard the clank of the kettle on the kitchen stove and the whump whump of her grandmother’s boots, which she always took off to keep the floors clean, putting on a pair of fuzzy blue slippers instead. Her mother and grandmother would soon begin talking about Angela—wondering aloud whether she was sick or just tired—if she didn’t appear. She put a saltine cracker into her mouth—she had hidden a sleeve of them in her dresser—and brushed her hair. She would keep her secret to herself for now, and make an appointment with Professor Fitger when she got back to school.
* * *
—
Twenty-two hundred miles southeast, on an island in the Caribbean, Janet Matthias was standing in waist-deep water, holding a thick green leaf full of sand above the rocking sea. Because Phil had left to her the selection of the resort where they would vacation, Janet had chosen a cluster of oceanside palapas run by a trio of retired Californians. De Luz emphasized relaxation and wellness and offered optional sessions like “Spirit Bath” and “Attentive Calm.” Hokey, yes; but Janet (blood pressure 135 over 100) had decided to force herself to learn to be calm and attentive, which is why she was listening to one of the owners gently scold her (he scolded several other guests as well) for her tendency to measure life according to a series of tasks scratched off a list—according to progress and to getting things done. How the fuck do you think I paid for this? she thought; but, with the others in her group—two mother-daughter pairs and an older man who was wearing short, ill-fitting trunks that periodically revealed one low-hanging testicle—she breathed in and then out, attempting to be tranquil and at rest.
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