The Shakespeare Requirement

by Julie Schumacher

  The idea was to imagine that she was holding her entire existence on the surface of the thick green leaf, her life and all its incidents and its trillions of moments, good and bad, as distinct grains of sand. Cradling these innumerable elements, she should walk slowly, breathing deeply, into the ocean. Relaxed and powerful, she would relinquish herself to the water. Breathing in again, breathing out…Calm and attentive and—

  Something slimy—a massive water slug or worse—dragged itself across the top of her foot. Plunging her existence, wholesale, into the ocean, she fled for shore and tried not to scream.

  “Okay, so don’t sign up for things,” Phil said, when she told him about the muculent underwater creature, that night in their room. He had spent the day with his laptop on his knees, beneath an umbrella. “Come and sit.” He patted the duvet. “Look: there’s plenty of space.” Without referring directly to the idea of combining their households, they had recently been debating the merits of a king-sized mattress versus a queen. Phil said that a king was more comfortable. Janet said that two non-obese human beings, in a world where most people were sleeping on mud or straw and had no concept of dual controls and foam toppers, should not require a bed the size of a pontoon.

  She ignored the bed-patting, annoyed at him for spending the day working, and for his lack of interest in the manhole-cover-sized slug. “There’s something strange about vacations. They give you a false sense of reality.”

  “I think that’s the attraction,” Phil said, his laptop still perched against his knees.

  “They’re supposed to make us feel relaxed,” she went on, “but the entire experience is artificial. The people who work here are being paid to create a fantasy. Just by being here, we’re probably contributing to sewage problems and erosion and overfishing. You might have eaten something nearly extinct today with your lunch.”

  “It was delicious, whatever it was,” Phil said. “So I hope there are enough of them to last through the end of the week. Do you want to visit that turtle farm tomorrow?”

  The words “turtle” and “farm” didn’t belong in the same sentence, Janet said. She had browsed the resort’s website before they arrived and sent Phil a link to the turtle farm as well as to a “forest adventure,” but both now struck her as factitious. She suggested that they walk into town instead.

  Phil pointed out that it was ninety degrees in the shade and they would have to walk along the highway. “I’m beginning to think that vacations don’t agree with you,” he said. “Maybe you prefer stress to sun and salt water.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Janet said. Had she accused Jay, a few weeks before, of the very same thing? She went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. “You’re the one who’s sitting there typing,” she said, her mouth full of foam. “What have you been working on?”

  “Nothing. Just…e-mail.”

  She spit into the sink, then stood in the doorway, watching, while he typed and squinted at the screen. He was leaning against the headboard, surrounded by pillows. There were at least a dozen pillows on the bed, many of them large and oddly shaped; they seemed to migrate around the room of their own volition.

  “Working in bed can give you curvature of the spine,” she said.

  “I think I’m too old for curvature of the spine. Or not old enough.” He shut the computer and, grabbing her hand, reeled her in and kissed her.

  “You smell like beer and crustaceans,” she said.

  He kissed her again, his lips salty and chapped. He took her place in the bathroom, and she heard the clank of the toilet lid, then the rattling shriek of the rings on the shower rod.

  “Janet?” he asked. “Would you bring me my soap?”

  She found the aloe vera bar he had packed in his suitcase; he had sensitive skin. She unwrapped it. “Here.” Phil’s nipples were large and surrounded by hair—two pinkish islands ringed by trees.

  “Maybe if we took more vacations you’d feel better about them,” he said. “We could find a place where you’d be poorly treated. Let’s go to a ranch for spring break. And maybe we can spend the whole summer at a prison camp.”

  “Funny,” Janet said. “But I get fourteen days’ vacation. And I thought deans were tied to campus during the summer.”

  Phil soaped his chest and turned around in the water. “That might change. I have a chance to go back to the Department of Music.”

  “How would that happen?” Janet stared at his gleaming backside. “I thought they eliminated your position.”

  “Looks like they’re going to reinstate it.”

  She walked out of the bathroom and picked up a column-like pillow. Then she walked into the bathroom again. “Why would they reinstate your position?”

  Phil lifted his arm and soaped underneath it. “Because I asked them to,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “What I mean,” Janet said, holding the pillow against her sternum, “is that a lot of departments are being cut back. Margulies just got pushed off a cliff, over in Theater. Why would Payne create a new position in Music? There’s no way they’re giving that position back to you for free.”

  Phil turned off the water. Enough talk about work for a while, he said; they were on vacation. Besides, the appointment in Music wasn’t yet certain; he shouldn’t have mentioned it until it was, and he hoped Janet would keep the news, at least for now, to herself.

  * * *

  —

  Fitger’s winter holiday began with an e-mail from President Hoffman’s office: the media coverage of his department’s “Shakespeare problem” was not the PR the university needed; that sort of news could stir up alumni and frighten donors. What was going on, over in English? And when did Fitger plan to reverse the tide of bad press? Hoffman wanted to see his department’s image improved, and soon; she wanted things clean.

  Thinking that “clean” had a sinister and unfortunate tone, Fitger mentally drafted a reply (something about “vigorous debate enlivening the discipline”) while on the way to Fran’s house for a Christmas Eve dinner. He had tried, unsuccessfully, to refuse her invitation, and now found himself knocking at the door of her one-story home with (as requested) a large brick of cheese. Hoping to be one of a number of guests (he assumed Fran had invited a collection of the reclusive and friendless), and therefore able to depart undetected after only an hour, he saw, while removing his boots in the entry, a table set for two people. Damn.

  A few friends who lived out of town, Fran told him, had in fact canceled that afternoon: the roads were bad, the snow almost a foot deep and continuing to fall from a lead-colored sky. Fitger lived only a mile away and had been able to walk.

  He shook the snow from his clothes and was quickly put to work, slicing potatoes. When he told Fran about President Hoffman’s ominous message, she turned toward him with a knife in her hand. She had been thinking about this, she said, the blade grazing his sleeve, and what they needed was a visiting writer or speaker. Lots of departments hosted events to sanitize or boost their reputations; events were good for showing off, for creating a razzle-dazzle that the administration enjoyed. Couldn’t Fitger round up a playwright or a fellow author, someone semifamous or impressive, whose face they could put on a poster so they could leave the Shakespeare controversy behind?

  And what would they pay this visiting luminary? Fitger asked. Would the semifamous writer pay his or her way, and be compensated with sincere appreciation and an IOU?

  Fran said her job was to offer suggestions; Fitger was paid the big money to wrestle problems to the ground.

  He finished slicing the potatoes. Next to the sink, a radio emitted tinkly versions of holiday tunes.

  Fran asked him if he usually celebrated Christmas.

  No, not usually. To the soundtrack of “Frosty the Snowman,” sung by the threadlike voices of a preschool choir, he explained that he respected others’ interest
in ritual, myth, and religious and spiritual festivity, but had not been a celebrant of any stripe for many years. Mainly, he said, he marked the passage of seasons via the beginnings and ends of semesters. He had recently finished grading his students’ essays, successfully resisting the temptation to soak the majority in gasoline and, in a nod to the holiday season, set them alight.

  Fran excused herself and left the kitchen. Thinking that he heard her talking to someone, he turned the radio down; but she turned it up again when she came back. “President Hoffman’s not going to let this go,” she said, putting his potatoes into the oven and stirring up a mixture of grains and dried fruit—the meal appeared to be vegetarian. “She made a whole speech last month about the university’s image. I guess you won’t be taking any time off during the break.”

  “What do you mean? We have almost three weeks off,” Fitger said. He had been planning to spend the next few days on the couch with a book in his hand.

  Fran pursed her lips in disapprobation. “The break is for students. In addition to keeping Hoffman at bay, you have to write teaching and service reviews for every member of the department, as well as a self-assessment as chair—that’ll make for interesting reading. And then there’s admissions, which is obviously no picnic, and you need to finish your heart-to-hearts with your colleagues, who are probably eager to discuss a compromise solution to the Shakespeare plan.”

  “None of the faculty will be in their offices over the break,” Fitger said. “They were wearing hats and gloves in the basement all through December.”

  “You can make house calls,” Fran said. “I hear Martin Glenk has a hobby farm.”

  On the radio, “Frosty the Snowman” was followed by a baritone paean to Mr. Grinch.

  “Can we turn this music off?” Fitger asked. “Or find a station with a higher IQ?”

  Fran switched the radio off and filled two jelly glasses with wine—it was white and sweet and would definitely give Fitger a headache. He tossed it back anyway, refilling his glass before following Fran to the living room, where the furniture consisted of a short-legged sofa and two short-legged chairs. He sat with his knees jacked up close to his chest, sipping the migraine-inducing beverage and mentally subtracting vacation days from his winter break, which also—he now remembered—would include an appointment to have his gums rearranged by a psychopath in latex gloves. Conversation flagged. Fran asked if Fitger had any updates about the provost, and he reported that Rutledge was probably hanging upside down in a giant web, in Suriname. He heard a shuffling sound, then a whimper. “Fran? Is there…someone else here?”

  Fran rustled back and forth in her chair like a hen on its nest. “He’s not thoroughly socialized yet. I wasn’t planning to show him to you, but now that you’ve asked—”

  Fitger imagined a vertically challenged inamorato, trussed up in a closet.

  She left the room and soon she was coaxing toward him the ugliest creature Fitger had ever seen: a nearly hairless dog with a torn flap for one ear and with patches of rough pink skin on which it seemed he’d been gnawing. The dog snapped in Fitger’s general direction, showing its teeth. Fran clipped its collar to a leash and tied the leash to the leg of a chair.

  “Is this…a new pet?” Fitger asked.

  No. Fran didn’t keep “pets.” As she believed she had already explained more than once, she was—in her spare time because she had to make a living—an animal rehabilitationist. The shelter had wanted her to accept a blind and pregnant cat, too, but Fran was, in general, a one-at-a-time kind of gal.

  The dog lay down and licked its crotch.

  “His fur will grow back,” Fran said. “I have a cream that should do the trick. He just needs some TLC and some training. And he needs a name.”

  Privately thinking that what the dog needed was a syringe full of something lethal, Fitger suggested—given the hairlessness—that she call the dog Rogaine.

  With the dog tethered nearby, they ate. Fitger noticed that while the food on his own plate was vegetarian, the dog was allowed to enjoy a poached chicken breast.

  “I didn’t make dessert,” Fran said. She opened a package of marshmallows and spilled a dozen of them into a bowl. Fitger ate two and put a third in his coffee. When Fran wasn’t looking, he tossed a fourth to the dog, which lifted the corner of a black rubbery lip before wolfing it down.

  They cleared the dishes. Fitger thanked Fran for dinner, then put on his coat and boots at the door.

  Was he going to spend Christmas alone? she asked.

  Yes. He was going to spend at least three days pretending not to be the chair of a department, or even an employee of a university. He would answer President Hoffman after New Year’s; and in the meantime, he was not going to look at his e-mail or check in at the office and, as a personal gesture toward the holiday, he might unplug his phone.

  “You shouldn’t unplug your phone,” Fran said. “I’m sure they won’t call you, but I had to provide an emergency contact.”

  “To whom?”

  “The hospital. Franklin Kentrell is having his surgery. You signed off on his medical leave, remember?”

  “Yes, I signed off, but—”

  “Crohn’s disease,” Fran said. “It sounds pretty unpleasant. They’re going to take out part of his lower intestine and reattach it to—”

  “I don’t need the details.” Fitger had already endured a mailroom conversation in which Kentrell had compared his struggles on the toilet with those of Santiago and his marlin in The Old Man and the Sea. Unable to turn the discourse toward the subject of the English curriculum, Fitger had mentally canceled any plans to reread, assign, or mention Hemingway’s novella for the rest of his life.

  “No one at the hospital is going to call me,” he said to Fran. “I’m not next of kin.”

  Fran shrugged. “Franklin doesn’t have family, and I had to provide an emergency contact.” She had let the dog off its leash, and it bared its teeth in Fitger’s direction. “Look. He likes you,” she said. “Anyway, they probably won’t call you—but don’t unplug your phone.”

  * * *

  —

  On the 25th, Fitger ate Chinese food and slept and read and shoveled and took himself for a walk around the block. On the 26th, he dismantled a closet shelf, intending to fix it, after which (leaving the hardware scattered over the floor) he purchased and ate—in a single sitting—a pint of ice cream. On the 27th, feeling a bit forlorn and hoping to avoid work a little longer, he sent Marie Eland an e-mail. Was she still interested in a holiday drink?

  Yes a good idea, she responded. Where and when?

  They agreed to meet that night, in town at six-thirty. At noon, throwing some laundry into the washer in an effort to locate a shirt without stains, Fitger heard the phone ring. Was this Mr. Finger? Yes? He was speaking to Darla, a social worker from the hospital. Mr. Franklin Kentrell was ready to be released; would his friend Mr. Finger be available to collect him at the west entrance at four-fifteen?

  “I’m sorry. Four-fifteen? I’m not sure that—”

  The east entrance (Darla seemed to be reading from a script) was currently undergoing renovation, so he should be sure to arrive at the west entrance, the one off Sixth Street, with the circular drive. He could not leave his car there or leave it running to go into the building, so it was important to arrive on time. If, in fact, he could arrive a few minutes early, at the west entrance, that would be optimum.

  “Optimal,” Fitger said. “But I wonder if—”

  Darla wished him a wonderful holiday season and hung up the phone.

  * * *

  —

  At ten minutes past four, Fitger was slowly cruising (windows fogging, engine running) through the patient-retrieval queue at the hospital’s west entrance; his car’s thermometer registered minus-six degrees. Two volunteers—one dressed as a Santa, the other, oddly, as a m
ulticolored dinosaur—were ineffectually managing traffic, waving the same dozen cars around the merry-go-round of the circular drive-through, though no patients had emerged from the hospital’s pneumatic door.

  Fitger rolled down his passenger’s-side window and beckoned the dinosaur forward. “Why don’t you let us turn off our cars and wait? There’s no sense in our continuing to circle around.”

  The dinosaur—an unshaven man with a smoker’s cough—picked up his tie-dyed tail and snarled at Fitger through the open window. “This is a no-parking zone,” he said. “You can’t park here.”

  “But this is pointless,” Fitger said. “You’re just filling the entry to the hospital with exhaust.”

  The dinosaur leaned through the car’s window, gripping the passenger door with tie-dyed mittens shaped like claws. “What’s your problem? You think you’re the only person waiting?”

  Fitger wanted to remind the dinosaur that he and his ilk had been extinct for fifty or sixty million years, but he put the car in gear and circled around, again, to the back of the line.

  Forty minutes later—Fitger looked at his watch; he still had plenty of time before meeting Marie Eland—the Santa hailed him. “Are you Finger?” he asked.

  Fitger said that he was. The Santa directed him to the top of the drive and told him to pop his trunk and get out of the car. Fitger stood shivering on the sidewalk—he caught a glimpse of the dinosaur on a smoke break around the corner—until at last an orderly approached, pushing a person in a wheelchair. Was it Kentrell? The person was bundled up and resembled a piece of driftwood wrapped in a blanket.

  The orderly buckled the patient into the car while Fitger blew on his hands and uselessly held the passenger door open; he avoided looking at his shriveled colleague. Fitger’s trunk was summarily filled with a collapsible walker and what appeared to be a shower stool, an overnight bag, a thick manila envelope (“post-op instructions,” the orderly said, “to review at home”), and several plastic bags full of miscellaneous hospital souvenirs. The orderly made a short speech (the windchill had to be twenty below) about pain relief and potentially troubling symptoms that would warrant a call to the twenty-four-hour nurse line. “He’s a little dopey with drugs, but I’m sure he’s ready for the comforts of home.” He knocked on the passenger’s-side window. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Kentrell?”