The Death of a Constant Lover

by Lev Raphael

  Lucille answered him. “Me, Coral, the secretaries, I guess. Delaney looked at it, too. That’s after I found it in my box. Who knows who touched it before that.”

  Valley shook his head, disgusted. Obviously the fingerprints would be a mess. Suddenly he read the card aloud in a stern, wooden voice as if willing the words to reveal their author: “I hate your black ass.”

  Carter clucked his tongue, and Iris Bell breathed in as if to start one of her tirades, but Carter grabbed her arm to stop it. She shook loose of him but said nothing. I hoped she wasn’t going to file sexual harassment charges against him now and embroil the department in more dissension.

  There was a general nervous stirring around the bench, part surprise, part embarrassment. It was not as venomous as I had expected, but it was bad enough. So now the ugliness on campus was being aimed at faculty members. Who would be next? Gay faculty? Jews?

  I looked at Lucille, but she still didn’t seem distraught or even disturbed.

  “Not entirely accurate,” she muttered. “But I suppose it was meant metaphorically.”

  Now, if it had been me getting hate mail, I think I would have wanted to snag the first plane out of town before they started burning crosses on my lawn.

  Just then there was a sharp clacking of heels all the way down the hall, and we turned to follow Juno Dromgoole’s shapely, black-clad figure down to the women’s rest room. Her heels echoed wildly in the high dim hallway, as discordant as laughter at a funeral. I half expected someone to call out “Quiet!” but no one did, and I turned back to Valley, who didn’t seem to have noticed the distraction.

  “Typed,” Valley mused in his normal voice, not much of an improvement over his orator’s tone. “No signature. Michiganapolis postmark. Who put this in her mailbox?”

  Dulcie Halligan raised her hand. Perpetually huffy and putupon, she looked like a slimmer version of Barbara Bush, down to the pearls and shapeless suits, and was given to snapping at any faculty member who she felt was acting superior. As if she were dropping a neutron bomb, she’d say, “I graduated from SUM cum laude.” Behind her back, people called her “Dull Harridan” and “The Graduate.”

  Her lips twitched. “But I didn’t see the message side.”

  I wondered if she meant she would have thrown the card away if she’d read it. Had there been other cards before this one?

  “Okay,” Valley said to Dulcie, “I’ll want to talk to you. And you,” he said to Coral Greathouse. “But later. Don’t go anywhere.”

  Coral and Dulcie started protesting that they worked there, and of course—But Valley just shooed them away and told the Malatestas to scram as well, unless they were witnesses. Since it wasn’t clear what they would be witnesses to, they left, glaring at Delaney. What was that all about?

  Carter Savery and Iris Bell didn’t budge, and Valley snapped, “You can go.”

  “You’re very rude,” Iris said, chest out like some elfin warrior throwing down the gauntlet to a giant.

  “I come from a long line of rude people. You should’ve met my father.”

  Iris flounced off, not easy to do when you’re so short. Carter followed, shaking his head, though whether at her or Valley, I couldn’t tell. But Delaney hadn’t stirred. He hovered by the bench and smiled now and then in that odd way of his.

  Pointing at Lucille, Valley said brusquely, “First I want to interview her.” He frowned at Delaney as if wondering where he’d seen the guy before, and then cocked his head sarcastically as if to say, You still here?

  But Delaney held his ground.

  “Go back upstairs and wait for me,” Lucille said, her voice warm and motherly. Delaney nodded and moved off. “Sweet kid,” Lucille said to no one in particular.

  Valley slipped the postcard into the breast pocket of his suit and turned to me. “I don’t need to talk to you about this.”

  “Nick is my friend.” Lucille patted my hand. “I’d like him to stay,” she said firmly, with a wonderful, solicitous, end-of-discussion smile. “Let’s go to the faculty lounge.”

  Lucille rose, and we followed her into the dim lounge down the hall that wasn’t much more than a jump up from a coffee room, overfilled with cracked orange and avocado vinyl-covered chairs whose wooden arms looked as if they’d been gouged by people undergoing electroshock therapy or some other kind of torture—like a speech from SUM’s half-wit president. Littleterry was the kind of man who thought calling for “customer satisfaction” at SUM was a bold new move, something that would “re-create the university.” There were rumors that he was planning some major initiative, and I was surprised he hadn’t already proposed merging the university with Kmart and renaming faculty “course associates.”

  Valley closed the door and waited for Lucille to take a seat before sitting opposite her. I sat on a chair facing them both, and I suppose if you had come upon us accidentally, you might have thought it was a friendly meeting. But having just been interviewed by Valley upstairs, I didn’t envy Lucille.

  “Maybe it was a joke,” Lucille said.

  “What?” Valley shook his head as if he hadn’t heard her right. “You think it was funny?” He brought out his pad and green Flair pen.

  Lucille rolled her eyes. ”I didn’t say it was a good joke. But it could just be a prank, or somebody got dared to do it. A stupid joke.” She shrugged and smiled at me as if inviting my agreement, but I was too surprised by her suggestion to say anything. “Some fraternity stunt.”

  “You don’t think it’s serious,” Valley summed up.

  “No. Not really.”

  “This kind of thing happens to you a lot?”

  Lucille got quieter. “What I’m saying”—and here she paused as if he were an especially dim student who needed her to speak slowly—“is that the sentiments…expressed by this anonymous correspondent…aren’t very threatening or abusive.”

  Why phrase it like an administrative report? Was she mocking Valley, or did she think that kind of language had a better chance of penetrating?

  “Okay?” she said. “It’s really no big deal.”

  Valley looked even more surprised than I did. Why was she working so hard to downplay the whole situation? He made some notes.

  Lucille nodded at Valley. “I bet you were expecting me to go ballistic, right? Get myself on the news, organize a strike or a sit-in, start a lawsuit, send for Jesse Jackson. That’s it, isn’t it? Blow it completely out of proportion.”

  That must have been close, because Valley flushed and said stiffly, “What I expect doesn’t matter.”

  Lucille and I exchanged a conspiratorial smile. I was glad she had embarrassed Valley and put him a little on the defensive.

  “Maybe you don’t think it’s a big deal,” Valley said, his composure returning. “But I do. It’s my job to be concerned about hate incidents like this.”

  Lucille’s eyes widened, and she breathed in slowly as if trying to calm herself down. “It’s not an incident. It’s only a damned postcard.”

  “That’s where it starts,” Valley said ominously. “Tell me if you have any enemies here on campus or in town.”

  Jeez, I thought, that sounded so melodramatic, and yet I knew how vicious the academic community could be.

  “Oh, lots,” she said smoothly. “The KGB’s been after me for years.”

  Valley stared her down until she relented. I’d been on the receiving end of that stare too often.

  “Well, I suppose you could say that I’m not the most popular faculty member this department has ever had.”

  Valley checked it out with me, and I nodded. “Why’s that?” he asked Lucille.

  She didn’t hesitate. “I’m a minority hire, and they’re usually controversial. You probably know that this department looks a lot like you: white and male. They need diversity. Well, I’m as diverse as they come. I could be my own multicultural studies program. I’m half black, half Chinese Indonesian, and I’m a woman.”

  Valley frowned, but I wasn’t sur
e if it was confusion about how this information was relevant, or distaste for her being what he might consider a “mongrel.”

  “Black? Not African American?”

  “Hey, I’ve never been to Africa, and I’m not going. African American doesn’t fit me at all.”

  “And what’s Chinese Indonesian?”

  “My father’s parents were born in China, he was born in Indonesia.”

  “Okay. So what’s the controversy about you?”

  I wondered if Valley was playing dumb. Surely he’d been around SUM long enough to know what Lucille meant about minority hirings?

  “To start with, I haven’t always been an academic. I used to be an editor, in New York, before I quit and went to graduate school. People here resent that I had another life where I was successful. I know they did in graduate school.”

  That made sense. All older graduate students coming into the department were treated badly, as if they were cocky recruits who had to be beaten into submission. “Then I got hired before I had the degree in hand,” Lucille continued. “And my salary’s higher than that of most new members of this department.”

  I knew that was something of an understatement Lucille was making a good thirty-five thousand more than any of the newer faculty, none of whom were at all reluctant to complain about the difference. The department was full of rumblings, and had been ever since Dean Bullerschmidt let it be known there was money for a new position, but only if it was filled by a “double minority,” at the very least.

  Bullerschmidt was dying to be provost, and he wanted his record in the College of Arts and Letters to look as good as possible. When Coral ran for chair of EAR, she was his candidate, even though they had never gotten along with each other. Coral was a woman, and that was all that counted for him. But now that she was his rival for the position of provost, I wondered if he regretted helping her.

  Valley crossed his legs, nodding like a talk-show host. “People think you just got the job because you’re black, or whatever you are?”

  Lucille smiled. “Well, I did, didn’t I? Lots of universities were competing for me.”

  “And you picked SUM. ” It was a statement of fact, but clearly a question.

  “SUM offered more than anyone else.”

  This honesty was what I most admired in Lucille.

  “How much?” Valley asked.

  “Seventy-five thousand. And I was hired as an associate professor with tenure.”

  Valley’s tongue worked on the inside of his cheeks. Was he comparing that to his salary? He turned to me as if expecting I would protest the amount, despite being Lucille’s friend. Unless he wanted to hear me defend the sum. I did neither.

  The money was amazing, but to me what was most enviable was that she had been hired with tenure. She’d never have to jump the biggest academic hurdle. Even if she didn’t ever distinguish herself by publishing, it wouldn’t matter, since she was utterly safe. That is, unless the university completely abolished the department—then they could fire everybody. It was possible, I suppose: EAR could be declared a toxic waste dump in need of cleanup.

  “This is a seller’s market,” Lucille said plainly. “People like me are in demand, so why shouldn’t we take advantage of the way things are? I’ve never pretended to be a brilliant scholar, and I sure know I’m not much better than hundreds of new Ph.D.s. But I have what people want. Now, anyway. In ten years it could be Hispanics that are really hot, and nobody will want to read about Toni Morrison.” To Valley’s blank look, she said, “The Nobel Prize winner? She was the subject of my dissertation.”

  “Okay.” It didn’t seem to have registered, but Valley eyed her admiringly. I could tell that he too was impressed by Lucille’s candor.

  But I also knew that there was spreading tension in the EAR department precisely because Lucille publicly made no effort to pretend that she was anything more than a minority hire or that she was more qualified than the competition. Those who had favored her appointment were angry that she was making them look bad by supposedly downplaying her qualifications; those who opposed it were furious that she was—in their words—bragging about her deficits.

  In our department, the truth was not something for public consumption. Hell, that was the case at the whole university.

  SUM was, after all, admitting record numbers of students who shouldn’t have been in college in the first place, under the rubric of “expanding educational opportunity.” These subliterate and maladjusted students of all races and ethnicities were causing problems across campus as faculty withered under the assault of their ignorance and arrogance. They were at the university only because SUM wanted their money. Education had long since stopped being a privilege at SUM and the country at large: It was nothing more than a business transaction, and often a rip-off.

  “Is there anyone who’s been especially—” Valley hunted for the word.

  “Vociferous?” I suggested.

  “Loudmouthed,” he said to Lucille. “About your being hired? Anyone come to mind?”

  Lucille closed her eyes as if mentally running through a list of department members. Why was she stalling? She and I both knew of at least one very vocal critic: Juno Dromgoole. Even though she was a guest professor, Dromgoole hadn’t made any effort to fit in. She had been abusive and outrageous at faculty parties and meetings from the very beginning. Juno was a total mismatch for our department: brazenly assertive and alarmingly well-dressed. Just the sight of her was like an unexpected electric shock.

  Maybe because she was a guest, Juno felt free to say whatever popped into her head, and she had been heard in hallways, in her office, and even in her classroom to describe the spectacle of watching SUM and the EAR department trying to be politically correct as “grotesque—like watching a mad dog bite its own ass in the town square.”

  “I don’t see why you’re not hiring more cripples,” Juno had announced. “You’re scraping the barrel for everything else, God knows.” That was widely taken as a reference to Lucille, since she was the only new hire in the department.

  Valley prompted Lucille again. “Nobody’s been bad-mouthing you?”

  She grimaced. “Why should someone in the department send me a puerile card like that?”

  Valley leaned closer. “I don’t think it came from a total stranger. Or maybe you sent it to yourself to get attention?”

  Lucille jumped to her feet “I don’t have to listen to this! Don’t pull any of that John Bradshaw bullshit psychology on me. I’ve got all the attention I want.”

  Unruffled, Valley said, “You’ll be getting more before this is over. Sit down.”

  She did, and grumbled, “Iris Bell. That dwarfish woman who was out in the hallway. The one who called you rude. She’s been pretty vocal.”

  “What’s her beef?”

  I jumped in. “Iris has been here twenty years, but she’s at the low end of the pay scale for full professors. She hasn’t written a book in twelve years since her promotion to full professor, but she bitches about her salary anyway.”

  “You’re pretty new here compared to her,” Valley said. “How do you know all this?”

  I shrugged. “None of it’s a secret. The salaries are public information—they have to be, since SUM’s a state school.”

  Valley nodded. Then he said to Lucille, “Is she following you or something?”

  Lucille shook her head. “I haven’t noticed anything. But she is pretty hard to spot—”

  Valley didn’t smile. “Who else?” he asked. “What about that guy with her?”

  “Carter Savery?” Lucille mused. “I don’t know about him. But every time I catch his eye, he’s glaring at me.”

  Valley wrote something down. “And they were together, those two, when you got the card. Maybe they stuck around to see your reaction.”

  Even though I didn’t like Carter or Iris, thinking of either of them as responsible for Lucille’s hate mail was disturbing.

  “Is that it?” Valley asked
Lucille.

  “There’s Juno Dromgoole. She’s a guest professor, and she’s very vocal in taking on what she calls political correctness.”

  “What do you call it?”

  Lucille ignored that “She’s said some unpleasant things at department meetings, not directly at me, but about minority hiring in general. I suppose she could have sent the card.” Lucille raised her eyebrows at me, seeking my opinion.

  “I don’t know if Juno’s the type to send hate mail. But she is pretty—” Now it was my turn to search for a word.

  “She’s obnoxious and offensive,” Lucille said. “And she does it on purpose.”

  Valley took that in. “Anyone else? No? You’re sure? Okay, if you think of specific people, let me know. I’ll talk to this lady to start. And call me right away if there’s any other cards, or—” Valley left us alone with the various possibilities hanging over us in that miserable little lounge.

  Lucille seemed to deflate with Valley gone, and I moved my chair closer. I could see now that she was starting to sweat.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine.”

  I wasn’t convinced. Her initial cool response to the card might have been an act, an attempt to stay above such viciousness. And maybe she might not have been completely honest.

  “I didn’t tell him the best part,” Lucille brought out. She smiled at my curious glance. “The hiring committee thought I was Islamic.”

  “Wait. You’re not?”

  Now she laughed. “No, that’s only the majority of Indonesians—there are lots of Buddhists and Christians. They just assumed I was Islamic, and maybe they were confused because my father’s name sounds almost Arabic. You know, Mochtar, Mukhtar. Of course nobody would have asked.” She shrugged. “So there are some faculty that think I got in under false pretenses.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Come on, Nick. I have work to do,” she said. “And Delaney’s still up there—he probably thinks I was arrested.” She chuckled, and we headed back upstairs.