Small Blessings (5 page)

Occasionally she shot him a surprised look that seemed to his hyperattentive inner self to say:
I'm in a bit of trouble here, but please pay no attention.

*   *   *

Tom couldn't help himself; he stopped her after class. “Ms. Callahan!” he called out rather sharply. He always addressed his students formally. In that way, he remained stubbornly old-fashioned. He might submit to the dean's pressure to grade on the curve or pass full-pay students who had done inferior work, but he refused to submit to the instant familiarity of first names.

Not only Rose but the other half-dozen students remaining in the seminar room turned to him. What was he thinking of, calling her back in front of so many others? “May I speak to you for a moment?” he said more softly, hoping his sudden, colossal confusion didn't show.

“Of course.” Rose's brown sandals made soft scuffing sounds as she walked toward him, holding her book and her pad tightly against her breasts. Her fingers did indeed look long and strong enough to dribble a basketball with authority. Hadn't Russ said that playing high school basketball was how she'd broken her nose? Maybe she still played? Tom had a sudden vision of her pushing a basketball down the court, her inner light glowing like a small sun.

The rest of the students drifted away, giggling and whispering. Rose stopped four feet away from him. “Yes?”

Tom realized he had thought of nothing to say to her. He'd called her back on impulse, simply because he wanted her in the room. Marjory's face floated before him. Marjory was with her shrink at this exact moment. Maybe she was telling Dr. Simms about inviting company for dinner instead of spending the hour pointlessly resurrecting his affair with the poet. Maybe she was talking about why she liked Rose Callahan. “Are we still on for dinner tomorrow night?” he asked.

“Of course,” Rose said, smiling—quite happily, he thought. Her eyes skittered up to meet his, then skittered away to something over his left shoulder. “May I bring something for dessert? Or maybe the wine?”

The back of Tom's neck began to itch again, and one of his eyes felt as though it had developed a tic. Was he going to itch and twitch every time he spoke to this woman? “Just yourself. That's all that's needed.”

Rose pushed her fingers into her unruly hair and attempted to drive it back. The attempt was not successful. “I think I met your mother-in-law this afternoon at the Book Store,” she said. “Agnes Tattle? Doesn't she belong to you?” Rose laughed when she said this, understanding that the idea of Agnes Tattle's belonging to anyone was pleasantly ridiculous.

“All mine,” he said, catching up the joke. “She's a pistol, isn't she?”

“I liked her. She said she came in to size me up. I think I must have passed muster, because she stayed to chat for a while.” Rose smiled again, and Tom felt slightly dizzy from the impact. “Anyway, I'm looking forward to tomorrow night.”

“Me, too,” Tom said, aware of faint, alien stirrings of rivalry directed toward his mother-in-law, of all people. Then he remembered the look Rose had given him once or twice in class, the one that had seemed to be asking for some kind of help.

“Was everything all right during class?” he heard himself say to her. Amazing. He never asked students anything remotely personal. Of course, if any other student had sent out distress signals during class, he would have asked her to stay just as he asked Rose Callahan, and then he would have asked
her
what was wrong. He would have felt such an inquiry was nothing short of his
duty
as a professor. But with Ms. Callahan here, it felt—oh, for Pete's sake, whom was he kidding—it
was
personal. It was he himself who wanted to know if anything was wrong; not Professor Putnam, the dutiful academic.

Rose appeared to be deciding whether she should tell him about whatever it was. He held his breath. Please, please,
please
let her …

“Professor Putnam.” Susan Mason's face appeared again in the doorway.

Tom dragged his eyes away from Rose. “Yes, Miss Mason?”

The child was peering around the doorframe like the Country Mouse in the Beatrix Potter book once adored by Tom's cousins. The sight of her irritated the living daylights out of him, but then the sight of
anybody
would have done that at this moment. “I wonder if I might ask you some questions,” she squeaked. “I know I should have asked them in class, but I only just thought of them.”

Rose was leaving. “I'll see you tomorrow night,” she called from the door.

Tom instinctively looked at Miss Mason to see if she thought this odd, but Miss Mason's freckled nose was buried in her gigantic backpack, and she didn't seem to have heard.

*   *   *

“Tom!” Iris Benson accosted him in the hall, throwing back her curtain of emphatically red hair and leading with her pelvis. Man, woman, or beast, Iris Benson sent the same message:
Let's tangle and see what happens!
There was nothing personal about it. As Russ said, every campus needs an Iris to keep complacency in check.

Iris's office was four doors down from his. She was up for tenure this year in American Studies; her specialty—what a surprise!—was the history of women's suffrage and women's rights in general. Her style in the classroom was the polar opposite of Tom's—she was “Iris” to one and all, and she regularly had her favorite students, her groupies, over to her house for dinner. Tom privately thought that if Iris made tenure, it would have as much to do with the volume of her voice as the volume of her scholarship. His fellow sheltered academics often confused aggression with competence.

“I want to talk with you,” Iris said, backing him up against the wall with her flying hair.

“So talk.”

“Not here. Someplace more private. Could we go into your office?”

Tom hesitated. It had been when the two of them were alone in his office that Iris had once come so close to him that her formidable breasts had actually made contact with his shirtfront. Iris was not an unattractive woman, and goodness knows, Tom was starved for sex. He was afraid that even guilt and personal distaste would not be armor enough to withstand a direct seduction, and sex with Iris would be even stupider than sex with his poet had been. Even considering the just-discovered results.

“No,” he said, “we couldn't.”

Iris stared at him, obviously surprised at receiving a direct refusal. It pleased Tom to have asserted himself quietly before one of her onslaughts. But then his innate good manners took over and he added, “I'm sorry, but I need to get home.”
To huddle with my mother-in-law about how to prepare my crazy wife for the arrival of my ten-year-old son I didn't know existed until yesterday,
Tom added in his own head.

There was instant derision in Iris's eyes. “And how is Marjory these days? Still cutting and pasting?”

“Yes, I'm afraid so.” Tom experienced that odd flash of loyalty that came on whenever his wife was under attack. “What was it you wanted?”

Iris Benson tossed her head. Red hair flew around and settled over one shoulder. “It's not anything to do with tenure. I wanted to ask your advice on something of a personal nature,” she said, not quite meeting his eye. “I'm worried about”—she shot him a quick, almost beseeching look—“about something I … I may have done. For very good reasons, of course,” she finished lamely.

Tom thought about all the things Iris had done that had
not
worried her: throwing tantrums in faculty meetings, failing to meet classes, asking her students to turn in chocolates with their papers, all the tales of her polymorphous perversity. But it was too small a campus to simply tell a troublesome colleague to take a hike. “Could we get together tomorrow, Iris? I've got office hours at ten, but I'm not expecting much business this early in the semester. We'd have to leave the door open, but we should be fairly private.”

Iris seemed to shrink inside her clothes. She was wearing some kind of flowing purple shirt over black jeans. How old was she? Tom wondered. His age? Mid-forties? She looked much older at this moment, almost haggard, diminished by her own flood of hair.

“I guess that will have to do,” she said, taking a step backward, releasing him from the wall. Tom was immediately certain he'd been unfair—surely even Iris Benson could have normal human troubles and was entitled to seek comfort from another human being. But God help him if Iris Benson had slated him as a confidant.

“Are you all right, Iris?” he asked, impulsively reaching for her hand.

She looked up at him. “No, I'm not. I'm afraid I've finally gotten myself into something I can't get out of just by yelling.”

If he hadn't been standing against a wall, Tom would have leapt backward.
Why tell me about it?
he wanted to shout.
What can I do?
He stood there frozen, holding her hand. The idea of Iris Benson telling him her secrets filled him with dread. He had enough trouble dealing with Russ's occasional confidences. He hadn't talked about himself to anyone other than Agnes in years.

Iris was looking down at their intertwined hands. “You've always seemed so kind, you know, Tom. And I have to talk to someone. I'm not sure I'll make it otherwise.”

Was this real suffering or just another of Iris's mood swings? “I can call home and say I'll be late if this is some kind of emergency,” he said.

Iris looked up at him gratefully. “I was right, then. You are kind, Tom.” Iris gave him a wan smile. “It's not really an emergency, I guess. I'm sure I'll feel just as desperate tomorrow. Thanks anyway.”

“Certainly.”

They stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to say next, both momentarily yanked out of their accustomed roles.
But then,
Tom thought,
Marjory has decided to become a hostess, and I am about to dive into fatherhood. Why not try friendship with Iris Benson?

*   *   *

Down in the parking lot, Tom handed Iris into her Toyota Corolla like the fusty, old-school academic he was, and she accepted his outdated courtesy without derision. “I'll see you tomorrow, then,” he said, standing back and giving her a little wave.

“Yes,” she said though her open window. “Have a good evening.”

“You, too.”

Not much chance of that for either of us,
he thought, watching her back out of her parking space. Iris reportedly lived in some improbable cabin up in the hills the students thought was way cool. Russ said she had a half-dozen dogs, and she told tales in class of letting them all sleep with her when she was feeling blue. Tom felt a wave of pity for her. Iris must be as lonely as he was and a lot more needy—or maybe just a lot less conveniently repressed. It occurred to Tom that he had never seen Iris Benson consistently with the same person, man or woman, colleague or lover, for more than a few months running. She had plenty of groupies among the students and the junior faculty, but did she have any friends?

Iris swung her car around and drove off through the rows of parked cars. A couple of passing students waved enthusiastically, but Iris didn't respond. Tom stood and watched Iris's car until it disappeared, then turned and began the walk home, his briefcase clutched in his right hand, full of work that he wouldn't do. It was the last week in August and the early chrysanthemums were coming into bloom. The campus was beautifully planted, beautifully tended. The administration put a lot of emphasis on this, as though education were a still-life rather than a process. But then most things in life were like that, the emphasis on surface rather than substance.

Did he have any friends? The question nipped at him like a small dog.

Well, there was certainly Russ. Tom was genuinely fond of Russ and thought that Russ was fond of him. But did Russ really
know
him? Could he talk to Russ about Henry, for example, and expect to receive wise counsel tailored exclusively for him? Probably not. Russell would certainly listen, certainly care, certainly give advice. But in the end, he was probably too bombastic, too intent on his own performance. In order for true closeness to develop between people, there had to be times of something quieter, less showy, more honestly forthcoming than what Russ offered—less driven by a need for response.

Tom walked on, taking the long way home, one of his small personal indulgences in good weather. He stopped in front of a particularly brilliant display of bright purple mums.
Agnes.
What about her? Could he count his mother-in-law as a friend?

The first hint of fall was in the air. The late afternoon light slanted at a sharper angle; the maples showed an errant red leaf or two. Tom decided to extend his already wandering way home and take the path through the woods that began just below the soccer field and would take him around behind the houses on Faculty Row. Who knew? He might run into Rose Callahan. Russ had said she wandered around out in the woods with her binoculars.

Tom's sense of obligation immediately began needling him. A conscience was such a delicate balancing act. There was what he knew was right, what he ought to think was right, and what he wanted to do, all to be considered. It was the ultimate moral chess match, and it was the only game that mismatched married people got to play.

It seemed to Tom the birds were exceptionally active as he entered the woods. He recognized most of the ones that flitted about the campus—robins and cardinals and mockingbirds—but over there he spotted a giant striped woodpecker that looked like a throwback to dinosaur times. It was pecking ferociously at a dead tree. Tom carefully noticed its “field marks,” as a colleague in the Biology Department called a bird's distinguishing characteristics. That way, he'd have something to talk about with Rose Callahan tomorrow night.