Foolscap

by Michael Malone

  4: No tenure for this Rice, Early American, either—English already had four Americanists, and by God, if at least one of them didn’t know something about the “Early” stuff, they ought to all be fired. Sure, Rice was Thorney’s little pal, but Thorney would only put up a pro forma fight. That’d be a nice change from Norman’s endless wheedling.

  Speaking of Norman, there was Effie Fruchaff, that sarcastic old secretary he was always making excuses for despite rumors that she was drinking on the job. She must have been there since Mabel Chiddick’s day, plus she refused to learn how to use email. And Marcus Thorney didn’t want her. Fine. A new broom sweeps clean. She was already way past mandatory retirement anyhow. No prob.

  5: Fire Fruchaff.

  Speaking of retirement, there was this thing about old Woodrow Mortimer and Davey Lovell suddenly deciding to call it quits and go off and live together in a senior citizens community in Boca Raton, Florida. The provost wondered momentarily if the two little southern widowers had gone gay in their old age. Or maybe they’d always been funny. Hadn’t their wives died about the same time? Maybe Mortimer and Lovell had murdered them so they could spend their twilight years together. Tupper chuckled, giving the bronzed football on his desk a spin. He was just kidding. Besides, he’d never had anything against gays per se, as long as they kept their hands to themselves. Hell, he’d seen a couple of football players pork each other in the shower once. Good athletes, too. Tupper was all for personal privacy: a man’s sexual preference was between him and his wife…or whatever.

  But Mortimer and Lovell leaving. This could be trouble. The English Department would want to hang on to those two freed-up tenure slots, and there was that new faction over in Ludd Hall who wouldn’t want to use them on something tried and true like what Mortimer and Lovell had done with Romantic Poetry and Victorian Novels. (What they’d done for forty years was have their classes go down the rows, each reading aloud a page of Dickens or a stanza of Shelley until the bell rang.) No, that faction might try an end-run with those tenure slots, go for some radical feminist or psychoanalytic theorist or specialist in Native American folktales and drive-in horror movies. Of course, the best thing to do money-wise now, would be just to collapse two slots as soon as Mortimer and Lovell retired, and pull the funds back into the kitty. That would take care of the added tenure slot he’d promised Religious Studies, and he could get the French Department off his back by giving them the other one.

  Dean Tupper was spinning the football by thwacking its tip with his middle finger as he mused on these options, when his secretary buzzed him that Norman Bridges was out there wanting to see him.

  Norman Bridges (former department head and recent recipient of a Ludd Chair) looked as if he might have just gotten back from the beach. Everything that was visible was burnt to a crisp, including his feet, on which he wore rubber thongs that didn’t really go with his seersucker suit. He made a sharp hissing noise through his teeth when he sat down too, and moved forward so that only the edge of his buttocks touched the chair.

  “Norm, good to see you. Been to the beach?” The provost came around his desk, bulldozing his swivel chair into the wall behind him.

  Bridges hissed again when Tupper shook his hand in Bone-Cruncher fashion. “Not really,” he said.

  Not really? Why couldn’t people just say yes or no? “Well, you sure fried your hash somewhere. Put on a little weight too.” Tupper socked himself hard in his thick flat stomach. Whack! “Regular exercise, Norm. There’s not enough of it around this place. When the Grim Reaper comes for me, I’m going out fit and trim.” Whack!

  Bridges agreed that it was better to die healthy, and then explained that he’d acquired his frankly painful sunburn by falling asleep in his bathing trunks at the Hillcrest Country Club swimming pool. His wife, Tara, had forgotten that she was supposed to meet him there at eleven in the morning. Instead, she’d driven to Asheville to buy a videotape of Hello, Dolly!, and he had woken up at four that afternoon in the state he was now in.

  Tupper guffawed. “Tara’s stopped the clock on her love life for a couple of days, I guess.”

  There was no response from Bridges to this manly jocularity other than a weak smile. In fact, Tara had stopped the clock on their love life for a couple of decades now.

  “Well, Norm. You tell me.” Tupper slapped his thick thighs as if to show it could be done if you weren’t stupid enough to boil yourself like a lobster. “How does it feel to be a free man on a year’s sabbatical, and a Ludd Chair when you come back?”

  “Yes, it’s a wonderful honor. I was very touched that the department felt moved to, and naturally Dina Sue, and, of course, you and Claudia and—”

  With a smack of his hands together, Tupper cut off Bridges’s gratitude before it meandered through every name on campus. “So! What brings you here? You’re supposed to be on vacation, and what I hear tell is, you’re over in Ludd Hall before the janitor can get there and unlock the johns.”

  Bridges cleared his throat. “The fact is, Buddy, well, I was on campus and I thought I’d drop by because, em, em, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  Yeah, obviously. Why couldn’t people stop beating around the bush? “So, talk.” Tupper swung his rear end onto his desk edge, picked up the football, and practiced a throwing position. “But I don’t want to hear another word from you about John Hood’s promotion.”

  Bridges opened his mouth, but when the provost aimed the football at it, he shut it again. Then he pulled his shirt loose from his lubricated chest and said, “It’s Theo Ryan. I know he’s made an appointment to see you tomorrow. He’s here in Rome—”

  “I kind of figured he’s here in Rome if he’s made an appointment to see me, Norm. But don’t talk to me about Ryan or anybody else in that faction. What’s he want to see me about?” Tupper couldn’t resist a scouting report before a game.

  “Well, I don’t know if you knew this, but Ford Rexford died last week.”

  “Heard it on TV. Heard he plowed into some river over there in England.” So much for Ryan’s promise to get Cavendish on the theatrical map with a world premiere of a Ford Rexford play. Well, but let’s be fair, Tupper thought, as he watched Bridges wriggle at the edge of his seat rambling on about Rexford’s death. Let’s be fair. Thanks to Ryan, Cavendish (well, Doug Spitz) wasn’t going to be paying that juvenile escapee from the Betty Ford Center, that wild-spending nutcase Scottie Smith, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year to bankrupt the Spitz Center. Thanks to Ryan, they’d instead hired this other director, Barbara Sanchez, who’d asked for eighty and settled for seventy-six. ’Course, she looked like a, a, a Chicano, Hispanic, whatever you were supposed to call a Mex these days. But actually, Barb was a pretty decent sort. Said she’d played basketball at Texas State. Even had a Ph.D.; the board liked that. Good vita. Won a couple of awards. Good interviews. Doug Spitz was impressed. Even that little power-crazy twerp Thayer Iddesleigh didn’t get too bent out of shape after she’d said she didn’t see why he shouldn’t go on directing the two C.F.D.C. musicals every year himself. Not at all a bad appointment for Tupper to sign up while there was all this flak in the air. The world would see Claudia Pratt wasn’t the only one scoring affirmative action points. Besides, better Sanchez than some off-center oddball like Scottie Smith who’d be roaming the streets of Rome looking for boy prostitutes. Tupper wondered if there were any.

  The provost had plenty of time for his musings while Norman Bridges dithered his detouring way through the details of Rexford’s fatal accident. “So Theo himself, with, of course, the family, flew the body to Bowie, Texas. I forgot to say that Rexford had grown up there. I remember his talking about—he came to my house once for dinner. This was last November, I think—”

  Tupper slammed the football down on his desk. “Norm! I’m sorry the man’s dead. What’s the point?”

  “Yes, it’s a terrible loss to the American theate
r, a terrible—”

  “Norman.”

  Bridges winced as his back scraped the chair when he pulled away from the big Bulova watch Dean Tupper had stuck in his face. “I’ll get right to the point,” the plump professor said. The provost cupped his palms, wildly gesturing as if he wanted Bridges to come on and fight him. He’d started to think maybe he’d have to hit that buzzer under his desk so his secretary could get on the intercom and say the governor was on line one.

  The point. It was that Theo Ryan had been appointed (Bridges noted parenthetically that he’d predicted this) literary executor of the Rexford estate. This was a great honor for Cavendish. It could well mean that Cavendish would one day house the Joshua Ford Rexford papers (the way Bridges had always hoped). As literary executor, there were a million things that Theo Ryan needed to do now. Plus, Mahan and Son (very distinguished publishers) were eager to push up the publication of volume one of Ryan’s biography of the now-dead playwright (it was a big book, and would bring honor to the English Department). The point was that, in addition to all this, Theo Ryan was in a distraught state (he had been a close friend of Rexford’s, very close), and needed to get away.

  “I thought he was away,” Tupper interjected. “I thought he’d gone to London with the rest of my damn faculty that couldn’t get a boondoggle to Tahiti or the Riviera.”

  Well, yes, Ryan had been in London, but he’d flown to Texas for the funeral and then come back here to Rome.

  The provost scratched at his flattop. “I heard he’d sublet his house to a Country Western singer. My secretary told me the local press was over there trying to get an interview with her. You know the one. Can’t think of her name right now. My son got her autograph at the Boone Civic Center.”

  “How is Henry?” Bridges politely asked.

  “Don’t talk to me about Henry.” Tupper’s youngest son had been a source of baffled disappointment long before declining to go out for varsity football, trading his (unused) telescopic-lensed deer rifle for an electric guitar, and his Philip Morris stock shares for a red alligator jacket with white birds all over the back. “And don’t bother calling him Henry Tupper either. He’s changed his name to Snow Williams.” The provost suddenly remembered that Norman didn’t even know where his own son was half the time, and probably didn’t want to find out. Tupper shouldn’t complain. “Kids!” he offered as a gesture of solidarity.

  “Rhodora Potts,” said Bridges. “The singer’s name. Very nice young woman. I was never really clear on the particulars of her relationship with Ford Rexford. She went with Theo to Texas. It was a private service. There’ll be a memorial in New York in the fall. I’m not that much of a fan of country music myself, but—”

  “You’re all over the backfield again, Norm.” Tupper made a snaky movement with his arm. “You’re losing me.”

  With a sigh, Bridges patted his heart, and plunged in. “Theo Ryan wants to take next year off. I think he deserves a paid leave.” Having begun, Bridges plowed ahead, unencouraged by the expression on the provost’s face. “I realize he’s not due for a leave ’til year after next, and he had that ACLS grant, but he’s worked hard for the department. This time would be important to him.”

  “He’s scheduled to teach.”

  “There’s a fifth-year graduate student who’s taught for us, and T.A.’d Theo’s survey course twice already. ‘Sophocles to Rexford.’ Jenny Harte’s her name. She could take it over for the fall.” Bridges thought it best not to get into Jenny Harte’s own relationship with Ford Rexford, which had, frankly, been a shocking disappointment to the former chairman, on both sides. He went on explaining how this course could be shifted, and that course postponed.

  Tupper took a stroll around his wall-to-wall carpet. Then he held up a palm in a stop sign. His voice sounded almost benevolent. “Norm, what does this have to do with you? This isn’t your prob anymore. If anybody should be coming to me about this, besides Ryan, it’s Marcus Thorney. He’s chairman.”

  With a wince, Bridges eased himself off the seat. “Well, Buddy, I guess I felt that Marcus might not, em, em, necessarily, all things considered, be the strongest advocate for Theo, and—”

  “That’s for damn sure,” Tupper conceded. “Norm, you got to give this up. You just about had a nervous breakdown when you were chair—”

  “Well, not really.”

  “And I don’t notice you fussing and fretting at me any less now that you’re not!”

  Norman Bridges looked sadly down at his red blistered feet in their rubber thongs. He supposed it was true. He couldn’t keep away from Ludd Hall, even in the summer, when it was practically deserted. Maybe he’d lived in, and for, the department so long, maybe he was like a, like a convict who couldn’t adjust to freedom. At home, at his desk alone with Walt Whitman, with his daughter off stuffing envelopes in the next room, with Tara off at dance class and voice lessons and terrifying shopping sprees, he found himself still nervously reaching for that Almond Joy. At home, with no phones ringing, no Effie Fruchaff bullying him, no junior faculty in tears, no professor in a huff, maybe he didn’t know what to do with himself anymore.

  “Relax, Norm,” the provost advised. “Play some tennis. Pump some iron. Go fishing.”

  Bridges had never pumped any iron or caught any fish in his life. “I know. But, but—” He squeezed his hands together hard, and was sorry he’d done so. “But I just want to be sure you realize, Buddy, that Theo Ryan deserves—”

  “Ryan doesn’t ‘deserve’ squat ’til fall after next.”

  “And maybe we should keep in mind that, after all, the world being what it is—perhaps an earlier generation of scholars, like ourselves, when teaching figured more prominently—still, public recognition, and national—”

  The provost wheeled on the plump, sunburned professor and glared.

  Bridges took a breath. “And parenthetically, Buddy, you might think of this. The board of trustees will care much, much more about Cavendish’s getting the Ford Rexford papers,” he took another breath, “than they will about whether Theo Ryan or Jenny Harte teaches English 124 next year. And Theo is going to decide where the papers go.”

  Dean Tupper looked appraisingly at Norman Bridges; well, finally, the man had gotten to the point. He smiled and rapped his ring twice on the desk top. “Norm, I appreciate your taking the time to come talk to me about this. I’ll think it over after I see Ryan and after I talk to Marcus. Let me walk you out.”

  “Thank you, Buddy.” Norman Bridges smiled; not for long, because it hurt. “It’s good to see you.” He’d been dealing with Tupper for twenty years, ten as chairman; he knew the provost wouldn’t “think it over” after talking to anybody. He knew the provost had already decided to give Theo Ryan the paid leave; he always rapped his ring like that when the answer was going to be yes. And if Tupper said yes, Marcus Thorney wouldn’t say no.

  Out in the cavernous waiting room, Bridges, by a dexterous twist, escaped being slapped on the back by the Bone-Cruncher; he nodded at the people standing around, pretending not to notice that they were staring at his feet. Back he gingerly walked to Ludd Hall, passing the door to the chairman’s office with a wistful sigh. Then he turned back again and peeked inside to see if Effie Fruchaff was at her desk. Maybe she’d like to go over to the Forum for a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll.

  Then maybe he’d give Theo another call, and, well, just offer a little advice on what perhaps Theo should, and on the other hand it might be better not to, say in his meetings tomorrow with Marcus Thorney and the provost. Then maybe he could try just once more with Marcus about John Hood’s promotion. After all, the department wanted to do the right thing. By everyone. Didn’t they?

  Buddy Tupper Jr. certainly felt like slapping somebody. Claudia Pratt was right there in his waiting room laughing it up with his assistant provost and his secretary! Even his own secretary was laughing! When they saw him sta
ring at them, they all stopped, like a choral director had cut them off in midnote, and started busily shuffling the papers in their hands. Turning on his heel, Tupper shouldered his way back through his office door and slammed it. Their giggling voices started again, fainter from the other side. Right! Go ahead, he told them; forget who made you who you are. Take your best shot, Pratt! Georgia Tech couldn’t push me back when I was crawling in the snow and mud with a broken hand, and lady, neither can you. The provost rubbed his thick neck while he surveyed the trophies in his office at the top of Coolidge Building. Nobody, but nobody, was going to get his job away from the Bone-Cruncher.

  In this determined prediction, Buddy Tupper proved right. He was to remain provost at Cavendish until he retired. Dean Claudia Pratt was to be catapulted by the trustees right over the defensive line of that lower position and to do her victory dance under the goalpost as the university’s first woman president.

  Chapter 28

  Throws Down a Glove

  king: What do you call the play?

  hamlet: The Mousetrap.

  —Hamlet

  “Yes, autumn, autumn,” Mole Fontwell exclaimed as fields flew by the car window in a golden blur. “‘Season of mists, and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.’ Now really, Jonas, that’s awf’lly good.”

  “Bloody competitive Krauts!” Marsh downshifted, flooring the Bentley in order to pass a Mercedes with German plates that didn’t want to be passed.

  “You must give Keats top marks for ‘Autumn.’ Mustn’t he, Theo?”