Chapter 13
Damage Control
The department office was unusually noisy, as a maintenance man worked to reconstruct the ancient lounge doorframe to meet current ADA requirements. Most of the faculty complained loudly about the racket, asking why there was no warning and questioning why the work could not have been completed over the weekend. Of course, the reality was that it usually took so long to get a work order request filled that no one dared send workers away when they presented official paperwork and declared, “Tenemos nuestras órdenes.” To avoid the noise, Jane had tried to stay out of the office most of the morning, but finally dropped in to pick up her written messages. One small Post-it note stopped her in her tracks.
Dr. Roardan: Please call me. Mandy Taylor. 555-9890.
Jane stared at the scrap of paper for several minutes. The last update she had received from Gary said that the legal department had delivered a response to Katherine’s formal complaint, using all the correct legalese. They had yet to present the case to the ethics committee. That would probably drag on for awhile, as nothing moved quickly in the college bureaucracy. Jane had met with the tenure committee a week earlier and convinced them to postpone a decision on Lewis’s application. He was not happy about the delay, but knew it might work to his advantage in the long run.
Now Mandy was calling Jane for some unknown reason. The Chair hesitated to return the call, unsure whether she should consult with Gary or legal first, just in case they preferred for her not to speak to the student one-on-one. Finally convincing herself that the administration was making her needlessly paranoid, Jane dialed Mandy’s number.
“Hello, Dr. Roardan.” the student answered after three rings. The transparency of caller I.D. still threw Jane off kilter. Mandy thanked her for returning the call, explaining that she had to duck out of a class to answer. This girl sounded much more confident than the person she had met during the conference with Katherine. She asked Jane if they could set up a meeting together, just the two of them, but refused to say why. Jane felt a little uneasy about meeting alone regarding such a sensitive case, so she asked if Dean Jones could be present.
Mandy declined, but suggested perhaps Dr. Stevens, to which Jane agreed if her colleague was amenable. Hanging up the phone, Jane replayed the conversation, looking for clues as to Mandy’s motive. She sincerely hoped that this was not some kind of ploy to get Jane to reveal information that would help the other side’s case. She felt better about having Sheila present. It occurred to her that, for someone who professed no interest in campus gossip, Dr. Stevens was constantly being drawn into the middle of this drama as a mere “witness,” reflecting the advantages of being a listener among a sea of talkers.
The next day, Isobel strained her head to watch Sheila and Mandy enter the Chair’s office. Jane was beginning to wish that she had convened the meeting in Sheila’s office, so as to avoid the big ears next door. Mandy looked very different from their previous encounter: shoulders back, head up, much more confident than in the conference with her mother. Jane could tell she was still nervous, by her absent-minded chewing on a thumbnail. Dr. Stevens parked herself in one corner, while Jane sat behind her desk. “Well, Ms. Taylor,” she began, resting her folded hands in front of her. “What did you want to see me about?”
Mandy cleared her throat and looked directly at Jane. “I want to see how we can end this thing with Dr. Burns.”
“End it?” Jane queried.
“Ya see,” Mandy sighed, “this complaint wasn’t my idea. I never wanted to get Dr. Burns in trouble. When Momma saw that picture of him, she freaked. She’s a divorce lawyer, so her answer to everything is to file papers. That’s not what I want. I don’t wanna hurt him. Well, okay, I did, that’s why I posted the picture, but that was stupid, I know. Anyway, that’s my fault. I don’t want him to lose his job. He’s a good teacher and his job means a lot to him. I don’t want to be responsible for him losin’ that.”
Jane was impressed by the girl’s concerns, but had to make sure that she fully understood what she was doing. “But if he violated university policy, we have a responsibility to take action,” Dr. Roardan pointed out.
“He didn’t violate any policy,” Mandy replied confidently.
Jane raised an eyebrow.
Speaking like a future attorney, with words well-rehearsed and carefully chosen, Mandy stated emphatically: “No sexual contact occurred between Lewis Burns and myself while I was an actively enrolled student in this university.”
Jane wanted more clarification. “What does that mean?” Mandy merely repeated her previous statement, adding, “Should anyone ask me to testify before any group regarding this matter, that’s what I’ll say.”
The professor could tell that there was some kind of linguistic hair-splitting going on, but she could not identify its source. “So you’re changing your story?”
“It was never my story,” Mandy noted. “My mother filed the complaint. I didn’t verify any of it in our meeting together.”
This girl was smart, Jane concluded. Out of the corner of her eye, Jane caught a bemused smirk on Sheila’s face as the student out-maneuvered the Chair. The department head pressed, “What about the accusations of him serving you alcohol?”
Mandy did not miss a beat. “As I recall, I once gave him a beer from my fridge and a couple of times served him alcohol as part of my employment duties as a waitress, but I don’t recall him ever serving alcohol to me. You’d have a hard time proving otherwise.”
“And the text messages?” Jane pressed.
“If you look at the dates,” Mandy noted, “No inappropriate messages were sent while I was enrolled as a student nor while I was his employee. I do admit that, over the summer, I may have sent some messages to Dr. Burns to which he responded in a manner that could be misconstrued if taken out of context. However, it might also be considered harmless joking between friends.”
Summer. Ah, there was the hair-splitting. A crafty technical point that could be countered as violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. Was this really worth the fight?
One last shot: “What about the videos you made for ‘In the House’?”
“Dramatic license,” Mandy countered. “It’s entertainment; we make stuff up. Photos can be doctored too, ya know.”
At this, Jane accepted defeat. The girl had prepared a plausible explanation for all of the evidence. If she refused to cooperate, there would be little the school could do. At this point, that was just as well with Jane. She was getting tired of spending her time delving into other people’s personal lives.
Jane glanced at Sheila, who was still smiling slyly in the corner, then back to Mandy. “Ms. Taylor, by any chance are you going to law school?”
Mandy grinned, knowingly. “Yes, Ma’am. I take my LSATs this spring.”
“It figures,” Jane sighed. “And you know that if you don’t cooperate, this case won’t get very far, but we still have a complaint that has been filed and the ethics committee may have to look into it. Plus, I’m not sure your mother will be as willing to let this drop. She threatened some trouble for the university in the legislature.”
“I think I have a solution for that.”
Again, Jane was not surprised.
Mandy explained, “Sometimes in Momma’s divorce cases, the two parties’ll take their complaint to a mediator instead of to court. They get to tell both sides of their story and the mediator makes a decision that everybody agrees to live with. That’s what I wanna do. I want mediation with Lewis, to work some things out.”
Jane furrowed her brow. “I don’t understand. If you’re not going to pursue a complaint, what’s the point of mediation?”
Mandy looked to Sheila for support, then back to Jane. “Well, it’ll probably get my Momma off your back, which is your main problem now.” She paused, indicating that there was more. “Plus. . . ,” she finally admitted, “I need closure. Ya see, that picture of Lewis got posted ‘cause I was mad. He wo
uldn’t talk to me. I have things I need to say to him, but he won’t listen. Now we’re not allowed to talk to each other. Momma, my girlfriends, everybody’s pissed at him. But I’m tired of bein’ pissed.” Mandy paused and cleared her throat again, her voice beginning to crack. “I just wanna move on. All I want is to tell him how I feel and for someone to make him listen. Maybe a mediator can do that, ya know? I’ll take whatever happens and I’ll make everyone else accept it, too. I promise.”
The professor sat back in her seat, in awe of this wise-beyond-her-years young woman. Jane pointed out that Lewis would have to agree to the mediation, but if he did, she was fine with the plan. All parties shook hands as they finished, with Sheila hanging back for a moment. When they opened the office door, there stood Perry, leaning over Isobel’s desk. No doubt both had been straining to hear the conversation within. Jane made a mental note to hold the mediation on a neutral site.
Watching Mandy retreat from the office, Jane looked at Sheila and commented, “That girl is sharp.”
“Yes, she is,” Dr. Stevens agreed.
“Lewis always seems drawn to the smart ones,” Jane noted, “though I can see why it didn’t work. She’s way too mature for him.”
“On that point I would agree,” Sheila concurred.
Jane then headed straight to Lewis’s office, hoping to catch him before he left for the day. He was just packing some books into his satchel when she interrupted and relayed Mandy’s suggestion. She thought he would be thrilled, but instead his reaction was rather muted.
“What does she want that for?” he asked, sounding a bit perturbed. Jane repeated what Mandy had told her, but he looked suspicious. “Do I have to do it?”
Jane was incredulous. “Lewis, this is a golden opportunity! One meeting, you two hash everything out, then the complaint disappears. We’ll still have to review the outcome, but unless the mediator suggests punitive action, I doubt much will happen. This is your best chance of minimizing the damage.”
He mulled over the options in his head, clearly reluctant to face Mandy again. He hated confrontations, but knew this might be the only way to save his job.
“Come on, Lewis! It’s time to be the grown-up here!” the Chair demanded.
He finally acquiesced. Jane advised that it would probably take a few weeks to set up a meeting, as she needed to get approval for the plan and vet mediators. She was excited about the prospects of ending this drama. Looking back at Dr. Burns, leaning glumly against his desk, Jane shook her head in disbelief at his hesitancy. “Definitely too mature for him,” she muttered to herself.
Driving home that evening, Jane felt relieved at the progress that had been made and at Mandy’s seeming maturity about the situation. As she sat stuck in traffic thanks to a rush-hour pile-up, her mind could not help contrasting Mandy’s maturity with the immaturity of Jane’s spurned young lover. Did he ever regret his treatment of Jane the way that Mandy regretted posting the photo of Lewis? She never knew, nor did she ever care. She just knew that he had hurt her in ways that even he never knew.
Like a lightening bolt, the other memories came crashing into her present. She tried to force them out, but sitting behind the unmoving cars with nowhere to escape, Jane could not avoid mentally colliding with her past. It was the version of her story that haunted her dreams, keeping her awake more than one night, clutching Dana’s security blanket in the darkened living room, feeling shame for poor choices made long ago and feeding fears about her own child’s choices.
What Jane recalled was that she had enjoyed the young man’s regular services throughout that spring semester after their first date. Often they went for days without hearing from one another. They never met each other’s friends and she never told anyone about him. He was her dirty little secret. After that second outing, they never really went out in public. If they required sustenance for their trysts, they ordered in. Pizza and Chinese food became the staples of their affair. Luckily, he was not in the second half of her Western Civ course, so she did not have to worry about any conflicts of sleeping with one of her students. They never talked much about his classes, nor about anything else substantial.
Each seemed content with the shallowness of the relationship. She called him “Stud,” much to his delight. His pet nickname for her became “Mrs. Robinson,” even though she was less than ten years older than him. Her lover was hardly a naïve Benjamin Braddock, though. In fact, he seemed to be much more experienced in many ways than she was.
As the evidence piled up, she came to realize that his world really did revolve around sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. The sex she was all too eager to enjoy. In fact, it was the only real reason she continued the relationship, if one could call it that. He was lusty, energetic, and willing to try almost anything. As a Valentine’s Day present, he gave her a book on tantric sexual positions, which they studied and practiced together. She thoroughly enjoyed this exploration, certain on a few occasions that she had reached some type of orgasmic nirvana.
After a few weeks, Jane came to the slow realization that the young man was supplementing his income with a lucrative side business selling drugs. He always seemed to have plenty of cash on hand, especially after attending concerts. She correctly suspected that he used the musical venues to market his product. At first, he just admitted to raising some pot plants, which was one reason why, he claimed, he never invited her to his apartment. Then, one day he casually suggested she use some uppers to finish a conference paper, noting that he could easily supply her with any pill of choice. She declined the offer, sticking to her preferred drugs of caffeine, the occasional Valium, and a few hits off his post-coital joints.
She never asked directly about his own drug use, though he volunteered enough to know that he was willing to try just about anything that did not involve needles. He mentioned almost in passing that he avoided LSD because his one experience had given him a bad trip. After he whipped out a vial and suggested they do coke lines off each other’s naked bodies, she finally forbade him from bringing any drugs other than pot into her home. In hindsight, she should probably have realized that anyone who talked about drugs as openly and as frequently as he did was headed for trouble, but she never pressed the subject. It was one of the many things that she chose not to know, lest it threaten her access to physical pleasure.
Jane doubted that he was monogamous. She understood that during a high at the right music venue he would probably be willing to sleep with just about anyone or anything. He did not like wearing condoms and she never insisted that he wear one, trusting in the magic pill to prevent pregnancy and regular STD checks in case she needed a shot of penicillin. In the pre-AIDs era, that was the responsible thing to do if you were sexually active. Years later, after seeing the love of Perry’s life waste away in a slow, painful death, Jane appreciated just how risky her behavior had been.
At the time, such risks were just part of the thrill. She, who had never viewed herself as much of a risk-taker, felt more alive through her experimentation with the young man than she ever had before. Perhaps that is why she could so easily decline his drug offers. He was the only drug she wanted, and her addiction had a much greater grip on her than she realized.
The few times she felt what might be considered pangs of guilt occurred when she was with her friend Mark. All throughout her affair with the student she went to lunches, coffee and the occasional movie with the geeky Math professor, whom she found to be smart, witty and increasingly endearing. Jane continued to make it clear that she had no interest in romance, convincing Mark that she was in a self-imposed period of work-centered celibacy. In a way, that was sort of true, in that she was avoiding commitment to a boyfriend or husband. She had Mark and Perry for companionship and her young lover for physical release, without having to get emotionally attached to anyone. She thought she had found the perfect compartmentalization of life.
It was only when her sexual relationship spilled over into the other compartments that Jane felt u
neasy about its trajectory, like the night when Mark had called while she was trying to get dressed for her second date with the young man. While she was in one venue, she preferred to pretend that the others did not exist. Not that her lover would have cared if she was sleeping with every professor on campus. She was more concerned about Mark finding out about the lover and being either hurt or disappointed in her. She did not tell Perry, either, mainly because she could not trust him not to tell Mark.
Even more disturbing were the times when her secret stud spilled over into her work life. There was the time, for instance, when he dropped by her office hours unexpectedly. She knew what he wanted the moment he locked the door behind him and turned up the radio on her desk to drown out their voices. Jane found herself unwilling to resist his overtures, possessed by some magnetic force that allowed him to take her right there behind her desk. Growing frightened by her own weakness, she told him to avoid her on campus.
He obeyed her order, until one Thursday evening near the end of March, after her late graduate seminar had ended. He was waiting by her car in the darkened faculty parking lot, eyes bloodshot, body reeking of marijuana and whiskey. “What are you doing here?” she asked sternly.
“I need ta talk to ya,” he slurred. Not wanting anyone to see them, she quickly beckoned him into the car. He immediately popped an eight-track into the player, frantically punching buttons. “Ya know, we need a song. We don’t have a song.”
“You’re stoned. I don’t need to see you like this.” His immature behavior was not turning her on. “Why don’t I give you a ride home?”
He casually slipped an arm around her, then gently started to stroke her neck. “I gotta better idea. Why don’t ya give me a blowjob?” He unzipped his jeans, but Jane grabbed his hand before he exposed himself. “Ooh, yeah, Babe,” he said, forcefully moving her hand down into his pants. He still never wore underwear.
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