by Robin Kirman
His expression was gentle, at once boyish again, wounded, but she thought back to the image of him standing over her, minutes before, his knuckles against the door.
“Please, let’s go,” she told the driver and the car lurched forward, leaving Storrow panting at the curb.
—
The next time she encountered Storrow was a week later, at his office on the fourth floor of Robinson Hall. She’d come by late enough to slip in unseen: the receptionist was gone for the day; the other professors’ office doors were closed. Only Storrow’s was left open a sliver; he was seated inside, his back bent over his desk. He turned at her entrance and rose quickly to pull her inside. His hand lingered on her arm; he kissed her cheek, then hesitated, confused whether to chide her or embrace her.
“I know I’m not supposed to come here.”
“It’s fine, fine. I’m glad to see you.” He studied her expression. For all his stiffness, Storrow wasn’t without sensitivity. He must have seen she wasn’t also happy to see him, that her need to come here wasn’t motivated by desire. “Though, to be honest, now isn’t the best time. I’m expecting a student at seven.”
“I’ll be quick.”
He sighed and dropped into his chair. He stared ahead, at the thick piles of books and papers; the strain she’d sensed in him, and which, at times, had made her tender, now made her more certain of her decision.
“I tried calling you,” he said. “To check you were okay.”
“I am.”
“And your friend? Anything from Alice?”
“Not a word about New York.” Since returning to Georgia’s, Alice had behaved as if nothing had happened, if not for her sake, Georgia thought, then out of self-interest; after all, until graduation, Alice was reliant on her hospitality.
“She probably didn’t even see us.” Storrow smiled dryly. “It was a fuss over nothing.”
He seemed oddly serene on the subject, suddenly, Georgia remarked. “You were worried enough last week.”
“Last week I was not myself.” He leaned forward, to take her hand in his broad pale one. “I need you to understand; it was the stress that I’ve been facing.”
“Really, you don’t have to explain.”
But Storrow insisted on it: “A bloody cabal against me: they drafted a letter, you believe this? To the head of my department. But to heck with them, what’s the worst they can do, get me kicked out of here? So fine, I’ll go; a few more weeks and we can both get out of here. This will all be behind me and I’ll be different then, you’ll see.” He squeezed her hand and smiled brightly. “After graduation, it will be like a new beginning for us.”
“After graduation? I have no idea where I’ll be.”
“You’ll be in D.C. with me.” Scooting his chair out, he pulled her close, against his knees. He’d been working on it, he said, a way for them to be together after she left school. This trouble with his students had made clear he wasn’t suited for a university career; he had other, better options, in government and at law firms, among his many contacts in Washington. As for her, he’d put in a call to someone he knew at the National Gallery; she’d have to start in fund-raising, but from there, his friend claimed, she could move into acquisitions.
“You found a job for me?” She had no idea Storrow could prove so devoted, or so delusional.
“You don’t have to take it,” he put in, fearful, maybe, he’d overstepped. “There’s plenty you can do there.”
She didn’t see herself in Washington, with or without him. She belonged among artists and musicians in a loft in DUMBO or a bungalow in Venice Beach.
“It’s just a chance for a fresh scene. That’s all we need, Georgia. I’m convinced of it.”
She wasn’t convinced in the least; on the contrary, the very circumstances Storrow blamed for their troubles were also the basis of her attraction: she couldn’t envision them as an ordinary couple, not in D.C., not anywhere.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, drawing away. “None of this is going to happen.”
“Listen to me: you and I deserve a proper chance.”
“We’ve had three months.”
“Three mad months. I’ve never faced such hostility in all my life. It’s been really more than I can take. After all that, I can’t handle your leaving me, too. I’m serious. I can’t.” He sat with his hands clasped; his sinewy forearms were downed with those red hairs she’d found charming once. “I’m in love with you.”
“Let’s not…exaggerate.”
“How can you speak—how can you treat me this way?” He rose sharply from the desk and took a few steps toward her. When she recoiled, he stepped back, palms up. There was a knock at the door.
“Professor Storrow?” A woman’s voice.
Storrow closed his eyes. “Just a moment.”
“It’s all right; I should go.” The interruption had come at precisely the right time. Georgia moved to the door, passing on her way out the petite Indian girl waiting in the hall. Julie Patel.
Storrow admitted her, then turned to address Georgia, his tone professorial. “I don’t think we’ve quite finished yet. If you’ll give me a minute or two.”
He shut the door behind him; Georgia could hear his voice, muffled, on the other side. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a bad time.”
“You’re the one who called me here,” Julie replied. “Though I don’t see what good it can do; it’s a bit too late to start apologizing.”
“You think I called you to apologize? You think I’d stoop to that?”
After just seconds, Storrow was on the edge of shouting. Georgia had begun to walk away, but now she stepped back again, held by the tension of the exchange behind the door.
“Why would you be stooping?” Julie’s tone was the same Georgia recalled from their meeting in Phillips Brooks House: gentle, feminine—and yet there was something dauntless behind those soft manners. “Am I so low to you or something?”
“Oh, it’s all a trap with you—every word I say becomes a problem.”
“Maybe because there is a problem. Maybe you’re the problem, and I’m just pointing it out.”
“You have no idea,” Storrow snapped, “what sort of problem I can be.”
A man appeared across the reception desk, another instructor locking up his office. He held the elevator for her and Georgia joined him, darting between the closing doors. Her heart was beating hard; she fixed the strap on her shoe so that the man wouldn’t notice her frenzied excitement, then hurried out through the main door, jogging on toward Sever Gate. She felt the same wild relief she had years ago, setting off inside her father’s car, leaving behind her latest hometown, the site of her last catastrophe. All she wanted then was distance from Storrow, to turn this man she’d been intimate with into a stranger again. What else should Rufus Storrow be? Not her boyfriend, not her friend, not her concern—nothing to her, finally, just some other girl’s problem.
8
The visit took Charlie by surprise: professors didn’t go showing up at students’ homes, not even professors as sociable as Storrow. Yet here the man was, standing in the hallway of Eliot House, on an otherwise ordinary late April evening.
He knows I know, thought Charlie. At least Storrow had to be wondering if it was mere coincidence: Alice spotting him with Georgia in New York and Charlie’s absence from his lectures ever since.
Skipping class was irresponsible, of course, a move bound to arouse Storrow’s suspicion. If Alice found out, she’d be angry; she expected Charlie to maintain appearances. She’d made it very clear she didn’t want Georgia, whose room she shared, learning what she’d told him, and so she’d put him in an impossible position: smarting from this betrayal, he couldn’t confront the two people responsible, not Georgia and not Storrow, both of whom he’d been clumsily avoiding.
“Come on, son. Let me in.”
Charlie hesitated at the door, peering at the room around him: its mismatched, thrift store furniture trimmed in empty soda cans and chip ba
gs. If he’d known Storrow was coming, he’d have cleaned up and made a point of putting away the more juvenile items, Roger’s mostly: the Smashing Pumpkins poster, those dopey pictures of his parents and his dog. He felt embarrassed in advance, then annoyed: Storrow was the one who ought to be ashamed, a man invading territory meant for a boy. Charlie hadn’t realized how angry he was until this moment.
But as soon as he opened the door and looked Storrow in the face, he relented. The professor was pale, his eyes puffy and red. Pity and, even more, curiosity trumped indignation: Charlie stepped back and Storrow crossed the room and took a seat on the cheap, lumpy sofa, ignoring the litter around him.
“I tried phoning first, but no one answered.” Storrow sat forward, elbows on his knees. His navy jacket was rumpled, and there was a small wine stain beneath the collar of his shirt. The impossible seemed to be happening: Rufus Storrow—spotless even on the muddiest of days, a man who wrestled even with a sneeze, never yielding to impulse, whose meticulousness and self-control had fascinated Charlie—was unraveling.
No doubt the man was under pressure: from the first week of the spring semester, Storrow’s class had inspired controversy. The subject was a touchy one—Law and the Colonial State—made more so by the fact that he was the instructor. A man in his position must show special sensitivity; he must know better than to repeat the sort of anecdotes that Storrow had from his time on the Indian continent: a description of his trip to the High Court of Bombay, a building of “colonial splendor,” with thirty-two sitting judges and no one, apparently, to clean the toilets. On the subject of Pakistani law, he’d quoted one local with whom he’d discussed the phasing out of jury trials—If your American peers were as stupid as ours, you’d hardly wish to be judged by them.
One simply could not say such things—not in 1997, not at Harvard, in front of a classroom filled with men and women many of whose ancestors hailed from places other than London or Amsterdam or Zurich.
After class, students began to gather outside the room, in the corridors of Sever Hall, to voice their disapproval: just a few in the first month, but their numbers multiplied with Storrow’s gaffes. By March, almost half the class stood whispering as Storrow nervously brushed by. The discussion moved to the lobby and then to the Quincy Junior Common Room, where a formal meeting was hosted by the student most critical of their professor: Julie Patel. Charlie didn’t know her well. Julie was a fellow senior, serious, subdued: she’d sat quietly through Storrow’s first lectures until, one afternoon, she’d objected to Storrow’s suggestion that British common law was more advanced than the ancient Hindu law it had replaced.
Storrow had responded with an anecdote. Arguments for cultural relativism were hardly new, he’d told the class: Hindu priests had likewise criticized British authorities for banning their practice of sati—burning widows alive. “We British also have our customs,” one commander had famously replied. “When men burn women, we hang them.”
And what was the point of such a story? Julie had asked him. “Indian women should be grateful to Western men?”
“Not to men. If gratitude is due to anyone, it would be to the English Queen.”
Storrow’s cool response had earned him smiles from his admirers, but, in the long run, done him damage. In the days that followed, Julie claimed his remark expressed violence against her and all women of color—if you were just going to bitch, Storrow had implied, we should have let you burn. But Charlie believed Storrow never meant any such thing. Julie, he felt, was taking matters much too far. When she went further still and began to press for a formal complaint against Storrow, Charlie showed up to her meeting in Quincy to argue for lenience. So maybe their professor was a bit smug and tone deaf, poorly attuned to the subtleties of campus lingo, but that didn’t make him the sort of brutal bigot Julie and her supporters made him out to be. There wasn’t anything that Storrow said which others among his colleagues weren’t thinking.
Before you go on record accusing him, just keep in mind, this is a career you could be ruining. A man’s whole life.
He’d stood up for Storrow then, not only because Storrow had been good to him, but also because he sensed that behind such attacks stood a resentment of privilege—of the same sort displayed by his own father. Sure, Storrow had his faults, but if people were eager to go after him, it was because of his background, because—here was the irony—they were intolerant of him.
—
Well, they could string Storrow up for all Charlie cared now. He hadn’t been to class for the last three meetings, not giving a damn what befell his former mentor. Nor was he moved to hear the man insisting from his sofa how he’d been fretting over Charlie’s absence and what it might mean.
“I was worried you were sick.”
“You can see I’m not.”
“Look, I’m not here to catch you out. I’d hate to see you fall behind; you’re a superior student and your grade ought to reflect that. Whatever the reason you’ve missed class, you can confide in me. I hold you in special regard, I think you know that; I consider you a sort of protégé, and more than that, a friend.”
Charlie snorted.
Storrow ignored this. “Just make up what you’ve missed; bone up for a few days, take the test, and we’ll get this squared away. Otherwise, if I don’t penalize you, we could both get into trouble.”
“Is that what you’ve come to talk about? My getting into trouble?”
Storrow looked down at his fingers, laced together over his knees. The knuckles were white from his tight grip.
He wants to ask but he’s afraid. Afraid of what I know. Afraid of what I’ll do.
“Are you going to stop seeing her?” Charlie demanded gruffly. He hadn’t planned on confronting Storrow; it would come back to Georgia now, and then to Alice, that he’d failed to keep their secret. Well, so what? To hell with them: Why should he be false because they were all such liars? “Are you through with her? Just tell me.”
“I’m going black here, Charlie. Going black.” Storrow left off, unable to say more. His silence was empty: not a defeat for either of them, nor a victory. “You’re angry and I don’t blame you. I suppose I failed to live up to your idea of me.”
An arrogant remark, Charlie thought, and a stupid one. Didn’t Storrow realize he’d matched Charlie’s ideal exactly? He’d gotten Georgia; he’d done precisely what Charlie wished to do.
“You might not believe me,” Storrow continued, “but it hurts me a great deal to know I’ve disappointed you. You matter to me, and your opinion of me matters, too.”
In fact Charlie could believe that. For a few lovely months, he and Storrow had shared a mutual desire to believe in Storrow’s myth and in the existence of such grand and exclusive circles to which he belonged and to which Charlie was about to be admitted.
Now, seated across from Storrow in his own living room, Charlie saw him as unworthy of his veneration. For the first time, he saw Storrow, with his elegant looks and manners, the way his father saw the privileged summer renters on the Island, and he understood Jim Flournoy’s refusal to consider such people—however educated or accomplished—nobler than himself. What was nobility, really? It wasn’t behaving as if the whole world belonged to you; it was a demonstration of proper conduct and restraint, of not taking more than one was due.
Georgia had not been this man’s to take.
“I want you to know,” Storrow went on, sternly. “If you were to inform the administration, I wouldn’t blame you. In your position, that’s probably what I would do.”
“So why don’t you inform them then. In your position. Go ahead, do the honorable thing.”
Storrow sighed, defeated. “You’re right. I’ve been a smack, haven’t I? I’ll do as you say.”
But truthfully, it wouldn’t bring Charlie any satisfaction to see Storrow suffer.
“What I want is to forget this,” he told Storrow, finally. He would return to class for the few sessions that remained; he would complete his
assignments and finish the term without incident. All he asked from Storrow in exchange was to respect the boundaries: “Just stay away from Georgia Calvin and stay away from me.”
—
Charlie appeared in class, as promised, and chose a seat in the back row beside Julie Patel. Storrow must have taken note of him, and of his new location in the room, but if he had, he didn’t let it show. The man’s attention remained fixed on the dais: he was reading from his lecture—a new approach: perhaps meant to prevent further inappropriate, off-the-cuff remarks.
Charlie glanced over at Julie. A button was open on her blouse, the lace of her bra peeking through. A pretty girl, sexy in her demure way, though he hadn’t paid her much mind until then. To think she’d been in this classroom all semester and it hadn’t occurred to him to ask her out. A campus full of young, attractive, clever women—he’d never be surrounded by such abundance again—and he’d wasted this chance, just wasted it, on Georgia. What was the sum of his college dalliances? A few awkward nights with the girl across the hall of Weld his freshman year and, in all the time since he’d met Georgia, nothing but one rushed revenge screw, after the junior formal, with a snub-nosed blonde from the Salient, an episode that had left him feeling guilty and regretful.
Georgia wasn’t stupid: she must have surmised the reason he’d held himself apart from other women. She must have known it and chosen to ignore it. Had she once, while in bed with Storrow, given a moment’s thought to him, felt a single pang of regret for what she’d done?
She hadn’t, of course, and now only a month was left before graduation and all he could hope for was a hookup, to share in a last grab with others like him, seeking small compensation for experiences missed. He wondered if Julie might be among them, if she were also single and susceptible to a last orgiastic impulse.
Sleeping with Storrow’s adversary—that might offer consolation. And why only sleep with Julie? Why not become involved with her, develop a commitment based on trust, a love founded in mutual respect? Julie was thoughtful, courageous, and responsible: with her he might have a relationship like Roger had with Jasmine, one far more adult than Georgia’s with a man twice her age.