Sticks and Stones

by Janice Macdonald

  Steve shifted at the table. I'd already cleared away the dishes, but we’d been lingering over the social aspect of the evening. I realized that I’d wanted to linger. Steve was very easy to be around, and I’d been alone far longer than most hermits would deem necessary. Mind you, I still hadn’t come upon any amazing truths.

  We both knew there was business to get down to. Steve said, “So what sort of student was Gwen Devlin?” just as I rose to get her paper off my desk behind his chair.

  “Gwen was a nine student, by anybody’s standards. This is a fascinating interpretation of The Great Gatsby in terms of metaphorical place. She comes to terms with the Valley of Ashes, the town where Daisy’s husband visits his mistress, in a really personal way. You see, if Daisy is meant to personify the American Dream, the unattainable goal someone like Gatsby is striving for, then why on earth would her husband require a mistress, and what must the mistress represent? Well, what the mistress represents, according to Gwen, is the true American Dream, vulgar and tarty and common and commercial. We want what we don’t have. Jay could have a hundred mistresses like Myrtle, but he wants some ethereal projection from his youthful fantasies, a meta-Daisy. The man who actually has Daisy wants a flesh and blood woman, but he can’t really have Myrtle either, because she’s already someone else’s wife. Whether he would want her if she was single is another question.”

  “Gwen’s paper said all that?” Steve sounded skeptical.

  “Not in so many words, but she’s on the right track. Most of my students get lost in the simplistic structure of the novel and forget to read it as a fairy tale gone wrong. Maybe you need to have lived a bit before you read Fitzgerald. Maybe you have to know that there are precious few ‘happily ever afters’ out there in the real world.”

  “And you think Gwen knew that?”

  “I think she was projecting her interpretation of the novel from her own unhappy marriage. We’re talking Cinderella Complex: spend your life waiting for Prince Charming without realizing that all fairy tales end at the start of marriage.” I stopped short. This wasn’t exactly first-date conversational fodder, and I had to admit I wouldn’t have minded calling this a date. I shifted my train of thought a bit, trying not to look as though I’d lost my place, a skill I have had great practice with during 101 lectures.

  “Although she misses the symbolic relationship between the names Daisy and Myrtle and, in fact, in a couple of places transposes their names, she does pick up on the affair as the underlying rot of the American Dream.” I stopped. “Was Gwen’s husband having an affair?”

  Steve looked disconcerted in that way the fraternity of men does when having to rat on a member. “So far, we have a very sketchy interview with Rod Devlin from the RCMP who contacted him. He lives in Fort McMurray with his two sons. I’m expecting to hear from him this coming week, since he’ll be coming down to clear up his wife’s effects.”

  “Why?” I couldn’t imagine an ex-husband being so ­concerned, but then again, I’d never had one.

  “Apparently they had separated on only a trial basis, while his wife ‘tried to find herself’ at university. From the sound of it, he expected her to realize she was out of her depth and be back with her tail between her legs by Reading Week.”

  “If that’s what he really thought, he didn’t have much of a line on his wife. Gwen was born to go to university. She might have been short on the classics, but her command of contemporary literature was pretty sound. Surely he must have noticed she was reading Atwood and Findley, not the National Enquirer.”

  Steve shrugged. “People see what they want to see, Randy.”

  I looked at him, puzzled by the tone of voice. He was looking at me in a decidedly first date sort of way, which caused a warm feeling in me down somewhere near the lasagna. I wondered what Steve Browning was wanting to see while looking at me. With any luck, it was the same thing I was ­seeing.

  By tacit agreement, Steve went off duty as we moved into the living room with another cup of coffee. It didn’t seem too contrived to find ourselves together on the couch, since the other living room chair is a ratty little wicker job which looks like a summer cottage reject.

  After a suitable interval—to borrow a coy phrase from Victorian novels—Steve left, with the promise to phone about tickets to a concert at the Yardbird Suite, the local jazz temple. As I waltzed my way dreamily to bed, sated on romance, it occurred to me that I still hadn’t told Steve about Gwen’s journal.

  Oh well, it’s not as though I wouldn’t be seeing him again. Tra la.

  13

  IF SOMEONE HAD ASKED ME PRIOR TO MEETING the two men, I would have expected to take a shine to Mark Paulson and want to hiss when Rod Devlin walked into the room. After all, Paulson was a reporter with the local daily, and I would imagine we’d have something in common. Devlin, on the other hand, was a murder suspect and the ex-husband of a woman I had liked a lot, and chances were he’d be behind my social eight-ball from the start. It just goes to show you that I am not as in touch with my inner social convenor as I thought I was, because the reverse proved to be the case. Of course, it was possible that my first impressions were skewed by the fact that I met them both on the same day as the graffiti artist struck the English Department.

  Denise had called me at home at eight-thirty on the Monday after my marking weekend. I’d been hoping to get all the marks recorded before doing my laundry. The plan had been to reward myself then with a stroll through Old Strathcona, the nifty boutique and bookstore haven of Edmonton. I had been thinking of a visit to Greenwoods to buy a book, and maybe a browse through Southside Sound or Sam the Record Man.

  But, no, instead of whiling away a day with cafe lattes and fiction, I was aiming my 35 millimeter lens at venomous prose on office doors. It had been Denise’s idea to call me, since I lived the closest to campus, and she knew I had a ­camera. She had arrived at seven to prepare for her early class. About a half hour later, she’d gone across to the building to run off some handouts and deliver a paper to Grace Tarrant for her quarterly. She’d found Lepine had the right idea scrawled in red felt marker on Grace’s door. On her way to the office to report it, she noted several other doors marked with equally abhorrent messages: PhD = Phrustrated Dyke; Montreal was a good start; Ballbreaker; Get back to the kitchen; Die, bitch; all in blood red upper case letters.

  The police arrived just as I was inserting another roll of film. Steve was with them, and came straight to me, which probably did not endear me to Dr. McNeely, chairman of the English Department, who was standing next to Denise.

  “What’s going on?” Steve asked. He sounded out of breath, as if he’d run all the way from the station.

  I explained what I was doing, getting recorded evidence for Denise before the maintenance people came to clean the doors. Steve abruptly turned away and spoke to one of the other officers, who hurried away.

  Seeing my puzzlement, Steve explained. “I’ve sent him downstairs for the evidence kit. We’ll try to hurry our procedure so that this can get cleaned up as soon as possible. Can I get your film developed as well?”

  “Are you sure I’m going to get it back?”

  “Randy, we’re the Edmonton Police Department, not the KGB. I would just rather this sort of thing wasn’t sent out to a private firm for development. I take it you wouldn’t want to see one of your pictures on the front page of the Sun?”

  I got the point and dropped the film into his outstretched hand. “It’s not all graffiti shots,” I warned him. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure what was on the top of the roll. At the speed I shot pictures, there might even be some shots of the bison that Guy and I had seen on our picnic last summer to Elk Island.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get it back to you, no charge.” He smiled, somewhat grimly.

  I belatedly remembered who buttered my bread, and referred him to Dr. McNeely. McNeely had been fired up by Denise already, but he was already on record as being a pro-active feminist, so I knew his blood would
be boiling over this spectacle.

  Steve asked me to wait around, saying that he’d like me to walk him through the hall after he’d spoken with Dr. McNeely. Denise and I sat on one of the low benches near the elevator and I reloaded my camera while we waited. It gave Denise enough time to fill me in on what had occurred before I was called in.

  She had counted eight defaced doors on her way down to the office, but found four others after patrolling the other ­corridors, waiting for me to get there. The “scribe” had confined himself to the English Department. Religious Studies and Philosophy hadn’t been hit, and the offices of the Classics Department were locked behind their general office.

  She’d then phoned Fine Arts and Engineering, to see if they’d been attacked in the same way. With all the references to the shootist Marc Lepine, and what’s now known as the Montreal Massacre at L’Ecole Polytechnique, Engineering would have been a safe bet, but apparently the Lepine fan was only angry with the women of the English Department. Why?

  I was startled out of my reverie by a voice close by, to my left.

  “So you think this has a connection to the Montreal Massacre? What about something closer to home, like the Co-ed Murder?”

  Denise was startled, too. We were clearly both feeling jumpy, sitting down the same hallway that had so recently been walked by someone full of hate for women. I waited for Denise to lambaste him for eavesdropping on us. I was too tired. It seemed she was, too, because she listened semi-politely to his introduction.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “My name is Mark Paulson and I’m with the Edmonton Journal.”

  Denise deigned to shake his hand. I managed to avoid it by standing up and moving a few paces from the bench, supposedly to look out for Steve.

  “Why do you think there is a connection to something else, Mr. Paulson?” Denise seemed calculatedly curious. Perhaps she was toying with him.

  Mark Paulson shook his head.

  “All I know is that they didn’t like me writing about the Poison Pen Plot, and I doubt they’ll be happy to see me here now. Do you feel safe here at the university?”

  It was my turn to shake my head, metaphorically. It was as if the guy was talking in 20-point headlines. Poison Pen Plot. Co-ed Murder. I just love the names the press comes up with for grisly events. What would we do without all the various Stranglers and Rippers and Grabbers? Might we just absorb the details of the story without the lurid headline? Or would we just unwittingly flip through to the horoscope and crossword puzzle, never knowing what we were missing? And who in Canada has ever heard of a co-ed anyhow? As I sighed in exasperation at the words echoing in my head, it hit me. This was the guy who had printed the letter about Gwen in the paper. Regardless of whether it was logical or not, I realized I had been holding him responsible for what had transpired. It was just as well that he was such a creep; I had taken an instant dislike to him, and now I had a good reason. I ­couldn’t understand why Denise hadn’t let fly at him, herself.

  Steve came back just then, and after gracing Paulson with a curt “No comment” and a withering look, he motioned for me to join him. I said my goodbyes to Denise and grabbed my camera. She could fend for herself with a mere reporter, I was sure. Steve and I walked through corridors that last week had seemed benign to me. Today they made me feel like a twelve-point buck in hunting season. Hate seemed to scream from the doors we passed. Steve said very little, sensing my distress.

  He walked with me to the House, supposedly to check our doors, but mostly to see me safely to my office. I hesitated as we climbed the stairs, afraid to see what might be printed on my door. It hadn’t occurred to me till then that I too might be a target for the scribbler’s rage.

  I must have been holding my breath, because it all came out in a gasp when I saw that my door was untouched by red pen. Steve looked at me.

  “Did you think your door would be marked too?”

  “I wasn’t sure what to think.” I unlocked the office and ushered him inside. “I’m relieved, though. I’m not sure if I wouldn’t have taken it personally.”

  “Do you think the others should be taking it personally?” Steve was in detective mode. I could tell it wasn’t an idle ­question.

  “I’m not sure. I was so shocked by it all, that I really ­couldn’t tell you whose doors got hit, besides Grace’s.”

  Steve took out his notebook and started to read from it. “Grace is G. Tarrant?”

  I nodded.

  “Is Grace outspoken about her feminism?”

  I laughed, but it came out sounding shakier than I would have liked.

  “Grace’s outspoken about everything, but yes, I guess you’d know she was a feminist within a moment or two. Grace is the co-editor of HYSTERICAL, after all.” I saw the look of incomprehension on Steve’s face. “It’s a quarterly journal of feminist theory. Hysteria, or tremulous mental incapacity, was thought to be a ‘woman’s disease,’ which is why you get it using the same root as ‘hysterectomy.’ The latter, in fact, was often used to cure the former. So, if you told someone that they were being ‘hysterical,’ what you actually meant was ‘stop that, you’re acting like a woman.’ Grace and her editorial board are playing with reclaiming the term. The same way queer theory is reclaiming the word ‘queer’.” I stopped with the etymology lesson and got back to business.

  “What about D. McLaughlin?”

  “Dr. Deborah’s a nun. I don’t know if you’d call her a feminist or not. I’ve never heard her speak one way or the other.”

  “How about S. Tanner?”

  “Sylvia is a medievalist. She’s married with twins and a nanny. I’m sure she believes in equal rights for all, but it’s not her field.”

  “Okay, what about H. Claridge?”

  “Are you sure you copied that right?”

  “H. Claridge? 3-17. Burn, Baby, Burn.”

  “There’s got to be a mistake on your list, Steve. H. Claridge is Professor Howard Claridge, the Melville specialist.”

  “A man?”

  “Last time anyone looked. Read the rest of the list.”

  “N. Hocking.”

  “Nancy.”

  “T. Bevingson.”

  “Ted.”

  “J. Guthrie.”

  “Joyce.”

  “M. Arnese.”

  “Marlene.”

  “E. McCloud.”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “D. Bamvanni.”

  “Dharma. Male.”

  “C. Trainor.”

  “Christina.”

  “F. McWhirter.”

  “Fred. Are you sure you got the right names?”

  Steve looked a bit put out at my question.

  “Okay, so you got it right. I told you, I wasn’t even looking at the names; all I saw was the red writing. So, why wasn’t it only on the doors of female professors? I assumed that we were the targets of the hate.”

  “So did I. Can you think of any sort of pattern to account for it?” Steve checked his notebook again, making some sort of fast calculations. “There were eight doors on the north hallway, and one on the south corridor on the third floor. Then three more on the fourth floor.”

  I shook my head.

  “I just don’t see it.”

  Steve asked to use my phone. I felt uncomfortable being privy to a police call, so excused myself to get us some coffee. I looked around the kitchen of the House as I reached into the antiquated, round-shouldered refrigerator for the 1% milk. I’d always bitched about not being in the same building as my classes, my mailbox and the department office, especially in January when the snow was higher than my boot tops. But today I was glad to be away from the Humanities Building and the ugly red writing that had poisoned the third and fourth floors. The old Formica table piled high with outdated magazines and academic journals, and the institutional orange chairs had never looked so comforting. Maybe Denise and I could get a couple of the plants from the grad lounge moved over here, I mused, and then felt a little ashamed. I was thin
king of hiding from the horror, and Denise was not the sort of person who would go along with that. She’d be rallying the troops even now and crying for blood.

  I turned to go back upstairs with the two cups of coffee I’d poured and doctored with milk for me and nothing for him (I figured it was a positive sign that I remembered how Steve took his coffee) and was at the bottom of the stairs when the front door opened. I looked over my shoulder, half-expecting to see Denise. Instead, there stood a huge man in a nylon team jacket and blue jeans. He wasn’t one of my students, and I knew Leo and Greg didn’t schedule office hours on Mondays, but he could have been one of Thora’s or Denise’s. For once, I felt as if there were entirely too many students allowed access to my office. I wondered how some of the women with the painted doors were feeling, if this was how the fallout was affecting me.

  The man-mountain looked unsure of himself, but some students never do come to office hours, so it wasn’t unusual to see a newcomer to the House even in November. Most students couldn’t believe they were talking seriously about university topics with their professor in what had been someone’s bedroom. They spent their first fifteen minutes gawking at the molding on the ceiling. Chantal Dupuis, a post-doctoral student in the back office, had a chandelier for a lighting fixture; her office had once been the House’s dining room.

  “Can I help you?” I asked. In my fragile state, I didn’t feel like having strangers roaming around. If he was here to see someone, I’d make sure he got to their door.

  “I hope so. They told me at the English Department office that I could find Professor Randy Craig here. Am I in the right place? Do you know if his office is in this, this place?”

  Well, we were evenly matched. I had no idea who he was, and he thought he was looking for a man. I figured that gave me the upper hand.

  “I’m Randy Craig, and yes, my office is in this building, but I am in conference right now, so …”

  I hoped Steve wouldn’t mind being used as an excuse, but there was something about this mystery man that felt odd. It could be the sheer size of him. I’m not petite, but big men tend to scare me a bit. A friend of mine had dated a football player, and once, when he came to pick her up at my place I was sure he was going to break things just moving through the room. I avoid Schwarzenegger films for the same reason; I spend the whole time worrying about breakage that isn’t plot-related. Even though this man couldn’t have been more than six-four, he seemed to fill up the doorway. I mean it; I couldn’t see daylight around him.