An Uncommon Education (32 page)

She must have been an older woman, but her energy and enthusiasm were immediately noticeable. She wore a corduroy skirt and a button-down shirt, tucked in. Her belt was plain, as were her shoes. Her face was lined but her eyes were bright, and she wore her shoulder-length gray hair back in a small, neat bun. She radiated what I can only think of as a characteristic New England confidence: tradition had raised her, and raised her well, and it would put her in a solid grave.

I had no idea what to say. I wasn’t sure if I was there to argue my case or to be reassured, to opt out of the program or announce my renewed commitment to it. “Honestly,” I said, “I’m not sure.”

She seemed to like my answer, and nodded sympathetically. “Not everyone is cut out for medical school,” she said. “It’s a glorified hazing, really, to prepare you for the rigors of tending to patients. Not unlike, I imagine, the rigors of tending to students.” It was meant to be a joke, and I found myself wanting to laugh a little, to ingratiate myself to her.

“Though you can just get out of your seat and walk off”—she was talking, still, about students. “Your dependencies are much more subtle. My work really is a privilege. The way you all disappear after four years, no time really. And some of you I never even see, which makes a visit like this a cherished moment for me, sort of like when a bird lands on one’s shoulder.” She blinked. “You ever study ornithology?” I nodded. “A little,” I said (I’d gone through bird books in high school when Teddy was still writing, trying to place some of his birds), which surprised her, and a small, pleased smile worked its way onto her face. “Great field. Girls today are too busy to indulge in just bird-watching, though. Have to make it a profession, you know.” She sat forward suddenly in her chair, leaning forward on her outstretched arms. “That’s the world we’ve given you, I’m afraid. Tell me, Ms. Feinstein, may I call you Naomi?” I nodded. “What is it that interests you?”

Again, I wasn’t sure. “Cardiology,” I answered confidently. “Particularly cardiac replacements.” I was trying too hard and my voice was halting.

She smiled, though. “Well, that’s just great. I hope Wellesley’s not lacking in opportunities to help meet your goals. I understand you were able to take advantage of one of the best undergraduate cardiology internships in the nation. Abiomed. Is that right?” She waited for an affirmation. I nodded, smiling weakly. “Well, good.”

She stood up, came around to my side of her desk and leaned on it. “Listen, Naomi, if you want to stay on this track, you’ve got to get those grades up. The rigors of the best medical schools begin with admissions. I’m not trying to push you into it, it really must be your decision, but if it’s what you want, don’t lag. There are ten more women who’ll want your spot, twenty more men. Don’t let it get out of your reach because you gave up the fight. You don’t want to attend a second-tier school if you can get into a first-. Give me just a minute,” she twisted around and riffled through a pile of folders behind her. “Ah, here you are,” she said, turning to me again. She opened my folder, scanned the first page. “No, these grades won’t get you into the schools you’ll want to attend.” She pushed the thin glasses she was wearing up on top of her head, as if to see me better. “If you were a lesser student, I’d direct you somewhere else. But your early grades show you have it in you, and you have claimed to want it.” As she said this, she studied me. I wondered if she had just fed me a line she wasn’t sure I’d digest. “It’s your decision, though,” she repeated herself. “Yours alone. You need to decide this for yourself.” Each repetition felt more pregnant than the last. Perhaps we were both expecting me to respond with the same focus and determination she had directed my way.

I nodded, if only so she’d know I had heard her. “It never really occurred to me that I wouldn’t be a doctor,” I said.

She was willing to wait me out, but it was taking me a while. “Go on,” she said.

I thought of the beauty of the body, the way that it strove toward healing despite the inevitable, the fascination with it I hadn’t yet lost. I thought of how I had been frightened, at first, by that
Gray’s Anatomy
cover, tracing the red lines with my finger to try to understand them better. I thought of those first explorations of Teddy’s body. I thought of Mr. Rosenthal, how he’d shared his love of birds with his son. How his death swept Teddy away beneath the wings of his mother. I thought about how even that rigid doctor at the hospital near Milnah had known that Teddy and I should not be separated. How he had seemed as powerful and strange as a god. And then I thought of my most recent encounter, how touch could consume inhibition. “But somehow, something isn’t as I expected it to be,” the memory of Teddy trying to listen for my heart in my belly flashed through my mind. “I really can’t explain it otherwise, there’s just a block coming between my idea of what I wanted to be, who I’d be here, and what it’s all like, where I am now.” I knew I wasn’t making much sense, and that my words were empty, words she’d probably heard a hundred times in that room. But she was listening, patiently.

“Some of our best students are lost here, Naomi,” she said quietly. “You’d be surprised by who has sat in that chair. But don’t miss out, my dear. You don’t want to regret missing out on what you have just now; so many opportunities, right at your fingertips. I can’t tell you how many alumnae wish they had just one more semester at the college, or could go back and revisit their best years. And it’s they who make this college.” She fixed me in her stare. “We’re a fine institution, make no mistake about that, but there’s something about a Wellesley woman, something that draws a certain kind of girl here when she’s young. And meeting other girls like her makes her into a woman by the time she leaves, and then an alumna who sees, in the real world, what rare opportunities she had here, what she can make of what she learned and what she’s capable of doing. Did you know that Rose Kennedy used to say that her greatest regret in life was that she didn’t attend Wellesley when she could?” I was momentarily shocked by her choice of an example, a page from my past read aloud. But she took my surprise for true astonishment, and I knew there had been no real familiarity. She smiled conspiratorially at me. “Imagine what more she might have done. I’m sure she would have blown those sons of hers out of the water.” This last bit she declared almost gleefully, then sobered at once. And what of her daughters, I wanted to ask, but didn’t, wondering if there was anything about their lives that might have been different had their mother’s ambitions been met.

The dean shook her head to rid us of the stalemate that threatened to introduce its way into the conversation. “Just remember, these opportunities are your inheritance as a modern woman of the world. Don’t waste them, Ms. Feinstein.” She dropped her gaze, walked back around her desk and scribbled something in my folder. “I’m going to recommend a tutor for you,” she said. “Betty Warren, my secretary, will be giving you a call, but here’s her number, for your reference. And here’s mine, too. My direct line.” She slid the paper across the desk to me.

“Thank you,” I said. I looked down at it. I thought about the incongruity of healing again, the reverence I felt every time I thought about how inevitable demise was, how we fought against it so courageously, how that fight could bring a joy that perfection couldn’t offer. “It takes a lot,” I said, “to make a good doctor.” I looked up at her. I thought I saw confusion flicker through her face, but she had corrected it before I could know for sure. She was a professional. “I mean, it’s not just the schooling, you know?”

“I’m sure that’s true,” she replied.

And then, for some reason I could never have explained at the time, I stood up and put the paper gently back on her desk.

“Ms. Feinstein,” she called as I got to her door. I turned around. “Good luck,” she said. For an instant she looked older and, even more briefly, very tired.

T
he weather was unexpectedly warm that afternoon, and I took my time walking home. The women I passed were acting friendlier than usual, but there was still that sense that we were all moving quickly toward important destinations. As I walked by Severance Green, a wide stretch of lawn that runs behind the south walls of the academic quad, I saw a tall man walking toward me.

I think if I had seen his face, I might not have recognized him; it was the way he carried his body that brought the shock of recognition. He was still several yards away when I put it all together.

He looked up as he got closer, and must have read the expression on my face. “Professor Weingarten,” I said. He stopped in his tracks. My own heart was in my mouth, beating and filling it. “Oh,” I said quietly, instinctively turning to walk away.

In a few steps he was next to me, passing me. “Follow me to my office,” he said, then walked quickly on, leaving me to follow behind.

I felt sick as I trailed him. The smells of the warm, muddy lake hung heavy in the breeze. As I walked I thought again of that image of Orpheus and Eurydice, though this time it was Eurydice who came to mind, looking longingly at her husband’s back, not trusting him to do the right thing.

When we got to his office he shut the door firmly behind me. Then he walked over to his desk and sat down, dropping his head immediately into his hands, deflated. I wanted to feel pity for him, but I didn’t. I stared over his shoulder at the window, looking out, wondering why it faced his back.

“Did you know? When I registered for your class?”

He nodded, his face still in his hands.

I began walking around the perimeter of the room, running my hands over the books that lined the walls. I thought again of what my father once said, about how I could know everything. It was hard to imagine that in a few years’ time I might be on my way to collecting just as many books, even those whose contents I already knew by heart. They could sit on my shelves, too, like so many tiers of calcified thought.

“It was my first time, you know,” I said casually, still looking at the books. He made a small sound, like a moan. He sat back and looked at me. “What I want to know,” I continued, “was if I was yours.” He looked confused, momentarily. “Your first student,” I added.

“Oh God, Naomi.” He stood up suddenly. “Yes. Yes, of course. I’m not some kind of”—he stuttered—“predator, for God’s sake.”

“But you spoke with Phyllis.” He looked momentarily lost. “She was handing out the masks.” He nodded, just barely. “I spoke with Phyllis,” he admitted.

And he had come to the house and put on a mask. Had he known or sensed what he was looking for? Had I? I fingered a slim volume of Mirabai’s ecstatic poems. “Are you a religious man, Professor Weingarten?”

“Jules,” he said, sitting back down. “At the very least you should feel free to call me Jules.” He rubbed the back of his neck, roughly, making me want to grab his hand to stop him. “No. I’m not a religious man. Just mistaken.”

“It was a mistake.” I nodded, trying the idea on for myself once again.

“No, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean to say that you were any kind of mistake.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

He thought for a minute, looking almost calm for the first time since I’d stopped him, “Well, to begin with, because it felt right, like it was supposed to happen.”

“Like predestination? Are you sure you’re not a religious man, Jules?”

He stared at me but did not speak.

“I think,” I said, replacing the next book I’d taken off the shelf—a Harold Bloom, preaching to the choir—“that maybe it was just that you’re lonely, too. As lonely as I am.”

“You’re right,” he said simply. He had composed himself somewhat. “Naomi, it did mean something. It meant enough that, at least on that last night, I was willing to lose my job for you. I don’t know why. I wish I could explain better. It was just how you wanted me to reach out to you, it felt like who you were didn’t matter.”

“I would never want you to lose your job for me.” I continued to stare at his books, feigning interest in them. “I’m not planning to tell anyone about what happened.” All at once I felt tired and deeply disappointed. In myself and him.

“I know that,” he said, his admission tinged with impatience. “I said I knew what I was doing. It’s not your responsibility to resolve this. On top of everything else, you don’t need to hear me beg.”

For what? I wondered. More or less of me? For his job? “For your job?”

“I wouldn’t beg you for my job, Naomi. No—beg you to be quiet.” At this my stomach turned in shame. His reassurances only drew more attention to his own deep anxieties. “Which I wouldn’t do anyway,” he added hurriedly. “I made my bed. I can lie in it.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said. I wondered why it was so difficult for either one of us to say that we just wanted this all to be over. I took in his odd, homely face and thought of how his body had felt so smooth against mine. I wondered if, when I did become a doctor, the body would ever appear so two-sided again. Or if every body would appear multidimensional, unwilling to be understood at first glance.

He nodded, apparently resigned to some unwanted fate, one that may or may not have involved the admission of our interlude. “I’m leaving soon,” he said.

“Back to Yale. Yes, I know.”

“No, I’m through with teaching.” He grimaced at my look of surprise, trying to morph it into a smile. “You see, I don’t like the students that much.” I laughed at that. His smile relaxed into something more genuine and sad. “These past few years, it’s all turned sour,” he shifted and began fidgeting with nothing on his desk. “Students constantly trying to prove me wrong, prove themselves right, instead of just, well, proving something. And they’re relentless, too hungry for my taste.” He lifted his shoulders up, tensing his neck. “I’m so busy telling others what I know, I feel like I’ve been emptied of whatever I had of myself in the first place, not that I’m soulless, but sometimes . . .” He had been staring off and suddenly looked into my face. “Maybe I am more religious than I admit,” he said, allowing a little delight to make its way across his face. “Naomi . . .”