Gray Matter

by Gary Braver

  “I’m out of here. By the way, who’s that woman in the green?”

  Vanessa Watts was standing with several people, including a woman with a long green dress with her back to them.

  “She visited the school the other day.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Don’t move.” She slipped behind him. “I don’t want her to see me.”

  “Her n-n-name is Rachel Whitman. She’s new. Moved here about seven months ago. Her husband’s the guy in the olive d-double-breasted Armani. He owns an egghead recruitment company called SageSearches. It’s the same suit on the cover of last month’s GQ with Keanu Reeves. It’s in the m-men’s lounge—”

  “I don’t care about his suit,” she snapped. “They were on a parents’ tour. She must have a kid who wants to be a Bloomie.”

  “They have a six-year-old son, Dylan, but he’s not Bloomie material. A nice little kid, but he’s kind of 1-1-limited.”

  “Do they have other kids?”

  “None listed on her m-membership application. Just Dylan—signed up for day care and tennis lessons. Has a good swing. Also sings like an English choirboy.”

  “Then how come they were on tour?”

  Brendan shrugged. “Maybe the old B-B-Bloomies are becoming more liberal with their standards. A kind of n-noblesse oblige, like the Dellsies with the poor-boy scholarships.”

  “Tell me another.”

  “Nice perfume, by the way.”

  “It’s my mother’s. It’s called Joy.”

  “Ah.” And the magazine ads lit up his mind. “Jean Patou. The world’s most expensive fragrance. By the way, do you know how many flowers go into one two-ounce bottle of eau de parfum?”

  “No, and I don’t care,” Nicole said.

  “Six hundred and seventy-five.”

  “Where do you get all this useless information from?”

  Before he could answer, somebody called for him—some guy in a grotesque maroon houndstooth sport coat and baby-blue gabardine pants was waving him over for some food. “Have to g-go.”

  “Even if Dylan qualifies, I don’t think they’ll send him. There was an accident in psych lab.” She did not explain but flashed him a cool, sly look and headed for the rear exit, while Brendan headed for the houndsteeth.

  Rachel watched Brendan LaMotte wend his way through the guests. He was quite dashing in the tuxedo. And, for once, his hair looked washed and neatly bound behind his head. She was tempted to go over and compliment him, but he’d probably discorporate. Or worse, tell her all the ingredients of his canapes.

  Rachel was grateful for the party, because it took her mind off the enhancement option, which had left her ill at ease. Holding Martin’s hand, she moved through the crowd. There must have been a hundred people in the grand ballroom, some parents and friends of the scholarship winners, others, associates of Vanessa Watts. Also a few media people, including reporters from local TV stations. At the center of the room was a large table with an ice fountain sculpted as a swan, behind which waiters served champagne and other drinks. Nearby were tables of fancy hors d’oeuvres. In one corner sat a table artfully stacked with copies of Vanessa’s book, plus life-sized displays of the cover. Also behind the podium were blowups of each of the scholarship winners, all Dells caddies. The evening was a double-header billed as Dells’ Scholars Celebration.

  At the far end of the room sat a huge television monitor for a video presentation for later. Sheila was by the equipment chatting with some club staffers. When she saw Rachel she fluttered a wave.

  Vanessa, who stood nearly six feet tall, was in a clutch of people chatting away. She was dressed in a striking black sheath with boat neck and capped sleeves that accentuated her long tanned arms and chest. A simple strand of pearls hugged her neck. Her golden hair had been elegantly styled with an upward flare adding to her stature. On her feet was a pair of pointy-toed black slides. She looked less like a professor of English and more like a fashion model. Rachel pulled Martin to join her.

  “Congratulations,” Rachel said with genuine admiration. Vanessa was a brilliant and accomplished woman, and now the pride of Middlesex University. She had taken several years off to raise Julian, and in her spare time she worked on her book, Dark Visionary: A Literary Biography of George Orwell, which was on its way to becoming an academic and commercial success, a rare accomplishment.

  Vanessa thanked Rachel and introduced them to her agent and editor. Before they moved on, Rachel mentioned how they had met Julian at Bloomfield and how impressed they were.

  Vanessa nodded. “Are you still thinking of … your own son?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Yes, very much,” Martin said.

  Vanessa looked at Rachel for a response.

  “I still have a lot of questions.”

  Vanessa pulled her aside. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she whispered. “We have to talk.” The intensity on her face was almost startling.

  “Sure,” Rachel said. “Is there a problem?”

  Then somebody pulled Vanessa away to meet another guest. “I’ll call,” she said, leaving Rachel wondering at the urgency.

  After nearly an hour of cocktails, a representative from the club announced that the program was to begin. There were ten scholarship recipients—nonmember caddies from area high schools—each of whom would receive a four-year fifteen-thousand-dollar scholarship to the college of their choice. The announcer read off their names and called them to the podium for an envelope and a framed plaque—nine boys and one girl who would be matriculating in the fall, most of them at A-list institutions.

  Rachel watched the recipients receive their accolades, smile for the cameras, and return to the hugs and kisses of proud parents. As she scanned the crowd, her eyes landed on Sheila who was studying Rachel from across the room. Sheila smiled and held her gaze, nodding knowingly. If she could have read Rachel’s mind, she would have registered cross-currents of emotions— yes, pained awareness that Dylan would never receive such a plaque and envy that she would never feel the elation of their parents.

  Until two weeks ago she would have accepted such a fate. So what? Scholarship isn’t the measure of us.

  But that had all changed now. And it wasn’t just the TNT story and the ragged guilt. It was Lucius Malenko. She wished she had never heard of him and his damned enhancement. She wished she had never said anything to Sheila, because all that had done was corrupt her evaluation of her own child and others. She could not go about her daily chores without thinking of people in terms of their IQs—from bank tellers to people stocking shelves at the supermarket. Who was to say that they weren’t happy, productive individuals? Who was to say that a fancy college degree and a fancy job were all there was to living a successful life? And it left her feeling ashamed of herself.

  Worse, her exposure to all the little geniuses threatened her appreciation of Dylan. Now when he rummaged for a word or came up with the wrong expression, she felt an irritating impatience, hearing a snippy little voice inside saying: Lucinda or Julian wouldn’t do that. It was awful. She was beginning to resent her own child.

  From across the room Sheila flashed her a thumbs-up sign.

  “He can be fixed.”

  (You bought this. Damaged goods. It’s yours to return.)

  Rachel broke the contact and glanced at Martin. But he was grinning and returning Sheila the hand sign.

  When the applause died, the host turned to the second part of the program. He made some brief congratulatory remarks about Professor Watts, the segue being a celebration of new scholars to a professional who was a model for the younger generation to emulate. He then introduced Vanessa’s editor who commented briefly on how impressed he was with the manuscript and how he knew instantly that it was an important work which would be appreciated by an audience beyond academia.

  The host returned to the microphone. Before introducing Vanessa, he announced a special surprise congratulation. When the lights dimmed, the huge TV monitor
was turned on. To instant applause, the screen lit up with the face of the governor of the commonwealth, who congratulated Vanessa on a fine book. Following the applause, the picture shifted to the department chairman and the president of Middlesex who also added their congratulations and best wishes. Then a group shot of her colleagues in the department all saying “Congratulations” in unison and waving and blowing kisses.

  Across the room Rachel could see Vanessa beaming and thanking people.

  A scrambled void filled the monitor with snow as if the tape had been roughly edited. The screen went black for a moment, and somebody said “Is that it?” when the monitor again lit up, this time on the face of a serious-looking man about forty with a VanDyke beard. Nobody seemed to recognize him. And Rachel glanced at Vanessa who looked frozen in place.

  “My name is Joshua Blake, and I was a graduate student of Vanessa Watts fifteen years ago at Middlesex University. At the time I was pursuing my doctorate in English, and Professor Watts was my advisor. My thesis, which was completed in 1988 and published in monograph form two years later, was entitled In Defense of the Defensible: An Intertextual Study of the Dystopian Politics of George Orwell.

  “Some weeks ago, a reviewer for The Modern Novel Quarterly sent me an advance copy of Professor Watts’s book to inform me that she had plagiarized my dissertation.”

  A murmur rose up from the crowd. Rachel looked over to Vanessa who appeared stunned.

  “At first I was incredulous, since I remember Professor Watts as a brilliant and honorable scholar. Yet, after reviewing her book, I can only conclude with shock and great disappointment that she had engaged herself in massive and deliberate theft of my research, my conclusions, and my words. In fact, there are pages of identical or parallel passages, including whole paragraphs lifted word for word.”

  Across the room, Vanessa slumped into herself. Amazingly she did not protest but stood glaring at the screen in strange resignation. A stunned hush fell on the crowd, which stood transfixed at the split screen with pages from Blake’s dissertation juxtaposed with those from Vanessa Watts’s book.

  “Aside from a few feeble attempts at rewording, large passages are nearly identical, as you can see,” Blake continued. “I don’t know what your motives were, Professor Watts. Perhaps you had just assumed that because I was a lowly grad student you could help yourself to my material while I disappeared into the world and my dissertation molded away in the basement of Middlesex Library. What amazes and saddens me even more is that nowhere in your book am I acknowledged—not a single word of attribution. It pains me, but I accuse you of gross theft of intellectual property, and a violation of trust.”

  Vanessa put her hand over her eyes, while her husband tried to comfort her. Meanwhile, the tape continued. “I have informed my attorneys to file suit against—”

  “Turn the goddamn thing off,” Brad Watts shouted. “Turn it off!”

  The picture went dead.

  While the crowd looked on in disbelief, Vanessa pulled herself free of her husband and walked out of the room without a word. Brad began to follow, but she waved him back and left.

  “My God,” whispered Rachel to Martin. “That poor woman.”

  Vanessa rode around for nearly two hours hoping to find her center again. She had no place to go, nor did she want to drive home and face her family. Although Lisa was sleeping over at a girlfriend’s house and Julian would be doing his silent-troll routine (he couldn’t care less about her), Brad would want a full explanation.

  In one stunning moment, she had been totally and permanently destroyed. And tomorrow, to forestall litigation, her publisher would publicly express embarrassment and apologize for the gross act of plagiarism and announce that it was halting distribution of her book, and that all fifty thousand copies would be taken off the market and destroyed—and that the twenty thousand scheduled for release in the UK and Europe next month would also be junked. The press would crackle with scathing indictments, contempt, and ridicule from colleagues and associates at Middlesex and other institutions around the country. Some would speculate on reasons—arrogance, entitlement, and academic pressure. Others would offer up the “death wish” theory, since this was such a careless, wholesale case of plagiarism.

  The president would apologize while expressing concern for the kind of example this set for students and faculty alike, declaring something to the effect: “Originality like free expression is sacred in the academic world. This is an utter abuse of our trust as well as an affront to the academy and an example of intellectual corrosion.”

  For the next several days, her telephone would ring off the hook with reporters scrambling for a statement—for the scoop on her ruination. There would be an inquiry at the university; and in a few weeks she’d be relieved from her teaching post. Meanwhile, her publisher would demand reimbursement of the $70,000 advance and present a bill for another few hundred thousand dollars to cover the cost of the worldwide withdrawal and destruction of her books.

  By this time next week, she, like her book, would be pulped.

  As she drove around in the thick of the night, the reality of it all had hit her, rising up from that warm protected recess of her mind where she had packed it away for all these years. Joshua Blake was right: She was a plagiarist. She had stolen his work. And in the world of academic publications, that was the highest crime—tantamount to murder and suicide.

  murder and suicide

  She had taken his material not because it was so much better than hers, but because she was desperate to get the book into production and out in time for the 2003 George Orwell centennial. Adding to the pressure was her publisher’s insistence that the book had high sales potential—a promise, which realized, could reduce the enormous debt incurred by Julian’s enhancement and pricey education.

  She had done it for him, she told herself. For Julian. She’d been on an unpaid leave of absence, racing to meet deadlines so he could nurture his genius. For her son. A mother’s sacrifice.

  As for the actual plagiarism, she was certain she could have come up with Blake’s very insights. He had not made any conclusions of which she was incapable. In fact, she had felt entitled to them—more so for being his former advisor. And, yes, she had assumed he had disappeared and would never know.

  Denial: the curse of the species.

  And she had done it before. At Littleton College in New York where she had plagiarized a paper on Jonathan Swift in a graduate eighteenth-century course. At the time she was a doctoral student and a TA, and under tremendous pressure to excel at both. But she was young and foolish and for twenty dollars bought a paper on Jonathan Swift from one of those term-paper houses. Unfortunately, the same paper had been turned in the year before to the same professor. She had done stuff like that in undergraduate school, but this time she was given a term’s suspension—a permanent note on her transcript.

  We are what we ever were, she thought. We never change. murder and suicide

  Vanessa’s insides were wracked with agony, but she did not go directly home. Instead she drove in the dark talking into her portable tape recorder, the one she kept in her car and used while working on her book. Her remarks were brief and pointed. When she was through, she drove to the home of the Whitmans and dropped off the recorder with tape in the glove compartment of Rachel’s Maxima. Luckily the car was unlocked.

  She then drove home.

  Brad had left the downstairs lights on, but the rest of the interior was dark. All but Julian’s room.

  Shit.

  She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to see anybody. All she wanted to do was go into a deep sleep and not come out of it. Thankfully, Brad had probably given up waiting and gone to bed.

  She looked up at Julian’s bedroom.

  What the hell is he doing up at this hour? Christ, it’s nearly two.

  She pulled the car into the garage. Julian’s skis were hanging up along the back wall. New parabolics that had cost over seven hundred dollars.
They had been used once, on their winter vacation in Vail last year. He had no interest in skiing, and the entire week he spent inside the condo doing his pictures—stippling away like some crazed gnome. He had gotten soft and flabby, and given up everything physical. At school he was known as “Dots.”

  She unlocked the door and pushed her way inside. Except for the hum of the refrigerator, the place was dead quiet. The only relief from the dark was the light strip under Julian’s door at the top of the stairs.

  Vanessa climbed the stairs, feeling old and weary. On the landing she looked into the master bedroom. Brad was asleep. She then stopped just outside of Julian’s door and listened. Nothing. No CD, no television, no sound of some mindless video game. He had probably fallen asleep on his bed. Good. She’d just flick off his light and let him sleep out the night.

  She tapped quietly. Although he slept little, he would occasionally pass out from sheer exhaustion. She tapped again, and still nothing. Gently she turned the knob and pushed open the door.

  Julian was not in bed but at his workbench.

  The halogen lamp glowed brilliantly over the tilt board. His back was to her and his head was hunched below his shoulders. For a moment she thought that he had fallen asleep in place, because he did not move as she entered. But as she moved closer, she noticed his left hand.

  “You’re still up.” She tried to sound pleasant, but the effort was strained. The public humiliation had its source in him; and at the moment it took every fiber of her being to feign civility.

  Her eye fell on a photo of her and Julian at his music summer camp last year in the Berkshires. He had just finished his recital to a standing ovation. They were posed at the piano, she with her arm around his shoulder and smiling proudly, he standing limp and glowering at the camera with one of his pained grimaces. That photo was so much them, she thought: her needy pride, and his refusal to give. Such a pathetic symbiosis. To think what she had sacrificed to get him in that picture—the money and years, the leave of absence—just to be available to guide him, to drive him to his music and art lessons, getting him into one of the best prep schools in the country. And what does she get back at the height of his achievement? A fucking scowl. He had perfected the art of rejection. The ungrateful little prick.