By the Book

by Julia Sonneborn

  Steve was beaming at me, his face pink with pride. “Felicitations!” he cried, shaking my hand exuberantly. I let myself smile for the first time in what felt like months.

  *

  MY COPY EDITOR HAD asked me to double-check a citation, so I dutifully headed to the library to track down the book I needed. Construction on the new addition to the building was slated to start in the summer, and library staffers were already moving items into storage and rearranging bookshelves in anticipation. Luckily, the book I needed was still in the library stacks on the second floor, and though the area had been cordoned off to students, the research librarian gave me permission to access the area.

  Before heading upstairs, I took a minute to look at the architectural mock-up that was on display in the lobby. There, under a glass-enclosed dome, was a miniature replica of the renovated library, dotted with miniature trees and people. Bex’s gift would update the infrastructure and also add a modern annex with a student café and a state-of-the-art space for Manuscripts and Special Collections. A small placard noted that the complete structure would be renamed the Chandler-Beckington Library when it reopened.

  I walked up the stairs to the second floor, my hand on the worn wooden banister, feeling a little sad that this would be my last time in the stacks for a while. No more leisurely browsing through the dark aisles. No more sampling interesting books, buffet-style, from the shelves. No more quiet afternoons tucked into a window seat, reading through my selections.

  I stepped over a velvet rope barring access to the bookshelves and headed straight for the PR-PS section. The air was cool and dry, and I breathed in the familiar, comforting smell of paper and ink. Natural light came in through the glass windows but was soon swallowed up as I walked farther into the stacks. Squinting, I tried to make out call numbers—I was looking for PR865 and found myself in the PR600s, then 700s, then the 800s. The row ended, and I quickly slipped to the other side to continue my hunt.

  Someone was standing at the other end of the row, quietly looking out the window at the courtyard below, his back silhouetted by the light.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed. “Sorry—I didn’t realize there was anyone else up here.”

  The person turned around, and for a second I couldn’t make out who it was.

  But then the person said “Anne,” and my chest tightened at the familiar sound. Adam.

  I blinked, my eyes adjusting, and saw him standing there, a folder tucked under his arm. My hands suddenly felt damp.

  “Hi,” I said, walking tentatively toward him. “I was just here looking for a book. The librarian gave me permission to come up.” My voice sounded shrill in the empty stacks.

  Adam nodded, turning back to the window. “There’s a great view from up here,” he said, pointing to the quad littered with students sunbathing on the grass, or playing Frisbee, or studying. A banner was stretched across two trees with the message “GOOD LUCK ON FINALS!!!!!” painted in large black letters with a bunch of red and white balloons bouncing gaily in the breeze.

  “I like to come up here every once in a while to get away from the craziness,” he said. “It’s always nice and quiet up here.”

  I stood next to him, watching the activity below. Through the windows, I could hear muffled laughter and the sound of hip-hop playing on a distant boom box. For several seconds we stood in uncomfortable silence, staring out the window and avoiding each other’s eyes.

  “How are you doing?” Adam asked. “It’s been a hard semester for you.”

  Ugh, I thought. Even Adam felt sorry for me. Poor, pathetic Anne, whose dad had passed away and whose boyfriend then disappeared in a cloud of scandal.

  “I’ve had better semesters,” I said. “I’ll be glad for summer to get here.”

  “I’m sure,” Adam said, nodding. “Listen—I’m sorry about everything with Rick. I had no idea he’d stolen from so many people’s work.”

  “You didn’t?” I asked, surprised. “I thought maybe you suspected it. When you warned me he wasn’t trustworthy, isn’t that what you were talking about?”

  Adam shook his head. “No, not at all. I was actually thinking of something else entirely.”

  “Was it about his political activism? Rick told me that you two clashed over his union work.”

  “Is that what he told you?” Adam laughed. “Wow, he really is a true fabulist.”

  “It isn’t true? You didn’t fire him from his job at Houston?”

  “Me? Fire him? Absolutely not. He agreed to leave after he was discovered having an affair with one of his students. The parents found out and wanted to press charges, but in the end the girl wouldn’t cooperate. And technically, Rick hadn’t done anything wrong, at least according to the school’s fraternization policy. The girl was over the age of eighteen and she was no longer his student.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “After he left, we found out he’d actually been involved with several undergraduate women at the same time. It was a real mess. You can imagine my surprise when I saw they’d hired him at Fairfax.”

  “Ugh, I’m such an idiot,” I said, flinching. “I can’t believe I went to bat for him. He should be barred from ever teaching again.” I looked at him curiously. “So why did you still help him out, knowing all of this?”

  “I didn’t do it for Rick,” Adam said, his voice husky. “I did it for you.”

  I felt my face get warm. Adam was standing so close to me that I could practically touch him. If I took just a half step forward, I would be in his arms.

  “I should’ve listened when you warned me about him,” I said.

  Adam shook his head. “No, I should never have said anything. You were right. It was none of my business.” He cleared his throat slightly. “I care for you, Anne. I didn’t want you to get hurt. I— He didn’t deserve you.”

  Adam was looking at me now, his brown eyes holding mine. My heart caught in my throat. This is it, I thought. He wanted a sign from me, a hint of encouragement—I was sure of it. I could feel the dam of pent-up emotion about to break.

  I started to say something, but there was a sudden slap of flip-flops from the stairwell.

  “Dr. Corey!” I heard someone say. “Yo, are you up here?”

  I saw Chad Vickers’s curly head peek out from behind a bookcase.

  “Chad?” I said.

  “There you are, Dr. C!” he exclaimed. He loped over, one earbud dangling from his ear, his skateboard under his arm. “The librarian told me I could find you here.”

  “Is this one of your students?” Adam asked me, looking amused.

  “Yo—you’re the president, aren’t you?” Chad said, his eyes widening. “What’re you doing up here?”

  “Just checking out a book,” Adam said, pulling a random book off the shelf. I tried not to laugh.

  “Cool, cool,” Chad said, his head bobbing up and down. “That’s tight. Our president reads. I’m down with that.”

  “What do you need, Chad?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Right. I need your signature, Dr. Corey. So I can graduate.” He began rummaging through his backpack.

  “You’re a senior?” Adam asked. “Congratulations!”

  “I know, finally,” Chad said. “It only took me six years. I’ve been on academic probation forever, but Dr. C—she helped me out. Let me take her class three times so I could finally pass.” He found a crumpled sheet of paper and tried to smooth it out on his knee.

  “You must have learned a lot in her class,” Adam said.

  “Oh, yeah, for sure. Like Tennyson’s legit GOAT. His poetry’s dope.”

  “I agree,” Adam said, nodding and laughing.

  “Here’s the form from my academic adviser,” Chad said, handing me the crumpled piece of paper. “Sorry it’s so mangled.”

  “Anne—I’ll catch up with you later,” Adam said, making a move for the stairwell.

  “Wait—” I said, scrambling to find a pen in my bag. “This will only take a minute.”
r />   “Oh, man,” Chad said, realization belatedly dawning on him. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “No!” Adam and I said in unison.

  “Sorry—I do have to run,” Adam said. “But Chad—good luck, and I’ll see you at graduation.” I felt my heart sink as he disappeared down the stairwell.

  “He seems like a cool cat,” Chad said to me after Adam had left. “You guys know each other well?”

  “Sort of,” I said. I finished signing the sheet of paper, and Chad tucked it back into his backpack.

  “If it’s OK with you, I’m gonna run this back to my adviser before he leaves for the day,” he said. He popped in his earbuds, dropped his skateboard, and coasted the twenty feet to the stairwell. I half expected him to ride his skateboard down the stairs, but soon I heard the descending beat of his flip-flops.

  Turning back to the shelves, I closed my eyes and rested my head against the book spines, feeling a swelling of disappointment and despair. Had I misread the situation? Why had Adam left so abruptly? I shoved my hands in my pockets and felt the slip of paper with the call number for the book I needed. Pulling it out, I saw that the number had been so badly smudged by my perspiration that it was almost impossible to read. Was it PR865 I wanted? Or was it PR866? I steadied myself against the walls of books, suddenly feeling claustrophobic.

  When I finally got to the correct spot, I scanned the call numbers for a match. I double-checked and then triple-checked, but the book I needed wasn’t there. I left the library empty-handed.

  chapter twenty

  THE MORNING OF GRADUATION dawned overcast and humid. Usually, the ceremony was held outside in a grassy amphitheater, a picturesque venue with concentric stone steps and towering trees that made commencement look like an ancient Druid ritual. The threat of rain, however, threw the plans in doubt, and up until the last minute, we weren’t sure if the ceremony would be relocated indoors. In the end, the college decided to go ahead with the outdoor ceremony but issued everyone a plastic poncho in case. I was wearing my rental regalia, feeling damp and uncomfortably hot, my shoes squishing in the moist grass and my poncho tucked under my arm. Since I was receiving an award, I would be seated on the dais with the board of trustees, student speakers, and other award recipients. Larry waved at me as I processed in, holding up his own teaching medal and giving me a thumbs-up.

  Graduation was considerably less entertaining without Larry seated beside me cracking jokes and offering assorted beverages and snacks. I paged through my program as the rest of the faculty processed in and then the undergraduates, beaming and waving at their parents in the audience. Around me, I could hear my more jaded colleagues grumble about wasting their morning at the ceremony. The pomp and circumstance weren’t for us or even for the students, they complained—it was for the parents, who ogled us in our robes like we were a circus menagerie and then misted up seeing their own children in Fairfax’s red-and-black regalia. I couldn’t help it, though—I had a soft spot for graduation. Every time I heard the familiar Elgar melody, I felt myself getting sentimental. From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Emily Young dressed in her regalia, her mortarboard covered in rhinestones and photographs, and I felt a bittersweet mix of emotion. I’d heard from Pam that she’d accepted her Columbia offer but deferred it for a year, under the pretext that she wanted to work for a year and travel. In truth, I suspected she was planning to follow Rick wherever he was. Part of me didn’t blame her. She was in love.

  From where I sat in the third row, I could make out the back of Adam’s head. His hair looked as if it had been freshly cut, and he was seated next to the white-haired chairman of the board of trustees. Every once in a while, I could see him lean over to whisper something into the trustee’s ear. With a pang, I thought of our Princeton graduation more than ten years earlier. I’d slumped in my seat, hungover on peach schnapps, fighting off waves of nausea and self-pity. I never did see Adam on graduation day.

  Adam made his opening remarks, and a series of student speeches followed. The salutatorian, a classics major, gave a Latin address that no one but Steve understood. The valedictorian, a former student of mine, gave a dull but unimpeachable speech about hard work and big dreams. A local judge who was receiving an honorary doctorate pontificated on civic responsibilities. I shifted nervously in my seat. The awards were coming up next.

  Three of us were getting the Distinguished Teaching Award—a guy from political science, a woman from chemistry, and me. I watched as the two other recipients were called up and introduced by their deans, congratulated, and applauded. When my turn came, I stood up and walked to the front of the dais as the dean of humanities introduced me.

  “Professor Anne Corey is a scholar of nineteenth-century British literature, specializing in the work of women writers. Although she has only been at Fairfax for a few years, she has already made her mark on the college. One faculty member notes, ‘She is a brilliant scholar, a devoted teacher, and a generous colleague—a true humanist, in all senses of the word.’ Another colleague writes, ‘Professor Corey makes the text come alive for her students. Suddenly, these supposedly boring nineteenth-century novels become interesting and relevant to their twenty-first-century lives.’

  “Her students concur, praising her ability to present difficult material in a clear and engaging way. ‘She uses real-world examples, and she has a great sense of humor,’ one student said. Several said, ‘She made me fall in love with literature.’ One student, who has taken every class Professor Corey has offered, wrote, ‘Professor Corey is my hero. She taught me that books are powerful and that language can make and remake entire worlds. I want to be her when I grow up.’

  “For her record of excellence in teaching, I am pleased to award the President’s Distinguished Teaching Award to Professor Anne Corey.”

  I was blushing as I moved to shake the dean’s hand. I turned to face Adam, who placed the teaching medal around my neck and handed me a certificate, sealed in a large envelope. “Congratulations,” he said, formally shaking my hand. In the audience, I could hear Larry whooping, “Go Annie!”

  It was the quickest graduation ceremony I’d ever attended, cut short after Adam conferred the degrees and it began to rain. Instead of processing out, everyone disbanded in a helter-skelter kind of way, pulling on their ponchos and running for cover. I found Larry huddled under a tree waiting for me, his fluorescent-orange poncho wrapped around his almost-hot-pink regalia.

  “I want to be just like Professor Corey when I grow up,” he said, pretending to pray to the sky. “She’s my hero.”

  “Shut up, Larry,” I said. “I was dying of embarrassment up there.”

  “Oh, don’t be so modest,” he said. “Isn’t it wonderful to be worshipped?” He reached over to inspect my medal, pulling his own medal out from under his poncho to compare. “Wait a second,” he cried. “I think your medal’s bigger than mine. No fair!”

  I’d invited Larry to be my guest for the luncheon, so we dropped off our damp regalia in our offices and headed to the President’s House, Larry keeping me dry under his enormous black umbrella. Because of the rain, the luncheon had been moved from the garden into the main house, with several round tables covered in white tablecloths and scattered with red and black confetti. Larry and I were seated at Adam’s table, along with the other teaching award recipients. Adam hadn’t yet arrived, leaving two empty seats diagonally across from us. I peeked at the name cards. “President Adam Martinez,” read one. “Guest,” read the other. I felt my heart constrict with jealousy, wondering who Adam had invited to be his plus-one.

  “I’m done with him,” Larry said, complaining about Jack. After weeks of no contact, Jack had finally resurfaced with a new phone number and new plans for the future. Larry allowed himself to start hoping again. “He kept telling me, ‘Just hold on a little bit longer. We’ll be together soon.’ But then the next thing I know, I’m reading in People that he and Bex are in Paris renewing their vows. Paris! And just to twist the
knife further, they’re apparently trying to have another kid.”

  “I saw that,” I said. “I’m sorry. I thought maybe he’d changed.”

  “No kidding! He’s back to playing the Happy Family Man, just because of this stupid vampire sequel. He cares more about his image than about me.”

  Our salads were served, and Larry picked listlessly at the leaves. “I can’t eat,” he said. “I can’t sleep, I think I’m losing the rest of my hair.” He sighed heavily. “They shouldn’t call it a breakup. They should call it a breakdown.”

  Adam seated himself at the table, apologizing for being late. He greeted Larry and me from across the table, but our conversation was almost immediately interrupted by an elderly alum who came over to introduce herself. The seat beside Adam stayed empty. As soon as the alum left, one of Adam’s aides appeared with something for him to sign, and he scanned the page quickly.

  “Did you not like your salad?” a server asked, leaning over Larry to take his untouched plate.

  “Oh, no, the salad was delightful,” he said. “I’m just not hungry. I got dumped the other day.”

  The server, a young woman, looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she said before hurrying away.

  “See?” Larry said. “It’s like I have the cooties. No one wants to hear about a breakup. No one wants to hear about my tawdry personal life.”

  “The woman just asked about your salad, Larry. She didn’t expect you to spill your guts.”

  “You’re right,” Larry said. “I’ll just be mute now.” He pretended to zip his lips.

  I glanced at Adam. His salad lay untouched, and he was jotting something down on a small pad of paper. I wondered where his guest was and then hated myself for caring.

  I turned back to Larry. “You’ll feel better in a few weeks,” I said, lowering my voice.