The Professor and Other Writings (43 page)

As “a general proposition” this strikes me as eloquent, sensible, and true. But I'm also stuck with an autobiographical paradox: had I punctiliously “avoided” my relationship with D. in the early eighties, as per such a guideline, it is fair to say I would have missed out on the first seriously
good
relationship I'd ever had, at precisely the time I needed it most. For D. turned out to be a kinder and more generous person than I had previously encountered, a sort of female Bob Cratchit to my twisty Mr. Scrooge. Emotionally speaking, she undid a great deal of the Professor's devilish handiwork and fixed a number of problems. (Her corny but unimpeachable motto:
never lose an opportunity to be thoughtful
.) I learned a great deal from her about trust. I can't speak for my influence on her, of course, but it couldn't have been
too
bloody awful. Though not close in any day-to-day sense, we still stop and smile and hug when we see each other on campus: she's
a gifted administrator at my university, much loved and admired by many, including me.

All that can be said in the end, perhaps, is that a confusing sense of my own insufficiencies makes it hard for me to cast some final moral judgment on the Professor. I find it difficult to lay an eternal curse on her. There were parts of her then that I see all too well in myself. Not long ago, in fact, it even struck me—for the first time in thirty years—that the alacrity with which she cut me loose might be favorably construed. She knew, long before I did, that eternal bliss was not to be ours and that the sooner she left, the better. Yes, she administered the poison, but she also provided the antidote—distasteful as it was—with (arguably) a beneficial dispatch and aplomb.

And for better or for worse I had my chance for outrage—sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s—and never took it up. It was the beginning of the Era of High Political Correctness and a lawyer from my old university called me. Some sort of sexual harassment charge had been lodged by a young female graduate student against the Professor. (I also got a pathetic e-mail, at some point, from the student herself.) As I recall, the complaint had somehow raised the possibility of a class-action suit—the legal office was, in any case, contacting former students, some from fifteen years or so earlier, believed to have had untoward romantic dealings with the Professor. Jo—still going strong, like a tugboat—had some part in the business, had taken the aggrieved student under her wing.
Did I wish to make a statement?

I said no: it had all happened—I remember sighing—
such an unutterably long time ago
. But I also recall telling the lawyer that I wouldn't have felt entirely right doing so: I thought I had had my share in the imbroglio. Twenty-two years old might be young; but still, one had nonetheless been an adult. Yes, it had been a misfortune—but more like a car accident, I'd come to think, than being mugged. I may even have made some gay, Cole Porter–ish aside; that it was Just One of
Those Things. The lawyer thanked me but said that she, for one, was sorry I felt that way. I never learned the upshot of it all.

My decision not to squawk was no doubt due in some part to the fact that not long before the call from the lawyer, I had had a genuine comic catharsis—an altogether unexpected meeting with the Professor herself. I was attending a professional conference on the East Coast—a huge mind-numbing academic affair mounted every year after Christmas by a large scholarly organization to which I belonged. It was all the usual palaver: a bulbous cluster of convention hotels; doormen, taxis, and slush; plastic name tags, metastasizing panel discussions in so-called ballrooms, pompous “delegate” assemblies, alcohol-fueled crushes in various lobbies and elevators. Barf City: I was not enjoying myself. Trolling along one morning, however, through a drifting throng of rabbity academics—I was on the garish mezzanine level of one of the hotels—I was suddenly assailed, over all the hubbub, by the ear-shredding peal of a whistle. The whistle was one of those heavy-duty ones—the kind they give you if you are a Super Bowl referee—and someone was blowing on it forcefully, at regular screechy intervals. Alternating with every blast came a boomy cry, only slightly less loud:
WHEELCHAIR! WHEELCHAIR!
WHEELCHAIR!

The crowd ahead of me then parted like the Red Sea—if one can imagine a Red Sea, that is, made up of hundreds of mostly unprepossessing individuals wearing tweedy jackets, sensible shoes, and carrying book bags from Barnes and Noble. And suddenly the Professor loomed up before me—wheelchair-bound indeed, barreling forward in my direction, and yelling and blasting on the whistle as she did so. People on both sides had to jump out of her path; some were getting their feet run over. A red-haired, somewhat sallow-looking lady in her fifties trailed along behind her—a bit half-heartedly, it seemed, as if to push, or at least guide, the chair. But the Professor was moving ahead under her own steam; in fact sported some fairly
grubby white fingerless leather gloves—the sort worn by paraplegic marathoners—and every now and then would give a firm and masterful spin with her hand to one of the wheels.

This juggernaut-like progress lurched to a halt, however, as soon as the Professor espied me. With a gasp and a clap and a deep shout of delight, she called out,
Terry! Wow! What are you doing here? What a surprise!
The woman with her, an unfriendly Slavic-looking lady who had once had a harelip, glowered at me suspiciously. She seemed to be some sort of lady's companion; she was carrying the Professor's briefcase and plastic bags full of what looked like Kentucky Fried Chicken leftovers. Perhaps they were boinking? The Professor, I noticed with a shock, no longer had her braid. (
Damn it! That missing piece has gone missing again
!) She now had a sort of bizarre, all-white, Barbara Bush-style flip. She looked happier, though, than I'd ever seen her before. What with the gloves and the whistle and all, life in the wheelchair obviously agreed with her.

It certainly did: she was there at the convention, it turned out, as a delegate from some national disability-rights-in-higher-education group. She was one of the head honchos in fact—was flying all around the country, would be taking part in meetings with this one and that one,
liaising
with the head of the Blah Blah Foundation. So what accounted for her being in the chair? She seemed nearly to rejoice as she explained: like some child-sufferers from polio, she had developed later-life post-polio syndrome—a sort of wasting condition involving the muscles originally affected. Her leg muscles had atrophied; her back had also gotten messed up. Final result: the P. would never walk again. I tried to look appropriately dismal when she said this last, but the response hardly seemed necessary. She appeared to exult in her paralysis, as if it had brought her some new and febrile kind of glory. Her deepest wish had finally come true.
And hey, Terry, you know, it's really fantastic: I'm in the best shape ever—working out with weights, playing Wheelchair Basketball every weekend;
I'm training for the local disabled Olympics…
—on and on she went. It was true—her biceps looked seriously ripped. As I walked alongside her and the companion toward the bank of elevators (they were on their way to some caucus session), the Professor began shouting again to people to move aside and blew on the whistle with renewed, even theatrical gusto. The whistle, I now saw, was on a sort of lanyard round her neck, like an athletic coach's. The scene was heroic, Gipper-like: WHEELCHAIR COMING THROUGH!

I had been shocked to see her, needless to say, but also found myself thinking,
This is fabulous, this is so insane I can barely take it in.
I felt mirthful, curious, and—I was glad to find—mostly unperturbed talking to her: if anything, she made me feel oddly elated. Intellectually speaking, I felt detached—Herr Isseyvoo in
Goodbye to Berlin
. I just wanted to hear her say more wild and surreal things. The uncanniness of the meeting was overwhelming: the face so familiar, but now haunted by inscrutable changes, a certain metaphysical blowsiness. No doubt she was thinking something similar about me. Yet she also seemed genuinely thrilled to encounter me—exhilarated in some unfeigned and child-like way. While the companion (who had been introduced but never said a word) continued to give me shade, the Professor bounced up and down with glee and burbled out an invitation:
Let's have dinner tonight—for old times' sake!
I assented instantly: I couldn't wait to get back to my hotel room, call various friends, tell them what had happened and what was still to come.

We met again in the lobby that evening and the Professor, now genteel, leather-gloveless, and
sans
companion, condescended to be pushed outside to a waiting cab. (We were going to a restaurant a few blocks away.) Here one had suddenly to credit the miracles one heard took place in the holy pools at Lourdes; for even as the cabdriver came over to help her, the Professor suddenly vaulted out of the wheelchair, folded it up, neatly and compactly, like a little campaign desk from the Napoleonic Wars, and before the driver could
stretch out a hand, had shoved it into the open trunk, twirled around, and zipped back to me. Then she scooted herself into the back seat. She could obviously walk as well as I could—at least some of the time. In fact, when we got to the restaurant she didn't even bother unfolding the chair, just carried it in and then left it to be checked with our coats.

Our conversation was at first quite stunningly inconsequential. It was as if she had been declawed—had four soft paws now and was on my lap giving me little face-pats. Bizarrely enough, she seemed to regard me as if I were some former junior colleague—a student perhaps—who had gone on to do well and with whom she was just now belatedly catching up. She beamed at me proudly when I mentioned having published several books, as if she had seen my talent early on and pointed me in all the right directions. I was the protégée who had made good. What had been true all along, I now saw, was still true: that she was thoroughly dissociated. Lost in herself. Not available. Never had been. The smile was charming; the eye contact warm and intense; the alienation absolute.

There were moments of impinging hilarity, of course, during which I had to struggle not to give the game away. One had to meet the Professor's self-deception with one's own mask firmly in place: she had been one's tutor, after all, in slyness. The Professor was eager, for one thing, that I come to visit her ASAP and stay awhile.
(Really, Terry! I mean it!)
She wanted to get me out with her in a pair of chairs on the Wheelchair Basketball court. Then I would see
what's what
. The game was rough and nasty, I was informed; you had to have superstrong arms and could get pretty loused up in collisions. Not that you needed to be paralyzed or disabled to take it up. Able-bodied people did, too. All the time.
You've got to come this summer. You'll meet your match! I guarantee: your lower back muscles will feel like hell!
The Professor laughed and vamped and told me how fantastic
it would be—not least of all, she crowed,
because it would be the one thing I could beat you at.

And then there were the moments of feigned communion. I asked at one point what had become of Tina, and the Professor, suddenly less friendly-looking, went into some dark bad-memory zone and related the story of the unpaid loan, the detective, and Tina's subsequent bankruptcy. The Professor now looked paranoid: morose, hard, old, mentally addled.
She never paid me back. That was unacceptable. No way was I gonna let her do that.
But then, recollecting how effectively she had handled it, the P. regained her poise. She reverted to a more characteristic look—that of someone who had just received a best-in-show ribbon at the County Fair. Her begonias had obliterated everybody else's in the flower competition. Left them riddled. Ripped-up leaves and bits of pink and purple petal everywhere on the ground. Major vandalism.
Fuckin-fantastic!

And then again, as if on cue—her expression softened and she turned a melancholy gaze on me. Garbo in
Queen Christina
saying goodbye to John Gilbert after their night of love in the inn. The chain of association had obviously triggered something: some ghoulish, poetical sensation of contrition. She had treated me terribly, she now confided; how could I even bear to think about it? She knew how much pain she had caused.
The things I did to you were unforgivable. I'm sorry, Terry—you know I mean that, don't you? I hope you can forgive me.
Then, out of the blue, More Good News:
You know, Terry, I would love to write a book with you. There would be so many things we could write about, don't you think? You can come stay with me in June. We can spend the summer together. I mean it: think about it. Can I call you when you are back home in California? I could make everything up to you.
The Professor's eyes glistened oddly; she sniffed a little, reached down for her napkin. Now, I admit it, I had never till then fully grasped the metaphoric spot-on-ness of the term
crocodile tears
. (Or, for that
matter, the term
crocodile smiles
.) But here, all of a sudden, were the former: the conscious, copious tokens of grief—undeniably dampening the Professor's strong, still-handsome face.

One didn't say it in so many words, of course—one remained a paragon of good cheer throughout—but the sentiment
not on your bloody life, my dear, dear Professor
, was nonetheless delicately conveyed. The lady herself smiled winsomely in response—though not without a slight razor-glint—then gave me a cheeky, boyish wink.
Well, hey, keep it in mind, Terry: maybe one day you'll realize you have to stop looking in the rear view mirror all the time!
This final tweak was one of the very last things I remember her saying—we didn't stay in touch and I never saw her again. I think she ended up in some kind of hospice care organized by the nuns. Whatever Wheelchair Basketball skills I might have developed were sadly nipped in the bud.