Murder in the English Department (13 page)

‘India,' Shirley said again.

‘I want you to know that this isn't just a game to get her mind off the illness,' said Nan. ‘I really mean it.'

‘I'm sure you do,' laughed Shirley. She took a long drink of her Coma Coma and then asked, ‘But India? Isn't it awfully crowded and hot?'

‘Not in the Himalayas,' smiled Nan, ‘not any more so than Southland Shopping Mall.'

‘Do you really think she's going to be OK?' Shirley asked abruptly. ‘Oh, please, god, she's OK.'

‘I'm sure of it,' said Nan. ‘As sure as I am of anything right now.'

‘But what do you think it is?' asked Shirley. ‘None of those tests …'

‘Emotional, Shirley, something emotional, I'm
sure
of
it.'

‘In that case,' Shirley hesitated, ‘this family tug-of-war is doing Lisa no good.'

Nan stared hard at her, wondering whether those were Joe's words, then feeling ashamed. Sometimes she gave Shirley no credit.

‘Of course you're right,' said Nan, meaning nothing in particular, but longing to be closer to her sister.

‘Then you'll stop pulling her back to school this term?' asked Shirley.

‘The girl does need her own life,' said Nan.

‘But she's hardly
been alive
this last month,' said Shirley. ‘She's exhausted, can't sleep, eats poorly.'

Yes, Nan wanted to say, can't you see that Joe is killing your daughter with these demands. And then she thought about herself. Was she also killing Lisa? First Murchie and now Lisa. It was too much to think about. She noticed that Shirley was close to tears.

‘I know she's growing away from us,' Shirley was saying.

Nan thought about Lisa's last birthday. She had asked for a portable typewriter but Shirley had given her a reconditioned sewing machine. Of course she agreed Lisa should trade it in for a typewriter. Of course. Whatever she found more useful.

‘Remember,' said Shirley, ‘I've been through this one before. She's a lot like you when you was a kid, Nannie.'

Nan nodded, embarrassed and guilty, as if she had seduced Lisa with some genetic mirror.

‘Nan, she'll leave us as sure as you did. I just want to make sure she's well enough to go.'

‘Maybe she
should
drop school this quarter,' Nan murmured. ‘But do let her come out to my apartment for a visit, to recuperate for a few days.'

Nan smiled encouragingly at Shirley.

Yes, nodded Shirley, Lisa would come for a visit. On this the sisters agreed to agree.

chapter Thirteen

WINTER QUARTER ALWAYS MOVED
slowly. Everyone was depressed by the weather and still suffering from the torpor of bloated holiday bellies. Nan looked out the window of her classroom.

One of the more long-winded students (a bright woman, but verbose) intoned about incest and inspiration in Bloomsbury. ‘Vanessa Bell's paintings were …'

Morning rain again, Nan noticed. January and now February presented impermeable grey. Streets lines with stubs of trees. And an early dark, much too early for those who would lie sleepless until after midnight. All possibilities seemed closer to Nan. Winter was a season for snuggling families or pensive solitude. But she had no heart for such satisfactions. She felt her soul was camped in a large, empty waiting room. What was she waiting for? Perhaps the official police wrap-up on Murchie's death. There had been delays on delays of the coroner's report.

The student continued, ‘Few people give adequate credit to Vanessa's visual influence on Virginia's lyrical …'

Nan noticed that the old room with its dusty fluorescent lights and peeling ceiling seemed particularly stuffy this morning. The students looked alert, engaged, and Nan momentarily let herself feel the excitement and satisfaction of seminar teaching.

Nan gazed out the large window again. Waiting. She was also waiting for Lisa. Poor kid never did make that trip to Berkeley. She had returned to Memorial Hospital for two weeks. Anaemia. One of the things they were considering was anaemia. And when she was released, she was spent. Lisa looked paler than Nan had ever felt in Africa. She had grown so much thinner. Her skin was almost translucent, barely covering the delicate bones of her face. The doctors still did not know what was wrong, and wanted to keep her under observation like some prodigal astronaut.

‘Don't you agree, Professor Weaver?' Nan focussed on a student at the back of the room, a woman with long, black hair and bright eyes who did all the readings and submitted her papers on time.

Nan looked around the class, twenty faces staring at her, waiting for her, demanding of her … She relished their eagerness. Usually, she flourished on it.

‘Would you repeat that?' she heard herself say. She had spaced out several times lately, luckily only once in each class. Today she was fading in the middle of a seminar discussion of … what was it today, oh, yes, Virginia Woolf's essays on criticism. She had to ‘get her act together' as Lisa would say. She had planned the class thoroughly. All the hand-outs and readings were prepared last quarter. She loved the topic. The course had an excellent reputation on campus. But, she must not keep coasting like this. She must wake up. And now she heard herself asking,

‘Do you remember what Woolf says in the Hogarth Press pamphlet—that writers should consult critics, the way patients consult doctors, without the public looking on …'

Their faces brightened; each looked eager in her own way to jump in and argue. Nan promised herself to stay awake, to pay attention, to be a good teacher. After all, she liked teaching. She liked being a good teacher. This was her life. If she didn't get tenure, she would find somewhere else to teach. In her home, perhaps. These twenty women could squeeze into her studio if most of them sat on the floor. Sometimes she had dreams of a feminist literary institute. Dreams, she reminded herself, were for the night.

‘That's about all we have time for today,' she said, over the grudging sighs of her students. ‘See you Thursday.'

When Nan reached the fourth
floor
of Wheeler, she was relieved no one was waiting outside her door. Just a couple of notes (one from a student, another in persistent Claude's florid handwriting) tacked to her bulletin board. And a
Daily Cat
. She quickly let herself into the office, locked the door and sat down to read the student newspaper.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT CAMPAIGN REACHES
CHANCELLOR'S COMMITTEE

A campaign against sexual harassment has now garnered 5000 signatures and will be the first order of business tomorrow at the Chancellor's Advisory Committee.

The campaign, run by students and teachers from across campus, was started two years ago by Nan Weaver, Assistant Professor of English. It …

Two words burned
from the
page: ‘Assistant Professor', a term meaning ‘academic without tenure'. A teacher up for losing her job. All the old fears of being penniless, jobless, a failure, welled up inside her. Of course Mom had been right about the Telephone Company. She stopped herself. Why was she so timid? Why couldn't she read victory in this article? They had all worked on the campaign for two years. Five thousand students and professors were now involved in this vital issue, and all Nan could think about was losing her job.

The phone interrupted her worries. Gratefully, she picked it up.

‘Hello, pet,' came Matt's voice. ‘I see you've made the headlines.'

‘What do you think of it?' Nan was remembering Matt's warnings last month, wondering now if she should have listened to her prudent friend.

‘I think you're a brave woman.'

‘But how do you think the committee will vote?'

‘Are you asking if they'll send you to the guillotine?'

‘Something like that.'

‘Well, I can't vote,' he answered. ‘But I can take you to lunch afterwards.'

‘Can't do lunch; gotta save that for my campaign sisters.'

‘Dinner then?'

‘How about dinner if we win and drinks if we lose,' suggested Nan. ‘Lots of drinks.'

‘You've got it, friend,' said Matt.

The next evening,
Matt drove
Nan to a celebratory dinner at the Pogo Cafe in the Castro District of San Francisco.

‘So this is your idea of victory?' Nan asked ruefully. ‘The Chancellor sets up a faculty committee to consider setting up a grievance procedure: some bureaucratic victory!'

‘What did you expect?' laughed Matt. ‘Mass castration? Of course it's victory. They took the complaint seriously for the first time. They're developing a policy.'

‘You'd make the perfect English Civil Servant,' said Nan in exasperation. They were approaching the Bay Bridge. She would change her tone. She really did appreciate Matt's loyalty. ‘So tell me about this restaurant we're going to.'

‘Well, the Pogo is a kind of camp, punk rock cafe,' Matt explained. ‘And aside from admiring their salads, I must admit to a small crush on one of the waiters, a Scandinavian guy from the Midwest who has done the
definitive
dissertation on David Hockney. Knut is determined to get a teaching job here in the Bay Area. And, well, hmmm, this is Knut's third year at the Pogo Cafe.'

This news didn't cheer up Nan at all. What would she do next year when she lost her teaching job? Certainly restaurants were no option. When she was sixteen, she had been fired from the Palace of Pancakes on Foothill Boulevard for putting too much butter on the waffles. One of the many times when Mom's lessons in generosity backfired.

From the ceiling of the Pogo Cafe hung mannequin arms and legs, painted green and purple. Over by the kitchen, a grotesque head of Sir Francis Drake was stuck on the bare branch of a potted palm. Patti Smith screamed from the loudspeaker. Nan would suggest that they go somewhere else for drinks afterward. Somewhere cosy and quiet. Somewhere outside the context of such nightmares which captured her few hours of sleep.

Knut walked over and took their order with a red sequined pen. He was a tall, handsome young man who revealed an easy sense of humour as he flirted with Matt. Nan tried to concentrate on his healthy face and on Matt's delighted gaze to distract herself from the surrounding grotesquerie. The tortured limbs reminded her of tales Sister Anna Peter used to tell about Romans persecuting Christians. Be prepared to die for the faith, Sister Anna Peter had instructed them. Sometimes lately, Nan felt she might be willing to die in exchange for faith, if god would only grant some order to the craziness of the last four weeks. Had Angus Murchie been prepared to die for his lusts? With all her imagination, Nan could never understand how they could call it suicide with his pants down like that. Was Marjorie Adams prepared to die for her self-defence? How could Nan even pretend to lead a normal life until suspicions were settled? What else could she do? As Knut left the scene, Matt turned back to her.

‘Marjorie Adams seems to be getting along with you these days,' he began.

‘How do you mean?' asked Nan, startled that her friend had learned to read minds. She took a long drink of ice water and stalled to catch her wits.

‘Well, first she apologised for her political insults, and then you told me she actually joined the SHC. Didn't I see her circulating a petition last week?'

‘That did surprise me,' said Nan, but not wanting to sound intimate with Marjorie Adams, she added, ‘Now all she needs to do is wash her face.'

‘Nan,' smiled Matt. ‘There's nothing wrong with a little make-up. What a Puritan you are! In England the punks—and I'm referring to the
men
—wear make-up. I've always fancied myself in a little green eye shadow.'

‘Oh, you'd be exquisite,' said Nan. ‘But you'd be wearing it for fun. Marjorie does it because she thinks she has to, to objectify herself.'

‘Whoa now,' said Matt. ‘Aren't you exaggerating a mite? Marjorie would have men flying after her, even if she wore a mask, just because of that gorgeous Rapunzel hair.'

That Rapunzel hair, thought Nan. How many times in the last four weeks had she dreamt about that Rapunzel hair! Gold thread through the black night. Yellow cloud floating over the dark campus. How often had she waited for Marjorie to come to the office and cry off her midnight blue mascara? How many days had she expected Marjorie to confess the murder, the self-defence, the fear? And how many nights had she lain awake, haunted by the image of Rapunzel's escape?

‘Don't take it so seriously,' said Matt. ‘Marjorie isn't such a tough cookie. The make-up is her covering for shyness.'

‘Shyness!' exploded Nan. ‘Come on now, she carries that upper-crust Eastern poise like a tiara.'

‘And not very different from the shyness of someone else I know,' said Matt. ‘Plenty of people would deny that you're shy. They'd say you're quite a dragon lady.'

‘That's different,' Nan began.

Before she could finish, Matt was distracted by the approaching of gorgeous Knut, carrying huge California salads, overflowing with avocado, bean sprouts, tomatoes. Clearly, he had provided well for his friends. The Pogo Cafe was abundantly more generous than the Palace of Pancakes.

When Knut was out of earshot, Matt confessed, ‘You know, I'm ready for a good, long romance now.'

‘You?' teased Nan. ‘What happened to your principles of non-monogamy? What about the “fluidness” of picking up a new man every night? What about Enrico?'

‘Enrico, dear man, is only interested in passing ships,' said Matt wistfully. ‘I'd like something more serious. I don't mean a husband and a white picket fence. But I wouldn't mind a little long-term infatuation.'

Nan nodded, trying to be sympathetic.

‘You're not convinced,' said Matt, stabbing a tomato. ‘You don't believe I can be faithful.'

‘No, no, it's not that,' said Nan, sounding tired. ‘But sometimes this emphasis on sex seems so, so authoritarian. If you're not in love, you're supposed to be looking. And once you find someone to desire, there's always the question of whether you're monogamous or polygamous or celibate. Do you know that one of my favourite students turned in a paper last week entitled, “Celibacy as a Political Option in Feminist Fiction”.'

‘Nan,' Matt spoke tentatively, ‘are you sure that this sexual harassment thing isn't making you a little, well, a little cynical?'

‘Oh, the old “feminist as prude” theory?' she exclaimed.

‘My dear, you're the last person I'd call prudish. “Passionate” is more like it. Passionate about everything.'

‘You know I've been in love since Charles,' said Nan. ‘Four years with Tony. Lots of flings—some more far flung than others.'

Matt nodded.

‘And, recently, I've realized that I did love Charles once upon a time. It was love. Then we grew apart.'

Matt nodded again, waiting.

‘But sex is over-rated.' Nan picked up a fork, turned it over. ‘Sometimes it's great fun. Sometimes it's boring. Sometimes you feel like it. Sometimes you don't. Can we leave it like that? Listen, Matt, I'm delighted that you're in love this month. But that doesn't mean I have to be.'

‘Oh, you're just disappointed that there's no one in the cafe who appeals to you,' teased Matt. ‘Just you wait. I'll phone you next Sunday morning and you'll answer, absolutely breathless from lovemaking with Claude.'

‘No,' said Nan. ‘I'll be
enjoying
my own company. Besides,' she grinned, ‘I don't answer the phone when I'm making love.'

Matt shook his head in surrender.

Nan continued vehemently. ‘And I won't be missing the struggle about whose house I'm sleeping at, whether to pack two days' worth of clothes to take with me, whether the “other person” is “into” watching TV or fucking or talking. I won't miss worrying how long the romance is going to last, whether I should be meeting new people, whether I'm leading someone on. I'll know that when the coffee grinder is gungy, it's my gunge. When the bathtub is unwashed, it's my toe jam. And I can play my records any time of the day or night.'

‘OK,' said Matt. ‘As you like it. You always were more practical than I. Sometimes your life seems a model of self-sufficiency.'

‘I'm not saying I
won't
fall in love again,' warned Nan. ‘It's just that
right now
I don't need it.'