I managed to finish Mr. Sandman half an hour before the exam ended. They packed up, I packed up, and we all left the room. No bang, no whimper. Just business as usual.
I dumped the exams in my office at the House, and put in a quick call to Steve from my office phone. I told his machine that I was on my way home to cook a tuna casserole and that if he felt like comfort food he should come over about six-thirty. I took a quick look around the office to see if I was forgetting anything, and then locked up. I’d be in tomorrow, as soon as I’d seen Jane, to chain myself to my desk for a few hours to mark the exams I’d been hauling around. First-year students might never see my role of marking exams as harder than theirs of writing them, but they only had to write it once, whereas I’d be reading and commenting for two or three days.
Steve arrived at twenty after six with a bottle of German white.
“I wasn’t sure what went with tuna casserole, so I made a fish/white sort of guess,” he said, simultaneously kissing me, handing me the bottle and shrugging off his overcoat.
I laughed.
“Draft beer is probably more in keeping, but this should raise the tone of the evening.”
And so it did.
42
I MADE AN EFFORT THE NEXT MORNING TO CLEAN the apartment up a bit, since I figured I wouldn’t be getting back till late. My plan was to head in to Student Help and then straight to my office and mark until my eyes crossed. If I could dodge Leo and other sundry distractions, I figured I could get at least half of the exams marked. Posting my marks by Thursday morning would not only make me a hero with my students; it would give me two free days tacked onto the Christmas break.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from my scheduled meeting with Jane. Steve hadn’t been overly interested in knowing about it, so I still wasn’t sure why he had suggested it. I myself was a little apprehensive about talking to a stranger, but I was cheered somewhat by the thought that she wouldn’t be telling anyone. Especially the press.
The same sympathetic-looking woman was behind the desk when I arrived ten minutes early for my appointment. She nodded and checked me off in the book, and I took a seat to wait my turn. I’m not sure if Jane had anyone in with her before me, because I didn’t see anyone exit, but at ten o’clock she appeared in the waiting area to lead me into her office.
“Have a seat,” she said, gesturing toward the sofa/armchair grouping. I sat in a corner of the sofa and tried to think of what to do with my hands.
Jane picked up a legal pad and pen and sat across from me in one of the matching chairs. She crossed her legs easily and smiled. Her smile must have been what brought her into the counseling profession, because I doubted if that open sunniness that shone right through her eyes could have been learned in school. This was someone who wanted to listen, who wanted to help. My hands folded naturally onto my lap.
“I take it this is your first time seeing a counselor?” Jane intuited. I nodded. “Well, there’s nothing much to it, but it can feel awkward at first. I suggest I ask you a few questions first, just to get the ball rolling, and then you can tell me what has brought you here, okay?” I nodded again.
She noted down my name, my connection to the university, my family connections and birth order, and several other innocuous things; the sorts of things you tell any potential friend in initial conversational forays. Then she paused.
“You were here last week with the policeman investigating Gwen’s death. Does this visit have anything to do with that?”
The phrasing of her question startled me, not because I thought she hadn’t recognized me, but because linking Gwen’s death with my trauma so causally was something I hadn’t really done until that moment.
“In a way,” I said slowly, and started jerkily to tell her why I was there. I started with the episode in the basement bathroom, but by the time I finished with the threatening phone calls I was speaking much faster than normal. It was such a relief to actually talk about it. It was as if letting the words escape and hang in the air released them from my nightmare holding tank. When I stopped, Jane’s response again surprised me. I guess I’d been expecting the stereotypical “Hmmm, and what do you think that means?” sort of answer that I’d seen in Woody Allen movies.
“Goodness,” she said instead, “no wonder you needed to see someone. You’ve been through the wringer!”
Jane laughed at my startled look, and that made me laugh, more from stress release than any real humor.
“I think there are two or three things we might want to explore today. The first one is the feeling you have of not being connected to your friends. It occurs to me that you haven’t spoken to Denise of your concern that your discussions wouldn’t be confidential. Maybe you could broach that with her and see where it takes you. You have an ally in Steve and also a listening ear. Use it. As for your other friend, whom you think Steve suspects, I don’t think that is your problem, is it?”
When she put it that way, I had to agree. Let Steve worry about Leo. Leo could take care of himself. And maybe I wasn’t being fair to Denise. Already I felt better. No wonder Woody swore by analysis.
Jane went on. “The other issue is a little more serious. Are you being stalked and harassed personally, or were you just in the wrong place at what is definitely the wrong time? Either way, you didn’t deserve it, or bring it upon yourself, and you know that. I sense a great deal of strength in you.”
I raised an eyebrow in a reasonable facsimile of Steve’s skeptical look.
“You’re not allowing this to turn you into a victim. You’ve been through a traumatic situation. You’ve handled it maturely. There’s some residue, which makes you uncomfortable enough to come see me, but that too is part of the mature way to deal with things.”
“I don’t know if it’s maturity or automatic pilot,” I admitted.
“What bothers you the most about the phone calls?”
I hesitated. “I guess it’s the not knowing if this is all connected. So much has gone horribly wrong in the last little while, and things seem as though they must be connected since they’re all awful. And is it worse or better if they aren’t connected? There’s this real sense of backlash against feminism everywhere on campus, and it feels like tentacles reaching out from the walls. Gwen gets murdered, and I get assaulted and my office gets trashed. The office doors are graffitied, and the vigil wrecked, and Grace’s office burned. Are all these things linked, or is the link more tenuous, like just because we’re all women on campus? How much is pranksterism, and how much is truly dangerous?”
I leaned forward, into Jane’s sympathetic force field. “Part of me wants to think it’s all random, so that I don’t have to worry about a killer being after me personally. The other part of me almost hopes it is linked to one person, even though I know that more than one person disrupted the vigil. I just don’t want to think there is that much misogyny out there. Does that make sense?”
Jane nodded. “Perfect sense. And I think that dichotomy is really what’s bothering you, more than the after effects of your assault.”
“So what can I do about it?” I said, with a little self-pity creeping into my voice. So what, I thought, this was my fifty minutes.
“The only way you’re going to find out whether your enemy has one head or many is if the crimes are solved,” said Jane matter-of-factly.
“And I’ve been told to stay clear, so my mental health is in the hands of others.” Bitterness creeping in there, edging over to sit with the self-pity.
“You’ve been told to stay out of the police investigation,” Jane clarified.
“Right, that’s what I said.”
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep your eyes open and your mind alert.”
“If the Edmonton Police Service can’t catch a murderer, what hope do I have?”
“Why not look at things from another angle? Let the police deal with Gwen’s death. Concentrate on the events that had an impact on you personally. Maybe the
re’s something you haven’t picked up on, something only you could pick up on.”
If I hadn’t taken to her before, her proper use of the noun “impact” endeared Jane to me for life. If I could round up all the people who turned it into a verb and pour honey on them in wasp season, I’d be a happy camper.
Jane discreetly checked her watch and suggested we meet again in a week. I agreed and stood. We shook hands, which, though oddly formal, felt right.
I left the building by the side exit and walked purposefully off to my office in the other corner of campus. Jane was right. If I could figure out who had it in for me, I could put a face onto the evil. The irony of feeling better by knowing you had an enemy didn’t escape me, but it still felt right. Maybe a series of lists would trigger something.
All of this would have to wait a couple of days, of course. I had exams to mark.
43
I STOPPED BY IN HUB TO PICK UP A CAFÉ LATTE from Java Jive; I needed a little pick-me-up to push me onward to all those waiting exams. I was meandering down the mall, licking the chocolate-sprinkled foam off the top of the cup before I set the lid on, and not taking much notice of the faces attached to the general ebb and flow. I was trying to stay on the right side of the mall, although that didn’t always work during term. There were times when walking through HUB made me realize what a spawning salmon must go through.
I was pretty sure I had some foam on my upper lip, which was the Murphy’s Law cue for me to bump into someone I knew, but not well. Right on time, just as I had my tongue extended upward toward my nose, I heard someone call out, “Randy!” It could have been worse; it could have been a student. I knew without turning that it wasn’t a student calling me. They’d have called me Professor Craig, especially in this “sucking-up week” prior to results posting.
I looked around, swiping the perfectly lovely foam away on my coat sleeve. Mark Paulson appeared at my left elbow, and just about got said elbow in the chest for his troubles. He didn’t exactly qualify as the last person I wanted to see, but he came close.
“Randy, I’ve been looking for you.”
“Oh really?”
“I left a message on your answering machine.”
Just the mention of my message machine made me tense up, and I nearly spilled my latte, but then I remembered that I had heard his message.
“I’m sorry, things have been a bit rushed.”
“So I hear.” he smiled wryly. He had a nice smile, I’d give him that. What the heck, for Denise’s sake, I’d also give him a couple of minutes of my time.
“But not now.”
“What?”
“Sorry, just thinking out loud. Look, Mark, I’m not sure what you want to talk about but I am really pressed for time right now and it’s not exactly healthy for me to be seen conversing with the fourth estate. My chairman would have my head, for one thing.”
“Oh, I understand. But look, here’s my card. Call me tonight, okay? I’d really appreciate it.”
“I guess, but …”
He was gone before I could ask him what I could possibly tell him that Denise couldn’t. I put his card in my pocket, and shoved the lid on my latte. Just seeing him had taken the edge off the chocolate. I was fighting with the plastic rim of the lid, when I heard my name again. I looked up to see a swarm of English types observing me from across the mall. Oh great, if any one of them mentioned seeing me with the press to McNeely, I’d be tap-dancing in the chairman’s office again.
I nodded to Carol Stanton, a sessional lecturer married to Geoff Stanton, the Moderns prof. They were clustered at stools around a precariously high table at the Pasta Place with Arno Maltzan. Maltzan was certainly making the rounds of the old guard. I felt as though I was watching a political campaign in action; first the students, now the tenured profs. I was betting this too had something to do with Arno’s upcoming tenure review; maybe that was why we’d even been seeing him with Dalgren recently. Leo would probably have the dirt.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about tenure anymore, having heard cogent arguments for both sides. It seemed to me that some sort of guarantee needed to be in place to offset status quo thinking, but on the other hand, I could find examples of people coasting for years on easy street as well. Maybe a ten-year term, with review policies might be the answer to keeping professors vital. I felt a bit of pity for folks like Arno, who were running the gauntlet of sitting on committees and pushing to publish in order to jump through all the standard prior-to-tenure hoops.
Still, I felt sorrier for Carol. She was just as qualified as Arno, and yet she’d probably never get higher than sessional status, just because the department knew it had her. Unless she wanted to split a marriage and seek employment elsewhere, she was stuck with sessional status because they’d already hired her husband.
Mind you, it was all relative (as in who are your relatives). Carol was a rung above Denise, who couldn’t depend on her contract being renewed, and with three qualified Shakespeare profs on faculty, the chances of her qualifying for an interview were incredibly slim. As well, Geoff probably had some pull in getting Carol’s contract renewed endlessly. And then there was me, a lowly MA, destined never to teach more than freshman English, and wondering every eight months if I’d be able to pay next year’s rent.
There was no mail in the department mailbox, so I had no other excuses. I trudged over to the House, let myself in with my key, and made my way slowly up the stairs.
I’d just got comfy at my desk when my phone rang. It was Steve, wondering how my morning had gone.
“Great. But right now I’m looking at a stack of essays.”
We decided I’d be in need of a back rub around eight-thirty at my place, and I set down the phone feeling markedly more cheerful. I wonder if studies had been done on rating productivity at the workplace with getting enough good sex. I was more than willing to sign up for the core group.
Whatever the factors involved, I managed to get through twenty-three papers before my bladder called for a truce. I was pleased to see the upstairs bathroom had been fixed. I didn’t need to revisit the lower bathroom, especially after rekindling the memories so vividly during the morning’s session with Jane. I washed my hands, and headed back for more torture.
Actually, they weren’t too bad. The essay questions on Twelfth Night were bringing me back to thoughts of the murder and ensuing days. It was obvious from the tone of the essays that the similarities of the incidents hadn’t escaped many of the students, either. There were references to anonymous letters, and masquerading as someone else to gain understanding of another. I wondered again who it was masquerading in Gwen’s life. Was she Olivia, being wooed from afar and courted by a pretender? Or was she cast as Viola, dressed up and playing make-believe in a world that wasn’t hers? One of the students even drew a parallel between Malvolio’s incarceration and the fears of the students who had received poison pen letters. It seems several of them had dropped out of school since the whole incident had begun. This was the first I’d heard of it. What a dreadful pity. One horrid, stupid action, like a pebble into a murky still pond, brought ripple after ripple of effects and after-shocks. I knew I was mixing up my geomorphology. What the heck. I rolled my shoulders a few times, and went back to marking.
It was going pretty quickly, all in all. Aside from the Shakespeare fans, most of them were settling for safer topics on the essay component, but a few had attempted to analyze the poem I’d included, which made for some hilarious reading. It was Snodgrass’s “Leaving the Motel,” which depicts an adulterous liaison. Most of my babies read a family vacation into the words, rather than a bittersweet extra-marital affair. One of the girls analyzing it (wrongly) did come up with the most telling aspect of the poem: although it is written in rhyming couplets, to make sense of the words one must read beyond the set feet, and find that it doesn’t rhyme at all. To me, this was Snodgrass’ comment on illicit love. To her, it was a flaw. And to think I still had four months worth o
f pearls for them to stomp on.
I wondered, idly, what Gwen would have made of “Leaving the Motel,” given her situation. I was sure Devlin must have been having an affair or something, to give her such a hard, cold take in the essay on Gatsby that she never was allowed to submit. I had recorded the 8.5 I’d have given it in my records, anyway. Even without the rest of the grades, she still would have fared better than some of the students still left in the class. In fact, I’d have given her a nine had she not mixed up Daisy and Myrtle in her synopsis of the Valley of Ashes. Having Tom punch out his wife would give an American classic a whole new twist.
I started. That was it. Rod Devlin wasn’t a philanderer; he was a wife beater. No wonder she’d mixed up the names. No wonder she had left him. No wonder he had killed her. I reached for the telephone to call Steve, then thought better of it. I’d be seeing him this evening. I had essays to mark. And I wasn’t Nancy Drew. I wasn’t going to somehow solve all this mess by some inadvertent transposition in a student’s essay. I would tell him, though. It might be enough reason for him to question Gwen’s doctors back home, or something. Maybe I should just call him quickly. Anything to hear his voice, and avoid marking another essay just yet.
My willpower didn’t have to be tested, since the phone rang just as my hand was reaching for the receiver.
It was Steve, which just goes to show that we were made for each other. Or something.
“Hey, I was going to call you. Do you remember asking me about the essay Gwen wrote? Well I think maybe there was something in there for you to check out.”
“Randy, listen to me, I've got something important to tell you.”
“I think Rod Devlin was beating Gwen.”
At almost exactly the same time as I said that, Steve’s voice came through the receiver, “We have a warrant out on Rod Devlin for the murder of his ex-wife.”
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