The Devil and Webster

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  “Let’s talk about it another time,” said Francine. The men were coming back. Billy sat beside Naomi on the sofa and, instinctively, she leaned away. Sumner, unnecessarily, stoked the fire.

  “The two of you,” Francine said. “Between the bow and arrow and the fire building. I feel like I’m in the eighteenth century.”

  “Next time,” Sumner said, “I’m going to roast the venison in the fireplace. Like they used to do at that place in Connecticut. What was that place?”

  “Randall’s Ordinary,” said his wife, filling in the spousal synapses. Naomi had once done something similar for Daniel when he forgot the streets they’d lived on, or the names of their friends’ pets. Oddly, it never seemed to work in the other direction. Did husbands ever carry these tiny mosaic pieces of memory for their wives, slotting them instantly and adeptly into place when needed? Naomi could still recall the name of a cat who’d lived upstairs from the first apartment she and Daniel had shared in Collegetown. She knew which brand of milk had been preferred by his mother—now long deceased—because his mother had told her once, just once, nearly thirty years before. She remembered the barbecue restaurant down the road from the VISTA training center in Berea, Kentucky, where she and Daniel had spent six weeks the summer after their marriage, preparing themselves for, as it would turn out, Goddard, New Hampshire. That barbecue restaurant, more of a shack, really, was a one-man show and the man himself was called James. He was a Korean War vet, a native of Tennessee, and a genius with beef ribs. It had been while eating one of his beef ribs, in fact, that Naomi had truly and permanently understood she would never be a vegetarian, not really. And yet, were Daniel here at this moment, in this baronial living room with its oversized couches and faux-timbered ceiling, Naomi did not doubt that he’d be unable to remember not only the beef ribs, but James, his shack, the town where they had once prepared for their twelve-month (ha!) VISTA stint, or the fact that he had ever spent any significant time in Kentucky, at all. What was that about?

  “Can I just say how exciting this is?” said Billy Grosvenor. “Dinner with not only the president of Webster, but the admissions dean!”

  “Well, you got the right emphasis there. Francine is way more important than I am,” Naomi said.

  “Please.” Francine rolled her eyes.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “For my daughter’s class at Groton? Webster’s more popular than Harvard. Could have knocked me over when she told me that. I mean, back when I applied? People didn’t talk about Webster like that. Of course it was always a good school,” he said apologetically. “But you know, this is a big change.”

  “We have an extraordinary faculty and a gorgeous setting,” Naomi said. She was trying, hard, not to sound as defensive as he’d made her feel. Or as annoyed. “We also have a reputation for creativity and entrepreneurship. It’s hard to find all of those things in the same place. And we have our secret weapon: a dean of admissions who consistently assembles brilliant classes for us. Long may she wave,” Naomi said, raising her coffee cup.

  “Cheers!” Billy raised his wineglass.

  “Yes, well,” said Francine. “Not hard to do when you’ve got ten overqualified candidates for every place in the class.”

  “Especially hard to do when you’ve got ten overqualified candidates for every place in the class,” Naomi said. “Sumner! Your wife is selling herself short. Why don’t you stop her?”

  But even as she said it she was thinking: Why should I have to ask him?

  Chapter Four

  A Long History of Capitulation

  Naomi had inherited her assistant, Mrs. Bradford, from the previous president, Logan Coulson. Mrs. Bradford (her first name was Susan, but very few people knew that) had worked devotedly for Coulson since the end of the penultimate decade of the previous century, and far be it for Naomi to upset this particular apple cart, though there were days—many, many days—when the severe and plainly mirthless smile of Mrs. Bradford, the first thing she saw when she climbed the top flight of Billings Hall’s broad mahogany steps each morning, would set the tone for the entire day. It was a smile that said, in arctic essence: You? Again? It was a smile that made the soul wither.

  Mrs. Bradford had passed the suggested retirement age in the last millennium, but the HR office’s initial attempt to bring this to her attention had met with a freighted silence, and no one brought it up again. Over the years, also, Mrs. Bradford seemed to have arranged matters in the office in such a way that no one but herself could really fulfill her duties, not without shredding all the systems and starting over, an undertaking that might take months, or be impossible. There was never a good time to try that, and never a reason Naomi could feel justified in pointing to: The office ran beautifully, its business quietly dispatched, and most callers made to feel known and valued (which was no small thing, especially each April when the admissions decisions went out and Naomi’s phone commenced to thrum with vitriol), and she brought nothing of her personal life into the office, apart from a line of well-tended plants on the window ledge, which were hardly objectionable. If Mrs. Bradford didn’t want to retire, why should she? And no, the fact that there existed no great affection nor even detectable goodwill between them was not a good enough reason to make her go.

  “Good morning!” Naomi said, cheerily enough. She was pushing open the heavy outer door with her shoulder, her arms full of tenure folders. The president’s offices were not substantially changed since Billings Hall had gone up in the 1880s, its edifice composed of the same gray stone that would later be used for the Stone House. Titus Billings, a Presbyterian minister, had been the president then, and though his tenure would be abbreviated by tuberculosis, he still cast a long shadow in the form of his namesake administration building and of course the Billings Lawn, which stretched from its door to the library on the left, classroom buildings on the right, and the chapel on the far side. Naomi occupied the same chamber every one of her predecessors had, since Billings himself, though she’d also requisitioned the seminar room next door for meetings, and broken through to it from her own room the year before (an innovation that also allowed her to put a bit more distance between herself and her assistant when the urge arose). To the basic decor of manly nineteenth-century dominion she had added very little in the way of an individual touch, only a single quilt from her VISTA days (a favorite pattern called Drunkard’s Path in blues and greens, which happened to be Webster’s colors) tacked to a frame and hung on the wall behind her desk, and a discreet eight-by-ten of Hannah holding her flute to her lips, long hair flying evocatively behind her in some well-timed puff of wind.

  She set down her files and walked around the great oak desk, and by the time she reached her chair on the other side Mrs. Bradford was in the doorway. Naomi, to her annoyance (but also to her shame), recognized her assistant’s efficient summing up and customary expression of disapproval, which translated to: “You’re wearing that?”

  It was, indeed, a truth universally acknowledged—and not least by herself—that Naomi Roth had no idea how to dress herself for the grown-up world. It hadn’t mattered in her own student life. It hadn’t mattered during her VISTA years, when mostly the standard was how much of the New Hampshire cold you kept out. It had mattered, but in an inverse way, when she’d stood in front of a classroom of hatchling feminists, trying to explain why Erica Jong mattered every bit as much as Philip Roth did (more! more!); for such an occasion one’s army boots meant that you were prepared to march, one’s forswearing of logos meant that you declined to pay Ralph Lauren for the privilege of advertising his brand, and the deliberate choice of handmade garments, created by collectives of women and brought to market with micro loans to women entrepreneurs in the Third World, meant that you cared to express more in your sartorial choices than what your favorite color was, or what made you appear the thinnest, or that you took your cues from the ultimately patriarchal gaze that was Vogue et al. And yet, with the news that she was being seriously cons
idered for the job of Webster’s seventeenth president, Naomi understood that her luck in this matter had run out. The idea of leading Webster College, making policy, overseeing thousands of students, and getting people to give the institution their money didn’t faze her in the least. Dressing for it, however, did. A lot.

  College presidents did not wear army boots to meet with alumni about a scholarship fund or a naming opportunity in the new gym. They did not wear sweatpants and flowing embroidered Indian shirts to oversee convocation or speak at commencement. They represented their institutions in outfits that were planned out in advance, in clothing that came from stores, not collectives: normal but well-constructed items like dresses and jackets and skirts, with carefully edited accessories. None of these were to be found in Naomi’s pre-presidential wardrobe, which filled not even one of the small closets of her pre-presidential home. Indian skirts with elasticized waists. Leggings (so useful, leggings, not to speak of their comfort!). Oversized men’s shirts from the excellent thrift stores of the Pioneer Valley. The very same Frye boots she had brought with her to Cornell, at the height of their original chicness, though many times resoled. A black Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress that she had taken from her mother’s closet to wear to her mother’s funeral (her mother would have wanted this; she would have been thrilled—had she not been dead), which, nonetheless, Naomi had never found reason to wear again. Birkenstocks, of course. So sturdy, so honest in their intentions. Her collection of accessories included a white Swatch and a macaroni necklace from Hannah’s kindergarten period, along with a canvas bag that read, no longer so wittily, A WOMAN WITHOUT A MAN IS LIKE A FISH WITHOUT A BICYCLE. She did own a Ghanaian garment, immense and voluminous, of some very pretty but very loud purple and yellow and sky-blue cotton fabric. It had been a gift from one of the other women in the women’s studies program at UMass, brought back from a Semester at Sea expedition, and Naomi had never even put it on (though she did, occasionally think about making it into pillows—it really was a very pretty fabric.

  Obviously, all but a few of these items of clothing were going to be useless; even Naomi could see that. Perhaps there would be a use for one black turtleneck sweater (it itched horribly), a pair of brown tweed pants that gave her ten highly unnecessary extra pounds at the waist, and three pairs of leather boots in various shades of brown, but bags and bags of those oversized men’s shirts, loose fitting jeans and khakis, and It’s-a-Small-World ethnic outfits would have to go into storage or be deported to the Springfield Red White and Blue. And what would be left? Not a single jacket, dress, skirt, heel, or purse—meaning, a proper handbag. When that whole You-Might-Get-to-Be-a-College-President! thing became so real even she could not ignore it, she’d picked up the phone and called one of the trustees, a Webster grad about her own age whose clothing had always struck her as understated, non-restricting—this woman was no stick figure herself!—and yet entirely grown-up, and she asked for some guidance. A week later Naomi was in New York, trawling the stores with a personal shopper named Margie. (In due course, the well-dressed trustee would confide that it was this very phone call, and Naomi’s willingness to admit to a gap in her own expertise and ask for help, that persuaded her to support her candidacy.) A new job, and the clothes to go with it.

  Now Naomi’s wardrobe filled a walk-in closet (actually a small room) in the Stone House’s master bedroom suite. Much of the new inventory had come from Eileen Fisher, but there were a few Eskandar shirts that Naomi thought she could have loved even in her prior circumstances: clean but flowy, white and black and slate gray. (“You should never wear earth tones,” Margie the personal shopper had said. “I mean, under no circumstances.”) She now wore a chunky silver necklace, shockingly inexpensive, from a store near Penn Station, and a proper-looking watch that was supposedly a copy of some other, iconic watch. The canvas bag was gone, replaced by a leather bag that fit easily over her shoulder and could usually accommodate whatever she needed to carry. Her surviving leather boots were now in constant rotation during the school year, though Naomi did, over the summer, allow herself to return to Birkenstocks. (She maintained a stubborn loyalty to Birkenstocks. Who didn’t love Birkenstocks?)

  Today, in black pants and an Eskandar shirt, over which she wore a long gray sweater, she had felt invulnerable enough, but Mrs. Bradford looked as if Naomi had taken a unilateral casual Monday, and moreover chosen the wrong Monday on which to do it.

  “You know the honorary degrees committee of the Alumni Council is coming for lunch, right?”

  Naomi nodded. Of course she knew. Her schedule, daily and weekly, was beamed into her brain each morning via each and every screen in her life. Naomi generally enjoyed dealing with the Alumni Council. These were Websterites who’d chosen to view their graduations as merely a transition in their lifelong relationship with the college. While undergraduates they had tended to run student organizations and chair fraternities and sororities; now they served on committees like alumni relations and development, athletics, and undergraduate affairs, remaining involved members of Webster’s eternal community even as they pursued their careers and carefully raised the next generation of Webster students. And while it was true that Naomi herself felt none of this passion and loyalty for her own alma mater, she found their ardor for Webster quite touching, and actually envied it a tiny bit. When the class of 1997, at their tenth reunion, voted to make her an honorary member of that class, she took it as a legitimization of her own affection for the college, and thereafter appeared, in all official print, as Naomi Roth, ’97 Hon.

  The honorary degree committee would be here at noon, and college catering would serve them turkey sandwiches in the conference room next door, but before that she had a meeting with Douglas Sidgwick, whose department of one had the arcane mission of research and assessment for the college. Naomi, who liked Douglas very much (and privately believed him to be squarely in the Asperger’s zone of the autism spectrum), considered him a human repository of institutional memory, which was a matter of knowing not only the history of the college but every link in the various chains of Webster folklore, statistics, trends, and transitions. She had been entirely unaware of Douglas, his “department,” or indeed his physical office in Billings’s basement (which had, incidentally, its own walkout egress—no wonder she’d never run into him on the stairs) until she’d become president, and then his presence had been revealed to her, like a secret room for which she was now the guardian of the key.

  She used the moments before his arrival to call the department chairs of math and biology and officially confirm their tenure rulings. There would be a celebration tonight, she knew, in the household of a young and brilliant math professor, lured from Yale as a postdoc, who’d already done a cataclysmically popular TED Talk on number theory, and the woman in biology was, according to her department head, on the threshold of some life-altering discovery. This, she thought, as she made the calls, was the way things were supposed to unfold in tenure decisions (no surprises, happy candidates, delighted departments), and today’s news would be a relief all around.

  If only they were all so orderly.

  For months, by contrast, the anthropology department had been fording dangerous waters with a very different tenure decision. The candidate in question was a teacher named Nicholas Gall, and he was creative and charismatic and extremely popular among the students, but the publication side of his skill set was a bit more problematic. After years of creative inactivity and several extensions from the department, Gall had finally published only a monograph on “The Mountain Whippoorwill” as folkloric source material, and this, horrifyingly, had been found to contain plagiarized passages. He’d been warned the previous winter that a tenure offer was highly unlikely, advised in April that the decision would go against him. The official verdict, handed down at the beginning of the fall term, had been merely a formality: a dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s to close out his unfortunate employment at Webster. Gall, whose contract would continue th
rough the current academic year, might wish to appeal, and he was entitled to do so, but why take the chance of having it all come out? Naomi hoped he’d go quietly. As far as she was concerned, the situation’s only saving grace was its containment within the department, the tenure committee, and her own office. It was all a great shame, since as a teacher Gall had been well liked, but well liked wasn’t enough, not at a college like Webster and not today.

  She looked up to see Douglas Sidgwick stepping into the room. He hadn’t knocked. He probably didn’t understand that knocking was customary. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could hold against him.

  Douglas Sidgwick had attended business school at Harvard, but quickly discovered that he did not enjoy working alongside other human beings. He’d been a Webster student during the 1980s and he had loved and felt included at Webster. And so, because all he wanted after a four-year stint at Paine Webber was to return to that feeling, Douglas Sidgwick had essentially conceived and proposed his own position to the newly inaugurated President Coulson, proving his worth by constructing a plan to raze two of the college’s least loved dormitories and build in their place an “Arts Neighborhood” of studios, editing suites, and theaters. (This had the one-stone-three-birds effect of eliminating a campus eyesore, bumping up the college’s profile for arts-minded applicants, and creating no fewer than eight significant naming opportunities.) Even so, Coulson had never been more than a grudging fan of Douglas’s abilities. Naomi, by contrast, considered him something of a secret weapon.

  Their meeting, like all of their interactions, began with one of Douglas’s obviously rehearsed jokes, and Naomi did her part by laughing heartily. She asked Mrs. Bradford to bring a mug of the herbal tea her strange colleague liked, and coffee for herself. She had actually called this meeting, and she was eager to get it under way, but before she could get to her own matter of interest she had to strap in for the usual tour.