Blue Angel (36 page)

“And when was the first time you sensed that Professor Swenson wanted something beyond the nature of an ordinary student-teacher relationship.”

From their first conversation, Your Honor, from the first time he looked at her in class, while the bells were ringing. Their eyes met across a crowded room. Not that he realized it was happening then. But that's what he thinks now. How did
he
become the romantic? Once more, the committee's version of him—the scheming dirty old man—seems less degrading than the truth. But if Angela knew what he wanted, why couldn't she have told him? Told him how he felt about her and how she felt about him, and spared him all the time and trouble of trying to figure it out? Saved him from the confusion, the pain of not knowing. Even now. But of course she couldn't have mentioned it. How could she have brought it up? Because he was the teacher, she was the student. That's what this trial's about.

“I guess it was when I told him that my computer crashed, and he offered to take me down to Burlington to the computer store. That seemed a little, you know, extra. But I kept telling myself he was just being nice.”

“And was he?” asks Lauren.

Well, yes, absolutely. He was certainly being nice, taking a morning out of his life to drive this kid down to Burlington. All right. There is a God, and He's punishing Swenson for having wanted that drive to last forever, and for liking it so much better than the same trip he took with his daughter.

“And what happened that day?” asks Lauren.

“Nothing at first. Professor Swenson seemed nervous. Like he was scared that someone would see us. Like we were doing something wrong.”

Is Lauren forgetting that she was the one who saw them, that she was driving straight toward them as they left the campus?

“Until…,” Lauren says.

“Until we were on the way home and he was saying something…I can't remember. Anyway, he started talking about his editor in New York. He asked me if I would like the guy to see my novel, and that's when he put his hand over mine…and then he moved it to my…leg.”

Angela takes a moment to steady herself. The room is utterly quiet.

Anyone would break in now, any normal person would say: she's lying! But if Swenson interrupts, he'll disrupt everything, he'll lose his only chance to hear what Angela says. To find out what she was thinking. Or anyway, what she claims she was thinking.

“And he asked me again if I wanted his editor to see my novel, and I knew what he was really asking, and…”—Angela's whispering now—“and I told him
yes
.”

She looks down at the desk for a long time, no doubt gaining encouragement from the waves of understanding and forgiveness streaming at her from the committee, every one of whom—even Lauren, most likely—would have slept with anyone who promised them an introduction to a New York editor at a major house. And they're supposed to know better, have lives, they're older, Angela's just a kid. What could she—what would
they—
have done?
Yes
, they would have said,
yes
.

“And then what, Angela?” asks Lauren.

“And then we drove back to my dorm, and he offered to help me carry the computer up to my room.”

Offered
? Angela
asked.

“And you told him yes?” says Lauren.

“Yeah,” says Angela. “I didn't want to hurt his feelings. I wanted to be nice. I wound up feeling really, like, totally passive, like everything was out of my control.”

Passive
isn't Angela's word. She can hardly say it. She's trying out some jargon she learned in the last few weeks.

“So you would say that you didn't feel very much in control on that day when Professor Swenson suggested coming to your dorm room?”

“Not at all,” Angela says.

No, sir. She just pushed him back on the bed.

“And did you and Professor Swenson wind up having…doing…whatever you assumed you had to do so he would help you with your book.”

Angela can hardly speak. “I don't know if I can talk about this.”

“Try,” says Lauren. “Take a deep breath.”

How pornographic and perverted this is, a grown woman—a professor—torturing a female student into describing a sexual experience to a faculty committee, not to mention her parents. Swenson could have slept with Angela on the Founders Chapel altar, and it would have seemed healthy and respectable compared to this orgy of filth. Meanwhile he has to keep it in mind that Angela started all this. Angela chose to be here.

“Well, we sort of had sex. I mean, we began to have sex. And then Professor Swenson had this…accident.”

“Accident?” Has the committee not heard of this? There's some riffling of papers and notes.

“His tooth sort of cracked.”

The whole committee pivots toward Swenson, who just at that instant happens to be probing his broken tooth with his tongue. They observe the telltale bulge in his cheek, the incriminatory pull of his mouth. Fascinated, they watch his own reflexes testifying against him.

“And?” says Lauren.

“That ended it,” says Angela.

“And how did you feel?” asks Lauren.

“I was relieved,” says Angela, as is everyone in the room. How do Angela's parents feel? What must they think of Swenson? “Anyhow, it wasn't my fault. I kept my part of the bargain.”

“And did Professor Swenson keep his? Did he take your book to his editor?”

“Yes. I mean, I guess so.”

“And how do you know he did?”

“He told me. But he lied.”

“What did he lie about?” says Lauren.

“He said he gave it to his editor.”

“And the truth is?”

Angela falls silent. Perhaps they'll sit here forever, watching her perform her party piece: psychic self-erasure. But now, as if to compensate for their daughter's withdrawal, her parents stir from their stupor of discomfort and politeness. A tremor—a sort of hiccuping—seizes her father's (step-father's?) body. His wife attempts to restrain him, to keep him from breaking some rule of decorum, but the man has something to say. His voice is rusty as he shouts, “Come on, honey, tell them. Tell the people your good news.”

His daughter turns and glares at him—now
there's
the Angela Swenson knows! She closes her eyes and shakes her head. Why can't her father just vanish? When she opens her eyes, she seems annoyed that he's still in the room.

“Angela?” Lauren's improvising. “Good news?” Good news is not on the prearranged agenda of sin, abuse, and damage.

“The thing is, I believed Professor Swenson when he told me that he couldn't get his editor to look at my book, that the guy wasn't interested. I was kind of upset. Disappointed. After what we'd…you know…done. And then, like two weeks ago, I got this call from a guy named Len Currie, Professor Swenson's editor? He said he'd found my manuscript on a chair at the restaurant where they had lunch and he picked it up. He was going to send it back. But he started reading it in the cab going home. And now he wants to give me a contract and publish it when it's finished.”

If this were a real courtroom—or better yet, a courtroom in a movie—a wave of shock and astonishment would ripple through it right now. But these academics are too refined, too repressed to whisper or gasp. Still, Swenson thinks he can hear the stifled buzz emanating directly from their brains. Doesn't anyone
get
it? The girl's a pathological liar. This wishful-thinking sick little joke about Len Currie and her novel…. The committee isn't laughing. Their facesare parched and drawn. They haven't had a chance to hide their separate pained responses to the jabs of envy and resentment. They'll need a moment to conceal their private jealousy and grief behind the mask of unselfish happiness for a Euston student's success.

Magda's mouth is open, but Magda doesn't know it. Swenson looks at her and looks away. That Magda asked him to bring Len her book and Swenson refused and brought him Angela's instead is more than their friendship can sustain. Magda will never get over this: so many different tiny rejections streaming into one. He's flattering himself. She'll recover. It's their friendship that won't make it. It's something else he's losing, yet another precious part of his life that he's never valued enough, just part of the water he didn't miss until his well ran dry. Only now does he realize how much he loved, he
loves
Magda. So why was it
Angela's
book that he tried to persuade Len Currie to publish?

Len Currie is publishing Angela's novel. So what is this hearing about? Angela should be kissing Swenson's feet instead of ruining his life. As she must have decided to do when she still believed that Swenson, her white knight, had failed to get her manuscript published. If that's when she decided. Who knows what she did, and why? Why did Lola Lola want a bumbling overweight professor selling dirty postcards—of her?

From now on it will be Len who gets to read Angela's book in installments, Len who talks to her about it, Len who will be the first to find out how the novel ends. But Len won't fall in love with her, he doesn't have to, he isn't that bored, that weird, that pathetic. Why would he sleep with Angela with a whole city of beautiful women to choose from? And Angela doesn't have to bother
making
him fall in love with her because she already has a contract.

Another thing Swenson wants to know is: Why didn't Len Currie call
him
? Why has he been cut out of the loop? What conspiracy is at work? He'd been mooning over
The Blue Angel,
how typically lame and romantic, when the film he should have been watching was
All About Eve.
Be careful…. That way madness lies. He'll never publish another book. Angela will take over the world. Well, let her. She can have it.

“That's…wonderful, Angela,” says Lauren.

“Here, here,” Bentham cheers. “Congratulations, Miss Argo! You'll be sure to let the alumni newsletter know, and of course freshman admissions.”

How smoothly Angela's triumphed! Whom will the committee favor? The student with the success story to impress prospective students and alumni donors? Or the used-up, erotically restless, loser professor whose very existence must be hidden from the same applicants and donors?

“Congratulations,” Magda says. The committee echoes: well done, congratulations. This is all working out wonderfully. They're extracting the thorn from their side—and getting good press for the college.

Quietly now, soothingly, as if to a baby, Lauren says, “Angela, how has this thing affected you? Have there been lingering effects?”

“What do you mean?” Angela says.

“You've mentioned sleep disturbances….”

“Oh, that?” says Angela. “Well, yeah. I mean, I've been having these terrible nightmares. Practically every night I dream that I'm looking out my window and I see these white shapes floating across the quad, women in long white dresses with this long flowing hair. As they get close I somehow know they're Elijah Euston's dead daughters. And I have this feeling they've come for me, and I start to scream and wake up screaming—”

Welcome to
The Twilight Zone
. Really, it's appalling, Angela's hokey performance on the theme of Euston mythology, its spooky Puritan ghosts. But the committee goes for it. Angela
is
multitalented. She can act, as well as write. Swenson can't—he
won't
—believe that she was always acting with him. Not about what he meant to her. At least in terms of her work.

Magda puts on her sweater. Shivers all around. Lauren looks flushed, exalted. This is what she teaches her students, what she believes in her soul: the restless female spirits, floating up through the centuries, wailing.

“Am I done?” says Angela, the sulky teenager again, asking to be sprung from the hell of the family dinner table.

“Yes, of course, thank you,” Bentham says.

Lauren's not about to let it go so quickly, so unceremoniously. “Angela, let me say again that we know how tough it was for you to come in and say what you did. But if women are ever going to receive an equal education, these problems have to be addressed and dealt with, so that we can protect and empower ourselves.”

“Sure,” Angela says. “You're welcome. Whatever.”

“And congratulations about your book,” says Bentham.

“Thanks, I guess.” says Angela. “Now I have to finish it.”

“I'm sure you will,” says Magda, her tone so neutral that only Swenson can hear the icy sarcasm beneath it.

“Angela,” says Lauren, “are you sure there's nothing you want to say? This may be your last chance.”

“Just one other thing,” says Angela. “It really hurt my feelings. I thought Professor Reynaud really liked my book. And then to find out it was because he just wanted to sleep with me—”

Reynaud
. Did the committee hear
that
? That's the name of the character in her novel. Now Swenson's the one with the shivers. Angela called him Reynaud. Have them put
that
into the record! The girl can't tell the difference between living breathing humans and the ones she's invented. It proves she's a raging psychotic.

Angela stands up shakily and practically limps to her seat. Her parents hug her and thump her back. After a suitable silence, Bentham turns to Swenson and says, “Ted, I imagine there are some things you might want to say.”

It's
just
like the end of the writing class. The moment when students thank their tormentors and acknowledge their wrongdoing. Thank you for helping me figure out how to improve my story. Thank you for teaching me to sit still and shut up while what I care about most is defiled and mocked.