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by Mameve Medwed

  “As long as it’s not for student-faculty affairs,” says Harriman.

  We all laugh, me included, though I don’t think it’s that funny and wonder if he’s intended some reference to Seamus and me. I wouldn’t put it beyond my mother to keep informing the world— particularly Arthur T. Haven and his relatives—how I snared the Harvard English department’s teacher of the year. This, despite her horror at the M&M’s and despite her concession that Seamus comes off better on paper than in the flesh. Look, I understand; the competition in the best-daughter sweepstakes is something fierce. In a brilliant tactical maneuver, I switch the topic to steamed dumplings. Jake Barnes waxes enthusiastic about the best Hunan scallops he has ever had until we are called into the dining room.

  Our table rests on a small raised platform like a stage. Jake Barnes asks permission to pull out my chair, inviting my sympathy. This man is burned, I think, as I graciously accept. Trial by fire has made him question all preconceived notions and actions in male-female relationships. Unlike Seamus, he’s capable of change.

  And the first thing I’d change, I think, is all this endless talk about food. For me, the act of eating doesn’t require foreplay. I remember a Japanese movie—a sellout at the Coolidge Corner—in which a courting couple sucked a raw egg from each other’s mouth the way you tip a yoke from half shell to half shell to separate the white. Why the egg, I wondered, when simple tongues suffice. It’s like embellishing a good sentence with a lot of unnecessary adjectives. “Did you ever see a movie called Tampopo?” I ask Jake now.

  He slaps his fist against the table. “One of my all-time top ten.” He leans closer. “When I’m really down in the dumps, I rent it from the video store. That egg scene never fails to cheer me up,” he confides, his mouth practically within egg-sucking distance of mine.

  I nod, deeming it not worth explaining that for major depressions I always choose Singing in the Rain. I push my hair from my face and manage to tilt my head away. I hope it’s a subtle enough gesture for him not to notice he’s invading my personal space. I remember reading about a study some Harvard professor did on how people in different cultures place their faces at varying distances from each other when they talk. He made precise measurements. Latins speak nose to nose, a position which makes colder-blooded species uncomfortable.

  Jake’s closeness makes me uncomfortable. He chews his lower lip. I think of Louie’s lips, of Louie’s teeth, of Louie’s tongue. Sucking an egg yolk from Louie’s mouth wouldn’t be so terrible.

  “Now that I think of it, I saw that movie, too. That scene was pretty gross,” Harriman says.

  We discuss the erotic qualities of food unerotically—milk baths, aphrodisiacs, a performance artist who paints herself in chocolate—the way you might suggest soaking an ankle in Epsom salts. Jake studies the menu. Moving on to the wine list he’s headed for a doctorate. Tonight there’s much more ado than at Biba. I suppose it’s because the addition of Zenobia and Harriman multiplies everything by two, including the exponent for fussiness. I put my menu down. “Order for me. I place myself entirely in your hands.”

  Harriman excuses himself to wash his hands. The butter from a roll glistens on his index finger. Moisture from the wineglass anoints his thumb. “You could use a napkin, darling,” Zenobia suggests, but he’s already risen from his chair. From the way he’s examining his hands, you’d think he was about to perform open heart surgery instead of cutting into a boeuf en daube. “Harriman is impeccable,” sighs Zenobia in a tone filled either with admiration or rue. I’m not sure.

  “It probably makes sense given what’s going around,” I console.

  Jake looks up from the red-tasseled wine list. “What do you say, a Montrachet or a Meursault?”

  “Either,” Zenobia shrugs.

  “You know, you’re right. I’ll order both.”

  Zenobia leans across the table. “My father tells me you’ve volunteered to pick them up at the airport. That’s nice of you, Katinka.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “For me it would be. I’ve got an incredible amount of work.”

  And I on the other hand have nothing to do but loll around in a bathrobe in backless mules, drinking wine out of half-gallon jugs, eating chocolate-covered cherries, reading Danielle Steele, watching soaps, a New Yorker reject, a Seamus O’Toole reject. “Well, writers’ hours are more flexible,” I grant.

  “Not my kind of writer. I need to do research. I’m dependent on libraries, which are starting to cut back to banker’s hours. And of course I teach full time.”

  And bake your own bread and spin straw into gold and raise a child and are building a telescope on your lunch break. “I’m teaching, too,” I feel defensive enough to point out.

  “You are?”

  Jake Barnes beams. “Katinka’s teaching at Harvard,” he exclaims.

  My mother couldn’t have said it better. “A writing course,” I admit modestly.

  “Many’s the time I’ve thought of taking up writing myself,” Jake says.

  “You have?” It’s my turn for astonishment.

  “Why not, I’ve lived an interesting life. It would make a good book. The story about my divorce alone …” His voice trails off. He looks as if dollar signs of big advances are dancing before his eyes. As if made-for-TV movies are flitting across his screen. “Maybe I should take your course.”

  Help, I plead. Louie’s seat in Sever Hall hasn’t even had a chance to gather dust. What is this with writers, turn over a rock, turn up a writer. Up from under a bucket of mail. Up from under a wine list. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I begin.

  “What do you mean?”

  “To have somebody I know in my class, a friend …”

  “I’d think it’d be a comfort.”

  I shake my head. “These things can get sticky.” I try to think of an example and say, stupidly, the first thing that comes into my head: “I know from experience. I was a student of Seamus O’Toole.”

  “Some people would say that worked out fine since you married him,” says Jake.

  “My biggest mistake.”

  “Which doesn’t mean all student-teacher relationships are doomed. Especially when, like us, they’re more age-appropriate.”

  And class-appropriate, and Ivy League–appropriate, and mother-appropriate. But body-appropriate is another matter. “Have you written before?” I ask Jake.

  “Only briefs. And my article, Tenancy by the Entirety, a copy of which,” he pats his inside jacket pocket where there is something rolled up nearly the size of the Sunday Times, “I’ve brought you, Katinka. But I’m sure I could. Write, that is. Once I put my mind to something … I did get an A on my Beowulf paper my freshman year at Penn.”

  “Writing’s hard,” says Zenobia, my new best friend.

  I nod. “Harder than it looks.”

  “Besides,” Zenobia continues, “I would assume Katinka’s course would be limited to undergraduates.”

  She’s got me. “It’s the Extension School,” I have to confess.

  “Oh, that,” Zenobia says dismissively. “I taught there once before I finished my doctorate. A course on Mary Cassatt. My students were taxi drivers and hairdressers.”

  Impeccable Harriman arrives back to save me from submitting a defense. “You’d think in a restaurant like this,” he says with a shudder, “the bathrooms would be kept up.”

  “Never mind, dear,” Zenobia gives him a pat.

  “That’s Cambridge,” I say. “The concession to the bohemian.”

  “The unsanitary, you mean,” Harriman grunts.

  But is cheered when the next course arrives with the accompanying stellar bottles of not-the-house wine.

  Which involves another half hour of ohs and ahs and wonderful-meals-I-have-knowns. Also a comparison of the different kinds of noodles you can get in Japan—Zenobia delivered a paper there last year—versus those offered in Japanese restaurants along the Boston–Cambridge axis—a mere shadow of the real
thing. During the salad course, served continental style after the entrée, Jake slips me his article “lest I forget and carry the damn thing home.”

  I fold it into my pocketbook. “I’ll read it before bed.”

  “Breakfast would be better, with a lot of unadulterated caffeine.” He smiles.

  Harriman frowns. “Don’t undercut yourself, Jake. It’s first-rate stuff.”

  “For what it is.” Jake turns to me. “Since my divorce, Zenobia and Harriman are on a mission to bolster my self-esteem. Nevertheless, The Sun Also Rises it ain’t.”

  “That’s a relief,” I say. “Three Jake Barneses might seem a tad excessive.”

  He laughs. “So where’s the reciprocity?” he asks.

  “The what?”

  “Copies of your own stories. You said you’d bring them for me.”

  “You’re right. I forgot.” Which is incredible since usually I’m as trigger-happy as a tourist just back from Alaska with his carouselful of slides. The vaguest I’d like to see your stuff sometime tends to bury a perfect stranger in an avalanche of my Xeroxes. Why did I forget to bring my stories to Jake Barnes?

  “Never mind. I’ll pop in and you can show them to me.”

  “The proverbial etchings,” Harriman chuckles.

  Very funny, I think, but don’t say anything. Instead, I work on maintaining an expression of pure ingenuousness. One thing I’m sure of is that I didn’t forget to bring the stories as a ploy to lead Jake Barnes down the wayward corridor into my apartment. “I can always mail them,” I say.

  “At the price of stamps these days?” exclaims Harriman in the same tone Seamus used to take me to task for splurging on ground round rather than chuck. “Serve the papers in person is my advice.”

  What is it with Harriman, I wonder, playing Miles Standish to Jake Barnes’ sphinx-like John Alden. Am I witnessing male bonding, a fraternity with its own rituals? A prearranged scenario?

  “Katinka and I will figure something out,” says Jake.

  “Darling,” Zenobia says with a restraining hand on Harriman’s elbow, “did you know that Katinka is teaching at the Harvard Extension School?”

  “Where you taught, darling. I thought you hated it.”

  “I never really—”

  “But you said the students were terrible.”

  “Now you tell me, when I was set to join the ranks,” Jake says. “Before Katinka gave me the heave-ho,” he adds pointedly.

  This last I ignore. “They’re actually fine,” I say. “Many are regularly registered undergraduates.”

  “It’s probably changed, Zenobia,” Harriman says. “You taught there so long ago. You were just starting out.”

  I don’t need to hear any more about what was for the baby Zenobia a stepping-stone and for the mature me a literary pinnacle. So I do one more exercise from Janet Graham’s textbook of social graces—the flattery will get you anywhere pirouette. “Zenobia,” I say, “my mother tells me you’ve won a wonderful prize.”

  Zenobia nods. Her marble cheekbones pinken.

  “She certainly has,” says Harriman, suddenly avuncular. “For her monograph on women painters of Dutch domestic interiors. They’re flying us both out to Amsterdam.”

  “Is that the prize?” I ask. “The trip, I mean.” I catch myself. I can’t believe I’m asking that question, I who am always explaining that two copies and seeing one’s story in print is payment enough. “Not that that isn’t a wonderful award.”

  “The prize is the trip. Plus a dinner.”

  “Don’t forget the medal,” Harriman adds. “There’s always a medal, or plaque, or statuette, or trophy. Like an Oscar for art history. Zenobia’s got a shelfful of them.”

  I picture my own medals. Most improved conduct in third grade, second runner-up in the Voice of America Contest in seventh. If I had a husband like Harriman, he could describe the lamp of knowledge, slightly raised, nickel-plated on tin, that graphed the incline in my deportment. How wonderful to have someone boast of your accomplishments, allowing you to stay acceptably humble. Mothers, of course, do it all the time, but they’re mothers and therefore not to be trusted. But to have a husband to blow your horn. Too many of the husbands I know are too threatened by the success of their significant others to extol their significant others’ significance. Harriman is a man of more parts than just cleanliness.

  And Seamus, with the soil of Ireland clotted under his nails, is a man of less. Seamus hogged the limelight, deflected any overspill onto himself. If someone dared to admire my writing, he’d explain how he taught me everything I knew. I think of Louie. Would Louie be as proud as Harriman? Who would he have to tell? Cheryl? Not likely. Chris Smith? Even in his less-incapacitated condition, one just circumcised would not be a person to whom Louie should be pointing out the merits of Playgirl magazine. And I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Cappetti have no interest in the teacher from another class who taught their son’s writing class. No, Louie, curtained inside his hospital bed, exiled on the middle floor of his triple-decker, cloaked in an anonymous blue uniform would find no audience for my résumé. But that’s not true, I remember. I take it back. It’s Louie after all who told Seamus about my story. It’s Louie who’s indirectly responsible for Seamus’choosing me, after three turn-downs, for the Harvard job.

  By dessert, hazelnut cake and brewed espresso (Jake checks to make sure it’s been decaffeinated by the Swiss water process) all around, I am full of fine feeling for my fellow man. I like how Harriman admires his wife, how Zenobia blushes at her medal shelf, how Jake Barnes has neither pressed Harriman’s etching analogy to my stories or his thigh to mine. And thus when Zenobia suggests she wrap up some of the cake to take home to Max, I am given the opening I have been waiting for. “What are you doing with Max when you go to Amsterdam?” I ask.

  “That’s a problem,” Zenobia says.

  “It doesn’t have to be,” Harriman says.

  “It’s vacation week at Max’s school. So the families of his friends are off to Aspen or St. Barts or Palm Beach. I’ve tried an agency. But I haven’t been that impressed with the care providers I’ve interviewed.”

  “Your standards are impossible, darling.”

  “And you, darling, have none. Max is at a vulnerable stage now. Even though the school has declared the experiment over, Max is so attached to Daniella he wants to keep her.”

  “Damn Daniella,” Harriman exclaims, stirring his coffee so hard it splatters against the tablecloth. “It’s got to stop. You coddle him, Zenobia.”

  Zenobia’s cheeks are nearly crimson. Her eyes flash. “And you’d prefer to run your household like a boot camp.”

  “My father was from the old sink-or-swim school. It didn’t hurt me. And even with your father as such a pushover, you still never had the need to lug around a sack of flour.”

  “I had a blanket.”

  “As did I. But let’s face it, neither of us suffered from a Linus problem. I’ve never glimpsed that blanket in any of your baby pictures. And your father has shown me albumsful.”

  “I might have had other talismans.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ll never tell.”

  “Now, now,” says Jake Barnes in the measured judicial tone of one as expert at mediation as at tenancy by the entirety. “Time to resolve the problem at hand. If I may be so bold, why not start to wean Max from Daniella by using this vacation? Tell Max Daniella’s taking a vacation, too.”

  “And leave Max without both his parents and Daniella? I’m surprised at you, Jake. You have no understanding at all.”

  “That’s not fair, Zenobia. Just because I don’t have children myself. Let me point out, I was a child.” As is all too clear since Jake’s voice is starting to sound like a six-year-old at the supermarket counter who’s being denied a Hershey Bar.

  Harriman turns to Zenobia. “Let me remind you that I, too, was a child.”

  Which is harder to believe since he looks as if he’s stuffed his snowy white shirt f
orever.

  “No kidding,” Zenobia says.

  “Darling …”

  “Men,” Zenobia declares with a dismissive wave.

  “Men,” I sigh, joined with Zenobia in sisterhood. I pause. “I know this isn’t any of my business,” I begin, “but why shouldn’t Max keep Daniella for as long he needs her? I had a friend in college who arrived as a freshman wearing a locket that contained a pink postage-stamp-sized square of all that was left of her baby blanket. She was still wearing it when she finished medical school.”

  “That’s the damnedest—”

  “Harriman …” warns Zenobia. She turns to me. “I think that’s a wonderful story.”

  “Which is all,” I continue, “by way of my offering to take Max. And Daniella while you’re both away. Provided, of course, that Max would like to stay with me.”

  “Why, Katinka,” Zenobia exclaims.

  “That’s not such a bad idea,” Harriman considers. “Your father would be right upstairs.”

  “You’ve just complained about Daddy’s incompetence with children.”

  “Janet will be there, too.”

  This Zenobia chooses to ignore—whether out of loyalty to the late Mrs. Arthur T. Haven who brought her up so well or dislike of her usurper, I’m not sure. Then again, she could have a little sibling rivalry of her own or simply find the mention of Janet Graham irrelevant.

  I press my case. “I’m completely smitten with Max. And since I work at home, it’s no problem. The one night I teach, well, Max could go upstairs, or my mother could come down.”

  “Or I could come over and baby-sit,” Jake Barnes offers. “I’d love to help.”

  “Whatever,” I say.

  Zenobia cocks her head, puts a finger to her chin like Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer. “You know, this may work out.”

  “Of course it will,” I sum up triumphantly.

  Zenobia pauses, then begins to speak, choosing her words with the kind of delicacy people use when they’re about to introduce the topics of money or sex, “… now I know that writing fiction is not remunerative, so this would be only under condition that you let me pay you …”