by Smiley, Jane
Cecelia Sanchez, assistant professor of foreign languages and teacher of Spanish, too found the Midwest eerie, but it was not only the flatness that threw her. Each day of the past two weeks she would have picked a different source of dislocation. Right now it seemed eerie to look out on twenty-one blond heads, in rows of five, unrelieved by a single brunette. Last night she’d thought the humidity was going to suffocate her. A few nights before, her rented duplex had seemed uncannily muffled by trees. Sometimes it seemed that everyone she saw, everyone in every room, was determined to be very very quiet. In the almost empty streets there was no shouting, no music. When she went into stores, the customers seemed to be gliding around on tires. Salespeople appeared beside her, smiling significantly, murmuring, apparently ready to flee. No one wanted to negotiate or even talk about a purchase. You were supposed to make up your mind in some kind of mysterious vacuum. The smiling itself made Cecelia uneasy, because it didn’t seem to lead to anything, and whatever the distinctions were between types of smiles, they were so fine that she couldn’t make them out. On all sides, her neighbors were dead quiet, the hum of air conditioners substituting for conversation and argument. She saw men in gas stations exchanging sentences a single word long and understanding what they were getting at.
This was her second class today. In the first class, a second-year group that met at eight a.m., the students sat silent and attentive, their faces straight, their posture excellent. They raised their hands and waited to be called upon. The girls wore so little makeup that the one set of plum-colored lips, and perfectly outlined and filled in they were, belonging to a heavyset girl in the front row, throbbed like a beacon. Cecelia had not been able to take her eyes off them, and that, too, made her feel weird.
Though only twenty-six, Cecelia had never thought herself provincial—her parents were from Costa Rica and Mexico. She had lived in L.A. and San Francisco. She had been married to an Anglo and spent time with his family in Oregon, and that white family had talked and argued plenty. She had even known transplanted midwesterners—now that she thought about it, it was they who had rolled their eyes in amazement when she’d revealed the location of her new job. But she’d been so relieved to get a good job, a job like there used to be in the old days, before the era of a course here and a course there, all for little money and no benefits, that she hadn’t paid any attention. A job away from Scott, the Former, and her parents, who’d had less sympathy with her divorce than with her marriage, and little enough with that. Anyway, what could be bad about a town with low rents and no crime? And it wasn’t exactly bad, it was just quiet and dreamlike; except for the humidity (which did give her hair a wonderful bounce), it was a cool, Anglo, keep-your-distance-and-we’ll-all-get-along kind of heavenly vision, where, as she had overheard in the departmental office, someone’s wallet had been found on the street and turned in to the police, who called and said they’d send it over in a squad car, the officers didn’t have anything better to do at the moment. It was true that no one had asked her more than the most perfunctory questions about herself and that even good friends at parties she’d gone to talked to each other about the weather, their gardens, and the athletic teams with a detailed interest that dumfounded her, but the blankness of this was maybe a fair exchange for the anxieties and conflicts of home.
She read the roll. The students, like those in the earlier class, expressed their presence with a slight change of posture or the lifting of a finger or chin. She counted them all present, baffled at how she was supposed to read the roll-sheet and detect their gestures at the same time. Then she had an idea. She said, “For the first two weeks, I would like you to sit alphabetically, starting here.” She tensed for the inevitable wise-guy remark—“Hey, Professor, what’s an alphabet?”—the sort of smirking, half-charming, getting-to-know-you-getting-to-know-all-about-you remark at least one of her students of the last three years would have shouted out, but it didn’t come. She pointed to the front desk to her left, then read out the roll again. All but one of the blonds noiselessly took their places. She said, “Yes?”
“I’m a late add?” said the leftover girl. “The registrar sent me over here for permission? Because the class was full?”
“Name?”
“Lydia Henderson.” Lydia’s voice surged out, musical and vibrant.
“That’s fine.” She assigned the girl a seat.
“Hola,” she said. The semester had begun.
4
The Common Wisdom
IT WAS well known among the citizens of the state that the university had pots of money and that there were highly paid faculty members in every department who had once taught Marxism and now taught something called deconstructionism which was only Marxism gone underground in preparation for emergence at a time of national weakness.
It was well known among the legislators that the faculty as a whole was determined to undermine the moral and commercial well-being of the state, and that supporting a large and nationally famous university with state monies was exactly analogous to raising a nest of vipers in your own bed.
It was well known among the faculty that the governor and the state legislature had lost interest in education some twenty years before and that it was only a matter of time before all classes would be taught as lectures, all exams given as computer-graded multiple choice, all subscriptions to professional journals at the library stopped, and all research time given up to committee work and administrative red tape. All the best faculty were known to be looking for other jobs, and this was known to be a matter of indifference to the state board of governors.
It was well known among the secretaries in every office and every department that the faculty and administrators could, in fact, run the Xerox and even the ditto machines. They were just too lazy to do so.
It was well known among the janitorial staff that if you wanted to maintain your belief in human nature, it was better never, ever to look, even by chance, into any wastebasket, but to adopt a technique of lifting and twisting the garbage bag in one motion and tossing it without even remarking to yourself that it was unusual in weight or bulk or odor.
It was well known among the students that the dormitories, like airlines, were always overbooked, and that temporary quarters in corridors and common rooms happened by design rather than accident. It was also well known to the students that there had been three axe murders on the campus the year before, that the victims’ names had started with “A” or “M,” and that the murderer had never been found, and that the university would do anything to hush these crimes up. It was well known to the students that the chili served in the dorms every Thursday noon contained all the various kinds of leftover meat from the preceding week, even meat left on plates. Some students found it tasty anyway. It was a further tenet of popular student belief that the bars stopped checking IDs at midnight Fridays and Saturdays. This happened, in fact, to be true.
It was well known to all members of the campus population that other, unnamed groups reaped unimagined monetary advantages in comparison to the monetary disadvantages of one’s own group, and that if funds were distributed fairly, according to real merit, for once, some people would have another think coming.
IVAR HARSTAD, the provost, knew all these things and plenty more. Only his secretary, Mrs. Walker, whom he called “Mrs. Walker,” while she addressed him as “Ivar,” had been around the campus longer and knew more. One of the things that Ivar knew about Mrs. Walker was that she would only tell him what she knew if he asked the right question, so he spent a portion of his time meditating over what he might ask Mrs. Walker and how he might phrase the question. He understood that this was much like being married, but he had no firsthand knowledge of that. He lived with his twin brother, Nils, the dean of ag extension, in a large brick house with two sunporches in the best neighborhood in town. One thing he knew was that he and Nils bore the disrespectful appellation of “the Albino Nordic Twins,” but Mrs. Walker had assured him that this moniker was no
longer in widespread usage, since Jacob Grunwald, who had put this name about as a disgruntled seeker after the job Ivar had now held for fourteen years, was long gone elsewhere, and had in fact died of the heart attack he deserved.
Foremost in the provost’s internal data bank just now were the results of his morning meeting with the President of the university and His inner circle of administrative advisors. They were not positive results, did not redound to the university’s professed goal of excellence in every area, or even the provost’s own secret goal of adequacy in most areas. Cutbacks, on top of cutbacks already made, were in the air, though no one had yet used the word, which was a technical term and a magical charm to be used only at the time when items in the budget were actually being crossed off. It was a technical term in that you could refer to “shifting resources” and “reallocating funds” right up to the moment you told some guy that his research assistant was being fired and his new lab equipment was not being ordered, and it was a magical charm because it instantly transformed the past into a special, golden epoch, the grand place that all things had been cut back from.
One thing that Ivar had noticed at the meeting was the way that the president and his right-hand and left-hand men, Jack Parker, federal grant specialist, and Bob Brown, human cipher, pushed back from the table as the word “cutback” entered the discussion. It was clear from their manner that the actual cutting back would be beneath the three of them—they were adopting a regrettable-but-necessary-I’m-leaving-for-the-airport-right-after-the-meeting sort of detachment. It was perhaps for this reason that the actual amount to be cut from the budget had not seemed to faze them—the three of them dealt only in numbers. What the numbers would buy, whether copying machines or assistant professors, they did not precisely know. Or at least, the president and Jack Parker, a hawk-nosed man with close-set eyes who Mrs. Walker told Ivar had once been a private investigator, did not know. Bob Brown, balding, round-faced, ever-smiling, seemed to know either everything or nothing. In his two years on the campus (at a salary higher than Ivar’s own) he had not yet divulged what he did know. His only distinct characteristic was his habit of referring to the students as “our customers.”
Though his computer screen was shining with color and information, Ivar was biting the eraser of his pencil and marking in little tiny writing on a little tiny piece of paper, etching the little tiny names of enormous corporations, potential investors of great big sums of money. Like everyone else at the meeting, he was preparing a list for Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek, associate vice-president for development, whose whole job was made up of the sort of approaching, stroking, grooming, and teasing that these corporate contracts, or “grants,” demanded. Until the advent of Jack Parker, she had approached, stroked, groomed, and teased the federal government, too, but now Jack did that, spending most of his time in Washington, D.C., where, Ivar couldn’t help imagining, the first thing he did when he got to his hotel room, before he even cast his glittering gaze around the room for evidence of hostile intrusion, was to pull out his .357 Magnum and set it on the table beside his bed. Elaine’s beat was corporate headquarters in places like Wichita and Fargo, where university-trained engineers and agronomists had built empires based on flow valves and grain sorghum.
Associations of mutual interest between the university and the corporations were natural, inevitable, and widely accepted. According to the state legislature, they were to be actively pursued. The legislature, in fact, was already counting the “resources” that could be “allocated” elsewhere in state government when corporations began picking up more of the tab for higher education, so success in finding this money would certainly convince them that further experiments in driving the university into the arms of the private sector would be warranted, that actually paying for the university out of state funds was irresponsible, or even immoral, or even criminal (robbing widows and children, etc., to fatten sleek professors who couldn’t find real employment, etc.).
Ivar stared at the tiny scrap and counted the names, ticking each with the tip of his pencil. Fifteen names that only he could read. Then he pressed the button on his phone. Mrs. Walker’s voice came through like the voice of God. He said, “Mrs. Walker, tell me again the amount of the possible reallocation.”
“Seven million.” That made it true.
“This early in the fiscal year.”
“This early in the fiscal year.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
No single donor had ever come up with seven million, except for a named building with a bust of said donor bigger than life in the lobby. But though perhaps somewhere some billionaire on his deathbed was longing for a respectable home for his wealth, Ivar hadn’t heard of any.
Good-bye to Nuclear Engineering.
Good-bye to Women’s Studies.
Good-bye to Clothing Design and Fiber Science.
Good-bye to Broadcast Journalism and the university radio station.
Good-bye to Oceanography.
Good-bye to the Geological Station in Colorado.
Good-bye to the university chamber orchestra.
Good-bye to every secretary hired in the last six months.
Good-bye to Xeroxing, hello to dittoing.
Ivar turned his paper over and wrote down another name, then another. He sighed.
It was all true, what everybody knew, all true about the Marxists and the vipers and the indifference of the legislature. Only the axe murders weren’t true. Those, he had heard, took place on some campus in northern California.
5
Secular Humanism
MARLY HELLMICH did have a semester of college. What she remembered most clearly was how her freshman English teacher wrote the words “critical thinking” on the board, and then, after some discussion, during which all of the students, including Marly, expressed discomfort with the idea of “critical thinking,” the teacher had written the phrase “Critical thinking is to a liberal education as faith is to religion.” After the semester, Marly understood that the converse was true also—faith is to a liberal education as critical thinking is to religion, irrelevant and even damaging. The wiser course, she had decided, was to cast her lot with faith and forget liberal education, and that was what she had done, and she had felt much better for it, while at the same time noting the irony that her unskilled labor was worth more to the university than it was to any of the other employers in town. And so she had spent all of her adulthood in the arms of the university after all, serving the cause of critical thinking, or at least the critical thinkers, with what, some days, seemed like all her strength.
Father saw the university as a set of one-way streets in the middle of town that sometimes were confusing, and always snarled traffic. When he used to drive more, he would come home perennially surprised—“I don’t know what they’re doing down there, but it took me twenty minutes to get through.” Marly’s brother, who worked in a feed mill in a nearby town, saw the conspiracy of secular humanism moving forward at the university every day on every front by measurable degrees. Computers, he told her, had been designed specifically to forward the progress of secular humanism—“Christians had to count one thing at a time, so they went slow. The secular humanists weren’t going to stand for that, nosiree. The computer is the atom bomb of secular humanism. You ever seen a computer that acknowledges the Lord? The computer is the greatest false prophet there ever was. I wouldn’t touch a computer with a fork.”
Marly’s view was more complex. What she saw was a stream of people who often didn’t acknowledge her, and so felt free to look and act with complete unself-consciousness as they were passing down the food line. Almost the only thing she was ever called upon to say was “Lift your tray, please, the plates are hot.” Almost the only thing anyone ever said to her was “I’ll take some of the pork,” or whatever. Almost everyone was slow, as if contemplating the food put them into a dream, and a lot of people had to be prompted to choose. A few had the irritating hab
it of throwing their trays onto the top of the steam table and saying, “I don’t care, just put something on it,” thereby leaving the choice to her. People started eating while they were waiting in line.
But of course food behavior wasn’t the end of it. Boys walked through the line pushing trays with one hand and feeling their girlfriends’ rear ends with the other. Couples kissed passionately every time the line paused. Fingers went to noses, hands to rears. Once in a while someone absentmindedly stuck a fork handle or a pencil in his ear and twirled it. Tears streamed, and not only down the faces of women and girls. There were bursts of laughter at nothing. People sang and muttered. People pushed trays, their own and those around them, off the tray rails. Food was spilled, plates were broken, tempers were lost, apologies were made (or sometimes not). People fell down, even though the busboys were careful to clean up and to set out the “Slippery Floor” sign. People read books and had arguments in line. On more than one occasion, food had been thrown as soon as she served it.
Once, fifteen years ago or so, a man had stuck his fork right into the back of the man ahead of him, as far as it would go. Everyone in line had started saying, “Oh my God oh my God oh my God.” Blood might have spurted out, except that it was winter, and the victim’s tweed sport jacket had soaked up most of it. The commons supervisor had come out and taken charge, calling an ambulance and the police. She had walked the victim over to a table, and he had sat there, very straight, wincing but not talking. The supervisor wouldn’t let anyone pull out the fork. Marly never understood why. Another time, late on the dinner line when there weren’t many people in the food area, three fraternity pledges had exposed themselves to her. She had just lifted the plates onto their trays when they stepped back and there were their penises, dangling like little purses in front of their jeans. “Thelma!” she had called out, and when the supervisor appeared and the boys were hurriedly zipping up, she had said, “These boys have something to show you.” Then she had looked them, especially the biggest, who was first in line, right in the eye, and said, “Do it again, NOW!” and they had done it, and Thelma had turned them in to campus police and they had been expelled from school.