Mr. Wonderful

by Daniel Smith

  It’s all quite predictable which is why it’s so refreshing to see that the first person knocking at my door is none other than the rebel without either a cause or an idea, Billy Watkins. This, I figure, should at least be entertaining. Billy is one of those small young men who have decided that mouthing off, like a yapping miniature poodle, offers the best way to stand out in the crowd. He’s maybe five foot seven, with unruly curly hair, and an unfortunate surly resting face. You look at him and you wonder if he’s permanently unhappy or maybe he just ate something bad.

  “Professor Fenton,” he announces, “I’ve come to discuss my mid-term.” He drops the blue book on my desk as if it’s Exhibit A and he’s about to make a head-turning dramatic point in court. “You gave me a D, which, respectfully, Sir, is ludicrous.”

  “You got me dead to rights, Billy. The fact that you didn’t get an F is beyond ludicrous.”

  “Not funny.”

  “I’m not laughing.” I gesture for him to take a seat. To maintain his oratorical stature, he declines and instead paces around my office. “You know perfectly well I had to miss a number of classes before the exam, and with no one to take notes for me, I simply fell behind, as anyone would in that circumstance.”

  “You could have spoken to me any time about your deficiencies, Billy. But if memory serves, this is your first appearance in my office this semester.”

  “I’m not a kiss-ass, Professor. I figure I have to pull myself up, you know, not ask for handouts.”

  “A real Darwinian kind of guy, I see.”

  “Not sure what you’re getting at, but I’m going to let that slide.”

  “Very kind of you.” I pick up the blue book and nonchalantly flip through it. “Now, listen, you truly earned this D. On the question about the Great Awakening, you couldn’t identify the who, the where, and forget about the why of the movement, leaving you to spend nearly all of the two measly paragraphs you wrote bloviating about unrelated ‘great’ moments in the colonies, and then concluding—and I just love the insight here: ‘with the American Revolution right around the corner, it was certainly time for the colonies to wake up. And what a Great Awakening it was!’ Not going to forget that one, Billy.”

  “So this is how it’s going to go?” he asks in amazement. He stares at me like his mere presence in my office should have already prompted some sort of immediate improvement in his situation. I nod and look at my watch, usually a clear indication that both the complaining and begging times have ended. But, to my surprise, Billy wasn’t through. Far from it. “Well, I guess you leave me no choice.”

  “You mean to work harder and take my class more seriously?”

  “No. To take my case higher up the food chain.”

  I’m slightly impressed by the “food chain” metaphor but even more upset to see the fierce conviction, even optimism, cross his face as he says it.

  “You want to speak to the chair of the department, to ask Dr. Jensen if he thinks your understanding of the Great Awakening plumbs deeper ground than my limited vision can see?”

  “You a funny man. Everybody knows these days you’re playing a weak hand, Professor.” I give him a look of complete bafflement that quickly morphs into deepening concern. “They want you gone, old man,” he says, his tone now suddenly so utterly offensive that I’m tempted to grab the baseball bat I keep near my desk and belt the son of a bitch across the face. But then for sure I would be gone.

  “So you actually think the ‘ludicrous’ D I gave you, if it isn’t changed to a C or better, will be the death blow to my career here?” I ask trying to maintain a carefully composed look of indifference, making a big show of checking my watch and flipping aimlessly through a nearby textbook.

  “After I reach out to the half dozen or more of my classmates who’d like a better grade, yeah, I’m damn sure we’ve got the stuff to get you on the run.” Then he pauses a moment, glancing out the window for dramatic effect—something he may have dimly remembered from watching court scenes in “How to Get Away with Murder” or whatever—and actually has the gall to lean over my desk, nearly getting in my grill, to make his closing statement. “So the choice is yours, Professor: make the changes, or get ready for the shit storm.”

  He glowers at me a moment, then grabs his blue book and with a shit-eating grin on his face, saunters out of my office.

  Before I can grab my bat and imagine pounding the little punk into submission, my cell notification buzz goes off. It’s a text from Jeff, my brother:

  “Heard about Dad from Claire. What R we gonna do, bro? Time 4 the nursing home? Holler.”

  Just what I need. My passive little brother—who lives a mere 25 miles away from my dad and Claire—wringing his hands and begging me to come down and solve everything. Jeff can manage a real estate firm with twenty agents to a fair thee well but when it comes to health issues loses all sense of decision-making. I make a note to call him when I’m free from my OWN crises.

  I sit down in my chair and take a couple of deep breaths. For the first time in my teaching career I actually have to stop and think about whether a punk-ass student may in fact have some leverage over me. Normally, a grade-grubber like Billy would get nowhere in making an appeal. But if the administration really wants me gone, a stunt like this by Billy and a group of losers he’s able to corral can only add fuel to the fire. “Brian’s not only dead wood in terms of research,” I can hear my adversaries argue, “he’s apparently taking out his own failures on his students.” Strangely, though the tenure system offers massive job protection, given the thinly-disguised egos and jealousies among the faculty, it in fact often makes for a very precarious sense of security. An ordinarily innocent colleague with his fading, rumpled sport coat and wrinkled khakis can, if pressed, turn into an executive suit ready to cut waste and fraud. All he or she needs is the sudden awareness that the dean awaits their highly valued opinion. “The Dean must be very concerned,” I can hear some of my colleagues wondering, “so I guess we better give Fenton a really close look. Can’t have our students pissed off at us.”

  Of course, there’s always the “smartest one in the room” colleague who enjoys cutting down not just fading talents like yours truly but the chair and the dean—hell, the president of the place, if given the chance. In this case, that would be Franklin McIntosh, our medievalist who believes the world and all the thoughtful people in it (except, of course, for those wise enough to study it more than a millennia later) came to an end about 900 A.D. Franklin will be on my side but only long enough to pivot to taking on our “idiot chair” and “moronic Dean,” as he frequently calls them. Not going to be a good character witness.

  Well, of course, nobody can actually fire me. I earned my tenure, by God. But the department and the dean can make my life as unpleasant as possible—ending all hopes of pay increases, doubling my teaching responsibilities, putting me on every thankless departmental and college committee—so that I become marginalized as a second-class citizen at this third-rate directional school.

  I wander down to Gillian’s little cubicle in the TA office to see what she knows about this Billy Watkins brouhaha. She’s meeting with some other students, so I wave and walk back down the hall. Before I get to my office, though, I hear her faint, nervous voice: “Dr. Fenton?”

  I gesture her into my office and she stands at the door—not a good sign. Halfway through my rendition of Billy’s outrageous claims and threats, she interrupts me by raising her hand. Billy, she tells me, is not alone. “Those students I was just meeting with?” she points out, her voice cracking, “apparently Billy has already talked to them because they’re making the same claim about the unfair grades they got.”

  “Are they mad at you or me? After all, we both graded blue books, Gillian.”

  “Well, I didn’t give out any Ds or Fs, Sir, like you did. So I guess”—

  “So why did they go complain to you instead of me?”

  Gillian’s face fills with embarrassment, turning red, and
now her voice is really shaking. “They came to me for support.”

  “Support?! In doing what, for Chrissakes?!”

  “In protesting to the department and the dean your, well, your teaching standards.”

  “Tell me you’re kidding, Gillian.”

  “I wish I could, but they insist they need at least a C if they’re going to graduate”—

  “There’s still the final exam. Why don’t they actually consider studying for it so that they earn a C?”

  “I mentioned that, Sir.”

  She “mentioned” it. Jesus, does this hand-wringing twenty-something have even the faintest grasp on how to teach lazy, underachieving students?

  “But, Sir, they are convinced that you have it in for them and so they decided to join up with Billy in making a formal protest to the chair and the Dean.

  “What did you tell them? Did you give them your ‘support’?”

  “No. Well, I told them I’d have to speak to you first.”

  “Very courageous of you, Gillian.”

  Now she’s tearing up. “I do not like being put in this position, Sir. This is not fair to me. Not at all.”

  “Oh, so now it’s all about you, is it? You should have more free time to carefully explore comparative slave systems instead of getting your hands dirty teaching what passes for students at good ol’ Eastern Missouri State?”

  At this, she puts her face in her hands, shakes her head and opens the door to leave my office. I surprise myself with an act of sheer desperation. I race to the door and put myself between it and Gillian. “Gillian, I’m going to have to demand your support on this.”

  At the faculty meeting I keep a low profile as my colleagues drone on arguing about vaguely distant new searches, endless reports from the director of graduate studies on recruitment prospects, and making fun of an upcoming department evaluation. When Jasper Lincoln, our colonial Latin Americanist who feels completely neglected, observes that what we really need is a modern Mexican historian, “to complement me,” Fred Henson, a doddering 70-year-old American historian who’s never published a word but is quick to rebuke anyone who brings it up, replies that “no one’s ever going to compliment you, Jasper.” Fred gets the reaction he wants: chuckles and head shaking everywhere followed by Jasper’s angry glare. Jasper then pulls out his cell phone as if he isn’t really bothered at all.

  When I first got a job in academe and attended my first faculty meeting, I remember being shocked at how petty and small my new colleagues could be. I told someone later that after sitting through all the backbiting and snark at the faculty meeting I felt like I had lost IQ points—and not a little dignity. Did I really get a doctorate so I could belong to THIS kind of club? More than once, I’ve rejoiced that the taxpayers never get to witness this aspect of the professorial life.

  On the way out of our meeting, Pat taps me on the shoulder.

  “What’s up, Pat?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Again?” He gives me a nod. I give him an annoyed eye roll. “I got stuff to do, Pat. Just tell me what it is.”

  “It’s not a public matter, Brian.”

  “I gotta run to the head.” To my amazement, Pat follows me into the men’s room. While I stand at the urinal trying to relieve myself, Pat checks to make sure there’s no one in any of the stalls. Satisfied there isn’t, he comes back to me, standing off to the side.

  “Looks like you’re sort of losing control in your US survey course.”

  “’Losing control’?”

  “I had a half dozen students come to my office to complain about your grading and overall attitude towards them.”

  “And you believe them?”

  “I believe they are very unhappy and want to protest the situation as far as they can take it.”

  I finish my business and wash my hands while Pat stands at the other lavatory continuing this bizarre conversation.

  “Why don’t you just take a look at my exam questions, Pat, then read what they wrote, and I guarantee you that you’ll see the low grades they got were well deserved. Probably should have been even lower.”

  “They’re seniors, Brian, and I don’t think you want to be the reason they can’t graduate.”

  “I won’t be the reason. It’ll be their own laziness.”

  “Look, you’ve already got trouble with evals, which you and I have discussed. So on this you’re really going to need to be more flexible, Brian. I trust you understand what we’re dealing with here.”

  “Oh, wait. I forgot: they’re not students, they’re customers, and customers are always right.”

  “Especially when the father of one of them sits in the state legislature and oversees higher education funding.”

  “You have got to be kidding.”

  “I wish I were.”

  Mercifully, Jerry Linton, our French Revolution historian who’s clearly fighting an advanced case of Asperger’s Syndrome, enters the restroom and immediately seizes up when he sees the two of us having a confab around the urinal.

  “Am I, am I interrupting something? I’d sure like to use the restroom, guys. Can you please leave?”

  “Of course, Jerry, go right ahead,” I insist and head out of the men’s room, with Pat right on my heels.

  In the hallway, Pat continues to press me. “So Brian, you’re going to have to rethink this. If you don’t, I can already tell you the Dean wants to visit with you about all these other issues facing you.”

  I stare at Pat thinking he surely must have a hard time putting his head to the pillow at night knowing his job at chairman of the history department apparently includes following faculty into the men’s room to discuss how we all must stick our noses even further up our students’ asses.

  “I’ll get back to you,” I say as I walk away.

  “Make it soon,” Pat almost shouts as I turn the corner and head for my office.

  On my way home I stop at a campus pub to get a quick drink. Talk about needing to take the edge off. Except for the TVs mounted above the bar playing basketball games, the bar is dark and smells faintly like last night’s vomit. Felix, the bartender, a young ladies man who looks like he just arrived from a Sigma Chi frat party, hands me a Scotch neat, just like I want it. “Kinda early for you, isn’t it, Professor?”

  “Better early than late, my man.” After a couple of sips, my cell rings. It’s my brother Jeff again. I consider declining the call, then finish my Scotch in one gulp, and decide to talk to him. Jeff is at once calm and panic-stricken. He has the business sense to carefully analyze the situation looking for the most effective solution and yet gives voice to deep fears about what to do.

  “With Daddy falling again, bro, I think we’re entering new territory,” Jeff says in his favorite ominous tone.

  “Well, it’s hardly the first time he’s fallen and Lord knows, it won’t be the last. What is it you think we should do, Jeff?”

  “Whatever it is, it needs to be done now. Poor Claire is worn out half the time—he gets her up three, four times a night, wetting the bed and all—and I just don’t think it’s fair to put all this on her.”

  “So, again, what your suggestion?”

  “Look, I’m not going to be the first one to say ‘nursing home,’ but we all know what’s next,” Jeff replies.

  Four years younger than me, Jeff always felt ignored as a kid, as if mom and dad viewed him as an amusing afterthought, rather than an important legacy that needed attention and grooming like me. So now with Dad suffering more advanced dementia, he seems to view his role as the Chief Alarm Sounder—desperately reminding us of ominous things that we better focus on, or else. It’s the “or else,” of course—precarious, impending death, to be precise—that most alarms him, the one thing in life that’s uncontrollable and yet always lurking in the shadows, sometimes out in the open.

  “What does Claire think?” I ask.

  “Oh, you know Claire: she never says a word about putting him in a nursing home. She
thinks it would be the end of him.”

  “Would it?”

  “Nobody lasts long in a fucking nursing home, Brian. You know that.” I can’t disagree and in my silence, Jeff gets antsy. “You need to come down here, bro.”

  “I was just down there.”

  “Yeah, well, things are worse and, you know, decisions have to be made.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait to hear this from Claire?”

  “Jesus, what kind of sons are we to let him fall apart like this and just do nothing?”

  “Sons who are respectful of the wishes of our father’s loving wife.”

  “I swear to God,” Jeff says, exasperated, “just go back to your ivory tower and meditate. Just hope Daddy doesn’t die while you’re lecturing on the civil war.”

  “You mean the Revolution.”

  “Real funny. I gotta go.” With that, Jeff hangs up.

  As I drive home into South City, I’m reminded that St. Louis is one very different neighborhood right after another. Sometimes wildly different. Just five blocks from the turn I make onto my street, I pass on Kingshighway sketchy bars, boarded-up former crack houses and payday loan store fronts. Seconds later, I turn onto Nottingham and I’m smack in the middle of large two story homes selling for $200,000 or more. At the end of my block are trendy comfort food restaurants and bistros that get rave reviews from City Magazine. And yet if I walk the other direction for maybe 400 yards, I’m facing the rough world of dope dealers, prostitutes and petty criminals cruising around on Kingshighway.

  Before I get out of the car I try to center myself before re-entering the volatile world of “Danny hanging at our house.” Should I tell Corinne about the student protest over my grading? Or Jeff’s alarmist calls regarding dad? Before I can come to a clear answer, I hear guitar music. I get out and follow the music, a gentle, melodic instrumental piece, coming from the back of the house. Sure enough, Danny is sitting on the back porch, plucking away on his guitar and humming along to the music. He’s actually pretty good, so I stop and listen a moment before making my presence known. Danny clearly has a love for music; I’m always repeating the cliché “follow your passion,” but encouraging him to try to make it in the music business is probably an extreme example of fantasy-thinking.