Leaving the World (21 page)

‘Does anyone here know who Charles Ives was?’ I asked the class.

A big vacuous silence.

‘Lorrie, would you mind . . . ?’

‘Charles Ives – 1874–1954,’ she said in a loud demonstrative voice, standing up to speak. ‘American composer noted for his use of polyrhythms, polytonality, quarter-tones and aleatorical technique. Notable works include “The Unanswered Question” (1906) and “Three Places in New England” (1903–1914). Was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1947.’

It was like listening to a talking dictionary, but I was immediately intrigued. When one member of the class – a very preppy guy, dressed in a cream crew-necked Ralph Lauren jumper – snickered at the automaton style of her delivery, I shot him such an angry look that he immediately blurted out ‘Sorry’ in her direction. Lorrie seemed oblivious to this.

‘That’s incredibly impressive, Lorrie,’ I said. ‘But besides making the connection between the fact that they both worked as insurance executives and both won the Pulitzer Prize, are there any other points in common between Stevens and Ives?’

Come on, kiddo
 . . .
show your classmates just how smart you are and knock this one out of the park
.

Again she wouldn’t make eye contact with me. Again she engaged in this swaying motion as she spoke, like an Orthodox rabbi at prayer.

‘They both were responsible for extending the possibilities of language. In Ives’s case, a musical language. With Stevens, a reductive abstractionism . . .’

‘. . . which allowed him to speak of large metaphysical matters in a style that, though rich in metaphors, never tempts lushness.’

Then she sat down.

‘That’s really brilliant, Lorrie – and you’ve really got it in one when it comes to Stevens’s language. But I’d like to return to your first question: whether you think that Stevens’s ultraconservative business life made him even more experimental in his poetry.’

She stood up again.

‘It’s not what I think,’ she said. ‘It’s what
you
think, Professor.’

‘But I’m throwing the question back at you again – which may be unfair, but so it goes.’

‘What do
I
think?’ she asked, sounding so automaton.

‘Yes, please.’

A long pause.

‘I think . . . I think . . . well, I
really
think that if you work at something
really
boring like insurance, you
really
need an escape hatch.’

That got a big laugh from her fellow classmates – and Lorrie Quastoff, taken aback by such support, momentarily smiled. Then she sat right down again.

I was hoping I could catch her attention at the end of class but she was gone out the door before I could motion her over for a chat. When I ran into Professor Sanders in the English Department corridor that afternoon, I mentioned how extraordinary Lorrie Quastoff was.

‘Yes, I meant to talk to you about her,’ he said. ‘She is rather special. As you can gather she is something of a savant—’

‘But not an idiot savant?’

‘
We
certainly don’t see her that way – but other people may do. You see, Lorrie Quastoff is something of a “special case” for us. Because she is a very high-functioning autistic woman.’

Everything suddenly made sense: the monotone delivery, the inability to make eye contact, the rocking back and forth when she spoke.

‘We accepted her after much deliberation, not so much to do with her intelligence – which, as you have seen, is formidable – but about whether she could function socially in the university environment. So far she’s done reasonably well, though some of the jock brigade have engaged in a degree of mockery from time to time, and she doesn’t really have much in the way of friends. We’ve assigned one of the proctors in her hall of residence to be her minder and make certain she’s coping. As it turns out, she’s ferociously well-organized – the proctor told me her room is immaculate – and she has a capacity for pedagogy that is simply remarkable. She’s still just a freshman, but I have recommended her for a transfer to that place across the river in Cambridge . . . and I think Harvard would be mad not to take her.’

‘If there’s anything I can do to help with that, let me know. I do know the Harvard English Department inside out.’

As soon as that comment was out of my mouth, I regretted it. Professor Sanders worked hard at suppressing a smile.

‘I’ve no doubt of that, Jane. No doubt at all.’

When I returned to my office and ran through the list of seventy-three students in my American Naturalism class, lo and behold Lorrie Quastoff was there. The course was so big – and held in such a large lecture theater – that I hadn’t seen her in the crowd. But when I arrived at the hall that afternoon, I scanned the rows of students and noted that she was sitting way in the back, off to the right, on her own. As I searched for her, I also saw Michaels sitting with his beefy acolytes and their blonde squeezes. As I caught his eye he made a face at me, mimicking a naughty schoolboy caught by the teacher. Then the bastard actually winked at me, as if to say: ‘
Think you could get me suspended, did you?
’

I coughed to bring the class to attention, then wished everyone a good afternoon and returned to
An American Tragedy
, discussing the grim scene leading up to Clyde’s execution for a crime he didn’t commit. Having gotten their attention with the details of the electrocution I asked the class if anyone had considered which major work of fiction had influenced Drieser’s novel. No one answered. At the back of the class I could see Lorrie Quastoff wanting to raise her hand, but feeling intimidated.

‘Ms Quastoff,’ I said, ‘you seem to want to say something.’

The moment I mentioned ‘Ms Quastoff’ I saw Michaels pull a monkey face at one of his chums. As he did this, Lorrie suddenly stood up. And in a far-too-loud voice she said: ‘Dostoevesky. That’s the answer. Dreiser loved
Crime and Punishment
and he used the same theme of self-recrim . . . crim . . . crim . . .’

She’d gotten stuck on that syllable and kept repeating it. The titters from Michaels and Company got louder. And when I heard him distinctly mimic her – ‘
Crim . . . crim . . . crim
 . . .’ he said in a loud whisper to the guy behind him – I pounced.

‘Mr Michaels,’ I shouted. ‘On your feet right now.’

There was a long shocked silence – and Michaels was suddenly looking very worried.

‘I said: on your feet
now
.’

Michaels rose to his feet, his eyes boring into me – a stare meant to intimidate but which I saw off with a caustic shake of the head.

‘What were you just saying?’ I asked.

‘I was saying nothing.’

‘That’s not the truth and you know it. You were mocking Ms Quastoff.’

‘No, I wasn’t . . .’

‘I heard you very distinctly, Mr Michaels. You went “
crim, crim, crim
” when Ms Quastoff had trouble with the word. Did anyone else hear Mr Michaels mock Ms Quastoff?’

‘I did,’ Lorrie Quastoff said. ‘And he’s always doing that to me. Always calling me “spaz” or “Rain Man”. He’s a big bully and he always does it to show off to his friends.’

‘I’m really sorry if—’ Michaels said.

‘You were sorry the other day as well when you insulted me during my lecture,’ I said, ‘and I let you off with an apology, which is why you are back in this classroom today. But to then go and mock a student with developmental challenges . . . there is no way that a simple apology is going to get you out of this one. You’re back on Dean’s Report, Mr Michaels, and this time the automatic suspension will stick. Now get the hell out of my class.’

He didn’t look to his buddies this time for support. He simply bolted for the exit, then turned and shouted at me: ‘You think you’re going to get away with this, you’re wrong,’ and slammed the door behind him.

After the class I asked Lorrie Quastoff to stay behind. Once everyone else had left the lecture theater, she stood by my desk, rocking back and forth, her agitation showing.

‘They’re gonna get me now. Really get me. Make me pay. You shouldn’t have called on me . . .’

Her rocking became so repetitive that I had to put a steadying hand on her shoulder.

‘Lorrie, I promise you, they will not get you if you do exactly what I say.’

‘And if I don’t do what you say?’

‘Well, that won’t be the end of the world. But it might not put an end to the teasing. This will, trust me.’

‘He’s going to be suspended?’

‘And more – if I have my way.’

‘You want me to write something?’

‘You’re ahead of me.’

‘Like Dostoevsky was ahead of Dreiser.’

I went back to my office and wrote up my Dean’s Report. True to her word – as I told her I needed it within an hour – Lorrie slipped her own signed affidavit underneath my office door and was gone immediately. I stuck my head out the office door but before I could say her name she had turned a corner and vanished. I picked up her report. It was written with amazing fluidity and accomplishment and it detailed, at great length, the hectoring and intimidation she had received over the past term and a half from Michaels and Company. Immediately I revised the final paragraph of my report. It read:

I knew these last couple of lines would provide the knockout punch I wanted to land, as they were veiled with the idea that this incident might turn into a media cause célèbre that could cost them dearly. I finished the report, read it through, signed it, and then called Professor Sanders to brief him.

‘Oh,
merde
,’ was his initial reply, followed by: ‘But if what you say in the report can’t be refuted—’

‘It can’t be refuted.’

‘Others will be the judge of that, because this whole business is going to end up on the desk of Ted Stevens.’ He was the President of the university. ‘If my instincts prove me right, he will move to close the whole thing down within twenty-four hours. I doubt they’re going to side with Michaels because they don’t want reporters from the
Boston Globe
or the
New York Times
crawling around the campus. Do understand, though, after this you’re going to be regarded as Typhoid Mary around here. The administration will side with you publicly while at the same time privately despising you for costing them dearly. Hockey’s a big sport in this school.’

And the university President, Ted Stevens, was a very big hockey fan. He told me that himself when he called me into his office the next day to ‘discuss’ the situation. He was a man in his mid-fifties, hyper-fit, wearing a very conservative suit and rep tie, with pictures of himself and the first George Bush on a wall near his desk. He looked very much like a high-powered executive (and as a quick glance at his bookshelf informed me, he was very much an exponent of applied corporate management principles). Seated in his office were the Dean of Students, Alma Carew (African-American, late thirties, wiry, intense); the Head of Sports, Budd Hollander (short, hefty, wearing an ill-fitting brown blazer and a check shirt); and Professor Sanders.

‘Now, according to Mr Michaels’s very high-powered and expensive attorney,’ Ted Stevens said, ‘you provoked him into mimicking Ms Quastoff.’

‘With respect, sir, that’s nonsense.’

‘With respect, Professor, several other members of the class have corroborated this.’

‘Were they members of Michaels’s little clique?’ I asked.

Ted Stevens didn’t like this question one bit.

‘Not all of them,’ he said.

‘Well, I’m certain if you were to interview Ms Quastoff—’

‘We have interviewed Ms Quastoff. Or, I should say, Dean Carew has.’

Alma Carew came in here.

‘Lorrie told me she didn’t have her hand in the air, but you still called on her.’

‘I called on her because I had posed a question to the class and no one was offering an answer. Lorrie Quastoff had spoken brilliantly that morning in my course on American Moderns and I could see that she knew the answer to my question.’

‘How could you see that?’ Alma Carew asked.

‘She was on the verge of raising her hand.’

‘Lorrie Quastoff denies that she even moved her hand. She said you sought her out.’

‘Does it really matter whether Ms Quastoff did or did not raise her hand?’ Professor Sanders asked. ‘The fact is, Professor Howard was perfectly within her rights to call on any student she wanted to. As she wasn’t getting a response to a general question thrown out to the class, she called on a student she knew to be bright and knowledgeable—’

‘And who she also knew was on the autistic spectrum and had been subjected to alleged bullying by Michaels.’

Budd Hollander came in here: ‘Joey told me he never,
never
bullied Lorrie Quastoff.’

‘Her signed statement says otherwise,’ said Professor Sanders.

‘But she doesn’t have witnesses.’ This was Hollander.