The Learning Curve

by Mandy Berman

  “What do you think,” Dani said.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. It’s gorgeous here today. How’s my boy?”

  Simone sighed. “Causing trouble. He’s got quite the rebellious streak.”

  “He certainly didn’t get that from you.”

  “I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

  Danièle had never approved of Oliver. She liked that he was Jewish, but did not like him: she was reproachful of his moody affectations and the playboy lifestyle of his past; she thought that he drank too much, that his writing was dark and strange, that he was not a good role model for her nephew. She would have much preferred that Simone marry Ariel, and she had never seemed to be able to come to terms with Oliver being the polar opposite of him. Danièle herself had made the practical, steady choice by marrying Alex, who was gone for work so often that it made Simone suspicious. Then again, she supposed, she was no longer an authority on present husbands.

  The sisters themselves remained close despite Danièle’s dislike of Oliver—and, if Simone was being honest, her own dislike of Alex. Oliver did not like Danièle, either: he thought she was too prissy, too uptight, too judgmental—not exactly inaccurate, but Simone never verbally agreed with him, feeling defensive of her sister. Oliver didn’t have siblings, and he might never understand her bond with Danièle. And Danièle was particularly invested in Henri: it was important to her to keep up with her nephew, the child who remained the closest to being her own.

  “When are you coming to visit?” Simone pleaded.

  “You know how I feel about Germany.”

  “Berlin isn’t Germany.”

  “That language. How can you stand it?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “I know,” Dani said. “And I’ll never understand it.”

  * * *

  —

  Later, Simone and Henri went to pick up dinner from the Lebanese place on the corner. They took it to go and ate silently at home, Henri watching her, waiting for her to speak, but she had nothing else to say. She had to admit that she was, in her core, quite proud of him.

  4.

  OUTSIDE THE AUDITORIUM were a few young women holding signs that read EXPEL RAPISTS and BELIEVE VICTIMS, chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, the patriarchy has got to go.”

  “You should join them, Marley,” Liv said, as they walked past. They’d been bickering about the reading all day. Marley was appalled that Oliver Ash had been invited to Buchanan after the sexual misconduct at Columbia, and was determined to speak up about it. And as a Jew, Marley hated that Oliver Ash might be considered at all a representative voice of her community. Liv was obviously on the other end of the spectrum, attracted not only to Professor Ash himself but also to the prestige he brought to the college. She also, so she said, genuinely loved his writing. (“Why come if you hate him so much?” Liv had asked, to which Marley didn’t respond.)

  “Nice work, ladies,” Marley said, cheering on the protestors while ignoring Liv. Fiona hadn’t realized she was going to be playing mediator tonight over this relatively inconsequential issue.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t show them that you’re about to walk inside,” Liv said.

  “I think everyone understands that I don’t have to be a fangirl in order to attend a lecture.”

  “An affair is not the same thing as rape,” Liv said under her breath so Fiona could hear it but Marley couldn’t.

  They were there fairly early, at Liv’s insistence, and they settled in seats a few rows from the stage. Here was what Fiona knew so far about Oliver Ash’s Columbia controversy, as Marley had explained it to her before the reading: two years after he was hired to teach in Columbia’s undergraduate creative writing program, tenure track, he was fired for sleeping with a freshman. (She was also, it turned out, seventeen, which was a horrible revelation, though it was not technically illegal in the state of New York.) Then he fled to Paris and published his second novel two years later. It could hardly have been classified as fiction: the story of a professor having an affair with a student after his father, a Jew who’d fled Nazi Germany as a child, had killed himself. “Thinly veiled” would have been a generous description of its relationship to his own life. It didn’t sell the way Adolf had, and critics were split on it: everyone found it self-indulgent, but some were willing to look beyond this and acknowledge his mastery of language and his unique voice. Some even called him the next Philip Roth—though not always in a complimentary fashion.

  The auditorium began to fill up with students, professors, and community members. The college often hosted prestigious speakers, but Oliver Ash was their first big name of the school year. At seven P.M., the lights dimmed, and the English department chair, Professor Alpert, in an A-line dress and sexy leather boots, took the lectern. She looked over her reading glasses at her printed speech, said phrases like “stormed onto the literary scene,” words like “dystopian,” “cynical,” “Holocaust,” “haunting.”

  Fiona wondered what it might be like for your ideas to be so valuable that other people would pay to read them, or would show up on a Thursday night, when they could be drinking or having sex or sleeping instead, to hear them. And what was it like to have your ideas cemented in print, unerasable? To not be able to go back and change them? She was so mutable, the things she felt and knew changed so quickly from one moment to the next; she couldn’t imagine putting a single one down in ink, to be published forever.

  “We are so grateful to have Professor Ash here this semester,” Professor Alpert was saying, and Marley turned to make a face at Fiona, who sat between her two friends.

  The audience applauded. He walked out from the wings, shook the department chair’s hand, and took the lectern.

  “Hello,” Professor Ash said to the audience. “Thank you, Ruth”—he turned toward Professor Alpert, who had now taken his place in the wings—“for the incredibly kind introduction.” He was wearing a starched white button-down, top button undone, a navy blazer, navy slacks, no tie. Like those he’d worn at the department party, his clothes looked expensive. The slacks fit him well.

  “I’m going to read the first chapter of my yet-untitled new novel,” he said to the audience. “Please be kind to me.”

  He offered a weak smile and began:

  “No one had prepared Michael for Berlin in winter.”

  He cleared his throat, and read on.

  He’d spent Decembers in New York, Januarys in Edinburgh, even Februarys in Montreal, but the dark, gray expanse that was Berlin from November through March was unprecedented in its ability to impress upon him a deep, unrelenting sadness. He was not one to follow the rules of staying up late and rising early in order to beat jet lag, and so, during the first month, he would remain awake all night and then sleep until three in the afternoon, only experiencing an hour of sunlight through the window of his apartment—if one could be so bold as to call it sunlight, the sun already single-mindedly determined to set—before the sky began to turn that charcoal blue again.

  Michael’s life was permanently charcoal blue. He saw charcoal blue behind his eyes as he closed them to sleep in the very early morning. When he went for walks after dusk, when he finally got himself out of the apartment in Neukölln, he passed the doner kebab shops on Sonnenallee but did not eat anything. In Kreuzberg, where his father was born, he thought inevitably of a childhood in an attic, of Berlin winters in an attic, winters that were strung on top of each other like nesting dolls. He stuffed his hands in his pockets instead and tried to keep himself warm while the unforgiving East German wind worked its hardest to carry him up, out, and away.

  He read the rest of the chapter from the book and finished to steady applause. Fiona found it engrossing, and less intellectually dense than she had expected; it was about this man trying to reckon with the memory of his father, a Jew who had escaped from Berlin in 1938, while r
etracing his footsteps throughout the city seventy years later.

  The house lights were raised. Liv didn’t look at either of her friends—she was too focused on the man at the lectern. Marley looked over at Fiona and rolled her eyes, mouthed, “Clichéd.” Fiona nodded; she wouldn’t admit to Marley that she’d liked it.

  Oliver Ash said he believed that there was time allotted for a few questions, and several hands shot up. An usher walked a microphone out to a girl sitting in one of the rows in front of them. She was young, round-cheeked, a freshman or sophomore, the microphone wobbling in her hands. Oliver Ash smiled at her in a way that looked kind and unintimidating, a smile Fiona imagined his publicist or someone else who worked for him had encouraged him to practice.

  “I was wondering?” the girl said in a high-pitched voice. “Do you have a writing routine? I was wondering if you could share it with us?”

  Fiona had been to a few of these readings, and someone always asked this question.

  “I find that establishing a routine is extremely important for me when it comes to getting work done,” Oliver Ash said. “I try to sit at my desk from nine until five, with around an hour-long break for lunch and a walk. My wife teaches full-time and my son is in full-day school and then I’m in charge of the childcare after school, so that concrete gap of time while I have the apartment to myself is pretty much taunting me each day to get work done. Some days I find the words pour from me. Others I can barely eke out a sentence.” Several audience members emitted small, familiar chuckles. “On those days, I read authors that I admire, and I drink a little extra coffee, and my lunchtime walks are a bit longer. The key, I think, is to keep your ass in the chair for as long as you can each day, and eventually your brain catches up with your body.”

  Bullshit, Fiona thought, and mouthed this to Marley, who nodded in assent. If he followed that routine every day he would have published at least one more book since his last, almost ten years ago. The underclassman girl seemed grateful for the answer nonetheless, perhaps emboldened by it, and Fiona felt content that this girl would keep trying hard, keep writing, a thing she clearly loved to do, because of this answer. The girl, giddily starstruck, passed the microphone back to the usher. A few more questions went along like this—who are your favorite writers, how do you get inspired, et cetera, et cetera.

  Then Professor Alpert announced that there was time for one last question.

  Marley’s hand casually went up. Fiona and Liv both turned their heads and were surprised to see the microphone being immediately delivered to her, almost as if she’d conspired with the usher ahead of time. Marley stood, confident, prepared for something Fiona could not begin to predict.

  “Your second novel is obviously largely autobiographical,” Marley began. “I was wondering about your relationships to reality and fiction in your own writing. Do you ever grapple with the balance of fidelity to the facts versus fidelity to the story? In other words, where do you draw the line between fictional narrative and truth?”

  Oliver Ash nodded, clearly considering the subtext to this question and how to tiptoe around it. The second book, of course, was the one about the affair. Fiona loved that she had friends like Marley, unafraid to confront a man in power. Marley was intimidated by no one.

  “To me, ‘truth’ does not live so much in facts as it does in the realm of emotional verisimilitude,” he began. “What’s important to me is that my reader feels some sort of human recognition of the narrative. So whether or not I’m recounting things that have happened in so-called reality feels irrelevant. That is, if we are defining reality as events that have happened in the course of human history. Which is, of course, relative, since we’re always repeating ourselves in one way or another.” He seemed to stop himself there from digressing further.

  “Okay,” Marley said. “That doesn’t answer my question, though.”

  Fiona couldn’t help but let out a wide smile, full of nervousness. She always laughed or smiled when she was uneasy, when awkwardness abounded. Liv’s face was pink, and she was not looking at either of her friends.

  “I’m sorry?” he said. “Perhaps you could rephrase it.”

  “Pardon my crassness, but I’m not talking about a bullshit version of ‘truth.’ ” She used her fingers for air quotes. “I mean in the most basic way, aren’t you actually betraying truth by blurring its outlines so much?”

  The audience shifted their gazes back to him.

  “No,” he started. “I don’t believe that I am. Fiction springs from life, but it’s also dynamic. The borders between facts and fiction are entirely up to each writer. When a reader decides to read fiction he is giving the author the power to determine—”

  “Or she.”

  “I’m sorry?” he said again.

  “The reader. He or she.”

  Fiona swore she saw him roll his eyes. “When he or she reads fiction, he or she is granting the author permission to take liberties. This is the unwritten contract of novels. The reader doesn’t have to like what he’s reading, but so long as he has the book in his hands, he continues to be complicit in whatever version of fiction he’s being served, no matter how much an amalgamation it is with a recognizable version of reality.”

  “So do you not care if people believe that that character is you?”

  Titters came from the audience, nervous whispers.

  “That’s an entirely different question,” he said.

  “Well,” she said, “if that character is you, this reader would rather not be complicit in our college hiring someone who abuses his power and sleeps with his students. But…” She shrugged. “Who are we to judge. As you say, truth doesn’t really ‘live in the facts.’ ” She handed the microphone back to the stunned usher and sat down. From the back of the auditorium, there were a few hoots and hollers and spurts of applause. Fiona, sitting so close to the man himself, stopped herself from joining in.

  Marley had left Oliver Ash dumbstruck. Professor Alpert, flustered and red-faced, rushed out from the wings and toward the lectern. Fiona had to admit that it was entertaining, the way Marley’s question had punctured the politically correct air of the largely white, largely liberal auditorium.

  “That will be all for tonight,” Professor Alpert said into the microphone, forcing Professor Ash to step off to the side. “Thank you so much for coming, and for your…probing questions. Please get home safely.” She walked off the stage then, beckoning for him to follow her, and the audience began applauding in staggered numbers. Oliver Ash offered a small wave on his way out.

  * * *

  “Incredible. Honestly incredible.”

  Fiona was shaking her head in disbelief and grabbing three cups from the cabinet above her head. She, Liv, and Marley were in the kitchen, jackets still on and bags slung over their shoulders.

  “I don’t see why any man should get away with that kind of behavior,” said Marley, throwing her purse on a chair.

  Fiona grunted in assent, dropped her jacket and bag on the counter, and took the half-empty handle of vanilla vodka from the freezer.

  “I’m not drinking,” Liv announced.

  “What?” Fiona said. “Why not?”

  “I’m staying in tonight.”

  “You said earlier you were going to come out.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  Liv took a cup from the counter and filled it with water from the tap.

  “You should stay downstairs with us for a bit,” Marley said. “It’s Thursday night.”

  “I have work to do,” Liv said, and made her way up the stairs to her bedroom.

  Fiona and Marley looked at each other, glances weighted with judgment, and after Liv was out of earshot, Marley said in a low voice, “Why does she care so much about him?”

  “I think she might be trying to sleep with him.”

  Marley’s e
yes widened. “Are you serious?”

  “She was fawning over him at the department party,” Fiona whispered.

  “What about Brandon?”

  Fiona shrugged. Maybe she was being too harsh on Liv, but she suspected she was right. Brandon did not seem to make Liv really happy, not the way she used to be when she was single. It was like she was with him out of some sense of duty, because she felt she ought to have a boyfriend, not because she wanted one.

  “Well, if that’s the case,” Marley said, “I don’t understand why me saying what I did would put a damper on her chances with him.”

  “I think she’s trying to make as strong an impression as she can. And she thinks he might have thought less of her because she was next to you. It’s silly, but that’s the way she operates. You know. She cares a lot about appearances.”

  Fiona felt bad immediately. She and Liv used to be a pair, Marley and Lula the other duo. She felt, confiding these things to Marley, like she was cheating on Liv.

  “Well,” Marley said, “I can’t think of anyone I’d less like to fuck.”

  “Same.” Fiona opened the fridge. “Let’s make a drink.” She pulled out a big bottle of Diet Sunkist.

  “Did we forget to get Fanta?”

  “I love this,” Fiona said, pouring the bright orange soda into her cup. “It tastes like orange sherbet.”

  “Blech,” Marley said, but held her own cup out anyway, allowing Fiona to pour the soda into her drink.

  Marley leaned against the counter, took her first sip, made a face.

  “Hey,” she said to Fiona. “Have you heard from that guy?”

  “Nope.”

  Fiona hadn’t expected Gabriel to call, but she hadn’t expected him to not call, either. The night had left a bad taste in her mouth, so why would she even want to hear from him again? But she did, despite all logic. Hearing from him would have made her feel she was valuable to him, would have been a way to prove herself and her own suspicions wrong about the night. If he had contacted her, then maybe what she’d imagined had happened didn’t actually—because calling her would have meant that he wanted her, specifically her, and not just whoever happened to be in his bed in the middle of the night.