Jeff is silent. He looks as though he’s recalibrating something. Without another word to me, he follows Steven down the hall.
I stare at the wall. I tell myself to get busy with work. I am still staring at the wall minutes later when there is a rap on my doorframe. Turning, I’m greeted by Steven’s jaunty salute as he strides past. He doesn’t stop.
I take out a file labeled “Syllabi—Spring” and survey my plans for week one of my Literature of the American City seminar. Slowly I scratch notes onto a pad—the outline of a lecture.
Forty minutes pass. An hour.
An hour and a half.
Some tenure meetings, I tell myself, take a long time. Surely some must take more than an hour. It doesn’t necessarily mean something’s wrong.
A door swings open down the long corridor, and thuds shut. Footsteps approach. Victoria appears at the door.
“How are you?” Her voice is tense.
I don’t answer.
“May I sit?”
I nod, a dreadful constriction in my throat. She settles heavily into the chair.
“Tracy, your committee is in the midst of deliberation.” She meets my eyes. “You know that, of course.”
I don’t answer.
“There is a question,” she says, “that has come up.” She purses her lips, choosing her words. “Due to the length of the discussion, the committee decided to take a ten-minute recess. And knowing that you are in the building, one of the committee members suggested that we ask for your input on a particular matter that some are finding puzzling.” She sighs; for an instant her posture softens and she looks at me frankly, as though she’d like to tell me, for real, what’s going on. Then she straightens. “As the moderator of this meeting, I’ve been dispatched to speak with you.”
“Elizabeth.” My voice, loosed from its moorings, wanders high and low over the name.
Victoria nods. “Specifically, the strife between you and Joanne over Elizabeth’s work and well-being. Whatever motivates you two, it’s created a difficult situation in the department.”
“Whatever motivates us two?” I say.
She’s silent.
“Victoria.” My voice rises. “You’ve seen me try to get along with Joanne. The only thing I couldn’t do was sell my own advisee down the river. Do people truly think this is just competition between Joanne and me?”
Again, silence.
“Because . . . and please forgive me for speaking plainly, Victoria, but”—I lean into her eyes, placing my trust—“everyone knows Joanne’s at the root of the problem. But no one wants to blame her because she’s sick.”
“Because she’s sick,” Victoria echoes, her expression guarded. “Yes. But also because Joanne takes on a Herculean load of committee work. Even in the midst of her illness, she breaks her back for this department. Without Joanne . . .” Victoria stops. She lines up her hands and slides them against each other, moving so slowly it’s more meditation than motion. Slide. Slide. Slide. She stops. “No,” she says. “I don’t feel you’re ultimately at fault in the conflict with Joanne, Tracy. And no one who truly thinks about it will blame you for the tension. But everyone wants this”—her eyes rise warily to the clock—“unpleasantness to end.”
I feel nauseated. “Has the committee taken note of the fact that I made sure one of our graduate students got help? While she was facing her own potentially fatal illness? Victoria, you never saw Elizabeth at her worst, but I need you to trust me that it was bad. If I hadn’t . . .” I stop myself. Victoria is watching me. “I could have walked away,” I say.
“I appreciate your intervention. And others do as well. But Elizabeth’s fate is her own responsibility. This is an English department, not a counseling service. You chose to help a graduate student, and that’s kind. But your championing of a student who was teetering on the brink of an unsavory dismissal, and whose behavior was directly harmful to a faculty member with whom you’d clashed, has raised questions among some of your colleagues”—her face clouds with disapprobation, directed at some unspecified constellation of faculty members assembled down the hall—“about whether they can count on you.”
“I’m a team player, Victoria. I always have been. Maybe I haven’t been the savviest political player, but that’s just because I’m not playing here. I’m teaching and studying and living and breathing American literature.” I force myself to pause until my voice is under control. “Since the day I came here I’ve done everything this department asked.”
“I appreciate that,” says Victoria slowly. “Perhaps more, Tracy, than you credit me for. You’ve been steady and unselfish and smart, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed.” She hesitates. Then, her eyes fastened on mine, she crosses the line: a breach of academic protocol that would mean little coming from anyone else. “As I’m sure you can guess, Tracy, I’ve recommended your tenure.”
The door opens. Jeff enters. His lips are compressed, and he gives no response to the silent question I send his way.
Victoria frowns and ignores him. “I should get back in there, Tracy. But if there’s anything you can say that will strengthen your position, I’ll go back in there and report it.”
I face Victoria. What words, to persuade a collection of people I’ve known without knowing them—people who have in turn labored alongside me without the slightest real notion of who I am—of my worthiness?
“If I’ve erred,” I begin, “it’s been with the best of intent.” The words drain hope. “I’ve worked, and would like to continue to work, to build—”
“Don’t waste your breath,” says Jeff. “Victoria wasn’t sent to talk to you during everyone else’s smoke break because the committee wanted to give you a shot at defending yourself. She was sent so that if your tenure is denied, committee members can tell themselves they were fair-minded and can sleep well tonight. The gesture isn’t generous, it’s despicable.” He shakes his head crisply. “Nothing you can say is going to sway the vote one way or another. You have plenty of support, Tracy. Don’t think you don’t. God knows, if a certain Oxford professor were a member of this faculty, you’d not only be tenured, you’d be chairwoman.”
“Jeff—” Victoria cautions sharply.
“Hell with confidentiality,” Jeff says, turning sharply to face her. “Victoria, you know how this works. You know that despite the criticism Joanne is taking in there, people are going to hesitate before voting against her, because she pushes this department and makes sure we have a place at the table for major university decisions, and nobody else wants to have to do that work. And you know what Tracy gets from the straight world for breaking off an engagement. She’s bad luck. Open game for wicked speculation.” He doesn’t so much as glance my way. “The effect will take about a year to fade, and even then it won’t fully disappear unless she marries. Tracy needs other voices defending her right now. She needs members of this faculty to speak out. Regardless of tone.”
Victoria’s jowls dimple with concentration. I expect her to contradict Jeff’s statements as absurd. Instead she rises and, with a curt nod to me, follows him out the door.
Voices rise periodically from down the hall, a muted surf. There is a long silence, then a distant rise in tempo like a washing machine going into spin cycle in the basement. I shut my door. I pick up Welty: A Companion and read a long segment on the author’s uses of metaphor, taking meticulous notes.
When Jeff opens the door his expression is grim.
“What?”
He enters, and leans against the wall, flexes his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he says.
I can’t speak.
“I just don’t know,” he says, “which way this one is going to go.”
“Tell me,” I manage.
“You’re sure you want details?”
I hesitate, then nod.
“If these people are your colleagues for the next twenty years, you may find it easier not to know.” He looks at me. Then folds his arms. “All right,” he says. “As you’r
e aware, your record is fantastic. There was absolute agreement on that. In fact people agreed on that so quickly they had to move on to a more controversial subject. Tracy, I don’t know what possessed you to leak word of that half-conceived project you’re working on, but—”
“Who—”
“Steven made a speech about it at the start of the meeting. He very Britishly begged everyone’s pardon, and asked to offer a comment before the meeting was called to order. He discussed your new project as an example of your groundbreaking ambition, and mentioned parenthetically what a strong impression you were making on higher-ups.” Jeff grimaces. “Joanne was ashen. But not for long. Clearly Steven’s plug was the first she’d heard about your project, but she knows good grist when she sees it. She could barely wait until he’d left the room to start taking you apart. She said this project was just the latest example of a tendency to be lightweight. She said your projects are too broad, too ambitious, too focused on primary sources at the expense of critical literature. She said now you’re getting lost in sweeping generalities about happy endings. She called your book idea grandiose, tilting at windmills, lacking a sense of scholarly rigor. Which of course she used to bring the conversation to the topic she’d obviously prepared to discuss: your selfish obsession—that’s her phrasing—with controlling your advisee’s work. She made out like she was Elizabeth’s protector, and you were unreasonably interfering with that collaboration, obstructing her efforts to deepen Elizabeth’s dissertation so that it considers the whole critical literature. Tracy must not be encouraged to take shortcuts with the honest academic travail to which this assembly devotes its hours. I’ve been working all my professional life to defend academic standards. She was developing stigmata up there.
“Victoria tutted at her, but only a bit. You know Victoria.” He sighs. “I think the response to that was divided—some people fell for it, others didn’t. Your record of achievement, after all, speaks for itself. But nobody was sure what to make of your new project, or whether it enhanced or undermined your record. For once, though, there was plenty of back talk to Joanne. And also plenty of pointed comments about competition between you two . . . women at each other’s throats.”
“That’s a sexist—”
“Of course it is.” He shrugs irritably. “The more Joanne hammered away, the more people sank their teeth into the question of your defense of Elizabeth. That conversation went on forever, and kept getting more tangled—as Victoria let on. You should know that several people spoke strongly in your defense. But then it got really interesting.”
I don’t think I want to hear more.
“Paleozoic stood up.”
“He stood up? In a tenure meeting?”
“And his eyes were open. He made a speech that was just incredible. I’ll confess it took me entirely by surprise. I didn’t know he had it in him. Made me think maybe he was once more than a figurehead. He said academics were bolder in his day. He said they used to take on the big questions, the sweeping questions, the questions at the heart of our culture, things that helped us understand where we come from and where we’re going. He said academia today has nitpicked its way into nonsense. He went on a couple tangents there about everything after formalism being a wrong turn, and sex obsession in American culture—not sure why that was relevant—but the whole arc of the speech was actually pretty glorious. He said it’s rare to find someone bold enough to take on more than a tiny corner of literature, and you ought to be commended.”
“I’m flabbergasted.”
“You ought to be. He was goddamn regal there for a moment, in a dusty kind of way. It was the professorial version of Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech. When he sat down people were affected, you could tell. The conversation limped along while everyone absorbed the way he’d challenged them. People were uncomfortable. You could tell they were thinking about their own academic ambitions, wondering how they measured up.” Slowly Jeff shakes his head. “And then he goddamn threw it all away.
“I picked that moment to make my big speech. I’d saved it up.” He makes a wry face. “Everyone knows I’m now irrelevant. There’s a limit to how long I can hold the floor before they tune me out—as Shakespeare understood, a ghost gets only one good monologue before the living take over. I said, before I leave this faculty, I need to make a stand for its future. Joanne immediately jumped in, of course, to say that was hard to believe, given my campaign to undermine the department’s grading standards.” Jeff sighs, and raises a finger. “Which is a move I would not have made, Tracy, had I known Elizabeth was going to throw political bombs in your path. But no one supported Joanne, to her obvious shock. I talked about your publications and your invitations to conferences, and the interest your approach to departmental issues has aroused among the deans. I talked about what an uncomplaining kick-ass colleague you are, and I very respectfully submitted that Joanne was dead wrong about your stewardship of Elizabeth’s academic inquiry. And I went for the heartstrings—I talked about how you defended Elizabeth, which is the most unselfish thing you could have done, given that you acted in full knowledge that you were about to be judged by this assembly.
“And when I said that, Paleozoic, who’d looked like he was asleep, gave this little chuckle. No one would have made anything of it, but Joanne pounced. She demanded to know—you know how she demands to know—what he was laughing about. I figured Joanne had just put the nail in her own coffin. She’s always been too smart to bully the old man, especially right now when people actually were looking at him with respect. Paleozoic went a bit purple, and you could just feel the room turning on Joanne. Then he wheezed something apologetic about how he’d had to smile at my indignation, because after all I’ve been courting both Elizabeth and you.”
“You’re joking.”
Jeff doesn’t answer.
“He must have been laughed out of the room.”
“That would have been better. Nobody laughed—not out loud. They just traded smirks. You could watch the whole room relax back into dismissing him.”
“Did you contradict him?”
“Of course not. Everyone knows it’s nonsense. Paleozoic didn’t undermine my testimony, he undermined his own.” With a frown Jeff considers me. “I went on the offensive,” he says. “I invoked my years in this department, said I hoped they all knew me to be an honest and fair-minded colleague. And I told them it was my firm and studied belief that Joanne was persecuting you out of her own psychological issues.”
“You didn’t.”
“At this point, Tracy, there’s nothing to be gained by holding back. I know a pile-on when I see it, and if your opponents play dirty you’d better be prepared to do it too. Whatever happens from here forward, Joanne’s not coming out of this unscathed. I brought up her illness. I did it respectfully, but I said she wasn’t acting in a rational manner. She countered that accusing women of irrationality was a time-honored sexist tactic, and I said be that as it may, the faculty can judge based on their own experience of her over the past four months. I was courteous, Tracy, I was bend-over-backward compassionate about her illness, I was deferential about contradicting a colleague at such a difficult moment in her life, but I did have my observations to report. I talked about your integrity.”
I wait for Jeff to subvert the compliment with a tongue-in-cheek aside, but he doesn’t. He regards me soberly as he speaks.
“I talked about what a good role model you are for the undergrads and grad students. And how you’ve held your tongue despite poor treatment. I also said some Emory higher-ups had asked about you and had mentioned a salary that would raise pulses among our august assembly. I said I’d tried to lure you to Atlanta but you’d refused, expressing loyalty to this department.”
“They believed it?”
“I do have a reputation for honesty. But it made Joanne go for the jugular. Not mine. Yours. She’d been saving this for a last resort. She pulled out a report she’d typed up in November. Then she just passed the single page
around the room.” Jeff rubs his brow. “It was a brilliant move, not making copies. You couldn’t beat it for dramatic tension. You could have heard a pin drop while every single solitary person in the room read the page and passed it.
“It was a report paraphrasing a statement from one of your TA’s, who apparently complained that you threw a book at a student who was misbehaving during class.”
I open my mouth. Then shut it. After a few seconds I try again. “Who would have said that? All three of my TA’s know me.”
“And all three have a lot at stake in proving themselves to the tenured faculty. Besides, who knows how Joanne twisted the TA’s original comment?”
“It was a joke,” I say weakly.
“I told them so. I pointed out that the student didn’t complain, which corroborates that you didn’t throw the book in anger, and in fact you intended for him to catch it. Joanne countered that the absence of student complaints doesn’t matter, the point is you engaged in dangerous classroom behavior.”
“I threw it right to him. That’s different from throwing something at a person. He caught it.”
“Joanne emphasized that he might not have. That hardcover book might have struck him or another student on the head. It might have caused injury.”
“Carole Highsmith said you weren’t the type to act out, and she was sure the TA’s words had been taken out of context and you probably dropped your book by accident. Joseph Yee said he wasn’t sure, he’d gotten the impression you were a little off lately.”
“Off?”
“He said you quoted poetry to him.”
“This is an English Department.”
“He said he finds you dark.” Jeff curls and flexes his hand restively. “I said even if you had shown poor judgment with the misbehaving student, you’d had a lot on your mind this year and ought to be forgiven a single thoughtless action. Joanne’s response was, and I quote, ‘Plenty of people get engaged. Tracy’s not special.’
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