Still in Love

by Michael Downing

  Mark’s immediate response was envy for the two dropouts who wouldn’t be wasting a Saturday in Amherst. His next move was to pour a cup of coffee and wander around Paul’s living room, trying to gin up a plausible excuse for skipping the event. But the last time Mark skipped an NEPCAJE meeting, this same dean had assigned him the task of writing up the literature review. And the only prospect grimmer than a round trip to Western Massachusetts was a round trip with any colleague who had nothing better to do on a weekend. It was a simple Yes or No question. But Mark was stumped.

  He could invite the Professor.

  This thought required a refill on the coffee, and with that in hand, Mark parked himself at Paul’s desk and reread the dean’s email. Yes or No?

  What would the Professor do?

  For starters, the Professor would give a lecture on the power of conjunctions, and while Mark imagined that delightful interlude, he also imagined that the Professor would surely beg off or simply ignore the request. Mark had no intention of actually composing an email to the Professor. But he responded to the dean with a perfectly Professorial Yes but/and/so No. Yes, he would pass on the request to an eminently qualified colleague, but he could not guarantee the Professor would be willing or able to attend, and Mark wasn’t even certain the Professor would respond, so if the dean did not hear from Mark again by tomorrow morning, No, he could not count on the Professor.

  The dean responded immediately. Fingers crossed!

  And then an email from Sharon popped up, agreeing to dinner next Wednesday, and with another cup of coffee, Mark had regained his resolve. He was back on track. It was not even ten thirty, so there was no need to readjust his plan for the next four days. He would work on the NEPCAJE literature review today and Friday, and then drive to Ipswich and spend two days working on that abandoned novel.

  There was a pile of dishes to deal with first. And after half a Black Russian on the roof, Mark thought the cooking smells from the night before were hanging around longer than normal. He switched the exhaust fan on. It sounded sort of feeble. He lit the other half of the Black Russian, took a drag, and watched his exhaled smoke loiter around above the stove, amused by the fan but not drawn in. It was probably forty years old. He ducked his head under the hood, and that did it. Replacing it would be easier than scraping off enough of the accumulated grease so he could unglue the ancient, clotted filter. Which led him to the exhaust fan in the bathroom, which led to five trips to two different hardware stores over the next four days, a touch-up paint job that turned into two new coats on the entire bathroom ceiling, and so much horsepower that you could vacuum-clean the carpet in the living room by just turning both new fans on high.

  6.

  Mark was ten minutes late to the department meeting on Monday. He sat near the back, at the top of the vertiginously raked concert hall. The room had five hundred seats, and about thirty were occupied. A mini Mount Rushmore of suited and polished vice presidents and deans had been installed behind a table on the stage, under the watchful eye of one of the college’s many lawyers, a youngish woman in pearls standing at a podium, for some reason. They would be delivering the same news to each of the college’s departmental faculties over the next few days—to full-timers only. They were laying down the law about communication with the Other Side during the run-up to the vote on the unionization of adjunct faculty.

  Mark recognized the backs of many heads and the familiar features of the many active Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook feeds. The Professor was nowhere to be seen. Althea Morgan was marooned in the middle of the very front row. Maybe she felt it was her duty as chair, but she did look like the only person paying attention until she stood up to take off her coat, turned briefly, and gave everyone the finger, aiming it back at the stage. The lawyer picked up a little device and illuminated an overhead projection of Faculty & Staff Protocols on the screen behind the panel. Mark estimated that he’d transgressed at least four of the enumerated boundaries during his conversation with Karen Cole.

  The air in the room was getting warm and a little squalid, and after he devoted almost twenty minutes to an inspection of the HVAC vents and fans overhead, he saw the venerable Norman Chester, emeritus, wobbling up toward the exit and rushed to his assistance.

  Chester gladly took hold of Mark’s arm, and while he paused to catch his breath before heading out the door, he pulled Mark in close and said, “What a collection of fuck buckets.”

  Outside, Mark offered to walk him to his car, but Chester pointed to a new black SUV parked in the fire lane ten feet away.

  “Think they’ll get their union?” he asked.

  “I do,” Mark said. “Frankly, I think the administration will be relieved. They don’t want to waste their time worrying about what goes on in classrooms.”

  “They’ve got meetings to attend. Can I give you a lift?”

  “I’m teaching soon, just up the hill,” Mark said.

  “I hear those workshops of yours are quite the draw,” Chester said. “I don’t know if this sounds barmy, but I envy you.”

  “Here’s what’s barmy,” Mark said. “I like the teaching so much I envy me.”

  Chester tumbled into his car, but he wasn’t having much luck closing the door, so Mark waited for him to get himself realigned and then sealed him in and waved goodbye. When he reached the top of the hill and started to cross the Common, Chester screeched to a stop beside him, blasted his horn, and lowered his window. “That lawyer on stage? I did the math. The college pays her more every year than it pays the entire first-year comp faculty—all adjuncts. I added it all up.” He waved and drove away.

  7.

  Mark was five minutes early to class, and his entrance didn’t interrupt the lively conversation underway.

  “Maybe that analogy makes sense if you’re white,” Dorothy said. She was a terrific writer, and she looked like the black Buddha, though better coiffed, with her hair extensions and beads. Although she hadn’t spoken much in class, she seemed to be at the center of this discussion.

  “I wouldn’t know what makes sense to white people,” Julio said indignantly. Stroking his shiny black flattop, he added, “Nací en Quito, hermana.”

  “I’m sorry, but you still can’t compare the history of American slavery to anything,” Dorothy said unapologetically.

  “Well, the Jews were enslaved,” Max said. His ponytail had migrated up his head into a little yellow man bun.

  “Were they sold?” This was either Dorothy again or Rashid.

  “They were exterminated,” said Max. “Which is sort of harder to live with.”

  “Those two guys who stole his car aren’t dead, and they’re not at Auschwitz.” Leo looked at Mark but didn’t stop to fill him in. “How did they become the victims all of a sudden?”

  “I heard Mark started that rumor so he wouldn’t get expelled.” Willa looked up and smiled. “Not you, Mark, the other Mark.”

  Someone said, “If he got kicked out, why is he still living on campus?”

  Leo said, “Mark said—this Mark, I mean, our Mark said we’re not supposed to talk about the other Mark behind his back.” The entire class slowly turned to Leo. Evidently, it was up to him to sanction any further discussion. For a few seconds, he was paralyzed by the attention, as if his bulky ivory hand-knit sweater were a full-body cast. Finally, he shrugged, staring right at Mark. “Right?” He threw up his hands—but he had only one hand. The right arm of his sweater ended somewhere near the elbow.

  Mark nodded in answer to Leo’s question. But how had he not noticed Leo’s missing hand? How would Leo handle the reams of paper that would be passed around the table this semester? Did he type his own stories? Were his classmates unaware, uninterested, or unnerved? Was it odd, or alarming, or a relief for Leo that no one at the table had asked him to tell that story?

  Willa tipped her cowboy hat off her head. “Anyway, I heard those two guys didn’t steal the car at all.”

  “They’re black. Ergo, on this cam
pus, they stole the car,” Dorothy said.

  Mark looked at his watch. One minute to three.

  “But they aren’t black, are they?” Jane paused. “Not exactly, anyway. They’re from Fall River.” This was met with stunned silence, so Jane and her amazing freckles ventured deeper into the controversy. “Or New Bedford? Somewhere on the South Shore. I think they’re from Brazil.”

  Anton said, “Probably Cape Verde.”

  Someone said, “Cape Verde is in Africa.”

  “No, it’s not,” Anton said. “It’s an island.”

  Mark said, “Penelope wrote a story.” He paused just long enough for phones to disappear, packets to be unfurled, and the other-Mark mystery to dissipate. “She titled it ‘End in Sight.’ What needs to be said about it?”

  And they were off.

  The Professor never showed up, which occurred to Mark too late to curb the enthusiasm for the open-window stories by Penelope, Rashid, Virginia, and Willa. Each of their workshops ran on for almost fifteen minutes. And when Dorothy pointed out that almost all of them had killed off their central characters, several people jumped in with speculation about why that was so, and Mark looked up for the first time in a while and saw that eleven of the window ledges were occupied by familiar silhouettes, and while he registered their ghostly presence, the remainder of the class time was almost diverted into a free-for-all discussion about the morality of imagining and orchestrating someone’s death.

  To quell the crowd, Mark stood up and said, “I want to talk about your responsibility as writers—not only how you handle the fate of your characters, but the language you assign them, as well. But for right now, Anton wrote a story. He hasn’t yet titled it.”

  Anton said, “Let’s be honest, it’s not good.”

  Mark said, “You’re not here, Anton.”

  Anton said, “I wish I wasn’t.”

  Mark said, “Weren’t.”

  Leo said, “Weren’t? I wish I weren’t. Really?”

  Mark said, “Really.”

  Rashid said, “It’s the subjunctive.” She didn’t seem convinced. “Isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Mark said, “which I am officially adding to the growing list of Future Topics. For now, suffice it to say, yesterday, Anton wasn’t in this room, and today he wishes he weren’t. But he is, and I want to know what you have to say about his story.”

  No one spoke for a few seconds. Dorothy said, “Well, again, over, because, already, into, windy, open, wooden, outside, and a few others aren’t monosyllables. But the writer’s idea that the air outside is poisonous—I totally endorse that.”

  Anton picked up his pen and underlined something.

  Mark saw that the window behind him was occupied. Twelve, at last.

  Julio said, “Is that why the guy yelled at her about the heat?”

  “Yeah, yeah, of course,” Dorothy said. “And the dead things outside. The whole setting—I endorse that, too. It’s got some problems with the syntax, but it’s original. This was the only really dystopic story.”

  Anton looked up beseechingly.

  Mark stood up and said, “It’s a great word, and I want to make sure everyone knows the form Dorothy used.” On the blackboard, he wrote Utopia and Dystopia, and after he explained the distinction, a couple of the faces at the table did not look entirely enlightened, so he added Functional and Dysfunctional beneath the first pair. That seemed to work, so beneath those, he wrote Myopia and Myopic, to make sure Anton and everyone else understood that the altered ending of dystopic was a familiar convention.

  Time was up. “I know it’s four thirty, but don’t move. I want to thank you all for getting the work done again. I received all twelve new stories. On time. Top-notch adult behavior. I have a new packet of stories for each of you.”

  Rashid said, “The dreaded long sentence.”

  “If mine is a sentence,” said Leo.

  Mark said, “Starting Wednesday, I’m going to ask that you pass the writer your annotated reading copy of her or his story at the end of each workshop. Your editorial notes don’t have to be formal, or elaborate. A question mark next to an underlined passage is often as useful as a long comment. But do aim for legible. This will also make it possible for us to spend less time talking about minor issues that are best handled on the page, leaving more time for—for the art of it.”

  Willa said, “Did you say the art of it?”

  Mark said, “I did.”

  Max said, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  Dorothy said, “Don’t miss a chance to use a cliché.”

  Willa said, “I so wish I was an English major.”

  Rashid said, “Were. I wish I were.”

  “Oh, Mark, how could you?” This was Max again. “You’ve put us all in the subjunctive mood.”

  Mark tapped his watch. “And I owe you four minutes. Now, go away.”

  When the classroom cleared, Mark expected the Professor to turn up with an explanation for his absence, and this persisted as he erased the blackboard and shoved all the chairs back into place around the table, packed up his bag and headed to the garage. It haunted him all the way to Paul’s place, through dinner, and two Black Russians on the roof.

  On Tuesday morning, Mark did write another One Percent email to Paul, but the NEPCAJE books proved as repellant as ever, and his resolve to work on the novel would have required a trip to Ipswich to retrieve the manuscript, so he turned on the new fans to admire his handiwork, and they sucked up and disposed of the rest of the day. For lunch and dinner, he had coffee, so he was wide awake when the Professor finally delivered his comments on Technical Exercise 2 late Tuesday night.

  Mark smoked a Black Russian to brace himself for the Professor’s latest assault.

  Mark Sternum / Technical Exercise 2.

  The prose work here is genuinely impressive, and you handle the distended syntax of the long first sentence with apparent ease. (I am well aware that it was not easily done. You might be surprised to know that I really am a fan of your writing, not only in these short stories—which I really think you might consider submitting to one of the better journals for publication, should you be willing to go public—but of your nonfiction work, as well.)

  I am not entirely confident that readers who don’t identify Anton as a student simply by mention of his name will be immediately drawn in to the fullness of the story (I was—and I found the breakneck speed at which that happened really rewarding). You might want to find some way to at least establish his youth (if not his status as your student) right from the start. That’s a minor consideration in a very successful and sophisticated piece of work.

  I do think the seduction—or the suggestion of same—ought to be rethought. Why not give the narrator agency, have him caress or stroke Anton? Isn’t that why the narrator climbs into the pickup? Isn’t he hoping for something more than a ride to the beach? Or, perhaps what you mean to suggest is that Anton initiates the attempt at intimacy? Do you want readers to see that Anton has misinterpreted his teacher’s intentions, that the narrator (notably, he never does acquire a name over the course of the story) has simply been an alert, engaged, and even affectionate presence in the young man’s unhappy life but unaware of the effect he has had on his student? (That’s absolutely plausible, but readers will need to see some evidence of that in the literal text.)

  Of course, these and all of my other questions and concerns are matters of nuance and fine-tuning, as I hope is evident from my line-by-line notes. Your prose here is so confident, and your respect (you would say “love”) for the Technical Limits is so total that I am really happy to devote my time to your little stories, week after week, and I am hoping you will be able to set aside some time to return the favor.

  Presently, I am at work on a couple of op-eds for the New York Times or maybe the National Geographic in support of THAT BOOK (your phrase—my emphatic caps), which does inexplicably prove perennially popular. It might please you to know that I also have a nov
el underway, though I suspect it will be a few weeks, at least, before I am ready to submit those pages to your scrutiny. If you can see your way clear to give the op-eds a good going-over, I will have a rough draft of the first to you in a week’s time, or so. As always, my extensive responses to the new student stories follow.

  THREE

  Technical Exercise 3.

  (Mark Sternum / 498 words)

  The Professor typically slowed as he drove past yard sales only to marvel at the junk people considered valuable. But it was June, sunny at last, and instead of inchoate student stories on the passenger seat, he had a flat of tomato plants. Plus, one table in the yard was piled high with books. As he pulled over, two young guys loaded a mountain bike missing its front wheel into an old black Cadillac that looked like a hearse.

  The books were handsome, hardbound, and of no interest—college textbooks, an encyclopedia of American music, biographies of Papa This, Joe That, and other apparently admirable and dead bluegrass pioneers. There was also a silver harmonica someone thought was worth $40, an electronic keyboard, and a banjo in a black case lined with red satin.

  More interesting were two stout women—lesbians?—wrestling with an old Boy Scout tent, both glancing beseechingly at the big, bearish man on a lawn chair inside the garage.

  From across the patchy brown lawn, a blonde yelled, “Richard!” She was at a picnic table, her hand on a cash box. She headed toward the garage.

  Richard stepped out into the light and winced. He was wearing a too-small Oberlin sweatshirt, holding a bent bicycle wheel.

  As she approached, the blonde—Richard’s wife, surely—said, “That bike is finally gone,” and grabbed the bent wheel. “You have to let it go.” As she passed the Professor on her way to the tent, she said, “How about fifteen for the encyclopedia?”