Dr. Narang pointed to a boy in the second row. “Dan. Very good. Now, where did I lose you?”
“At the beginning.”
A couple of students snickered, but the professor held up his palm. “Now, if one of you has a question, there’s a good chance others have the same question; they’re just not saying it.”
He walked up the aisle. “Dan, you play a sport, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Remind me of what it is again. Ping pong? Battle chess?”
Dan snorted. “Lacrosse.”
“Yes, lacrosse. Well, when you play lacrosse and you hit the ball with that stick thing—what’s that called?”
“A stick.”
“Right. So if I said, ‘Holding the stick helps Dan play lacrosse,’ what is our verb?”
A pause. “‘Holding’—no, ‘helps.’”
“Yes! Helps is our verb. It is the action.”
Dan nodded.
“And the helps Dan play lacrosse, that’s our predicate. But, ah, where is our gerund—our weird little verb acting as a noun? In other words, what helps you play lacrosse?”
Even from the back row, Eliza saw something light up in Dan’s face. “‘Holding the stick.’”
“Exactly!” Dr. Narang practically ran up to the board, scrawling the sentence with his marker. “‘Holding the stick’ is our gerund!”
Before she realized it, Eliza had straightened up and leaned forward. She’d spent so much time thinking about what he taught—railing against it, most recently stewing about it—that the how hadn’t occurred to her. But Dr. Kunal Narang was a natural. He was a teacher. He didn’t just believe in grammar, he loved it, and it showed.
Fifteen minutes had passed, a new sentence on the board, a new student being called on to diagram, before he finally caught sight of her lurking in the back.
His eyebrows raised a moment. Then he smiled that Cheshire grin.
“It has escaped my attention, class, that we have a visitor with us today.”
The students turned to gawk at her, and Eliza managed a small smile and an embarrassed wave. She smoothed down her unruly blond curls and sat up straighter.
“Dr. Eliza Stein, renowned poet and newest member of the English faculty, is here to visit us today, perhaps to see the more structured side of language.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and he beamed.
“It is Dr. Stein’s good luck that class is almost over and I won’t make an example of her by asking her to diagram her own sentence.”
Eliza’s stomach clenched.
“Because diagramming a sentence is something Dr. Stein finds objectionable. Unless she’s changed her tune?”
She shook her head fervently.
“By the way, my friends, the phrase ‘diagramming a sentence’ is a…”
“Gerund,” Dan boomed from the front.
“Clever boy. I’ll see you lot next week.”
The clock’s second hand ticked over and the students started putting their books away and making for the door. Though there were a few stragglers. As Eliza waited for the room to clear, a girl approached Dr. Narang as he erased the board and asked him questions about a handout.
Eliza watched him respond enthusiastically and warmly to her, like he’d done with the others in class, and as a soft pink blush erupted over the girl’s pale cheeks, Eliza thought of how she might’ve felt to be eighteen and in this man’s class, watching his tall, lanky frame two or three times a week as he taught with such energy. Thought of how it might’ve been to daydream about touching his thick dark hair or having him whisper things in your ear in that rich accent.
She reached down and tugged up her boots.
As the girl walked past her and out of the room, Eliza stood, slung her bag over her shoulder, and walked down the lecture hall toward him.
“Dr. Stein, this is a pleasure.” Dr. Narang stood at the table at the front, gathering his supplies.
She pulled an apple from her bag and plopped it down on the table.
“An apple?” he asked.
“A noun,” she said. “I thought I’d beat you to the punch. Anyway, I’d like to trade it for Kate Netherfield.”
“Who’s Kate Netherfield?”
“Kate Netherfield is a student who is no longer going to be in my Poetry 102 class next semester. Do you know why?”
“She’s leaving the university?”
“No.”
“She died?”
“No.”
“She’s been incarcerated?”
“Might as well have been.” She picked up the apple and took a bite of it. “You poached her from me. She was all set to take my course, and then her advisor suggested she take Sentence Power because it would ‘improve her writing.’”
A slow smile spread across his face. “Kate Netherfield, brown hair with the purple streak, thoughtful sort?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “She’ll do well. And it will improve her writing.”
“Save your gloating.”
He laughed and shoved a thick binder and two slick paperbacks into a big canvas bag on the table. “Did you know that the English department has been hemorrhaging students for the past decade? Last year I lost one of my best students to the Computer Science department, and another to Media Studies. Do you know how that makes me feel?”
“Poached.”
“Yes. Be glad that she’s at least staying within the department.” He slung the bag over his shoulder. “By the way, it’s been over a decade since I’ve read the faculty handbook, but I don’t remember it saying anywhere that trading fruit for members of the student body was technically ethical. Especially half-eaten fruit.”
“Desperate times.”
“Yes, well.” He started walking up the aisle, gesturing with his hand for her to follow.
She walked quickly to keep up with his long legs, crunching on the juicy apple as they spoke. “You know, I teach students how sentences and phrases and words have power in my poetry classes, too. I don’t know why she needs a grammar class for that.”
“We are talking about two different things.” He held the class door open for her to pass first. “Left and right brain. Structure and instinct.”
“Instinct is more important.”
He shook his head. “You really are obstinate, aren’t you? Did you read that entire article I wrote? Or did you simply glance at the subtitles, scoff, and haiku them?”
“Can’t it be both?”
They pushed through the double doors out of the building and into the quad. The October air was still so pleasant—cool, but without the need for heavy jackets. The sky burned blue and the grass somehow still smelled fresh. They walked along the sidewalk.
“Did you reread it?” he pressed.
“I reread it.”
“And so?”
“Nothing’s changed. You explain yourself well, but I still don’t see why we need to concern ourselves with picking out all the transitive verbs and such. I mean, grammar rules and structure have their place, don’t get me wrong, but if we get students too caught up in these technical aspects of language, they’ll forget that it can be beautiful, too. They’ll forget to listen to it. We should leave the diagramming to the tech geeks, the engineers, the architects.”
“Are you calling me a geek, Dr. Stein?” He narrowed his eyes in mock threat.
She tossed her apple in the trash and tucked her flyaway hair behind her ears. “Maybe I’m just saying you should read more poetry.”
“I’ll have you know, I recently read a haiku by an award-winning poet.”
She realized they’d reached the periphery of the university, the street which separated the campus quad from a line of shops. “Where are we going?”
“Out for coffee,” he said.
“I don’t have my wallet.”
“You don’t need it.”
He led her to a small coffee shop four blocks down, a hole in the wall she hadn’t yet explored. At the c
ounter, they both ordered Earl Grey tea.
“You should have some chocolate cake,” he said, nodding his head at the clear case in front which held an assortment of pastries, including several dark, luscious squares with mocha frosting as thick as her thumb.
She shook her head. “It’s not even four o’clock. Isn’t that a little obscene?”
“That’s the point.” He lifted two fingers to the girl behind the register, indicating they’d both have slices.
As he waited on the cake, Eliza found a table at the back between a rustic fireplace and the cool windows. She breathed in the bergamot from her tea and took a quick, hot sip. Exhaling, she felt some of the week’s tension drain from her shoulders. For the eight weeks she’d been there, she hadn’t done much of this, just sitting and drinking tea and eating something sweet—at least, doing so without a stack of papers beside her. It had all been teaching, meetings, sleep, and poking at her lifeless poem.
Or, she reminded herself with a pang of guilt, turning Dr. Narang’s article into a haiku.
Apparently she could finish a poem, after all.
She took another hot sip and exhaled again more slowly. When she finally lowered her cup, Dr. Narang was folding himself into the seat across from her.
“So who was it then, the inept teacher?” He slid a small white plate of cake in front of her.
She shook her head.
“Spit it out. I won’t report her. Or him.”
She scrunched her nose, but couldn’t think of how to dodge his question. “Him. And her. Mr. Daniels, eighth grade. And Professor Jones in college.”
“I hate them already. Boring?”
“Yes.”
“Droned on to the blackboard?”
“Yes.”
“Made your eyes glaze over?”
“From the moment they opened their mouths.” She set down her tea and picked up the fork next to her plate. “I just don’t get it. Why do we need to teach diagramming and grammatical structure to writers? They’re dropping it from some public school curriculums, you know.” She cut a neat triangle from one corner of her cake. “It’s not necessary. I understand the need to teach grammar and punctuation rules—although, as any writer knows, sometimes you need to know those rules to break them—but I don’t understand the value in having poets parse out their subjects and predicates, the articles and direct objects… Past a certain point, I don’t believe we’re teaching them anything useful.”
She tasted the cake, the rich chocolate flavor sending her senses into overdrive. Delicious.
“Good, isn’t it?” Nodding at whatever expression he saw on her face, Dr. Narang lifted his own fork, cutting off a very large bite of cake—practically a third of the square. “You studied poetry. Different forms, styles, techniques. Correct?”
“Right. But that’s—”
“That was actually helpful, wasn’t it? Look, many writers have a natural inclination to writing well even without our intervention. Any kind of intervention. Not that we should tell high school guidance counselors that.” He raised an eyebrow. “But for the rest of us, having a conscious knowledge of the way a poem works, or a sentence is structured, by breaking it down and studying its components can only aid us.” He bit into his cake.
“But an entire class devoted to it?” She took another bite, a larger one.
He wiped his mouth on a napkin. “Are you trying to get me fired, Dr. Stein?”
She smiled, feeling a little giddy as the sugar and cocoa hit her bloodstream. “I’m sorry.” She sought to find neutral territory. “So, how do you become involved in all this?”
“Grammar? Or maybe you mean the chocolate cake?”
She laughed. “Grammar.”
“I had a teacher when I was young who was not so boring. Though very, very stern.” He was studying his plate, but his eyes looked up and found hers. “My mother. Back in India, she taught grammar at university. Loved it. Loved her students. I went away to England for boarding school, but on holiday she’d make me do extra schoolwork of her own invention. Math and memorization of world history dates—talk about your unnecessary information—and many, many sentences to diagram that were at least three miles long.” He smiled. “At least that’s how I remember it.”
Eliza wiped cake crumbs off her bottom lip. “She must’ve been happy you became a grammarian.”
He looked down as he forked up his last bite of cake. “She’s passed. But I think of her often when I’m parsing out sentences, as you say. Especially present participles—she especially liked those. She always said they were not always necessary, but they made words dance.”
Eliza smiled. “So you come to it naturally,” she said, smooshing a blob of chocolate cake with the tines of her fork, hiding the fact she couldn’t remember what a present participle was, if she ever even knew. “It’s in your blood and how you were raised. You were born into grammar. It’s probably always been natural for you.”
“Yes, it has, but…” Dr. Narang shook his head. “No, that’s not right. It’s not easy. The English language is never easy. If it was, I would’ve stopped doing this a long time ago.”
They looked at each other a beat, and she noticed the way his nose was like one of those branching lines he used to parse sentences—perfectly straight and a little long.
“Don’t you find English continuously challenging?” he said.
Eliza swallowed. In that moment, she found it incredibly challenging. She didn’t know how to respond. She’d been so focused on presenting herself as an important entity to her colleagues at the university, a published poet and every bit the professor as they—not some young, tiny blonde who was terrified she’d be discovered a phony at any moment—that she couldn’t think how to answer.
Which left her only with the truth.
“There’s this poem I’ve been trying to write.” she began.
He put down his fork and studied her intently. “Yes?”
“Well, I’m… I’m stuck.”
He paused a beat, maybe only two seconds, but in that span Eliza sensed an imaginary void open up above her, felt herself floating away. She’d been wrong to say that; why had she admitted it? Now he’d—
“It’ll come,” he said quickly.
She exhaled, her emotions returned to her body, to settle a bit uncomfortably under her ribs.
“Or something else will,” he said. “Something better.”
His words filled her with a rush of warmth and gratitude. “You think? I’ve published three collections. And I’m a professor now. I teach writing to students. I thought I was past those days.”
“We all get stuck like that from time to time. For months, years even. I know I have on articles and textbooks. You know old Dr. Scott? I think he’s been stuck since the nineties.”
Eliza laughed, and more tension drained down and settled in her boots. She could live with it there. “You sure about this? It really still happens to the rest of the faculty? You’re not just saying that to the new girl?”
“Trust me.” He nodded sagely. “I’ve got…” He peered closely at her face. “…about fifteen years of experience on you, I’d guess.”
“Thirteen,” she retorted—before realizing that she’d just given away that she’d Googled him.
His smile was slow, the warmth growing to a simmer with his eyes.
“I don’t remember what a present participle is,” she blurted, maybe to change the subject, maybe because she was bursting with things she hadn’t been able to tell anybody.
“I’d be happy to teach you.”
“On my arm?” She felt a faint blush hit her cheeks and thought of the girl in his class. “I think I may be short a few fingers to illustrate that complicated of a sentence.”
His brown eyes held hers. “No, you’re right. I’d likely need more skin,” he said—but in a way that wasn’t dismissive at all of the idea.
Eliza looked down at the table. “I should get back to my office,” she murmured, then stoo
d up abruptly.
He stood too, surprisingly gracefully for such a tall man, and cleared their plates and cups before they walked out.
“So I sense I haven’t been able to utterly convert you, have I?” he asked as they reached campus again.
“Convert? No. I understand that you love it—I can see that—but I’m still not sure what a poet can get out of it. At least a poet like me.”
“It’s structure. I’ve argued for consciously studying grammar, but maybe I should’ve talked about how we need structure. In all things.” They paused as they reached the building where their offices were housed. “Like your boots. You’re always wearing those boots, and with good reason. You wouldn’t want to walk around barefoot.”
She clicked her heels together. She was surprised he noticed, and wondered how much more he’d seen, but she quickly sought to derail his argument. “You can argue for structure all you like, but I don’t think it’s going to have me diagramming my poems any time soon.”
He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “You’re quite stubborn, Dr. Stein. I suspect it’ll keep your students and your verses in line, though. The words will cower before you.”
Feeling both pleased and irritated at what he said, she took a step towards him. “I could tell what you were thinking when I gave my talk, you know,” she said. “At least, now I can. You thought, I’m going to convince her she’s wrong. So, excuse me, but I think you’re the stubborn one.”
“Stubborn, maybe. But correct? Definitely.” He hadn’t denied anything.
Their words were fighting words, but the tone wasn’t, and instead of sparring, Eliza simply wanted to reach up and run her finger down the straight bridge of his long nose. Or, she realized with surprise, turn her head up to press her lips against his.
“I have class in half an hour…” he began, reluctantly. “And of course I’ve got to plot for our next meeting.”
She resisted touching him. Took a step back. “Well, thank you for showing me that café.”
“It was my pleasure.” He smiled. “Eliza.”
She returned the smile. “Kunal.”
He nodded in parting, but took his first few steps backwards, not looking away from her.
Halloween came and went, with tiny ghouls knocking at her door for treats and the faraway sounds of drunken debauchery coming from campus.
Covalent Bonds Page 27