Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) (41 page)

I sit in the chair Mary indicates.

“I need your help,” Elizabeth murmurs. “That's why I asked my mother to call you. Joanne will let me off the hook if I write a letter of apology.” She unfolds herself: a protracted process, as though her limbs were steeped in regret. On the side table sits her mother's handbag. Opening it, she produces a pen, which she cradles with a moment's longing. Then she hands it to me. “Joanne says she won't involve any committees. She says the whole thing will be between the two of us. It will be settled, I won't get forced out of the program. But it's hard”—she stares at the pen, which lies in my open palm—“to write. And my mother says she doesn't want me doing it alone.”

“You know the politics, Tracy,” injects Mary firmly from the sofa.

“You want
me
to write the letter to Joanne?”

Mary and Elizabeth nod.

I set the pen on the coffee table and address myself to Mary. “You do realize, don't you, that this won't end the problem? A letter of apology, which constitutes a confession, will sit in Joanne's desk. Any time she feels like bringing Elizabeth down, all she has to do is hand it to a dean. That could be a year from now. It will prevent Elizabeth from having any real security in the department, so long as Joanne is around.”

Mary hesitates only a second, then answers decisively. “We still think it's generous of Joanne to offer this option.”

“Have you
met
Joanne?”

Mary looks at me sharply. “No. Why?”

“Come
on
,” whispers Elizabeth with sudden passion.

Mary reaches for a small gray answering machine positioned beside the phone, and presses Play.

This is Joanne. It's four o'clock in the afternoon.
A long, forbearing sigh blows from the machine's microphone.
Elizabeth, while I don't at all understand what happened, I am willing to accept a written apology. I could take that letter you sent me to the faculty senate, you know. I could take it to them for next week's meeting.
A long pause.
But I won't. If I receive a letter from you.
Joanne's voice drops; she seems to pull the receiver closer, and when she speaks next, enunciating clearly from inside the small gray box of the answering machine, she sounds like she's right here in Elizabeth's spare living room.
I forgive you.

Elizabeth's light touch on my hand makes me jump. Undeterred, she puts the pen between my fingers. I shake her away, but don't drop the pen. I have to agree with Mary: Elizabeth doesn't have a choice.

With the slightly awed demeanor of a child embarking on an art project, Elizabeth brings a notepad. “If you write,” she says, “my mother can type it later.”

Determined to get this over with as swiftly as possible, I settle at the bare desk and set pen to paper. “To Joanne Miller,” I say.

“Dear,” says Elizabeth. “
Dear Joanne.
No last name.”

I write the words, then turn back to Elizabeth. “
I would like to apologize for—
”

“
I beg your apology,
” she says.

“
—for the offense I caused you?
” I suggest.

“
And my poor judgment in doing so,
” adds Elizabeth.

“It wasn't poor judgment,” I say testily. “It was a breakdown. How about
I was not well?
”

“
My poor judgment,
” insists Elizabeth. “I should have known better than to let them make me do things people wouldn't understand.”

“Why did you ask me to do this if you're going to write it yourself?” My voice quivers with unexpected anger.

Elizabeth takes a step backward. “Thank you for doing this, Tracy.” She looks so meek I want to shake her.

“
When I have regained my strength,
” I say, penning the words, “
I hope to make this apology in person. For now—
”

“It will be in person. I mean . . . I'm going in to the department to give this to her,” says Elizabeth.

“That's crazy.”

Mary flinches. Elizabeth looks out the window.

With a sigh I strike the line and continue. “
I would like to assure you that I am aware my actions were deeply inappropriate. I intended no harm to you, and hold you in great respect.
”

“
Greatest,
” says Elizabeth, who has crept back to peer over my shoulder. When I don't respond she repeats, quietly: “
Greatest.
”

I write the word, then add what's necessary in a rush of irritation. “
I hope this incident, inappropriate and upsetting as it has been, will not overshadow my years of work and devotion to the department. I am committed to completing my dissertation just as soon as I am well, and I hope to have the opportunity to demonstrate my dedication to academia and to this department. Whatever I can do to make up for my behavior, I will do.
”

“Thanks a lot,” says Elizabeth, when I've set down the pen. “I think that's my best chance at getting back.”

I hand her the letter. She stands reading it: pale, beautiful, young. She could tear up this letter and go on to a different profession, one that wouldn't commandeer her sanity so powerfully. One that doesn't prize, above all, solitary fever-pitch thinking. “Are you sure you want to go back?” I say.

Elizabeth presses the page to her chest, uncomprehending. “It's my life. It's . . .” A powerful grief crosses her face, a grief I feel in my gut. “Literature is the most beautiful thing in the world.”
Her speech is reflexive, a blind plea for understanding. “It will be hard to go slow, when I'm better. You don't know what it's like. Being
lightning.
Being able to hear them directly, to write down what they tell me. On the medicine, I have to figure it all out for myself.” Elizabeth offers a strange smile. “Don't worry. I'll stay on my medicine. If I don't, I burn up. No one can be lightning without burning up, right? Not for more than a millisecond. Or something.” She giggles miserably. Then, soberly: “I'm going to ask Joanne to be my adviser. When I go back.”

“That's
insane,
” I say before I can censor myself.

“She emphasizes the evolution of prosody,” blurts Elizabeth. “So do I.”

“She emphasizes the evolution of
sixteenth-century
prosody,” I fire back.

Elizabeth says nothing.

I stare at her. There is a taste of acid in my throat.

Mary sips her tea.

“What makes you think Joanne would even accept that?” I say.

“I just—know her. You know what I mean?”

Slowly I shake my head. I imagine Joanne: the iron gray noticeably taking over her hair, the moon-round face, the thickness in her voice. The slight limp she seemed to develop out of nowhere this week. Then I look at Elizabeth's wan features. I don't understand the symbiosis at work here. Elizabeth and Joanne, and whatever bargain of despair, punishment, or reward they might transact, have stepped beyond my reach. Only when Elizabeth turns her head toward me do I see her request for forgiveness.

When Elizabeth trudges off to the bathroom, Mary turns to me. “She says she needs to show her face and let everyone know she's still devoted to the program. Is that true?”

“Mary,” I say, “I don't know whether she'll be able to recover from this politically, no matter what she does.”

Mary takes this in. Her face is stolid. She motions toward the bathroom. “She wakes up in the morning thinking of books. I won't take that away. Is there a way for Elizabeth to do this dissertation without being driven day and night?”

“That depends whether she chooses to wear Joanne's choke collar.”

Mary looks annoyed. Then she continues as though she hadn't heard me. “Her outpatient treatment is going well. But the doctor says Elizabeth can't go back to work for two months. The department has already had to find a replacement for the section she was teaching. Elizabeth says she needs to show up to prove she hasn't just vanished. You know she can't go in there alone. She needs you to go with her.”

“That's—”

“I'm afraid for her,” Mary interrupts. This is not a confession; Mary neither seeks nor expects sympathy. Nor, it's suddenly evident, does she like me.

I struggle to contain my hurt. Why should I care if Mary thinks me condescending? She has no understanding of the pressures I face. “My tenure committee meets a week from today,” I say. “I hope you'll understand why I can't be involved in this. I've extended myself more than—”

“You're the only one who knows the whole situation,” Mary continues. “In a week that faculty senate could already have kicked her out.”

“They wouldn't kick her out,” I counter testily. “They'd force her to take a temporary leave of absence.”

“Which would turn permanent. Wouldn't it? Probably?”

I sigh a long sigh, then nod.

I'm being asked to hold Elizabeth's hand while she delivers an apology I've ghostwritten—even as she spurns me as her adviser. If there is something too raw about Joanne's forgiveness of Elizabeth, the same might be said for my deepening involvement in this mess. By all logic, I should walk away. Yet I, too, have been seduced by something about Elizabeth, hooked in until her well-being feels essential to my own. I run my fingers through my hair, digging into my scalp, and take momentary refuge in well-trodden indignation: that Elizabeth has lost her grip is tragic enough; why did it have to be a goddamn tabloid scenario, the kind Eileen lives for?

My thoughts drift longingly toward George; I wrest them away. Shutting my eyes, I ask myself: Why—honestly—am I so angry?

Here is my answer: If the world stopped making sense—i f I heard voices in the midnight library stacks—I would have a choice. I could believe there were aliens who also happened to be
literary giants—a belief that would be at once glorious and harrowing, upending my understanding of all I've ever known.

Or I could believe there were no aliens, and I was losing my mind.

Which would be less terrifying?

Head in hands, I listen to the flush of the toilet and Elizabeth's soft tread, and it occurs to me that there are two kinds of people: Those who, told they're crazy, turn their opinions over to surer hands. And those who will pay any price, no matter how steep, to remain true to their own vision, without which the world is a sickening void.

I'd choose aliens.

I would not have been any more willing than Elizabeth to step back from the verge, to alert a friend, to turn myself in for treatment and shut my eyes to revelation. Recalling the Dickinson poem, I can hear it now only in Elizabeth's low whisper:
Most—I love the Cause that slew Me / Often as I die / Its beloved Recognition / Holds a Sun on Me.
Up close, devotion and folly grow indistinguishable. Elizabeth's courage, her choice to trust her mind in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is the sort of bravery that might under different circumstances have made her a Romantic heroine. Instead it's made her tragic. I'm not furious at Elizabeth for clinging to outlandish visions, but for being wrong.

I've read enough about bipolar disorder to know that her visions may yet kill her, that in such extreme, psychosis-inducing cases, the suicide rate is fearfully high. Elizabeth's prospects terrify me. But my fear goes deeper than altruism. My own fate seems to rest obscurely on making sure she's not burned at the stake for her beliefs. I can no longer deny how powerfully I see myself in her. How I've hated her vulnerability because I understand it; how I can imagine all too well the scald of her loss; the dizzying fear that she can no longer trust her judgment, that her choices were madness, that the vision that lit her world is gone forever.

And I, like her, refuse to believe I was wrong. Contrary to every sensible friend urging me to declare my love for George dead and look to new horizons, I refuse to turn my back on the truth of what I saw.

Nothing but luck separates Elizabeth from me. To suppose otherwise is hubris. The tenderness I feel, as I understand this, is powerful enough to make me break stride. I think: We are all just creatures swimming toward the light.

Sometimes life is like this. Sometimes all the scrims drop at once: theory, professionalism, politeness. We stand, totter with loneliness. Brace ourselves. Fling fingertips to the sky.

“What time?” I say to Mary.

This is what happens when Elizabeth steps off the elevator: The air in the department ionizes. A heightened quiet settles over the corridor as I greet her with a squeeze of her shoulder and lead her to my office. We pause here inside my fortress of books, its floor-to-ceiling shelves dwarfing Elizabeth, who scans the spines with a darting glance. She is breathing shallowly.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “I owe you big-time.”

We walk to the faculty lounge, Elizabeth with a boxy, stretch-marked backpack riding high and empty on one shoulder. Inside the lounge she pours coffee, then warms her hands on the cup without drinking. We don't have to wait long. Footsteps approach, the door swings wide. Victoria and Joanne enter, Joanne with a startled glare in my direction. It's obvious Elizabeth didn't tell her I'd be present.

Victoria's forehead furrows. She looks at Elizabeth with strained concentration. As I expected, the sight of her has wakened Victoria's sympathy.

Victoria's voice is kind. “You didn't have to do this in person.”

“I wanted to,” says Elizabeth. Her voice catches on the words. Then, more steadily: “It's important to express how sincere I am in my apology, and how dedicated to this department.”

Victoria settles, with a watchful nod, onto the sofa.

Elizabeth swings her backpack from her shoulder, fishes in its roomy cavity, and produces a single folded sheet of paper. She hands it to Joanne, who takes it with a rough gesture and leaves.