“Old sexist pig,” another sophomore, Nora, says.
“Who seems to think he’s God,” Connie says. “But who mainly wanted to embarrass us right out of the room.”
Virginia waits for Helen to speak up, since she knows that Helen has her own long-held professional opinions about this particular sexist pig. Helen reminds the girls—the young women—that Elgin Parker is about a thousand years old, and he’ll be retiring in a year or two. The rest of the English department can hardly wait for him to go, she says. Nora snorts and says that’s not enough.
“No, it’s not enough,” Helen says, “but I want to remind you that he’s out of touch, he hasn’t published anything in decades, and he gives the same tired lectures year after year. We all know that intimidation is a tactic that’s as old as time because sometimes it works.”
The girls—the young women—talk all at once, voices rising and falling over one another, about the unfairness of who gets tenure, and why tenure really should be taken away from people like Professor Parker. Virginia catches Helen’s eye again and they both smile, remembering. Yes, girls, there’s a lot of unfairness out there, she’ll have to say. Sometimes tenure doesn’t get granted, and sometimes it gets taken away. Unfairly.
Virginia and Helen meet with these young women on Wednesday nights. These meetings aren’t part of her job, but something that she and Helen agreed was needed, and so here they are. Everyone who shows up has to agree that nothing expressed here is to be shared with anyone outside the group. Last year, Virginia voted against having women faculty assigned to advise the young women. There weren’t enough women on faculty to accommodate them, for one thing, and it would have sent a signal that the young women were still second-class citizens at Clarendon. But the young women do need extra support because in most ways the college hasn’t moved on. The college seems to want to make it as difficult as possible for these young women. “Are you keeping notes on the things Professor Parker says, the ways he tries to intimidate you?” Virginia asks.
“No, how could we forget something like that?” Connie says.
“Well, from now on keep close track of anything else like that you hear,” she says. “Write it all down. We’ll need ongoing evidence in order to take it up with the administration.”
“As if his rudeness to them isn’t enough by itself,” Nora says. “Seems like someone should prosecute him for general obnoxiousness.”
“Shoot him and put him and everyone else out of their misery,” says another girl. Annie, she thinks the girl’s name is.
These young women are sharp and funny, and often Virginia feels like she’s a few steps behind them. Still, they listen when she speaks. They cry in her office about professors like Elgin Parker, or about the asshole guys who hold up numbered cards to rate the coeds as they enter the dining hall. There are times when she wants to murder every single boy—every young man, be fair, call them men—on campus. She pictures Rebecca’s eyes, so big and sad, as she tried to tell Virginia what was wrong after the terrible night two years ago. Virginia failed her daughter, failed to ask what happened. She doesn’t know how Rebecca lived with the assault on her own. All she has to do is remember Rebecca’s expression from that day and she feels like she could single-handedly kill every young man at Clarendon. And Elgin Parker.
Don’t get mad, get even, Virginia’s dad used to say when she or Marnie or June or Rolly had a complaint about someone being mean or someone’s unfair treatment. Dad had learned that phrase from his Irish grandmother, and Momma would always shush him and say, Stop it, Roland, that’s not Christian talk. Virginia hopes she’s getting even. She was able to see that Teddy Burnham had to take a year off—no expulsion for him because his father (and grandfather, years before) was a trustee. She didn’t have the heart to pursue a criminal case, the possibility of Rebecca having to take the witness stand and be questioned about that night and her own behavior. But the other getting even was rewriting her dissertation—what would she have done without Jeannette, and Louise, and Helen, and Lily, she couldn’t have done it without them—and then running the gauntlet of her committee at Harvard, which gave her something back, a confidence that she hadn’t expected. She brought something new into the world; she brought a little of Sarah Miriam Peale’s work to the light of day. And she’s a better teacher now than she was a few years ago. Oliver would be happy about that, she thinks. She hopes. She likes to imagine him standing beside her, supporting her, still with her.
And the truth about Elgin Parker’s anti-female obnoxiousness is that if they do keep track of it and establish a pattern among the older professors, they might be able to make something happen. With this new Title IX law, a federal antidiscrimination law, they can cause Clarendon to lose federal funding if they can show that Clarendon is keeping young women from the same opportunities it gives young men. A few months ago, Virginia and Helen and Lily organized a Title IX seminar with the young lawyer from NOW, and she was surprised and pleased to see so many show up—two administrators, the entire admissions office and more male faculty than she would have guessed.
The most unexpected part of the decision to admit women to Clarendon was a mandate to hire more women faculty members. Louise was offered her old job back, and she turned Clarendon down; she’s happy at Wellesley and being closer to Boston. Clarendon’s hiring of new women faculty meant firing the most recently hired men in every department, including Henry Jernigan. Henry teaches at University of Vermont now, but he runs a multi-school computing conference and he comes back to Clarendon twice a year. Henry, who sees the world’s details in his own peculiar and lovely way.
But even now, the burden is on those affected by Elgin Parker’s kind of discrimination. (What irony, that the worst offenders, like Elgin Parker, remain firmly in place, while better men like Henry have been shunted off.) These young women have to stand up and shout about it, as Connie is doing now. Maybe it will serve them well. And Virginia hopes she’s doing her part, for Louise, who was so badly treated by the college, and others like her. And for these young Clarendon women. But mostly for Rebecca.
“Let Helen finish, please,” she says to Nora, who’s interrupted again. These young women have so much to say that they can barely contain themselves. She’s glad for them, and for herself, that she gets to be here with them. At this time, as they inch closer to the last bit of the twentieth century, in this awkward new world of a coed Clarendon.
* * *
“Oliver, so much has happened,” she says out loud on the way home from the meeting, shivering as the car’s heater blows cold air on her legs. “I wish you’d come visit me sometime.” She knows he won’t. He’s only with her in that sense she gets sometimes. But she’s still here. She lets herself go back to the beginning for a moment; she and Oliver had a lovely beginning, and after a while they made a family. Their marriage, unexpectedly broken right in the middle of life, will always be unfinished. There will always be blank spaces and unanswered questions. Oliver is gone, and she’ll carry those blank spaces, those questions, her failings and his, his love for her and hers for him, into the future. But she’s still here.
* * *
Acknowledgments
Writing is solo work, but publishing a novel is a group endeavor, and this book would not exist without the care, thought and good eyes of many people. To Sharon Pelletier, my intrepid and insightful agent, thank you for sticking with me. And thank you to the team at MIRA Books, especially April Osborn, who pushed me (gently) to make this a better book, and Laura Gianino, Roxanne Jones, Ashley MacDonald and Gina Macedo.
Thank you to Sarah Stone, Laura Gabel-Hartman, Debby Prum, Lisa Sands, Heather Newton, Julie Hubble, Emerson Bruns and Carol Rifka Brunt, who read my early drafts—their suggestions improved the novel in so many ways. Likewise, many thanks to my workshop-mates and teachers at Vermont College of Fine Arts, especially Abby Frucht, Brian Leung, Ellen Lesser, Clint McCown and David Jauss, who
helped me grow as a writer.
To Anne Boedecker, who shared her memories of being a female exchange student at Dartmouth College, and to Ann Crow and Liz Russell, who shared their memories of New England women’s colleges, all my thanks. Although Clarendon College bears some resemblance to Dartmouth College before coeducation, Clarendon is a more hapless, and of course fictional, place. Dartmouth gave me a wonderful education, an introduction to New England and lifelong friends, especially the Green Girls.
I’m lucky to have a host of bookish and creative friends; many thanks for our talks about books and other arts. And to my stalwart reader-writer friends—Laura Gabel-Hartman, Jessica Benjamin, Lisa Sands, Emilie Burack—thank you! I’m also lucky to have parents who shared their love of reading, making me a reader at a young age. To my own three readers, Jack, Bea and Alice, thank you for your confidence and love. And to Peter: none of this would have happened without you. Thank you.
ISBN-13: 9781488062469
The Wrong Kind of Woman
Copyright © 2020 by Sarah McCraw Crow
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
For questions and comments about the quality of this book, please contact us at [email protected].
Mira
22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor
Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada
BookClubbish.com
The Wrong Kind of Woman Page 26