The Wrong Kind of Woman

by Sarah McCraw Crow

  Mom called that it was time to go. “Professor Jernigan thought you were very brave, Sam,” Mom said, and Sam lifted his uninjured eyebrow at Rebecca, making her laugh.

  * * *

  In math class, Professor Jernigan, not President Weissman, stood waiting at the board. “Emergency meeting,” Professor Jernigan said, when they were all seated. “President Weissman was called away. You got me instead today.”

  “What’s the big emergency?” Jerry asked.

  Sam rolled his eyes at Jerry’s comment, which made his nose hurt. The skin around his eye had gone through a rainbow of colors, blue-gray to green, and now greenish yellow. His nose was still red and painful, but less swollen today. Jerry didn’t notice Sam’s eye-rolling; Sam hadn’t had much of a chance to give Jerry the silent treatment, since Tuesday’s class had been canceled.

  “Meeting with some of the trustees. If I had to guess, I’d say the singing competition last week captured their attention, and the trustees want to know what’s up. But since I’ve got you fellows this morning, have you talked about time-sharing language already? No? Okay, then. You’ll need this when we get the network up and going.” He turned back to the board.

  * * *

  Out on the sidewalk after class, Sam took in the May morning, bright and clear, more summer than spring, guys around him talking about a beach trip and Frisbee on the green. He sped up to break away from the cheerful summer-weather talk. Jerry caught up to him a minute later, as they passed the library.

  “Hey, Manhattan,” Jerry said. Sam scowled at him. “Bad night, huh?” Jerry asked.

  “I saw you together,” Sam said. “On the green. After Spring Sing.” He didn’t say Elodie’s name or mention the kiss in the rain.

  Jerry looked away, gave a little nod to the air. “So we had a thing, a while back. I was, I was trying to get her to see reason.”

  “You never told me you had a thing with her,” Sam said, and he felt the flimsiness of his retort. Elodie didn’t like him enough to see him for more than that too-brief meeting at the Waverly Place coffee shop.

  “Listen, I got no claim on her,” Jerry said. “But you should stay away from her.”

  That didn’t add up. “Why?”

  “She has too much money, she’s too sheltered. She doesn’t get it,” Jerry said, not answering his question. “She’s either in way over her head, or about to be.”

  “She’s not a stupid girl,” Sam said. “She’s one of the most—”

  “I didn’t say she was stupid,” Jerry said.

  Sam didn’t want to hear any more. “I gotta go.” He started to run.

  “She’s at Topos. There’s some meeting late tonight,” Jerry called.

  Sam didn’t turn around to ask what the meeting was about.

  When he considered whether to go to Topos later, that vision flew up at him, Elodie and Jerry together, kissing in the rain on the Clarendon green, as if they were reenacting Love Story. And he was just a loser. His right eye gave a little throb, as if to say, Yep, that’s right, buddy, you are a loser.

  No, he wasn’t a loser. He was a guy who cared. He would go talk to her, that’s what he’d do. Dougie’s car wasn’t in the dorm lot, and he didn’t want to go over to Lambda Chi to start asking around. He started walking north with his thumb out.

  * * *

  At the Tavern’s entrance, Virginia scanned the tables, spotting Louise and Corinna in one of the far booths. Corinna waved across the room, and Louise lifted her glass in greeting. The bad news had arrived, Helen had said earlier, on the phone. “Louise got the notice, her tenure status is officially being questioned,” she’d said. “We’re meeting at the Tavern, if you want to join us.”

  Virginia wove around the tables, the Tavern half-full, and slid in next to Corinna. When she saw Helen and Lily coming down the stairs into the basement restaurant, she signaled to them. She wanted to thank them for including her, but that would be silly; they’d gathered for Louise, that was all.

  “Another round,” Louise said, marking a circle with her glass. The booth was a little too small for five, Virginia between Corinna and Lily as if they were high school girls, squeezed together because that was the way they always did it.

  “To moral turpitude,” Louise said, after the waiter set their drinks on the table.

  “To moral turpitude,” they answered, clinking glasses.

  “And personal misconduct,” Louise said.

  “I just don’t see how—” Virginia said.

  “There are a few things that can lead to your tenure getting questioned or taken away,” Helen said. “Personal misconduct and moral turpitude. But no one knows what moral turpitude even means.”

  Louise finished her drink too quickly, swirling the leftover ice so a piece shot out and skittered across the table. “It means you’re a woman, that’s what it means. If you’re a man you can get away with countless bad behaviors, you can hit on students without any consequence, and you can be a bad teacher, a terrible researcher, never bother to publish again. But if you’re a woman—”

  Helen put a hand on Louise’s arm. “What did they say?” she asked gently.

  “They said that because I’ve been encouraging radical behavior in young women, who as everyone knows are more impressionable and potentially less morally fit than young men, they’re going to hold a hearing to determine my status. I’m officially on probation. And apparently the exchange program for the girls is under review. If they cancel it, it’s all on my head.” She raised a hand to get the waiter’s attention.

  That strident pushy woman, Virginia heard Oliver’s complaint from the past, echoing in her head, and Louise shouldn’t be grandstanding like that...the Clarendon boys only gave her the faculty award because they don’t know any better... At last she understood what Oliver had been saying, and worse, what the other men had meant when they’d nicknamed these women the Gang of Four, as if one woman’s tiniest achievement or advancement meant they’d all be clamoring to take over the place. What a clever and insidious nickname. “This is wrong,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Louise said. “Although easy for you to say, since your job isn’t on the line.”

  “Maybe there’s no place here for a woman,” Corinna said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t at the meeting. I should have been there.”

  “That meeting.” Louise smiled around the table and started to cry.

  “Louise didn’t do anything wrong.” Virginia looked from Corinna to Helen to Lily. “It’s bullshit,” she heard herself saying—the first time she’d ever cursed. “It’s absurd to pretend that young women are less morally fit than young men. All we have to do is walk two hundred yards into one of the frats if we want to see the opposite of moral fitness. And Louise has tenure.”

  “Let’s get some dinner,” Helen said.

  They drank two carafes of wine with dinner, and Virginia listened as the others told stories of bad behavior by men on the faculty, and the weaselly administrators who couldn’t cope when there was a controversy, who made excuses, or created committees to study issues, instead of making a decision.

  It was late, after ten o’clock when they left the restaurant and as they walked in a clump toward their cars, music floated over them from one of the outlying frats at the edge of campus. The thump of a bass, twangy harmonies, “Down on the corner, out in the street...”

  “A party,” Louise said. “Let’s go.” She swayed, an unstable giant half dancing, half stumbling.

  “It’s a frat party, Louise. That’s not for us,” Corinna said.

  “Let’s go find some moral unfitness, like you said, Virginia,” Louise said.

  “Oh, well, I—” The music was coming from Delta Mu, Oliver’s old frat. “Oliver used to go there sometimes, to have a beer.”

  The others turned her way, staring openmouthed. “Oliver? He did?”

 
Virginia took in their horror. She’d never thought it wrong, only a little strange, and yet also endearing, that Oliver went to his old fraternity on homecoming and other alumni weekends. “I mean, it was his fraternity back when he was an undergrad, and he went over there now and then.” The music sounded enticing now. “We could go in for just a minute, see what it’s like,” she said. “I’ve never been inside a frat.”

  “Yes, let’s.” Louise strode off in the direction of Delta Mu. “Moral unfitness for all.”

  “Come on,” Virginia said, following Louise.

  “No, that’s a hideous idea!” Helen said. “The frats, they’re the worst of everything. They stand for—hell, they are—the patriarchy. Louise, listen to me! What in the world are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that I played by the rules my whole life, and look where it got me,” Louise called over her shoulder.

  “All right, Virginia, you said it’s fine,” Lily said. “So go on. Go keep an eye on Louise.”

  It wasn’t fine. She needed to think before she spoke. She swallowed and nodded. “Okay, I’ll make sure nothing happens.”

  “I’ll go with you, Virginia,” Corinna said. “Safety in numbers.”

  “Good luck, then. We’re going to call it a night,” Lily said, and she and Helen set off for home.

  A knot of young men clustered outside the frat’s front door, laughing about something. Louise swerved around them to the side of the house, where another door was propped open. The three of them followed a student through, entering a short, unlit hallway where a couple clutched at one another, and then a large wood-paneled common room filled with Clarendon boys and their dates, most of them dancing; the whole room had been turned into a dance floor. The lights were low, but Virginia could see that rugs had been rolled up, furniture pushed back against the walls. The room smelled of beer, sweat and cigarette smoke. They followed Louise as she wove around the party, a few students whispering and pointing at Louise, and one boy offering them beers from the rack he carried. The beer was flat, yet not unpleasant.

  A song started. It was that Nancy Sinatra song, the one about the boots. “Woo! Woo!” a girl yelled. The whole room danced and sang as one organism.

  “Right on! Professor Walsh is here!” Virginia heard a boy say. “Let’s dance, Professor Walsh!” Louise wiggled and stomped, trying to match her partner’s moves.

  “We should go,” Corinna said, the two of them at the edge of the dance floor, watching Louise doing her awkward dance.

  “I’ll get her,” Virginia said. As she moved into the fray a boy took her hand. The music had changed, one of those Jackson 5 songs that Rebecca used to sing along with. The boy lifted her hand to twirl her, and she let herself twirl away, then back again, holding his hand. The drinks had hit her, and that moment of twirling had made her feel years younger; she felt like she’d just learned something new and magical. She was having fun.

  The music changed again. “What the fuck, Chip?” someone yelled into the momentary quiet. “Who’s your old lady?” The boy dropped her hand and slid away, and Virginia felt her body heat up in shame.

  “Lady, what is your problem?” a girl yelled at Louise. “You stepped on my foot and almost broke it!” Some of the couples were clutching at each other now in a slow dance, while others trailed away from the dance floor.

  “What is my problem? What is my problem?” Louise yelled. “This—” she threw her arms out wide “—is my problem, all of it!”

  Virginia grabbed Louise’s arm, pulling her away, and Corinna took Louise’s other arm. “Let’s go, Louise,” Corinna said. Young people, pretty, handsome, drunk, sweaty young people, stared at them, backing away to make room as the three of them passed. One on each side, she and Corinna steered Louise back out the side door.

  “It’s my fault, I’m sorry,” Virginia said, once they were back on Main Street. Louise charged ahead, muttering about young fascists and the old-boy network.

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” Corinna said briskly. “We’re all a little—well, things aren’t as they should be right now. I’ll drive Louise home.” She moved ahead too, leaving Virginia alone on the sidewalk. In pretending to be one of them, trying to join them, Virginia had only made things worse. She’d led Louise into making a drunken scene in a frat, and it would probably get back to the history department. Whatever they’d been doing tonight probably counted as moral turpitude.

  * * *

  Sam stood in the muddy, unlit driveway, debating. For a few moments tonight, he’d turned into one of those guys he used to wonder about: a guy hitching back to Topos with a farmer. A pickup truck had stopped for him, and without asking where Sam needed a ride to, the driver, a middle-aged man in a canvas coat and driving cap, started talking. He was on his way home after visiting his brother’s youngest son in Vermont, back from Vietnam, he said. The nephew had gotten his bell rung pretty bad from an explosion and had also broken a leg, but he was home. Anyway, the man needed a little help rebuilding trellises for his raspberries, which would free him up to finish liming and manuring his last field, all right?

  “I’ll post a note on the board,” Sam said, and asked for a pen to write down the information.

  “You fellows and gals did good work on the fence repair and the apple picking last year,” the man said. “I have to give you that.”

  “Thanks,” Sam said, on behalf of the fellows and gals at Topos.

  “I don’t approve of the free love and this knee-jerk anti-Nixon business. How do you think it makes my nephew feel?”

  Nixon was a crook, and Sam didn’t know what to say about the injured nephew home from the war. “I haven’t seen any free love,” he said. “Only the usual non-free kind.” He’d made the farmer laugh.

  But Sam hadn’t asked Jerry when the meeting was tonight. Maybe he’d missed it entirely. This time he couldn’t make up some lame excuse for being out here. No, he should just say it out loud: he’d come here to find Elodie. He forced himself to charge across the driveway and up the house’s side steps. Inside the house, he could hear voices in the front room, and from upstairs, the plucking of a guitar—Dylan, of course. He wished he had a joint or a few glasses of Topos cider to give him a boost.

  “You’re patronizing me.” Elodie’s voice carried from the front room. “And maybe you don’t understand how fucked-up everything is.”

  Sam stood waiting at the edge of the front room. Six people sat on the floor, some with their backs against the couch. What do you people have against chairs, he wanted to ask, but he’d only sound like someone’s square dad. Elodie took in his presence and waved him over as if she’d been expecting him.

  “Actually, I have a pretty good idea,” Jerry was saying, as Sam approached. Jerry nodded up at Sam, then turned back to Hank.

  “Let’s not get heated,” Hank the senior said. Hank had a beard now, which had come in darker and bushier than his pale hair. With the beard and those frameless glasses Hank looked a lot older than even a couple months ago. “It’s a small operation. It’s not that big a deal.” Hank noted Sam’s presence, frowning up at him. “Is he okay to be here?”

  “He’s fine,” Elodie said. “Sit down, Sam.” She scooted to the side, and he squeezed between her and Shelly, the girl who’d been pruning apple trees that night he’d cooked with Elodie. Shelly nodded at him blankly—she didn’t remember him.

  “Maybe it’s not a big deal, but I thought we were here to talk about ecology,” Jerry said.

  “Some of us have gotten to a better understanding of things,” Hank said. “We’ve all tried peaceful protest, we’ve seen what happens. Do I need to remind you about the May Day protests?” Jerry made a grunting sound, not agreeing or disagreeing. Hank turned to Sam. “You know what happened right? The Feds came down hard on a completely peaceful demonstration in DC, they brought in the fucking marines, fucking paratroopers and tear gas—”
>
  “We all know,” Jerry said.

  Sam nodded with the others. The phrase May Day rang a bell, but the protests blurred together, one front-page photo after another: a hundred thousand in DC, ten thousand at Kent State, thirty at Clarendon—the protests would get put down, the battering rams would come out, the protesters put in jail or worse.

  Hank lifted some papers from his lap and began to read. “The time is now.” His voice had grown deeper, as if he were giving a speech. “Political power grows out of a gun, a Molotov, a riot, a commune...and from the soul of the people...”

  “You’re the one getting heated, man,” Jerry said. “No more manifesto crap, that stuff never works.”

  “First of all, it’s not crap,” Hank said. “Second, Elodie said this was an ecology meeting to get you to sit and listen for a minute. We can’t help Mother Earth if we don’t get the humans to see reason. So therefore, if we can raise a little money to fund the—”

  “Who’s going to give money for something like that?” Jerry said.

  “We wouldn’t have to go into specifics,” Hank said. “We have fundraisers all the time. Or often enough.”

  Next to Sam, Elodie took his hand, squeezed it, and let go. “Hey, Hank, Sam is the one who made the code for us.”

  “Ah,” Hank said. “Thanks, man. We appreciate the work, you dig?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Sam said.

  “What did you do, Manhattan?” Jerry said.

  “See, other people want to help us out, Jerry,” Elodie said. “Sam’s code was super helpful.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Jerry said.

  Sam hadn’t been thinking when he made that cipher for Elodie, and now he saw himself kissing the two pieces of paper. He was such an ass. Only he could be so dense that he’d consider an encryption code, a stupid little project he’d borrowed from some long-dead British spy, to be something other than what it was. If he said anything now, that he’d only kind of meant it for the Movement, that mainly he’d been showing off for Elodie, they’d know his idiocy. His face was aflame, but he stayed quiet and tried to listen, slowly taking in that Shelly was talking about the prongs of some operation somewhere else, a response to the fascist pigs. They could support these actions with their own actions. Hank mentioned something about Elodie’s aunt’s empty town house in the Village, and Elodie nodded.