Still in Love

by Michael Downing

  Comma splice: The girl laughed, the boy cried.

  “An English sentence might arrive with one or one hundred independent clauses, and one hundred dependent clauses or none. But it won’t reliably take readers where you want them to go if you don’t coordinate those clauses.” He turned back to the board and wrote as he spoke. “To coordinate two independents you need a comma and a conjunction”—

  The boy cried, and the girl left. The boy cried, but the girl left.

  —“or you have to make one clause dependent.”

  When the boy cried, the girl left. The boy cried after the girl left.

  Penelope—the Penelope on the windowsill—asked why there was no comma in the second example.

  “I had a superb teacher in third grade,” Mark said. “She asked us to memorize two sentences, which I am now asking you to write down exactly as I say them.” Pronouncing not only the words but the punctuation, he slowly said, “When the dependent clause comes first, you need a comma. You need no comma when the independent clause comes first.”

  Someone yelled, “Holy shit.”

  The Professor shouted, “Max!”

  “No. That was me. I’m Isaac.”

  Isaac was seated in the chair nearest the front of the room. Mark fixed his gaze on him to avoid the eyes of the guy seated on the sill directly behind Isaac. Both of them were wearing Maple Leafs hockey jerseys, both with a bold number 14.

  The Professor said, “For starters, it is I. I spoke. Me had nothing to do with it.”

  The Isaac in the chair said, “I’m so sorry I cursed. It’s just amazing to realize how far I’ve gotten without understanding how to write a simple sentence.”

  Max said, “Yeah, me feels like an idiot, too.”

  A woman near the back added, “While you were saying that—comma—we were all thinking the same thing.”

  This was the perfect last note for the day, and if Mark had not glanced at his watch to confirm that there was still half an hour of class time in the bank, that woman might have had the last word. Instead, the Professor said, “And now, let me add a few items to your notes that are not rules but useful tips. For starters, when do you absolutely need to use a semicolon in your fiction?”

  Mark sat down and said, “Never.”

  The Professor said, “When should you use a semicolon in fiction?”

  Mark said, “Never.”

  There was a long litany of unnecessary punctuation, from exclamation points to ellipses—and a longer series of tips that kept the students busy taking notes for about twenty minutes. The gist of the Professor’s jumble of advice, warnings, biases, and opinions was simple—rely on conventions, eliminate devices. When he finished, he pulled a sheet of paper from the top of the pile of collated stories and read. “Dorothy, Mark, Max, Isaac, Rashid, Jane, Penelope, Julio, Charles, Willa, Virginia, and Leo. Those are the lucky twelve whose stories are in the packet for Wednesday. They constitute the workshop. Their assignment is to read all twelve stories carefully, which is to say, at least twice.”

  No one moved. Mark said, “I will be in my office from one till three on Wednesday, happy to meet with anyone whose name was not called. If you email me in advance, I’ll have read and thought about the story you wrote. The other twelve, please take a packet on your way out.” Still no one moved.

  The Professor said, “Now, go away.”

  And they did, eventually, all of them, including the look-alikes, to Mark’s relief—everybody but Anton, who stayed in his chair midway down the long table. He was wearing the yellow V-neck again, and though he’d found a long blue and yellow scarf to wind around his neck, he hadn’t yet acquired a hat or coat.

  Mark said, “Please tell me you’ve got a parka stuffed in your knapsack.”

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to hear if you let me into this class.”

  “That’s not up to me, Anton.”

  “I know it’s on me, but I am a senior.” He waited to see if this news altered his status. “And not only that, I’ve been a senior for about eighteen months. I need this.”

  Mark said, “There are other English courses, and other writing workshops.”

  “No, I mean this course is exactly what I need. I could take any course for graduation credits. That’s not the point.” He smiled sadly, and then turned away and stared out the window behind his chair for a long time. “This is a good room, isn’t it?”

  “Feels real,” Mark said.

  “Like a real college, you mean?”

  That was exactly what Mark meant. “Whatever that might be.”

  Anton stood up and leaned back against that window. “I think it’s like this—college is, when it’s real. How we feel in this class. You gotta let me in, Mark—if it really is okay to call you that.”

  Mark said, “That’s my name.”

  “I’m probably a lousy writer, and I can’t really remember if I’ve ever written a whole story—I mean one I made up. Do you know what time it is?”

  “About a quarter to five.”

  “Phew. I am on the wait list, somewhere near the top, and I know at least one of those guys who didn’t stay for your grammar thing was ahead of me. So.” Anton uncoiled his scarf about halfway, and then wound it back up. “I have an appointment at five thirty. I changed them all so I won’t have to leave class early ever again.”

  It was Anton’s ever that got to Mark, as if he’d understood that time with anyone anywhere was infinite and circumscribed. It certainly made Mark’s standard speech about the college’s commitment to small classes and the democratic selection process seem inane. “It’s just not up to me, Anton.”

  “Something happened in the first class, and it happened to me again today.” He paused and tugged at the ends of his scarf. “I don’t even know how to describe it.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s not about this particular room, or how I happen to—”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “I know,” Mark said, though he was not sure he did. And though he could already feel his ears ringing with the Professor’s protestations, above that din he could still hear Anton’s ever. “When does the Drop-Add period end?”

  Anton said, “A week or two.”

  Mark said, “So, not for another two or three classes.”

  “So, I’ll see you on Wednesday?” Anton retrieved his bag from the table. “Should I make copies of the story I wrote?”

  “I can do that,” Mark said. “And no guarantees. But stay on the wait list.”

  Anton shoved in each chair he passed on his way to the door. “I meant what I said—about me maybe being a lousy writer.”

  Mark said, “My being.”

  Anton said, “My being?”

  “Your being,” Mark said.

  “This stuff is fantastic,” Anton said, and then he disappeared.

  7.

  Before he left campus, Mark went to his office and dutifully pulled off his shelves all of the books he’d been assigned to review for the New England Private College Access, Justice, and Excellence initiative. After trying and failing to stuff them into his bag, he found an empty recycling bin in the hall, dumped in the books, and headed for Ipswich. He spent most of Monday night and all of the weirdly warm and rainy Tuesday morning hoping for three things—an update from Paul, the Professor’s responses to the first set of stories, and some mention of classrooms in the critiques of higher education on the NEPCAJE reading list. He’d prompted Paul with two emails, several texts, and pictures of the snowless deck, roof, and driveway of the Ipswich house under the heading, “Global Warming: The Benefits.” Still, no word from wherever he was. And nothing from the Professor by noon. This was unusual. The Professor typically didn’t devote a lot of time to the first Technical Exercise, as he figured that most of the students would not choose to revise those monosyllabic stories for their final portfolios. He was typically proved right. The Professor considered this a reflection on Mark’s assignment. Mark considered it a
reflection of the shock and shame students experienced when they read the Professor’s comments and realized someone was treating every word they’d written as if it meant something, or ought to.

  At the end of their first semester together at Hellman, Mark had attempted and failed to persuade the Professor to try his hand at the Technical Exercises. According to the Professor, the classroom was a sacred space—those were his words—where twelve undergraduates could be transformed into writers, and unfashionable as it was to invoke the power of ritual and religion, someone had to be the priest, someone who believed in the possibility of transubstantiation. Mark wondered if that meant he was the Professor’s altar boy—he’d done some time in a cassock and surplice as a kid. The Professor rather dismissively reminded Mark that he was an adult. He should do what he had to do.

  So Mark took to writing a new story to fulfill each Technical Exercise every semester. In deference to the Professor, he never showed these to the students. All Mark asked was that the Professor always read his story first. Mark didn’t know if his efforts made the Professor more mindful of how challenging the assignments were. But he liked to think that he was an effective sacrificial lamb. The Professor’s responses to the students’ stories were still comprehensive, blunt, astute, and unnerving, but not dispiriting, not deadly. He had a poison tongue, the Professor, but these days he lavished most of his venom on Mark.

  On this dreary Tuesday, however, it was Anton and his comment about their classroom that preoccupied Mark as he migrated with his books from the dining room that was his study to a stool in the kitchen overlooking the deck, down to Paul’s desk in the guest room, which was outfitted with a stationary bicycle that moved only when Paul dutifully climbed aboard. Mark’s house was small—something less than 750 square feet of marginally habitable space—but it offered a surprising number of alternative places to read and write and think, which suited his peripatetic habit of mind. Built as a one-room tavern—now, the living room and kitchen on the main floor—the verifiably Colonial portion had been wheeled on logs from downtown and shoved into the side of a little hill above the Ipswich River in the early 1800s. That must have been when the owner decided that the profoundly eaved attic was a plausible bedroom. About a hundred years later, someone built a two-story ten-by-ten box and nailed it to the back wall of the kitchen to create a tiny bathroom and dining room on the main floor and a biggish room of indeterminate purpose below, abutting the dirt-floored cellar. Mark had added a bathroom in the attic, and then another bathroom so the indeterminate ground-floor space could serve as a guest bedroom and a quiet space for Paul to work. All of this fiddling by generations of carpenters as intrepid and ill-trained as Mark had resulted in a structure that perfectly resembled a tipsy sheet cake with three layers, each a different length, held together by icing and toothpicks.

  During the first winter in the house, Paul had mentioned several times that it was cool at his desk downstairs, even after Mark repeatedly jacked up the thermostat in the living room and strategically positioned fans at the top of the attic and basement stairs to spread the wealth more equitably. He finally broke down and called a licensed plumber, a big guy with a belly that had to be helped around the furniture while he inspected the tiny dining room and the guest room below. Finally, he asked if Mark had noticed the baseboards in those rooms were cold to the touch.

  Mark hadn’t.

  “That’s because there aren’t any,” the plumber said. “Whoever built this addition didn’t add heat. I can do that, but you might want to get a carpenter in here, as well.” This guy wasn’t an architect, but he was wearing overalls, which gave him an air of authority. “Have you noticed these rooms sort of slant away from the rest of your house?”

  Mark assured him he had noticed that, making it clear the heating oversight was an anomaly. “It’s an old structure,” he added, with a knowing shrug.

  “It’s gonna be two structures pretty soon if you don’t get someone in here to hang a beam and properly attach these rooms to the rest of this little birdhouse,” the plumber said.

  By the end of that spring, there was heat for Paul, a beam to bring things back together, and a deck off the kitchen with a three-season porch below, where Mark finally landed on Tuesday evening with the NEPCAJE books. He could squeeze a fourth season out of the unheated porch if he wore a parka, bathrobe, and a beanie and sat near the exterior wall of the house, which leaked plenty of heat. After several hours of reading the new student stories and responding to emails, if he squinted he could still squeeze enough light out of the overhead lamp to read another chapter from one of the NEPCAJE tomes. But he could squeeze almost nothing about classrooms or teaching from that pile of books documenting the various crises in higher education.

  Mark’s assignment was to write a summary of what was in those books, but all he’d achieved was a comprehensive survey of what was not in those books. He had flagged two lists. The first was Ten Habits of Highly Successful Teachers. By his quick count, he and the Professor together exhibited exactly none of them, and the Professor had explicit policies that were diametrically opposed to at least seven of the strategies and attitudes of their successful counterparts. The second list enumerated elements of Poisonous Pedagogy: Killing Creativity. Mark was confident he and the Professor could be convicted on several counts of toxic teaching for their murderous approach to creativity, but instead he turned his attention to the Professor’s responses to the first set of student stories.

  Mark Sternum/Technical Exercise 1.

  This is a genuinely engaging and intriguing first draft, and you handle the monosyllabic diction with apparent ease. In several sequences here, the clipped diction generates a gratifyingly swift pace, which gives us a clear sense of both Paul’s haste and Mark’s lethargy. (Your original assignment did involve two men. But in the final version, it was a woman in that room. If you write your story before the students write theirs, to prove it can be done, you might as well write a story that embraces the Technical Limits in the actual assignment.)

  As it is, my principal question about this draft is the point of view—and whether you might reconsider your choice. Early on, I assumed I was limited to the Paul character, though it later became evident that I was also receiving information (Paul’s coat flying by the bed) from Mark’s point of view. But the story never makes full use of the omniscience. On second reading, I wondered if this might be a stronger (and more emotionally coherent) story if the narration gave us only Paul’s point of view. (Mark’s perspective seems irrelevant—technically of no real significance. Plus, his behavior marks him as a kind of man-child, self-indulgent and more than a little annoying. Intentional?)

  This, of course, is most pertinent in the final sequence, where I do too often feel the hand of the writer. I wonder initially about Paul’s impatience—but given who he is stuck with, I do buy it in the end. But Mark’s stasis, and his sophomoric way of taking the blame (“My bad.”) without accepting responsibility (still, he does nothing to remedy the situation he has caused) feels scripted, not lived. Or maybe that final sequence leaves me with too many unanswered questions about what, exactly, Mark understands is at stake in this moment. It occurred to me that Mark actually regretted being awakened. (Can that be the truth about him?)

  I do see how the disparity in maturity between the two men and the bugsomeness of the Mark character can reasonably account for the rather dramatic ending. But the oddball detail about Paul not living in the same house as his lover is complicating my reading of the final moments of the story. You might try to rework that element—it is a peculiar way for adults to conduct an intimate relationship, and though it does underscore the idea that Paul is wisely hedging his bets in the relationship, if Paul actually lived with Mark—had been genuinely committed to him—it might be easier to earn the ending you were aiming for here.

  You’ve done the hard work of making us believe in the open window—that one adult had asked that it remain closed, and another adult had igno
red that request. That’s great narrative work. Now, the challenge as you revise is to make the nature of their relationship clearer (more credible?) so we have a better purchase on the emotional stakes. I mean, what exactly does Mark want that explains his oversleeping and his reluctance to get out of bed on the morning his partner is leaving the country for several months? And Paul—what’s in it for him when the story begins? Why does he bother to wake Mark? Paul seems entirely reasonable and—well, adult. Does he really want nothing more than to see that window closed? Or should we sense from the start that Paul is itching to get away from Mark—not for a few months, but once and for all?

  TWO

  Technical Exercise 2.

  (Mark Sternum / 250 words: Part I 183/Part II 67)

  At midnight, my phone rings, and Anton giddily announces he’s outside in a pickup, so I grab my parka, but he won’t lower his window, forcing me into the passenger seat, and he floors it, squeals past a stop sign, and soon we’re sailing down icy curves to the beach, and maybe because he’s wearing sunglasses, I announce I can’t joyride with my student, and he says he’s not anymore, his parents cut him off and he got a job plowing snow, but don’t worry, he whispers, rubbing my thigh, he’ll be back next semester, and then a reflective yellow vest catches the headlights, and the pickup clips the jogger, slams her into the pavement, blood spilling from her misshapen skull as Anton skids to a stop, hyperventilating, and when I open my door, he confesses he’s fucked up and carrying, pulls a pipe from his pocket as proof and defeatedly folds the sunglasses into their protective case, so I glance at the woman—the corpse—and the dark, dark road ahead and order Anton to pull a U-turn and follow my directions.

  Anton disappears, as instructed. The case goes unsolved for a blessed month, and then a horn honks during a snowstorm. Anton’s pickup is sporting a plow attachment.