My Latest Grievance (13 page)

She
would call it fate: Why else, seven weeks into the semester, would Eric Woodbury suddenly undertake an outreach campaign in the form of once-a-week dining with students? And what force besides kismet would have changed Laura Lee from the afternoon's blue trousers and concession-shop Pucci blouse to a dress of zebra-striped jersey that draped and clung in a manner designed to provoke?

From the salad bar, tongs in hand, I saw it all: President Woodbury emerged from the food line, blinking into the fluorescence of
Curran Hall, his tray overloaded like a first-timer's. The tall, attractive ex-ballerina sipping Chablis alone glided upward to a standing position and waved. Maybe, from a distance, the president mistook Laura Lee, with her long red-blond hair and her frozen yogurt, for a mature and friendly senior. He smiled, nodded, moved toward her. Face to face, he must have realized that she was not his target tablemate, not a payer of tuition. An exchange followed nonetheless. I guessed he was saying, "I'd love to join you, but the point of my visit is to meet and mingle with our students. Another time?"

I knew Laura Lee's dining hall smile, and this one was different, even brighter than those bestowed on touring dads without wedding rings. She said something in return. Possibly:
I'm disappointed, but I understand. Such are the demands on those of us who are slaves to social intercourse.
I didn't have to be Margaret Mead to note the time they devoted to each ritual—the protracted shaking of hands, and the gaze that lingered after their release.

Would a bona fide mating dance be this obvious? Could life be this fast, and this frank? I moved closer, pretending I was searching for an empty seat, noticing nothing, caring less.

"French," she was saying. "Laura Lee
French
... like the nationality, like the fries—"

"Like the
kiss
?" murmured our president, this father of three, this long and publicly married man.

"Hi, Mr. Woodbury," I said.

He didn't mind. "Hello, Frederica. Do you know Miss French from Tibbets Hall?"

"Sure," I said.

"Of course you do! She's a resident head, and you're the official resident teenager."

"And Marietta now, too. Don't forget her."

"What a coincidence," said Laura Lee. "I met your lovely daughter for the first time today."

I put my tray down without asking permission. "Two good choices for a change," I said. "I picked the veal cutlet."

"Too much breading," said Laura Lee.

"You're careful about such things," he said. "I couldn't help notice."

"It's my background as a dancer—a courtesy to the partners
who had to lift me over their heads and promenade across the stage."

"That's right! I've
heard
we had a professional dancer on campus," he said.

"From Mrs. Woodbury?" I asked.

"We should talk," he said to Laura Lee. "There's so much that could be done toward enriching our dance program."

"Even a field trip once a season to the Boston Ballet would be an improvement," said Laura Lee.

"I'll call you," he said. "We'll brainstorm."

"I'm passionate about dance," she said, "and I'm always available: five-five-oh-six. My direct line."

For my benefit he proclaimed, "Isn't it wonderful that someone who comes onboard to fill one job can bring a whole other, unanticipated form of enrichment to our campus? That's what I love about Dewing: the talent and enthusiasm I'm finding at every turn."

"I feel exactly the same way," said Laura Lee.

Did they think I was deaf or blind or born yesterday? After thousands of uneventful and forgettable meals at Curran Hall, here was one for the Dewing archives: the night President Woodbury and Housemother French virtually announced, publicly and brazenly, the launch of their affair.

W
HAT DID WE OBSERVE
, those of us who were watching hungrily, and accepting at face value the public displays of libidinous affection? By Veterans Day, there were reported sightings of President Woodbury entering Laura Lee's apartment in Tibbets Hall unchaperoned; similarly, sightings of Laura Lee leaving his inner office, the one with a leather couch and a private bath, wearing what a promiscuous senior in my dorm described as "that just-laid look."

Wouldn't you think they'd go off-campus for their assignations, or at least stagger the dinner shifts to avoid each other in Curran Hall? Their indiscretion became a secondary topic of discussion, not just
Are they or aren't they
...? But also
How much does a man have to hate his wife to publicly humiliate her?
And
How long will he last?

Condone or condemn? What do parents do when they've been ivory-tower sweethearts themselves? Mine couldn't appear too exercised about public philandering without appearing hypocritical, so until the rumor became fact, they employed it for pedagogical purposes.

"We think you'll take away from this the following: that nothing in life is this simple or this transparent," said my mother.

"Besides," added my father. "It's inconceivable that they'd be sleeping together. He's too smart for that. And too ambitious."

"Maybe they're in love," I said. "Maybe they can't help themselves. Maybe it's no rumor."

My mother bestowed on me a noble and indulgent smile. "In the original Latin, 'rumor' was a synonym for 'noise.' I think you know the culture of the campus as well as anyone, so you know that rumor and gossip are forms of idle, destructive chatter."

"Everyone else thinks they're sleeping together. If they're not, they'd better stop making a spectacle of themselves."

"Who's 'everyone'?" my father asked. "Because you know how we feel about your citing that pronoun as the subject of a sentence proclaiming some trend, some fashion, some allegedly majority opinion."

Were they not the most annoyingly evenhanded parental team in the history of civilization? "Students," I answered. "His, hers, yours."

"We want you to think for yourself," said my father.

"In our respective fields, observation is everything," said my mother. "Months and years of study in the field. We don't draw conclusions until we can back them up."

"Why are you being so nice about this?" I asked.

"How could you even ask?" said my father.

"Because he's management. You hate management. And she's your ex-wife, who's getting more famous by the minute."

"Do unto others...," said my father.

"Innocent until proven guilty," said my mother.

Even those who weren't majoring in the rumor, as I was, saw tête-à-têtes and penetrating eye contact in the dining hall, spoons stirring coffee dreamily in a manner that would make any reasonable eyewitness conclude that no due process was going to save the jobs of these Ten Commandments scofflaws.

Within a week, one manifestation of the alleged affair worked its way into my immediate family: Dr. Woodbury signed up to audit the seemingly irresistible Criminology and Penology.

No one had told me until I heard it at breakfast from a sociology major, obliging me to circle back to our apartment. "You think it's a coincidence?" I demanded, standing at the foot of my parents' bed. "Can you still say with a straight face that nothing's going on?" Aviva sat up, her quilt clamped under her armpits—she and David slept in the nude—to announce that it was not a
fait accompli.
Dr. Woodbury had visited one class, hardly what one would call auditing. In fact, she'd appeal his regular attendance on the grounds that his managerial presence and note-taking constituted a form of intimidation.

I said, "This isn't about intimidating you. This is about two students playing footsy."

"Let's be logical," my father said. "If two people were having an affair, especially in this hothouse environment, would they advertise it by auditing the same course?"

My mother turned to him and said quietly, "Although, you'd have to admit, if these two
are
having an affair, the audacity is fascinating. He's acting like a male peacock, strutting as if it's a fulltime job and his
raison d'être.
I'm just wondering: What does he have to prove?"

"Why else would he want to audit a course that's already half over?" I asked.

"His stated objective is some kind of three-pronged plan to rub elbows with students—in the classroom, in the dining hall, and by coaching a team," my mother explained.

"And he just happened to pick your class?"

"As I said: to harass me."

"To harass
us,
" my father corrected.

"What's his Ph.D. in?" I asked.

"Classics," said my mother.

I had been going to suggest that he sharpen his classroom skills by teaching, but there was a problem with his field: We didn't offer Classics at Dewing. Our Math and English departments had only recently dropped the modifier "Business." Psychology and Sociology in those days pretty much represented the school's conversion from clerical to intellectual. I asked my father, "Do you agree with her? That it's harassment rather than his crush on Laura Lee?"

He said, with a blush that went down his neck and with a truly
dorky chuckle, "I was thinking it was because he has a crush on your
mother
!"

What daughter wants to see her parents in bed, knowing they don't wear pajamas, knowing that as soon as she leaves for school they'll have sex because it was Tuesday and their intertwined schedules gave them the morning off?

"We thought you'd already left for school," said my mother.

"Aren't you going to miss the bus?" asked my father.

"Yes. And if you had a car, you could drive me."

"Don't be bratty," said my mother.

"Did they sit together?" I asked.

My mother said, "So far, in the one class he attended, no, they did
not.
"

I said, "It's not a coed school. Maybe you could get rid of him on the grounds that he's disturbing the class's chemistry."

My father said, "We're keeping out of it. In our position, you pick your battles." I saw movement under the covers, the smaller foot nudging the larger one, a prod that induced him to ask, "Do you think it's more important to continue this conversation, or more important that you get to school on time?"

More tedious psychology at work. I picked up my books and said, "You're allowed to say, 'Go. You're late. You'll miss the bus.'"

They smiled uncertainly. I said, "Never mind. You're doing fine."

I would have been enjoying our own
As the College Turns
with more relish if it hadn't been for the female Woodburys. Their public faces grew painfully dignified, highly uncharacteristic of the snappish Marietta. I knew she was pushing me away, and I went along with it. It was best, I thought, and kinder if I pretended that the honeymoon was over, that Marietta had found me lacking as a cool girl's friend. Mrs. Woodbury phased me out of the car-pool when rain turned to snow in November. As a transplant from the south, she explained, winter driving scared her. I said, "I understand completely. In fact, it's better if I take the bus and get to school a little earlier."

"Marietta likes to walk," she said. "Even in bad weather."

When the silver-mauve Cadillac passed me on its future trips
to Brookline High, Marietta slouching in the front seat, I pretended to be engaged in animated popularity with whoever was standing next to me. Left on the curb, I could have waved somberly, but I thought it was the least I could do—to fake bus-stop contentment—for the victims of the humiliating campus romance I might have triggered.

We were losing Mrs. Woodbury to a lower and lower profile, sad for a college that had lived under a no-frills bachelor administration for a decade and a half. Mrs. Woodbury's First Lady bearing didn't disappear altogether, but it sagged. Where there had once been imported hors d'oeuvres on polished silver trays, now there were cubes of Jarlsburg alongside clumps of grapes. The strain of being cuckolded manifested itself in weight loss. She began to look drawn, then thin, then emaciated by the time the jig was up. We who were watching from the cavalier sidelines didn't take the disturbance as seriously as we should have. What did we sixteen-to-twenty-one-year-olds know of true, debilitating distress? We onlookers had seen heartbreak of the televised and cinematic kind. Bad behavior was for watching and enjoying, for dissecting and disdaining. We were, for a long time, entertained.

What proved to be unique and publishable about the most famous affair in the history of the college—later my parents squeezed two papers out of the mess—was the willful indiscretion of the principals. Where was the classic sneaking around? The shame and the guilt? I still marvel over it today: that Laura Lee seemed proud of her conquest, and her paramour did his share of the preening. At sixteen, I thought someone like me, someone who didn't need months and years of note-taking in order to draw a conclusion, should speak up. After all, who besides Mrs. Woodbury was going to confront the truth? And who among the faculty, for reasons of various past indiscretions, would want to throw the first stone?

With only a two-burner stove and limited cookware, we weren't a family who entertained. Dinner parties were out of the question, but I thought, in the face of a campus crisis, we could put candles on the kitchen table and drag an extra chair in from the smoker.

I chose a Saturday on which my parents had an executive committee meeting of the Dewing Society of Professors, took the bus to Star Market, bought a good-sized chicken, some potatoes, some lettuce, and a pint of fancy ice cream.

David and Aviva weren't pleased to hear that company was coming at seven, but I was firm: Yes, they were picking their battles and keeping their distance, but did they want to put themselves through another presidential search? Laura Lee needed a talking-to. Grandma would want us to step in. We could end up with someone with an anti-union animus, someone opposed to three people living in a dorm apartment meant for one.

"You should have asked us," they said. "Don't we run this family democratically?"

My parents dropped their worn leather satchels and flopped onto kitchen chairs. "Did you stop to think that we are hardly the two people Laura Lee would want to take advice from on the subject of the sacredness of marriage?" my father asked.