But in class the morning after returning from Chicago, he had zero focus. It was as if his voice came from somewhere else, and then the debate that followed his intro was just a shrill cacophony filling the air.
In a short time, Max’s classes had become popular. There was a buzz about them. The students called him Max, at his request. He understood that some were there just because of how he looked—a majority of the art majors were young women, and he’d read the comments online, on websites where students rated teachers. He was not unaware of the power this gave him and he was determined to wield it cautiously, especially in relation to his colleagues.
Max muddled through class, and afterward, walking on a pathway through the central quadrangle, he looked around at the coeds moving in all different directions around him. They were bright-faced kids, the bunch of them, and not for the first time he was aware of the gift of this academic life, how perfectly it had all come together. Even if he wasn’t still on the street, he would be lucky to work in some soulless office, or hawking Buicks somewhere, spending winter mornings brushing off rows of cars after a snowstorm.
Max felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Terry Germaine, a sound artist also in the art department who served on the committee that had hired Max.
“Ready to be bored silly?” Terry asked. “Some good consensus decision making?”
“Always. Nothing like a department meeting on a sunny day,” Max continued, as if he had sat through hundreds of them when in reality this would be only his third one ever.
Max surreptitiously studied Terry in profile as they walked, his bald head and his absurdly long salt-and-pepper beard, a cultivated look, to be sure, just as Max’s was, the carefully crafted uniforms that shout, Hey, we are artists and we don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks. Terry, as if aware of Max’s gaze, turned toward him and gave him an awkward half smile, and Max wondered if Terry was the one.
Max tried to imagine Terry sneaking up toward Max’s house with a pre-taped note, placing it against the wood of the door before skulking off down the street.
No, Terry may be wary of my sudden notoriety and wish it for himself, but he doesn’t have the balls to take me on, thought Max. He is way too soft.
They climbed the steps of the red stone building that housed the art department. Inside they passed students staring at bulletin boards, and together the two went upstairs to the department offices.
In a small room with two wooden tables pushed together, everyone else had already gathered, the other four full-time artists: Ernst Werner, the department chair, a German impressionist in his late sixties; Susan Lin, a petite Chinese American with her hair cut dramatically in a bowl who did video work; David Hammer, who did ephemeral installations made from cut-up paper; and finally, Jean Littleton, her hair still long and blond in her late sixties, who was probably closest to Max academically since she didn’t make anything, but had become famous as a feminist thinker when she created a series of happenings in New York in the early seventies. Jean had grown bitter over the years. Of all of them she was the only one who remotely frightened him, for along with her generalized anger at the world, she could see through people. Max worried she thought he was a poser, though she also liked to make a show of not tolerating straight white men.
But Jean wouldn’t leave a note on his door. That wasn’t her style. She loved confrontation. Her entire career had been built on it. So Max could dismiss her, cross her off the list. But the others were all suspects.
He and Terry sat down. Max looked around the room as Ernst led them through “his process,” which meant raising concerns and then stopping and listening thoughtfully while others talked. Ernst’s commitment was that all decisions would be group ones built on consensus, and that if anyone opposed a particular idea, they would talk it through until all agreed. Max hadn’t seen it in action yet, but he had heard war stories about meetings that went on ten or more hours, a bunch of artist academics deliberating like a hung jury over trivial matters such as specific word choices in a letter they intended to send to the dean about an appointment. Beautiful.
Ernst was prattling on about some new policy the provost was talking about implementing. Ernst was Paleolithic to Max, exactly the kind of artist the art world fawned over in a different time; a talent for what he did, for sure, but also banal and derivative of all the great moderns. His work still sold modestly in New York, but mostly the sun had set on his career. He had his sailboat he lived on in the summer, moving up and down the large lake with his husband, who was some twenty-five years younger and had once, naturally, been a student of his.
It wasn’t Ernst either.
That left David Hammer or quiet Susan Lin. A case could be made for either. David used to be the only handsome youngish heterosexual guy, and this was not to be underestimated. While David was always friendly in his vaguely Southern way (David was originally from Georgia), Terry Germaine had told Max that David had opposed Max’s hiring, saying at the time that the project that had first brought him to prominence, a set of interviews he did with the homeless on a simple recording device, a project that had been bought by MoMA, was not even art, but rather some kind of “faux documentary.”
As for Susan, who once made a film that was three hours of her expressionless face, which she called All You Need to Know About Chinese Oppression You Can See Right Here, Max doubted that she had the same issues with his work. Then again, perhaps she felt he was encroaching on her space, especially with his refrain that the personal was always political. For what Max had learned was that while art education encouraged a fealty to a specific kind of thinking, within that there tended to be room for only one practitioner per individual tranche of thought. Someone had to be the most feminist, someone had to tackle the plight of indigenous peoples, and someone had to take on poverty and injustice.
The only thing Max stuck to as any kind of principle was to forbid his students to use the word beauty, even though secretly he loved the word. “It’s too easy,” he told his classes. “The B-word doesn’t mean anything so I never want to hear it in my class.” Susan Lin agreed with this, too, so maybe she didn’t like his stealing her thunder.
Max was so lost in thought with all this he didn’t realize that he had chuckled out loud.
“Max?” Ernst said. “You think we should be handling this differently?”
Max shook his head, since he didn’t even know what was being discussed. “No,” he said, gambling, “I think this is perfectly right.”
“Okay, good,” said Ernst. “Others?”
What had made Max laugh was an image of Susan Lin moving stealthily down the dewy lawns on his street, dressed in her customary black turtleneck and black jeans to put a note on his door, this tiny woman hiding in front of bushes. Max didn’t even know where she lived and had never thought of it before. Though if he had to guess, it was most likely in one of those industrial-loft developments a town away where the Winooski River ran over a set of dams. She would have to drive. David Hammer, on the other hand, lived one block away, in a house similar to Max’s. He had a dog, some pit-bull-looking mutt he walked around with. Once, last fall, Max had invited him up for a drink when Max and Susannah were sitting on the porch and David and his pooch came down the street.
David was talking now, that slight drawl tempered by a decade in New York and Vermont, and Max didn’t hear a word he said, more inane blather about something Max could not care less about. But as David talked, Max did study him and thought, Yes, it must be David. David, who played like a child with paper and scissors and geometric shapes, as if he had graduated from making snowflakes to something just beyond that and never went any further.
After the meeting came to a merciful and early end, Max stepped out of the building and called to David, who was in front of him walking briskly toward the library. David stopped and Max broke into a half jog to catch up to him.
“Hey,” Max said. “Wondering if you have plans this weekend? It would be go
od to have you over. You and your wife, I’m sorry, I don’t remember her name.”
“Joanie.”
“Yes, of course. Joanie. What do you think? We haven’t gotten enough of a chance to talk.”
“Well, that’s nice of you. I don’t think we have anything Saturday, but I need to check with Joanie. Get back to you?”
“Sure.”
Max watched David retreat from him, that urgent fast walk of his, standing straight up. Above, the sky was completely cloudless and the palest of blues and the sun was spring warm on Max’s face.
Keep your enemies closer, thought Max, until you find out how to get rid of them.
THAT SATURDAY NIGHT THEY HAD a dinner party with David Hammer and his wife, Joanie. Susannah had not met them before, and she was charmed by their Georgian accents, that slow-Southern talking way, but after they had been there for a short time, she found herself having a hard time with Joanie. She was strung tighter than a violin. She looked like a bird, black haired and slight, pointy nosed and always looking as if she were going to jump out of her skin. She was a lawyer at one of the downtown firms.
When Max first told her they were coming, Susannah brightened. It made everything seem normal again, and she imagined cooking a paella all day, with sausages and mussels, the one she had watched her mother make on special occasions when Susannah was a girl. Then Max told her he was pretty sure they were both vegans.
“Oh, Jesus.”
“How can you tell who at the party is a vegan?” Max asked, his eyes twinkling.
“How?”
“Don’t worry, they’ll find you. ‘Is this vegan?’ … ‘Is this vegan?’”
“Very funny. But what am I going to cook?”
He kissed Susannah’s forehead. “You’ll figure it out.”
Susannah googled best vegan recipes and ended up cooking some pasta with wild mushrooms and made a salad. The evening was beautiful and warm and they ate out on the wraparound porch. Freddy had his friend Miles over, and the two of them were upstairs and didn’t join. David and Joanie didn’t have children.
“I got a vasectomy when I turned eighteen,” David said.
“No shit,” said Max. “You really knew yourself.”
David shrugged. “Yeah, not sure I wanted to keep populating a dying planet.” He looked at Susannah. “No offense. I mean, doesn’t bother me that others have children.”
Just as it probably doesn’t bother you that other people eat meat, Susannah thought. “No offense taken,” Susannah said. “And you, Joanie, any regrets?”
“Not really. I never had that bug.”
David said, “So, Max, what years were you at CalArts again? The early aughts?”
“Yeah. Graduated in ’04.”
“So you must have worked with Karl Banks then?”
“I didn’t.”
“But I thought you studied painting? He’s pretty much the man out there.”
“I knew who he was, of course. But I kind of kept to myself.”
David nodded, as if taking this in. “You guys must miss New York.”
“Not at all,” Susannah said. “There are some things I miss. Like good bagels. But it’s so lovely here. And it’s especially been good for Freddy.”
“I miss the anonymity sometimes,” Max said. “Walking down streets where no one knows who you are.”
“Really?” David said. “That surprises me. You seem quite comfortable in the limelight, Max.”
Max didn’t respond to this, and Susannah thought the comment was deliberately snarky. Max asked, “How about you guys? Do you miss Atlanta? You were at Emory, right?”
“Yes, Emory. I think we miss the weather. We’re still not crazy about the winters.”
“The summers are lovely, though,” Joanie said. “Especially the lake. I’ve always loved lakes. More than the ocean.”
Max poured more wine and they jabbered on, Joanie complimenting Susannah’s food, all small talk, and it should have been pleasant, dining outside for the first time since the fall, but suddenly Susannah became aware of everyone breathing. They were breathing like crickets, she thought, the rise and fall of it all, in between words and bites of food. What was it that made them human?
Susannah looked across at David, his pleasant face, the blocky glasses, and then she looked at Max. Max was intently focused on him. It was one of his talents, his ability to engage with others, let them believe, for a moment, that their words were the most important words being uttered anywhere. But tonight Susannah saw a different quality to Max’s gaze.
Max’s eyes were electric. Blue darts of hate.
Susannah suddenly realized that this was why they were here tonight, on her porch, eating vegan pasta and drinking red wine. It seemed so obvious she wondered why she hadn’t picked up on it before. Max thought David had left the note.
A feeling of dread overcame her, this idea that Max was going to do something awful. But Susannah told herself that she was reading too much into everything again, something Joseph used to tell her in therapy. She hated it when he said that, for she always felt that he was gaslighting her when he did this.
When she told him so, Joseph would say, “This is exactly what I mean, Susannah.”
The circular logic continued and she wasn’t equipped to fight it. He was too calm, too reasonable, and too expert.
Now, listening to the conversation going around, which had, inevitably, turned to work and the politics of the art department, Susannah heard Joseph’s words in her head. Telling her to breathe, that it would all be okay, that the world kept spinning whether we want it to or not.
AFTER THE HAMMERS LEFT, WHICH was sometime around eleven, Susannah and Max were in the kitchen. He was doing the dishes and she had snuck out for a cigarette before coming back in. Freddy had popped in for a minute to grab some of the cookies Susannah had put out earlier, then disappeared back upstairs. This was the thing about teenagers, she thought sometimes. How quickly they become stealthy people in your own house, the little boy who was once her shadow now making himself invisible.
Max was rinsing the plates and loading the dishwasher. Susannah sat on top of the counter and watched him work. She liked this about him, that he was good about this stuff, the little domestic things, pitching in.
“So that was fun,” Susannah said a little sarcastically.
He turned his head, looked at her where she sat. “It was.”
“I had a realization partway through dinner.”
“What’s that?”
“That you think David is the one who left the note.”
“He’s not.”
“You don’t think?”
“No,” Max said. “I did before. And you’re right. That’s why I invited them over.”
“But there was a little bite to what he was saying to you, don’t you think? The stuff about how you need attention?”
“That’s how I know it’s not him.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Well, if it was him, he would do everything he could not to reveal himself. No biting comments. No thinly veiled jealousy. Unless he couldn’t control himself, which I doubt. Those two are very controlled.”
“I kept trying to imagine them fucking.”
Max laughed. “What?”
“I do that sometimes with couples. Picture them in bed. Or try to.”
“What did you decide?”
“She’s definitely a dead fish. Just lies there.”
“I’m not sure he’s that much more alive,” Max said.
“I bet he never takes those glasses off. Probably sleeps in them. Total back sleeper. Can’t tell if he’s awake or not.”
“Amazing.” Max laughed. Then he came over to her, drying his hands on a towel. He put the towel on the counter, leaned forward, and pecked her on the lips. “Speaking of bed…”
“Take me with you.”
THEY DIDN’T HAVE SEX THAT night, and maybe if they had, Susannah could have beaten back the thoughts that star
ted to swirl.
They dressed for bed and side by side brushed their teeth, then Susannah went to check on Freddy. By the time she got back, Max was snoring on his side, his face pressed into the pillow.
She lay next to him and tried to read the book from her night table, one of those book-club reads that everyone was discussing, the messed-up girl who sees things and everyone thinks she is crazy and it turns out she’s not. But mostly Susannah just found the girl annoying and her mind started to drift. She turned off the bedroom light and the room was dark and she curled into Max and he stirred slightly.
Within moments she knew she had made a mistake by turning off the light, for this was the thing about panic, she could tell when it was coming. It was like seeing a storm off in the distance and you know you should run and you don’t. Tonight, her inability to focus on the book told her all she needed to know.
She started replaying the dinner from just hours before and that feeling she had had of being trapped, as if she were stuck on her own porch somehow. That moment when she became aware of them all breathing.
Many years ago, Joseph tried to make a point to her. He was frustrated, he said, by her failure to progress, as if she were in labor, she thought, and about to birth some kind of new her if only she pushed hard enough.
They were in his office. It was winter, maybe January. Outside, the day was gray and sad. Susannah’s mood had been the same and they had had a fight, or that might be the wrong term because Joseph never fought. He deflected. But Susannah was angry with him and she had sat in her chair yelling at him about something that must have been ultimately inconsequential since later she wouldn’t remember that part of the conversation.
But Joseph started to lecture her, pedantically, in her view, about this and that, and she ignored him, refusing to make eye contact, and turning her eyes toward the window, to the city outside those closed-in walls.
The Perfect Liar Page 7