“Well, to tell you the truth, as far as I’m concerned, Ahlers can go hang. What I am interested in is a relatively new Canadian grad student, and the way to any student’s heart is through her research.”
“What about her stomach?”
“Pizza was my backup strategy,” Guy admitted.
“Is everything a game to you?” I asked, with more curiosity than condemnation.
“Pretty much. In the long run, it makes it easier to stay clear-headed if you keep the rules in mind.”
“I sense that you take play pretty seriously.”
“Indubitably,” he remarked. “In fact, as you get to know me better, you’ll find that I take everything pretty seriously.”
“Ha. Well, as far as the research goes, I appreciate the gesture. But I have to warn you that I’m rather jealous of my work.”
“Point taken. I’ll just read the novels so I can follow what you’re saying. I promise not to butt in.” Guy crossed his heart.
I laughed at his little-boy seriousness. “I mean it, Guy. Stick to the pizza gambit. I have never felt a need to discuss my work, and I’m not about to start now.”
Oh gosh, as I think about it now, I shake my head in assuming at the time that Guy was the arrogant one at that table, thinking I could do everything on my own. If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t know what I’d have done that year.
I was praying he wasn’t going to show up for the reunion. If just thinking about him dredged up all these memories, what would come of seeing him face-to-face? We had lost touch over a decade ago. Either I had stopped sending him Christmas cards, or he’d stopped responding. I couldn’t quite remember how the ties had unravelled, but I was okay that they had. Memories of him were so tied to my thesis time and all that entailed that I wasn’t sorry to cease to be reminded of him. Regardless of Denise’s present absorption with reunions, the past wasn’t somewhere I liked to dwell.
I doubted Guy wasted even a second thinking of me. He had likely just moved on to another set of acolytes. Guy studied game theory for a reason; it was all a game to him, with people as the pawns, not the players. I had amused him for a year or so, so it was worth his while to read a new Canadian author to make me happy. I wondered if Guy still read Ahlers, and if he knew about the new book? And if so, what did he know? Or would he even care? I wondered briefly just where Guy was nowadays and what he was up to.
All of a sudden, I was thankful I had agreed to help Denise with her Homecoming class reunion, after all. I could satisfy my curiosity without appearing to be opening old wounds.
6.
Recalling that first term, it was just as well Dr. Quinn hadn’t been on campus to greet me with open arms in September. I was barely keeping my head above water with all the work I had to churn out for the grad courses. In the materials they handed out, it is said the expected time for completing an MA is one calendar year. I’d heard of two people who’d actually managed it, and that was probably because their seminars dovetailed into their thesis topic so nicely that papers for classes could do double duty as chapters for their thesis. In reality, I’d come across about thirty frantic individuals that first year, juggling writing for courses with reading for courses with teaching or marking for first-year courses with trying to come up with a thesis topic and advisor, all looking forward to at least one more year of research and writing, to bring it in under two years. In this instance, I had the jump on them. I’d already drafted three different thesis proposals. Once I could get out from under my seminar commitments, I was raring to get started.
At the moment, I was leaning toward a study of regionalism and the land in Ahlers’ novels. I’d once heard Robertson Davies talk about the fact that Canadian writers were sitting in the oldest land in the world, geographically speaking, and that—being such sensitive types—it had to make a difference to their writing. I suppose he was talking about the Canadian Shield, but I figured it might hold true for western writers too, the way the topsoil had been blowing away that year.
A study of the regional quality in Ahlers’ work made sense as a project for two reasons. First of all, I hadn’t really noticed a particular regional flavour to the novels on first reading, although they were deliberately set in the northwest. Secondly, no one had written about Ahlers and regionalism yet. There were a couple of articles about the two novels appearing here and there, but so far the mysterious Dr. Quinn was still the so-called expert on the topic. I’d tried to winkle an address for her out of the secretaries, but it seemed that not even Guy’s abundant charms could work miracles. Quinn hadn’t left an address. I determined that hounding her was probably not the best way to begin a working relationship anyway. While she continued to hover in the ether, I devoured books on regionalism whenever I wasn’t cramming for Canadian Lit or Narrative Studies, or skimming through the Twentieth Century Novel, or marking sixty-two essays on Pride and Prejudice.
In fact, I’d almost completely forgotten about Hilary Quinn until two things arrived in my pigeonhole to remind me. One was a memo informing us that we had two weeks to submit our approved thesis proposals. The other was a copy of Margaret Ahlers’ third novel—The Children of Magpie.
I rushed through the paperwork for my thesis proposal with a codicil attached, explaining how I hadn’t been able to contact Dr. Quinn. I had checked with the Grad Chairman about this; he was understanding and said it would be approved conditionally. The Children of Magpie was burning a hole on the edge of my desk, but I’d promised myself I wouldn’t touch it until I had my research paper in for one seminar, and the final exams marked for the profs I was assigned to. It was December 16 before I could relax enough to enjoy the yuletide season.
Christmas spirit on campus had, however, dribbled away to nothing by that time. The department party had wisely been held on the final day of classes, because exam time was characterized by excess activity in the photocopying room and dwindling presence in the halls. By the time my papers were turned in, most everyone had faded away to sunny shores or family hearths. I lugged my notes and Ahlers’ new novel back to my basement suite, bought a mickey of rum and a litre of store-brand eggnog, and settled into my cocoon.
Guy had left a message on my phone machine, something about skiing in Whistler. Since my idea of winter sports is to burrow into woolen underwear and hibernate, I wasn’t even sure of which direction he’d gone. The pang of realizing I wouldn’t be able to give him his present on the actual 25th was lessened by the thought of the new novel on my lap. I snuggled under an afghan and cracked the spine the way they’d taught us in Grade Six, just to prolong the anticipation. In matter of pages, I too was on holiday.
Magpie felt like a throwback to the style of the first novel. Whereas Two for Joy had been the exploration of the weird symbiotic relationship of two women, the new book was again a one-hander. The character, Isabel, would often share the role of narrator, mostly when looking back on her life or forward into her dreams. The present of the novel unfolded in a limited omniscient. Ahlers seemed to be playing with the concept of actions of the past informing and shaping the present. It was hard to grasp at first, sort of like watching Harold Pinter’s Betrayal and then fusing it with its mirror image running forwards again—except that the characters all knew what would happen this time. I wasn’t up on the contemporary writers well enough to know whether anyone else was writing like this, but whatever the case, I was certainly glad that Ahlers was.
I closed the covers reluctantly when I reached the end. It had taken me two days to read the novel. I set the book on the side table, made myself a grilled cheese sandwich, then walked around the apartment picking up the things I’d strewn about over the past forty-eight hours. I found myself staring blankly out my kitchen window at the snowdrift in the window well. I couldn’t shake myself out of the story; I felt like an iron filing near a magnet. With a sigh, I threw myself back on the couch and picked up the book.
I was about a third of the way through it for the second time when the phone rang. It was my
parents calling from Australia to wish me a Happy Christmas. They were giggling a bit giddily because they’d been up half the night trying to figure out the time-zone equivalents. Their Elderhostel course was going well, they’d reconnected with several of the people they’d met in Spain the year before, and they were shipping me a sheepskin vest.
“I hope you’re not spending Christmas alone, Miranda,” my mother was saying. She always uses my full name whenever I become an object of concern to her. It would be too costly—both in terms of long-distance charges and worry—to explain to her that being along didn’t bother me. It was an old argument between us, anyhow. My mother still tried to unshackle herself from her ’50s mindset, but she still couldn’t fully accept that I might choose to remain single. I assured her that I was going out for brunch with a friend, and in a way I was; I could take The Children of Magpie with me for dim sum.
My folks promised to send postcards of Ayers Rock, which back then was what we were all calling Uluru, and rang off to throw a shrimp on the barbie.
I spent the rest of the week doing laundry and finishing a short paper on Marian Engel for my Canadian Writers seminar.
On December 29, Dr. Quinn phoned. We arranged to meet on January 3.
7.
I remember thinking Dr. Hilary Quinn was not a bit like I’d been picturing her for the previous six months. I’d had visions of a rather frail, older woman with her hair up in a bun. Don’t ask me why; maybe my brain’s casting director lumped all bookish characters—professors, librarians, authors, bookstore clerks—into one type. All I know is that Central Casting had to do a massive reshuffle when the office door swung open.
Dr. Quinn was just average height for a woman in her late forties or early fifties, but she held herself with such amazing posture that she seemed taller than me. She had shoulders I’d have killed for, the Joan Crawford kind but without the padding, and short dark hair that resembled anthracite with a few strategically placed veins of silver running through it. She wore a large red sweater over a black and red tartan skirt. I was going to have to fire my casting personnel; Dr. Quinn was altogether the quintessential professor.
“Miranda Craig?” There was something in her tone that kept me from asserting my preference for Randy. I used Miranda, the name on my birth certificate, only when necessary, like on university applications. Randy was a better name to publish under, more androgynous. I’d rather be mistaken for a man, which often worked in my favour, than spend time fighting the preconceived notion of Shakespearean naïf.
Quinn smiled as we shook hands, but her face didn’t light up. Fine by me, I figured. If cool and reserved was the way we were going to play it, I could try that. She motioned me into her office and closed the door before resuming her place at her large desk. I just had time to catch a quick scan of the room—floor-to-ceiling bookcases on each wall, two massive sideways filing cabinets, a few plants on the window ledge, a personal computer in the corner, and some very nice paintings—before Dr. Quinn focused in on me again. She caught me with my eyes on a painting of a lake that seemed to have about seventeen distinct horizons as part of the design.
“Interesting work, isn’t it? It’s a McNaught.”
“I beg your pardon? I didn’t catch the name.”
“McNaught. Euphemia McNaught. A Peace River Country artist. Student of the Group of Seven.”
“She’s very … engaging,” I stumbled. Art has never been my strong point. I feel as awkward discussing aesthetics as I would declaiming a wine as having “an unpretentious yet amicable bouquet.” I was hoping that Dr. Quinn would let me off the hook, and she did.
“You’re rather older than I expected from your note.”
I tried not to bridle as I nodded. I’d forgotten that aspect of the career academic, the sort that teethes on Milton and has their PhD at fifteen. Of course I was older than Quinn had expected; how could she possibly imagine starting an MA at thirty? She’d probably been in the biz for at least six years by the time she was my age.
I plastered on a placating smile. “I spent some time freelancing before coming back to do an MA.”
She nodded in a businesslike way and folded her hands together on top of her desk. “So, why don’t you tell me what you’d like to work on? I gather it’s something to do with Margaret Ahlers.”
This was it. I took a deep breath and began to ramble immediately. After about five minutes of garbling terms like “regionalism,” “space,” “terrain,” and “inner reality,” my diatribe trickled to a halt. To my surprise, Quinn looked interested.
“I see. You want to tackle the metaphor of place and belonging in Ahlers’ fiction within the context of Canadian regional dictates. Not a bad idea. There would seem to be enough scope for an MA thesis there. What graduate seminars are you attending at present?”
We went on to discuss my timetable and schedule, plotted a time to meet on a semi-regular basis, and ended up, forty minutes later, in the same place we’d started—in the doorway, shaking hands. I bounced down the hallway toward my own little hideyhole at the other end of the building. Things were rolling right along at last.
Or so I thought. Even thinking about it now makes me cringe, after all these years. For someone who prided herself on reading people and situations, I made a complete fool of myself. Too many 1940s college caper movies, I suppose. I should have just stuck to watching Animal House.
If I had expected to bask at the feet of the master, I changed my expectations in a hurry. While Dr. Quinn allowed for a meeting every second week, she didn’t ever seem too het up over it. She’d sit and listen to my research so far; occasionally she would nod or say, “Hmmmm.” I never did learn how to translate those “hmmmms”—they didn’t appear consistently enough to denote triumphs or mistakes. After about an hour and a half, Quinn would unfold her legs, which she had wrapped around each other about three times during the course of the meeting, and clear her throat. This was my cue to stand up and say, “I’ll see you next time.”
She never marked anything except grammatical errors on any of the papers I handed in to her. I narrowed this sparse feedback down to two possibilities: either I was a genius or too stupid to waste intellectual time on. Having the self-confidence of a salamander, I proceeded to get spooked.
Guy was not the rock he thought he was. “Are you sure you’ve read all her articles? Maybe you’ve contradicted something she’s written.”
“Thank you, thank you. This is just what I need to hear. Shall I start humming ‘The Volga Boat Song’ now, or should I just go out and hang myself?”
“You’re getting too worked up about this, Randy.”
“Well, I just can’t figure her out. One minute she’s nice as pie; the next minute, she’s staring off into space and ignoring me.”
“Sounds like a godgame to me.”
“A what?”
“A godgame. You know, one where you are the player, but you don’t know the rules. You try to go one way, and the god who is the game-master lops off your arm because you’ve somehow transgressed an unwritten law.”
“How could I have known about it if it’s unwritten?”
“Exactly! The god toys with you. Like flies to wanton boys and all that malarkey.”
“Do you really see Hilary Quinn as a god?”
“It’s not about what I see; it’s what Hilary Quinn sees when she looks in the mirror every morning.”
“Hmmmm.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What? Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Dr. Quinn?”
“Why don’t I just order more beer instead?”
So there I was. It was mid-March; my seminars were winding down in spirit as the workload increased proportionally. Meanwhile people around me were generally going a little crazy.
I had three major papers to submit, one presentation left to complete (in the course I understood the least), a thesis outline and chapter draft to hand in and two comprehensive exams to mark. I pitied m
y poor students; even I couldn’t remember what we’d covered in September without consulting the syllabus.
Not only that, I was beginning to believe that my advisor was toying with me for her own bizarre amusement. Did I say “other” people were going crazy?
8.
When I am caught up in a project, such as grad school, I tend to turn off my need to stay current, and cease to watch the news or read newspapers. Knowing this, my mother, out of abject fear of my being caught without some vitally important piece of news, had been weaving tidbits into her letters. For some reason, it was the deaths of important people that she kept telling me about. It reminded me of a comedian I once saw who said his grandmother reads the obituaries every day and then crosses the names out of her telephone directory. I suppose that’s what we want to hear about, though; it’s somehow comforting to keep track of who’s fallen out of the race while we’re still running.
I didn’t have to wait for Mom’s letter to hear about this particular obituary. Maureen had thoughtfully left the page on my desk, and Guy came by about twenty minutes after I’d hung up my coat.
“Did you hear?”
All I could do was nod.
“You weren’t planning on interviewing her, were you?”
I shook my head.
“Listen, let me buy you a cup of coffee.” Guy led me out of the office and down the corridor. I felt numb, so numb that I hardly noticed my knuckles scraping against the stucco of the corridor wall. The architect obviously had his own ideas about the mating habits of English professors; the hallways were treacherous if not navigated single file.
Guy bought coffee, snaffled a table, and sat me down. “Here’s to Margaret Ahlers. May she rest in peace.”
“Oh, Guy. I can’t believe it.”
“I know what you mean. After all, her latest book just came out … what? A couple of months ago?”
I nodded. “Just before Christmas. It’s not even that so much. I guess, really, it’s because her name hasn’t become a household word yet. I mean, who even knew what she looked like? There’s no signature; no frizzy hair, or bowtie, or kilt, or wolf smile. Who was she?”
Another Margaret (The Randy Craig Mysteries Book 6) Page 4