The Garden was abuzz with people arriving for the hockey game, and Jack took me by the elbow, steering me through the throngs. In the past when I had gone to Ranger games, I had taken the escalators that wended their way at an alarming speed up through the Garden. More than once I had felt nauseous riding those escalators. I had never had great seats, so my escalator rides had always ended in the nosebleed section. But tonight would be different, from what Jack told me, because he worked in the public relations office for the team and had access to second-row, center-ice seats, right behind the home team’s bench. For a French Canadian like me, it was about as close to heaven as you could get.
We arrived at our seats just as the pregame practice was ending. We really hadn’t spoken on our way to the seats, so when Jack sat down next to me, I realized that it was “showtime.” He asked me if I wanted anything to eat.
“No, thanks,” I said. I had never met this man before. I wasn’t going to display my chowing prowess in the first half hour of our time together. Nobody likes a woman who can inhale a foot-long hot dog in three bites. Except maybe Crawford. The guy I like, I thought, as I admired Jack’s chiseled jaw.
“A glass of wine? A beer? Soda?” he asked.
I gazed into his blue eyes for probably longer than was socially acceptable. “Wine would be nice,” I said.
Jack told me that he would be back in a few minutes, so I settled into my seat. When I was sure that he was out of sight, I dug my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Max. I wanted her to watch the game to see if she could get a peek at me; with seats right behind the bench, I was confident that I would be on television at least once or twice. I needed input on my hair. I had been going for a Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl look and wanted confirmation that I had succeeded. She answered on the first ring, as she normally does.
“Max here.”
“Hi, it’s me,” I shouted over the crowd noise. “Listen, are you watching anything on television tonight?”
“No,” she said, chewing loudly in my ear. She mentioned that her favorite reality show wasn’t on so she wasn’t watching anything. Max loves reality television more than life itself and watches every single reality show with a devotion and solemnity normally reserved for religious ceremonies.
“Great.” I smoothed my hair down. “Put on the Rangers. I’m out with Jack McManus and I want you to see how I’ve done my hair.”
She gasped. “Cheating on your married boyfriend already?” she cried, with mock alarm. She knew about this date but wouldn’t miss an opportunity to rib me about it. “Well, I never!”
“Max, seriously. I need help. I haven’t been on a date in this millennium. Help me.”
She turned on the television and we chitchatted while she waited to get a shot of me. She continued eating what sounded like an entire bag of tortilla chips.
“Wait,” she said, “there’s the bench…and there you are.” She paused for longer than I would have liked. I started to get nervous. “You look like Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl.”
“Great! That’s what I was going for!” I said.
“But not in a good way,” she added. “Take that piece that you’ve artfully arranged behind your ear and pull it forward.”
“Like this?” I pushed some hair around.
“Got it.”
“Oh, and Max, I went to Ray’s apartment yesterday and guess what I found?”
I took the massive crunching in my ear for her response.
“A sex tape.”
“Is it good?”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s not the point, Max. There’s a woman on there. Do you think she might be a suspect? She’s awfully big. I could see her being able to overpower someone.”
“Bigger than you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
A hand on my shoulder interrupted our conversation; Jack was back. I pretended to be on an important phone call. “I appreciate your concern about your grade, Anne Marie, and will reassess the points you made tomorrow. Have a good night.” I snapped my phone shut.
Jack sat down next to me and handed me a crystal goblet filled with red wine. “Here you go.”
We had already covered all of the basics of our lives on our “predate interview” as I liked to call it, over the phone: we were both single, professionals, but whereas I lived in Westchester County, Jack had stayed close to his and Kevin’s Queens roots and had a condo in Long Island City, which was fast becoming the hot new area in New York. I attempted to make conversation, pretending to myself that I was out with someone in whom I had no interest, didn’t find the least bit attractive, and with whom I had spent many an evening.
“So, Kevin tells me you’re a Joyce scholar,” he said, and took a sip of the beer that he had brought back for himself.
“Guilty.” Nothing says sexy like someone who reads obtuse Irish writers.
“‘Love loves to love love. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody,’” he said, a faint blush appearing on his cheeks as it may have occurred to him that quoting Joyce was either a show-offy move or one that would give me the wrong impression of our first date.
Neither possibility crossed my mind. “I’m impressed,” I said, and it was the truth. Not only did he quote correctly, but it was a quote from well into the text. That was a quote correctly rendered from someone who had read the book from start to…well, at least the middle.
He focused his attention on the game. “I’ve always loved Joyce. His writing has such a musical quality, it’s hard not to love it.”
We cheered as the Rangers scored a goal. I was careful not to jump up and down, spilling what tasted like a fine merlot all over my date. “So, what else did Kevin tell you about me?”
The look that passed over his face told me that Father Blabbermouth—my rather improper nickname for gossip-loving Kevin—had given Jack chapter and verse on the many sordid aspects of my life. How I had married a scoundrel but stayed married to him for seven years. And how the dead body of one of my students had been found in the trunk of my car. And how I had fallen in love with a very attractive, yet very married, detective. And how aforementioned scoundrel was found dead in my kitchen. It was all there, written on his kind face.
“He told me that you love hockey,” he offered weakly. “I hope that’s true.”
Nice save. “Yes, it’s true,” I said, and exhaled. “My mother and father were from Quebec and while my father was a dedicated Nordiques fan, once he moved to New York, he changed teams. I grew up a Ranger fan.”
“College professor, Joyce scholar, Ranger fan,” he said, smiling. “You don’t find too many people in this arena with that pedigree.” The buzzer sounded, ending the first period. “How about another glass of wine?” he asked.
I looked into my glass and saw that it was nearly empty. “Why not?” I said, and handed it to him. The moment he left his seat, my cell phone chirped. Max.
“You’re showing quite a lot of boob tonight,” she observed. “Unless that’s the glare from the ice bouncing off your cleavage.”
I peered down into my chest area; my cardigan sweater was unbuttoned just enough to say “yes, I’m a college professor but, boy, have I got game.” “Am not.”
“You’re doing quite well,” she said. “I’ve been watching your entire date on television.”
“He’s cute, right?”
“He’s very cute, I think. The guy sitting in front of the two of you has a huge head. It’s enormous. He should get that looked at.” And with that, she ended the conversation.
Jack returned with wine and some hot dogs, one of which I devoured as daintily as I could. I stretched out my consumption to five bites this time but he didn’t seem to notice. After the second glass of wine, the conversation flowed a little more easily and I found myself really enjoying his company. The game ended with the Rangers winning, leaving both of us in a great mood.
We left the seating area and returned
to the lobby, where we had begun our date. “Did you drive in tonight?” he asked as we went with the crowd toward the front door. The night air was chilly even though, technically, summer had just ended.
“I’m taking the train home,” I said, and pulled my jacket tight around my body.
“I’ve arranged a car service to take you home. Let’s walk outside; the driver should be waiting out here on Thirty-fourth Street.” He took my hand and led me out to the street. Just as he predicted, a driver was parked along the street, holding a sign bearing the name “Bergerson.” Close enough.
I turned to face him. “Jack, thank you. This was a really lovely evening.”
He leaned in and I girded myself for a kiss. But instead, he took a piece of my hair and put it behind my ear, reestablishing the look that I had so carefully constructed before I had left the house. He rested his hand on my left cheek, rubbing it slightly with his thumb, and leaned in and kissed the other one. “Good night. Maybe we can do this again?” he asked.
I nodded. “That would be great.” I got into the car and gave him a little wave as we drove off. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and saw that I had a text message from Max. It read: “You have mustard on your left cheek. It’s been there since the second period. xoxo”
Chapter 11
I went to school the next day with a spring in my step. For one night, at least, I was able to forget about Ray’s death and focus on something fun and pleasurable.
Every time I thought of Crawford’s face, I tried to put it out of my mind. Why the hell did I feel so guilty? After all, I had a lot of lingering hurt and ire left over from the Crawford “I’m married but not really” debacle of the spring. I had very strong feelings for him—of both the love and lust variety—but the sting of not knowing about his estranged wife, who was adorable and seemingly lovely, was still painful.
I bounced into the office area, nodded a quick hello to Dottie, our crazy “never met an eyeshadow she didn’t like” faculty receptionist, and went to my office. She was also dating one of Crawford’s colleagues, a fireplug of a man named Charlie Moriarty, with whom she had fallen deeply and madly in love during the Miceli case. I was surrounded by women dating cops. I wondered what would have happened had I set a small fire in the office area instead of ending up with a dead girl in the trunk of my car; would everybody be dating firefighters? Or if I had caused some kind of international mail incident by sending a toxic package to my cousin Giselle in Quebec? Would letter carriers be part of all of our love lives? I went in and fell into the chair behind the desk, musing on the attraction of civil servants to single women and closed my eyes.
A soft knock at the door interrupted my thoughts. “Come in,” I said, running my hands through my hair and standing. Frank, the mailman for our division, opened the door and tossed in a packet of mail, rubber-banded and thick; it hit me mid–solar plexus and I let out a little grunt in surprise. Frank is middle-aged, suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and lives with his mother, who also works in the mailroom. He’s been on campus for as long as I remember, going back to my undergraduate days. “Thanks, Frank,” I said, surprised to see him. He usually puts the mail in the boxes behind Dottie’s desk.
“Dottie said that you looked like you had a late night,” he said, “so I thought I’d bring you your mail this morning.” Frank is nothing if not painfully honest, something that on most days, I appreciate. Today was not one of those days. “Do you dye your hair?” Frank is also king of the non sequitur.
I dropped the mail on my desk and put my hands back up to my head. “No.”
“You should.” He started to pull the door closed. “And don’t wear red. It makes you look green.”
I looked down at my red blouse. “It’s garnet!” I called to the closed door. I hastily pulled a hand mirror out of my drawer and examined my face; it didn’t look green to me but maybe I wasn’t getting the whole picture. My phone rang as I looked for a larger reflective surface around my office. “Dr. Bergeron.”
It was Sister Mary, my boss. She wasn’t my biggest fan but she wasn’t my biggest detractor, either; she was somewhere in the middle on me. I attributed this to my geeky undergraduate years at St. Thomas. “Alison.”
I suppose I had to guess why she was calling. I stalled. “Sister.”
“Alison. We are sitting in Dr. Etheridge’s office awaiting your arrival.”
Awaiting my arrival. I gave up the hunt for a larger mirror and immediately went to my day planner, still turned to two days prior. I turned the page to the current day and saw in giant red letters “Staff meeting. Don’t be late.” And in smaller letters “You were late to the last one.” I resisted the urge to curse and went for the always-courteous abrupt hang-up. I smoothed down my sleeveless garnet blouse and ran out of the office, skidding down two flights of stairs until I reached of the office Dr. Etheridge—“little Napoleon” as I liked to refer to him—where my illustrious humanities and social sciences colleagues were gathered. I ran past Fran, Etheridge’s secretary, who shot me a death look, and ran into the room. With the plethora of pocket protectors jammed into short-sleeved dress shirts and knee-hi panty hose peeking out from beneath peasant skirts, it resembled a meeting of the local chapter of Star Trek conventioneers. In my garnet blouse, black printed skirt, and high-heeled pumps, I looked, frankly, like a hooker compared to this crew.
“Sorry I’m late,” I mumbled and slid into the only empty chair in the room, the one right beside Little Napoleon at the conference table. Sister Mary glared at me from across the table and I looked down at my hands.
“Thank you for joining us, Dr. Bergeron,” Etheridge said. “Now that you’re here, perhaps we should have a moment of silence for our departed colleague, Dr. Stark. And perhaps a word from Dr. Bergeron?”
I looked around the room and all eyes were on me. Why me? I had only been married to the guy for seven years; some of these clowns had worked with him for far longer. Silence, the man said. Surely I couldn’t be expected to say something about Ray?
“Alison? Would you like to say something?” Etheridge asked.
Oh, I’ve got a lot to say, I thought, but I shook my head instead.
“It really would be nice if you could share something about Ray,” he persisted.
Share something? How about how he made me pay off the credit cards after we divorced, and then bought a fifty-thousand-dollar car? Or how I’d learned he was catting around mere hours after we returned from our honeymoon? Or how he had managed to produce the most boring sex tape known to the world of amateur porn? I clasped my hands together and cast my eyes downward. “Dear Lord, watch over Ray as he makes his way from purgatory to heaven.” That was the best I could do.
I looked up and all eyes were still on me, except this time, instead of pity, the eyes were filled with wonder. At my prayer. Sister Mary put her hand over mine and patted it gently. “Do you really think that Ray is in purgatory, Alison?”
No, I think he’s in hell. My marriage was purgatory. “I don’t know, Sister. But let’s hope he makes it upstairs to the big guy as soon as possible.”
If I had any doubts that Etheridge thought I was a giant buffoon, I was fairly confident at that moment that that was the case. He stared at me from behind his glasses and considered what I had said. Finally, he broke the silence and returned to the matter at hand: why we were all in the conference room together. “We were just discussing the potentially changing demographic landscape for…”
Blah, blah, blah, I thought, as I chewed on “potentially changing demographic landscape.” There was so much wrong with that phrase that I couldn’t even begin to focus on what he was saying. I watched his mouth move and thought about my raging headache when in my half slumber I heard him ask, “And what do you think?”
I sat up a little straighter. “Sounds good.”
David Morlock, the history chair, caught my eye and gave his head a little shake to warn me.
“Sounds good?” Etheridge asked.
“So, you’re proposing that we reverse our policy?”
Whoops. The blood in my veins turned to ice as I considered my options. I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting the answer right—or wrong for that matter—so I stalled by putting my finger to my nose in a gesture of contemplation. “Hmmm…” I said. “Interesting dilemma.” I looked around the table and saw that all of my colleagues were staring at me. After a few seconds of silence, David spoke up.
“I think what Alison means is that there are two schools of thought on the issue of gay rights and that allowing a queer studies program into a Catholic school has both pros and cons,” he said. He continued talking, and after a few tense seconds, all eyes were off me and onto him, an eloquent orator and all-around good guy.
I almost fell in love with him at that moment, but being as he is sixty-seven, has terrible halitosis, and lives with four cats, I was able to keep my emotions in check. I shot him a grateful look and returned to studying my cuticles. I also said a silent Act of Contrition to make up for all of those “Morlock the Warlock” jokes that I found so hilarious during my sophomore year.
Etheridge asked me if I had collected all of the syllabi that he had requested. I felt the blood drain from my face as I realized that I hadn’t. I didn’t even have one.
He stared at me from behind his frameless lenses. “And when do you think you’ll be getting them, Dr. Bergeron?”
“Any day now,” I proclaimed unconvincingly. Damn that Sister Calista and her cabal of ornery sisters. Now I knew why they were so resistant to giving me the information I needed; the school was thinking about offering some courses in gay and lesbian studies and they weren’t having any part of that. I could save Etheridge a lot of time and tell him exactly how many gay and lesbian literary figures were included on those syllabi: none. And I could also tell him who’d be happily teaching a queer studies course if it were offered in the future: me. So, he could have saved me a heck of a lot of time and energy by just being honest with me from the get-go. Those nuns had turned on me and I would never be able to turn them back.
Extracurricular Activities Page 10
