Straight Man (35 page)

“Between us,” Missy says, her voice lowered, “did you off this duck?”

“Goose,” I remind her.

“Goose.”

“No comment.”

It’s almost noon before I can kick free and pay a visit to Jacob Rose. In the interim, half the department has traipsed through my office. Finny has stopped to determine my intentions with regard to this afternoon’s meeting. I’ve asked him to remind me what meeting we’re talking about just to watch him flinch. The meeting that will remove me from this office and from the chairmanship of the department, he wants me to understand. Will I be attending, is what he’d like to know. Of course, I have every
right
to attend. Charges will be leveled and discussed, and of course I’ll have the
opportunity
to respond, perhaps even the
obligation
. Still, I’m to understand that, in this present circumstance, even my staunch political allies have aligned themselves against me. It is unlikely that I will get much support, and I may be uncomfortable listening to so many low opinions of my performance as chair, the detailing of so many grievances. If I attend, I should expect to be charged with giving aid and comfort to the administration, of misinforming and betraying the department I’m charged with notifying and nurturing. Finny would
also like me to understand that while he hopes, officially, that I’ll attend the meeting, he privately would prefer I didn’t. He’s anxious that I not reduce the proceedings to farce. In Finny’s opinion today’s meeting is serious business, and English has been a joke department in the eyes of the university community long enough. He actually says this. I repeat: in an English department the serious competition is for the role of straight man. We leave it that I will not attend the meeting. I will be permitted to vote by proxy, assuming I can find someone to bear one.

I have also been visited by Teddy and June, separately, each wanting to urge me one last time not to take this lying down. It chills their blood to vote with Rourke and Finny, and they see my behavior as perverse. All I have to do is attend the meeting, announce that I’ve not provided Dickie Pope with a list, assure my colleagues that I would never do such a thing, and once again our house will divide against itself, return to the gridlock we’ve lived with so long it’s begun to seem natural. Teddy reminds me that the last time our department ever agreed on anything we hired Gracie. Consensus is unnatural for us, is his argument. We’re an English department. Let’s act like one.

Just before heading over to see the dean, I’m visited by Orshee. He’s been thinking about our department all weekend, he confesses, and the more he’s thought about it, the less reason he can see for the sorry state we’re in. “I mean, we’re all reasonable people,” he says. (“Who?” I can’t help responding. “Name one reasonable person in our department.”) What’s really troubling Orshee, of course, is not so much the sad state of our department as his own place in it. He’s had the weekend to consider his rash position at the last personnel committee meeting, where he urged us not only to disqualify all male candidates from our search but to vote against him when he comes up for tenure next year. It’s not that he fears someone may have taken his admonition seriously. As he explained to June over the weekend, his contempt for the pervasive sexism of our culture is so powerful, so profound, that he wouldn’t mind being sacrificed to further the cause of gender equality. Still, he’s afraid that his position may have been misunderstood and possibly misstated. What if, in paraphrase, it sounded like he just didn’t
want
tenure? What if his deepest convictions were misinterpreted as personal dissatisfaction, which was the way June herself, he was horrified to discover, had taken them.

What he would like the chair to understand is that, as a white male, he isn’t sure he
deserves
tenure, but he does
want
it. Actually, he’s seriously thinking about making an offer on a house in Allegheny Wells. His realtor keeps insisting it’s a buyer’s market, and June agrees. The problem is, how can you even
look
at houses, how can you contemplate the future, in such a climate of rancor and antagonism? Take today’s meeting. How he votes will be remembered. He hasn’t decided how he is going to vote yet, I’m to understand, but he knows that no matter which way he votes he’s going to make enemies. Even June says so. What did
I
do when I was in his position? he wonders. “It’s so hard to be moral,” he laments.

If William Henry Devereaux, Jr., were a more honest man, he’d confess to his young colleague that he’s not going to think much of him no matter how he votes. Instead, my advice to Orshee is to listen to his realtor. I tell him I believe he will be tenured, that he will be chair before he’s through, which in fact I do believe. If he suspects he’s been insulted, he gives no sign.

Jacob Rose’s secretary, Marjory Brownlow, has been at the university longer than anyone I know. A former secretary in English, she followed Jacob over to Liberal Arts when he was made dean. Since that time, she’s been offered half a dozen positions in the administration and turned them all down, out of loyalty to Jacob, I’ve always assumed, or contempt for the new regime of Dickie Pope. I don’t get over to this end of campus that often, and seeing Marjory reminds me of something I’m surprised to have forgotten. Back in late November she called me, wanting to know whether there was any chance of her returning to English. If Rachel was planning to leave, would I keep her in mind? I assured her that if Rachel were ever to give notice I’d pick up the phone, but that, as far as I knew, Rachel was enjoying her job, the fact that I was her boss notwithstanding. “Is this something you want to talk about?” I recall asking. “It sure is,” Marjory replied. “But it’s not something I can. Not a word to Jacob, Hank. Promise me.” So I promised and kept my promise in the same fashion Lily always accuses me of keeping such promises. By forgetting entirely whatever it is I’m not supposed to tell anyone.

Seeing Marjory now, however, brings the conversation back in its entirety, and with it comes a suspicion—that whatever is happening or is about to happen on campus is something Marjory knew or suspected in the fall. Secretaries to the deans always know all the dirt, and only gender and class bias keeps department chairs from dealing directly with them and bypassing their bosses altogether.

“Marjory,” I say from the doorway. “Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out. I can take it.”

Marjory has been around, and been around me, too long to be taken aback by much, but this smart-ass hello seems to have caught her like a good left jab. She looks me over long and critically before observing, “You’re limping.”

I plop down in one of the chairs reserved for people begging an audience of the dean. Actually, this is the inner of two offices, where people like department chairs and union representatives wait. The outer office is for students, several of whom I’ve made my way past already. They stare at me maliciously. “No cuts,” they’d like to tell me, and who can blame them? Not me, and I’m a cutter. I recognize a couple of them from Finny’s morning comp class, poor devils. They’re probably here to complain to Jacob about Finny’s dullness. This errand would be a waste of their time, even if people like me weren’t cutting in line ahead of them. Jacob Rose himself was no fireball in the classroom, and he’s been hearing the same complaints about Finny for a decade. There are lots of dull teachers. You can’t make them all deans.

What Marjory says is true. I am limping. “Old pal-o’-mine,” I say, “let me see your phone book.”

She hands it over. I find the number of my doctor, Philip Watson, which I read out loud to Marjory, who dials it, then hands me the receiver. In the next room I hear Jacob is also on the phone.

After several rings, the phone is answered. I identify myself and ask if I can speak to the doctor. I’m asked if I can hold. My problem is the exact opposite, I explain. Muzak, by way of response.

“Ah, Marjory, we’re getting old, you and I,” I say, studying her. She’s in her early sixties, but still a vigorous woman. Her body, instead of growing slack, has become compact, as if she’s reducing everything to essentials. Nearly a decade ago I played golf with her
and her husband, Harold, Lily’s colleague at the high school. Marjory had one of the sweetest swings I ever saw. One-eighty from the tee with a three wood, right down the center of the fairway every time. You could set yardage markers by where her ball dropped. “But we still have our memories. Those hot August nights, lying naked on the beach, the sand still warm, our skin cool, nothing but stars above. Remember?”

“No,” she admits. “But I like your description.”

“Watson,” I say, when Phil comes on the line. “I need you.”

“Hank,” he recognizes the voice of his left fielder. “I need you, too. At first base this season. I talked my nephew into trying out this year, and I want him in left.”

Most people who don’t call their doctors when they should, have perfectly good reasons. They don’t want their medical fears confirmed. But when your doctor doubles as the captain of your summer softball team, there are additional reasons to steer clear of him in the off-season. I had hoped not to see Phil until June, at which point I intended to just trot out to left field and thereby avoid discussion.

“And the reason you need me is that I never see you
until
you need me,” he went on. “Regular checkups and you wouldn’t have these emergencies.”

“Fine. Punish me.”

“What is it this time?”

“I’m trying to pass a stone,” I tell him, winking at Marjory. “It won’t.”

Marjory starts to rise. “Maybe I could go somewhere?”

“No,” I say. “Stay here. Hold my hand.”

“What?” Phil says.

“Not you,” I tell him. “From you I want an X ray.”

“Do you
know
you’re trying to pass a stone, or is this something you suspect? You always come in knowing what’s wrong with you, and you’re always wrong.”

“I know I can’t pee,” I tell him. “My father is a certified stone former. You should see all his citations.”

Marjory pushes back her chair. “Back in a few minutes.” She smiles, and leaves.

“And you’ve waited until you’re in serious pain before calling,” he intuits.

“Pain was last week,” I tell him. “Discomfort, the week before that. This week my back teeth are floating.”

“Idiot.”

“I’d hoped to get through the semester.”

“And now you can’t get through the lunch hour.”

“See? You
do
understand.”

“One hour.”

“I’ll be there.”

When I hang up, I hear Jacob do the same thing in the inner office. I take advantage of Marjory’s absence by ringing him. “Hello, Numb Nuts,” I greet him.

“Marjory,” he says. “You always did do a terrific Hank Devereaux.”

I go in, take a seat in one of Jacob’s plush leather chairs. He’s got a nice office, my pal the dean. Much nicer than mine. “So. How was California?” I inquire.

“Texas,” he corrects me. “Hot. In the nineties already. Also, there are no Jews in Texas.”

“I’ve heard they’re very strict.”

“Good tacos, though.”

“I bet.”

We’re grinning at each other now.

“So,” I say. “Who do you figure snuffed this goose?”

Jacob shrugs. “Lou Steinmetz thinks it was you. I told him I didn’t think you could take a goose in a fair fight.”

“You’re in an awfully good mood,” I observe. “Things must have gone well.”

Jacob takes a moment to consider his response, as if precision were important. “I
did
receive a job offer this morning.”

“Congratulations. Where in Texas?”

“This particular offer didn’t come from Texas. It came from out of the blue.”

In truth, I’m surprised. Jacob is a fine fellow, but not a distinguished one. I wouldn’t have thought even a lateral move would be all that easy.

“How come you were on the market to begin with?” I ask, since this has been puzzling me. Most of us who came to the university twenty years ago continued to make applications for years after we arrived, but then tenure and promotion locked us in place and we gave up.

“Because Dickie shit-canned me back in October,” he says, smiling at the effect that this intelligence has on me. He’s enjoying himself, it occurs to me, and I can understand why. He’s taken a fall and landed on his feet. My unflattering view of his marketability was probably a view he himself shared. He’s as surprised as I am. Also, he’s kept his firing a secret, something nobody who knew him would have suspected he was capable of doing. His reward is that he can announce his firing and triumph over adversity in the same breath.

“How come you didn’t tell your friends?” I ask, realizing too late that this is a straight line.

“I did,” he assures me. I can see that his spirits are absolutely irrepressible. This must be one hell of an offer he’s just received, from the kind of institution that will make all of us jealous when we hear. I can’t imagine how such a thing has transpired, but apparently it has. “But enough about me,” he grins. “Let’s talk about you. I understand you had your talk with Dickie last Friday?”

“You might have told me what was coming.”

“I thought you knew. It’s been going on for weeks. You were the last one,” he admits.

“That kind of hurts my feelings,” I admit.

“Lots of reasons though,” he says. “You’re a lame-duck—pardon the term—interim chair. Also, the Vatican views you as a genuine loose cannon. Unpredictable and therefore dangerous. Anyhow, don’t feel bad about being last. I was first, and now you know why.”

“So you think it’s going to happen? The twenty percent?”

“I got news for you. Twenty percent is what everybody’s hoping. What not many people know is that there’s also a thirty percent scenario, depending on what the legislature does.”

I shake my head. “Even as the concrete is being poured on a new Tech Complex?”

“That’s right. I’d be careful, too. Another duck dies, and you could end up in one of the footers.”

“Does any of this make sense to you?”