Quieter than Sleep
Page 27
I glanced at her, surprised; as a rule, Jill wasn’t given to strong antagonisms.
But Jill didn’t notice my reaction. “You should see Sally’s hair—no, Karen, don’t turn around. I’ll tell you. Today, Professor Chenille’s hair is a lovely Day-Glo orange, a very, very nice visual contrast to Miles’s strawberry—no—raspberry complexion. Okay, now your pal Greg Samoorian is talking—that deep authoritative voice that only bearded men seem to have, I can’t hear exactly what he’s saying, but it looks like he’s on Avery’s side. At least Avery’s nodding and …”
“Okay, okay, I don’t need a blow-by-blow. If Greg’s involved, I know what it’s about. He told me Avery was getting together an exploratory committee to investigate collegewide curriculum reform. As the new chair of Anthropology, Greg’s part of that. This is probably the planning group.”
Jill whistled softly between her teeth. “Whew, no wonder Miles is so upset. The college might actually stop requiring his course in the Literature of the Dark Ages.”
“Yeah.” I laughed, but it wasn’t funny. In the current culture wars the English Department faculty was factionalized between the old-guard professors who taught Literature (with a capital L) as high art, and the avant-garde who taught almost anything that had ever appeared in print—and had completely discredited the very idea of art. And now it looked as if the contest for the hearts and minds of Enfield students was about to draw blood. Miles was representative of the older contingent, completely conventional in his approach to literature: Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton were his gods. Henry James deserved serious consideration—maybe. Jane Austen, well, okay, she wrote nice little stories. But beyond that, no woman had produced anything worth consideration. And minority literature? A contradiction in terms.
Since I’m in the opposing camp—I’d been hired to teach American women’s literatures—I was at frequent odds with my department chair. As an un-tenured professor, I could be made pretty uncomfortable at times. Miles, and the other old boys, seemed to think that the department got more than it bargained for when they hired me. My work on Emily Dickinson was acceptable, of course; after all, the woman had somehow wormed her way into the canon of American literature, that body of texts professors had taught since time immemorial. But now, two years into my position at Enfield College, I—young upstart that I was—was exposing my students to all sorts of noncanonical stuff: slave narratives, sentimental novels, working-class literature—the books people actually read in the nineteenth century. Garbage. And now, God help me, I was also thinking about writing a biography of an obscure woman novelist named Serena Northbury. I hadn’t told the department yet, but Miles would freak out when—and if—I mentioned it in my annual faculty activity report.
I sighed and nudged my empty plate away. Time to get back to work. There were papers to grade, classes to teach. And I needed to make time to write a good long letter to my daughter. Even though Amanda had been away at college for two years, I still missed her. We talked on the phone all the time, but letters were better: you got to slit the envelope, pull the missive out, smooth it open—and read it over and over again.
Jill picked up her sandwich, examined it with a curl of her lip, and dropped it back on the plate. “I guess I’m not hungry. Are you finished?”
I slid the canvas strap of my book bag over my shoulder and picked up the copy of Jane Eyre. “Yeah,” I said. “But I actually ate something. Are you sure you’re okay?” Jill had the milk-white skin of the authentic redhead, but today she was paler than usual, and her mouth had an uncharacteristic pinched look. She drained her water glass, then rose from the chair.
“I’m fine. It’s just that—Karen, watch out!”
But it was too late. As I moved from the table, intent on Jill’s response, Miles Jewell stormed away from the curriculum meeting and barreled into me. He hit me broadside, and, in a blind fury, kept on going. I staggered, fell back, and caught my balance by grabbing hold of the table. My book bag slipped from my shoulder, my arm jerked painfully, and the old book in my hand plummeted to the dining room floor.
Miles continued his retreat. As he exited through the Commons’ wide French doors, I stared after him in astonishment. Miles may be conservative, even retrograde, but he was never rude. What could possibly have been said at the Round Table to cause this gentleman of the old school to forget his manners so shockingly?
“Karen.” Avery Mitchell, Enfield’s president, was at my side, his hand on my elbow. His tone was solicitous. “Are you all right?”
I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know whether Miles had knocked the breath out of me, or if my current inability to breathe was due to the close presence of Avery Mitchell. Our distinguished president tends to have that effect on me. Tall, lean, and elegant, Avery is the consummate American aristocrat, the type of man my working-class origins had taught me to passionately distrust as effete and dangerous. A member of the power elite. A parasite on society. I get palpitations every time he comes within six feet of me, but I don’t think it has anything to do with my politics.
“I want to apologize for Miles,” Avery continued. “He’s extremely upset.”
“I could tell.” I had worn my long hair loose today, for a change, and now, pushing strands away from my face, I struggled to control my ragged breathing. That was particularly difficult, because Avery still had hold of my arm.
“Yes, well … You know he would never behave like that if, ah, well … under normal circumstances. Please don’t take offense.” Letting his hand fall, Avery reached for the copy of Jane Eyre, sprawled open on the cream-and-rose-patterned carpet. “You dropped this.” As he handed me the volume, something fell from between the pages. He stooped again, retrieved a photograph, took a cursory look at it, and held it out to me. I took the picture by its corner.
“I’ve got to get back.” Avery waved his hand in the general direction of the Round Table, smiled at me ruefully, then strolled over to reconvene the disrupted meeting.
“Always the old smoothie, isn’t he?” Jill was at my elbow. “God, that man has all the moves.” I took the book bag she held out to me, my eyes intent on the sepia photograph in my hand. I had no intention of being sucked into any gossip about our exalted president.
“What’s that?” Jill asked, motioning toward the old photograph. A picture of a baby, it must have been pushed deep into the center of the book, or I would have come across it earlier, when I’d riffled through the pages. The infant was about six months old, propped against a plump pillow with intricate lace edging, and dressed in smothering layers of white mid-Victorian ruffles.
“Poor thing,” I said. “She looks uncomfortable.” I assumed the child was a girl—a waterspout curl on the top of her head was tied with a white bow, and on a chain around her neck she wore a heart-shaped locket in what looked like gold filigree.
“Who do you think it is?” Jill asked. “One of Mrs. Northbury’s kids?”
I turned the stiff photo over. On the back was written “Carrie, August, 1861.”
“No,” I said. “Serena Northbury had her children in the 1840s, when she was in her early twenties. They were named Lavinia, Josephine, and Hortense. There was no Carrie.”
“A grandchild?”
“Too early. Her daughters weren’t married yet. Must be the child of a friend. Or maybe she just liked the picture, used it as a bookmark.”
Jill took the photo from me. “This looks like a studio shot.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The table with the paisley cloth, the ornate book, the vase of flowers: they’re all photographic conventions. Cameras weren’t easily portable then. This isn’t a casual snapshot. Somebody really wanted a picture of this baby.”
“I don’t blame them; she’s a beautiful child,” Jill said. “Those dark eyes, the curls.”
I retrieved the photo and looked at it more closely. “Huh,” I said. “That’s interesting.”
“What?” Jill seemed enthralled with this long-vanished baby.
“Look.” I took the picture over to the window, where the light was better. “Yes,” I said. “Jill, I think this is a black child. What do you think?”
She gazed intently at the sepia print. “It’s hard to tell, the image is so dim. She’s light-skinned, but her features do have an African-American look. I wouldn’t be surprised; there were a great many biracial children coming off those plantations.”
“Yeah. Right.” I shook my head sadly. The rape of slave women by their masters was well documented by nineteenth-century slave narratives. “I wonder what Serena Northbury was doing with a photograph of an African-American baby?”
“Was she an abolitionist?”
“Well, yes—she seems to have been. But she was never outspoken in the way that women like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Lydia Maria Child were. She was—genteel, you might say.”
“Sounds deadly. I’m surprised you’re interested in her.”
“Yeah, well … There’s something there….”
I shrugged, tucked the photograph back into the pages of Jane Eyre, where it had reposed for at least a century, and slipped the book into my big canvas bag for safekeeping.
Crossing the quad on my way back to my office, I sipped carefully at a second cup of coffee and recalled the farcical scene with Miles Jewell. Then I thought about the chaos certain to descend on the English Department when we began to reassess our course offerings and curriculum requirements. If Miles and I hadn’t been at loggerheads before, we certainly would be now.
It wasn’t until I slipped my key into the lock of my office door that I realized Jill had never told me what was bothering her.
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
QUIETER THAN SLEEP
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Published in association with Doubleday Doubleday hardcover edition published November 1997 Bantam paperback edition/August 1998
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1997 by Joanne Dobson
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-53970.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Doubleday.
eISBN: 978-0-307-56996-7
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Chapter 1 - One
Chapter 2 - Two
Chapter 3 - Three
Chapter 4 - Four
Chapter 5 - Five
Chapter 6 - Six
Chapter 7 - Seven
Chapter 8 - Eight
Chapter 9 - Nine
Chapter 10 - Ten
Chapter 11 - Eleven
Chapter 12 - Twelve
Chapter 13 - Thirteen
Chapter 14 - Fourteen
Chapter 15 - Fifteen
Chapter 16 - Sixteen
Chapter 17 - Seventeen
Chapter 18 - Eighteen
Chapter 19 - Nineteen
Chapter 20 - Twenty
Chapter 21 - Twenty-one
Chapter 22 - Twenty-two
Chapter 23 - Twenty-three
Chapter 24 - Twenty-four
Chapter 25 - Twenty-five
Chapter 26 - Twenty-six
Chapter 27 - Twenty-seven
Chapter 28 - Twenty-eight
Chapter 29 - Twenty-nine
Epilogue
Permissions
About the Author
Copyright