Oink
Page 12
“But if the dose is small enough, it can just make you sick,” Dorothy said. “You get dizzy, feel nauseous, maybe throw up. That’s what saved Professor Elliott. But he seems to have had a heart attack too. Furadan affects the respiratory and nervous systems, so it’s not clear what shape he’ll be in if he does come out of the coma.”
I was silent for a moment.
“What’s happening with Juan Carlos Vega?” I asked, as casually as I could.
“He’s still a person of interest, but we can’t tell you more.”
“When you came to see me the first time, I think you knew I was the one who made the corn bread. Why did you assume that? I don’t think Frank noticed what anyone brought, and, as far as I know, no one else had identified the corn bread with me when you first asked him questions.”
Dorothy looked down at the fake wood circle of the table.
“We can’t tell you,” she said.
Gluten-free Cornmeal Pancakes with Candied Kumquats
For ten 4” pancakes
Candied Kumquats
¼ cup coconut sugar
2 tablespoons honey
½ cup water
A dash of pure vanilla extract
2 cups fresh kumquats, washed, cut, and seeded
Cornmeal Pancakes
⅓ cup cornmeal
½ cup oats, ground into flour
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
A pinch each of salt and lemon zest
1 egg
½ cup almond milk
¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon melted coconut oil
For the candied kumquats, heat the coconut sugar, honey, water, and vanilla extract in a small saucepan or a small skillet over medium-high heat until the sugar is dissolved and liquid begins to boil.
Add the kumquats, reduce the heat to medium, and cook uncovered for 10 to 12 minutes, until the kumquats soften.
Once they are cooked, remove the kumquats with a slotted spoon into a bowl and bring the liquid back to a boil over medium-high heat and reduce until syrupy. It should be thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Transfer the syrup into a small bowl and set aside.
For the pancakes, whisk together the cornmeal, oat flour, baking soda and powder, salt, and lemon zest in a small mixing bowl.
Whisk together the egg, almond milk, vanilla, honey, and coconut oil in another small mixing bowl. Pour the milk mixture into the flour mixture and whisk until thoroughly combined.
Heat a frying pan over medium-high heat. Cook pancakes using about 2 tablespoons of batter per pancake. Flip when edges begin to look dry and a few bubbles surface.
Serve pancakes with candied kumquats, a drizzle of the coconut sugar syrup, and yogurt if desired.
Adapted by permission of Rachel Leung and Rachel Chew at http://www.radiantrachels.com/gluten-free-cornmeal-pancakes-with-candied-kumquats/.
Chapter 10
The sun brushed the sky with bands of rose and yellow, as I drove past the eastern edge of town to enter a subdivision that had opened in the 1960s. Houses in Los Campos de los Palominos, or Palomino Fields, cost more than those elsewhere—being surrounded by acres of untamed habitat and boasting a golf course said to be the best in town. The golf course sported a country club with a dining room as well, which, when dressed for evenings with crisp white cloths and linen napkins, served up nut-encrusted halibut and tender rib-eye steaks along with pleasing views of swelling greens and of the spacious homes that perched along their edge. A fountain splashing peacefully in a glimmering pond gave the course the aura of a sanctuary, a well-tended sanctuary for those who could afford to buy a stately home on an eight-thousand-square-foot lot.
Despite its landedness and luxury, however, Palomino Fields struck me as sterile and a bit forlorn. The sprawling houses, some with columned porticos, were meant to show well and impress, but they retained the regulated feel of products from a well-heeled factory, and as I continued down the wide, but mazelike, streets, I was struck by the rightness of this place for Lorna Vogle. For it was to Lorna’s residence that I was headed this late fall afternoon. I had been summoned, along with the heads of American and ethnic studies, to a reception for the chairs and directors of what would soon become the Division of Humanities.
I wasn’t required to attend, but, in a time of shrinking budgets, I owed it to my program to show some deference to a woman whose hands would rest upon the kingdom’s purse. I also hoped to discover what Lorna’s invitation really meant. Did it suggest that the women’s, American, and ethnic studies programs would be allowed to join forces as a named unit within the new Division of Humanities? Or was it a sign that Women’s Studies would soon disappear into the Department of English? I chose to focus on the former thought. It might be the only way to get through the evening.
Other colleagues were arriving, and the front door was ajar, so I stepped in. A small, unlived-in living room, like an old-fashioned parlor, opened to the right, where people had put their coats. I unbuttoned my jacket and laid it on a pile. Following the sound of conversation, I passed a stiff and formal dining room and then a kitchen, brilliant with stainless steel, which had been taken over by the caterers. The latter, of course, looked right at home in all that burnished glory, but did Vice Provost Vogle actually use this fancy kitchen? Knowing Lorna, I thought it might be more for show.
Just beyond the kitchen, the hall gave way to an enormous room where conversations had begun to hum, and where, I saw, as soon as I’d entered it, the house had greatest impact. Wide and high ceilinged, it formed a giant rectangle pierced on one side with sliders that overlooked a swimming pool outside. With a fire burning assertively in a marble fireplace at one end and a long table laden with hors d’oeuvres grandly presenting itself at the other, it felt like the hall of a country manor, built for large gatherings and for display.
“Emily,” Lorna said, tilting her head in a birdlike way. “How good to see you.” She was wearing a plain brown suit, but her poufy scarf, the color of a robin’s breast, gave her look a bright and autumn leaf–like feel. Behind her, a vase of orange-red dahlias, perfectly matching the scarf, stood on a table next to the leaping fire. Lorna had an eye for detail. The fire matched too.
“Thanks for inviting me,” I said.
“Your great room is terrific.”
“It is, isn’t it? I’ve been waiting to get into Palomino Fields for quite a while. Well, make yourself at home. Have some food.” Lorna flitted off to greet the next arrival.
I headed toward the table to examine the hors d’oeuvres. The platters, which the university’s official catering service had supplied, were familiar from past occasions. Laid out with precision on orange-red cloth napkins, they offered crudités, brie melted in a crust, mini quiches, potatoes stuffed with bacon, and blue corn blini with a curl of orange smoked salmon atop a dollop of sour cream. The blini were a new and elegant touch. They were the kind of thing Miriam might well have served in her New York living room. From Miriam, of course, they would have come from the heart, but where Lorna was concerned I wasn’t so sure. I was inclined to think of them—as I often thought of Lorna’s spiffy suits and flamboyant scarves—as gestures toward a cheerful sociability meant to obscure her less friendly and less visible endeavors.
“Emily, how are you?” It was the chair of the French Department and a friend of the Women’s Studies program. She was French, a delicate woman with shiny dark eyes and a black velvet dress with colored beading—the very kind of dress that I myself would have liked to wear.
“You look lovely!” I could always trust French women to dress with elegance.
“Merci,” she said, putting one of the blini onto a small plate and looking quickly around the room, her eyes coming to rest on Lorna. The latter was standing near the fireplace talking to the head of the English Department, a tired-looking man whose hound-dog face seemed to sag into his tweed jacket.
&
nbsp; “I’ve been wanting to talk with you. I’m on the special committee for reorganizing Letters and Sciences. We received Isobel’s petition for the Haven Hall programs to become a separate division. I think we can offer a compromise, not a separate division but a named unit in Humanities, but there’s a major problem.” She glanced at Lorna and at the man I couldn’t help thinking of as Hound Dog near the fire. “Lorna opposes it.” She picked up a blini with one tiny hand and nibbled on it like a charming French mouse.
“Oh geez!” I said, the familiar flare of anger coursing through my upper body. “What is it with her anyway? We try to do something innovative and creative, and she tries to quash it. She really does want to merge us with large departments and see us disappear.” Only fifteen minutes into the evening and, already, the future of our programs was careening out of our control.
“It’s tied to the budget cuts, in part. I know she’d like to get rid of French too. We’re small and vulnerable.” She wiped her lips daintily as if grooming a set of silky whiskers.
“But French is a traditional department, so you have some protection.”
“It’s true, and, unlike the Haven Hall programs, we’re not exactly challenging the status quo, at least most of my colleagues aren’t.”
“Thanks for telling me.” I felt my anger vying awkwardly with incipient depression. “We’ll try to make a run around her,” I said.
“I’ll do what I can do on the committee.”
I felt grateful once again for the feminist network that operated quietly below the surface at Arbor State. Spread over dozens of programs and departments, its members kept in touch by e-mail, sometimes voted in a block on campus affairs, and occasionally met in person to discuss conditions for women on the campus. If only women like Lorna shared the values of this group. What would that be like?
Alma had arrived, and I went to join her, hoping for some solace.
“Do you think the rest of our group is going to come?” she said. Her hair was spikier than usual this evening with an extra coat of gel. Perhaps, given the ambiguous way we’d all been summoned, she was making a statement.
“Some of them hate to be commandeered to occasions like this, but I figure it’s smarter politics to show up.”
“I just learned that Lorna is standing in the way of our becoming a separate unit.”
“Why am I not surprised? But why should she oppose it? What sense does that make?” Alma looked into her glass of wine. “She wants to get rid of us. We’re like the scum on Indian Creek as far as she’s concerned.” This time, Alma took a big sip of her Cabernet. “But we can’t give up. Who else is on the committee? Maybe we can have a word with those who might be sympathetic.”
“I’ll e-mail and find out. We’ll have to work around her in every way we can.” Above Alma’s head I could see Lorna leaning toward the chair of English and he toward her. I hoped they weren’t discussing Women’s Studies. Hound Dog glanced in my direction, frowned, further creasing his already corrugated brow, then looked quickly away as if caught red-handed. Oh no, I thought, they are discussing Women’s Studies or at least its director, which was me.
“How’s Frank doing?” I asked Alma, trying to divert myself from the unsavory stew of my own emotions.
“The police haven’t been back, according to Isobel, but he’s still a suspect. He’s writing a paper about it. Expect a lengthy e-mail.”
“It’s inconceivable that anyone would suspect Frank of attempted murder. They’ve questioned Juan Carlos Vega in Environmental Toxicology too.”
“Oh sure. What would they do without a Mexican to harass?” Alma paused for a moment, looked into her glass once more, and then straight at me. “Mire, the police, as usual, assume it was one of us who’s guilty, that whoever tried to poison Peter disagreed with his corporate politics. But maybe the person who tried to poison him wasn’t someone who disagreed with Peter. It could just as easily be someone who shared his corporate values but saw him as a rival. People who operate inside dog-eat-dog ethics often do each other in.”
Collin Morehead’s square face flashed briefly across my memory. I’d already made a note to think more about him. I wondered what Tess knew about her colleague, Collin.
“I need to think about that,” I said, stealing a peek at Lorna and the chair of English, who were still absorbed in conversation. As the room had grown more crowded, they’d inched ever closer to the fire, keeping others away as if trying to conceal the topic of their talk. That didn’t look good.
“I had another visit from the police,” I said, determined to put a lid on my growing anxiety about Lorna and Hound Dog’s secretive exchanges. “And what’s really disturbing is that they seem to think someone is trying to throw suspicion on me. I’ve been getting phone calls in the middle of the night.”
“I hope you told the police about that. It happened once to me. The police had me ask the phone company to direct late night calls to a religious hotline, and it stopped. There are a lot of disgruntled students out there, and whoever it was needed to be prayed at forcefully.”
“I did tell them and they gave me the same advice, but I hadn’t thought about its being a student.” I felt appalled at that idea too. I glanced at Lorna and the chair of English once again only to see an ember fly over the top of the fire screen and land on Hound Dog’s jacket, which began to smolder. I grabbed Alma’s arm, then pointed at Hound Dog.
“His coat’s on fire.”
“Oh, Dios,” she said.
Glasses in hand, the two of us dashed across the room.
“Your coat! Fire!” I splashed my glass of club soda toward his tailbone.
His droopy eyes went wide in horror as he turned to look at me and fell backward, colliding with Lorna.
“What in God’s name,” he sputtered as steam wafted from his jacket.
“Emily!” Lorna looked at me aghast, mouth open, eyes rounded.
“Fire! He’s on fire!”
“What are you talking about?” Lorna said, angry at being interrupted and then trampled upon because of my seemingly deranged behavior.
At that moment, the chair of the French Department, who’d scurried across the room emitting small cries and waving one of the cloth napkins as if it were an orange NASCAR flag, began to beat it on the edge of Hound Dog’s jacket, as if delivering a light spanking. The napkin, having served as resting place for the platter of blini, left streaks of salmon and cream cheese in its wake.
“Have you gone mad?” He was shouting now, his face aglow with heat and anger. In desperation, a meek-looking man, obviously following my example, gingerly tossed his half glass of brandy at the burning jacket.
“Not alcohol,” I cried. “It’s flammable!” A small blue flame flickered on Hound Dog’s back as if warmed brandy had been poured into a pot of coq au vin.
A crowd had gathered, faces pale and shocked.
“Fire!”
“Oh, God!”
“Roll him on the floor!”
I picked up the vase and desperately tossed the water and flowers together at his back.
“Stop this, instantly!” he cried. His face was red with rage, and bits of dahlia clung to him as if he’d turned into a fall bouquet. Finally, Alma stepped up, hooked her hands on Hound Dog’s front lapels, shook him, and spoke directly to his face. He was lucky she hadn’t slapped him for good measure.
“Your coat is on fire. We are trying to put it out.”
Finally, a look of comprehension dawned in his red-rimmed eyes.
“Fire?” he said at last, feeling the back of this jacket, which was now completely sodden.
“Fire?” Lorna said. Ophelia-like, her suit bore bits of dahlia too.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Hound Dog, “I didn’t want to see you burned.” I hadn’t wanted to see him burned, but was I entirely sorry about the vase of dahlias?
Lorna yanked Hound Dog’s shoulders and turned him around to get a look at the damage. She took one sleeve and then another and pulled
his flower-strewn jacket off. Then taking his arm in her right hand and his jacket in her left, she led him to the bathroom so he could work on his shirt and his composure. When she returned, her poufy orange scarf, which had suffered collateral damage from the water, had lost its plumpness. It looked less like a robin’s breast now and more like a dead cowbird.
“I’ll get the caterers,” I said. They came, armed with towels and sponges, handed Lorna a towel, mopped up the floors near the fireplace—thank God, the floors were tile—and began restoring a sense of order to the table of hors d’oeuvres. The blini I had so admired, having toppled when the chair of French had grabbed the napkin from underneath their platter, lay in an orange, white, and blue-brown heap all over the floor. Too bad. They were made of corn and I hadn’t had a chance to try them.
Lorna, after dabbing at her scarf and suit, put on a brave smile.
“Everything’s fine,” she said. “Please continue.”
People returned to their conversations, and the party went on, though with greater liveliness than before because everyone now had an exciting topic of conversation. Alma and I returned to our spot near the door, my cheeks still burning from the debacle and from the looks of shock that had been directed at me. Well, that does it, I thought. Women’s Studies will never be lodged in English. Suspicions about me and the poisoning and now the spectacle of my dousing the chair of the department with a vase of flowers and water surely made me and my program too much of a risk. Despite the fiasco that had just unfolded, I began to feel relief, until it occurred to me that Lorna might be more determined than ever to disappear me and the program into English just to bring us under control. The thought was crushing. I’d heard a lot about the department’s gender wars.
I left soon after, making my goodbyes, thanking Lorna for her hospitality, and apologizing once again for the watery havoc. Though, really, shouldn’t she be apologizing to me as well? She was gracious, if grateful to see me go. Lorna was adept at playing hostess, I mused, as I buttoned up my jacket. I had to admire her, and yet, this evening’s event, like all her others, seemed mainly designed to buy goodwill while further disguising her secret attempts to do us in. What made her think we didn’t know, or couldn’t find out, what she was really up to? Was I missing something or were these sociable displays as manipulative as they seemed?