Easter Island

by Jennifer Vanderbes

  Greer laughed, and tucked one arm beneath her head.

  “Well,” said Jo from the couch above. “Living a cliché is a lot better than living a deviance.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Just remember, sometimes an older professor,” Jo said, waving her cigar before Greer, “is just an older professor.”

  But, when Greer returned to Professor Farraday’s class the following week, it was as if nothing had happened. She arrived early in a yellow skirt and white blouse. She’d even put on makeup. In the front row, as she took her seat, she slowly tucked her skirt beneath her, but Thomas, reading through a paper on his desk, didn’t look up. Only as the last students filed in did he stand and make his way to the board. He was wearing his usual blue suit, wrinkled across the back; the sleeves fell an inch too long and when he wanted to write on the blackboard he had to shove them up his arms, although they promptly tumbled down again. His disarray perplexed her. Why didn’t this man have a suit that fit properly? A well-known scientist, the department’s darling—certainly he could afford it.

  She knew he was unmarried, but now recalled hearing about his solitary habits. People spoke of his monastic existence, occasionally speculating about his love life, linking him to the department secretary, and to an assistant at the university greenhouse. So rarely was he seen in the presence of women, he was assumed attached to any woman he spoke with. Anything he did outside the classroom was cause for conversation. Mildred Ravener had once seen him at the grocery store, and when she mentioned it to other students, they wanted to know what he’d been buying. Something in the way Thomas carried himself implied he had no time for trivialities; he turned his attention only to what was essential, to things with the density of fact. And clothing must have seemed to him an inconvenience. Or perhaps Greer was wrong; his disorder might be the result of nothing more than simple arrogance. As if his intelligence were handsome enough.

  When class ended, Greer was slow to gather her books—allowing him time for a hello, allowing them a moment when the room was less crowded—but he didn’t once look over. When another student approached him, however, with a question about writing grant proposals, he said: “Simple. State your credentials and your proposal. Don’t try to be charming, don’t try to be funny. And whatever you do”—his voice suddenly amplified—“for science’s sake, don’t quote Whitman.”

  It wasn’t until a week later, when she was working alone in the lab late at night, that she knew she had his attention. Greer had gotten stuck with the twoA .M. to fourA .M. slot for lab time, which she didn’t mind—she liked staying up late. But the temperature had fallen early that year, the lakes were already freezing over, and the university hadn’t yet begun heating the buildings. With a rough wool blanket around her shoulders, two pairs of socks over her panty hose, and Elgar’s Cello Concerto playing on her radio, Greer was looking at unidentified pollen types, when the door creaked open. She wasn’t alarmed. She had a feeling it was him. Something had passed between them, a current, and it was as if for the past week she’d been awaiting this moment. His footsteps moved toward her, but she didn’t look up—she didn’t want to appear eager. A hand wrapped itself around hers and guided it to a warm metal cylinder.

  “Fuel,” he said.

  Greer kept her eyes pressed firmly to the ocular. A grain of black willow pollen loomed beneath her.

  “It’s cold, Miss Sandor.”

  “I have a blanket.”

  “And it’s late. This building is deserted.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t think it’s safe.”

  “I have heard rumors of professors who prowl the halls late at night.”

  He chuckled. She could sense him exploring her work space, looking at her notebook, her taxonomy books, her pile of broken pencils, her radio.

  “You like your work?”

  “I love it.”

  He adjusted the blanket over her shoulders, then retreated. When the door clicked closed, on the table she found a thermos of hot coffee and a ceramic mug.

  The next night, he returned with a space heater. He said nothing as he carried the small machine across the lab. Greer sat at her microscope, watching as he plugged the black box into the socket.

  “I liked your lecture on seed dispersal,” she said.

  “Good.”

  “I’m interested in cross-water dispersal patterns.”

  He smiled.

  He angled the heater toward her, flipped on the switch, and waited as the machine whirred to life. “There,” he said. “The dial in the back adjusts the setting. It sticks a little, so twist it hard.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Well, good night, then, Miss Sandor.”

  “Good night, Professor Farraday.”

  “Ah, Professor Farraday,” he mumbled, as though speaking of someone he had known once, and forgotten.

  Thermoses of coffee, cookies and muffins, naturalist notebooks, lithographs, photographs. For months this went on; he arrived once or twice a week, in the middle of the night, always leaving something on the table. At times he must have found her asleep, her face pressed into the pages of a book, because she would awaken, bleary-eyed, to a gift beside her. Few words were exchanged—“You should eat” or “Get some rest,” always the admonitions of “It’s cold” and “It’s late”—as if the offering were conversation enough, as if the visits were the most natural thing in the world. It was as if they were a couple with their own linguistic shorthand:Honey, lights. Door. The dog. But she felt a slow seduction developing between them. As she sat examining grains of pollen, in he walked, a pioneer of palynology, her teacher, and yet, even when they spoke of science, the conversation inevitably became physical—it focused on the body, her body’s needs.

  Greer now seated herself in the back of the classroom and avoided eye contact, yet she felt his attention even more powerfully. Had she discovered a mathematic principle: For each outward display of interest eliminated, inward interest was squared? Sometimes, during department talks, she would watch him onstage, beside Professor Jenks, Professor Mitzger, and Doctor Hawthorne, arguing and gesticulating with his usual bravado. Her thoughts would drift miles from the topic—the destruction of tropical forests, the extinction of the Mauritius dodo—toward him, Professor Farraday, or Thomas, as she now thought of him. In public he held himself with such authority, people treated him with such deference, it was sometimes hard to believe this was the same man who visited her at night with slices of apple pie. But this was part of what attracted her. The dichotomy. The knowledge that beneath his public self there lived a private, flirtatious self he shared only with her. And for now Thomas wanted the whole matter kept quiet. So did Greer, who never for a moment forgot she was the only woman in the class.

  “Well, he’s either in love with you or he’s trying to fatten you up,” said Jo, when, toward the semester’s end, Greer finally confessed to the late-night trysts.

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  “But you like it.”

  They were having lunch in a diner, sipping milk shakes.

  “I guess I like it a lot,” said Greer.

  “I don’t need to tell you that it’s going to make your status as a woman around here even weirder.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s worth thinking about.”

  “You don’t think it’s a good idea?”

  “Greer, I’m not the person to ask.”

  They opened their books and began to review the material for their next lab assignment. “Sample purification,” said Greer. “I’m trying to get a handle on it. It’s taking up too much of my time.”

  “It’s all about centrifuging. Watch each step, decant, centrifuge. It helps if you don’t daydream about professors between each step.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “I’ll go through it with you if you want.”

  “That’s all right,” said Greer. “I need to do it on my own.”

  “I figured.”

  “And what a
bout the Wichita outcrop samples? Apparently there are some strange grains with echinae.”

  “I looked at them on Tuesday. They almost have that weird pear shape of sedge pollen, and a definite echinate sculpturing. They’re late Miocene. The plant, whatever it is, has been extinct for a long time. I’ll get you a sample.”

  “Thanks, Jo.” Greer flipped through her notebook, drew one last sip through her straw, and slid the glass to the side. “All right. Listen. If I deny myself an attraction because I’m afraid it will compromise my status around here . . .”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “I’m serious. If I deny myself something I want because I’m afraid it will compromise my status, what have I won? It still means I’m allowing myself to be trapped, to be dominated by the system that I’m not a part of.”

  “That’s a positive way to think about it.”

  “You think I’m deluding myself?”

  “I think you’re in love and that feminist politics or anything else doesn’t mean shit to you right now.”

  “He respects me, you know. He respects my work.”

  Jo set her palms on the table and looked at Greer. “That should be a given, Greer. Not a privilege. You’re the smartest one in the whole goddamned program. You’re just a little preoccupied right now.”

  “Don’t worry, Jo. I’m going to give it some time.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m going to take this slow.”

  “Excellent.”

  “There’s no reason to rush.”

  “I’m totally convinced. Are you?”

  “Barely.”

  “Remember the barracuda.”

  Greer laughed. “Jo, what exactlyis the story with the barracuda?”

  “I’ll tell you someday. But the details are irrelevant. The point is, you look into the face of death and you stay calm, you collect your own strength, and you tell yourself that life and death are in your own hands. They’re not outside you.”

  Greer nodded. “Inspiring. Of course, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it’s inspiring nonetheless. Hey, someday, Jo, take me scuba diving?”

  Jo turned the page in her book. “Anytime you want.”

  At the semester’s end, when Professor Farraday’s class was over, Greer went to his office. It was December, the lakes were frozen thick with ice, and the city was dusted in white. From his window she could see people skating on Lake Mendota.

  “I think it’s time we went out to dinner, or to a show, or for drinks. Something real.” She was in mid-sentence as she walked through the door, afraid of losing her nerve. “A date.” She lobbed the word at him.

  “I was beginning to wonder what a man had to do around here to get asked out.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “I was running out of baked goods. I figured if I had to wait until spring, I could bring fresh fruit.”

  “Yes, no. True, false. Are we going on a date, Professor Farraday?”

  “All right. What are your plans for the holidays?”

  “I was going to put in some extra lab time. With everybody gone I might actually get sunlight through a window.”

  “No trips home?”

  “No.”

  “No family visits?”

  “No family,” said Greer, hating how final this sounded. Her father had died just before she’d been accepted to graduate school, a blow that had knocked the wind out of her. School gave her something to occupy her mind, but she missed talking to him about classes, about lab, and she now wished she could talk to him about the man standing before her. Greer didn’t know what her father would think of her romantic life—her relationships in college hadn’t been significant enough to mention. Once, when she was home for the holidays, he had asked, “You have friends at school?” “Some,” she answered. “Special friends? Those can be as important as your studies.” “When I meet a man as interesting as botany, you’ll be the first to know,” she replied. After his death, she’d sold the house to finance her degree, and now there was no home she could go back to. Greer felt the weight of her admission hanging between her and Thomas. This was the first personal information they’d exchanged, the first hint that behind their late-night meetings, their banter and flirtation, lay real life, the past.

  Thomas adjusted his mood accordingly. “Well, certainly you should have some plans for Christmas. That’s no day to be alone.”

  “I didn’t exactly imagineyou celebrating the birth of Christ.”

  “I’m using the day to core on Lake Mendota.”

  “Much better.”

  “Would you like to come?”

  “At last, a date.”

  “A working date. If you do a good job, I’ll take you to dinner afterward.”

  Greer considered this, letting her attention drift over the walls of his office: certificates, awards, more Latin calligraphy in this one room than she’d seen in a lifetime. She knew he liked her—he had, after all, pursued her—but it was still hard not to feel overwhelmed by who he was. She could think of only one way to shake her intimidation. “How about you take me to dinner Christmas Eve, and if you do a good job, I’ll consider helping you take samples the next day.”

  “The next day?”

  “We can arrange something,” said Greer. She scribbled her address on a sheet of paper and tore it from her notebook. “You have to hold the doorbell down hard,” she said. “If that doesn’t work, throw a snowball at the second-floor window.”

  For the next two weeks they didn’t see each other. Greer heard from another student that Professor Farraday was lecturing at a symposium at the University of Iowa, and the shades on his office door were drawn. The campus buildings quieted, the crowds on State Street dissolved. Jo left to spend Christmas with Jeb and Jeremiah in Minneapolis, and for the first time, Greer, in her small apartment, looking at the rows of dark windows across the street, experienced the full realization of her solitude. When she was young she had gone on long horseback rides through the countryside by herself, watching birds or bullfrogs for hours on end—a kind of loneliness, but chosen. This was a sense of people vanishing, of empty rooms, and it unsettled her. She called Jo a few times but never reached her. She ate dinner out for the noise and the company. Mainly, Greer missed her father—it was her first winter without him, and even though she kept herself busy in the lab, working late into the night, shuffling endless slides beneath her microscope, it only reminded her how much she wanted to talk to him.

  By Christmas Eve, her sadness had turned to numbness. Greer had simply tired herself with feeling lonely. She managed to put on a red cardigan Jo had told her looked good; she barretted her hair, rubbed some rouge on her face. But when he rang her doorbell, and she met him downstairs, her smile was strained.

  “I should let you know I was entirely prepared to throw a snowball. Oh, no.” He was standing on the walkway. “I’m too late. The holiday blues have gotten hold of you.”

  “I’m just tired,” said Greer, examining his face, recently shaven, and the sharp line of his jaw against the collar of his coat. She couldn’t believe he was there. And she couldn’t believe how much she had wanted to see him, what need she harbored in herself.

  “Trust me, I know the look. It took me fifteen years to devise a way to avoid the holiday blues. And now, for the price of your charming company, I will share it with you. I’ll save you years of despair. Trust me.”

  “Youknow the holiday blues?”

  “Miss Sandor, I’ve spent most of my life alone. Holidays. Birthdays. Symposiums. Even football games. You are dealing with an expert in solitude. I’m an award-winning solitarian.”

  There must have been women, thought Greer. Perhaps on other holidays, perhaps other students. But she had no desire to ask about that now. She was simply glad that he was here. Beneath his overcoat he wore a blue sweater over a plaid shirt—the shirt’s collar was crooked, one side tucked beneath the sweater’s neck, the other side flipped upside down, a plaid arrow at his chin. It
was the first time she’d seen him in anything other than a suit. His cologne floated toward her on an icy breeze.

  “But you’d rather not be alone,” she said.

  “I’d rather you not be alone.”

  “Well,” said Greer. “Ditto, then.”

  They let a pleasant silence spread between them.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “Ravenous.”

  “Good. Me too.” He linked his arm in hers and they stepped slowly down the icy path. “Button up,” he said. “It’s cold.”

  “You too,” she said. They buttoned their coats, adjusted their scarves, watched their breath steam into the night. He then pulled up her collar and wrapped her scarf in one more loop around her neck. “There,” he said.

  Greer suddenly felt happiness, in all its perfect confusion, rise like tears. She leaned forward and kissed him—a burst of heat in the cold. “Merry Christmas,” she said.

  He smiled.

  And she felt the numbness begin to slip from her. She felt it would be a good evening, that they would enjoy each other, that this—his arm threading itself through hers—was the period put on a sentence begun months earlier. They began to walk, and Greer looked at his face. There is great beauty in this man, she thought.

  “All good?” he asked.

  “Very good,” she said. He steadied her as they made their way slowly along the icy path. A cold wind battered their faces, and as they leaned into each other she felt the weight and the warmth of him all at once.

  13

  After their ten-thousand-mile journey across the Pacific, after their eight-day rendezvous at Easter Island, the German squadron experienced a small victory at the Battle of Coronel.

  On November 1, off the coast of Chile, Admiral von Spee detected the BritishGlasgow nearby. Von Spee, who had received reports of a single enemy cruiser in the area, ordered his fleet to overtake the ship.

  TheGlasgow, however, was part of Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock’s squadron, which lay nearby, unseen.

  Admiral Cradock was equally misled. Reports had reached him of a single German cruiser,Leipzig, in the area, and by chance this was the first of von Spee’s ships he spotted. He, too, ordered his squadron into rapid combat against the single cruiser.