From the living room Elijah shrieks and Adam gives an answering banshee wail. The smell of waffles comes from the kitchen: Ed is making a rare cameo as chef.
“Did I mention that I get a full week off from house duties?” Hannah grins as contentedly as though nursing day and night, with a toddler barging in to demand boo-boo kisses, were a holiday.
Then her smile fades. “Still no word from George?”
“And I don’t expect it. But my problems are the last thing you need to worry about. Look at her.”
Ariel is taking in the red-and-blue-patterned quilt, blinking at the stitches millimeters from her glistening eyes.
“I’m really sorry, Tracy.”
I keep my eyes on Ariel. “Anyway,” I say softly, “I’m trying to concentrate on other things.” I glance at Hannah, who is patently relieved. “Like work,” I say. “And my tenure review. The politics with one of my colleagues have been horrendous lately. More than I’ve had time to tell you. More than anybody this minuscule”—I indicate Ariel—“should have to hear. Also”—I make a face—“I’ve got to get a dress for this faculty club affair. It’s a big deal. You know how much I hate shopping.”
“I’d go with you if I could.”
From down the hall there’s a thump, a howl from Adam, and a storm of giggles from Elijah.
“Adam!” Hannah calls sharply.
There’s a delay, then a recalcitrant “What?”
“Come here.”
There is a heavy dragging sound, and a moment later Adam slide-steps into the room, Elijah clinging to his leg.
Hannah pats my knee with her free hand. “I know who owes you a personal-shopping favor.”
Adam eyes his sister, then turns to me. “I told you she’s a moron,” he says.
I push open the door of the boutique. The air smells of some complicated plum sachet, and orderly classical music plays from concealed speakers.
“The saleswomen are a bit intense,” Hannah warned. “But the selection is great.” She gave Adam fierce instructions: I’m to treat myself to something nice this time. No frugality allowed.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” says Adam.
With trepidation I approach a rack of black fabric. The blouse I touch is silky and slips away from my hands.
Adam looks miserable. He pulls a Game Boy out of his coat pocket and settles cross-legged, his sneakers leaving gritty smudges on the immaculate carpet.
Continuing my tentative browsing, I take a dress from the rack. It weighs less than the upholstered hanger it’s suspended from.
“May I help you?” Everything about the saleswoman is sharp: her figure, her plucked brows, her eyes; crimson fingernails, stiletto heels, serrated French accent.
Demurring, I drop my handbag next to Adam and retreat with the dress and three other shimmering dusky outfits into a changing room. A moment later I’m parading in front of Adam in my white socks, wearing a black pantsuit that’s cut with more daring than I’d realized. “Is this one decent?”
Adam is urgently involved with the Game Boy.
“One of those trying-too-hard outfits?” I prod. “A little too revealing?”
He thumbs a button fiercely, then gives me a quick glance. “Nope. I don’t see a single breast.”
“Thanks.” Before I can swing back into the room, the saleswoman spike-heels her way from across the mirrored showroom, giving Adam wide berth.
“Any luck, dear?” she glitters at me in her English that would rather be French.
“Not yet. I’m just getting started. Thanks.” I match her smile tooth for tooth, and she leaves me be.
Inside the dressing room I shed the pantsuit and pull on a silvery sheath that makes me feel like a cosseted absurdity. “My aunt is phoning me daily at the office,” I tell Adam through the slatted door. “She says she just wants to check in. Then she keeps me on the line for twenty minutes, interrogating me about why George and I called it off and going on about how disappointed the whole family is . . . except for her, because she understands these things happen. In other words, she’s relieved, because George wasn’t Jewish. I tell Rona the same story every time, but she doesn’t believe the truth. She thinks if she keeps prying she’ll get the real reason for the breakup.” I shed the silver sheath and slip on the black dress. It’s perfect: sophisticated, festive, a tiny bit sexy.
Looking in the mirror, it occurs to me that my life might not in fact be over. I might get tenure. I might even some day feel excited about the future. I put on a pair of too big black heels I find in a corner of the dressing room, and step out the door.
Adam is frantically pushing buttons. After a round of cursing, he stops abruptly and leans his head against the wall. “Stupid boulder traps,” he says with genuine pain. Opening his eyes, he stares at me for a long moment. “Hey,” he says brightly.
I can’t help smiling. “Not bad?” I say. With Adam watching me, I look in the mirror. Then, before I can stopper it, I start to well up.
“You know,” the saleswoman’s tight accent cuts in. In the mirrored wall, her bright red suit and patterned scarf stand out behind my black figure, and it takes only a second to trace my déjà vu: a portrait from a traveling exhibit I once saw of Medieval Dutch art, a picture of a devil giving counsel over a vulnerable maiden’s shoulder.
I wipe my eyes and glare at her.
With an expression of barely masked distaste, she indicates Adam. “I don’t see why you need a friend to tell you how it looks. It looks fabulous.” Oblivious or impervious to the tears that continue to fill my eyes, the woman lowers her voice and confides. “But you’re very smart to come with a man. It’s better than coming with a single girlfriend. A single girlfriend may not tell you what looks nice.”
“Why in the world not?” I snap.
“Jealousy,” she sings, her lips puckering at my naiveté. “Also, for the same reason, a friend who is a mother and has lost her own figure is not the best adviser.”
“I think,” I say, “that I have different friends than you do.”
She waves a bone-thin finger, the gesture friendly and menacing. “You cannot trust.”
“I’d like to try on the last dress,” I say, sniffing.
Her face freezes. “Darling, if you come here you take my advice. Believe me, you’ll waste your time. What you want is the dress you’re wearing.”
True, but I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hate this woman right now. “I’m going to try on the last dress I’ve got in the changing room.”
“All right,” she says, in a way that gives the impression these syllables mean something entirely different in French.
“Darling,” says Adam. Rising, he tucks his Game Boy into the back pocket of his jeans and dimples at the saleswoman. “Allow me to explain what’s going on here, and put an end to this silly charade. The dress isn’t for her.” He chucks me under the chin; tottering backward, I barely avoid falling off the borrowed shoes.
The saleswoman turns to me for his dismissal. Regaining my balance, I nod confirmation. Her smile hardens.
“It’s for me,” says Adam. “My friend here is trying on dresses for me, because she’s my future size. After the operation I’ll be a six.” Adam’s face goes dreamy. “I’ve told the doctors I want my body to stay weedy. Weeeeeedy.” He gives her a saucy smile.
That does in the saleswoman. She disappears and leaves me to gather my belongings while Adam, who has strung a $300 purple satin bustier across his chest, gives me a double thumbs-up.
Leaving the store, tissue-paper-wrapped dress stowed in perfumed shopping bag, I fall into step with Adam. Neither of us speaks. We walk down the avenue in silence. Only after several blocks do I look at him: rangy blue-jean stride, backward baseball cap, cowlick sticking out the gap over his forehead. Blue eyes.
“You know,” he says, “you’re a real hottie in that dress.”
We pass half a block of heavily bundled passersby and belching traffic before I answer. The notion that Ad
am would think me attractive feels so absurd it makes me smile. I realize it’s the first real smile I’ve had in weeks.
And in truth, Adam’s presence acts on me like helium. Not to mention that he’s the only person who thinks following my gut with George was sane; the only friend who sticks up for me in a way that doesn’t feel complicated. And—humor is rare.
But like a plant seeking light I turn endlessly toward who George was: Toward gentleness and force, solemnity and curiosity. Toward a man who composed theories of the universe, knew when to laugh, cared for something outside himself, knew how to jump with both feet. Jeff was right: There is something nineteenth-century about me. Back then they thought love was like an element, like the most fundamental particle. Unsplittable. Irreducible. The modern mind, in contrast, is supposed to believe anything can be split—its components reshuffled, recycled, explained away. Nothing, according to the modern mind, is irreplaceable. Nothing is immune to reason.
The love I felt for George is immune to reason. I will not logic him away, or rationalize what I saw. But neither will I polish my grief for the rest of my life.
Among the narrow choices that remain to me (walking past glistening bakeries, chic boutiques), I choose this: I won’t close my eyes to what I know, now, about love.
My heart may be, at least, softer for seeing it.
“You’re not bad yourself,” I tell Adam.
We continue along the sidewalk, content in our confirmation that we’ll never get together.
“No offense,” says Adam after another minute. “It would be like kissing Worms.”
I crow, and smack Adam on the back of the neck, and, drawing cold, fresh air into my lungs, walk beside Adam to the subway, bag banging freely against my leg.
Steven greets me at the door of the Howard Perry Room. With a gallant sweep of his arm, he presents the velvet-bedecked, tuxe-doed gathering. It’s a smaller crowd than I’d expected. “You look lovely,” he says. Without pausing for a reply he takes my elbow and leads me into the room. Deans—men and women whose new-lecture-hall dedication speeches I’ve endured, from whose left hands I’ve received my diplomas while shaking the right—now greet me from close range. Some smile true, nonmandatory smiles. I smile back, tentatively at first, then with genuine ease. The dress fits right in. I feel so glamorous I halfheartedly wonder whether Steven is single, though reality quickly reasserts: he may be good-looking, but he’s got an ambitious gleam I don’t trust. Not that I’m not grateful. He introduces me to the silver-haired wife of Dean Frederick before repairing to the appetizer table.
“I understand you’re shaking things up,” Susan Frederick says to me. Dean Frederick, the senior member of the Coordinating Committee, was the force behind the pioneering New Century Curriculum initiative. His wife, who is wearing a dark green velvet dress that’s both tasteful and royal, nods curt approval. “Good girl,” she says. “Steven was just talking about some of the goings-on in English. A turbulent time for the department I’m certain. As it is for everyone in this university who cares about academic culture. This curriculum review is going to set our course for some years.”
Her husband appears, wrapping an arm around her thick waist. “We like to know our young faculty,” he says, in a tone that all but pats me on the head. I select a small piece of cheese from the glistening plate of appetizers he offers, and thank him. “This isn’t Harvard, you see,” he says, offering the plate to his wife. “We like to set the trends.” He gives a slow, exaggerated wink. “Then Harvard will adopt them in eight or nine years and take credit.”
I follow his wife in a hearty laugh.
“No matter,” he says. “People know who the real groundbreakers are.”
Dinner is called. Steven sits between the Fredericks. At Susan Frederick’s direction, I sit between her husband and Dean Ralph Phillips, a heavyset man whose blue irises look small in their roomy whites, and who gives off the impression of someone about to come down with a cold. “He acts like the living dead,” Susan whispers, “but he’s a good man to know. And if you’re going to join the band trying to keep the intellectual sparks flying here, you may as well be on friendly terms with the forces of inertia.”
The napkins are a heavy cream-colored linen. The beaded chandeliers throw necklaces of light against cream-colored walls. When the administrators lift their utensils I follow suit, eating with my left hand firmly in my lap. I comment to Dean Phillips about the room; he responds that it used to be more elegant before the renovation. I ask him when that occurred; he says twelve years ago. I ask him how the room used to look, and his spooky eyes light up. “It seemed . . .” He pauses. “. . . a rather larger space. Due to the décor.” He takes a bite and chews slowly, shaping his next thought, comfortable in the knowledge he won’t be interrupted. He swallows, pats his lips with his napkin. “The décor was somewhat . . . continental . . . in those days,” he continues.
Between courses Steven comes over to my chair. Bending, he speaks softly into my ear. “For your information, Frederick just said he looks forward to confirming your tenure after your departmental approval is out of the way. That sort of comment travels down the channels, you know. Word will spread before your tenure meeting that the deans are impatient to green-light you. It’s terrific for you.”
I blush. “That’s certainly good to hear. I’ve been a bit concerned about”—I gesture—“politics, lately.”
His laugh, at close range, startles me. “Joanne?” It’s clear from his tone how little he thinks of her.
I hesitate.
“You don’t have to worry about her,” he says in my ear. “All bark and no bite. Trust me.”
I give Steven a flustered thank-you. I’m not certain why he’s taking such interest in my tenure prospects. If he’s romantically interested, he seems rather restless; already he’s turned away and is greeting a newly tenured History professor with a high-wattage smile.
The university president, who has been making rounds, stops by our table, assistant in tow. President Talman circles the table, greeting each faculty member in turn, asking after children, spouses, the quality of the wine. When he reaches me the assistant whispers discreetly in his ear, and President Talman shakes my hand and calls me heartily by name. His grip is firm. “Welcome,” he says. He cocks his grizzled head at the candlelit room. “Make yourself at home.”
Talman passes. I settle slowly into my seat.
“It was a style even then out of favor on the continent, of course,” says Phillips, setting down his water glass. ”But timeless all the same.”
Behold the undisturbed gustation of a dean.
And finally, despite all my efforts to ignore the countdown of days, it arrives.
Swirling his glass, feet propped on my desk, Jeff smiles at the music of the ice cubes. “The zero hour,” he says.
“Are you trying to make me feel worse?”
Jeff takes another gulp from his iced tea. “You sure you don’t want some? I can spike yours if you’d like. I’m holding off in case I need my wits in there.”
“Look at you, sipping iced tea in December. A real Southern gent.” I wave the offer away. “Maybe later. Thanks again for coming.”
“Hell, I’ve got nothing to do in Atlanta this week.”
“Liar.”
He concedes.
“I should have listened to you. I shouldn’t have let Elizabeth drag me in. You should have seen the showdown Joanne and I had. She’s going to be on the warpath.”
Jeff doesn’t answer. He surveys my office. He indicates the poster of Zora. “She looks exhausted.”
“I expected I wouldn’t want to come in today,” I say. “Thought I’d take a conspicuous day off.”
“Then you woke up and couldn’t stay away.”
“I figured I’d come in to do some writing, assert normalcy. In retrospect a hideous idea.”
Jeff shrugs. “It would be torture either way.” He tilts his glass toward my desk lamp and studies the thin slice of lemon
resting at the bottom of the drink. “By the way, any news from Elizabeth?”
“I haven’t heard from her. I’m assuming that’s a good sign.”
He nods. “Well, if she starts channeling British writers, let me know. Maybe I can learn something.” He drinks, draining half the glass in a gulp. We lean back in our chairs. I believe both of us are considering the eight-year arc of our friendship, its recent strains, the many hundred miles that will soon separate us. After all this time there seems to be some sort of debt we owe each other, though I’d be pressed to articulate it. Opposite me Jeff reclines, pensive. Wondering whether his wry humor will find a welcome in Atlanta, I feel a small stab of protectiveness.
He glances at his wristwatch. “It’s time.” He stands.
“Eileen says they can’t afford not to tenure me. But that’s crap. They can always hire someone. This city is teeming with Ph.D.s.”
“Not Americanists with your strengths. Buck up.” He squeezes my shoulder.
“Will you come as soon as people turn in their votes?”
“I’ll wait for the tally. Then I’ll come back.”
“No, just come back after the votes are collected. You’ll know which way it went.”
There’s a knock on the doorframe. Steven Hilliard greets me with a salute. “Shall we?” he says to Jeff.
When Jeff doesn’t speak, Steven gestures toward the conference room down the hall.
“Since when,” says Jeff, “do they let visiting Oxford men attend tenure meetings?”
“I’m not planning to attend. I’m just going to pop my head in.” He examines his fingernails. “And ask to say a few words on Tracy’s behalf before the meeting starts.” He looks up with a puckish smile. “They can just consider me one of the external reviewers.”
“They’re not going to consider you anything.” Jeff’s voice is uncharacteristically brusque.
“All I plan to do”—Steven’s smile turns ironic—“is say a few words before proceedings begin. Then I’ll hie my visiting Oxford man self away.” He levels a gaze at Jeff. Then he turns to me, his face unreadable despite its pleasant expression. He says, “It’s a simple matter of supporting a deserving candidate.”
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