The Slip

by Mark Sampson

  In the end, it was a slip, ladies. It was only a slip. And it’s incredibly irresponsible of you to preach otherwise to your choirs.

  I closed the newspaper over and stood up from the kitchen table.

  Un.

  Speakable.

  CUNT!

  But then I stopped myself. I thought: No, no. We’re not reacting that way to things anymore. If you can’t help thoughts like that from travelling over the transom of your brain, then you need to keep your fucking mouth shut.

  It all seemed pretty simple, really.

  I nonetheless felt armed to tackle what I wanted to say in my Proper Apology. I went to my bar fridge and mixed myself an extra stiff — very stiff — Bloody Joseph and then trudged back upstairs to my office. I roosted at my desk, opened my laptop, and returned to my blank Word document. Oh, Ms. Sneed, you have no idea the grovelling I’m about to exact onto this page. Just watch me!

  My mouth gawped. My fingers curled. I leaned in.

  I leaned back.

  I sipped my Bloody Joseph. The cursor slowly tick-tocked atop that endless white page.

  I gulped my Bloody Joseph. The whole tomatoey mess slid down my throat.

  I leaned in. I tapped the side of my laptop, lazily, with my spread fingers.

  I leaned back.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake!

  I checked email. What else could I do? When you become engulfed in hesitancy, when you actually feel terror rather than ambition at the sight of a page’s taunting blankness, you’ll look for anything to distract yourself from your fears. Email’s great because email is a living thing: at any moment, another polyp of inquiry can sprout up in your inbox, demanding your attention.

  And that was exactly what had happened. There was a new message waiting for me there. It had, according to its time-stamp, come in while I’d been eating breakfast with Simone.

  It was from Sebastian.

  Oh Jesus.

  His subject line, so ominous in its simplicity, so precise in its foreshadowing, pierced me right through my sternum. It read:

  Grad school

  Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus Christ. With my mind coiling backward to last Thursday’s class, I knew exactly what Sebastian was going to say, what he was going to do.

  I didn’t want to open his message. But I opened it anyway.

  Dr. Sharpe,

  This letter is to inform you that I’m dropping out of the Ph.D. program. This may come as a surprise, but please know that I didn’t reach this decision lightly or in haste. I’ve been grappling with it for a long time now, and I suppose the events of last week have helped snap into focus why this is the right decision.

  There are many things that you taught me that I’ll never forget. I still remember that incredible rant you went on at the beginning of your David Hume seminar five years ago, when you reminded us all — a roomful of neurotic grad students in desperate need of reminding — why a liberal arts education was so important. You said that a liberal arts education taught the most important skill that anyone with any kind of imagination can have: to spot patterns in disparate bits of information so that we might create something new. You kept repeating that, like a mantra we needed to hear as we set out on our own intellectual journeys: Spot the pattern, create something … Spot the pattern, create something new.

  But you said something else that day. You said that studying the Humanities not only taught us what it meant to be human, but also what it meant to be humane. That’s what you said: that by the time you were through with us, we’d be “masters and doctors of humaneness.” Well, I think it’s fair to say that you have fallen down on that role, on that obligation, over the last week. I don’t care what your excuses were for not coming to that protest; and I can’t even fathom why you would make such a repugnant statement about your actions to that Globe and Mail reporter. Rape jokes, Dr. Sharpe, are not jokes. Women deal with this shit every day of their lives. They do. And it just crushes me that you — you, of all people — couldn’t spot that pattern in order to create something new, to make amends for your fuck-up on TV. Your failure to do that undermines pretty much everything you taught us. What’s more, it exposes your ideas for the peacock-like posturing that they are.

  Of course, you are not the sole reason I’m dropping out. I’m going to be thirty in a couple of months. I’ve been in university for the last eleven years. I have no real job experience; I have no real practical skills. But clearly I need some: every day I read another article about how the academy is dying, how cohort after cohort of Ph.D. graduates are finding nothing but adjunct positions or sessional work at serf-labour wages. Meanwhile, I have friends and relatives my own age who have started their grown-up lives — kids and a house and all the rest — and I’m scared shitless that I’ll miss out on all that. So I’m cutting my losses now. I can’t devote any more of my youth to what is clearly a bill of goods. I can’t dedicate my life to what is clearly a lie.

  Please know that I will fulfill my TA obligations until the end of term. You will have me until January. But then I’m out.

  Yours sincerely,

  Sebastian

  I became pretty unhinged after reading that. Getting up, I paced my office floor for a while. Then I sat down again. Then I stood up again. Then I sat down again. Then I clicked REPLY.

  Dear Sebastian,

  I can’t express how gutted I feel after reading your email. Forgive the corniness, but this truly is a professor’s worst nightmare, to lose a grad student in this way. I say that not just because I’ve invested so much time in mentoring you, but also because you’re so close to the finish line and have such potential to be a great scholar and teacher. I feel deeply ashamed that my actions last week have played a role — large or small — in this very serious decision.

  But you’re right. I couldn’t spot the pattern before. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but I completely missed the pattern all last week.

  I see it now. I see it, and I am utterly disgusted with myself.

  While I respect your decision to leave the program, I want to ask if you would give it, and me, one last chance. I ask that you not make your final decision until after tomorrow’s class. I’m going to do what I should’ve done a week ago: get all this out in the open, and talk candidly and transparently with our students about my actions. Let me do that, and if you still want to leave graduate school after I’m done, I will support your decision one hundred percent.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Philip

  After I hit SEND, I rested my head on the edge of the desk and thought about tomorrow’s class. Gawd. I had given myself yet another task to do.

  I looked at my screen and turned back to the waiting Word doc. But I felt like an empty husk now. I couldn’t bear to confront the page’s emptiness. I couldn’t even bring myself to put fingers onto the keys.

  I went downstairs looking for something to distract me. I made an early lunch, ate it, and then washed and dried all the dishes from it and from breakfast. Then I got an idea. Our front entry closet held a floppy old copy of the Yellow Pages, one I had refused to throw out despite Grace’s protestations. I took it down from the shelf and flipped to the listing for plumbers. If I was to suffer such a perplexing blockage at the word processor, I might as well use this time to do the thing I had promised Grace I would do, the thing that had caused this whole mess to begin with. I found a tradesman we hadn’t used before and called to get a quote. His price was ghastly — I gasped at it — but then I booked him anyway to come on Friday. I would get that goddamn, motherfucking tub fixed once and for all.

  Then I decided to get an early jump on dinner. Grace kept a copy of the Milk Calendar hanging inside our pantry door, and upon it I discovered this month’s recipe: phyllo chicken and root vegetable pot pie. I jotted down the lengthy list of ingredients and then sallied off to our local Loblaws — a former hockey arena
transmogrified into a bountiful, brightly lit mecca of yuppie consumerism. I returned home with my purchases and spent a vigorous forty-five minutes prepping this hearty autumnal meal — precooking chicken and chopping potato, carrots, parsnips, and squash, then sculpting the sheets of phyllo pastry like an artisan — before parking the dish into our overcrowded fridge for later. Then, again, I washed and dried all the dishes.

  After that, I searched once more for the tug, the impulse, the gravitational lure to return to my writing desk, my as-yet-unbegun Proper Apology. But no. It was like a mental boulder was blocking the route to my third-floor office.

  So what to do? What do you do, reader, when you “don’t feel like writing”? I went up and checked the communal hamper in the bathroom, but the laundry situation was well under control. I went downstairs and gazed into our backyard from the dining- room window, but Grace had clearly done a recent job of raking up the leaves. I went into the kitchen and yanked open the oven door. That grey cauldron was a bit grimy, but not quite ready for a cleaning. I turned my attention then to the fridge, its shelves and crispers. But everything was, more or less, spotless.

  Reality sunk in. I wasn’t going to find anything to abet my procrastination here in Grace’s domain. She had, I could tell, all her little systems and routines to keep the household and its multi­tud­inous chores under control. What’s more, as I stood there trying to find some domestic (don’t say trifle, don’t say trifle) task to divert me from the one thing I didn’t want to do, I began to see this space, Grace’s effusively chipper terrain, in a whole new light. I hadn’t realized just how much of my wife’s sun-kissed personality was all over this kitchen: the colourful backsplash on the wall; the daisies in their vase; the skillfully hung artwork and bunting; the corkboard arrangements; the fridge door with its effortless collage of thank-you notes and 100-percent homework assignments and a black-and-white photo-booth strip in the middle, pictures of Grace and Simone and Naomi during some midday sojourn to the mall, grinning and laughing and faux-posing in each shot, the three of them looking so carefree, so joyous, like they had just pulled off the biggest scam in history. Where was I that day?

  I want my wife, I thought. I want my fucking wife.

  I went to the cordless and, once more, phoned Grace’s cell. It rang and rang, but she wouldn’t answer. I knew she knew it was me. Who else would be calling from our land line? But she wouldn’t pick up. She just wouldn’t.

  I want my fucking wife, I thought. I want Grace. I want this woman, this woman — this woman of whom, perhaps, I haven’t even painted a proper portrait for you yet. Grace was, she was, she was — what? What? Oh, reader, you haven’t seen anyone laugh until you’ve seen Grace Daly laugh. Arms wrapped around torso, body coiled inward on couch, head thrown back in uncontrolled rapture. No one allows happiness, when happy times come, to inhabit every molecule of her body the way Grace does. And that — that cocky jut of her chin. Those smooth, confident glances at the kids. The wisdom. The wild green eyes. And the temper — did I mention her temper? Even that seemed sexy, sometimes. And also her astuteness, her ability to cut through bullshit with one keen-eyed remark and get to the heart of a matter, of any matter that mattered. I mean, gawd, I just want to fuck her on the spot when she does that. And yes, yes, she was vain, so very, very vain, and deeply insecure about her writing, about being a writer, and even about her true métier, her motherwork. But you know, she felt that if you just surrounded yourself with a bunch of fat-brained feminists, if you yourself became a fat-brained feminist, why, then there was no telling what you could accomplish with your life, irrespective of fate. I mean it was just so, it was just so … adorable. And, and, and — have I ever mentioned her smells? Oh, her smells! The cottony, baby-powder scents of the flannels she’ll wear to bed in winter? Or the aromas that get trapped in her hair? Or her lips? Her lips. Even that wet sheen they get when she’s been talking for too long has a fragrance I can’t get enough of. And also — she loves me? She loves me. She loves me. We met when I was forty-two and I had never been loved, not really, not properly, and she just went about the business of it, the business of loving me, and, and, and … I want my wife. I want my wife. I want my fucking —

  I called Rani. Unlike Grace, she picked up — following another oceanic delay — on the third ring.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey, Rani.”

  And she chuckled. Oh, reader, how she chuckled. “Philip Sharpe, are you still trapped inside my mobile?”

  “I’m afraid I am, yes.” I sniggered back. “How are you?”

  “I’m okay,” she replied. “How are you?”

  I grunted, loudly, in despair. “Are you free to talk?” I asked.

  “Well, I was just about to head home — it’s been another long day here — but I’ve now been told to stay back. There’s an update coming on that Russian passenger plane that went down in Egypt. But I have a couple of minutes.”

  “You know, you work too hard,” I said.

  “Phwore — look who’s talking, Mr. Full Professor with Ten Books Published by Age Fifty.” She gave a light laugh. “You and me, we’re both wired for hard work. Isn’t that right, Sharpe?”

  “Absolutely,” I replied, trying not to turn my thoughts to the blank Word doc waiting for me upstairs. “So listen,” I went on. “Before I start, I wanted to ask you something. What do you think I did last week? I mean, what did I really say on TV to enrage the entire world?”

  “What, are you taking the piss?” she asked in bafflement. “Sharpe, do you need me to repeat it? ‘I would love nothing more than to penetrate you with these ideas …’ Was — was there any doubt about that?”

  “Not a gram,” I said. “Not, not now.” The fact that she said this cast our Saturday conversation on the phone — and Rani herself — in a whole new light. I pressed the ball of my hand into my forehead. “Anyway, the situation here has gotten far worse. My wife and I had a huge fight yesterday, and right in front of ‘brunch company’ no less.”

  “Oh Jesus, Sharpe.”

  “Yeah, I know. She stormed out of here with our kid, and I haven’t seen them since. Yeah. So — yeah.” I took a breath. “Anyway. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said to me on Saturday. I have. And, Rani, I just, I just — can’t. Okay? I mean, even if everything here goes to shit and it all falls apart, I … I can’t. I just can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “What did I say?” she asked, kind of cheekily.

  “What, are you taking the piss now?” I waited for her to answer but she didn’t. “Rani, you asked if I’d run away with you to India.”

  “Oh, Sharpe,” she replied, “I was just — I was just joshin’ around.”

  “No, you weren’t.” I felt myself grow a touch angry. “Rani, you weren’t.”

  There was a long, staticky pause on the line. So long, in fact, that I thought our connection had dropped and I’d lost her. But then she cut back in.

  “Do you know what all this reminds me of?” she asked. “It reminds me of those articles that came out a couple of years ago, that said that scientists now believe there are ‘parallel universes’ existing somewhere. Did you read those articles, Sharpe? Of course you did — you read everything. Anyway, I saw those and found myself strangely heartened by them. You know? I thought: Maybe out there, in the vastness of space, there’s another version of Earth somewhere, an alternative reality to the one we’re living. And in that alternative reality, you and I decided to just take the plunge with each other, back in ’93. I thought about that, and wondered if we were still together in that reality, and still happy with one another. Isn’t that crazy?”

  It was crazy, I thought. It was batshit nuts. But also not. And that felt weird.

  “Rani, I have to live in the reality I’m in,” I said with the definitiveness of someone yanking a plug out of the wall.

  “Yeah, I know,” she replied. “Me, too.”
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br />   There was another pause, and then she asked:

  “So I guess this is it, eh?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Well, I realize it’s the second time I’ve said this in twenty-two years, but it’s been great knowing you, Sharpe.”

  “You too, Rani.”

  “Okay.” And then she hung up, very quickly. I sighed, and then I hung up, too.

  Somehow, through a tremendous act of will, a great force of fortitude, I managed to return to my upstairs office. With a fresh Bloody Joseph in hand, I manoeuvred myself behind my desk and returned to my Word document. I could sense the opening salvo of my Proper Apology, of what I’d been trying to say all day, coalesce and swell at the front of my mind. I got that familiar urge to shoehorn words onto the page with great authority and skill. I felt immense relief that it was finally going to happen.

  I leaned in. Sipped my Bloody Joseph. Munched absently at its celery stick. I placed fingers on keys. Twiddled them. Waited.

  And waited.

  I leaned back.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!

  So, reader, I just sort of sat there awhile, not moving, barely even breathing. My desolation felt almost hypnotic. Would words not come? Would words never come again?

  Before long I heard the front door of 4 Metcalfe Street pop open. “Hell-lo,” Simone called out as she returned home from school, and I shot up from my desk. I came bounding down the stairs desperate to greet her and hear about every last piece of minutiae from her day. I got an immediate faceful of it, like the hot air from an oven door freshly opened. “… can’t even, okay, if Caitlin thinks like that,” she said in mid-sentence, in mid-thought, as she threw her bookbag on the kitchen counter. “I mean, that’s what I said, but that’s not what I meant. And if she’s gonna act that way then she can’t come when Sarah and me go to the Eaton Centre for that thing on …” Yes, yes. I understand completely. We soon talked about the evening’s homework assignments, and she got down to them at the kitchen table while I put on the pot pie for dinner. I kept glancing at her bowed head, wanting to ask the questions that had been stirring in me all day: Have you heard from your mother? Have you and Grace been texting at all? I tried calling her earlier but she wouldn’t answer … Putting these to Simone felt like a bridge too far, like an invasion of their mother-daughter privacy, so I bit my tongue.