Grace (21 page)

Yet Justin has allowed himself to be drawn into the conversation. He cannot manage a paper on theories about illiteracy, but he has promised to write one on the relevance of Shakespeare to inner-city students. Applied Shakespeare, he notes wryly. His area of expertise tangentially.

He cannot complain. It is he who has chosen to teach in this college. A teenager who stumbled on his father’s lines, a teenager who could not read, that is what has brought him here.

He will have no regrets. Whatever the losses, his work is more meaningful here. He cannot be called a leech. No one can doubt he has paid for his scholarship a hundred times. Yet he does not have his heart in writing the paper. If Sally goes to Bermuda the week he is expected in Atlanta, it will not matter.

SALLY FEELS BETTER the next morning and decides to return to work. She tells Justin that when she meets with her therapist in the afternoon, she will discuss his idea about Bermuda.

“Why don’t you go to a movie with Anna after dinner?” he says, hopeful now. Her mood has changed. The lethargy that bogged her down has lifted. It is early, not yet six, but he has followed her into the kitchen and while she refolds the clothes in the laundry basket, he turns on the fire under the kettle for her tea. Mystical Mornings. He takes it out of the canister willingly. “I’ll stay with Giselle. It’ll do you good to go out.”

She’ll see, Sally says. She’ll talk to Anna.

On his way to the college, Justin stops at the hospital. They have moved Mark to another room, out of the crisis center. He is sitting on a side chair, next to his bed, when Justin walks in. He jumps up immediately. Justin reaches out to him and they hug, male style. Each grasps the other’s right hand and brings it to his chest. They move in close, shoulder to shoulder, they make a fist with their left hands, they strike each other’s back. The embrace, if it can be called that, lasts no more than seconds and then they part.

“Sit, Professor. Take a load off.” Mark offers Justin his chair.

Mark is not the only patient in the room. Through the thin canvas screen that surrounds his bed, Justin can see the prone outline of another man. Mark follows his eyes. “He’s zonked out,” he says. He points to his head. “They got him drugged up. Don’t know a thing.”

Mark is in the psychiatric wing of the hospital. It is a cheerless place. The walls of his room are a graying white, his bed frame a dismal dark metal, the rubber tiles a lackluster beige, the baseboards a gloomy green. Justin wishes he brought him flowers. Mark cannot get better, he thinks, if he stays in this place much longer.

“How’s it going?” Justin sits but he does not take off his coat.

“Fine, Professor, fine. Everything’s going good, real good.” Mark perches himself on the edge of the bed. “I’m feeling strong. Good. Doctor says I should be out tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Justin forces a smile. “That’s great, Mark.”

“Going to stay at my mom’s.”

“That’s really great. A great plan,” Justin says.

Mark tightens the cloth belt around his thin, blue cotton bathrobe. He is wearing pajamas beneath them. Striped gray ones. He bites his lip. “To tell the truth,” he says, “I had no choice.”

“But it’ll be good to be at Mom’s,” Justin says, determined to keep the conversation upbeat.

“Only way the doctor will let me out of here,” Mark says.

“Your mom will be glad to have you back home.” Justin
knows he is lying. He knows it will not be easy for Mark. Mark’s mother counted on Mark, her eldest, the one who escaped the seemingly inevitable, the one in college, the one who was supposed to be a model for his siblings. He knows Mark will be tormented by the disappointment he will certainly see in her eyes. “It’ll be temporary, Mark,” he says.

“Mom doesn’t have the space. Two brothers, three little sisters, no father. But she’s my mom.” Mark’s face lights up. “Says I can stay as long as I’m her son.”

The effort he makes to sound confident and hopeful tugs at Justin’s heart. He stands up and takes off his coat. He wants to put his arms around Mark. He wants to comfort him. This is not the self-assured young man in black leather jacket and tight, black jeans who just a few days ago was challenging him about Morrison. This is a child, a vulnerable, fragile child. But Justin changes his mind and sits back down again. He does not know how Mark will react if he folds him in his arms. He does not know how
he
will react. He puts his coat on his lap. He crosses his hands. He lays them on his knees. “It won’t be forever, Mark,” he says.

“No, not forever. I have to go for counseling and I can come back to college. In three weeks the doctor will reassess if I can live on my own.”

“That’s not such a bad deal.”

“And Mom needs the help. There’s a lot that needs fixing in her apartment. And I miss the kids.”

“Things have a way of working out.”
Sally’s platitude.
Mark is reassured.

“Yes,” he says. “Things have a way. The love thing didn’t work out, but, hey, those are the breaks.”

“She hasn’t come to see you?” Justin bends toward Mark; his voice is strained with hope.

“She sent her girlfriend. A righteous white woman.” Mark cracks his knuckles. His eyes skirt the floor. “She thinks you’re to blame,” he says.

It takes Justin less than a second to know whom Mark means. He sits back. He does not ask, Who thinks I am to blame? He waits for Mark to name her. But Mark is silent; he offers nothing more.

“Does your girlfriend go to the college?” Justin measures the question carefully.

“Ex.” Mark corrects him.

“Does she?”

“Used to. Matter of fact, that’s where she met her lover.”

“At the college?”

Mark shrugs his shoulders. “Would offer you something to drink, Professor, but …”

“Was she a tutor?”

“No, not a tutor.”

“Another student?” Justin asks, though he is sure, one hundred percent sure. There are no white women students at their college.

“A white woman?” Mark raises his voice, pretending surprise. It is as close as he gets to naming her.

Justin uncrosses his hands, he fiddles with the lapels of his
coat, he does not speak. But soon it is clear that if he is to get confirmation, he will have to be direct. “Why won’t you tell me it is Professor Clumly, Mark?”

Mark shifts his body on the bed and turns away.

“I know it’s Professor Clumly,” Justin says. “You don’t have to hide it from me.”

“I could call the nurse to get us some water.” Mark turns around to face him again.

“Did you think I would take her side?” Justin ignores his offer.

Mark lowers his head.

“Did you?”

“I know you used to date her.”

“A long time ago, Mark.”

“And you knew she was a lesbo, Prof?”

“No,” says Justin. “No, I didn’t know she was gay when I dated her.”

“I didn’t want you to feel like a chump.”

“I don’t feel like a chump,” Justin says.

“I feel like a chump for going out with a lesbo.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“I thought she was the one, my soul mate. I thought a lesbo was my soul mate.”

“I think you should say
gay
, Mark.”

“What?”

“Gay
not
lesbo.
That’s how they want to be called.”

“I don’t care how they want to be called.”

No, he cannot give him a lecture on political correctness
now. He had let such remarks go unchallenged before. He permitted them with his silence.

“Were you trying to tell me about Sandra, Mark? That morning you came in my office, was that what you were trying to tell me?”

“I had my suspicions then,” Mark says, “but I wasn’t sure.”

“I’m sorry, Mark.” It is not an apology. Justin is sympathizing with him.

“You think I made her a lesbo, Prof?”

Mark blamed Sethe’s husband. He said that it was Halle’s failure to help Sethe, it was his abandonment of her, that led her to do the unthinkable.

“No,” Justin says. “It is not your fault. You didn’t make her gay, Mark, no more,” he adds, “than Halle made Sethe kill Beloved.”

Mark considers this. He does not contest it. “You must have thought what I said about Sethe was crazy.”

“I should have known you had something else on your mind.”

“Professor Clumly seduced Sandra,” Mark says.

“She couldn’t have seduced her if Sandra weren’t gay,” Justin says.

“We were having some problems, you know,” Mark says.

“Everyone has problems.”

“But I wasn’t easy to live with, either,” Mark says.

“Who is?”

“Sandra was working full time and bringing home most of
the bread. She started getting bossy. Wanting to tell me how I should spend my money. Telling me I shouldn’t buy a TV.”

“What size, Mark?” The question is incongruous, but Justin grabs this chance he sees to relieve some of the pain that is squeezing the breath out of Mark. Squeezing the breath out of him. “I know how the brothers like it,” he says.

A wan smile begins to form across Mark’s lips and then gets brighter. He raises his hand, palm wide open. “Supersize,” he says.

Justin meets his open palm. They slap high fives, palm upon palm. “Big screen, huh, Mark?”

“Big time.”

“Now, you have to say Sandra had a point.”

“Yeah. She had a point.” But Mark is no longer smiling.

When Justin gets ready to leave, Mark tells him that he didn’t pay attention to a word Professor Clumly said to him. “Don’t even think for a second I believe you have anything to do with what happened to me. You’re the best, Professor. If I turn out to be any kind of worthwhile person, it will be because of you. You’re the best.”

And though Justin knows Mark means this with all his heart, that Mark wishes to dispel any traces of guilt that he may feel for what has happened to him, that he wants him to know that he does not in any way hold him responsible, his words do not have the effect they should. Justin leaves the hospital feeling sadder than when he came, a nagging sense of discomfort making it difficult for him to find any joy in the compliment Mark
has given.
It is Mark who is the best, Mark who will one day write books that will disturb the consciences of the world.
Justin wishes he had told him that.

HE DRIVES DIRECTLY to the college and heads straight for Helen Clumly’s office. The door is open. She is sitting at her desk grading papers.

“How long did you think it would have taken me to find out?”

“Shouldn’t you close the door?”

He disregards the question. “How long did you think you could keep up this game?”

She gets up, walks around her desk, passes close to him but careful not to brush against him, and closes the door. “It was not a game,” she says. “Someone almost died.”

“Yes, and you wanted to put the blame on me when you knew all along it was you.”

“Sandra doesn’t think so. She thinks you are to blame.”

“I just saw Mark. He said you were having an affair with Sandra. Don’t you know, Ms. Feminist, Ms. Women’s Rights, Ms. Defender of Women, that it is an abuse of power to sleep with one of your students?”

“Was. She
was
one of my students.”

“Is that why she left the college?”

“Now don’t be ridiculous, Justin.”

“Am I? Am I being ridiculous? You lied about having an affair with her.”

“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you.”

“So what else didn’t you tell me? That there was no complaint? That the only complaint was in your head?”

“I protected you,” she says.

“You
protected
me?
How could you make a complaint against me when you were having an affair with a student? How long, Helen? How long was it going on?”

Helen sits down. With the tips of her fingers she slides the papers in front of her across her desk. “I was attracted to her when she was a student but the affair did not begin until after she left the college.”

“Until you forced her to leave you mean.”

“I had nothing to do with her leaving. She was tired of school. She wanted to work, to buy things, while she was young. And then one day she came to my office.”

“Just like that? Out of the blue?”

“Mark sent her to collect his term paper. He had missed class.”

“So you knew she was living with Mark?”

“Yes,” she says.

“I will never understand this.” Justin slumps down in the armchair in Helen’s office. His shoulders sag and his jacket rises ridiculously above them. “This is too much. Too much,” he says.

“What is? That two people love each other?”

“You dated me, Helen. Sandra was living with Mark.”

“You are so naïve. Why do you think we stopped seeing each other?”

“We had different interests,” he says. He sinks deeper into the armchair.

“Mine was women.”

He thought it was feminism. He had become tired of the incessant arguments, the constant accusations, the articles she insisted he read: Women get less pay than their male counterparts. The pro-life movement is a smoke screen for men who want to control women’s bodies. The Kennedy date rape case was about the Good Old Boys’ Club in action. Men stick together, she said, because they all have skeletons in their closets.

Now he is thinking of her skeletons. “Why did you go out with me?”

“I wasn’t sure,” she says.

“You weren’t sure of what?”

“Whether I was gay or not.”

He is dumbfounded. “Didn’t you always know?”

“Did you always know you were heterosexual?”

“I didn’t have to think about it. I liked women.”

“I didn’t think about it, either. I didn’t think about whether I liked men or women. I was expected to like men, so I dated them.”

“Sandra was your first?”

“I don’t have to answer that.”

“Why, Helen? Why did you want to blame me?”

“Sandra said—”

“I know what you said Sandra said, but you are the professor here. You are more intelligent than that. You knew it had to
be absurd for Mark to try to kill himself simply over something I said or something he read.”

“I hadn’t intended for it to get this far. I didn’t know she was going to leave him.”