Settling my Caesar salad in front of me, my waitress says, “The whole point of being engaged is being terrified. When I first got engaged, I knew Stan loved me . . . you know what I mean? But what I wasn’t sure of was—if I got in an accident and my face got burned off, would he still love me then?” Distressed by the memory, she rests a plate of butter pats atop a steaming teapot, where they liquefy as her hands rise to cradle her peaches-and-cream cheeks. “You learn a lot about each other during the engagement. By the time we got married I knew he would.” Her kohled eyes turn dewy.
“That’s right,” says the waitress at the next station, swiping coffee rings off the countertop with a damp rag. “Engagement is when you sort it all out.” She folds the wet rag into the belt of her fanny pack. ”Plus, now you’ve got leverage. You can fight all the fights you want, and you won’t have those dating nightmares where you don’t see him for a week and don’t know what he’s thinking and you’re petrified he might run away. Engaged people don’t run away. It’s too embarrassing. You’ve planned this perfectly—every woman should be engaged while she’s deciding whether to get married.”
“Maybe,” I say. Before me is a white packet of sugar covered with tiny hearts. I open it, spill the contents, form the sugar into cocaine-lines on the tabletop until the family at the next table stares. “But engagement is intimidating, don’t you think? Makes it harder to be honest?”
“Intimidation is fabulous,” says my waitress. She’s levitating near the ceiling, checking her makeup in a small handheld mirror. “Without peer pressure, who would ever go through with the ‘I do’?” She snaps her compact shut. “When I was engaged, if I’d thought no one would have noticed, I would have hopped off the wedding-planning assembly line and bolted. And I’m so glad I didn’t. It’s been two years, and I’m nuts about him.”
The police officer previously sipping her coffee at a table near the window is on her feet. “Bullshit,” she barks. “Bullshit to leverage, bullshit to intimidation. And why is it considered romantic for the man to take the woman by surprise?” She thumps her fist on the tabletop, splashing coffee to the floor. “Don’t you think the most important decision of a woman’s life is one she should not make when she’s been caught off-guard? Why would any woman like the idea of being shocked by a proposal? Why would any man trust an on-the-spot answer? If you’re going to start a relationship in that system,” she says, glaring ominously at the wait staff, “all bets are off.”
“As goes the engagement,” says the cashier, looking glum as she hands me my change, “so will go the marriage. I’d turn back if I were you.”
Entering the elevator along with a half-dozen students drifting their way toward eight-thirty A.M. classes, I’m greeted by a grinning Steven Hilliard, who installs himself beside me with an impish thumbs-up. Before I can utter an automatic Thank you, George is wonderful, Steven addresses me in a whisper. “Things look good,” he says. “Seems the Coordinating Committee is leaning heavily toward a pluralistic curriculum. Their report goes as far as to stipulate that students’ writing-requirement classes must include at least one ‘older’ text. If they have to say that, it means the traditionalists are on the defensive.”
“That’s great. I’ve got nothing against older texts, though. I just want balance.”
With a sharp wave he dismisses balance. “Serves them right to get a taste of their own medicine. And it certainly won’t hurt you in December.”
The elevator ejects us onto the ninth floor, and Steven takes his leave with a clap on my shoulder. I’ve been dubbed a team member—though this promotion seems more about Steven’s political vindication than about camaraderie.
I stop at my mailbox. As I flip through my mail, dropping leaflets into the cavernous metal trash bin stationed here for this purpose, my gaze lights on Paleozoic’s box, situated directly above mine. Lying atop a curled stack of departmental notices is a postcard sporting Jeff’s handwriting. Tilting my head, I read the message Jeff has penned to Paleozoic in black ink: Tuesday faculty meeting delayed until Thurs 4 p.m. Wanted to make sure you knew. Best—Jeff Thomas.
Since when does Jeff take it on himself to notify the chairman emeritus of changed meeting times? With a swift glance confirming that I’m alone, I reach up and flip the card. On the glossy side is an enormous pink triangle.
In my office I check my voicemail. There are two messages, the first from six A.M.
Hello, my dear freaked lover. George’s voice is husky. He clears his throat. I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day . . . For a full two verses his serenade tackles Smokey Robinson and wrestles him to the ground. So I’m here in Buffalo, he says. I’m doing a little research on the Web before the day’s meetings start. And I’ve been looking into conversion. Reform, Conservative, or Reconstructionist. Which flavor do you favor? Call me at the hotel.
The message service cuts in with its pleasant female accent. I breathe again. Next . . . message . . . received . . . today . . . at eight . . . A.M.
Tracy, says a voice to which I definitely never gave my office telephone number. It’s Aunt Rona. Your mother said I might catch you in. Just a couple thoughts about your wedding. I’m thinking buffet would be nice, if you can find a caterer with variety. Your uncle Ted lives for buffet.
I open a page of Flannery O’Connor. For an hour I try to haul my brain into an examination of her lushly perilous world, but every story frightens me—desperate men and women scanning the universe for a miracle, only to get thrashed by the very people they thought their saviors. The notes I make are scattered: illness as catalyst, humanity, capacity for grotesque, for grace. I give up and mark student papers. Shortly before noon I permit myself to go for a walk, heading downtown this time.
The afternoon is damp and cold, the few leaves on the sidewalk sodden. It’s impossible to get warm. Each cozily lit storefront or warm café I bypass soaks me with regret. At Houston Street, I’m seized by an urge to telephone my parents in Seattle and demand to know the truth—any truth—about their marriage. About anyone’s marriage—about what augurs doom, what happiness. Fingering my cell phone, I discover the battery is dead. Just as well.
“Never marry a man,” says the boutique owner in a soft Virginia caress of an accent, “whom you have not seen angry. Goad him until he gets angry: that’s what I tell my daughters. Then see what he’s made of. If he’s a gentleman to you even when he’s spitting mad, then marry him.”
(“George,” I will peremptorily summon the most loving man I have ever known. “You know that cap you wear? The wool one?” I’ll sneer. “It’s incongruous.”)
“Marry the ex of a friend,” says the woman trimming my hair at Horatio’s Hair Design. I close my eyes as slippery trimmings rain past my nose. “It’s a prevetting service.”
“A relationship is a building,” says the gardener, rake poised in the churchyard’s meager garden. “Marriage is just the ivy that grows on it. It tells the world the building is old and respectable. But if you’re not careful”—a scrape at sodden leaves—“that ivy can crack the stone.” He straightens. “Live in sin, if you ask me. You may not look as respectable, but your building will stand or fall on its own merits.”
In Battery Park, inside the wooden barricades erected for his demonstration, the balloon operator releases a final jet of flame into the multihued dome overhead. “For men,” he shouts, “marriage is a dirigible. They don’t really understand how it works, but they like the view. The fact that they’re not sure how to steer the thing doesn’t trouble them, because now that they’ve gotten up so high there isn’t really anywhere particular they need to go.” He hops into the balloon’s basket and works at the knots that tether his bucking vehicle. “For women, marriage is a car with bad alignment. It has to be urged constantly in a particular direction just to avoid meandering off into the woods and crashing.” The last knot gives; the balloon operator recedes into the sky with a beatific grin.
“Marriage?” says Anna Karenina, pausing on the edge of
the subway platform to gather her skirts as the express thunders nearer. “Yeah. Everybody does that once.”
I re-enter the department carrying a paper sack of sodas and cookies: enough fuel to power me through my afternoon obligation, an American Women Writers seminar I usually enjoy but today have no appetite for. As I exit the elevator I am summoned by Eileen, who beckons, a stack of papers in her hand.
Reluctantly I approach. She’s holding a copy of my tenure packet, which by now must be in the hands of more colleagues and external reviewers than I care to think about.
Eileen hefts the pages in her open palm. “Feels like tenure-weight.” She smiles perkily, today’s lipstick augmented by tiny silver sparkles.
“Only the committee knows,” I answer as spookily as I can, which succeeds in making her laugh. I start away from her desk.
“Ah, the committee.” Eileen murmurs, attaching a label to my file with a hot pink paper clip. “Committees, committees.” A few paces from her desk, I wait for her to emerge from this clumsy conversational roundhouse, new grist in hand. “Committees rarely come up with sensible solutions for personal issues, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve never gone to a committee with a personal issue.” “I suppose not,” says Eileen with approval. “Anyway, I don’t know who they think they’re going to get to cover classes when Joanne’s on reduced hours this spring.”
“Where is Joanne going?”
“You mean which hospital?”
I meant nothing of the kind.
“Whoops,” says Eileen.
“Whoops what?” My voice crests with anger: a momentary stay against the awful understanding overtaking me.
“You did know, right?” says Eileen. “I thought everyone knew.”
This time I keep my voice steady. “What’s wrong with Joanne?”
“It’s not official public knowledge,” says Eileen primly. When I don’t take the bait, she relents. “Joanne has lupus, love. She was diagnosed at the start of the term. You professors, I swear. I expect the men to be oblivious, but I thought at least you women would have noticed how ill your coworker looks. For heaven’s sake, Joanne’s been on steroids for two months, and no one here has had a clue? Only Victoria picked up on it, and she came to me to talk.”
More likely, Victoria did her best to deflect Eileen’s suspicions until some bureaucratic necessity required bringing her into the loop. “Joanne’s going on leave?” I say.
“Part-time medical leave, for the spring. She’ll give up two of her three courses. I’m handling the paperwork.” Eileen wags her head with a sympathy that’s hard to believe. Even she can keep a secret of this gravity. If she chooses not to, it’s because she can’t stand Joanne—a fact that had escaped my attention until now. It’s obvious Joanne would not want me, of all people, getting inside information on her health problems—making this revelation a perfect dollop of revenge to mix with the more public support Eileen will surely offer Joanne. I’m being used, but also—even in my shock I can appreciate this—protected. For a few seconds I contemplate the limitless array of missteps from which Eileen has just saved me.
“Now why did you think she got so sensitive when it sounded like the students were making fun of her in the course catalogue?” Eileen’s habitual defense: it’s not rumormongering if everyone should have guessed.
I accept my penance. “I couldn’t figure it out.”
“Not that Joanne always makes sense.” Eileen giggles. “Except to herself, of course.” Sobriety wafts over her. “It can be crippling, you know. And she used to be a big athlete. People can die from lupus, too. Though I hear that’s rare. But Victoria seems to think it’s a serious case.” A final glance at me; then she casts down her eyes and wags her head, the picture of empathy.
I find Jeff sitting at his desk with one hand draped over the telephone, as though he hasn’t yet disconnected from a conversation that ended moments ago.
“I just learned something important,” I tell him.
He flitters his fingertips: my news can wait. “Richard thinks I’ve been an ass,” he says. “He thinks that when you first told me you were engaged you needed support, rather than my real opinion.” He screws his pale lips into a small, pained-looking rose. “I was harsh.”
In the eight years I’ve known Jeff, this is the closest thing I’ve heard to an admission of error. Lowering myself into the seat opposite him, I loft a thank-you across windy, highway-threaded miles to the mysterious Richard. So that’s who makes Jeff tick: A man who isn’t afraid to stand up to him. Who values friendship over principle. Who’s chosen a specialty in Queer Theory, as out as can be, while Jeff coolly chooses when to divulge each crumb of information. I take a moment to imagine their fights: long Sunday checklist versus lazy brunch, tidy desk versus photo-cluttered surface. The thought of these two torturing each other makes me like Jeff a good deal better.
“You have been harsh,” I say. “You know I value your opinion. Sometimes it’s simply a question of how it’s voiced.”
Jeff’s raised eyebrow knocks aside this olive branch. I’ve misunderstood; he wasn’t apologizing, just mulling. He sweeps something invisible from his desk and deposits it in the wastebasket, his half-mast eyelids flickering with perturbation.
Joanne’s knock at the door spooks me. Guiltily I meet her owlish stare. Her broad face looks poreless, nubbled and not quite clean—something I’ve noticed for weeks without noticing. Now I realize her skin is in fact overlaid by a hearty coating of peach-brown—the thick makeup of an actor stepping from swaying curtain shadows onto glaringly lit boards. How long has she put on that mask before coming to work?
“A word?” says Joanne.
Jeff nods her in.
“Two of your undergraduates had the bad judgment to hold an extremely loud gossip session outside my office door. They made it impossible not to overhear. But it was lucky I did. It turns out some joker is raising false hopes in your class.”
“Really?” says Jeff, his voice betraying not the slightest interest.
Joanne pauses, slightly, to catch her breath. She continues. “According to your students—who of course tried to squirm out of any confession the minute I cornered them—some attention-starved classmate of theirs claims to have overheard one of your TA’s telling another that when he flipped open your roll book to check a student’s attendance record, he saw column after column like ”Substance: B-plus; Presentation: B-minus; and then in the space for semester grade, an A already filled in.”
Jeff doesn’t answer. If he’s surprised, his face does not betray it.
“So now,” says Joanne, “the rumor has spread. Of course, it’s up to you whether you want to disabuse your students of their fantasy that A’s are guaranteed. Or let the lazier ones skewer themselves on it.” She stops, breathes. Leans, as if casually, against the doorjamb. “But I felt you ought to know. About the fabrication.”
Grading sheets aren’t due for over a month; Joanne and the others weren’t meant to discover Jeff’s grading mischief until late December at the earliest—by which point he should have received his countersigned copies of the Atlanta contract and given notice to Grub, effective at the end of spring semester’s paid leave. I anticipate Jeff’s handling of this ripple in his plan: the charade of laughing off the rumor, only to submit an unblemished list of A’s in December. His parting fuck-you will be postmarked, impersonal, and after the fact.
“There’s no fabrication,” says Jeff. His delivery is as cool as ever, but the muscles of his forearm, as he massages his jaw, are tight. He knows this is impolitic.
Joanne looks puzzled. “One hundred percent A’s isn’t a student fabrication?”
I stare hard at Jeff, but he doesn’t so much as glance my way. I understand what he’s doing. He doesn’t approve of my choices, he cannot apologize for speaking his mind, but he values my friendship, and he will, with implacable flair, commit this small political suicide for me—reparation for the dozens
of times he’s watched his own back while I took heat from Joanne. Bearing the standard of our friendship, he gallops off to a mission I desperately want aborted.
Jeff’s sigh speaks of regret admixed with awe. “It was an act of God.”
“An act of God,” Joanne repeats.
He takes off his glasses and folds them, the soft dual clicks the only sound in the office. He rubs his brow, then speaks softly. “God”—Jeff points upward—“came down”—a gesture toward the carpet—“and put the A’s in the roll book.” His eyes, steady and calm, dare Joanne to demur.
Joanne’s throat emits a strange cluck: the sound of something giving way. As she tips up her chin, drowning, I see that she has considered Jeff her friend.
Her words hit the air like tacks. “I wish I’d been in this office,” she says, “to witness the theophany.”
“You missed it,” says Jeff in the same patient voice, “because you were too busy making life miserable for Elizabeth.”
Beneath the healthy tint of her makeup, Joanne’s face darkens with fear, and it hits me that her look of nausea at our recent encounter was neither dislike, nor envy of love. It was envy of life.
“I see what’s going on here,” she says, though it’s obvious she cannot see, she cannot see at all. She leaves the office brushing the doorjamb with her fingertips, blind.
Jeff blinks at me. Then one corner of his mouth lifts in a tight salute of a smile: no thanks necessary. With a pointedly unhurried motion he turns a paper on his desk. His cheeks and forehead are pale, his lips compressed. He could as easily be the one with a grave illness. Or Elizabeth. Or me, I think. The whole department is drawn, poised for some terrible outburst.
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