The Tenth Muse

by Catherine Chung

  “Of course I believe women should be paid, and equally,” he said. “But just to play devil’s advocate, Emmy Noether claimed she actually liked not getting paid, because she didn’t have to do any of the additional duties official faculty were required to do.”

  “Oh, Peter, you’re a smart man, please don’t be stupid,” I said.

  “Don’t blame me, I’m just repeating what Noether said!” He laughed.

  “Come on,” I said. “That’s a nice story, but what was she supposed to say? She didn’t want to make everyone she worked with uncomfortable, and she had to fight so hard just to be in the room. What time or energy do you think she or anyone had left to fight a battle she’d never win about money? I’d take that comment of hers a lot more seriously if she’d been offered a salary and then turned it down.”

  “Whether or not that’s true,” Peter said, “you make it sound like these women had terrible lives. Noether was so happy and generous! And Maria is wonderful, you saw for yourself. They both had incredibly productive, enviable careers.”

  “It depends on how you look at it,” I said. “They both accomplished enough to make anyone jealous, it’s true—but do you think that the men who were at their level would have been content to never have held a permanent position while they were doing their most important work, or consented to work without pay, or suffered all the indignities of having to beg to be able to be in the room when they were clearly better than everyone else? Would you, Peter Hall, agree to do what you do for no money, while everyone else gets paid?”

  “Well, Maria was supported by her husband, and Noether had some money from her father,” Peter said.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Their circumstances allowed them to work for no pay. What if they hadn’t? What would we have lost as a scientific community, without their contributions? I’m not saying they had terrible lives, but they were certainly exploited. Why can’t we admit that, soberly and matter-of-factly?”

  “Settle down,” Peter said. “I’m on your side! No need to get worked up.”

  But I was getting worked up. “I don’t know why you want to pretend that these women weren’t taken advantage of, and that women now as a class aren’t currently being taken advantage of.” I wanted to say more, that I felt doomed by this pattern—not just of getting taken advantage of as a woman, but Peter’s failure to recognize it as such.

  “Come on now, Katherine,” Peter said. “We both know you’re here on a very generous fellowship that was made just for women. I think you’re doing just fine. How are you being taken advantage of?”

  “I’m not talking about me. I’ve been very lucky so far,” I conceded. “But remember, the Kennedy Commission reports that women make fifty-nine cents on the dollar that men make for the same job. Just so you know, that is the current state of affairs.”

  He shrugged. “Well, that’s all changing now,” he said. “For instance, you are here now, so clearly we’re making progress as a society to right some of our historical wrongs. Let’s not fight about this. I promise I’ll support you. I’ll make sure you get everything you deserve.”

  “That’s not the point,” I muttered, but he wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close. Soon, he fell asleep, the rhythm of his breath tickling my neck. Darkness had fallen, and the fireflies had gone away. I lay in the dark with my eyes open, watching the stars, feeling the thud of my own heart beating against my back.

  LUCK, OR HAPPINESS, or nearly everything in this life, I’ve found, is largely a matter of perspective. I learned this when my mother left—how one action can shift everything on its axis. From the moment she was gone, I always saw the past and our family through the lens of her departure. The depth of her unhappiness, her capacity to leave us, how little I knew her—the question of who we even were to each other, and what we owed each other—colored everything backward. And when I remember that argument with Peter, which wasn’t really an argument, I still find it difficult to locate the disagreement. What did I want from him then? To see things he couldn’t see, to see things even I couldn’t see? There is the story you think you are living in, and then there is the invisible, secret, unguessed-at core of that story, around which everything else revolves.

  Chapter 15

  ALL TOO SOON THE SUMMER WAS OVER, AND ROB AND Leo and all the other students returned. Classes resumed, and my fourth year of graduate school began. One day early that fall I was in the library searching for a monograph when I accidentally heard two men talking about me. I was standing in the darkness of the stacks, a pile of books in my arms, when I heard my name. I froze.

  “You know she’s sleeping with Peter Hall,” one of them said.

  “Yeah, he puts her name on all his papers now,” the other responded. And then they snickered.

  I wish I’d walked out into the light and confronted them right then and there. But I didn’t, I was flooded with shame. So I stood in the shadows, ears burning with humiliation, until the voices were quiet, and I guessed it was safe to sneak out. The problem with that, of course, was I never knew who had said those things about me—whether they had been faculty or students, or even friends or acquaintances of mine. And because I didn’t know, I suspected everyone.

  IF THERE WAS ANY SOURCE of awkwardness that arose between Peter and me, it came from that overheard conversation and the very successful paper we had published together. As the year progressed, it became clear that Peter was receiving all the credit for the paper, and I was getting none. My name was right there next to his, and yet when the paper was cited, my name went unmentioned more often than not. Men described my own paper to me, calling the results “the Hall results.” It was as if I’d been erased. Everyone just assumed he’d done all the work. And worse, Peter didn’t seem to notice, even when it happened in front of him.

  I tried to take it in stride, focusing instead on the Mohanty problem, but I found myself beset by the mounting anxiety that everything I did would be seen as a bone that Peter had thrown my way, that my accomplishments would always be compared, unfavorably, to his. So it was, when on the recommendation of an old college professor I was offered a visiting fellowship at the University of Bonn for the following year, I was immediately tempted to go.

  Peter, however, was strongly against it. “Why would you break up this momentum we’ve got going?” he said. “Not to mention, I’m the most productive I’ve been in years, and you’ve been doing extremely well for yourself. Do you really think you’ll find a better mentor in Germany, who’s more invested in your future than me?”

  I prickled. “You said yourself that studying abroad as a student was one of the most formative experiences of your career,” I said. “You said it shaped your intellectual life.”

  “Things were different then,” he said. “Nowadays mathematicians from all over the world come to us. Back then it was the other way around. And I was alone—I wasn’t leaving anyone behind.”

  This also rankled. It wasn’t Peter’s fault, of course—who wouldn’t resist their partner going across the world for one to two years, whether there was a clear benefit or not? But I felt constrained in ways I couldn’t explain and didn’t fully understand, and though none of these things were his fault, I’m afraid he took the brunt of my frustrations, as partners usually do. “Are you saying you won’t be here when I return if I go?” I asked.

  Peter, bless him, laughed out loud. “Where else would I be?” he said. “I’m just saying if you wait another two years, until I’m up for sabbatical, then maybe we can go together.”

  “And what will I do while I wait? Not to mention I don’t think they’ll hold the fellowship open for me.”

  “You can go as a postdoctoral fellow. Or if they don’t invite you again, I’m sure I can get myself invited, and then you can come with me. If that’s what you want, I promise, I’ll take you.”

  I sighed. “But that’s not what I want. I want to go on my own invitation, not as someone who happens to be appended to you.”

 
; “Well, maybe it isn’t ideal,” Peter conceded. “But if you’re part of a team, sometimes you have to make compromises.”

  I wish I hadn’t said what I said next the way I said it, but I did. I said, “I’m not sure I want to be part of a team.”

  Peter looked immediately and deeply hurt. “You don’t?”

  “Not if it means you think I should sit around waiting for two years,” I said. “I want to be with you, but I don’t want to be the one who always has to compromise. Sometimes I want to stand on my own. To make it by myself first, the way that you did.”

  “I see,” Peter said slowly. “I didn’t realize you felt like you were always compromising.” He was silent. I felt terrible.

  “I love working with you,” I said. “But look at the paper we wrote together—people talk to me about it sometimes as if I wasn’t one of its authors.”

  “I tell everyone how much work you did on that paper,” Peter exclaimed. “I tell everyone you’re the smart one between us.”

  I rolled my eyes. “No one takes you seriously when you say that, Peter. And I feel like if I stay here, I’ll only ever be your sidekick.”

  “So do something of your own, but stay here,” Peter said. “Do you want me to withdraw as your advisor? I’m happy to withdraw. You don’t need me for your work, Katherine. I know that.”

  But he sounded so wounded that I didn’t believe him. “No,” I said, “I don’t want anyone else as my advisor. I like working with you. I just—wanted to try something else.” I felt as if I had damaged something between us, and just kept cracking it further.

  “Can I tell you a story?” I asked, and I told Peter about Blake and his copying my problem set when I was in college, and how the professor had accused me of being the cheater. Afterward, I felt shaken, as if by telling him the story I had invited him to stand judgment, to weigh in whether or not he also thought I had cheated.

  “That’s terrible,” Peter said. “Why didn’t you take it to the head of the Math Department?”

  “That professor was the head of the Math Department.”

  “Why didn’t you take it to the dean?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It never occurred to me.”

  Peter was quiet for a moment. “Do you want me to get in touch with them now?” he asked. “I could say something.”

  I laughed. “What does it matter? What difference does it make?”

  “Maybe I can get them to revoke Blake’s degree,” he said. “Or blackball him. He should pay for what he did.”

  “That would be ridiculous,” I said.

  “What’s his last name?”

  “I’m not telling you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to stir things up,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. I did fine. I graduated. I’m here.”

  “I could probably call over and figure out who this guy is,” Peter said.

  “Please promise me you won’t.”

  “Why not? I could probably call his parents—you said his dad was a mathematician?”

  “Peter, please.”

  “If I promise, will you tell me his name?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want you to know anything about him. I’m not telling you this so that you can do something about it. This isn’t yours to handle.” I felt bad all over again, the same shame about how everything had unfolded. “What I really wanted to tell you,” I said, “was that for months after, I’d go over the problem sets Blake copied, over and over, quizzing myself, to make sure each answer was mine. I mean, I knew they were mine, I’d done them, but something about Blake and the professor uniting against me made me doubt myself, made me wonder if somehow I’d remembered everything wrong.”

  There was a long pause. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Peter said. “Why didn’t you stand up for yourself?”

  I found myself at a loss for words. “I didn’t feel like I could,” I said. “The professor didn’t believe me, it was my word against Blake’s, and frankly I was made to feel lucky that I was allowed to stay on at all.” But I felt now a second prickle of shame at Peter’s question. Why hadn’t I stood up for myself? “I guess I thought,” I said slowly, “that working hard and succeeding, beating him and doing well was the best way I had of standing up for myself.”

  “I see,” Peter said.

  “It’s not that I want to go to Bonn,” I said. “Or that I don’t want to be on your team. I just feel like I won’t ever feel safe until I can stand on my own.”

  There was a long pause, and then Peter said, “I can’t believe you don’t trust me.”

  I reached out and took his hand. “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “It’s not about you at all.”

  After a week or two of consideration, I told Peter I wouldn’t go to Bonn after all. And he said, “Are you sure? I don’t want to hold you back.”

  I said I was sure, and he said he was glad, but I felt that something had come between us. That I had planted distrust or dissatisfaction in him, and I regretted it sorely. Still, we moved on, and the conversation was forgotten—or at least dropped—and we went on as before, though it seemed to me that Peter henceforth held back just a little, that he tried to give me more space—which wasn’t at all what I’d wanted. But I wasn’t sure if he really was doing these things, or if it was all my imagination. I see now, of course, that he was trying to give me what I’d asked for: that he was hurt and afraid I would leave. All I could see then was my own fears—that I would lose him, or I would lose my career.

  ONE EVENING LATER THAT SPRING, as Peter and I sat in my kitchen working, Linda called me, weeping. At first I couldn’t figure out whose voice it was, but the grief in it frightened me. “Who is this?” I said. “Hello?”

  “It’s Linda,” she gasped. “I’m calling about your father.”

  “What is it?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

  Linda cried into the phone. “Your father’s had a heart attack.”

  Everything in me went still. “Is he all right?” I asked. “Linda. Is he alive?”

  “Yes,” she burst out. “He’s in the hospital.”

  “Thank God,” I said. “How serious is it?”

  “They’re running tests,” Linda said, gasping. “But I’ve never seen him like this. He started clutching his shoulder after dinner yesterday, and staggering around crying out your name. He was bumping into the furniture and the doors and I was right there beside him but I couldn’t make him see me. He just kept gasping and moaning your name, and now he’s better, but I can’t be here on my own, alone with him. I can’t.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll come out on the very next flight. I just need you to give me the doctor’s name and for you to write down everything he says when he comes in so I can look it over.” I didn’t know anything about medicine, or heart attacks, but taking charge like this helped me feel calmer.

  “Okay,” Linda said, “I will do that,” and I could tell she felt calmer too.

  When we hung up, I turned to Peter and said, “I need to go back to Michigan tomorrow. My father’s had a heart attack.”

  “Sweetheart,” Peter said, when I told him what had happened. “My love.” He wrapped his arms around me.

  I wriggled out of his arms. “I have to pack,” I said, pushing him away. “I’ll have to go to the airport and get a flight out tomorrow, but I should still get packed and ready to go.”

  “Of course, Katherine, we’ll do all these things. But why don’t you just stay still and take a few deep breaths. Relax for a moment.”

  But I didn’t want to relax. I wanted to keep going, keep active, because there was a ball of grief, hard and aching in my chest, that I could ignore as long as I had something to do.

  “Do you want me to go back to Michigan with you?”

  “No,” I said. “They don’t even know about you. Let’s wait.”

  The last conversation I’d had with my father had been a fight. I’d asked him to tell me more about the wom
an who’d given birth to me, and he’d refused. Then I’d asked him to tell me more about my mother, the one who’d raised me. “Stop pushing it,” he said. “Let it go. You never know when to stop.”

  “And you never know when to give in,” I said. “I have a right to these stories. I deserve to know what you know.” And then I’d told him I wouldn’t come home again until he agreed.

  And now I felt sick to my stomach, almost as if my father had actually died—as if the thought of his death had made it come closer. I regretted not telling him about Peter. I regretted never introducing him to my friends Leo and Rob. He had never been to my apartment. I hadn’t even told him when I was in Chicago, just a few hours away from him by train. When I went to see him this time, I decided, I would do whatever he asked. I would not push so hard.

  Chapter 16

  I RUSHED TO MY FATHER THE NEXT AFTERNOON. WHEN I entered his room, Linda stood by his bedside. My father sat up in his bed, the beat of his heart beeping steadily beside him on a monitor. He smiled. “Katherine,” he said. “My love.” It was probably the influence of medication that had made him speak to me that way, in a voice that was like a caress, but tears sprang to my eyes anyway. “My darling,” my father said. “I’ve missed you so much, and there’s so much to tell you.” He held out his arms. “But first, come here, and let this old man put his arms around you.”

  I went to him immediately, leaving my suitcase at the door. There were two empty chairs, one by the bed and one a little farther away, and the room was divided by a curtain, beneath which I could see the legs of another bed, on which lay another patient with his own visitors. I sat in the chair right by the bed and leaned into my father. He wrapped his arms around me, pressing me into his chest. The pajamas the hospital had given him were coarse and scratchy. He smelled different than I remembered him, less sweet and more metallic.