Burning Down the House

by Lev Raphael

  Larry Rich quipped, “It’s all those damned fruitcakes.

  They wear you down.”

  Cash smacked his desk. “Having a tree in the office is terrible—it’s a complete reversal of department policy. We haven’t had trees in EAR for years.”

  Larry Rich said, “We had one when Grace Jurevicius

  was chair. She loved it.”

  Cash softened a bit. “That’s true. But times have

  changed, and she would understand how divisive it is.”

  Avis whirled around, or as close to it as you could get in that straitjacketing chair, and said, “Who asked you! Who cares what you think! You’ve been riding your grandma’s coattails forever. How do you know what she would say anyway—she’s dead! And if you’re such a hot shot, how come you can’t get a full-time position babbling about those French construction workers or whatever the hell they are?”

  “Deconstructionists,” Auburn murmured, along with several people sitting around them, but Avis forged ahead: “I don’t care what the hell you call them—it’s all bunk and a waste of print. But the heck with that mess. You’re an adjunct —you have no right to be mouthing off about what we do or don’t do.”

  Serena stopped her in mid rant. “Actually, adjuncts have historically attended EAR meetings with the full understanding that they can participate but not vote—if there is a vote. We like to feel that everyone can be heard.”

  Unfazed and unimpressed, Avis tossed her head in an

  unflatteringly girlish way, given that she didn’t have much of a neck. It actually looked as if she were practicing some self-chiropractic move.

  Serena added, “And to be totally fair, I should remind everyone that we all have more or less private offices we can decorate or not in whatever way we want, but Dulcie and the other secretaries have only the main office, which they’re obliged to share with everyone else.”

  We all mulled that over. Was Serena saying she was in favor of the tree? Or was she giving herself a way out and reminding us that Dulcie had a union and this controversy might embroil the department in larger trouble?

  Cash had subsided for a moment, apparently

  embarrassed by Avis’s attack. Yes, the academic job market wasn’t very good, but still, how could he not feel on the spot and exposed to be rebuked for not having a tenure-track position? His grandmother had been so important a figure in the life of EAR and the College of Arts and Letters, and here he was, her epigone.

  Avis wasn’t done. “This country is becoming more and

  more godless every minute, and so is this department!” She glared around the room as if ready to denounce the devil worshipers (and humanists) among us.

  Perhaps trying to palliate her rage, Auburn tried a

  different approach, sounding as jovial as if he were buying us all a round. “Let’s remember that a tree isn’t a religious symbol anyway. It’s a cultural thing, it’s just part of our Western culture.”

  “Then why did Dulcie ask people to bring signs of their faith?” Cash fired back. “It’s a damned Christmas tree, no matter what you call it.”

  “Don’t you defame a symbol of Our Lord!” Avis

  shouted, cheeks as puffed out as a Renaissance cherub.

  That dished Auburn’s defense, and Cash crossed his

  arms with a QED smirk, unfortunately looking as smug as Martin Wardell had just looked, though a lot more decorative.

  Everyone seemed to be waiting for Serena to fully

  declare herself, but with scrupulous neutrality, she said, “Other opinions?” I had to admire her for keeping cool, and wondered if it was real, if she had no opinion on this issue.

  “I think we need a bigger tree,” Les Peterman joked.

  “And a better Christmas party,” Martin Wardell chortled, never looking more like a Toby mug than at that moment.

  “Holiday party,” Serena corrected.

  Larry Rich piled on, shouting, “With a keg!” Given his hippie-dippie clothes and hair, I’m surprised he didn’t suggest hash pipes and body painting. God, in another minute the three of them were going to become as repulsive as Beavis and Butthead. Their jokes did break the tension, though, and even Serena smiled. I leaned forward and could see that Tyler Mooney-Mauser was making notes on his PalmPilot.

  “I happen to support the Diversity Tree as a symbol of hope,” Rusty opined. “But no matter what you feel about it, I think we all need to slow down here and contact our Higher Power.” In response to jeers and puking noises from several quarters, he held out his hands palm upward as if about to invoke a blessing on us and said, “See? There’s so much hostility here when there should be love. It’s all about love.”

  “Give it a fucking rest,” Larry groused, “Sell your

  psycho-tapes someplace else.” And Martin said, “Go hug a tree. A live tree.”

  “Please,” Serena said. “Let’s maintain a dignified

  exchange of ideas.”

  In an undertone, Stefan said to me, “Right. In the middle of a war zone.”

  But I was furiously debating the costs of speaking out myself. My parents were emigrants who got out of Europe well before the Nazi death factories, but for all their sophistication, they were marked by having escaped, and they had always counseled caution, not standing out in a crowd when it was unnecessary: “Sois sage, sois chic,” as someone in a James Baldwin novel expressed it. As for debating Jewish subjects in a potentially hostile environment—that was always dangerous. So I felt their years of advice holding me back, but I knew that if silence didn’t quite equal death at this meeting, it was certainly suffocation. I felt compelled to tell people how much I disliked the idea of a departmental tree, but didn’t know how or where to begin.

  Avis wouldn’t let go berating Cash, and she had another weapon, given what he’d said in e-mail about a grandparent of his. “Are you planning to bring in some ugly Jew lawyer from the ACLU to drag our department’s name through the mud?”

  “You’re the last one to use the word ugly.” Juno laughed.

  Avis practically spat out her reply: “Whore!”

  I noted pleasure at seeing Juno abused flit across

  Serena’s face before she said, “Let’s not lose our tempers, please.” Was she on Prozac?

  Stefan rose from his seat, his hands clenched, his eyes tight. “Avis! Most of my family was murdered in the

  Holocaust. How dare you say what you did?”

  Auburn was ineffectually trying to quiet his wife, who looked as cocky and belligerent as if she were ten feet tall.

  “Poor suffering Jews,” she mock-moaned. “That’s all we ever hear. Well, you don’t seem to be suffering very much as far as I can tell, with a fancy office and a Hollywood film deal!”

  Stefan looked so stunned by her making light of the

  Holocaust that he sat back down as if he’d been sucker punched. Cries of outrage and disgust echoed in the room while Serena tried to restore order. She didn’t have a gavel, though, and her voice was drowned out by the confusion.

  In a sudden lull, I jumped to my feet. “You’re a hateful bigot,” I said to Avis, feeling shocked but not silenced. “And like most bigots, you’re stupid and smug, too. You’re so blinded by Christian privilege you think everyone sees the world the way you do, and if they don’t, there’s something wrong with them.” I told myself to slow down, to speak distinctly, to not yell. “That tree is offensive because it makes people feel left out and inferior. I’m Jewish, and it disturbs me. And I’m not bringing in any Jewish symbols to hang on it, because I’m not going to trivialize my religion by ornamenting a Christmas tree.”

  “It’s not a Christmas tree!” several people snarled.

  I kept going, amazed at my own verbosity but feeling as reckless and exhilarated as if I were heading down a water slide at an amusement park. “The tree isn’t half as offensive as the kinds of things you’ve said on e-mail and in this meeting. And the worst part is that you’re probably not that bad a
person, just shallow and vindictive and resentful, and you can’t stand to see anyone doing better than you. So you’re mouthing slogans you don’t even believe, at least not completely. You probably think Stefan got the writer-in-residence position here because of some Jewish conspiracy, but he got it because his writing has something to say, and it’s been noted and admired. You’ll never have Stefan’s reputation or talent, no matter what you write or how long you live.”

  Juno applauded. Les, Martin, and Larry did a football-game chant, “Hit her again—hit her again—Har-der, har-der!”

  Serena called out, “Decorum, please!” but she might as well have tried covering an open manhole with a dime.

  Avis goggled at me, and so did most of the faculty in the room. I was only the lowliest of assistant professors, and I did not have tenure. I had never spoken that long on any point at any meeting, and never openly criticized another professor.

  Serena’s offended silence had something lethal about it.

  Breathing hard, Avis said, “You’re nothing but a—”

  Auburn slapped a hand across her mouth, and the two of them wrestled.

  “Can we stay on track and not insult one another?”

  Serena said, as out of touch with reality as the Red Queen calling out “Sentence first—and verdict afterward!”

  Stefan pulled me back into my seat, where I knew that after this outburst, with a representative of the provost in the room, I was sure not to get tenure no matter who was on the committee and who became EAR chair. The university was full of rumors about public files and not-so-public ones, and if there wasn’t a secret upper administrators’ file on me yet, there would be one soon. Tyler was studying me as if I were Alger Hiss and he Joe McCarthy.

  “We’ve let things move too far from the topic,”

  Summerscale said magisterially, as if judging the entire roomful of people. “Dulcie Halligan is the office manager. She is not a faculty member and not bound by our decisions or traditions.”

  Nods flitted around the room like a line of falling

  dominoes.

  “Let her have her tree and call it whatever she likes. She works hard, she should have some joy in her life.” More approbation, especially since Dulcie was such a grouse. “And let’s have some order returned to our department.”

  Summerscale quickly lost his audience, since he’d never been a part of EAR until recently, and people resented his presence.

  “Judging from their behavior today, I don’t think either Juno or Serena would make a good chairman. I’m throwing my hat into the ring.”

  Juno and Serena looked at each other in shared outrage, and Serena blew her cool. “You can’t run for chair,” she hissed at Summerscale. “You’re a hooligan!”

  “Better a hooligan than a harridan.”

  The jocks whooped at that retort and started another

  chant, “Summer- scale! Summer- scale!” Could they have been out drinking before the meeting?

  With nothing really decided, nothing resolved, Serena yelled that the meeting was over, as a crescendo of shouting squeezed the remaining air from the room. She practically flew out into the hallway, sweeping up the provost’s snitch in her wake. It wasn’t quite as ignominious a display as the faculty reception (there was no food, for one thing), but it was close.

  People crowded around Stefan and me, alternating

  expressions of outrage and approval, but none of that mattered. Stefan and I retreated to his office, where he packed his briefcase so angrily I thought he’d rip off its handles. I felt slightly queasy watching his violent movements.

  “Sit down,” I counseled, but he kept moving. Then he

  stopped. “You were great,” he said. “Terrific. I felt like an idiot—like I couldn’t talk. I was paralyzed.”

  I didn’t feel proud of my speech but ashamed for having lost my temper, and worse, for having called attention to myself, for having committed that Jewish sin: making a fuss about being Jewish among non-Jews.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “Of course.” I pictured building a fire at home, opening a bottle of wine, putting on some soothing CD on endless repeat —a Chopin piano concerto, Mel Tormé, or even David

  Bowie’s tranced-out Low.

  But Stefan was thinking big. “Let’s quit,” he said, chin up. “I don’t want to teach here anymore. These people make me sick.”

  “What? ”

  “You’re always complaining about this place, how it’s crazy. How it’s full of half-wits and creeps. You’re right.

  Didn’t that meeting prove it? So why stay here after this semester?” He looked serious.

  “Stefan, we have jobs, we have commitments, we have

  classes to teach, we have a house.”

  “They’ll hire half a dozen temporaries to fill our spots and have money left over.”

  “But the house!”

  “We can sell it. The market’s terrific, and the house is a gem.”

  “We have health benefits!”

  “We’ll get them someplace else.”

  “Where? Who’s going to hire us if we leave and it’s a scandal? Well be damaged goods.”

  “So I’ll do something else. I’ll write full-time. I’ve never done that. Maybe that’s what I need. Time.”

  I didn’t point out that he had plenty of time to write: three months off in the summer, a month at winter break, and a week at spring break.

  Stefan was still planning. “If we needed it, my father and Minnie would help while I figured out what I’m doing. Your folks would do the same.”

  “Stefan, I’m not becoming dependent on my parents at

  my age! I’ll end up arguing about how much time I spend on the phone.”

  “We can live up north. There’s a great artists’

  community in Leland and Northport and Traverse City.”

  “The cabin’s not big enough to be a home. And

  everybody up there has two or three jobs to keep it together.

  Besides, neither one of us is into cross-country skiing or ice-fishing or complaining about tourists or gambling at Indian casinos. What the hell would we do there?”

  He sank into his desk chair. “You’re right. I’m just

  furious at Avis, and at myself.”

  “God, you’d think with a name like hers, she’d try a little harder.”

  He didn’t acknowledge the attempted joke. But despite having argued against leaving, suddenly I thought, Well, why not? If we sold the house and even the place up north, that cash plus the money we had in savings would carry us for a few years until we found another way of life, whether the movie got made or not. Except there was one problem: I’d been teaching for years, and I loved it. I didn’t want to do anything else as much as I didn’t feel certain I could do anything else. The first person at NYU to observe me in a class I was TA’ing for said I was a born teacher. That might have been a disappointment to my parents, who wanted me to go into publishing, but it was the benison I had hoped for.

  Give that up? I’d been teaching since before I met Stefan; it was part of my identity.

  As we got ready to leave for home, I noticed a fat

  Penguin paperback on Stefan’s desk—Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed, a book I’d heard of but never read. I asked Stefan about it.

  “It’s a great story, all about tyranny.”

  “The setting is Italy, right? Sixteenth century?”

  “Seventeenth. It’s dark, it’s funny, it’s moving. It has one of those cultivated omniscient narrators who makes you feel like you’re a great friend while he’s telling you the story, like he thinks the world of you. I wish I could write a book like that.”

  Curious, I picked it up and leafed through it. I found many passages underlined: “a secret league of atrocious counsels and wicked deeds”; “his power was exercised on behalf of evil intentions, atrocious revenges, or tyrannical caprice.”

  I read them aloud. “Sounds li
ke academe to me.”

  Stefan nodded. “Except for the stabbings and the

  cholera.”

  When we got home, Stefan said, “You know, I didn’t

  when I started, but I love teaching now, I do. If only there wasn’t everything else—the politics, the mania. But I think I can stick it out.”

  Of course he could. He was a writer-in-residence, with a great salary and a fat travel budget, a plush office, small classes, and a light teaching load. He was at the top of this insignificant heap. And I was down in the basement, in every sense of the word.

  I defrosted some ground venison for chili, and while he got the fire going, I cooked minced garlic, onion, and green pepper in olive oil in a cast iron casserole for five minutes.

  Then I browned the venison, stirred in chili powder, cumin, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, and red-wine vinegar.

  “What do you think Avis was going to call you?” Stefan asked when the fire had caught and he didn’t have to tend it.

  He had opened a bottle of Santa Cristina Sangiovese, and we were sitting at the island. The chili was simmering, and I’d added red kidney beans and some cornmeal.

  “The usual. Fag, probably. She doesn’t seem literate

  enough to call me a catamite. Unless she was going to accuse me of being a New Yorker.”

  We both shook our heads. Neither one of us had faced

  direct homophobia or anti-Semitism in the department, and whatever had been indirect we’d ignored. Avis’s outburst seemed hard to slough off, and yet all I wanted was for it to go away, for no one to mention it to us. Even after we lit the Shabbat candles and said the blessing, I felt oppressed.

  “I wish she and Auburn hadn’t come back from their

  leave,” Stefan said. “Students hate them, and they hate the students. It was a mess with temporaries teaching the other writing workshops, but at least they were dedicated.”

  Of course they were. “Gypsy scholars” are some of the best teachers in the profession; nothing else but innate talent and passion for their work can compensate for the terrible insecurity they live with, moving from job to job, cobbling together an unsteady and uncertain income, so painfully close to the privileges and comforts of a tenure-track position—the academic version of the lad with his nose pressed to the window of the chocolate shop.