East Hope (4 page)

“I wish I could spend more time with you,” he said. But he pulled on his rumpled clothes and combed his hair back with his fingers. He cupped her chin.

She gently pushed away his hand. She wasn't sure what she wanted. He searched her face as if hesitant to leave, his gaze tinged with longing, the kind of look that he might have given Marjorie years ago, or perhaps the look he might give any woman now. When he turned and left the bedroom, and then the front door closed behind him and his car started and pulled away, she felt a terrible emptiness.

Gradually, cooler air filled the bedroom. In the silent moments just before dawn the vague recollection that Rob would be home soon eased the loneliness in her heart.

W
ill Harmon crossed the quad of Habliston, the small women's college where he worked as an English professor, knowing that this blue late-afternoon Pennsylvania sky was weak in comparison to the vibrant blue over an ocean. At least the sun was out. It had been a dreary, wet spring.

He was headed to a meeting with Jack Mathews, dean of the college. They were old friends. Adele, Jack's secretary, had called yesterday to set up this appointment. It was early May, and Will had just taught his final class of the semester, a survey of nineteenth-century American literature. Exams were next week. The article on Henry James that Will had submitted to the
Fairfax Review,
a prestigious academic publication, had been accepted. Jack would be pleased. Now Will would have time to work on his novel about a boy growing up on the coast. Mary Beth, his wife, was proud of his academic work, and she had been encouraging him to start a novel.

Two students had kept him after class to question him about what would be on the exam. It had been a week of interruptions. He had made a quick stop in his office to pick up a set of essays that needed grading and added them to his briefcase. The unpleasant matter of Jennifer Whitely crossed his mind again. He couldn't stop thinking about her. He wondered if this appointment had something to do with her behavior last week. There had been no opportunity to discuss the incident with Mary Beth.

Will missed his wife. She had not come home for several weeks—one of the trials of a commuter marriage. He wanted this summer to be a good one. She would be glad to escape the stifling heat of the city; New York was no place to be on summer weekends. He pictured Mary Beth sitting on the terrace behind their house, a charming fieldstone cottage a few miles from campus. He had built the patio himself the summer after they moved in. He imagined her sipping a glass of wine, her hair dark and sleek, her skin pale, her lips red on the rim of the glass. She preferred red wine, even in summer.

Mary Beth had a small, shapely body. Will loved tracing the curve of her hip with his fingers and circling her waist with his hands. In ten years of marriage her curves had not changed. She had been a senior at the university and he had been a teaching assistant when they'd met. He had called her his Snow White. She had laughed and accused him of being a hopeless romantic. Their lives had not been romantic lately, but he was determined that this summer would be different.

Will picked up his pace toward Worthington Hall, the administration building that dominated the green. The fieldstone walls reflected the sound Quaker values once so prevalent in the region. But even at this distance one could see that the painted trim was peeling and the windows carried the lingering grime of winter.

Women's colleges like this one had been struggling for years or remaking themselves into testosterone-flooded institutions by building large gymnasiums and state-of-the-art science centers, and upgrading technology in the dorm rooms and formerly musty libraries in order to attract male students. Now, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, with careful cutbacks and by lowering its once rigorous academic standards, Habliston struggled on. Two smaller dormitories had been purchased by a hotel chain to use for adjunct housing for their conference center. The portraits in Kirk Library had been sold, and the collection of Audubon prints that had graced the walls of the president's mansion had gone on the auction block last year.

Will passed a large circular bed of azaleas. The fading blooms clung to the plants, and the new growth looked anemic with pale, leathery leaves. A stand of daffodils looked similarly lackluster. He remembered his mother deadheading the daffodils around their house in Rhode Island, where they had lived a short walk from the ocean.

Lately he found himself longing to see the water. Brown, silt-filled streams wound through this Pennsylvania landscape, and Travers Lake was a thirty-minute drive from town. Will kept thinking about the ocean. He missed the tangy salt air, the ever-present sound of moving water, the vastness of sky meeting the horizon. As a boy in Rhode Island, he had loved knowing that he lived on the edge of the country, the rim, a straight shot to Portugal.

Will pushed open the door of Worthington Hall. It yielded grudgingly, swollen from the endless spring rains that had finally subsided. The building smelled of stone, polished oak floors, and institutional dust long embedded in the plaster walls and old wood. He turned left, passing the admissions office, then a warren of small rooms lorded over by Miss Amesbury, the registrar, and her two assistants, and at the end of the hall was the glass doorway to Jack's outer office. Will drew himself up straighter and stepped inside.

Adele looked up over her reading glasses. She was a round little woman with intense dark eyes. Today she wore a flowered dress with a pin at her neck. Under her outdated exterior, Will knew, lay one of the masterminds that kept Habliston afloat.

“Will. Good. You're here.”

He stood close to the desk and smiled down at her. The roots of her hair were white. Maybe she was too busy to keep her hair colored these days, or maybe she had allowed herself to grow tattered like the college. “Hi, Adele.” She did not offer her longtime greeting, “How's the handsome Professor Harmon, heartthrob of the English department?”

“Jack's on the phone. Go on in. He's expecting you.” She reached for another folder and furrowed her brow. Apparently she wasn't in the mood to chat.

“My hands are tied, Will,” Jack said.

“It's a total lie,” Will countered. He should have known that the matter with Jennifer Whitely was not over.

“She insists that you're flunking her because she refused your invitation to come back to your house.”

“I didn't ask her to my house. My God. This is insane.” Will felt as if he couldn't breathe.

“We've got a real problem here.” Jack sat forward and put his elbows on the desk. His burly exterior belied his reputation as a Thoreau scholar. “The worst goddamned kind of problem we can have.”

Will thought for a moment that Jack was about to lower his head onto the desk in defeat. He tried to think. “And it's her word against mine?” He got up and walked to the window. The Oriental rug that had impressed him years ago when he had accepted the job as an instructor in the English department looked faded and worn. “You know what this is about, don't you?” He looked back at Jack, whose insightful gray eyes were studying him now, as if trying to understand what could have gone wrong. “This girl hasn't done a lick of work. She's barely come to class. She flunked the midterm and hasn't handed in a term paper.”

“Did you send her a warning after the first quarter?”

“Of course. I even offered to let her retake the test. She couldn't be bothered.”

“She's a senior. You know she can't graduate with a failing grade.”

Will tried to swallow. His mouth was dry. In his wildest dreams he could never have imagined this conversation taking place. “That's why I offered her the chance to do it over. You think I don't know who her father is?”

He had met John Whitely once at a faculty reception given by the trustees. A lawyer from New York specializing in class-action lawsuits, he made more money on one case than Will would make in a year. John Whitely, hawklike and tan, with slicked-back hair, Italian loafers, and a second wife, younger and equally sleek, looked like he was used to getting what he wanted.

“So what the hell were you doing meeting her at a bar?”

“I didn't meet her. I stopped at O'Grady's for a burger. All of a sudden there she was on the stool next to me.”

“What day was that?”

“Wednesday. I stay late for office hours that day. Mary Beth was away, so I wanted a quick dinner.”

Will remembered being in a hurry that night. He'd had an idea from an earlier discussion during class about
Ethan Frome
and Wharton's use of the landscape. It related to another essay he wanted to write on James. He knew that there was no food in his refrigerator at home, so he stopped at O'Grady's. That in itself was unusual. It was more of a bar than a restaurant, and the place was loud and popular with the seniors, but it had been a long day and O'Grady's was on his way home.

Will was halfway through his dinner and drinking a beer when Jennifer slid onto the empty stool next to him.

“Professor Harmon, hi.” She wore a tight scoop-necked T-shirt. “Can I call you Will?” She spoke loudly. The television above the bar roared on a sports channel, and most of the tables were filled with noisy students.

“Jennifer.” He swallowed. She had caught him with his mouth full.

“I know, I know. I still owe you that paper.”

“You also need to set up a time for the midterm.” Her plump lips had an unnatural purplish sheen.

“Come on,” she said softly. “Please give me a break.” She tossed her hair back over her shoulder.

“I'm sorry,” Will said. This wasn't the place to talk about an academic matter.

She smiled again, cocking her head to the side. He sensed that she'd had a lot to drink.

“I just need a C.”

There was a burst of laughter behind them. He turned and saw two girls who had been in his lit class that afternoon. “Jennifer,” he said, wondering if they were putting her up to this, “you've got to do the work for this class.” The words tumbled from his mouth.

“Come on, Professor.” She licked her lips. “I heard your wife's not around much.”

Will felt the pressure of her thigh against his. “Wait a minute. What's going on here?” He could hardly get the words out. “If you want to talk about your grade, come see me in my office.” And he had pushed back his stool, handed a twenty to the bartender to cover his dinner, and fled to his car.

Now, looking across at Jack, he realized that he should have reported the encounter right away. Had she flirted with him earlier? Should he have seen this coming? At the very least he should have stayed on her case—insisting that she get her work done. He had been remiss in not alerting Jack.

“Listen, Jack. She solicited me.”

“Nobody's going to believe you.”

“Why the hell not?” Will felt anger pulsing at his temples.

“She's young. She's the student.”

“Don't I have any credibility? I've been here ten years. There's never been a problem.”

Jack leaned forward, elbows on his desk, and rubbed his eyes as if trying to erase this entire conversation. “Don't you get it? You're in a bar with your student. Her friends saw you.”

Will stood and gripped the back of his chair. “You've seen that girl. She's spoiled, lazy. She doesn't give a damn about anything but herself.”

“Like a lot of these students,” Jack said.

“For God's sake, I've never gone after a student.”

“Mary Beth?”

“Give me a break, Jack. I'm married to her. She's my wife.”

“That's exactly the kind of thing they'd bring up.”

“First of all”—Will swallowed and tried to calm down—“we may have met when she was an undergraduate, but we didn't date until after graduation. Please. You've got to back me up.”

“With what? Do you think this place has money to put into lawsuits?”

“You mean you're not going to do anything?” A knot was forming in the small of his back.

Jack looked away, and Will could see he hated every moment of this discussion. He and Jack had become close friends over the years, going out for a beer after faculty meetings, commiserating about the declining abilities of the students, the lack of funds for symposia, the decreased enrollment. But they had also shared success stories: students accepted for graduate work, the pleasures of bringing literature into young women's lives, getting articles published in academic reviews.

Will took a deep breath. “What happens next?”

“Give her the C. Submit your resignation. They won't proceed further.”