The Woman in the Fifth (26 page)

'All during those months of holding hands in cafés, and staring dreamily into each other's eyes, I knew that if I kept seeing her, it was all going to blow up in my face. But the thing is, I couldn't bear the thought of
not
keeping it going.'

'That's because you were in love. That's also why you ended it – because you knew that, once you started sleeping with her regularly, you wouldn't be able to stop.'

'Perhaps. But don't you see how my thinking was so completely contradictory? I so desperately wanted her. Then when I'd finally had her . . .'

'Why shouldn't you have thought that way? And why can't you accept that, when it comes to matters of the heart, we all do contradictory things? You know that line from Pascal – "The heart has its reasons which reason itself does not know."'

'You're trying to tell me it's "all right", when the truth is—'

'You resisted temptation, you acceded to temptation, then you decided to resist temptation again. End of story. But because Americans equate sex with risk and potential disaster, it wasn't the end of the story, was it?'

'No, it wasn't.'

'So what happened to the girl, Harry?'

'The story goes a little haywire here. In the days after that afternoon in the motel, she started sending me love notes all the time – five a day on colored paper in my office mailbox at the college. There were just as many emails. And they all said the same thing: "
You are the love of my life . . . I can't bear to be apart from you for more than another day . . . can we go to the motel tomorrow?
"

'I was just a little unnerved by all this instant emotional excess. When we were just meeting over coffee, she was always romantic . . . but I never got the idea that, once we'd slept together, she'd get so clingy.'

'You can never predict another person's emotions . . . especially the post-coital ones.'

'Too damn true. When I found Shelley loitering outside one of my classes two days after Toledo, I decided to take immediate action. I suggested we go for a drive out into the country. Once we got to the place by a lake, I quietly explained that, as much as I cared for her, the affair had to end. She was devastated – and told me that she would never have slept with me if she knew it was going to end it straight away. I tried to patiently explain that, as crazy as I was about her—'

'You were a man with a conscience . . .'

'Something like that, yes. It's amazing, isn't it, how you agonize over crossing a dangerous threshold. Then, when you finally summon the courage to make that move, you instantly regret it.'

'Another of those large contradictions, Harry. So did she cry when you broke her the news?'

'She simply wouldn't accept it . . . simply couldn't believe that I had changed my mind. Again, I tried to explain. Yes, I had feelings for her . . . yes, I'd loved all our conversations, and thought she was a fantastic person . . . and yes, if I wasn't married and wasn't her professor . . .

'She didn't take the news well – and started to plead with me, telling me she'd do anything to keep it going between us.'

'Was she a virgin?'

'No – there had been a big high-school love affair . . . which ended when she came to college. But as far as she was concerned, we were Tristan and Isolde: destined to be together from here to eternity. Try as I did to persuade her that, in time, she'd just see this as a passing blip in her romantic life, she remained devastated . . . and determined to somehow keep things going between us. There were constant notes in my mailbox, at least a half-dozen emails every day, and she made a point of hanging around every class I taught.'

'Surely your colleagues began to realize that one of your students was a bit obsessed about her professor?'

'Of course. Doug Stanley – my one close friend on the faculty – took me aside and asked me directly if I had been involved with Shelley. Naturally I told him everything – and wondered out loud if I should go to the Dean of the Faculty, Gardner Robson – and make a clean breast of everything. He was adamant that I confess nothing. Because once I did that, I was finished. He also emphasized that, until Shelley went public about the affair, I was in the clear. His hope was that she would soon calm down – and he even offered to speak to her and see if she might agree to seek help from the college psychotherapist.'

'Knowing you, the guilt must have been massive.'

'It was nonstop. I wasn't sleeping and lost about fifteen pounds in less than two weeks. I couldn't teach, couldn't concentrate. Even my wife, who was totally ignoring me, noticed that I was in rough shape, and asked me what was wrong. I said I was depressed – and that's when she told me that, as far as she was concerned, I had been in a gloomy place for years. "
And the only time you'd lightened up was during the last few months – when it was clear to me that you were having an affair
." I didn't deny it, nor did she hint that she knew who my lover might be. But when I came back from the college the next night, I found her in my office, on my computer, reading my email files.'

'Don't tell me you hadn't deleted everything you'd written to your friend – and she to you.'

'I'd deleted it from my AOL account, but not the Recycle Bin. A bad oversight on my part, as that's where Susan found them all.'

'Your wife had the password to your computer?'

'I'm pretty certain she once heard me tell our daughter that it was her name:
Megan123.
Whatever way she had managed to get into my files, the fact was,
she had managed to get into my files
. When I walked in and found her sitting in my desk chair, and staring at an email that Shelley had sent me, she said – in a voice so low and cold it sounded like a frozen whisper – "Pack a bag and leave right now. Otherwise I'll call the police and tell them you've assaulted me."'

'And you bowed to this threat . . . this blackmail?'

'I thought it best to let the initial shock she was feeling—'

'Harry, she was fucking some guy before you even hooked up with Shelley—'

'I still didn't know that—'

'But she betrayed your privacy—'

'True. And she also evidently emailed all this evidence against me to her lover, the Dean. Because, the next day, I had a visit from representatives of the firm that looks after security for the college. Two of their goons showed up at my office around ten that morning, telling me that they were escorting me off the premises and that I was now legally barred from setting foot on the campus again. They brought me downtown to the office of the law firm which handled all the college's legal stuff. There, some flinty smalltown lawyer – bow tie, blue serge suit, suspenders – read me a document, informing me that, as I had contravened several college codes of professional conduct, I was being summarily dismissed from my tenured position "without pay or any subsidiary benefits". He also said that if I made trouble, the case would go public and—'

'You didn't get a lawyer yourself ?'

'The college's legal eagle said that if I signed an agreement he'd prepared, in which I promised not to contest this dismissal, they would announce that I had "resigned" for health reasons. "You might just be able to rebuild your career," he told me. So I signed the damn document . . . not knowing that Susan's lover, the Dean, had another denouement in mind for me. The next day I woke up on the sofa in the house of Doug Stanley, to find I was being laid siege to by assorted regional television stations, not to mention a couple of local newspaper reporters.'

'All over a brief fling with a student?'

'Being dismissed for sexual misconduct is a big thing in small-town America. As it turned out, somebody had forwarded to the Ohio press the salient details of my correspondence with Shelley. Doug was certain that Gardner Robson had tipped them off and also told them where I could be found – because Doug had run into Robson on the campus, and the Dean had started spewing this bullshit of how it "genuinely injured" him to have to let me go, and how he wondered if Doug knew of my whereabouts. When Doug made the innocent mistake of telling Robson that he was harboring me, do you know what that sonofabitch told my friend? "I really feel for him right now."

'Doug managed to keep the reporters from invading his house – and I essentially took refuge in the rec room in his basement until . . .'

Pause. I looked away.

'Until . . . ?' Margit asked.

'Until Shelley killed herself.'

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
, before going to work, I stopped by my room to pick up my laptop computer and a book I was reading. When I arrived home, the note I was dreading was stuck under my door:

I get 1000 euros tomorrow or you fucked.

The handwriting was scrawly. I turned over the scrap of paper and wrote:

You will get your money in a couple of days. If you reveal anything before then, you will get nothing.

I shoved this note under Omar's door, then entered my room and sat down on my bed and tried to sift through everything I had told Margit tonight, and how good it felt to finally unburden myself of this secret, and how I felt simultaneously exposed and self-belittled for having admitted the terrible shame that haunted my every waking hour.

But Omar's blackmailing note also emboldened me. En route to work I walked directly into the little bar on the rue de Paradis. Yanna was serving the usual crew of drunks (many of whom were her husband's chums). Her eyes grew wide when I entered her establishment – a case of the guilty jitters which she tried to temper with a tight smile as she pulled me a
pression
and simultaneously filled a shot glass with bourbon.

'What brings you here?' she said in a low whisper, glancing at the half-cocked clientele, wondering if they were picking up her nervousness.

'We need to talk,' I whispered back.

'Bad time.'

'It's somewhat urgent.'

'I can't leave the bar with all these creeps watching us.'

'Make an excuse. I'm going to finish these drinks and leave. Meet me in ten minutes up on the corner of the rue de Paradis and the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière. What I need to say can't be said here right now.'

Then I threw back the whisky and drained the beer and left – all the other clientele glaring at me as I hustled myself out the door. As expected, Yanna did show up ten minutes later at my proposed rendezvous spot. She had a cigarette going when she arrived and appeared hyper-tense.

'Are you out of your fucking mind?' she hissed at me. 'Everyone in the bar saw you were trying to talk to me.'

'It was an emergency,' I said. 'Omar . . .'

And I told her how he saw us and what he was now threatening.

'Oh fuck,' she said. 'My husband will first kill you, then me . . .'

'Not if you do what I tell you.'

That's when I outlined the idea that Margit gave me (though not telling her that another party had cooked up this scheme). Yanna didn't seem convinced.

'He'll still believe that fat slob,' she said, 'because he's a fucking Turk. It's an idiotic Turkish male code-of-honor thing. If the slob tells you that your woman is a slut then, without question, she is a slut.'

'If you go to your husband crying, saying how Omar forced himself on you, how he had his hands everywhere, how he was so drunk he obviously didn't know what he was doing, but still did vast amounts of improper things to you—'

'He'll still beat me.'

'Not if you sell it properly to him.'

'He'll do it anyway – even if he totally believes me. And his justification will be that – as it was me acting like a slut which prompted Omar's "attentions" – I deserve to have my eyes blackened.'

'You should get out of this marriage.'

'Thank you for such intelligent advice. My husband gets back tonight. If you value your life I would lay low for a few days – just in case he does believe his fellow Turk and decides to come looking for you with a sickle.'

'I'll make myself scarce.'

'One last thing: don't come into our bar again. I want to erase you from my life.'

'The feeling is entirely mutual,' I said, then turned on my heel and left.

Some hours later, at work, the thought struck me: 'laying low' was not going to be the easiest of tasks, especially in an area where everybody knew each other and in a job where an unexplained absence from work wouldn't be tolerated. There was a part of me that wanted to return to my room, pack up all my possessions (a process that would take no more than ten minutes) and vanish into the night. But once again, I was plagued by the question:
Then what?
I also knew that if I did do a bunk, I'd severely disappoint Margit. Earlier that evening – after I had finished telling her what had happened to Shelley – she had returned to the subject of Omar's threat, saying, 'It would be far simpler for all concerned if Omar simply disappeared from view before the husband got home.'

'Sure it would. But from what I've heard, he has no family back in Turkey, and no life to speak of outside of his job and his
chambre de bonne
. And he's completely legal here. Even flashed his French passport in my face.'

'A pity, that. Had he been illegal, you would have been easily able to turn the tables on him. One phone call to the Immigration Authorities—'

'But he could have ratted on me too. After all, I am working here without a
carte de séjour
.'

'But your job doesn't really exist, does it? You live beneath the usual Social Service radar that would get you found out if you were legitimately working. Anyway, if forced to choose between the story told by an educated American and an illiterate greasy Turk, who do you think they are going to believe?'

'Racism has its virtues, I guess.'

'Absolutely. And you're just as racist as the cops.'

'Or as you.'

'That's right. But remember this: though an immigrant like Omar, living on the margins in this city, might despise all the people here having plush, proper lives, his real scorn and despair are aimed at those in closest proximity to him. Zoltan always used to say, "
Never trust another
immigré.
They wish for your downfall in order to reassure themselves there is someone lower than themselves
." So, yes – Omar will rat you out. Which means you should go home right now and pack a bag and flee the rue de Paradis. But if you do that—'

'I'm running away again.'

'As you ran away after your friend's suicide . . . even though you weren't to blame for what she did.'

'I will always blame myself for what happened.'

'As a way of hating yourself. But suit yourself. You haven't finished the story, Harry. So . . . tell me about the suicide.'

Margit poured me another glass of whisky. I tossed it back. Even though I had already downed half the bottle, I still felt nothing.

'First I have to tell you about the abortion business,' I said.

'Your friend had to have an abortion?'

'No. It was
alleged
that I was trying to talk her into having an abortion . . . which was certainly news to me. That day – the day I woke up on Douglas's couch to find his front lawn under siege by reporters – all hell broke loose. By six that evening, it was a major story across Ohio:
Professor Tries to Force Freshman Student to Have Abortion After Affair.

'Now, you have to understand that I never,
never
, spoke with Shelley about an abortion. Nor was I even aware that Shelley was pregnant. In fact, it struck me as virtually impossible that she was carrying my child, as I had used a condom when we slept together.'

'So how did this fantastic story about you trying to talk her into a termination go public?'

'It seems that Shelley had kept a journal since we'd started seeing each other. When all the shit hit the fan, the Proctor in her dormitory – a real little goody-goody Born-Again Christian type – carried out her own raid on Shelley's room, found the journal and dutifully turned it over to the Dean of the Faculty. As it turns out, Shelley's journal was full of crazy romantic stuff: about me being the love of her life, about me telling her that I had never felt so passionate about anyone before – something I never said – and also promising her that I'd leave my wife and daughter to marry her – another complete fabrication. This romantic fantasia went on and on for pages, and recounted, in prurient detail, the afternoon we spent together in that Toledo motel – something the press leaped upon after the diary was leaked to them . . .'

'Leaked by Robson?'

'As I found out later. But though the media loved all the graphic stuff in the diary about
our afternoon of love
– Shelley's exact words – they really went crazy when they read a long sequence of entries about her wanting to be the mother of my baby. Then, after I decided to break it off with her, her imagination went wild. Suddenly there were statements in the diary like,
How could he do this to me when he knows I'm pregnant?
and,
All I want is to have our child, but Harry tells me he will never allow that
. And then there was the kiss of death:
I got the results of the pregnancy test today. I am a Momto- Be! I raced to Harry's office to tell him the good news. But his reaction was horrible and absolute: the baby must die. And he picked up the phone and called an abortion clinic in Cleveland and made us an appointment in three days' time. But there's no way I will kill our baby.

'Margit, I swear to you, I never had any of those conversations with Shelley. It was pure invention on her part.'

'And one which the Dean must have looked upon as a gift from God.'

'Not just the Dean, but every right-wing press commentator in the country. The story played right into their hands: "progressive" professor seduces young student and then insists on "murdering" their baby. I was held up as an example of everything that was degenerate and sordid about the socalled "liberal elite" . . . while Shelley was considered a heroine for saving the life of her unborn child.

'All the television stations staked out my house – and showed my wife and daughter being ambushed by the press as they left our home. One of the journalists actually asked Megan, "
What do you think of your father having a girlfriend who is only three years older than you?
" She burst into tears and I wanted to kill that bastard.

'They also showed footage of some greasy lawyer for Shelley's father – an ex-Marine whom she loathed – telling the cameras that he was filing, on behalf of his client, a hundred-million-dollar lawsuit against the college for allowing a degenerate like me to teach there. There was also a soundbite with Robson, where he put on this face of gravitas and concern, saying how it was horrible that "this poor young woman" had been victimized by me, and how he would personally ensure that I never entered a center of higher education again.'

'And where was Shelley during all of this?'

'Her parents had taken her home to Cincinnati – where she was kept locked away from the press.'

'And meanwhile . . .'

'I stayed in Douglas's basement and ignored all knocks on the door and all phone calls. But I did email a statement to the press, in which I categorically denied that I had ever demanded the abortion, as she had never told me that she was pregnant. And as we had practiced safe sex . . .

'Well, this created a new feeding frenzy. The next day the television crews caught Shelley and her family en route to church, and started hurling questions at her like, "
Are you lying about being pregnant? Did you make it all up . . . ?
" Shelley looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Later that afternoon, the family lawyer issued a statement, saying that I was being even more of a monster by calling Shelley a liar . . . and how they would have certified medical substantiation of her pregnancy within forty-eight hours.

'In the middle of all this madness, Doug was fantastic. He ran interference for me, keeping all intruders at bay and screening all phone calls . . . except for one from Megan which came right after Shelley's lawyer appeared on TV, saying that I was a beast. Megan must have gotten the number from Susan – who, in turn, had to have been told by Robson where I was hiding out. Anyway, when I got on the line, I started saying something lame like, "
Megan, darling, I know this is awful. And I know you must hate me for all this. But I just want you to know—
"