Eureka Man: A Novel (17 page)

“Good. We'll get you started in my program
this summer.” She smiled at him with unwavering assurance and then
looked away to observe a half dozen guards moving through the
entrance doors. After the guards had taken up positions along the
back wall, the captain of the guards announced that all guests were
to begin making their way to the back exit.

Dr. B.J. Dallet stood and extended her hand.
Oliver took it in both of his, thanked her for coming and told her
he was looking forward to seeing her on Monday. When he released
her hand he hoped the gesture was a little more personal than a
formal handshake.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You're quite welcome, Oliver. And thank you.
I'll see you on Monday afternoon.”

While he watched her go he smiled to himself,
suddenly realizing that he had forgotten what a woman looked like
moving in a crowd.

TRULY DISCONTENTED PROFESSIONALS
know
they are. Know when the money and the years invested in their
careers have ceased to bring fulfillment or happiness. Seldom
dreaming of change, they often resign themselves to believing, as
dream-bitten people do, that a gold watch and the final exit are
the only destinations left to them. Lucky are the ones who find an
epiphany whispering that they themselves are responsible for their
own well-being. When this happens, change is often seen as a
definite possibility. It might be an appetite for a makeover, a
hobby or some weekend adventure. Or it may be as simple as an urge
to do something benevolent.

As a young girl, B.J. Dallet had been driven
by the completion of tasks, one after another in a variety of
fields: academics, arts, music, sports. No sooner did she finish
creating a collage out of the Saturday Evening Post covers than she
went to her mother's piano and practiced one Broadway musical
arrangement after another until she could play each fluently. If
working out with the high school track team so she could be the
best seventh grade high jumper in the state was overdoing it, her
parents couldn't tell. Home by six, she ate dinner, completed her
homework and still had time to read a good book before going to
bed. She was a prolific reader all her life and having received a
fine education, she learned, among other things, the true meaning
of the word “philosopher.” Knowing that this label provided her
with both drive and courage, she believed that to conceive of a
possibility was to begin it.

During her formal years of training to become
a doctor of philosophy in education, she unfolded a great paradox
of learning: Students are imaginative but lack experience; pedants
are full of knowledge but have feeble imaginations. Rote learning
had its purpose, but active interest was the key to engaging a
student's imagination. Just as she knew that staring too long at
the sun would make a person go blind, she knew there could be no
mental development without interest. Interest was the sine qua non
for attention and apprehension. Whether one endeavored to excite
interest by means of birch rods, or coaxing it by the incitement of
pleasurable activity, without interest there was no imagination, no
progress.

Her career was quite successful. Early on she
achieved a lifetime of tenure by writing illuminating philosophical
treaties on the organization of thought and the foundations of
childhood education. Her most celebrated work, a tome on the role
of classics in education, was translated into seven languages and
won her international recognition. She loved her career and her
life. Together she and her husband Stanley raised two wonderful
sons, Malcolm and Cab. Both boys grew up to have successful careers
and families of their own. Malcolm, now thirty-three, was a
cabinetmaker; Cab, thirty, was a watercolorist. After twenty-two
years of university life, she was still teaching her two graduate
courses every semester, supervising young teachers in the local
school districts, and advising a half-dozen graduate students each
year. Her income was large, but she had no taste for luxury outside
of fine clothes. Having never lost her drive to stay fit and look
attractive, she worked out three days a week at the same health
club she had belonged to for the past twenty years.

Her life was an arabesque of harmony,
complexity, and balanced proportion, except for one thing. The
careful construction lacked physical love. She had no preference
for celibacy but had succumbed to it after her second child was
born. That was when her husband Stanley, world renowned for his
wood sculptures, began devoting all of his waking hours to his art
and career as a professor of fine arts at a competing university.
Their marriage gradually dissolved into one of convenience. Even if
they had not been Catholics and had believed in divorce, they would
have stayed together for the sake of the boys and their own
careers. As it turned out, separate bedrooms and separate social
lives gave him the freedom he needed to be happy. She adapted and
they eventually developed a unique friendship, one in which they
talked and listened to each other, and went out for dinner together
once or twice a year.

After moving out of the master bedroom,
Stanley had crawled back into the marriage bed at least once a
month during the first year. As time went on he came less
frequently until he didn't come at all. She had always enjoyed
making love to him but the last half dozen times they did it she
noticed he could not experience sustained erections and she began
to wonder if she was the problem or maybe he had become a
homosexual. In any case she was relieved when he stopped coming,
for she had begun to abhor his flesh on hers. The sight of crust in
the corner of his eyes, his earwax, his moles and blackheads,
repelled her. Her attention therefore gradually settled on raising
her sons, advancing her career and occasionally having a go at
self-manipulation.

She could not remember when her season of
discontent began. Because she had not attended a conference or
published a paper in years, some of her colleagues were whispering
burnout. Others were saying her imagination had withered, and still
others that she was resting on her laurels. Her closest friends,
Alice Proctor and Shirley Knot, told her she simply needed a change
of scenery. She still enjoyed teaching and she loved her students,
but she longed for something more. Being highly acquainted with
existential philosophy, she felt that finding the right cause would
cure her of her ills. So when she heard about a bright and
promising young prison scholar who was in need of an academic
mentor, her interest was piqued. She thought it might be just the
thing she needed to shake off her mid-life doldrums. She had
watched The Birdman of Alcatraz more times than she could remember
and had always been fascinated by the convict Robert Stroud. She
had been more than a little curious about prison life. Over the
years whenever she drove past the towering walls of Riverview
Penitentiary on her way to one of the city schools where she
supervised new teachers, she had felt the same chill and reverence
she felt whenever she passed a church or cathedral. Her adrenaline
rushed through her fine veins each time she fantasized about going
inside. On her initial visit to the prison she was in awe of what
she had found there: civility, respect, gratitude. And to witness
such depth of commitment to post-secondary education inside a
prison had far exceeded her expectations. Moreover, she was excited
about the time she had spent getting acquainted with the handsome
scholar.

The second time she signed him up to be her
protégé and then lectured him on etymology, semantics and rules of
transformational grammar. After two hours she stopped and told him
that a broad knowledge of the fine arts was also essential to a
well-rounded education. They would therefore reserve the final hour
of each class to discuss anything from current events to books,
art, their personal lives and prison life, which she said she was
very interested in learning about, that is, if he didn't mind
sharing that part of his life with her. No, he didn't mind at all.
She wanted to know how dangerous prison life really was and asked
him not to spare a single detail. He didn't. He told her about the
homicides and suicides, gang rapes and love affairs, and all about
the underworld. In the middle of his story about an orderly named
Handsome Johnny, they were interrupted by the same prisoner who had
interrupted them the first time she visited. “Hello, Dr. Dallet.
That's a beautiful blouse you're wearing.” Victor LeJeune stared at
her long curvaceous legs.

She recognized his ruddy face with the off
kilter nose, but she couldn't remember his name quickly enough.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling tentatively.

“The boss just gave me the brochure you
brought for me. Thanks. I have a couple of questions. I was
wondering-”

“Hey, you ever heard of knocking, Victor?
We're having a meeting here,” Oliver said.

Victor LeJeune's coils of curly black hair
flew from his temples and his hostile black eyes remained focused
on Dr. B.J. Dallet. He ignored Oliver completely and she could see
from the change in his countenance that Oliver was angry. Victor
stood directly in front of her and when she looked down at his
shoes and glanced upwards, she saw a bulge in his groin and felt a
strange fear, and another response that wasn't fear. Something more
like repulsion. Because the front of his pants were stained in some
areas and wet in others. And he stank. Really stank. Ripe. God,
what a nasty smell! And he was practically right up in her face. He
stood there with his hands in his front pockets fondling himself
and staring at her like an animal. That was what repelled her.

“I was wondering if you could give me about
fifteen minutes of your time to explain some things to me,” he
said.

She shifted her body in the chair and pulled
on the pink collar of her blouse. She tried to sound regretful when
she answered. “I'm in the middle of working with Mr. Priddy, right
now.”

“It won't take long. Priddy, would you excuse
us for a few minutes?” Victor started to sit down.

Oliver got up suddenly and bolted toward the
door. “Come here, man. Let me talk to you out in the hall. Right
now!”

Through the crack in the door she heard
Oliver say, “Do you want all your teeth in your head? This ain't
your gig, man! Now get the fuck out of here!”

When he returned to the room his voice was
soft, breathy and refined again. “I apologize if what just happened
shocked you. He was way out of line barging in here like that.”

“You didn't shock me, Oliver, but he is one
strange character. Did you see the stains on his clothes? And the
way he smelled, my God, I almost gagged.”

“Personal hygiene is not a priority with guys
like him.”

“What is it with him anyway? I saw the way he
jumped in front of you that night at graduation. Does he have a
feud with you, or is he just naturally rude?”

“To be honest, Doc, the guy has no
manners.”

“If you think he's going to cause problems, I
can say something to Mr. Sommers if you'd like?”

“Please don't. I can handle it.”

“I know you can. I just don't want to see you
get into any trouble,” she said, surprised at the steadiness of her
voice and even more surprised with what she said.

“You have to understand something, Doc. This
isn't a college campus. This is a penitentiary. This is where the
term con artist comes from. He's a prime example of one. Every time
a pretty woman shows up, he comes around looking for a way in the
door. But you don't have to worry. As long as you come here, I've
got your back.”

“I believe you wholeheartedly, Oliver. One of
the first things Mr. Sommers told me was I can trust you and I do.
I feel completely safe with you. I just don't want to see you do
anything that might jeopardize your studies.”

“I won't. I can assure you of that.”

In her bed that night she tried to reconcile
his outstanding refinement with the physical threat he had made to
Victor LeJeune. Hadn't he just explained to her all about prison
codes and turfs? Wasn't he just protecting his own interests and
her at the same time? After all, she was his guest. She was
surprised at herself. She seldom judged people. Victor LeJeune had
violated one code or another, she was sure, and Oliver had merely
put him in check. Strangely, she was both pleased and startled to
know that what was so unique and green-eyed handsome was also
volcanic.

THE THIRD TIME she came he sat at the table
across from her and tried to focus on the complex theories of
psycholinguistics she was explaining with such intensity he
couldn't help but be spellbound. When he wasn't gazing into irises
so blue he thought they were heaven, he was watching the
thirty-five ways she could smile. How was he supposed to think
about morphemes and phonemes when her very presence was a study? It
would take some getting used to. Thank God for the textbooks he
could read later.

True to her word, every week she lectured for
the first two hours and then they spent the third hour rounding out
his education and getting to know each other better. She brought
him large picture books containing the works of Cezanne, Monet, van
Gogh, Hopper, and her two favorite American painters, Wyeth and
Bartolozzi. She taught him how to distinguish romanticism and
realism, impressionism from postimpressionism. He was instantly
affected by the intense moods of despair in van Gogh's
self-portraits, so she used van Gogh's works to teach him about
light, atmosphere, color, form and mood.

In these sessions they talked about war and
politics and he tried hard to impress her with his knowledge of
past presidents, the civil rights movement and the two party
system. She showed him the folly of seeing things in black and
white. She was a Republican, so he was shocked to learn she
supported Head Start and other entitlement programs. He thought
only Democrats approved of entitlements. She was also against the
death penalty and that, too, surprised him, for he believed that
all Republicans were proponents of the death penalty. She had an
abundance of patience with him and constantly challenged him to
postpone arriving at conclusions until he had all the facts.