I’ve yet to find a socially acceptable way to explain that.
He holds up the package that is obviously a book. “You’ll never guess what it is.”
Meredith chimes in from across the room. “Did you bring her one of your books?”
“I’m trying to impress her, not bore her to death.” His answer is as perfect as his smile—charming, self-effacing, humble, and sincere. It does nothing for me and I can see the thinnest flicker of doubt dart across his expression. For just a moment, he questions himself; he wonders why I don’t respond appropriately, why I’m not following the laws of evolution and choosing him as a suitable mate. I think it goes that deep for Ellis Trachtenberg; he believes himself to be on the upswing of the curve of human development and he probably is. Unfortunately for him, I’m bringing up the rear and am content to do so.
He hands me the book and I free it from its plain, brown craft-paper wrapping. A very understated delivery. Nicely done. It’s Herbert Mann’s The Eyes of God Turn, an exploration of the impact of the 1918 flu epidemic on the German Nihilist Art Movement. The book weighs in at almost four hundred pages, a remarkable amount of verbiage for an art movement that lasted less than five years and produced no significant milestones.
“I think you might find this interesting.” He starts to lean on my desk but catches himself in a charmingly embarrassed manner. “I saw this and thought of our discussion of Munsch and Brauer. I realize this is a little off field of that, but Mann brings up some challenging ideology. He draws some remarkable parallels that frankly surprised me.”
“Wow, great.” I thumb through the book as if I might see those parallels laid out for me. I notice he’s marked up several passages with blue ink that I would just bet came from a fountain pen. Maybe he should have used a yellow highlighter to drive home the imagery of him pissing on the perimeter of these ideas, to let me know that he saw them first. I don’t have the heart to tell him I’ve already read this book and disagreed with most of it. “It’s going right on my to-be-read list.”
“I hope it doesn’t disappoint.”
I’m not in the mood for this anymore. I never was, but I’m especially out of patience now. First of all, it’s Tuesday. Tuesdays are hard enough. I soothe frazzled and nervous students. I don’t feel like spending my lunch hour shoring up a grown man. And today? Today I have no care to spare. I have a head full of ghosts who need my attention. The conversation ends awkwardly as it dawns on him that I’m not adding any more to it. He mentions something about preparing for a lecture and makes a show of reminding Meredith about an internship at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. He drives the nail into his own exit when he informs her that the Corcoran is in Washington D.C.
“Thanks, I’m pretty sure I know where that is,” Meredith says with a lot of teeth.
He gives a manly chuckle and raps his knuckles on her desk and then leaves. Meredith surprises me when I see her flip him off behind his back.
CHAPTER THREE
Meredith is heating up something that smells like sausage. I don’t hear the microwave running so I’m assuming she’s using one of the toaster ovens or hot plates she’s got stashed back in her cubbies of madness. I assume she has a refrigerator back there somewhere, too, although I’ve never seen it. Where else would one keep one’s sausage during the workday? I hope she’s planning on sharing whatever it is with me for Snack Tuesday because whatever she’s making, it smells delicious.
Before I can ask, Karmen Bennett comes in, looking like the rough patch she’s been going through is getting rougher. As a student, she focuses mainly on pottery and textiles so it’s not unusual for her skin to be tinted with glazes and dyes, and the black eyeliner she slathers on doesn’t brighten her face in any way, but those aren’t the only things that darken her appearance. I’ve seen bruises and cuts, scrapes and burns that probably don’t all come from art.
I don’t speak as she settles herself into the chair across from my desk. It’s a production. She carries layers of bags and satchels, lumpy with art supplies and who knows what else. She also dresses like she lives outside—layers and layers of flannel and cotton and scarves and jewelry. It’s a look a lot of art students strive for with varying levels of success. Karmen wears it naturally. Once she’s contained the landslide of baggage underneath her seat, she tucks one leg underneath her, pulls out a length of fine-gauge copper wire, and starts twisting it around her fingers. I’ve spent enough time with Karmen to know that she thinks better when her hands are occupied.
I don’t rush her. I have a good idea why she’s here—the Rising Tide Exhibition cutoff coming up next month—but I’ve also learned that things turn to shit with some regularity in Karmen’s life. I can empathize.
“My second piece didn’t happen.” Each student is required to submit four pieces to qualify to even make it to the jury for the exhibition. Karmen is working on a series of ceramic sculptures incorporating scrap metal, glass, and fabric. I’ve seen her work. It’s uneven but powerful. Her concept for the submission is strong but won’t work without the series.
“The fist?” I think I remember the series in order—each piece represents part of a human body, ranked by their increasing ability to inflict pain. In immature hands, the concept would be melodramatic. Instinct tells me Karmen has earned the experience to bring some depth.
“No, the fist is first. Second is the foot.”
“Oh right.” I nod. “Kicking, huh? It does hurt.”
“I was thinking more like leaving.” She winds a length of the wire into a long coil. “Or not leaving.”
Karmen is one of the few students from the immediate area. Her records say she still lives with her parents in Elkins, just a few miles away, although I doubt she actually spends much time there. Still, this is home for her, with all the baggage that word brings.
“What happened to it? The foot.”
She curls her lip. “Ironically, I kicked it. It shattered. It was flawed.”
“Can you fix it?”
She gives me a look I know so very well, the look of an artist talking to a civilian. It’s one of the reasons I’m so valued at my job. I supply what other artists and art professors cannot—a complete absence of experience in the act of creation. I offer tiny moments of superiority to people otherwise battered by doubt, the chance to believe in the depths of their soul. “You’ll never understand.” It does wonders to settle their minds.
It’s been said that artists thrive at the intersection of narcissism and self-loathing. My job is to keep them there, safe in the middle, balanced between the blades. I was born to it.
“Unless I want to submit it as a bag of dust with rusted nail heads, I think it’s toast.” My dumb question has done its work; it’s made her admit out loud that the piece is lost and cannot be saved. Her choices now are to make a new one, go in a new direction, or quit. She doesn’t want to quit and she knows she’s going in the right direction and so she knows what she has to do. It’s funny how we can complicate simple decisions. Sometimes all it takes for us to see things the proper way is for someone else to see them wrong.
“What can I do to help?”
She wants to requisition extra hours in the pottery room, something that can be tricky this time of year. I think I can pull it off. Worse comes to worst, I can beg Walter Voss to sneak Karmen in after hours. I would do it for Karmen; something about her makes me want to try a little harder. Something about her tells me that not a lot of people have.
I see her fight to hide a yawn and when she realizes she’s been caught, she shakes her head. “I’m working a lot. Extra hours at the library and I took another shift at Ollie’s. I need the cash if I’m going to be able to make tuition for next semester. I’m on tonight, four to close, and I’m working a double at the library tomorrow. That’s why I had to get in today to see you. I tried to catch you yesterday but you were gone when I got off.”
Cobbling together a schedule around college classes and college jobs is never easy. I grew up falling through the cracks of my parents’ schedules. I remember my mother saying that people who worked nine-to-five jobs were as exotic to her as unicorns. I am now a unicorn.
The precedent has been set that I do not offer my cell or home number. Some administrators do; most of the advisors do. All of them complain about the nerve and drama of students demanding their attention in the off-hours, waving their loaded voice mailboxes around like badges of honor, like an emotional bankroll of value.
What they never talk about is how infrequently they take those calls; how many of those voice mails they don’t answer. To me, it’s crueler than not offering my number. When trouble rolls in, nothing escalates the pain like help that won’t come.
I’m here now and Karmen knows it. I’ve come through for her before and even when I can’t get her everything she’s asked for, I’ve always tried. She knows that and she’s the kind of kid who appreciates it. I recognize a kindred spirit. She begins the complicated process of gathering her belongings when she spies Ellis’s book on the corner of my desk.
“Herbert Mann.” She turns the book over, scanning the back. “I’ve heard of this book. Professor Trachtenberg was going on and on about it.”
“It must be his passion du jour; he just lent me that.”
She considers the book for a moment, her chin tucked down so I can’t read her expression. She sets the book down carefully but doesn’t manage to get it fully onto the desk. “You going to read it?”
“I already have.”
“Good?” She hauls her bags onto her shoulder.
“Overrated.”
She snorts a laugh. Not many people associate that word with anything from Ellis Trachtenberg. When she raises her palm to me—a mix of high-five and good-bye—I think she turns a little more abruptly than necessary. Her many bags swing out and catch the book, knocking it to the floor.
“Oops?” She looks back at me and now I snort.
“Leave it.”
Karmen smiles and holds out her other hand, palm up. Seated there across an ink stain and a paper cut is a little figure made of copper wire. She holds it out for me to take. I smile at the simplicity and expressiveness of the little form. I make out crossed legs and folded arms, even a long ponytail coiling down the wire back. It’s me—a simple and fluid armature of me that she sculpted with no more effort than I would put into tying my shoelaces.
“I love it,” I say, smiling at her through my likeness.
“S’nothing,” she says as she heads out the door. I wonder if she understands the depth of her talent.
It’s sausage dip I’ve been smelling, a creamy bowl of heart attack-inducing goodness that Meredith has been heating up in a freshly emerged Crock-Pot. She tells me we have to wait until four. I don’t mind; I’m in no hurry to rush today along. There’s a ton of paperwork, as always, phone calls to return, all squeezed in around the diminishing stream of students. Finally, four rolls around and Meredith makes a great show of shutting the office door. No sooner has she thrown the bolt than someone knocks.
I laugh at her stare of disbelief as she hauls the door open once more.
Jeannie peeks her head around the doorframe, sees me, and then smiles a little too brightly at Meredith. “Meredith, how nice to see you. I’m looking for Anna.”
“Well, Professor Fitzhugh-Conroy, good to see you, too.” Meredith stands aside and lets Jeannie push past her. She talks to my cousin’s back. “I’m good. We’re all good. The department is good. Busy. We love your cousin. Thank you for sending her to us. The students love her.”
“Terrific,” Jeannie says, still not listening as she sits in the chair across from me. She is the exact opposite of Karmen Bennett. Tiny, trim, neat, she takes up less than half the space the chair offers. Her posture alone makes the workspace around her seem even more disheveled. Maybe there is something about this office or this job. Maybe I’m closer to Meredith’s mountain of madness than I realized.
“I’ve been calling your cell all afternoon, Anna.”
“I turn it off during office hours.” I avoid sounding pious by not telling her the students come first. In my mind, cell phones are for emergencies and since Ronnie’s death, I’ve worked to keep my life emergency-proof.
She keeps her voice low. “So what’s the plan?”
I don’t have a plan. I didn’t know Jeannie would be here. My plan, such as it was, consisted of falling down into a deep, dark, wet hole. She must see this; Jeannie doesn’t miss much. She gives me a reassuring nod.
“Meredith?” Her tone borders on saccharine. “I was kind of hoping I could steal my cousin for a little girl-time at Ollie’s. Any chance her supervisor is totally awesome and cool and wouldn’t mind if she sneaks away a little early?” I add pleading eyes to her request.
“How can I refuse faces like that?” She waves the spoon she’s been using to stir the sausage dip, spattering the space around her with greasy bits. “Have a fabulous time. Get the fried pickles. Maybe they’ll have some live music tonight.”
“Oh god, I hope not,” Jeannie groans as I turn off my computer and apply a dusting of order to my desk. “Just what we need, some angsty, talentless wannabe howling about his pain in hopes of getting laid.” I laugh as she reaches down and pulls up the Mann book Karmen had knocked off earlier. “Do you need this?” When I just give a vague wave over my desk, she makes an impatient sound and holds the book out to me. “I’m an English professor. This is not an acceptable way to treat a book. Put it somewhere. Don’t just leave it on the floor.”
Meredith hollers from behind her desk. “Take care of it. That book was a gift!”
I wave my hands over the chaos. “Just put it somewhere. Anywhere.” I head for the door and Jeannie follows me out, the smell of sausage wafting behind us.
We take Jeannie’s car to Ollie’s at the bottom of the hill. We don’t have to drive. As always, Jeannie wears high, uncomfortable-looking heels but I have no doubt she could and would walk every inch of campus without flinching. She wears her heels like hiking boots; I’ve even seen her move furniture in them. I’m six inches taller than her and wearing actual hiking boots and I still have to make an effort to keep stride with her through the parking lot.
Ollie’s is one of two decent eateries in town. There are chain restaurants on the highway toward Elkins—Applebee’s and Chili’s and a Cracker Barrel—but Ollie’s has a lot more going for it. For one, it’s in town. Students can and do literally tumble down the hill from the green to land in the alley behind it. Plus they serve alcohol from a full bar with a decent wine list and a better beer selection. But it’s their pepperoni rolls and fried pickles that make them legendary.
Jeannie knows all of this; the staff of EAC spends as much time here as the students. She’s the one who told me about pepperoni rolls in the first place. They’re a West Virginia favorite—not a calzone, not a sandwich, but a buttery, doughy, spicy ball of deliciousness served everywhere from restaurants to gas stations, each location with its own collection of ardent fans who will fight to claim theirs as the state’s finest. I’ve yet to have a bad one.
“Look at all these craft beers.” Jeannie scrutinizes the list. “Jeff would love these.” Of course Jeannie’s husband is into craft beers. I can see him hunkered down in his basement babying his own batch of hoppy spiced-pumpkin-coriander-honey Belgian pale lager. I must be close because the beer Jeannie orders has a name almost that complicated. I ask for the most regular Sam Adams they have and my cousin laughs.
“As much as you like to drink and you don’t like craft beer? Higher alcohol content.”
“Do you really think I need a more efficient vehicle for alcohol?” I see Karmen at the bar loading up a tray. She waves to me and says something to our waiter. I hope it’s something about making sure the drinks keep comin
g.
“So tell me who sent you the book.” Jeannie leans in over the table.
“First tell me what’s the deal with you and Meredith.” She tries to play innocent but I shake my head. “I know that ‘So nice to see you, too, bitch’ tone of yours.”
“Oh please, I only vaguely remember her.” She leans back to make room for our waiter to set down the beers. “She used to hang out at the faculty functions. Like, all of them. Even the ones that were just for actual faculty. Ellis used to call her ‘the cub reporter’ because she was always asking questions about everyone and everything. Nosy biddy.”
“Ellis Trachtenberg?” She nods until I tell her, “That’s who gave me the book.”
Jeannie and I have known each other for most of our lives. She’s always been polished but I knew her before she had perfected her poise. This means I can see cracks in it that others might miss and I know that that little twitch on the left side of her mouth means she’s irritated. And I bet I know why.
Of all of Jeannie’s many good qualities, sexual fidelity does not make the list. She’s been married to Jeff Conroy twice for a total of nine years and I doubt she’s gone one of those years without a side piece. Maybe that’s an exaggeration but I wouldn’t want to put money on her having strung many faithful years together.
I don’t know how much Jeff knows about it; Jeannie dismisses the issue with a regal flick of her hand anytime I ask. I don’t care. I’m not married to her. She’s always been a loyal and caring friend to me and that’s all I’ve ever worried about. And considering the gene pool from which we sprang and the morality espoused therein, infidelity doesn’t even take the bronze. Hell, substance abuse barely gets me a seat at the table.
She gives an exhausted sigh. “Tell me you’re not sleeping with him.”
In that moment, I am doubly glad I’m not attracted to Ellis Trachtenberg. What would that have been like, to discover Jeannie and I had slept with the same man? Besides being completely against my personal code (Hos before bros? Chicks before dicks?), I don’t doubt that it would have pierced me with self-doubt to my very core. I place my cousin in a higher category than myself in every way—she’s smarter, prettier, sexier, savvier. To think that any man might also compare my intimate performance against her much more seasoned one? Terrifying.
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