Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) (4 page)

“Wouldn't it be nice. But I'm not counting on it.”

Jeff is my “tenure-shepherd.” It's his job to advise me on tenure-packet preparation. It's my job to fish for reassurance.

“Of course you're not,” he says approvingly. “Still, it looks good for you. Despite your rosy youth.”

“Ha.”

“Well you have to admit it's not every day profs come up for tenure at twelve.”

“I'm thirty-three. And—”

“What I'm saying”—he cuts me off—“is that beside your standout record, you've got a bulletproof specialty. I expect to see you crowned in the next few months. Then maybe once your job is secure you'll admit how much you despise undergrads.”

I grin. “You're projecting.”

“You hate teaching too, you just can't admit it because you're still an idealist. At least I'm honest about the spoiled buggers. Once you're tenured you'll tell the truth too.”

I try again. Maintaining my students' posture in their creaky
wooden seats is an unsung art, one I undertake with zest. “I like my students,” I say. Even if the endearing thing about them is how dumb they think we are. Even if they toss thin excuses at our feet: lazy dares. Undergraduates find their professors' infatuations unfathomable . . . except when a book has gotten to them. Then they queue up cross-legged on the speckled floor outside my office, radiant with the need to have a thorny passage explained, or some bracing moral challenge resolved. The trust they're willing to place in my hands, then, is stunning.

Jeff smiles with one corner of his mouth, telling me no argument I can summon will be worth the effort. “Why the tie?” I ask instead. “Black turtlenecks not good enough for you anymore?”

“The Emory chairman's in town. I'm going to attend his lecture on the fascinations of
Beowulf.
” He takes a mug from the cabinet and looks inside dubiously, then rinses it in the mini-sink. “Continuing the profound and brilliant impression I've been making on him. And letting it be known, parenthetically, that I might be persuaded to alter my present circumstances. For the right offer.”

“Why would you want a job at Emory? This is a much better department.”

“Upward mobility,” he says tartly, setting the mug down.

“No way you're going to leave Manhattan for Atlanta. Even for love. I know you. Can you really see yourself in the land of seven-lane superhighways? Where everything in town is sponsored by Coca-Cola?”

Saying nothing, he empties the coffeepot and sets it up for another round. I watch his profile. Jeff has known he was gay since he was seven, and he claims this early intimacy with what W.E.B. Du Bois called “double-consciousness” (living by one set of societal rules, all the while experiencing a different, unvoiced identity) trained him well for the path he's chosen. Life is about strict separations, and Jeff's boundaries are concrete: British Drama by day, Chelsea dance clubs by night; never the twain shall meet. In any other line of work Jeff's dress would mark him as obviously, stereotypically gay, but here in the world of lit he slips under the gaydar. He's routinely mistaken for just another straight Europhile liberal arts professor in tight black jeans, synthetic black shirts, and chunky black belts—one of dozens of boy-men stamped with the standard academic-chic pallor. Guys who dance with their eyes
half closed and break the hearts of female grad students with their eternal, eloquent, tormented ambivalence. Who have, where romance is concerned, more second thoughts than is mathematically possible.

In fact Jeff is anything but ambivalent. He knows exactly whom he loves (Richard) and what he wants (an apartment together with a spare room so they can share a home office). They've agreed to cheat on each other freely until they can figure out a way to be together for more than just vacations. At that point neither of them will have wild oats left to sow, and they'll buy a place in whatever city will offer stable attractive positions for two British lit specialists, one (Richard) with a subspecialty in queer theory. The fact that such opportunities are supremely rare has not escaped Jeff's notice, and although he is usually closed about his personal life, the relationship's glum prospects have fueled an occasional gripe session. Jeff, to his own surprise, is a lousy cheater. And Richard doesn't seem to have more success down at Emory. Despite all efforts, they're engaged in what is, according to Jeff, one of the colossal stupidities of the universe: a monogamous long-distance relationship. The prospect of spending three solid months together this spring—Jeff having at last succeeded in arranging a semester's leave—seems only to have sharpened Jeff's frustration.

Other than this inexplicable indiscretion of his loyalty to Richard, nothing fazes Jeff. He can read a department's politics like a page of Shaw, analyze, deconstruct, and tell you what's going to happen in the next scene. He's witty enough that conversation with him is intellectually seductive—there's a buzz I get from staying on my toes with him—and also fatiguing. I don't let my guard down entirely, because he doesn't. We watch each other's backs, but it's clear who's got the keener eye. Jeff lives and breathes cynicism. To talk to him is to measure the volume and density of my own naiveté. And though I know I'm his favorite in the department—I am, as far as I can tell, the only one who knows about Richard—there's something about his unshakable control that makes me uncomfortable. After Jeff's tenure was approved two years ago, he announced to me that the time had arrived for him to come out to his students. Now that he wasn't at risk, he didn't mind being a role model on campus. He dropped a couple of hints during lectures, the faculty got wind rapidly,
and now almost everyone seems clued in, with the exception of Paleozoic.

As Jeff pours a first cup of coffee, the lounge's door swings open: Grub, returning for a misplaced volume. Watching Grub search the haphazard towers of books on the end table, Jeff is the picture of solemnity.

“
Very
nice tie,” says Jeff.

Volume in hand, Grub straightens, smiles, and claps Jeff on the shoulder.

I like Jeff, and I find him scary.

I meet Hannah at the front of the reception hall. She looks composed, as always: brown hair tucked behind her ears; slender silver pendant resting above a not too deep V-neck; competent, calm, cheery. She's already filled a paper plate with hors d'oeuvres and is bolting them with the prayerful concentration of the pregnant.

As we hug, her considerable belly bumps me, and we smile.

“What's new in the hallowed halls?” she asks.

“Too many papers to grade. Otherwise it's a good semester so far. Just a couple problem students. How are you?”

“We're all fine—tell me more about you.”

In someone else it might be a power play, this habit of deflecting questions, drawing me out while revealing almost nothing of herself. With Hannah it's modesty, and a genuine love I've never taken for granted. Through college and after, Hannah and I were nearly inseparable. But in the years since we last shared an apartment, work and marriage and then motherhood have laid claim to her schedule. Now a coffee date requires three weeks' advance planning. In a rare show of exasperation last week, Hannah suggested a quick meeting at this reception to celebrate her office's new collaborative project with city charities. She's here for only twenty minutes, then off to pick up her three-year-old, Elijah, from preschool; but the reception is right around the corner from my department, and at least it's a place where she has a chance of conducting an adult conversation.

“Tell me about your problem students,” she says.

“One of them called last night to ask whether he could skip class to get tickets for a Tragically Hip concert. He said he's a poet and the concert would really
inspire
him.”

“What did you say?”

“Exactly what he expected: I gave him a lecture about the concertgoing habits of Emily Dickinson. Part of my job is managing undergrads' limits-testing.”

“Sounds like parenthood.” Hannah nabs a pig in blanket from my plate. She rolls her eyes in ecstasy, then bites into it. I trade my full plate for her empty one.

“You're sure?” She eyes my mushroom puffs.

“Eat. What's new in your world?”

“Ed is good. He likes the new job.”

“Hey, I saw George recently.”

“Oh, thanks.” She prods upward with her tongue, then ducks her head and daintily removes the piece of food that had lodged between her upper canine and its neighbor. “He still around?”

“Nope, he's vanished.”

Hannah flashes me a big, Georgeless grin. “Yet again you've saved me from social catastrophe.”

George is the code name not only for a piece of crud that gets stuck between your teeth, but for a wandering bra strap, an undone zipper, a piece of toilet paper stuck to your shoe. The guy helped Hannah and me alert each other to potentially embarrassing social situations through college and beyond, including the time I overslept the arrival of the first guests for predinner drinks, woke to the sound of the doorbell, and dressed from the top of my clean laundry pile—neglecting to notice, as I greeted our guests, the pair of underwear static-clinging for dear life to the back of my blouse. Bless Hannah, who came into the living room as I was greeting our guests, put an arm around me, and casually asked me whether it had come to my attention that George, who had previously left town, was
back.

As I watch Hannah bite into a mushroom puff, it strikes me how far we've traveled, my college friends and I, since those giddy years before careers, spouses, and dignity installed themselves in our lives. It takes an old friend now—one grandfathered in from my twenties or earlier—to bring out the goofiness in me. As Hannah chews, I rue the sobriety of the thirties: all life choices and strategy, no slapstick.

And even with Hannah, dignity needs its due. “Tell me about Ed's job,” I say.

“Oh, it's
fantastic!
” It's clear that the promotion is a source of pride not only for Ed but for Hannah, who details the changes in Ed's responsibilities with relish. Beneath her excitement I hear relief. Hannah's job has always been more prestigious than Ed's. And while she's never made mention of a certain sulkiness from Ed where her work is concerned, it hasn't escaped my notice.

“Oh, and big news from Adam,” Hannah says.

“He's joined a luge team in Finland?”

“I wouldn't have been surprised.” Adam, Hannah's younger brother, hung up his teaching shingle a couple of years ago in Prague, then moved on to Rome and Parma, taught English in the countryside in Holland until he and his Dutch girlfriend split, then bartended in Gorky
to get a little Russia in.
“But he's done with his travels,” says Hannah, “and he's moving back to New York. My mother just told me last night.” She licks her fingers discreetly. “He called her from Moscow.”

“Adam in New York?” I say. “Poor Elijah will have to adjust to an uncle who thinks eggs are for juggling. I give it a week before Adam teaches him to shoot spitballs.”

“Adam's grown up a bit, you know.”

“
Adam?
” I say. “I know the rest of the human race grows up. But
Adam?
”

Our laughter attracts the gaze of Hannah's boss. Hannah flashes him a disarming smile. “I need to be a little social,” she whispers to me. “Can you stand two minutes of networking?” She leads me to the center of the room and into a conversation with one of the charity administrators, a fifty-something-year-old woman named Nancy whose husband, Victor, has the decency to ask me about my teaching style, and the pros and cons of a classical education for students of literature. As I summarize the canon wars for Victor's benefit, Hannah stands beside me in her dark jacket and black slacks, waistline thickened, eyes sparkling with freedom. I can't remember the last time she and I were in a social situation without Ed or Elijah clinging to her, Elijah with earnestly lisped requests, Ed with an expression of faint bewilderment that hasn't gone away in three years of fatherhood. I know women who would run for the hills at her responsibilities. But motherhood suits Hannah. She's among those luckiest of souls—people who like being needed.

Hannah tips the contents of her plate onto mine. “Here,” she whispers. “Now I'm too full to eat.” With a quick apology for not having more time, she hugs me goodbye, plans a business call with Nancy, and leaves with a promise to let me know the minute Adam shows up.

Victor alights on his passion for archaeology and his stints volunteering at digs. I check in often enough to agree at the appropriate moments, but I'm not listening. Instead, I continue to indulge a rare hit of nostalgia for those postcollege years when Hannah and Adam and I all lived together. We argued over the remote control, the telephone line, the grocery list. We consoled one another, roughly or with delicacy, for personal idiocies. We made important decisions in one another's company: lying on our backs, staring at the ceiling, making dust angels on the floor.

“What was fascinating,” Victor continues, “was how much the dig's yield varied from day to day.”

Nancy and I listen with such strained attention it's obvious we're both bored. Victor, I realize, is bored too, reciting a story he's told before out of some well-bred impulse to keep conversation flowing. I try to focus, and fail. When a child is named Victor, does some other set of parents somewhere have to name their child Loser? Turning away to mask a smile, I notice an angular blondish man a few feet away in a dark sweater sipping from a cup of seltzer. He's looking at the crowd a bit stiffly, like someone who's opened a box of pastries only to find them stale. His features are regular, his hair straight. Other than the expression of distaste, nothing stands out except his height, which invites me to imagine his view of Manhattan: a city of combed crowns and dandruff, cramped restaurant seating, hazardous doorways. He turns his head and, without meaning to, I catch his eye.