Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) Page 9

  Gossip is not Eileen’s hobby. It is the food of her soul, marrow of life, milk of paradise. Eileen is a chatty fortyish double divorcée with wavy brown hair, wide brown eyes, and powder pink candied-looking lipstick. She’s been the department’s administrative assistant since well before I arrived as a graduate student. From her desk she commands the elevator and the stairwell, and, craning her neck, extends her purview to the faculty lounge. When this doesn’t provide sufficient data she wheels her cart around the perimeter of the department, trolling for information, slowing flagrantly outside the copy room or anywhere else she might find two faculty members in conversation. Eileen is the Switzerland of the department, accepting deposits from all comers, taking no sides because any alliance might block information supplies from an opposing camp. In her world we faculty are arrested in a submature stage of development, playing smarter-than-thou games while the real matters of adult life go unattended. You people have your priorities completely screwed up. You don’t know anything if it’s not in a book. Despite Eileen’s open disdain for our ignorance, or perhaps because of it, a certain segment of the faculty jockeys daily to praise her. My colleagues—most of them trusty straight-arrow sorts, with pale spouses and children with the strangled, overwise look of junior Manhattan literati—admire Eileen’s clothing effusively and ask her, with cloying smiles, for the latest tabloid news. They’re convinced, as only a group of Ph.D.s can be, that they’re charming the sole non-college graduate among them. They think Eileen doesn’t notice the smirk behind their questions, the way they use her as a source of see-how-open-minded-I-am points in some intradepartmental tournament. I find it insulting, and suspect she does too; perhaps that’s why she grinds her superiority into our faces. When Eileen is particularly irritated, the mini-television comes out of the supply closet. Junior faculty’s meek requests for silence and the offended glares of grad students make no difference; on those days the TV prattles uninterrupted on her desk for hours. I once heard Eileen, preening for a handsome new graduate student, say she was the only person in the department who knew how to stand up for what mattered. In truth I’ve never seen her stick out her little finger, let alone her neck, for anyone. The false heroism of the bored.

  As I approach her desk Eileen greets me warily.

  As cheerfully as I can, I return the greeting. “By the way,” I say, “any chance you’ve got that photocopying ready?”

  She crunches a sucking candy. “Check again later,” she says, eyes drifting back toward the screen.

  “I’ll be in until three. I’ll check then.”

  She shrugs: The fates will decree as they choose. If the photocopying is ready, so be it. As I turn away, Eileen mutters, “She’s got a lot of nerve, asking me to schedule extra meetings during drop/add week.”

  And I’ve got better things to do than stand here figuring out which of my colleagues ticked Eileen off this time by requesting simple administrative assistance. Turning down the long fluorescent-lit hall, I head to my office. I unlock my door, rereading out of habit and for the thousandth time its single adornment—a one-panel cartoon depicting the tower of Babel under construction, each laborer depicted as a subspecialized academic. I flip on the lights, set my briefcase on the floor below my office’s only other decoration—a framed photograph of Zora Neale Hurston—and grab the coffee mug off my stacked desk. As I’m shutting the door I spy Elizabeth, drifting along the wall of the corridor as though forced there by a swift current. The pile of books she’s embracing reaches nearly to her chin. She starts when I greet her.

  “I didn’t see you.” Every word an apology.

  “How goes it?”

  “Fine,” she breathes. “Lots of work.”

  “I can see.” I point to the books. “That stack’s a spine-bender. You’re checking on a new idea?”

  “Joanne thought I should do some reading on nineteenth-century English prosody. To put Dickinson in better context. She did a little research for me and suggested these titles.”

  “Really? To me that seems unnecessary. Do you think Joanne knows your dissertation area well enough to know what you need? She’s a sixteenth-century specialist, not an Americanist.”

  Elizabeth stops walking. Her struggle to formulate an apology looks like a Medieval portrait of agony.

  “Don’t worry.” I give her my most reassuring adviserly smile. “Your dissertation is in great shape. If you just stay on the course we discussed, I think it will be fine. But go ahead and read whatever you think will help.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Thanks.”

  I glance at the title on top of the stack: Promethean Poesie. This doesn’t strike me as okay at all—it strikes me as a colossal waste of energy. Elizabeth will read each obscure tome cover to cover just to be sure she hasn’t missed something. Then long after I’ve forgotten about this conversation she’ll still be trying to mollify me by implying she did the extra work only to humor Joanne . . . or that the books were useful, though not at all in the way Joanne suggested. I don’t have time for Elizabeth’s curtseys and bows, yet I’ve already set them in motion by challenging Joanne’s advice. Feeling like a jerk, I step into the faculty lounge.

  “This is completely absurd,” Jeff greets me. He waves a half-empty cheese-pretzel bag in my direction. “Steven left these here. Have you seen the ingredients? I don’t know how any intelligent person can eat this crap.”

  I take the bag and scan the ingredients. “He’s British. Maybe he eats it ironically. What’s new?”

  Jeff half shutters his eyes: his have I got one for you expression. “Victoria was finishing her coffee when I got here. She waited until everyone else had left, then asked for a moment of my time. Apparently Paleozoic asked her this morning if I was courting Elizabeth.”

  “You’re serious? Did Victoria tell him you were gay?”

  “Victoria’s too Brahmin to divulge anyone else’s business, and too stiff to say the word ‘gay’ unless it’s in a sonnet. All she said to Paleozoic was that she doubted it. But it seemed to her”—here Jeff adopts Victoria’s measured New England cadence—“that it would be prudent for me to be aware there are rumors circulating about Elizabeth and myself among the senior staff.”

  “How could she even keep a straight face?”

  “She doesn’t have any other kind.”

  “She does know you’re gay?”

  “Of course. She knew before anyone, including you. The first week I was here she suggested, in a completely uncharacteristic non sequitur, that I stop by and introduce myself to Frank Chanville in Classics. And when I met Frank it turned out he’d just organized the university gay forum. Underneath the granite, Victoria’s pretty savvy—unlike Paleozoic, who wouldn’t know gay-as-a-goose if it came up to him and—” Jeff makes an obscene gesture.

  “But why would anyone believe that rumor?”

  “Because straight people are so hung up on the third syllable of ‘homosexual’ that they think we want to bugger everyone. Plus plenty of them secretly hope—for reasons only their therapists know—that homosexuality doesn’t stick.”

  “You really think the faculty is so backward?”

  “This faculty is relatively enlightened. Which is why I’m not going to bother correcting the rumor—it wouldn’t have legs here. But that’s not my point.” He lapses into a moody silence. After a minute he says tersely, “Don’t believe the commercials. Or our I’m-from-a-town-called-Hope president. We live in a reactionary country. The only way to succeed is to see through the system.”

  I know better than to speak. I wait until Jeff’s irritable expression passes and he takes a long gulp from his water glass.

  “Have you considered telling Paleozoic directly?” I ask. “Nipping the rumor in the bud? You’re tenured and you’re out. It’s too late for anyone to label you ‘special interest’ and stick you over in Gay Studies. Why not be direct?”

  “Paleozoic,” Jeff says, “is going to figure this one out for himself. I want to see what it wil
l take for him to realize.” He stretches his neck, rolling his head from one shoulder to the other. “Besides, Elizabeth is cute, in a Kate Moss kind of way. If I were wired that way, it wouldn’t be a bad match.”

  “Well, I hope you like women with scoliosis, because she’s going to have a case pretty soon.”

  “Because . . . ?”

  I drop onto the sofa cushion beside his. “Because Joanne’s advising my advisee. She’s just given her a last-minute reading list that would debilitate your average grad student. And you know Elizabeth—she’s already read everything she needs to, she’s practically done writing the damn dissertation. She doesn’t need someone making her insecure about irrelevant material.”

  “You’re awfully ticked off. It’s just a reading list, right?”

  “It’s not just a reading list. It’s the principle.”

  “Aren’t you being a tad possessive?”

  I back off from my annoyance long enough to consider this. Elizabeth is the brightest grad student I’ve known. It would be natural, wouldn’t it, for me to feel territorial? “Maybe,” I say. “Still, Joanne could have made a friendly suggestion or two, rather than giving Elizabeth—who is a setup for eleventh-hour dissertation paranoia—a brain-breaking list. It’s just inappropriate. I ought to talk to Joanne about it.”

  “Mmm.” Jeff leans back on the threadbare couch. He puffs his narrow cheeks and expels the air slowly. “If I were you I’d be careful about that.”

  “Because?”

  “Something’s up with Joanne.”

  “That was obvious at the grade-inflation meeting.”

  “True,” Jeff says. “Though most people have already chalked that particular stunt up as a power play—more flagrant than Joanne’s usual, but something they’re willing to overlook, mostly because nobody wants to have to take over the job of organizing these meetings. What I mean, though, is that this week she’s jumping on people for the slightest thing. You should have seen the to do list she gave Eileen this morning.”

  “I was wondering what was with Eileen.”

  “And I think Joanne’s particularly ticked off at you. When your twentieth-century class came up in a discussion this morning, she pronounced your name as though you’d been caught in a broom closet molesting Spenser.”

  “What’s she got against me? No offense, but you’re flip with her all the time. I’m nothing but polite.”

  “Yes, my dear, but I”—he draws himself up on the sofa, and looks at me sternly—“am a faggot. And straight women let gay men get away with anything. We don’t figure into the picture. We’re beyond sexism. We’re utterly unthreatening. No hierarchy to sort out, no mixed vibes. And don’t play dumb about this, Tracy, because it’s part of what makes our friendship so easy. No matter how I behave, I am not personally threatening to you.”

  Checking myself before I launch a rebuttal, I recall my first encounters with Jeff, and the relief I felt sparring with a man with whom there would be no complications. “I see your point,” I say.

  With a wave he acknowledges victory.

  “But what did I ever do to Joanne?”

  Jeff takes the copy of the PMLA from the coffee table and thumbs it. “If people’s biases required rational cause, I could have brought the entire Little League for court-martial when I was eight. I think you ought to let this reading-list thing go and let Joanne climb out of her foul mood on her own. Elizabeth is an adult. She can take care of herself.”

  As if on cue, the door to the faculty lounge swings open and Joanne and Grub enter.

  “. . . which sums up how I feel about Gilman,” says Jeff. “Did you ever read Difference and Pathology?”

  “You’re good,” I whisper to Jeff, as Joanne cuts in sharply from the coffee machine.

  “You two are talking about Sander Gilman?”

  “We were comparing his more recent output with his earlier books.” Jeff twists to face Joanne, his expression completely relaxed: a master at work.

  Joanne peels the top from a container of creamer, dumps it into her cup, and stirs her coffee in a tight whirl. She gives a small, competitive smile. “Overrated,” she says. “All of it. From start to finish.”

  Jeff tuts softly. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  Joanne offers a styrofoam cup to Grub, who declines it. Grub turns to scan a bookshelf, nodding in evident approval of the volumes he finds there. Periodically he lifts the bowl of his pipe and takes a deep draw.

  “Are you a Gilman fan, Tracy?” Joanne asks.

  “To be honest, I haven’t read him in a while. Sounds like I need to read his recent work and see what I think.”

  Joanne shrugs: It makes no bloody difference to her what I read.

  “How’s life?” I’m not nearly as good as Jeff, and the attempt at friendliness comes out stiff.

  She regards me for an instant, her face unreadable. Then she answers airily. “Fine. And how’s your life?”

  Hell with Elizabeth’s reading list; Jeff is right. Departmental peace is more important. And Joanne is, in many ways, a colleague I respect. “Good.” I offer Joanne a direct, warm smile.

  Joanne sips her coffee. “Lovely.” Her voice is flat.

  After the door has shut behind Joanne and Grub, I rise and open the single window that lets onto the air shaft. I fan my scooped palms in a clumsy sidestroke, but succeed only in urging a few wisps of Grub’s pipe smoke toward the ceiling. When I turn back toward to the sofa, Jeff is looking at me mournfully.

  “What?”

  He wags his head. “Now you’ve really put your foot in it.”

  “What did I do wrong?”

  “You’re happy. And you advertised it again.”

  “Am I missing something?”

  Jeff flaps his journal to clear the smoke around the sofa and, with an impatient glance at me, goes back to reading.

  “I wasn’t advertising,” I enunciate. “Besides, that wasn’t happy. That was just friendly.”

  “Happy,” he mutters without looking up.

  “Fine. What’s wrong with being happy?”

  Jeff lingers over the page another moment, then lays it in his lap. “You’ll be shocked how angry it makes some people. Especially people like Joanne.”

  “Because?”

  “She doesn’t have a life. She’s never mentioned a boyfriend or girlfriend. She may go on the occasional weekend ski trip with old rugby pals, but have you ever heard her mention a close friend? This department is her world.”

  “Isn’t it all of ours?”

  “Not like that, Tracy, and you know it. You and I care about lit, and we’re ambitious about our careers, but we also have friends and outside aspirations, and now you’ve got this guy—”

  “I might have this guy. We’ve only been on two dates.”

  “Now you’ve got this guy—and you’re lit up like a light bulb, which Joanne has surely picked up on even if she doesn’t know specifics. People like Joanne have nothing ahead of them but ladder climbing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m dedicated to Brit lit, sure. But I don’t plan to spend my life analyzing someone else’s passions without having any of my own.”

  With a pang it occurs to me that until two weeks ago the circumstances of my life may not have been so dissimilar from Joanne’s as Jeff seems to think. It’s an uncomfortable thought: Was George right when he said I hadn’t told him about myself? Have I truly let the rest of my life atrophy? And how often in the last year have I gone to hear music or see a show, bought something for myself other than work supplies, had outside aspirations of my own? I can count the occasions on the fingers of my hands—and two of them date since meeting George.

  Jeff is still fixing me with his stare. I stare back, hoping he sees something in me that I can’t see.

  Jeff stands. He picks up his satchel, slings it over his shoulder, and carries his empty mug to the sink.

  I rouse myself. “Hold on,” I say. “I still don’t buy it as an explanation for Joanne’s behavior. People always rehe
arse that crap about single women, as though we turn pathological the minute we either turn forty or get a cat. As though women’s singleness mandates rage at the universe. As a single woman, I’ve got to tell you that’s nonsense.”

  Jeff pauses mid-step and grins, signaling that this debate now has his full attention. “Aha. So as a gay man I’m not immune to charges of sexism.”

  “Not if you can’t come up with something better than the old singleness-equals-bitchiness chestnut. Joanne wasn’t always such a rotten colleague—and as far as we know she’s lacked close friends and relationships for years, not just a few weeks.”

  Jeff makes a long, low, ruminative sound—half hum, half growl. “Maybe she’s jealous of my torrid affair with Elizabeth.” He rinses his mug and glances at the clock: three minutes until the start of his seminar. “Speaking of affairs, how’s Mr. Tabouli in the sack? You two rogering each other yet?”

  “This would be your business because . . . ?”

  “Have you ever met a subject that wasn’t?”

  I stand and we both walk toward the door. “Things haven’t gone that far.”

  “Good.” He pats my cheek. “Mama always said, ‘Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free.’”

  “Your mama said no such thing.”

  “She should have. If I’d waited, maybe Richard would have turned down Emory in the hope of getting in my pants.”

  “You could as easily have turned down your job and gone to Georgia.”

  He smiles a rueful, soft smile, and for an instant I believe I’m glimpsing the other Jeff—the one he doesn’t show at work, even to me. “No blame intended.” He shakes his head. “I just miss the guy.”

  Jeff isn’t going to see Richard again until Thanksgiving. I try to think of a consoling response, but he changes the subject first.