Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 06 - Death without Tenure

by Joanne Dobson

“Really? Beyond class? Beyond sexual orientation? Beyond ethnicity?” The Enfield College Comparative American Studies Department, which considered itself daringly liberal, hadn’t advanced that far yet. “And beyond literature?”

  “Beyond even the category of ‘category’ itself,” Hank said. “Professor Lone Wolf thought ‘literature,’ for instance, was outmoded as a critical tool, as, of course are those worn-out terms, ‘meaning’ and ‘relevance.’”

  “Meaning and relevance gone, too?” I mused aloud. I found myself shredding the “ossified” syllabus with unconscious fingers. “So, tell me—what criteria do you use, then, in defining Outsider literature? Which is,” I added with some acerbity, “after all, the subject of this course.”

  “Oh, you know,” chimed up Waterspout Hair, “Rawness.”

  “Rawness?”

  There was some shifting in the seats, and the black student with the shaved head and little goatee stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  “Yes—raw literature,” the young man said, his dark eyes hooded. This was Elmore O’Hara, and I’d seen him talking to Joe earlier in the semester. “Lit brut—narrative liberated by the Internet and other cutting-edge advancements, and…well, er, media…” To a student, faces went blank. What the heck? “Narrative liberated,” he continued, “from cultural monitoring, thus allowing authentic expression, expression that escapes entirely the dead hand of literary and academic establishments. Blogs, e-mail, websites, listservs, chapbooks, underground lit, self-published stuff and, er, experiential narrative.”

  A tall young woman with black-rimmed narrow glasses and brown hair in a conservative bun chimed in. “The Internet, among other…um, media, has liberated us even from the concept of ‘writing’ itself. ‘Writing,’ like ‘print’ is passé. Our texts include Facebook and YouTube.”

  “Is that so?” What the hell had been going on in this course? I pushed myself up from the chair and walked over to the ancient leaded window. Trying to keep my face expressionless, I gazed out the wavy glass at a campus in dusk. Student migration had turned in the direction of the dining hall. Garrett Reynolds walked past our window, a Burberry scarf tied loosely around the collar of his navy-blue wool pea jacket. He held his Blackberry in an ungloved hand and was punching buttons furiously.

  Facebook? YouTube? The kids clearly had been captivated by the adventure of investigating outside even the most recent canon, and I didn’t want to alienate them. But there was a difference between cutting-edge literary investigation and absolute twaddle. Facebook! How to approach this nonsense?

  We were in one of the oldest and more elegant classrooms on campus, cherry-paneled, with tall, narrow recessed windows and, decorating the walls, portraits of bewhiskered gentleman from two previous centuries. There was nothing either raw or brut about it. Nor should there be about the education these young people were paying through the nose to receive on this distinguished campus. Cutting-edge was one thing; sheer literary anarchy was another.

  “So,” I said, turning my attention back from the window. “Raw lit, huh? Lit brut? I assume Professor Lone Wolf adopted those categories from contemporary visual art fads, er, trends. But, if you think about it, even Americans educated in the Western literary tradition have cast themselves as Outsiders.” I opened the anthology I had brought with me to its nineteenth-century pages and gave an impromptu lecture on “Outsiders” such as Walt Whitman, who wrote in what he called a “barbaric yawp” and set the type for his own poems, which were so “raw” no conventional publisher would touch them. And I reminded them of Emily Dickinson, who celebrated herself as “Nobody” and refused to participate in print culture at all, by making little sewn-together “fascicle” books of her verses for herself alone. “How dreary—to be—Somebody! / How public—like a Frog— / To tell one’s name—the livelong June— / To an admiring Bog!”

  “The instinct to write ‘outside’ the literary establishment, you see, can indeed be radical and liberating, but it wasn’t pioneered by the Internet and, er, other media—whatever they might be.”

  The students glanced at each other, and then looked back at me. Something wasn’t being said, and they were still wary. Hank and Ayesha exchanged enigmatic glances. Well, whatever was going on here, it was none of my business. By next week’s meeting, I hoped, the seminar would have a new teacher.

  I assigned a selection of Whitman and Dickinson and dismissed the class.

  It wasn’t until I was halfway down the hall that I realized Ayesha Ahmed hadn’t spoken a word during the entire discussion.

  ***

  The Dean of Students office was close by in Emerson Hall, on the second floor. My mother had spent most of the afternoon there, crocheting, I assumed. On this unseasonably chilly October day, Earlene had built a small, well behaved fire in the old fireplace. My mother sat in an armchair, hands quiet in her lap now, and the flickering firelight dancing across her face. When had she gotten so old?

  “Hi, Mom,” I said. Oh, what was I going to do with her tomorrow?

  “I’m hungry,” she replied.

  I smiled at her, gently. “We’ll take care of that right away.” Then I turned to Earlene. “I’m sorry, pal. I didn’t intend for the class to run so long. But, man, that Joe Lone Wolf was into some weird shit.”

  “You’re telling me.” my friend responded, twisting her lips.

  Any other time I would have caught the enigmatic tone in her voice. But right now I was so outraged by what I’d just been hearing that I spilled it all out. Then I finished up: “Can you imagine! When you have Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson available in a literature course, choosing to study YouTube and Facebook! Outrageous!” But, in spite of the outrage, I was curious and wondered if there was some way I could find out just exactly what Joe and the students were up to with Facebook. If I ever had a free moment again in my life—which was doubtful.

  “I’m not surprised…considering what else he was into.”

  “What?”

  She waved off my question with a beringed hand. “Never mind. You’ll know soon enough.” Then she sat down behind her desk and began to toy with an elongated African head carved in ebony.

  “Whaaaat?”

  Earlene laughed. It was a musical sound. “Sorry—can’t tell you. But it sounds to me like Professor Lone Wolf thought Outsider literature didn’t have anything to do with outsiders, but that it meant ‘literature outside of literature.’”

  I was struck by the astuteness of her analysis. I’ll have to remember that,” I said, “literature outside of literature.”

  “I’m hungry, Karen,” Mom repeated.

  I turned to my mother, distracted from Earlene’s comments about “what else” Joe had been “into.”

  “Do you like chili, Mom?” I asked. “We’ll go home and you can watch Nick at Nite while we eat.” I’d take some of Charlie’s fiery chili from the freezer, heat it up, and try desperately to forget that this day had been the deadline for submitting my tenure petition.

  And that I’d missed it.

  Chapter 15

  Saturday a.m., 10/17

  The knock on my front door at two a.m. didn’t wake me, but it woke my mother. She was bedded down in Amanda’s room, and when I’d peeked in before I’d gone to bed myself, she was tossing and mumbling. I’d stood in the door and watched her for a moment: what was going on in her dreams? Did she still have dreams? I knew she still had secrets, anyhow. What was it she’d been about to tell me yesterday when Neil Boylan had interrupted us?

  Then I was dreaming—a special handcrafted nightmare designed especially for a handcrafted tenure dilemma.

  Oh, stop it, Karen, said the Schoolmistress, stout, corseted and certain, index finger raised in scolding mode. You’ve done good work, you’ve been an asset to the department, your students love you. It’s only logical that you’ll be tenured. What is all this juvenile whimpering? Do I need to take you into therapy again?

  No. No. Not therapy. Not again, I said. I was back
in Lowell bouncing a rubber ball on a cracked sidewalk. K my name is Karen and my husband’s name is…

  Don’t listen to her, Karen, my love, whispered the Waif, her tattered skirts whipping in the psychic storm. Only I know how accustomed you are to hardship and loss, how your dreams evade you, how inconceivable it would be for a Girl from the Wrong Side of a Factory Town to succeed at Enfield College. You’ll never make it, and you’ll be inconsolable. Quit now. Just walk away. Don’t set yourself up for a fall.

  “Karen? Karen?” Why was my mother in my dream?

  “Karen?” Someone wouldn’t shut up. “Karen?”

  I opened one eye, then the other.

  My mother stood in the lighted rectangle of my bedroom door in white flannel pajamas with little red birds on them. “Karen, get up. Men are at the door. Get up.” Her hairdo was flattened on one side.

  I could hear the pounding now and threw back the blue thermal blanket. “Who on earth…?”

  “Policemen. Out the window. Policemen with hats.”

  “Cops!” I went cold all over; what had happened now? Grabbing up a crimson wool robe from the bottom of the bed, I headed for the door, my mother behind me clutching a handful of my robe.

  “Who’s there?” I called, turning on the standing lamp by the door, still shivering.

  “It’s Boylan, Ms. Pelletier. Open up.” The lieutenant’s tone brooked no refusal.

  “Boylan? Again?” What was going on? But he was a legitimate officer of the peace; I had no legal right to refuse him entry. I slid the chain from the bolt and unlocked the door. There were two of them, backlit by the motion-sensor light, the dark woods stretching behind them. Lieutenant Neil Boylan and a uniformed female trooper I didn’t recognize. She’d taken off her stiff-brimmed blue hat and stood behind him, slightly to one side, turning the hat in awkward hands. Where was Trooper Lombardi, Boylan’s usual partner?

  The lieutenant took an uninvited step into the living room, the trooper right behind him. Cold air swarmed in with them; it smelled like night. “Ms. Pelletier, this is Trooper Dunbar.” The tall black woman nodded at me expressionlessly. “Dunbar and I, we’re here to ask you some questions.” His mouth had gone lopsided, as if he were feeling a sore tooth with his tongue.

  “What’s so urgent it couldn’t wait until morning?” I began. Then the kitchen phone rang, and I startled. It was an old phone, and it shrilled in the darkness like the portent of doom from a 1930s black-and-white film—something, maybe, starring Claudette Colbert.

  “Don’t answer that.” Boylan moved to block me, but I side-stepped him and grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

  “I just heard.” It was Felicity Schultz. “Don’t say a thing. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Maybe less.” The line went dead.

  “Who’s calling you this time of night?” Boylan barked. “Piotrowski?”

  If only…

  I recalled that, after hello, I hadn’t said a word on the phone. “No one,” I replied. “Wrong number. What are you here for?” I moved into the living room, turning on lights as I passed them. Mom sat in Charlie’s big armchair. Boylan plopped onto the couch without asking permission, and the uniformed oficer stood by the door—as if, I thought, to prevent any attempt at an escape. I eyed her: she was big, but using my old Lowell street moves I could probably take her.

  Not that I would, of course, being a respectable professional now and having different and far more effective defensive moves, but it was comforting to know I could.

  “Why am I here, Professor?” Boylan replied. “I guess the answer to that would be…” big dramatic sigh…“it’s your third strike.”

  “Third strike?” All I could think of was a baseball game.

  “Yeah. Strike one—rivalry with Lone Wolf for that cushy job.”

  “Uh huh. We already talked about that.”

  “Yeah, we did. Strike two—that fight you had—”

  “It wasn’t a fight!”

  “Altercation, then. Your altercation with the victim.”

  “And we talked about that.” A suspicion began to flood my mind. “I know! You’re here because of what that damn Ned Hilton told you!”

  Boylan looked surprised. “Hilton? Hell, no. I didn’t pay any attention to his bullshit. What is wrong with that guy, anyhow? I’ve talked to everyone on campus—there are no rumors out there about you. Which surprises me, actually—Hilton’s the only one who seems to suspect you. Otherwise, you’ve got a lot of friends on that campus.”

  “I do? I mean, of course I do.” It was ridiculous; in spite of the dire implications of having a homicide investigator in my house at two a.m., I felt a flush of gratification: I had a lot of friends on campus. “Well, then…?”

  “We’re here because of strike three.”

  “What the hell is strike three?”

  “On Friday, October 2—ten days before he died—you conducted a comprehensive cybersearch on Joe Lone Wolf. That’s strike three.”

  Goddammit! My computer. “Yeah, I Googled him. I’d forgotten all about that.”

  He stared at the banked coals of the wood fire that was burning in the old fieldstone fireplace. “You had, huh? Well, Professor, now’s the time to remember.”

  “It was nothing. I Google people all the time. We all do. Don’t you?”

  He turned back to me, his eyes cold and hard. “Yeah. But it’s my job to investigate—not yours. I want to know why you were suddenly so interested in Lone Wolf.”

  I told him about Miles’ tenure bombshell. “I guess I panicked a little. I wanted to find out just who it was I was up against. Funny thing, though—there was nothing there.”

  He nodded. “Lone Wolf kept a pretty low Internet profile. Unlike you, of course.” He stopped. And waited.

  “What are you implying?”

  He didn’t answer me. “And he had very little e-mail correspondence.”

  “Is that so?” Why was he telling me this?

  “Also unlike you, Professor,” he continued, giving me a sly sideways glance.

  I stared at him, stunned. “You read my e-mail!”

  “Oh, Charlie,” he said, expressionless, “I miss you so.…”

  “You…you bastard!” I felt as if I’d been slimed.

  “Perfectly within my rights,” he replied, stony-faced, “in the course of an investigation.”

  Then, out of the darkness, headlights suddenly flooded the living-room windows. “What the hell?” Boylan snapped. “Dunbar, see who’s out there.”

  Trooper Dunbar had barely gotten the front door open before Felicity Schultz, dressed in jeans and a red plaid hunter’s jacket, came storming in.

  “The hell you doing here, Schultz?” Boylan towered over her.

  “I’m asking you the same, Lieutenant.” She stood facing him, leather-gloved hands on her hips. A pit bull facing down a fight-trained Rottweiler.

  “I’m here officially, and it’s not your business. You’re not even on active duty.”

  “I’m making it my business. Unless you have reasonable suspicion, disturbing a citizen at home in the middle of the night looks like harassment to me.”

  For a moment Boylan kept silence. Then, “You’re just sore about Lombardi.”

  “Damn right I’m sore. You slapping a suspension on his record! But that’s not why I’m here. Just because you and Piotrowski have a beef going on is no reason to persecute his lady.”

  His lady? Jee-zus! “Felicity—for God’s sake. I can take care of myself.” But I might as well not have spoken.

  “Wha-a-a-t? That’s an actionable accusation! I’m not persecuting anyone.” He turned his back on her and walked over to the fireplace with its glowing, half-consumed coals. Grabbing the iron poker, he hefted it. She stiffened into a defensive stance, but he used the poker only to push back the iron-mesh fire screen and then to stir the coals. He stood there, his back turned to us, for a long, uneasy moment. Suddenly the poker landed on the stone hearth with a clang, and he spun on his heel back
toward Schultz. “That Polack bastard put you up to this.”

  Schultz strode over and replaced the poker on its hook. “’That Polack bastard,’ as you call our colleague, is in Iraq—he doesn’t know nothing about it, Boylan. Give me one good reason not to report you for harassment.” They went into fighting-breed stance again, eye-to-eye. I had a brief nonvisual flash of jaws and teeth.

  Sergeant Dunbar had been watching the spat with unbelieving eyes. I saw her take a deep breath, let it out in a sigh, set her stiff-brimmed hat carefully on the narrow oak table behind the couch, and stiff-leg it toward the combatants. She didn’t say a word, just stood there, stone-faced, looking from Boylan to Felicity, from Felicity to Boylan.

  Lieutenant Boylan’s fair complexion was suffused with an angry red. He bit his lip so hard drops of blood oozed through the skin. For another long moment he stood motionless. Then he spun around again and headed for the door. “Dunbar, we’re out of here.” With his hand on the knob, he turned back and growled, “Schultz—don’t think I’m gonna forget about this.”

  Before following her furious superior out the door, Dunbar turned back. The long look she and Schultz shared was heavy with meaning, but it was meaning in a cop dialect, and I was an outsider. I couldn’t read it.

  When Dunbar eased the door shut behind her, I slid the bolt into place. In a suddenly quiet room, the chain rattled against the paneled door. I looked over to see how my mother had weathered the scene. She was no longer in her chair. I found her in Amanda’s room, crouched in a small space tucked between the dresser and the bed.

  ***

  While I was getting Mom calmed down and back to sleep, I could hear Felicity in the kitchen making coffee: water ran from the faucet, then was poured into the coffee machine; the beans rattled into the built-in grinder, then came the screech of coffee beans being pulverized into grounds. Then I smelled the aroma of the brew itself.

  Charlie had given me this expensive machine for my birthday, along with a gift card for a near-endless supply of Colombian beans. The sound and smell of the coffee-making bought a sensory illusion of his presence so strong it almost made me cry to know he wouldn’t come striding out of the kitchen to announce that breakfast was ready.