Still in Love

by Michael Downing

  “This isn’t a science,” the Professor added. “It’s art. Ideally, when readers become aware that the seller has lost a child, they will recall memorable and unsettling details from earlier in the story that make perfect sense in retrospect.”

  Mark said, “That’s why we call the end of a story a resolution. The implications and suggestions of the literal text are resolved, and the full meaning of the action we have witnessed comes into clear focus for us.” Mark was about to repeat the deadline and delivery instructions, but the symphony of sighs stopped him. The room looked like a Victorian sweatshop, all twelve workers bent over their tatting or needlework.

  When six or seven of the students sat back in their chairs, the Professor said, “Some of you will have read the famously short six-word story Hemingway wrote that bears on this assignment.”

  Mark turned and wrote on the board: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

  “I don’t like that colon,” Max said. “Unnecessary device.”

  “I question the syntax,” said Dorothy.

  “Isn’t it a little odd to sell off your dead baby’s stuff?” This was Rashid. “Why not give it away?”

  “That’s a profound question you’re going to want to think about before you write,” said Mark.

  Anton asked, “Can our stories be that short?”

  “Hemingway’s tiny story is a model of efficiency,” the Professor said. “It is not a model short story. Suggestive? Yes. But we have no central character, no dramatic arc, and nothing but the generic emotions we all associate with the death of an infant.”

  Mark was impressed—and a little appalled—by the Professor’s surgical summary of the famous little story.

  “On the other hand,” the Professor continued, “you have a buyer—and that buyer is the central character whose story must alter or complicate our sense of ourselves. Illuminate your readers.”

  Mark was thinking of the yard sale story he had written—and how he hadn’t really inscribed an arc for the character of the Professor.

  The Professor said, “And mind the transaction.”

  “More on that on Monday,” Mark said, putting on his watch.

  “When it’s too late to do anything about it,” said Max.

  “I’m happy to know that makes you nervous,” said the Professor.

  Mark was still thinking about his yard sale story, and now he worried that the oddball business with the harmonica and the seller’s two $20 bills didn’t really add up to a proper transaction. He put on his watch and saw that they were already ten minutes over time.

  The Professor said, “Pick up your drafts of the hit-and-run story with my responses on the way out.”

  “Can you give us just one example of the difference between a hint and a suggestion?” This was Virginia, and her request was getting a lot of nods.

  The Professor said, “A hint is singular. Suggestion is accretive.”

  Mark said, “An obituary notice—that’s a hint. Someone saying ‘I’m so sorry for your loss’—that’s a hint. In one word or phrase, the death is made obvious. But a man who hasn’t shaved for a couple of days, or an unkempt garden with lots of droopy flowers that haven’t been deadheaded, or a woman dressed in black—by themselves, those might mean a man doesn’t like to shave, or someone hasn’t been doing yard chores lately, or that woman thinks she looks better in dark clothes. But as such details chosen by the writer accumulate—well, you get it, right? They become suggestive.”

  Leo said, “Can we use words like deadheaded?”

  “You should,” the Professor said. “Words that evoke death and dying or loss will echo suggestively.”

  “Eight a.m. on Monday morning in my mailbox, please,” said Mark. “And thank you all for sticking around so long.”

  “Now, go away,” said the Professor.

  “Not you, Isaac,” said Mark.

  Isaac looked up accusingly, as if he’d been unfairly called out.

  Although no one else in the mad rush to the door seemed to have heard him, Mark added, “You said you wanted to meet with me.”

  “Oh,” Isaac said. “Yeah.” Clearly, he had no idea what Mark was talking about. He loaded up his knapsack and rearranged a few items, stalling. Luckily, something he’d scribbled on his notebook tipped him off. “It’s about those original short stories. I was reading the syllabus this morning and saw that we’re starting them next week.”

  “We are,” Mark said. Whether Isaac was more studious than he appeared or simply couldn’t find a cereal box to read this morning, something nutritional had sunk in. “What’s your question about the stories?”

  “How would it be if I submitted drawings with my story? You know, like a graphic novel.”

  Mark didn’t say, You mean a comic book? Instead he said, “Feel free to add drawings. I won’t consider them part of the text, but if you want to include them, I won’t object.”

  “No, see, the pictures are the story,” Isaac said. “It’s a new kind of writing.”

  Mark said, “Aren’t pictures the old kind of writing—what people did before they learned to write?”

  Isaac muttered, “There’d be some words.”

  “As you know, I’m a big fan of words,” Mark said.

  Isaac shoved his notebook into his bag.

  “I don’t want you to leave without this.” He handed Isaac the annotated draft of his hit-and-run story. “And I’m happy to talk this through, Isaac, and explain why I won’t treat illustrations as text,” Mark said.

  “Never mind,” Isaac said. “I think I get the point.”

  Mark wasn’t sure he did. But he didn’t really know anything about Isaac yet beyond that Maple Leafs jersey he wore every day, so he went with that as his point of entry. “I don’t want to forget to ask how the curling team is doing.”

  Isaac’s mood visibly improved. “We’re not a team, but we got club status—just today. That’s why I couldn’t hang around and wait for you in Hum Hall. I had to meet with some dean to sign the forms and everything.”

  “That’s great. Well done. I ask because someone was talking to me about wanting to join the team.” This was a risk, and not only because it was a lie. “He’s got his own special broom.”

  “No,” Isaac said, and then he looked genuinely confused. “I mean, sure, give him my email and tell him to be in touch. But we have an equipment budget now.”

  “No, no—that’s the thing. He has his own broom he wants to use—only it’s not really a broom. It’s better.”

  Isaac seemed intrigued. “Better how?”

  “It’s got bristles like a broom, but it’s also a vacuum cleaner.”

  Isaac said, “He wants to use a vacuum to curl with?”

  “The suction makes all the difference, he says.”

  Isaac tilted back in his chair, apparently trying to get a new angle on this situation. “A vacuum cleaner,” he said, just to make sure.

  “Portable,” Mark said, sensing that the absurdity was finally sinking in. “Battery-operated, so no cords. He says it’s way better than the standard curling brooms.”

  “Like using pictures instead of words, you mean?” Finally, Isaac got it. “Very funny.”

  Mark said, “Not acceptable according to the rules of the sport?”

  “Probably not,” Isaac said. He tilted back toward the table. He stood up and smiled. “Here I was, trying to figure out a polite way to say no to your friend with the vacuum.”

  Mark nodded.

  Isaac nodded, headed to the door and didn’t look back, but when he was out in the hall, he yelled, “See you on Monday.”

  3.

  It began to snow as Mark packed up his bag, big lazy flakes that smashed into the windows like hopeful, heedless moths. As he headed outside, he recognized the white headband and braids of the young woman sheltering under an eave of the Arts Building. Vanessa? Eleanor? The prospect of one more conversation was unappealing enough to make him back up and wait her out in the dark classroom, bu
t as he hesitated, she turned and entered the building, her phone pressed to her cheek, and didn’t acknowledge him. The snow made him mindful of Anton’s coat crumpled up on his office floor, so he veered off toward Hum Hall.

  It must have been after five because the front door was locked, and the windows of all but one of the departmental offices were dark. It was unclear what he might do with the puffy red coat if he retrieved it now. It was painfully clear that he’d have to climb up three flights of stairs to arrive at a decision that would probably leave him in possession of a winter coat Anton didn’t want, would promise to take from Mark on Monday, and then leave in the classroom.

  Mark was confident he knew Anton well enough to know he didn’t want that coat. And there was a lot of snow in the air, and more on the way, and that NEPCAJE panel in Amherst on the horizon this weekend, so Mark made a beeline for the garage. The Saab wasn’t happy to see him and balked the first few times Mark twisted the key in the ignition, but it finally relented. At the end of the exit ramp, a gust of wind greeted him. The snow was blinding now. He decided not to drive to Ipswich, which would make for a longer drive to Amherst on Saturday. Plus, he had several pork tenderloins at Paul’s place. And he didn’t need to stare at that abandoned novel on his desk to know what he wasn’t doing with his spare time for the next few days.

  Maybe it was kindness, maybe it was pity, maybe it was guilt—it was hard to name the principal currency of most transactions with students—but instead of heading directly to Cambridge, halfway down the hill Mark made a quick U-Turn toward Hum Hall and parked behind the back of the building, next to the only other car in the spaces reserved for office staff and administrators. He turned off the Saab, and as he braced himself for the climb up to his office to retrieve Anton’s car coat, one of the young English Department assistant-somethings rushed out through the back door. Sybil? Cheryl?

  She stopped and opened an umbrella. “Mark! Go home already. It’s nasty out here.”

  “A student left something in my office.”

  “Shaved head? Yellow sweater?”

  “Anton,” Mark said.

  “He came by about fifteen minutes ago to claim it.”

  “He did?” Even to Mark, the question sounded more accusatory than curious.

  She raised her umbrella up an extra foot or so, to let Mark see the concern on her face. “He swore he had your permission to go into your office.”

  “Oh, he did. I’m just surprised he remembered where he left it. And you are a true champ. Now, go home.”

  “There’s a bottle of wine waiting for me,” she said, and rushed to her car and drove away.

  Mark didn’t. After fifteen minutes of jiggling the key in the ignition and whacking the dashboard—often a successful strategy with the Saab—he called Paul’s automobile club. Twenty minutes later, he explained to the young guy with the tow truck that the battery was fine but nothing else seemed to be.

  All the guy said for a while was, “Saabs.” But after he’d poked around under the hood and plugged and unplugged the fuses under the steering wheel, he loosened up. This was his eleventh tow of the day, and with the weather, he figured he’d be out all night. He wasn’t wearing a coat or gloves, but he complained bitterly about the cold. He was also evidently annoyed that the Saab had to be taken to Ipswich, though he did concede that Mark’s mechanic, Ozzie, was an honest guy.

  Mark mostly shrugged his way through the conversation, and texted Ozzie, who was never surprised to learn that the Saab was on its way to him. As the tow truck operator hauled out the chains and cranked a couple of pulleys, knelt down on the wet hardtop and then slithered in under the car on his back to hook up the axle, Mark thought about this young man’s life tonight, next year, twenty years on, and all of the books he’d recently read from experts opining on the worthlessness of a college education.

  The tow truck driver said he could take Mark to Cambridge, but that would be an uncovered expense—maybe as much as $125, not including gas. Mark thanked him and ordered up an Uber. As he watched his Saab get dragged ignominiously off the field of battle once again, a white hatchback pulled into one of the empty parking spaces.

  Karen Cole, his adjunct officemate, rolled down the front window. “Was that your Saab?”

  Mark nodded. “Can’t imagine why they stopped making them.” He figured Karen was on campus for another union-organizing meeting, and he hoped his ride would arrive before the rest of the part-time faculty.

  Karen said, “Get in.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Mark said. “I’m actually headed home. I already called an Uber.”

  Karen said, “I’m your Uber.”

  Mark said, “No, I really did already call for a ride. Thanks, though.”

  “I’m your Uber driver, Mark. Harvard Square, right?” Karen blasted her horn. “I’m not getting out in this weather to open the door for you.”

  This was awkward. It reminded him of being served dinner or fitted for a pair of boots by a McClintock student three or four years after her graduation. Mark climbed into the back seat. “I’m staying at Paul’s. Just above the Cambridge Common.”

  “I’ve got GPS,” Karen said. “Do you mind NPR?”

  As opposed to discussing the irony?

  Karen turned up the volume on the radio. For the first time since November, the news out of Washington registered as a relief.

  Karen wasn’t a patient driver, but Mark’s standards were low. She didn’t hit anybody. That was good enough for him. When they were nearing his destination, he pulled out his phone and rated her a five-star driver on the Uber app. This was grade inflation, but Mark was an old hand at that pump.

  As Karen pulled into a handicap space at the top of the Cambridge Common, she said, “I’m giving you five stars as a customer. I like the quiet ones.”

  Mark said, “I’ve already rated you.”

  “I know you gave me five stars,” Karen said. “I checked. That’s why I gave you five. Good night.”

  At Hellman, faculty members weren’t allowed to read their student reviews until they’d given out final grades, which was fair but frustrating. Maybe Karen and her union would get that policy reversed.

  While he was waiting for the elevator up to the fifth floor, Mark texted Paul’s friend Sharon and asked to borrow back Paul’s car. Sharon was delighted to surrender the car, as she was going out of town for ten days and would otherwise have to pay for off-street parking. Mark was delighted that Sharon wanted to skip their planned dinner for tonight and make the exchange on Friday morning after her shift at the hospital, as searching for on-street parking at night in Harvard Square after a snowstorm was simply a roundabout way of eventually paying for off-street parking.

  4.

  Mark got to the hospital early on Friday. Until recently, Sharon had worked at Harbor Hospice, a project she and three other women launched to provide end-of-life care to homeless people who would otherwise die on the street or in an emergency room. It was more than a decade since a newspaper story about their noble but ad hoc operation in an abandoned basement lab of one of the big university teaching hospitals had caught Mark’s attention. He’d casually mentioned it to Paul, who took his brown-bag lunch for a walk the next day, found the basement, met Sharon, and spent the rest of that afternoon and most of the evening answering the one phone in the lab and greeting terminally ill people who had found their way to Harbor Hospice or been dumped in the doorway by someone who didn’t know what else to do with them. Within six months, Paul was the chief operating officer, and a former convent was being converted into a proper home for Harbor House, and ten years later he finally persuaded two of the big medical schools in Boston to integrate the project into their better-outfitted and better-funded facilities. That’s when Paul was recruited by the consortium of teaching hospitals to run the Paean Project, where Paul was hoping Sharon would soon join him, and where Mark was hoping Paul would spend more time in his Boston office.

  Mark stood and watched from the
counter of the intensive care unit desk as Sharon checked in with the last three of the critically ill people behind the twelve shower-curtained bays. She spoke so softly that the conversations were inaudible, but Mark could see her straightening out bed sheets, offering them cups of something, and pausing for a silent moment at the foot of each bed—meditating? praying?—before she made a few notes on the chart and then moved on. A doctor with a shiny swale of jet-black hair and a knee-length white coat was impatiently trailing Sharon, repeatedly looking at his wrist. He was leading a posse of short-coated students into each bay, where he picked up the chart from the foot of the bed, conducted a brief Q&A with his posse, and made a few cursory pronouncements about the patient’s progress, often with his back to the person in the bed.

  “Most of the doctors don’t like to waste time talking to the patients,” Sharon said after she’d found them an empty room with two chairs and a generous window ledge to eat lunch.

  Mark said, “What’s with his dye job?”

  “Second marriage,” Sharon said. “And now, instead of a watch, he wears one of those body monitors.”

  They exchanged a knowing nod. People often mistook them for siblings, and though neither of them could see a resemblance, their shared suspicion of well-groomed people and outdoor activities did lend them a distinctive rumpled pallor that might kindly be misconstrued as familial.

  “I don’t mind filling in here as needed for a few months, but I could never work full-time for doctors again.”

  Mark had seen doctors in action many times, and he’d watched rounds, but something about how little seemed to be required of the so-called expert had really impressed him today. “So the doctors are basically delivering summaries of what the nurses have been noticing and noting down, and—”

  “Oh, my god.” Sharon put down her sandwich and pried up one piece of bread. “What did you put in here?”

  “Pork tenderloin, avocado, and havarti.” Mark had brought bag lunches, as he always did for lunch with Sharon, not only because he admired her and could not imagine how to thank her for the work she did, and not only because lunch would otherwise be hospital food, but because Sharon credited the bag lunch Mark had made for Paul for her willingness to trust a too-handsome, too-well-groomed, too-mannish man—not to mention the suit and tie—on the day Paul had first wandered into Harbor Hospice.