Mr. Wonderful

by Daniel Smith

  “Hey, Pops.”

  “Pretty damn good, Danny.”

  “It’s ‘Melissa,’ from the Allman Brothers.”

  I join him on the porch and notice that he’s already polished off a bottle of some of my best red wine. I sit down and drink in the early evening air. There’s not much to look out on in our little back yard, but the trees that surround it allow me to pretend we’re living in a mini park-like setting. It’s good enough for me.

  “Your mom home?” I ask.

  “Yeah, cooking dinner, I think.”

  I start to get up but Danny stops me. “We had kind of a rough day.”

  I slowly sit back down and Danny tells me about an unexpected confrontation he and Corinne had with a drug dealer in our driveway. “It was all a misunderstanding, but I’m not sure Mom saw it that way,” he says in what’s doubtless the understatement of the year.

  My heart begins racing at what lies ahead once Corinne gets a private moment with me. “Danny,” I tell him, “you have got to get clear of all this crap that’s totally fucking up your life. Pardon my French.”

  “I know, I know. That’s why I’m here, Pops.”

  “Really? ‘Cause you look like you’re here playing the guitar and sucking down my pinot.”

  “I’ll have you know I really helped Mom with her criminal case.”

  Now I’m starting to sweat. How much worse could this day get? I decide to take my chances and enter my own house. Corinne’s chopping carrots for a salad when I come in. Probably not smart to approach her when she has a knife in her hand, but I figure it’s best to clear the air. I come up from behind her and give her a kiss on the back of the neck. She says nothing, so I give her a little love pat on the ass. And I do love that ass of hers. But it’s a bridge too far.

  “You realize your son is probably a criminal?” she says with an accusatory tone, as if I might be an accomplice.

  “No way.”

  “Oh, now, you’re telling me about the law?” she says, staring an incredulous hole in me. “He’s got drug dealers chasing after him, he’s probably committed a felony and where is he now, Brian? Hiding out in our own house! I have work to do, things I have to focus on—”

  “Okay, but, hey, I understand Danny gave you some help on that today.” She looks at me like I just set my hair on fire.

  “Have you been smoking pot too?”

  “Just making conversation, sweetheart.”

  “Look, ok, maybe he did offer a conspiracy theory to think about, if you want to call that—”

  “Helpful?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Between Corinne sequestering herself in the study to write her brief and my own fear of discussing my shattering world on campus, I spend most of the evening alone slumped on the couch watching basketball on TV. Danny, I notice, keeps a similarly low profile, hanging out on the porch picking away on his guitar. I do wonder how pissed off Corinne really is but I’m not about to find out. I also wonder if Danny actually is reassessing his situation, making a new plan, and, most important, counting on leaving by Saturday. He better be.

  I try to focus on basketball—one of those NBA games where there is zero defense until the fourth quarter and a lot of one-on-one streetball play between competing millionaire athletes. Before I can get too worked up about the over-commercialization of professional sports, I fall asleep. Or at least I must have. The next thing I know, someone is tapping me on the shoulder. I groggily turn around and it’s Corinne standing there sleepy-eyed in her pajamas.

  “What are you doing, Brian?” she asks pointing at the TV which is now running an early morning half-hour infomercial on an amazing set of steak knives.

  “I was watching the game,” I say, “and then . . . .”

  She sits down next to me on the sofa. “You must be depressed,” she informs me. I start to protest but then I realize she’s probably right and in any event I will clearly fail at dissuading her from her observation.

  “Maybe.”

  “So?”

  I have just enough presence of mind to ask myself if this is truly the best moment to tell her my troubled status at school, but not enough to actually decline the opportunity. So I give her the full nine yards of my quickly-dissolving stature at EMSU. As always, she never gives in to an emotional or philosophical reaction; like the superb lawyer she is, Corinne’s all about options and tactics.

  “Looks like they’re trying to trap you into making a decision based on what’s good for them, not you.”

  “Why would they think I’d go along with that?”

  “They know that by now you’ve come to identify with the history department and life at Eastern Missouri—whether you admit it or not—and so they present the issue as something they can’t do anything about, except to coax you into starting over with a new lease on life. Translated: give in, give up, and get out.”

  “Who said I was going to do any of that?”

  “Nobody. But you’ll need another strategy when you meet with the Dean.”

  “How do you know that I’m going to meet with him?”

  “Oh, you will. But let’s get you to bed right now.”

  “What about my strategy?”

  “Sleep on it, sweetheart.”

  I go off to bed with my wife seduced, without the slightest bit of evidence, into thinking things will be all right. That’s what marriage is all about.

  6 | Brian

  When I wake up, I hear voices laughing and chatting away downstairs—familiar and strange ones. I throw on my clothes and walk into the kitchen. Out on the porch drinking coffee and eating a plate of toast and eggs is Danny and a young woman I do not recognize.

  “Hey, Elise, this is my dad, Brian.”

  “Great to meet you.”

  “Elise and I were just talking about her case.”

  “Oh, what: You’re the one Corinne is representing—the Ferguson case?” I ask incredulously. An attractive woman in her late 30s, Elise has a slightly disheveled look (her clothes don’t match—odd for a woman—and she’s obviously tied a scarf on her head to hide un-brushed hair.) She looks like a woman who, for good reason, is deeply worried about something and way behind on her sleep.

  “Yes, I came by to meet with Corinne but she had to run off to court to file some papers. She’ll be back soon.”

  “Well, you’ve got Danny to entertain you, I see.”

  “He’s done more than that, Professor Fenton.”

  “You can call me Brian.”

  “He’s really helping us out on the case.”

  “Really?”

  “Maybe I should’ve been a lawyer, Pops,” Danny notes with a big smile.

  I have no idea how to respond to that diplomatically, so I go and pour myself some coffee. Maybe the caffeine will awaken my senses so that I can more fully appreciate the craziness of what’s happening on my back porch.

  “Tomorrow’s court day,” Danny informs me.

  “You’re coming, aren’t you, Danny?” Elise asks in a desperate voice.

  “You kidding? I wouldn’t miss it,” he says with a fond wink.

  The very idea of Danny offering something valuable to support this poor woman in her criminal trial is beyond all logic. I practically chug my cup of coffee, hoping for some new clarity.

  “It was pretty obvious to me that hubby was chasing the cheese,” Danny observes, “so it was just a matter of getting the goods on his buddies who were alibiing for him that night so they could end up sharing in all the dough.”

  Elise nods vigorously. “And Corinne’s investigator has one of the friends ready to turn against the others in court,” she says triumphantly.

  “Come tomorrow, gonna be a big legal smack down!” Danny says.

  “Sounds wonderful,” I manage to comment. “Maybe you can put your newly-discovered legal talents to work on your own situation, Danny.”

  “You, you have legal issues?” Elise asks Danny with great concern.

  “No, not real
ly. Well, nothing I can’t handle.”

  “And how are you handling them?” I ask.

  “Can we talk about this later, Pops?”

  “Sure. I got to go work anyway. Nice meeting you, Elise. And good luck on everything.”

  I drive into the leafy enclave that is the EMSU campus thinking about Danny’s infiltration into the legal world. I keep hoping there’s an ounce of truth to what he and Elise are talking about regarding her case. If there isn’t, wow, she’s dead in the water. If there is, well, maybe Danny’s wide experience in deceiving women to get his way may have finally found a positive utility. And in light of Danny’s “advice,” maybe Corinne will back off her tirades against him.

  As I walk through campus heading toward the social sciences faculty building, I am reminded that I don’t have any meaningful experience of any sort apart from academe. After graduating from college I went straight to grad school. Five years later, upon earning my doctorate, I took over a one-year job at Northern Illinois University, then a tenure-track position here at EMSU. I did have a couple of sabbaticals, but otherwise for nearly 35 years my daily routine has revolved around students and semesters—fall, spring, and summer—and nothing else. Summers are mostly taken as vacation time with the arrival of fall tinged with the sadness of having to return to school. Christmas breaks, always a generous three weeks, lead inevitably to the start of the spring semester, which is interrupted only by spring break in mid-March, and the long-awaited arrival of summer two months later. And for years I have managed an enviable Tuesday-Thursday teaching schedule which gives me three days off every week. No wonder all my non-teaching family and friends love to laugh at what passes for “work” in my world. “I can see why you professors make so little,” Jeff enjoys telling me. “You only have a part-time job.”

  As bad luck would have it, within a few moments of climbing the stairs to the third floor where the history department is housed, I run into young Gillian. A thin woman with stringy blonde hair, she’s all nerves and good intentions. I can only hope she finds another career before she becomes overwhelmed by worry and guilt. Her plaintive stare tells me all I need to know: “please help us get out of this mess, Dr. Fenton, before I lose my mind.”

  I invite her into my office, formulating a plan literally right on the spot. This time she sits down but looks just as anxious staring at me from a chair as I unload my backpack, check my messages, and otherwise try to affect a normal routine. Finally, I sit down across from her. “Gillian, I have a plan.”

  She nearly convulses in joy and anticipation as I think about how to finesse this ridiculous issue with my grade-grubbing students. “Fantastic, Sir, I just knew you’d have a solution!”

  Corinne’s notion of strategic thinking from last night has begun to make sense to me so I come up with an idea on the fly: “Here’s what we’re going to do. Since Billy Watkins and his crew of losers—excuse me, concerned students—think I’ve treated them badly, I’m going to give them another shot at improvement.”

  “But, Sir, they’re not looking for additional work to prove themselves.”

  “I’m not talking about additional work, Gillian. God forbid, they have to do that. I’m going to let you grade their blue books, which they apparently view as hidden gems of wisdom. And we’ll simply average your grade with mine and that’ll be the one that gets recorded.”

  I can tell Gillian is less than overwhelmed with this decision, but she also seems unable to find much fault with it. “Okay . . . I guess I can do that.”

  “Of course you can. That’s your job as a teaching assistant. To assist me in teaching. Now I’m not going to tell you what grade to give them. That’s entirely up to you. I’ll take whatever grade you assess, add it to mine, and divide by two. Get with Billy and his peeps after class today and explain the deal. Make sense?”

  “Right.” She gets up slowly, obviously still sorting it out. “I had sort of hoped not to be involved in this,” she says plaintively.

  “And yet you are. That’s the way it goes.” As she leaves I can’t help raising the ante at least a little: “You’re free to assess their exams any way you feel is warranted, Gillian. But be aware that I will, of course, take due note of the grade you award them. See you in class.”

  She nods, leaving the room with a burden so heavy her shoulders visibly slump as she ambles back to her cubicle. Not exactly a Solomonic decision, but it’s the best I could come up with under the circumstances.

  Later as I walk into my US history survey class, I wonder if Gillian had somehow already passed along the special deal to Billy and his fellow underachievers before class—maybe via a group email?—because my lecture on the Constitution is not only well attended (maybe only two or three empty seats instead of the usual six or eight) but Billy and company seem to be alert and paying attention, even to my favorite issue of how the same words mean something entirely different today compared to the eighteenth century. I point out the obvious ones like “democracy” and “virtue,” but then, quoting James Madison, I stress how he was conveying something utterly at odds with today’s meaning when he referred to the Anti-Federalists “wonderful” argument to the Constitution. Wonderful, I tell the class, coming from the word “wonder,” meant to Madison and his world surprise, unknown, and mystery. Much to my own wonder, I have several students stay after class to ask questions about the reading, a rare thing indeed.

  All of which puts me in a good mood as I stop by the department office to pick up my mail and grab a cup of coffee. Jackie and Frida, our two department secretaries, or administrative assistants, I guess I should say, give me big smiles, which also lift my spirits. Until I realize they routinely act that way even to Jerry Linton who daily glowers at them in his Asperger funk.

  Before I can finish sorting through my mail, Melinda McWhirter, a young assistant professor teaching modern America we hired just last year from Northwestern, stops me, her face filled with worry. At first, I’m thinking she’s going to inform me about a sexual assault or some other outrage, but instead it’s all about sympathy. “I heard about the grading scandal, Brian,” she says in a dramatic stage whisper, “and I want you to know that’s just not fair.”

  “’Grading scandal’?” Has my trouble with Billy Watkins and his moronic friends already descended into the legendary territory of “scandal?” Has it gone viral on Facebook? Melinda’s far more connected than me with social media and is doubtless keenly aware of what students like Watkins are saying on Facebook, or Twitter, or whatever the hell the newest thing is. “It’s no big deal, Melinda. I’ve already sorted it out.”

  “Wow. That’s great,” she says with an astonished tone.

  “How did you know, by the way?”

  “Oh, you know. Unfortunately, students like to talk.”

  “Well, thanks, for your support,” I respond as I leave the front office.

  Back in my office, I read my mail, killing time before an appointment with a prospective graduate student who has, amazingly, driven all the way from St. Paul, Minnesota, to consider getting an M.A.—which is all we offer—at EMSU. I make a note to gently discourage him, no matter what his talents are or his motives for coming here might be. The world simply does not need any more graduate students in history. My Ozark grandfather always loved to tell me when I headed off for graduate school that I was “educated beyond my intelligence.” I laughed at his hillbilly perspective, but he might have been right.

  I consider giving Corinne a call to see how her day is going and if Danny is continuing to pretend he’s some sort of legal advisor. But just as I punch in Corinne’s number on my cell, my office phone rings—something it rarely does. I answer and it’s Dean Fred Verley, or rather, his assistant, asking for me to come see the dean. I’m hoping for one day next week, maybe next month, maybe never. It turns out it must be today. Jesus. “The Dean says it’s urgent,” the assistant says in a monotone.

  I agree to come by in an hour. Why I picked an hour is beyond me as it
now it means I have to sit in my office and wonder what he wants. Of course, I know what he wants—to get rid of me—but what am I going to say by way of defending myself? What’s my tactic and strategy as Corinne would call it? I barely know the guy, other than he has a degree in political science, but like most deans he left the publishing and teaching world for administration years ago, so he has about as much in common with a real professor as a middle manager at Target.

  I try to call Corinne again for ideas and support, but all I get is her voice mail. Guess I’m going to have to face this shit storm alone. I got into it alone, so I suppose that’s only appropriate. If only I’d worked harder at writing a second book. Instead, the past ten or twelve years I’ve fancied myself a great teacher—which I’m not; I’m decent, passable, but nothing special in the classroom—who didn’t really have to publish that much, not at a place like EMSU. Half my colleagues haven’t written a first book, but they make themselves indispensable by teaching extra classes and sucking up to the administration by serving on every committee that comes their way.

  After my first book on family life in the early South, which got very nice reviews and was often cited by other social historians, I just lost interest in writing for other fellow travelers in the history racket. All those years in the archives jotting down trivia as well as quotes from strangers living in eighteenth-century Virginia and Maryland and then trying to fashion some sort of theme or tell able tale about their lives, seemed like a contrivance at best. Too much of history, I’ve come to believe, is, as Voltaire said, “tricks we play on the dead.” I told myself I’d never write another book unless it meant something personal to me. I figure if it didn’t mean anything to me—except as a step up the academic ladder—then that would be obvious to my readers. I wanted to find a topic that would be emotionally compelling, not just “important.” Trouble was, I never exactly found that topic. I kept talking about my “radical” new take on early American history, but that was mostly a dodge. I had to at least appear to be working on something.