The Englishman (10 page)

“You don’t exactly have to be clairvoyant to know that Dancey would get Nick to play gofer for him,” Tim said. “And if you ask me, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Erin contemplates me from the depth of the second armchair. “What you don’t know, Anna, is that Dolph Bergstrom should have gotten your job.”

“Erin! Don’t tell her that!” Eugenia frowns at her. “What’s she to do with that? Don’t worry about it, Anna. Department politics, keep out of them.”

“Well, I’d like to,” I say.

“No, Ginny, Anna needs to know, because I what I think is that Dancey and Hornberger have it in for her,” Erin insists. “Doofus doesn’t have to teach comp, so why should you? Because teaching comp means one fewer article on your list of publications at the end of the semester, that’s why!”

“Doofus?”

“Dolph. He’s an Ardrossan seedling, bedded by—”

“Hush, now!” Tim flutters his eyelids in the manner of a scandalized aunt.

“—bedded by William DeGroot, our erstwhile Commonwealth Foundation professor, and currently cultivated by Matthew Dancey. So you may be sure that the burden of teaching comp was going to be lifted from his tender shoulders at the first opportunity.”

“Dancey got Dolph shortlisted for your job,” Tim says, taking over, “although there are unwritten rules against having in-house candidates for tenure-track positions. The third candidate was another woman from up north. Dartmouth, or Cornell, I forget. But we didn’t like her, did we? Brusque, harsh.”

“Jessica-Ann Wright,” I say, because I don’t want to appear like a totally lame dweeb. Tim, Erin and Eugenia beam at me like teachers at the dumb kid who unexpectedly produces a nugget of knowledge.

“I would have preferred her to Doofus, though, if she had been the only alternative. Luckily, as it turned out—” Erin stretches out her arms toward me like a compere to an award winner.

When the four of us enter the Astrolabe—Erin still with her thirty-six-pack of diapers, which adds a bizarre touch to the pseudo-
fin-de-siècle
décor of the bar—the first thing I see is Nick Hornberger handing drinks to a gaggle of female students. This is his comfort zone. Chairing a college department is a thankless task, but if the whip is passed to you, you must use it. I’m guessing that Nick Hornberger is neither willing nor equipped to rule as master and commander of this
navis
academicum
, to ration bread and water if need be, and perhaps even subject slackers to the cat o’ nine tails. He wants to be popular, and that is a dangerous motivation.

“Ah, Anna! Welcome to our haunt! What’re you having?”

“I’m driving, thanks—soda, please, sir.”

“None of that formal sir! Call me Nick! Or have you spent so long among the English that you’ve adopted their stick-in-the-mud arrogance?”

My field of vision is completely filled by a big chest in a golf shirt as he puts one arm around my shoulders and draws me against himself. A receding hairline is the fate of many a younger man, but the sagging jowls and the tell-tale thickness around the waist and chest must give him a pang when he looks in the mirror.

“Ted? Ted?” he calls over to the barkeeper. “Ted, this is Anna, and she will have—” He scans my face as if the answer lay there. “A white wine spritzer. You can drive after a wine spritzer!”

“Well, sir—Nick—if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather—”

“To celebrate your appointment, Anna!” Hornberger insists as if he were a Sherpa tribesman obliged by custom to force food and drink onto a guest protesting his fullness.

The only person standing near Hornberger who comes up to his earlobe is a stunning brunette in a white pants suit and a figure-hugging top who has been watching our exchange very narrowly.

“Hello, Professor Lieberman! Welcome to Ardrossan!” She beams down at me with all the self-confidence of the spoiled and beautiful. “We’re all so curious to meet you—may we introduce ourselves? We’re all in offices next to yours. Only not so far down the hallway.”

Bite me, Versace Girl.

My advice to a graduate student at a top-tier research university would always be to strive to be remembered for her work, not for her looks, but Irene calls this the German Protestant infiltration of my cultural heritage.

I hope and trust the Almighty is not among the aging males dazzled by visions of female fabulousness, but Nick Hornberger evidently is. There is a subtle but distinct difference in the way Hornberger bear-hugged me and the way he reaches past America’s Next Top Model to take some glasses from Ted the barman. Not sure if I can put my finger on it. Familiarity coupled with a sense of reverence.

“This is Tessa Shephard,” Versace Girl says, inviting a copiously freckled girl with dark red locks into our small circle. “Tessa’s in her third year of grad school, so—”

“So if there’s anything you need, ma’am, don’t hesitate to ask,” says Tessa, not visibly galled by her colleague’s patronizing manner. She gives me a broad smile. “I’m in your class on parody, and Professor Cleveland said you’ll be coming to the Early Modern Studies graduate seminar, so we’ll meet there, too.”

“And this is my friend Selena O’Neal.” Versace Girl steps aside and pushes a third girl toward me. Selena is tall and very well-endowed, too, but two thick mouse-colored braids hang on either side of her pale face down to her waist, her face has a pasty sheen, and she manages to look almost dowdy in a pleated skirt and a white blouse. If it was Hornberger who recommended these girls as graduate assistants to the Academic Affairs Office, he is only partially guilty of selecting them with his loins. Maybe he makes deals with the AAO: one stunner for one nerd.

“Hello, Dr. Lieberman.” Selena has a soft, strained voice, and I have to read her lips to hear her above the music. “I was sorry to see that your class on
Paradise Lost
was canceled. I was…I was looking forward to that.”

“Oh, thanks! How nice of you to say that, Selena. Yes, I was sorry, too, but curriculum requirements made the change necessary. Maybe next semester!”

She smiles and bobs her head in a manner reminiscent of the late Princess Diana.

“That would be wonderful, because I’m actually working on—”

“Yeah, leave that for the grad sem, Selena,” her frenemy butts in. “I’m Natalie Greco, Professor Lieberman. I’m in my first year of grad school and it’s my first year as a grad assistant, so you can imagine how excited I am! Welcome to Ardrossan University, again, ma’am, and to The Old Dominion!”

I’m the new girl in class, and the popular girls are noticing me. That is definitely a new experience, only it comes fifteen years too late to be anything but awkward.

“Tessa, Selena and Natalie—thanks for coming to say hello.” I give them my best teacher’s smile. “I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, if we’re…on the same floor.”

In the same dorm
, I almost said. Knee-jerk reflex.

Hornberger hands me my wine, and my eyes focus on the glittering drops of water that are running down the outside of the glass, gather at the bottom, fall onto his wrist and run down the underside of his arm. This is what stimulus overload does to me; I latch on to a tiny detail and close in on it. Then the still life of the drops of water on Nick Hornberger’s hairy footballer’s arm turns dramatic. Natalie Greco reaches out, and with the backs of her four fingers, slightly bent, she brushes the drops away. She is talking to him about something college-related—I catch the words “scanning” and “PDF”—but her eyes find the detail that mine had also found, and she lifts her hand and brushes the water away. Neither of them comments on her action or stops the conversation, and it is this that tells me that they are sleeping together.

I look up and around to see whether anyone else has seen what I just saw, and I catch Yvonne Roberts’s pleading stare, urging me over to join her and Elizabeth Mayfield. It turns out that Elizabeth will not, after her stint as chair, go back to full-time teaching but proceed up the administrative ladder to the position of Dean of Studies. She graciously accepts our congratulations and encourages us to approach her, notwithstanding her principal duties, should we need her help or advice. There is not a single glance over at Hornberger and his circle of giggling admirers to indicate that she does, in fact, doubt the new chair’s ability or willingness to look after us.

I decide to take Elizabeth at her word. She seems genuinely upset when she hears about the mess in my office; apparently it was reported clean and empty months ago. Neither of us mentions Andrew Corvin’s name, and I am as certain as I can be that she appreciates my discretion. Relief at her promise to look into it gives me a second wind of sociability, and when Dancey beckons me over, I bound up to him like a trusting puppy.

Matthew Dancey, I decide after five minutes in which he scolds me with paternal sternness for volunteering to do service that isn’t expected of me and stresses that cooperativeness is of course the first virtue of a valued team member, is a politician. Physically, he is nondescript: below medium height, nearly bald, very thin, a little ill-looking. The only attractive thing about him is his smooth, sonorous voice, but as he speaks I sink into an aural hallucination of this voice as it affably dissects a poor junior professor’s failings and informs her that her three-year tenure review was unsuccessful. This man surely
can smile and smile and be a villain
. I am too exhausted and too pleased with the prospect of an uncluttered office to worry about the mixed messages that he is sending me. He is very upfront about the awkwardness of Dolph and me working together in the same subfield and suggests we might consider a project that would benefit us both. I can see that Dolphie, standing next to Dancey like a bodyguard with his biceps stretching the short sleeves of his shirt, hates the idea as much as I do, but with the non-tenured obsequiousness that unites us, we both nod and assure Dancey that this is a great idea.

“Anna, you have heard about the new jewel in our crown, haven’t you?” Dancey continues. “The new Institute for Cognitive Science, Linguistics and Psychology? Nick Hornberger was instrumental in acquiring the necessary funds—well, he and the task force delegated to undertake this project. It would make an excellent impression if the English department were among the first to convene a conference there—perhaps about Renaissance art and neuroesthetics? That’s Dolph’s field, of course, but you have worked on iconography, too, so you wouldn’t find yourself too much out of your depth!”

I just want to get out of this overheated bar and head back to my quiet little haven on the tomato farm, but I have to be polite. “You wrote your dissertation about neuroesthetics?”

“Visual art and visual images in Shakespeare, yes,” Dolph speaks up for the first time. “That’s how I cover the early modern requirement and bring cutting-edge theory to the table. I guess you see why it irks me that I lost out to two MILFs who sailed in here on a diversity ticket.”

I can only stare at him, the last sip of wine unswallowed in my mouth.

“All search committees have to balance academic excellence and fit with political considerations.” Dancey nods as if he hadn’t heard. “These days, white, middle-class men sometimes get rough deals. That’s only fair, of course, seen in a historical perspective. And Anna, you’d not be doing yourself a favor at all if you allowed this to reflect on your standing at Ardrossan. We are very happy to have you!”

“He said
what
to you?” Irene screeches into the phone.

“I know.” Generally, I enjoy entertaining Irene with
Tidbits from Academia
, but I’m not enjoying this.

“He called you a MILF?”

“Not directly, but—yeah, he did. And if you love me, don’t—!”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t say,
I told you so!”

“Well…”

“Reenie, I don’t know how to play this.” On my back porch, with another glass of wine, I don’t feel as low as I did when I drove home, but I’m still depressed enough to send a little
cri de coeur
to Manhattan. “They’re nice to me, don’t get me wrong. But boy—these small departments are cans of slithery, scholarly worms!”

“So what’s new?”

“That I’m in the thick of it. Well, not the thick of it, I’m not that important, but…involved. I didn’t used to be. That’s what was so great about England. I used to be just the li’l Yank and no one paid any attention to me. I preferred that.”