by Joanna Scott
It’s a cheap, pathetic light, but still it’s something—enough to cast a glow on the back of her hand. It’s true, isn’t it, that this is the same hand that stole a good man’s money? If someone had told her a year ago that this hand belonged to her, she wouldn’t have believed it. But the truth is the truth, and based on what she has learned about herself, she can only imagine a future that is a continuation of the present. It will always be raining. She will always be a thief. One electric candle in a row of twelve will always be lit. The present will always be the present, and it will always be raining in the center of Florence.
She is tired. She is hungry and alone and foolish. But where do you go if you are condemned to be a good-for-nothing thief for the rest of your life? You proceed in an arbitrary direction, not just away from where you’ve been but toward whatever destination you happen to choose.
As she leaves the church her right hand brushes against cold marble. Her left hand is thrust in her jacket pocket. On her way down the steps she bends beside the Gypsy and with a clumsy motion she drops all the money she has left in her shallow plastic bowl. She hurries on through the rain. Though she doesn’t turn around, she imagines the old woman behind her nodding in a routine fashion, as if she’d received exactly what she expected to receive—no more and no less.
PART III
Rain on Concrete
Or else Nora Owen never encounters little Larry Groton in White Oak Cemetery—then she doesn’t have to decide whether or not to help him after he falls from the stone wall, she won’t just turn and head home, she won’t move to Providence and then leave Providence for Europe. Instead of going to Europe, she’ll do what’s expected of her and go to college.
Her hair, a dense brown with a surface film of frizz, hangs to the middle of her back. Her unplucked eyebrows rise in fluffy peaks. She wears jeans and T shirts year-round, desert boots in cool weather, flip-flops in summer. By her sophomore year she has a strong, if not spectacular, academic record and plans to declare her major in psychology. But first she wants to stop pretending to be what she’s not.
Her boyfriend, Max, and her roommate, Sophie, think they know what she wants. They’ve been conferring privately, and Nora is supposed to be too naive to guess the plan they’ve concocted. As she approaches their table in the cafeteria, she sees them stop talking. She sets down her tray with a bump that sloshes Mountain Dew from her glass. Max’s expression is tranquil as he watches her mop up the mess with a napkin. Max has a reputation for tranquillity. Born and raised in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., the son of two State Department bureaucrats, he openly aspires to a career as a high school swim coach.
“Hey, Nora.”
“Hiya.”
Sophie has a reputation for spunk. The eldest in a family of eight children, she is putting herself through school, supplementing financial aid with tips she earns as a waitress. With her cap of glossy dark hair and her mocha skin she is by far the most attractive of the three and is inevitably the one who draws unwanted attention to their group. But Nora and Sophie and Max have learned to negotiate their relationships with what they consider sophisticated ease. Max has been Nora’s boyfriend since they met at a party three months ago. Sophie, who has her own boyfriend in New London, is Max’s confidante. And at some point Max confirmed to Sophie that Nora really does have some hang-up about chastity.
Nineteen years old and still innocent—though only by reputation, and not for long, if Max and Sophie are successful. Combining encouragement with convenience, they will help Nora Owen lose her virginity. Or, more exactly, though they can’t know it, they will help her lose her virginity again.
Night after night these past few weeks, Sophie has been peppering Nora with information. For instance, the average length of an erect penis. The chemical composition of semen. The mechanics of orgasm, male and female. Working from the assumption that Nora’s prudishness began as childish disgust and evolved into stubborn ignorance, Sophie has sat propped against pillows on her bed across the room from Nora and tried to explain everything, talking at Nora, talking and talking, until eventually Sophie talked them both to sleep.
And off Nora has marched each morning across the quad, an unremarkable female student who still refuses the full experience of love. The emotion of love supposedly connected to the action of love. But the logic is flawed. She wishes she could explain this to someone. How would she begin?
As she watched her chemistry professor diagram conversions on the blackboard during the day’s first class, she imagined her cool, precise testimony in a court of law. Given her decision to keep her secret to herself, she can’t turn around at this late point and confess. The idea of confession, though, intrigues her. Isn’t Saint Augustine more forthright than Rousseau? she wanted to argue later in her political science class. But she kept her mouth shut. It’s always best to keep your mouth shut unless you can predict at least in some general way where a conversation will go.
The conversation with Max and Sophie at lunchtime in the cafeteria, for instance: this, she’s sure, will lead to a good end. Here’s Sophie demanding that Nora go back to the counter and add a pile of bologna to her sandwich. Two pieces of white bread, mayonnaise, and relish do not make a sandwich, Nora! Her loud reprimand draws glares from other students. The disapproval of their peers rebinds the three of them into an impermeable triangle. And now it’s time, as good a time as any, Sophie coaxes Max with a nudge, to ask Nora to dinner at Chanterelle’s on Saturday night.
Chanterelle’s! Nora knows that Sophie will be in New London celebrating her boyfriend’s birthday this coming weekend—which means Nora and Max can have the dorm room to themselves. But though she’s been expecting this invitation, she feigns surprise at the extravagance. Not just pizza this time, eh, Max? Not just sausage and beer?
“Okay?” Sophie prompts. “Okay, Nora?”
Nora examines her fingernails. She sighs. She peels the top crust off a slice of the sandwich bread. She thinks of the previous evening, sitting with Max on the secluded stairs leading to the basement laundry room, their lips wet from kisses, her T shirt pulled up in a crumpled necklace. She considers how serene Max is in manner and speech, how he accepts whatever limits she imposes. He loves her too much to take advantage of her. She’ll never have to defend herself against him. But neither can she go on perpetuating this notion that she is what she isn’t.
Okay, Nora?
As if she could persuade herself that the past has no verifiable reality. As if, without cause, there were no lasting consequences. Is she willing? A nice dinner, and then she and Max can spend the night together?
“Okay,” she finally says, raising her eyes, locking startled stares with Max. For a few seconds they are silent while Max and Nora regard each other and Sophie looks on. Then Sophie swallows a burp with a hiccup, and they dissolve into hilarity.
BUT BY THE NEXT MORNING Nora has changed her mind. Through lunch, which she eats alone because Max is swimming and Sophie is in class, and on through the afternoon, she searches for an excuse to renege on the commitment. She thought she could convince herself to be willing. But she doesn’t feel willing. Why not? She, who is usually admirably in command—why can’t she just get it over with and move on with her adult life? Why won’t they just leave her alone? Why can’t she be lighthearted on such a fine spring afternoon, apple blossoms browning on the sidewalk, cottonwood seeds floating in the light breeze? Even the rattling of a bus engine at the intersection is soothing. Even the smell of old, percolated coffee in the 7-Eleven when she goes in to buy some groceries. The fluorescent lights. The rapid exchange in Arabic between a customer and clerk. The quiet voice of a man turning to ask, “You’re Nora Owen, right?”
Nora Owen. You’re Nora Owen. And that’s your political science instructor in line ahead of you, the one who assigned the whole of City of God for next Thursday—this after a week spent on the Confessions. Dr. Eric Harrison, associate professor, office number 316, Packard Hall.
&
nbsp; “Yes.” She is impressed that he remembers her name.
“Taking a break from Augustine?”
She forces a polite chuckle in response. He waits for her to put her change in her wallet. They leave the store together, and as they cross the parking lot Nora becomes abruptly conscious of the intense resin scent of his aftershave. Four thirty in the afternoon, and Professor Eric Harrison appears to have alighted on this dingy city street fresh from a bath, with his salt-and-pepper hair brushed neatly in two stripes on either side of the bald ridge of his scalp. His even teeth, Nora notices, stealing a glance as they walk along the sidewalk, are an unnatural white. His eyes have a copper tint. He’s a short man whose bulk makes him look taller, with imperfections enhanced by age. Thick black nose hairs, expansive pores, oversize ears, and beneath his chin a little fold of skin that trembles as he guffaws. But the smell of pine is delicious, and he walks with a boyish bounce, springing forward off the soles of his shining loafers.
He’s amused by her comment that her favorite passage in the Confessions is where Saint Augustine of Hippo admits he’d been doing nothing more for a decade than telling stories to himself. Indeed. The joys of self-deception. Professor Harrison hopes Nora is liking his class. She babbles something about the pleasures of studying a subject unrelated to one’s field of expertise. Not that she’s an expert in anything, she adds with a short laugh. He points out that fundamental connections can be perceived between the most disparate subjects. “In the Taoist scheme...” he begins to explain as they turn the corner together—but look, here’s his house, a modest, well-kept lemon Colonial on a side street shaded with new maple leaves. Won’t Nora come in for a cup of tea?
How easy it would have been to thank Professor Harrison for the invitation and excuse herself. Too easy. Instead, knowing full well the implications of acceptance—
“Okay.” With a shrug meant to convince both of them that there’s nothing at stake.
“Good. Come on in!”
The room is lit with afternoon sun. A bamboo screen painted with spirals of blue and white and gold casts its shadow across the wood floor. Two wicker chairs flank a low, cream-colored sofa. Nora, uncertain where to go, drifts toward the bookcase. She doesn’t recognize a single title, and her dismay over this extends into surprise as his fingers brush against the back of her hand.
“May I?”
Nora has bunched the top of the 7-Eleven bag, and her fingernails have left little tears in the paper. She realizes that he merely wants to relieve her of the bag of groceries. Not really groceries. Just some cans of soda, Triscuits, Tootsie Rolls.
“May I?”
“Oh. Sure.” Another shrug.
Already the air has become charged with the prospect of dangerous intimacy, though before they walked out of the 7-Eleven together it hadn’t ever occurred to Nora to think of the professor in these terms. She’s one of twenty-seven students in his class. She received an A- on her midterm exam. Sometimes she’ll work on a chemistry assignment while he’s lecturing. Even when she has an opinion relating to the discussion, she’ll keep quiet.
She’s quiet now while he bangs about in the kitchen, clattering pots, dragging warped drawers open and shoving them closed. Does she have a preference? he asks from the kitchen. The question strikes her as both significant and silly. She has to stifle a laugh. He appears in the doorway with a tea canister in hand.
“Lapsang souchong?”
Fine. She flashes him an inappropriate grin. He grins back, and Nora suddenly imagines herself watching him from the back of the class. Why does she think this now? Why does she think anything? Because of who she is. The stamp of personality. He. We. A professor who invites his students in for tea. A saint who spends a decade telling stories to himself. A young woman who is supposed to show up for work at the library’s reference desk at six o’clock.
Coincidentally, she forgot to wear her watch. She interprets this as a sign that she shouldn’t worry about the hour. She shouldn’t worry about anything. For a long while—long enough to switch from tea to wine—they talk about Saint Augustine. They discuss his theory that some parts must disappear in order to make room for new parts before a whole entity can be created. The crackling music of an old record establishes the ambience. “It ain’t necessarily so.” The inch of tea left in Nora’s mug is a translucent caramel. Her wineglass is empty. “It ain’t necessarily so.” Remember, Nora, how Saint Augustine offers the example of a sentence to demonstrate that disparate parts cannot be perceived simultaneously? And his conclusion: we should not attach ourselves to objects cursed with a temporal existence. The professor quotes the relevant passage as he refills Nora’s glass: “If the soul loves them and wishes to be with them and finds its rest in them, it is torn by desires that can destroy it.”
Nora doesn’t even know if she is already late for work. She’s not used to this. She’s used to knowing exactly where she should be at any given point. Now, as if to persuade herself that she belongs where she is, she hides a forced yawn behind her cupped hand and sinks deeper into the sofa.
Perhaps responding to her cue, the professor reaches across the small coffee table and lays a hand on her knee. He begins humming a few bars and then adds words, singing along with the final chorus. “The things that you’re liable”—he is an unexpectedly strong baritone—“to read in the Bible...” She laughs softly, nervously, idiotically. He sings with gusto. “It ain’t necessarily so.”
When the professor saw her in the 7-Eleven, he apparently decided that Nora Owen could be seduced. His expectations, she believes, are her fault. She’d given him some subtle signal, invited him to pursue her so she could lead him on in a direction that would be familiar to both of them. He knows what he’s doing. He is obviously a man used to success, someone who sleeps with his students whenever the opportunity arises and then rewards them with casual appreciation. And she is a young woman used to reneging on commitments. Together, Nora and the professor are a volatile match—surely he understands this as well as she does and has already guessed that she intends to extract herself from this tense situation before it is too late. Which is why he’s resting his hand on her knee. And singing. And trying to capture her with his gaze. He doesn’t just want her to look at him. She is supposed to look through him into his soul and to consider the possibility of union.
The song ends, and the room fills with the scratching noise of the needle sliding along the empty groove at the end of the record. Then the series of clicks as the bar rises automatically.
His goal, the professor explains after a moment, is to be able to reflect back on his life from old age and feel no regret. What he says seems to be related to the music they’ve just heard, yet it’s as though he’s speaking English in translation, using words drawn from the mysterious context of a language Nora doesn’t know. His intensifying solemnity has the effect of thunder rolling in the distance. Nora wonders where Max is, whether he’s gone to the library to find her. And Sophie? She imagines ahead to the carefree future when she and Max and Sophie will laugh together about how Nora was delayed on her way home from the 7-Eleven.
“Um...do you know what time it is?”
“Does it matter?”
Somehow she musters the poise to thank her host for the wine and tea and conversation. It’s been interesting, but it’s time for her to go.
She can’t go, not yet. The water for the pasta is boiling. Won’t she stay for dinner?
“Sorry, Professor Harrison.”
He wants her to call him Eric.
“I really have to leave.”
When the phone in the kitchen begins ringing, Nora flinches. The professor gives a sympathetic nod, indicating that he understands why she is scared. The ringing seems to grow progressively louder. Why won’t he answer his goddamn phone! Nora rises from her chair. The professor mutters something—a w sound, wait or won’t. His expression suggests that he is about to reveal some terrible secret. Instead, with a nimble motion, he grips her wris
t.
A man expecting more; a woman expecting less. She’d meant to stay in control of the situation and make her limits clear, but she was not prepared for such an abrupt escalation. Her awareness is clouded by confusion. She can’t figure out why she is unable to summon the strength required to resist, why suddenly she feels dizzy, drained, as in the aftermath of a high fever. She can hardly stay on her feet. What is happening? She can’t tell whether she is following his lead, or he is following hers. When did the phone stop ringing?
She tries to regain her balance, buying time with nervous laughter. Really, it can’t be as serious as it seems. Surely he’s joking when he tells her that he knows what she wants and wraps his arms around her. He’s relaxed into laughter again, and now she’s laughing, both of them admitting the inanity of this embrace. How can he know what she wants when she doesn’t know what she wants? Then and now. The present offering no more than a repetition of the past.
He combs his fingers through her hair until they’re snagged by a tangle. He brushes his lips against her cheek. His touch is surprisingly gentle, and this gives her the momentary impression that she can trust him. She wants to trust him. She wants to be able to anticipate what will happen next. And the possibility that what happens will injure her reputation stirs in her a vague, odd sense of relief. Whatever happens, she won’t be able to go on pretending to be innocent.
Tentatively, she parts her lips. He slips his hand inside her T shirt, caresses the curve of her waist and climbs upward. Slowly, cautiously. See how easy it is? Show him what you want. Okay. The soft exhalations as they settle into each other. Okay. Here you are. She isn’t wearing a bra—a simple discovery that has an animating effect, and suddenly he is all over her, his tongue is inside her mouth and he is fumbling with the zipper of her jeans.