All about Skin (8 page)

“What're we gonna
do
?” I asked. I don't know what I expected—whether I thought I'd catch him in a lie, or have him say something about not wanting the baby, or what—I forgot. All I knew was that something was pressing down on me, drowning me. If he'd said anything, anything at all, I would have been fine. If he'd started talking about the dialectic or about mesothelioma or aioli or how many types of cancer you could get from one little Newport menthol—I'd have been all right. Even if he'd cursed me out and blamed me and said he didn't want the baby—I'd have understood.

But he didn't say anything. I saw everything he was thinking, though. I saw him thinking about his parents—Sy and Rita—growing worried in their condo's sunny Sarasota kitchen; I saw him never finishing his thesis and going to work for some grubby nonprofit where everyone ate tofu and couldn't wear leather and almost had a PhD; I saw him hauling the kid around to parks, saying it was the best thing he'd ever done.
Really. The best
.

I walked out of that room, out of that house he rented with its really nice wood everywhere. I kept walking away, quickly at first, then so fast that the tears were the only thing to keep me from burning myself out like a comet. I wasn't running from Gideon anymore, but even if he was following me, it was too late. Even with no baby, I could see there'd be no day when I'd meet Sy and Rita, no day when I'd quit Pita Delicious before they quit me, no day when I'd hang around a table of students talking about post-postfeminism, no day when Gideon and I would lock hands in front of the house we'd just bought. Anyone could have told him it was too late for that, for us, but Gideon was Gideon, and I could hear him calling after me, hoping the way he always did that the words would do the chasing for him.

Amina Gautier

S
he cannot know how it will all end, this weekend in Los Angeles for the annual convention. She cannot know that she will have talked herself out of a job and slept with a man with whom she will have no future (there is no connection between the job and the man). It is only the beginning of the conference—Thursday night—and she has just arrived in Los Angeles after changing planes in St. Louis to complete the trip. She has only just arrived and checked into a hotel within walking distance from both the convention headquarters and the Staples Center and she has just entered her spacious hotel room and deemed herself lucky that her department is willing to provide travel funds to grad students on the job market without requiring them to share accommodations.

Behind her are two full beds covered in white duvets. Just beyond the restroom to her left, two bottles of water too expensive to drink sit atop a cylinder table backed by a wide window and floor-sweeping draperies. To her right is a dresser with six drawers topped by a large flat-paneled television that she will not turn on—not even once—over the next three days.

In the spacious room she does not have to share, she unpacks her interview suit, a basic black number with subtle shoulder pads. It is a serious suit; when worn, it will show no hint of curves. It tells one and all to focus on her mind and not her physical assets. It tells folks to get their minds out of the gutter.

The suit is not her own, but a borrowed one from the graduate pool. She and four other women of similar height and weight pooled their resources to buy this Tahari from Burlington Coat Factory. She is a proud shareholder, owning one-fifth's interest in the suit. In the early autumn, the department's placement chair brought in two former graduate students to impart their wisdom. Just the year before, they had been preparing to go on the job market; now they were junior faculty members at important institutions who could look back and provide sage advice. They cautioned the group of job market hopefuls to provide themselves with every possible advantage. They told stories of brilliant job candidates who had flubbed their interviews because of inappropriate dress. “Clothes make the scholar,” they said.

She has taken every possible precaution. She has come all the way to Los Angeles, all the way to the other side of the country, and she intends to shine. Like all of the other hopeful graduate students, she stepped out on faith, booking her hotel room and registering for the convention long before knowing if she'd have even one interview. She has been rewarded for her optimism and faith. She has one interview scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. She does not intend to blow it. She has done her homework, reviewing the university's mission statement, the department's website. She knows interesting facts about the two men interviewing her tomorrow and is conversant in their areas of interest. She is prepared to discuss possible courses she could teach. She has brought sample syllabi.

At a time when others have been working for at least five years, she is just now applying for her first full-time job. She is twenty-nine years old and she is ready to put behind the meager graduate stipend upon which she has subsisted for the past six years, ready to begin repaying undergraduate loans, ready to design her own courses, to have her own students, and to teach her own material. She is tired of grading papers for professors, teaching sections of composition and correcting comma splices. She is tired of being addressed as Ms. She cannot wait any longer. There is no indication that next year's job market will be any better and more reason to believe that it will be far worse. Originally, she'd had three interviews for the convention, but two have been canceled due to budgetary concerns. Universities were canceling searches and dropping new lines and hires without so much as a by-your-leave. She is in no position to be choosy.

So easy to tell the candidates from the conference participants. The next day, she spots them at a glance, picking them out easily from among the other indistinguishable men and women in nondescript black suits. Candidates sit, lost in wide-backed armchairs the color of sand dunes, trying to pass the time before their interviews. They clutter the hotel lobby. They watch the elevator doors and the front desk. They time their calls upstairs to the minute.

She waits among them in the hotel's main lobby and calls up to get the room number five minutes before her scheduled interview, ignoring the twenty or so other conference interviewees dotting the lobby, conspicuous in their severe suits. She wears the same asexual uniform as the other female candidates. They are identical in their black, gray, navy, and brown pantsuits, their hair pulled away from their faces, their mouths devoid of lipstick. She has been trained not to call attention to herself during the interview process, not to give the search committee any opportunity to think of her as less than equal. She knows the drill. She will greet each search committee member with a firm handshake and sincere eye contact. She will not expect anyone to take her coat or pull out her chair. She will accept a cup of water if offered; if not, she will not ask.

Don't ask, don't drink.

Prior to her afternoon interview, she'd visited the book exhibit room and attempted to interest publishers in her fledgling book project. In the area just before the exhibit room, makeshift walls had been erected to list conference changes and candidates had clustered around them, young men and women in somber suits standing on tiptoe, scanning to see if a last-minute interview had come through. She eyed those candidates with pity, taking comfort in not being one of them. Like her, they had taken a chance on coming to the convention. In the crowded elevator, she pushes thoughts of the unlucky out of her head.

It is all a gamble, she tells herself.

The search committee consists of only two members. The two men greet her and usher her in. One shakes her hand and the other follows suit. They direct her to the hot seat, a chair placed at an angle that allows her to face them both across the coffee table. They offer her a choice of water or coffee; they ask about her flight and her overall trip.

The man seated to her right then says, “Tell us a little about your dissertation,” the academic counterpart to the corporate “Tell us a little about yourself,” signaling that—niceties over—the interview can begin.

She describes her dissertation succinctly, in under two minutes flat, delivering the rehearsed recitation she has been trained to memorize. She answers every follow-up question admirably. The two men take turns asking about her teaching, her courses, her research. It is all going very well.

In the middle of discussing the unique advising system implemented at their university, which has now become a model for many other research universities with a focus on undergraduate education, she is asked, “Do you have any questions about opportunities for partners?”

“I'm sorry, I don't understand,” she says. When the placement chair brought in the former grads, they'd advised the hopefuls to be honest during interviews and not try to bluff one's way through any questions one failed to understand. Bluffing, they said, would only make it worse.

Silence fills the awkwardness and she sees the exchange of glances over her head. She has not read anything on the department's web page or in the university's mission statement mentioning a program called Opportunities for Partners. She suspects it is a program in which the university partners with the local community. Perhaps it is a new micro lending project. Opportunities for Partners. How has she missed reading about this? It is obviously important enough for them to change the direction of the interview and interject a question about it. Opportunities for … partners. Partners: their politically correct way of alluding to a significant other without making presumptions about one's sexual orientation. “Oh,” she says. “You mean ‘partners' with a little ‘p.' I understand now.”

“And do you have any questions?” she is asked.

“No, thank you.”

As one, the two men stand and extend their hands. The one to her left says, “Thank you for coming. We intend to be in touch with all of our candidates early next semester to arrange campus visits.” The one to her right says, “Enjoy the rest of the convention.”

At the conclusion of the interview, she returns to her room, which has yet to be cleaned by housekeeping. Stepping carelessly over strewn pajamas and balled nylons, she strides to the window and parts the draperies to look at the view that is no view. Though her window is as wide and high as the wall, it looks out only onto a pebbly area, beyond which is a well-loved city important to her only because it is hosting the convention. She steps out of her sensible shoes, losing two inches in height, and feels her smallness. In this city, she is nothing and in the hotel suites where the interviewers convene, she is even less, a number on a list of candidates, a dossier that has made it thus far but will go no further.

She slips the Privacy Please placard onto her room door's outer handle. She weighs her options and realizes she has none. Her graduate funding has run its course. The only way to secure more funding is to teach adjunct courses, which would only hinder her research agenda.

She undresses. Carefully, she folds her black suit and packs it in her suitcase, hoping it will serve someone else a better turn. She has no more need for it. The look between the two men had been subtle but definite. There will be no campus visit. She lies down on her unmade bed.

Just the other night, upon her arrival, she took comfort in the expensive and spacious room she had all to herself. Now she longs for a roommate, or any other person to explain it all to her, help her to understand just what went wrong. Now there is no comfort in the small cube refrigerator, discreetly hidden behind the faux mahogany door panel, nor the granite marble sink with the individual coffeemaker beside it, accompanied by two packets of coffee—one regular and one decaffeinated—and an inadequate supply of sugar packets. She takes no comfort in the waxy cups individually wrapped in plastic nor in luxury soaps and conditioners she will not use, preferring the familiarity of her own toiletries.

After two hours of lethargy and self-doubting, she heads downstairs for dinner, hoping to get there while everyone else is still at cash bars and receptions, hoping to beat the convention crowd.

The hotel boasts two restaurants—a bistro and a pub—on opposite sides of the lobby. She decides she will stuff herself on the department's dime. She will order dessert. Maybe she will have a drink. All she has to look forward to now is reimbursement.

Both eateries are full. She leaves the hotel and walks until she finds an eating establishment that looks a little less congested, only to turn in and find it as full as all of the others. She is too tired to keep walking, so she gives her name to the hostess and is told she'll have to wait for a table to become available. She is welcome to eat at the bar, but she doesn't feel like having her feet dangling from a too-high stool just now. She wants to sink into something; she wants her back supported by the cushiony leather of a booth.

Scholars and critics fill the small pub. All around her, people are eating or standing in line in collegial groups. She catches snatches of conversation on material culture, historicity, and the subaltern. She appears to be the only one intending to eat alone. When the hostess moves to lead a group of five to a back booth, she is nudged into the man in front of her.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “We're packed as tight as sardines in this vestibule.”

He looks out over her head and then back at her. “An apt metaphor,” he says. “Although not the most original.”

“I'm all out of originality,” she says.

“Tough day?” he asks. His dark cheeks are dusted with short dark hairs, his lips lost beneath a mustache and goatee. His name hangs from a plastic sheath secured at either corner by a clip, dangling from a navy blue lanyard, but she cannot make out his institutional affiliation.

She smiles noncommittally.

“Did you give a paper?” he asks, glancing at his watch absently. Behind them, more people are filing into the restaurant, though none of the tables seem to be emptying.