The Englishman (18 page)

“Not enough prospects?”

“Not enough balls.”

Cleveland lounges in his chair, watching me.

“You go to the UK to play, Jenna,” he says. “And come back to the States to win the game.”

“That is not quite how I would put it,” I say firmly.

“How would you put it?”

We are looking at each other, and I don’t know whether he is doing this on purpose. Cornering me.

“I think I…wouldn’t. Put it. At all—” I falter. “I’m here. Hu-hurrah?”

Some of the students find this hilariously funny.

“Hurrah-and-hurrah.” Cleveland nods, and then he gives me a smile of such sweetness that it takes my breath away.

After class, I try to get away as quickly as possible, but no such luck.

“Um, Anna, might I have a word?” Cleveland seems reluctant to talk to me, but he beckons me toward the first-floor hallway and I trail him like I trailed Elizabeth Mayfield five weeks ago. Then the place was flooded with sunlight; now the air is burning where the panes of stained glass add a red glow to the sunset. Cleveland pulls his office door hard into its frame, stretches past me, and switches on the light.

“Now, what’s going on?” He doesn’t even ask me to sit down.

“Pardon me?”

“Look, I know that jet-lag makes me stupid sometimes, but—”

“Oh, well done!” I burst out, remembering. “I read about it in the online
Guardian
. I assumed you didn’t want me to say anything in front of the others because you didn’t say anything in the faculty meeting, but—may I—
now?
First prize! Well
done
, sir!”

He is staring down at me as if he had forgotten who I am or why I am here.

“Don’t call me that.”

The ground is gaping wide in front of my feet. I take my heart into my hands and jump.

“Giles, then. You must be so proud of yourself!”

“Thank you. You’re very…kind.”

I can’t tell whether this is an Englishman’s habitual belittling of his achievement, or whether he finds me over-familiar and over-enthusiastic. Both, probably, and either way, I know I must back off.

“No, I’m not. Anyway, what was it you wanted to—”

“That’s right, you were hoping I’d be trounced!”

“You knew I didn’t mean that,” I mutter gruffly, and I can tell that the blood is shooting into my cheeks. “What was it you—”

He strides over to the sideboard and dumps his books and laptop on it; I hadn’t even noticed that he was still holding them in his hands. “I’m sorry to keep you from your…There is something wrong, isn’t there? In the department? It’s as if everyone is smelling a stench bomb and nobody wants to admit it.”

“What makes you say that?” I ask cautiously, and my punishment is a darkling look across the room.

“Are you telling me I’m imagining things?” he asks bluntly.

“N-No, but I don’t—You should ask someone higher up.”

“I will. Now tell me what
you
know.”

“All I know is that…well, what I heard is that one of our students accused one of our colleagues of sexual violence toward her. Rape, in a word. A professor from the English department allegedly raped a female student.”

“Good Lord,” he breathes. “Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Now look here—”

“No, honestly, I don’t know!” I give him a short, unvarnished report of the events so far, and he listens without interrupting me.

“So who else knows?” he asks at last.

“No idea. I haven’t spoken to anyone about it.”

“But the students know something.”

“Selena O’Neal must have tattled. Of course—her mother is the fountain from which this muddy water has sprung.”

“Perhaps. But when I went to the Eatery this afternoon, I saw Selena sobbing into her coffee and Tessa trying to calm her down. At the time all I thought was, I hope it’s just a boy, and not that someone has died.”

“Callous!”

“You think?” He strolls to the sofa and rests one buttock on the armrest. I begin to feel silly, standing where he left me, but at the same time I don’t want to sit down. Standing is more formal. Formal is good.

“Sometimes the two feel the same,” I point out, ruining my effect.

“Especially when you’re twenty-three and a virgin.”

“You don’t know that Selena is a virgin! Or—do you?”

“Of course I don’t
know
it! Perhaps that little crucifix around her neck and the chastity ring on her left hand are just a smoke-screen, and those buttoned-up blouses, and teaching Sunday school to the kids.”

“
I
taught religious education at
my
synagogue!”

“And were
you
a virgin at twenty-three?”

“No, of course I wasn’t,” I snap at him, mortified.

He laughs. “At any rate, Selena is a good girl, and one of these days someone will pay for that. She herself, probably.”

“But Selena can’t be the girl…in question. Tim tried out that idea, and it makes no sense. Her mother was far too collected, and the family would never have gone visiting friends, if—”

“No, no, that’s not my drift.” Cleveland is gazing at me, and I’m not sure it’s because he is waiting for me to catch up, or because he is using me as a screensaver while he is thinking.

“Natalie Greco didn’t teach her class today,” he finally says. Just that, no more. And because it’s late and I’m tired, I forget to shut-the-fuck-up.

“You think Natalie’s fling with Nick Hornberger has turned sour? And Natalie confided in Selena that she has accused her professorial lover of raping her, flunks off class, and Selena’s world is in shreds because to feel secure, she must have the lion lie peacefully and chastely with the lamb. Selena in tears, hushed whisperings among the grad students. Have I caught your drift?”

“Yes.”

“Damn.”

“Yes. Only you don’t know the half of it.”

“Will you tell me?”

“No.”

“Oh, unfair!”

Now he looks directly at me again, with a quick smile, as if he were surprised at something. As if he was surprised at me. But then he shifts on his perch and clears his throat.

“There’s something else I need to mention. It appears there is a spot of bother about your Gen Ed class.”

My stomach muscles, already tight in an attempt to resist his smile, clench with dread.

“Oh, no…Madeline Harrison?” Now I do walk over to one of the low chairs and flop down on it. “Of
the
Harrison family?”

“She went to see Hornberger. I’m to bring you in.”

“Bring me in? To be hanged at dawn, I expect.”

Cleveland says nothing, just gazes at me, his head cocked to one side.

“You really are…” He gazes, then shakes his head.

“A pain in the neck?” I offer bravely, not feeling very brave at all. “I’m sorry. It seems I misjudged them, and I also lost control a little, at one point. Am I in a lot of trouble? They’re not going to fire me, are they?”

“No, they’re not going to fire you.”

“What, then? A lecture, a dressing-down, a note in my file, presumably?”

“Something like that.”

As the shock waves ebb through my nervous system, I realize just how tired I am. It’s not the tiredness of the second week of term; it’s the deep exhaustion of an uphill struggle. When this feeling took over, four years ago, I fell into a lethargy that led me into some very irresponsible sex and the worst emotional and professional crisis I’ve ever been through. So with the exhaustion comes the fear.

“Did Hornberger say when? You needn’t come with me, you know. To be honest, I’d rather you didn’t.”

“So you can become dewy-eyed and distressed to soften Nick’s heart? Yes, that would probably work. He’s a complete pushover for beautiful young women. As we have current proof.”

So dry, so unexpected, so mean, this punch. And I’m reeling.

Whenever I have dealings with Giles Cleveland, I feel dejected afterward. Lonely. I don’t know what it is about him, unless of course it is the mean, hurtful things he says to me. He
could
be a friend, I am sure he could, but he doesn’t want to be. I, on the other hand, am summoned to appear before my department chair after just one week of student contact. I could do with a friend.

Interesting that Cleveland seemed convinced that Nick Hornberger is the rapist.
You don’t know the half of it.
The truth is, I don’t know a tenth of it. These people are all strangers to me. On Wednesday afternoon I see Hornberger walk down the Observatory steps accompanied by Ma Mayfield and an official-looking man. I give Elizabeth a diffident nod, but she either ignores me or doesn’t notice me; when I peek back at them, they are walking toward Rossan House, where the Provost’s office and central administration are located. It’s the first time I have seen Hornberger in a suit and tie, and he may well be wearing them in his capacity as department chair, requested by the Sexual Misconduct Hearing Panel to speak for (or against) a colleague. His rattled expression is easily interpreted as dismay that his term of office will not be as uneventful as he had hoped.

That, or I have witnessed the Dean of Studies and a plain-clothes policeman escorting a professor accused of raping his graduate assistant.

This whole thing is utterly bizarre.

On Thursday morning I dash into the library for some last-minute photocopying for my Parody class. I’m late because I tried a short-cut from the farm to the campus that took ten minutes longer, and because I keep forgetting that this library is a still unfamiliar labyrinth. When I locate the book from which I want to copy an essay, it’s two inches beyond the reach of my fingertips and there is neither a ladder nor an obliging basketball player in sight.

“Which one d’you want?”

As he stands there against the sunlight streaming in through the huge leaded windows, I finally grasp the echo of a resemblance that struck me when he sat down next to me at the faculty meeting: Dolph looks like Rocky Horror. I wonder whether it is because he’s blond and brawny or also because he is the creature of some scheming mastermind.

“Uh, thanks, Dolph, I can manage.”

He comes a couple of steps closer and peers at the books above my head.

“C’mon, allow a gentleman from the Old South to help a Yankee lady.”

Another step, and he is so close I can smell the fragrance of his aftershave. Too close.

“Don’t be a jerk,” I say pleasantly.

This takes him aback, but not enough to actually step back. As if to support himself, he leans one hand on the shelf next to my shoulder and reaches up; he has, in effect, trapped me. Three or four seconds, then he steps back, a couple of volumes in his hand.

“Was it one of these? Swift’s
Essays
?”

I don’t believe this guy.

“Don’t think I won’t make a fuss while I’m on probation, Adolph! And don’t kid yourself that just because we have a rape allegation pending, I won’t complain about a colleague crowding me in the library!”

I snatch the book from his hands and make for the downstairs Xerox machines. Dolph comes running after me.

“What do
you
know about
that?”

“Nothing. I’m just a rookie. I know nothing.”

In the afternoon—I am up on the least wobbly of my chairs, wiping the top shelves and hoisting folders with teaching notes onto it—the phone rings. My first thought is that this is the Voice of Doom demanding to know why I consider masturbation to be a suitable topic for a freshman class. The plummeting of guilt into the pit of my stomach is followed by an even guiltier splash of callousness: faced with a rape allegation, Professor Hornberger would hardly be in a position to berate me for my morally turpid syllabus.

“Hi, uh—am I speaking to Professor Lieberman? Anna Lieberman?”

Oy, gevalt!

I know at once who it is, because none of my students or colleagues has so sonorous a baritone with a Queens accent.

“Bernie!”

“D’you remember me? Mrs. Schwartz’s class? Zelda Krevitz’s nephew?”

“Of course, Bernie, hi!”

“I hope it’s okay I’m calling you at your office. I lost your number—the number your mother gave my aunt?”

A very sonorous baritone that raises the hope that pudgy Bernie has grown up into a broad-shouldered six-footer.

“Yeah, sure, I’m sorry, this is the first time someone’s rung me on my office phone. Weird. Thanks, anyway. For calling, I mean.”

“Well, I figured you probably wouldn’t call me—strange man, strange city. I know I wouldn’t, if I was a woman.”