It was so cold out. She stuck her hands in her pockets and, as she did, the gift of an idea, a reasonable, compelling idea, slid neatly into her head. Of course. An actual errand requiring timeliness and the privacy of a face-to-face conversation. With a little sigh of relief, she turned sharply around and went back in the direction she’d come, but not to Billings Hall. The building next to Billings had been built in the ’20s by the same architect and builder who’d created the Stone House, and the similarities were obvious. Service Hall was named not in reference to an imagined tradition of selfless acts on the part of Webster graduates but in honor of Lawrence Service III, class of ’14, who did not return from the fields of France to assume his rightful place in the Lawrence family’s brokerage dynasty. Lawrence Service II, Webster class of 1886, had given the new building in his son’s memory, and there remained in its gray stone entryway a bas relief of Lawrence III’s handsome profile. Service Hall, for its first half century, had administrative offices on the ground floor and classrooms at the top of the wide stone staircase, but when college admissions became far more than a matter of automatically enrolling the sons of graduates (and select others), the administrators and classes were shown the door and the entire building turned over to this strange new enterprise. From the mid-1980s Webster Admissions had been the sole occupant of Service Hall, with Francine’s comfortable office on the ground floor, financial aid and a warren of administrative rooms on the second floor, and assistant and associate deans of admission on the third floor. The year after Francine’s arrival, a large and bright lounge area had been created, opposite her own office, and it was there that crowds of prospective applicants, and their parents, awaited the departure of their student-led tours and took part in Q&A sessions with the admissions officers. Outside in the stone entryway, teams of students directed the visitors into the waiting area, and if those nervous applicants and their parents realized how close they were sitting to the seat of power itself, Francine’s own assistant was stationed just outside the heavy doors of the dean’s office at a very long, very solid, and slightly elevated oak desk, and everything about her trumpeted the message Don’t even think about it.
This assistant was a woman in her thirties, black, broad-shouldered, and wearing a headdress of some bright African cloth: black and green. It was an arresting sight, this headdress, which had been roped and folded and tucked in around the woman’s head, and Naomi could not stop herself from looking at it, rather than into the eyes of the woman herself, a small action that would come back to haunt her.
“Excuse me,” the assistant said.
Naomi now met her stony gaze.
“This is a no-access area.”
Is it? she thought. It was one of those things that must be intuited, she supposed, though there was no physical boundary separating this holy of admissions holies from the ostensibly public lounge a few feet beyond. It occurred to her now that she had not visited Francine’s office in years; always, Francine came to her when there was something to discuss. Something Webster-related to discuss.
“I’d like to see Francine,” she told the woman. Whatever she was feeling, she tried to keep it out of her voice.
“And you are?”
“Hello,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m President Roth.”
After a moment, the woman raised her own hand, and they shook. Cold and dry. Now it was she who would not meet Naomi’s gaze. She did not give her name. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” Naomi said. She declined to make an excuse for herself.
“Well, she’s in with someone.”
“Fine.” Naomi crossed to the waiting area and sat heavily on one of the banquettes, dumping her coat on the cushion beside her.
And for the next ten minutes they sat, no more than ten feet apart, in complete silence, except when the woman took a call.
Dean Rigor’s office. No, I’m afraid not. No, she can’t speak directly with parents, I’m sorry. It’s our policy. Yes, I do understand.
Dean Rigor’s office. Well, I can put a note in his file to double check that the DVD arrived. We’re very good at keeping track of submissions. You don’t have to be concerned.
Dean Rigor’s office. Certainly. Yes, she can move it to four. Next Monday. Yes. Goodbye.
The time passed so slowly. She could hear Francine from beyond the office door. Francine and a man. Two men. Naomi was too irritated to ask who they were. Instead, she stewed on her banquette. At one point she even picked up one of the thick Webster brochures from the table and opened the page. There she was, President Naomi Roth, resplendent in one of her Eileen Fisher ensembles, teaching a freshman seminar in Webster Hall. And was that Elise, the protester, to her right? She peered, but the photographer had artfully blurred the students into the background. The photograph was all about her: Naomi Roth! The president! Who still taught freshmen! Because Webster was that kind of place, where students and faculty and administrators all drew from the well of scholarship, and gave of their intellectual and creative gifts, back to the community, and the old trees dropped their Kodachrome leaves onto the Billings Lawn every fall, and protesters got an open door to air their grievances, whatever they happened to be.
The office door opened and out came two of the associate deans, both men in their twenties, and then the basketball coach, Lester McFadden, and his assistant coach, smiling and already shoving their arms into their coats. Behind them, Naomi saw Francine. She was walking them out.
“Naomi?” She stopped in the doorway. Naomi got to her feet. The young admissions officers nodded but went past, up to their own offices.
“Oh, President Roth,” said the basketball coach. He introduced the assistant coach, and there followed a brief but vaguely surreal conversation about the team’s prospects for the year. One of the more difficult hurdles of Naomi’s ascension to the presidency had had to do with sports. Learning about them. Acquiring the ability to discuss them. Appearing to care about them.
“Just beat Amherst,” she told Lester McFadden jovially. “You know that’s all I ever care about.”
Unfortunately, he took this request very seriously, and began a monologue about the current Amherst lineup, which happened to include two players he’d requested for Webster two years earlier.
“And we admitted them,” said Francine, reminding him. “They chose to go to Amherst.”
“No accounting for taste,” Naomi said with false cheer.
“Anyway, Dean Rigor’s going to make it up to me this year. Right?” he said pointedly.
“We will do what we can.” She sighed. And the men departed.
“Leanne,” Francine said, turning to her assistant with clear annoyance. “You should have buzzed me.”
Leanne seemed nonplussed. “You were in a meeting. She didn’t have an appointment.”
“It’s okay,” Naomi said, though a part of her would have liked to see what happened next. “I just wanted a few minutes, and she’s right, I just dropped in. Very unorthodox.”
Francine paused. She seemed to be making up her mind.
“Really,” said Naomi. “It’s okay. Can we talk for a few minutes?”
Her friend nodded. “Of course. Come in. Do you want something?”
“No, no,” said Naomi, who did not want to see any more of Leanne than she had to.
They went into Francine’s office and Francine closed the door behind them. It was a large office, actually larger than Naomi’s, and looked out on the Quad from a wide window, the black-and-white Webster Hall just opposite, and the Davis Chapel with its gray stone turrets. She sat in the armchair opposite Francine, and they disappeared from view.
“What’s up with your assistant?” she couldn’t help asking. “It’s cold enough outside without the arctic blast of her personality.”
“Oh, I know, and I’m sorry,” said Francine. “Usually she’s much nicer to be around, but she’s in a bad way right now.”
“Oh? Why?” asked Naomi, but almost imm
ediately she wished she hadn’t. It was going to be something horrible: an illness, a death. And then she would feel terrible for this woman in the elaborate African headdress. And then she would feel terrible about herself.
“Well, actually”—Francine looked away from her—“it’s her husband who’s just been denied tenure. She’s kind of going back and forth between being heartbroken and raging at everyone. I just need to cut her a lot of slack right now, especially since, A, she’s always been a great assistant, and B, obviously they’ll be heading off to another college soon.”
Not necessarily, thought Naomi. There would not be many open doors for a plagiarist who’d been denied tenure, since who else could Leanne’s husband be? A plagiarist who’d been denied tenure really ought to be looking for another profession, and it was entirely possible that Nicholas Gall would end up staying right here in Webster, where at least his wife was gainfully employed. Francine might well have her disagreeable assistant for many years to come.
“That’s a very difficult situation to be in” is what she said. “Very difficult. Very unfortunate for all concerned.”
Francine put her hands up. “I don’t know the details,” she said, which Naomi quickly and correctly interpreted as I don’t want to know the details.
“Have you met the husband?”
“Yes, of course. Nick Gall. He comes to pick her up sometimes. He writes about music and folklore.”
Well, or someone else writes about music and folklore, and he signs his name to it, she had to stop herself from saying.
“And how long has his wife been your assistant?”
“For five years,” Francine said. “I’ll be sorry to lose her.”
Naomi nodded. “I’m sure. Well. Can you help me out with something? I don’t want to take up too much time.”
Francine smiled. “Of course. And don’t be silly.”
“I’d like to look at a few application folders, of current undergrads. You keep those, right?”
“As long as they’re enrolled, yes. After that they go to storage. What are the names?”
Of course, in the painful instant that followed, she could only think of Omar’s name. The others, who were only there to obscure her interest in Omar, she suddenly could not remember. And Chava’s father had been on the phone with her only a few hours before. She closed her eyes. Friedberg. Yes. It wasn’t gone, after all. “Chava Friedberg.”
“Can you spell it?”
Naomi began: F-R-I…
“No, the first name.”
She spelled that, too.
“And Elise…oh no, I can’t think of her surname. She was in my freshman seminar last year. So, a sophomore now. And from Georgia, I think?”
Francine was typing the name into her keyboard. “Wait…” She stared into the screen. “I have an Elise Gibson? Athens, Georgia. African-American?”
“Yes,” Naomi said. “That’s her. And also…Omar Khayal. That’s K-H-A-Y…”
“Oh, I know Omar,” Francine said, looking up. “Omar isn’t easy to forget.”
She sat back in her uncomfortable chair. “Yes? Why so?”
“Magical application. One of the ones you pull out of the pile, the first time it comes across your desk. Like so,” she said, gesturing to a shelf behind her. It had, as far as Naomi could make out, four or five Webster-green folders stacked on it. The folders had hot pink Post-Its affixed to them, each with a surname.
“I don’t understand,” said Naomi. “What does it mean?”
Francine stopped typing. She sat forward in her chair, elbows braced against her desk. “So, they’re all one hundred shades of wonderful, right? Nearly all. Wonderful in all the ways a seventeen-year-old can be wonderful. Wonderful at this, wonderful at that, wonderful at everything at the same time. Mostly I’m making piles of wonderful, to build the class. And that’s great. That’s an embarrassment of riches. But then you read an application like Omar’s, and you just start to shake. Like…a kid who’s at the top of her class at Bronx Science going home to a homeless shelter every night. Or someone from the middle of nowhere who’s never met an intellectual, let alone an academic, but who’s already doing serious scholarship. Like that.”
“And that was Omar’s application?” Naomi said, remembering that he was from the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma, bordering the middle of nowhere in Arkansas. Had he already been doing serious scholarship? And if so, about what?
“No, not exactly. Even in that category he was a one-off. Well, you’ll see when you read the file. But why do you want to read it? Is he up for an award or something?”
He’s up for something, Naomi thought. But what she said was, “I’m trying to understand our activists. Omar and Chava and Elise. And the rest.” Like Hannah, she thought.
“Omar’s out there?” Francine frowned, looking toward the window.
“Well, yes. I’m not singling him out,” she said, a tiny bit defensively. “The others seem to defer to him. He may not be self-identifying as a leader but he’s clearly influential in the group. I just thought, maybe…if I knew a bit more about him. I mean, them. The leaders. It might help. I’m only trying to understand.”
“But you wouldn’t expel him,” Francine said. It wasn’t a question. It almost sounded, not that this made any sense, like an injunction.
“No, of course not. For activism? I just…”
“Want to understand,” Francine said tersely. And her long fingers returned to the keyboard and began to move. Naomi stood watching, wondering what had just passed between them: something not pleasant and not innocuous. And because she truly did not understand, and because the very idea of it frightened her, she chose not to think about it more deeply, or indeed at all. Instead, she distracted herself by thinking about Francine, and how strange it was that her friend could even ask that question. Naomi, with her own activist past, expel a student for engaging in a peaceful protest?
But Francine had never truly understood the dynamic of this kind of commitment—not deeply, not personally; this had always been clear to Naomi. Francine could evaluate activism as a desirable, even a competitively desirable quality (Webster applicant who organized a local charity fun run versus Webster applicant who organized march on Washington), but she herself had never been sufficiently moved by an issue to do more than sign a petition or cast a vote. It was something that separated the two women, certainly, but no more than their other differences, like background and physical appearance. Watching her friend at the keyboard, Naomi understood that Francine probably understood the motivation of those kids out on the Quad as superficially as she understood Naomi’s own political actions in college, or the years she had given to an idea of rural community work as a VISTA volunteer. Obviously, she’d heard Naomi’s stories, but it was clear that Francine considered an anti-ROTC occupation of a president’s office a roughly comparable college activity to the Barnard Glee Club, her own extracurricular interest.
They were exactly the same age, the two of them; in fact they’d been born only weeks apart. But Francine had managed to navigate the ’60s and ’70s without once being touched by the counterculture and its discontents. From Barnard student to Barnard fund-raiser to Barnard admissions officer, and from there to associate dean at Vassar, and finally to Webster—all without a major change in either hairstyle or fashion preferences. Socially liberal but fiscally conservative. Open to hearing what people had to say, but somehow wishing everyone would hold back, just a little bit, instead of sharing every tiny thing. Francine, who preferred “humanist” to “feminist,” who considered certain right-wing radio blowhards “buffoonish” rather than “evil,” was a witty and strong and accomplished woman, full of ideas and opinions, with a ramrod sense of institutional fidelity and a work ethic to match. They were made of different stuff, but their variations were finally superficial and mattered so little, given the thing they finally did share: They were both women who hadn’t had many close friends, and they were close friends.
“I�
��m having Leanne pull the files,” Francine said when she was finished. “You know that Nick and Omar are close.”
Naomi had the reaction before she understood the reaction: a chill. Something physical, untethered to anything she could have named. “Nick. Leanne’s husband, Nick?”
“Sure. I hear about Omar all the time, from her. He practically lives in their house.”
Naomi shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, he’s probably going to be an anthropology major. Omar is. Given his background I would have guessed politics, maybe history. But Nick Gall taught his freshman seminar and the two just connected, I guess. And of course he doesn’t have anywhere to go during the breaks, so he stays with the Galls.”
“But, what about…Oklahoma, right?”
“Oklahoma?”
“I thought…well, his records list his hometown as somewhere in Oklahoma.”
“Oh. Yes. But it’s not as if he grew up there. Or has family there. He doesn’t have family anywhere.”
She had no idea what to say to this. All at once she wanted to leave. She wanted to go somewhere and read the file, herself. But this wasn’t just any colleague. This was her ally, and the woman she walked with. This was the person who had given Hannah her first pair of earrings.
“How are you doing?” Naomi said abruptly. “I’ve been feeling a little sheepish about that night at your house. I mean, with the guy you set me up with. Of course I appreciate it, but it was such a colossal miss.”
Francine, unfortunately, did not rush in with an instant denial.
“Oh,” Naomi sat up in her chair, horribly embarrassed. “It was a setup, right?”
“Not really. I mean, as far as I was concerned, no. He just asked to meet you.”
“That guy asked to meet me?”
“Yes. But you, president of Webster, not you, Naomi. I’m sorry. It’s a tough situation.”
The Devil and Webster Page 13