“It’s all Greek to me,” Mark said.
“Izmir’s in Turkey,” Paul said.
“I do get around,” Mark said. He was trying to decide if it was a fading moon or a rising sun spilling light into his bedroom windows. “And as it is the job of the literary critic to state the obvious, I miss you.”
Paul was leaving soon for a week in Sofia, and then a few days in Zagreb, and then he’d be back to Rome to set up a permanent office for the Paean Project’s ongoing work with refugees and to hire a regional director. He asked about Mark’s work. Mark told him about this semester’s students. He asked about Mark’s writing. Mark told him some more about the students. He asked what Mark was writing.
Mark said, “Did you manage to see Sharon?”
Paul didn’t say anything.
Mark finally delivered the news about the Times, immediately adding that “they’re determined to run it on Wednesday,” and then he tossed in the National Geographic. “They’re demanding a lot of changes, so we’ll see what they finally run of it.”
“Bastards,” Paul said. “They are constantly exploiting you. I bet they end up putting you on NPR again, and probably they’ll even force you to do some TV. If you’re not careful, they’ll make another movie out of one of your books.”
Mark didn’t say anything.
“It’s an accomplishment, not a public embarrassment or a crime,” Paul said. “When were you going to tell me?”
Mark didn’t say anything.
Paul said, “I end up feeling like a fool because I’m happy or proud of what you write.”
“Sometimes the writing seems—I mean, compared to war and famine and cholera—it can seem sort of self-serving and petty. That’s why I asked about Sharon. Because I want you to know that I am so confused and petty in your absence that I was annoyed she was going to see you and I wasn’t.”
Paul said, “I take that as a compliment.” He had not seen Sharon, but he was confident she would join him in the Boston headquarters of the Paean Project this fall. He was hoping she would head up a public health initiative that was being redesigned to construe the city’s homeless population not as vagrants and wastrels but as refugees.
“Now I feel even pettier,” Mark said.
“My apartment in Rome is superb—tiny, but spectacular, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the piazza. It’s a little embarrassing,” Paul said. “Does that help?”
Mark said, “Now, I’m so petty I envy you.”
Paul was silent for a few long seconds. “Most of my time on that trawler was nothing but staring at the sea, but a few times we sighted a dinghy or dory stuffed with people. We’d signal them and lead them to a temporary camp on the coast that was prepared to receive them. There were bodies bandaged up with rags, kids crying. We’d wait offshore while they jumped in and waded to safety, such as it was. And do you know what I felt? I felt sorry for myself. Speaking of pettiness. I honestly felt sorry for myself, stuck on that trawler, a world away from you, drifting back out to sea instead of—”
Mark said, “It’s been too long.”
“We overshot our limits this time,” Paul said. “Come to Italy when your semester ends. Save both of us.”
“Okay,” Mark said. It was now evident that the sun was rising. “When I get there, we are going to revise the syllabus for our lives.”
“Okay,” Paul said. “Right now, I have to catch a plane.”
“Enjoy your peanuts,” Mark said, “because that’s definitely not on next semester’s syllabus.”
2.
At ten o’clock on Monday morning, the dean of students waved Mark into his office on the second floor of College Hall. The white brick building was identical to Hum Hall, but Nate Braxton’s office was exactly twice as big as Mark’s, and he didn’t share it with anybody. “Thanks for coming, Mark. I promise not to keep you for long. I’m sure you’re busy, too.” Braxton paused to admire Mark’s jeans and parka. “Wild weekend with the snow and rain. Impossible to know what to wear in this weather.” He was wearing an elegant navy suit and a regimental-stripe tie, charcoal and pale blue, Hellman College colors. They’d met several times over the years, but all Mark really knew was that Braxton had a PhD in American History from Michigan or Wisconsin or one of the other great state universities in the Midwest. He assumed Braxton was one of the thousands of ambitious white guys in their thirties and forties who didn’t get tenure after the federal government finally pried open the hiring and tenure process with diversity initiatives and so migrated into administrative positions where they implemented the federal guidelines that had cost them their academic careers. “Take a seat.”
There were three high-back red-leather wing chairs facing the dean’s vast desk, and four knockoff Chippendale chairs and a table under the window, evidently reserved for Braxton’s gym bag and squash racquet. The dean pointed to the red chairs and sat at his desk. Mark sank half a foot into the soft leather seat, so he was forced to look up at Braxton, and the chair’s wings obliterated his peripheral vision, so he was forced to look at nothing but Braxton.
Braxton opened a folder. “I want to let you know what’s happening with a young man in your class.”
“I know Anton,” Mark said defensively.
Braxton said, “Terrible story.”
“Able writer,” Mark said, as if Anton’s merits were being called into question, “and committed,” he added.
“Good to hear,” Braxton said. “That should make this easier.”
Mark said, “Has something happened to Anton?”
“I think you know as much about his illness as I do, maybe more. Aside from the letter you saw, the doctors don’t tell us anything. It’s a privacy issue. I have met with his mother several times, and in recent weeks, she and the stepfather have come to think the commuting back from campus for treatments is taking a toll.” Braxton closed his folder. “The student has finished the work to convert the two Incompletes he was carrying in his economics courses—or he’s done enough to satisfy those faculty members.”
Every apparently benign sentence Braxton uttered landed like a mallet on a peg, hammering Mark down deeper into that chair.
“Econ is his major, of course.” Braxton pulled a printed form out of one of the desk drawers. “This writing class of yours is just an elective, right?”
“Yes,” Mark said, “Anton elected to take it.” He sensed he was being set up to persuade Anton to withdraw from the workshop, to convince him that he was not able to do the work required for a passing grade. Thus, the form Braxton had slid toward Mark.
“The mother is well aware of how much her son has enjoyed your class,” Braxton said. “He speaks very highly of you.”
“It feels odd to be speaking about Anton as if he’s not here,” Mark said.
“Well, he’s not here.” Braxton looked genuinely perplexed. “Or did you mean as if he already—as if he’s no longer—”
“I just meant he is here, at the college, in the workshop, and he’s twenty-one or twenty-two—an adult.” Mark paused to stop his voice escalating into the counter-tenor range. “I think we ought to allow him to decide this.”
Braxton said, “Decide what?” It was evidently a genuine question.
And a good one, as Mark had no ready answer.
Braxton said, “You want to consult the student about his final grade?” He flicked the form a few inches closer to Mark. “I’m just trying to get this kid a college degree. You give him a grade, and he’s officially got his BA.”
This was an unexpected twist, somehow both more generous and more manipulative than Mark’s imagination of the dean’s plot. Mark said, “I give him a grade today, and he’s done?”
“Exactly,” Braxton said.
Mark said, “Because he’s sick?” This sounded more callous than he’d intended. Unfortunately, it also rang true to Mark, so he persisted. “What about the other two students you mentioned in your email?”
“If you haven’t hear
d about accommodations for those students, it’s because they decided not to declare their documented challenges or their need for special assistance.”
Mark said, “But why not give them each a final grade right now?”
Braxton didn’t say anything.
“Should we say automatic B+ for a missing limb? What’s the grading curve for bilingual or trilingual students?”
Braxton slid the form back from the edge of his desk and stuck it into the file.
“Either they are our students or they’re not,” Mark said. “I don’t think I ought to have a hand in admissions, or who gets accommodations, or anything else. I’ll happily take anyone who wins the registration lottery and gets a seat in the workshop. I’ll take anyone you tell me is ours. But then I close the door.” Mark knew his refusal to cooperate was mixed up with Anton’s enthusiasm for the workshop, and his own affection for Anton, but that stew was also chock-full of headscarves and curling brooms and anxiety dogs and man buns and Red Riding Hood.
Braxton looked away. “This is not at all the conversation I anticipated,” he said, and then he walked to the windows and stared out at his view of the muddy trails that looped around the pond and led out into the piney darkness of Breakheart Reservation.
Mark wanted to urge him to look for the ironworks, and sawmills, and the several centuries’ worth of commercial enterprises that were no longer there, to listen for the chanting in the Common of demonstrators down the years demanding co-ed classrooms or protesting gender-neutral bathrooms, students picketing desegregation or race-based quotas, alumni decrying merit-based scholarships or need-blind admissions. Hellman had survived them all. Was it morally superior or more politically correct or more humane than the institutions and ethical debates it had outlasted? Yes and no, here and there, depending on where you stood. But whether from afar the college looked like the last bastion of elitism or the best breeding ground for a new social order really did not matter to Mark.
It had managed something unimaginable.
The college had preserved the classroom, that fragile home for possibility, that singular space devoted solely to potential, that venerable, evanescent moment in which we have the chance to see that there is more to us than anyone ever knew.
Braxton said, “With or without your help, we’re going to find a way to make this happen.” He ambled back to his desk and sat down. “Is there something I could say to change your mind, Mark?”
Mark said, “Anton hasn’t completed even half of the work for his final portfolio.”
Braxton narrowed his gaze, and his consternation slowly faded into disbelief.
Mark said, “Let me talk this over with Anton.”
Braxton said, “The mother asked us to let her broach the topic with her son. I think we owe her that much, don’t you?”
Mark didn’t say no, but that was the truth. He also didn’t feel he owed explanations to coaches for their star players being late to practice twice a week or a heads-up to helicopter parents who requested progress reports on their progeny. “I can imagine how insensitive or obstreperous or silly I seem, Nate.”
“Add them all together and multiply by ten,” Braxton said. “You do understand, I trust, that our conversation today was confidential.”
“You mean I am not to say anything to Anton?”
“Honestly, I mean that I hope you will change your mind.” He extracted that form from his folder, leaned over, and handed it to Mark. “Whatever the outcome, it will be decided before classes resume after spring break.”
Mark said, “You can’t assign a final grade for someone in my workshop.”
Braxton said, “No, but until Friday, the student can withdraw without affecting his academic record.” He stood and walked to the door. “I am confident we can find someone else in the department to accept what he’s done as course credit for an Independent Study.”
Mark said, “Why not give him a PhD while you’re at it?” He paused at the door and said, “If the criterion is attitude, or pain and suffering, he’s earned it.”
3.
Mark was heading back to Hum Hall when he saw Althea Morgan waving from the far side of the pond. He knew he wouldn’t respond well if the chair asked a favor or tried again to get him to consider taking over the reins of the department, so he veered onto a downhill path and went directly to the library. The reading room was full, a sure sign that midterms were not yet complete. With twenty minutes to squander before his lunch date with Norman Chester, Mark went to the end of the circulation desk and counted the number of students who had borrowed the story collections he’d put on reserve. Eight of the writers had signed out at least one of the books a total of thirty-one times, better numbers than he would have predicted.
The Professor refused to assign texts for the workshops, convinced that published work by established writers inspired imitation instead of innovation. And it was true that the few times Mark had brought in a story for everyone to read, students treated it as a kind of trump card, using its particular plot and prose style to praise or criticize stories written by their classmates. The reserve list was a compromise, and starting this week, after he printed out the Professor’s typed responses to the first original stories, Mark typically attached photocopies of the contents page of each collection on reserve and checked off a few specific stories that he hoped might inspire or complicate each writer’s revision process.
“Hey, Professor.” A very tall young woman with an Afro and yellow-plastic eyeglasses was sidling toward him from her post at the checkout station. Lisa? Marina? Arlene? She’d been in a workshop two or three semesters ago, and she’d written a devastating story about a young man who was coerced into giving his mother away at her second marriage to a man he feared.
Mark said, “I hope this job doesn’t interfere with your writing.”
“I’m taking a poetry workshop this semester,” she said.
Regina? Lorna? “And?”
“I think I might have finally written a villanelle.”
“Then you are way ahead of me,” Mark said. “I just know enough to know that those are some intense limits to love.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve fallen in love with poetry. Still in the flirting stage,” she added, and dropped her gaze to the counter. “Would it be okay if I came by sometime to show you a story I wrote over Christmas?”
Mark said, “You know where to find me.”
“I can make copies of those contents pages for you,” she said. “Is that what you needed?”
Mark shook his head. “I can do that.”
“It’s sort of my job,” she said. “I’ll email them to you this afternoon.”
“You’re a champ.” Cora? Bethany? He couldn’t remember her name, but he would have liked to introduce her to the dean of students anyway. Wasn’t everybody best served if she did her job, and Mark did his job, and the dean did his? “When you send the copies, send along that story you wrote. I’ve been searching for something to read over spring break.”
“It’s not quite—oh, never mind. You’ll just tell me to let you read it, right?”
“Sounds like something I might say,” Mark said, and he waved as he turned away. He was halfway down the corridor to the café when he heard someone repeatedly stage-whispering, “Professor? Professor?” The primary-color foam sofas lining the hallway were empty ahead of him, and he kept going until he heard, “Hey, Sternum!”
Norman Chester was attempting to hoist himself off a blue cushion that bent in half and snapped at his torso like a clamp every time he pressed down.
Mark hurried back and offered his hand.
Chester slapped away the offer. “No wonder none of these was occupied when I got here. Anyway, the café is overrun with undergraduates caffeinated to within an inch of their sanity. I tried to get us a table earlier.”
“We can talk here,” Mark said, dropping his bag.
“Well, don’t sit down, for Christ’s sake. We’ll both be lost a
t sea. Anyway, you can save all the excuses you’ve been inventing for another day.” Chester was inching his way toward the sofa’s arm, and the effort made it impossible for him to talk until he was firmly anchored. “You’re off the hook.”
“What happened?”
Chester pointed to the red sofa beside his. “Sit down now so I don’t have to announce it to the entire campus.”
Mark sat as commanded.
“It’s the usual story of bargaining and begging. I’ve been granted a reprieve for one more year on my own. I don’t know if I’ll have cracked the code of the Housman by next summer—I’m more certain than ever that at least six of those poems are out of proper sequence—but Marjorie has promised not to divorce me if we are living full-time in South Carolina by then.”
“So, your office will remain your office till you leave,” Mark said. This did register as a relief for Mark, but it also registered as a fair compromise. “That seems right.”
Chester grabbed Mark’s forearm. “Just because I’m old?” He waited a few seconds to loosen his grip.
“I was thinking more of fair play,” Mark said. “And, as you pointed out, it does let me off the hook.”
“Fair enough,” Chester said. And after Mark helped him out of that sofa, he mystifyingly added, “Just so there’s no ill will between us,” and excused himself “to find the Gents’,” which had been replaced by gender-neutral facilities seven years ago.
4.
Penelope was due at his office at one o’clock. This left Mark fifteen minutes to stare at the final-grade form from the dean, which was more rewarding than staring at Anton’s crumpled-up car coat on the floor. Considered together, the abandoned coat and the blank form became a kind of pictograph—cryptic, but imbued with a maudlin significance. If either one was filled out, the other would remain empty.
Mark slipped the form into his bag. The coat was too puffy to stuff into a desk drawer, so he hung it from the hook on his office door, where it immediately looked intolerably poignant. But Penelope knocked, so he grabbed Karen Cole’s little chair and wheeled it across the room to hold open the door and hide the effigy of Anton.
Still in Love Page 18
