Eye to Eye (27 page)

“Are you going Buddhist or something? I hate ‘we'll see.' It smacks of self-righteous detachment. And what am I supposed to do for money?”

“I thought you'd just write. If this all works out, I'll have enough money for both of us, for summer at any rate. Just keep it in mind. And buy your ticket for December. I'm working on Earl to get him and Ronnie out here, too. A regular reunion, you know, between you two sistahs.”

“Shut up, Zach.” I'm smiling even though he can't see it.

“Word.”

“Don't be an idiot,” I say.

And then I hang up the phone.

 

If Zach had been lighting candles at the local parish for a change of heart on my behalf, he couldn't have lined up a better first customer of the day than Paige Prentiss. I thought that I'd dodged a bullet when I first got back from L.A. Two weeks of office hours passed without her mystic tan and Gucci bag materializing in my office. If she'd once wanted to talk to me, the desire seemed to have passed. In fact, it was almost as if her desire to talk, period, had passed. She wasn't even sullen proper, just withdrawn during class. And while a good teacher-mommy, since mommy and teacher are often cross-referenced in the average student's mind, would have called her into the office to find out what was really going on, I had clearly crossed over to bad teacher-mommy, and was just relieved to have some time without the thought police hot on my trail.

So I almost wondered if Zach hadn't paid her off when I see her outside my office first thing on Tuesday morning. As usual, I am juggling two tote bags full of papers, books and unread memos about department meetings and the like. At least Paige has the good, Southern manners to take an armload of books while I opened the door. Paige looks a little tired, a little less made-up than I'd come to expect, and her hair, while still close to camera ready, is looped in a decidedly unfashionable pink and blue scrunchie straight from the back page of
Glamour
magazine don'ts.

“I'm sorry it's early, Dr. Weatherall,” she starts. “But your office hours do start at nine, correct?”

She's right, although it's already just past nine fifteen. This might have been a barb, but it sounded strangely like a plea. We enter my office and Paige sits straight backed in the chair across from me. She folds her hands in her lap and then closes her eyes as she says, “My mother is getting married. Again.”

I have no idea what this has to do with anything English related, but decide to quiet my inner voice, which is all but screaming, “GO PAY A THERAPIST FOR THIS,” and ask, “Is that a good thing?”

“Her third marriage,
since
my father. And every time she changes completely. Phil, the guy, runs a construction company that's building a new skyscraper for Ted Turner. He's rich, but so, so tacky. You cannot buy taste. Did you see that bra my mother wore to your class? That's not my mother. Even I don't have a red bra, too hooker-y. That's Phil. And Phil has enrolled her in good wife classes at his church. I want to get married. I know that. But my mother…”

I am thinking, in this order, “I have two red bras,” and “is
hooker-y
an adjective?” Paige is clearly frustrated, but I'm still not sure what any of this has to do with me. I slip out of my tennis shoes, working-girl style, and slide into my less comfortable but much cuter work shoes, a pair of gold-tone ballet flats that I didn't want to get wet in the morning rain. The third thing that crosses my mind is that I'd really like to find out is what they're teaching in good wife classes, but I don't want to seem like a total smart-ass.

“Then there's you,” Paige says. She says it like she's pointing to my chalk outline sketched across the carpet. “You have this job where people listen to you—” (dubious, but I'll let it slide) “—and you have your independence, and you say what you think no matter what other people think. I can't see you going to church class for some guy named Phil, but at the same time, you're not married. None of you all are married. Not you, not any of the other women professors. Is that because you have so many opinions? Do you even want to get married?”

This is rapidly becoming worse than talking to my own mother. I can see what's happening. It's no longer good mommy-bad mommy time with the mama Prentiss as my foil, but a Goldilocks situation, where one is too hot, the other too cold, and the younger Ms. Prentiss cannot seem to fathom where one finds the life equivalent of just right. She, and everyone else I know.

“That's a personal question. For one thing, there are a lot of married or partnered professors, they probably just don't wear rings or announce it. And it's not that marriage or having children are things that I never think about, but I'm happy with most of the choices that I've made. I'm happy to have this job, and the chance to put my education to something that at least approximates good use. It's not that I don't date or think about having a family, but that doesn't automatically solve the problem of who you are, or who you want to be in the world. There are lots of unhappily married people in the world. It's not a cure-all for loneliness. And believe it or not, there are lots of smart, independent women with boyfriends.”

I'm thinking
at least I hope there are,
but now is not the time to show weakness. Paige sighs.

“My mother thinks being married proves something.”

“Well, the beauty of life is that we don't have to model our lives on our mothers'. We can model them on whomever we choose, or pick some course that's totally different from anything they might have imagined. But I'll tell you, just because you pick a certain kind of life, doesn't mean that everything will go as planned. You need to get to a place where you are not only happy with your own choices, but you can let your mother make her own choices and mistakes, as well. Or me, God knows I make some mistakes.” And at that exact moment I'm thinking about Zach, wondering if I'm not being a bit too cold, too uncompromising. I continue, “But the nice part about life is that if you live long enough, you can at least work to correct some of those. You're young. And you're going to make some good choices and some bad choices—it's just a given. Though you'll be a lot happier if you cut everyone some slack, including yourself.”

She sighs. “I'm sorry about my mother coming to class. And the other things…”

Either she's been possessed by a good demon or shelling out mucho dinero for therapy. It's actually a little frightening, like one of those gangster dramas when things are going really, really well and you just know the massacre is a moment from your door. But the massacre never comes. Instead, Paige picks up her bag just as Asa ducks her head in my office.

“Doris, can I talk to you when you're finished?”

“Sure,” I tell her, trying to conceal my utter lack of enthusiasm. “Just a minute.”

Paige notices my tone and smiles. When Asa leaves, Paige lowers her voice a bit. “I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

She holds her bag a bit closer to her and whispers, “Dr. Block. I didn't want you thinking that…I know there are things people say about him. And I didn't really believe them. But I think he might have tried to kiss me. I just…”

So the silences in class aren't only about me.

“Paige, it's not your fault.”

She sniffles and looks toward the ceiling. “I just thought that he believed I was this amazing writer. And he's such an incredible writer. I just…”

“Don't worry,” I say. “Was it just the one incident?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have to have any contact with him?”

“No.”

“Then don't.”

“But I need his recommendation to help get me into law school.”

“Oh, well, don't you worry about that. He's going to write you the
glowing
recommendation that you
deserve
for your
writing.
”

Paige looks relieved.

“You don't think less of me.”

I shake my head. “I hope you go back to talking in class. The last thing I want you to feel is silenced. Even if your opinions are different from my own, I do want you to have opinions.”

“I know. It's not that. It's just been a bad few weeks. But I'll be back to normal soon.”

“Threat or promise?” I ask, wondering immediately if sarcasm is the right approach. But Paige comes back quickly.

“Promise.”

Asa walks by again, looking quickly in my office. Scary that at this exact moment I like Paige better than I do Asa.

After Paige leaves, I spend a few minutes prepping for my morning class, then I go to check on Asa. She's a bit more chipper than usual, surrounded by stacks of papers and opened books. Either she's working her ass off, or just far better than I at creating that illusion. On close inspection, though, her eyes look watery, and her hair, while brushed, is at least two days' worth of dirty.

“I just thought you should know that David and I broke up.” She folds her hands together. Her nails look professionally manicured. So Asa is at least part regular girl underneath it all, heading for the salon in times of crisis. “And I wanted to tell you because I wanted you to know that I know what went on between the two of you.”

She says this with zero affect. Like she's cross-referencing a witness to see if she can trick her into talking.

“Nothing went on between the two of us,” I say as clearly and unemotionally as possible. If there's one thing I know about a liar—that is to say, David and/or Andrew—it's that he never lies about just one thing. If he lied about his name and lied about their relationship, it's highly likely that he lied about whatever allegedly happened between the two of us.

“I know. I should probably thank you in a way. He was so nervous that you might have told me something, that he came clean, from out of nowhere. I guess he feels threatened by the fact that I have this job, and he's still in school. He said that he needed to feel important, like the ‘alpha.' Can you believe it? He actually said that. ‘Alpha.' Like he's some mutt and I'm, what, his bitch? A Ph.D.”

“And not even like some saucy music video kind of bitch, he's talking actual dog. God, that burns me up. Like you can't win for trying if you do well in this world.”

Asa sniffs and wipes her hand against the corners of her eyes. “I thought he was better than that. I really did, that's the thing. He never acted this way when we were both in school.”

I sit down, and push the candy dish filled with mini-Snickers across the desk.

“People change, Asa. You really don't want someone who speed dates behind your back. For all you know he'll start dating Paige. That's all you need.”

Asa smiles, and even though her eyes are red, they crinkle genuinely.

“Thanks. For not telling me. I wouldn't have wanted to hear it.”

She has, of course, proven what I feared. That she's half-crazy. But right now she is half-crazy and contrite, and I'm still in the position of trying not to alienate anyone.

“I honestly wasn't sure what to do. But at the end of the day nothing had transpired, and I didn't feel it was my place.”

She nodded. “I was angry at you at first. I thought you should have told me, but then I could see why you wouldn't want to get involved, and that maybe you thought in some way that I was better off not knowing.”

Which is academic for “we all have situations in which the course of action is grey, where you're not sure if it's best to involve yourself or stay out of the way, where you can't say for sure if what you've been seeing is something or nothing, and you don't want people to hurt unnecessarily.” It's academic for “thank you for behaving like a friend.”

 

The rest of the afternoon, I stew over what I'd like to say to Antonius Block the next time that I see him. Unfortunately, I am in the unenviable position of David to his Goliath. Untenured junior faculty taking on the one departmental institution. Yet, if I'm the archetypal David figure, what does that make Paige? Who's going to stand up for her, and what message does it send if the Antonius Blocks of the world are not merely tolerated, but tacitly encouraged when people like me turn the other cheek?

It's not so much that Block hit on Paige, as that by hitting on her he undermined her security in her own accomplishments and intelligence. And the whole thing is so clichéd that my inner writer cringes. Antonius Block, of all people, should know better than to fall into such a bastardized narrative. Antonius Block, whose sonnets I shall not again be able to read with any degree of pleasure, and damn him for that, as well!

I decide that the best thing to do is confront him directly. If there's one thing I've learned from the paper trail of class complaints, it's the courtesy of direct address. Block's office door is half-open, the inside lit with the last natural light of the day. He has on reading glasses, and is reclining in an oversize leather chair with a book by Robert Pinsky held arm's distance from his face.