Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) (27 page)

Of all the literature I read in graduate school, Hurston's work was what spoke to me. It moved me, literally—from a specialty in nineteenth century to twentieth. Hurston mixed delight and majesty and humor as few writers do; but it was something else that riveted me. Traveling from Manhattan under the sponsorship of curious white patrons, Hurston reported on her Florida hometown—its beliefs, colorful characters, tall tales. The book she produced was an anthropological account that informed and obfuscated in the same sentence, delighting in frustrating outsiders' attempts to understand.

I spent years poring over those wild yarns and lies she reported. She made it seem riotous, that extended jaunt to Eatonville to collect folklore. And maybe it was. But sometimes I swear I can feel a jagged loneliness behind Zora's blithe sentences. Sometimes I'm sure that behind the anthropologist's mask she's trying every trick she can think of to hurdle her isolation, split the difference between the clashing worlds she inhabits. Am I wrong to see, underneath the shiny surface, an urgent, reality-bending scramble for answers?

I open my copy of
Mules and Men
to the first page and, supporting my head with my hands, scan it.

First place I aimed to stop to collect material was Eatonville, Florida.

The expression on Zora's face is unreadable. She has shut herself off against prying eyes and is patiently waiting for the portrait photographer to leave her alone.

Folklore is not as easy to collect as it sounds.

It seems, however, my best option.

“I had doubts all along,” says the fitting room attendant, hoisting a pile of Levi's to her shoulder. “But I was too intimidated to express them. Stupid me. That marriage took five years out of my life.”

I shake my head in sympathy.

“Not sure I've recovered yet.” She holds a pair of jeans to my waist and gauges its length against my legs. “Try these.”

“Honey, when I got engaged, you think it was perfect?” The cashier glares at me. I'm the only customer in the crammed market, which smells of sour milk. Holding my purchase—a plastic bag of bananas—above the counter, she pauses, bananas just out of my reach. “He proposed on the stage of a club full of my friends. On my birthday. He was so nervous he hardly looked at me the whole time, just talked to the crowd. The instant he popped the question, they started cheering. I never said yes. For years, every time he ignored me or fell asleep over dinner, I thought:
I never said yes.
Except at the altar, but what I really meant was
Jeezus, I hope this works.
” She thuds the bananas down in front of me. I practically hear the bruises forming on the yellow skin. “It hasn't been a bad marriage, mind you. I've seen worse.”

Settling my Caesar salad in front of me, my waitress says, “The whole
point
of being engaged is being terrified. When
I
first got engaged, I knew Stan loved me . . . you know what I mean? But what I wasn't sure of was—if I got in an accident and my face got burned off, would he still love me then?” Distressed by the memory, she rests a plate of butter pats atop a steaming teapot, where they liquefy as her hands rise to cradle her peaches-and-cream cheeks. “You learn a lot about each other during the engagement. By the time we got married I knew he
would.
” Her kohled eyes turn dewy.

“That's right,” says the waitress at the next station, swiping coffee rings off the countertop with a damp rag. “Engagement is when
you sort it all out.” She folds the wet rag into the belt of her fanny pack. ”Plus, now you've got
leverage.
You can fight all the fights you want, and you won't have those dating nightmares where you don't see him for a week and don't know what he's thinking and you're petrified he might run away. Engaged people don't run away. It's too embarrassing. You've planned this perfectly—e
very
woman should be engaged while she's deciding whether to get married.”

“Maybe,” I say. Before me is a white packet of sugar covered with tiny hearts. I open it, spill the contents, form the sugar into cocaine-lines on the tabletop until the family at the next table stares. “But engagement is intimidating, don't you think? Makes it harder to be honest?”

“Intimidation is
fabulous,
” says my waitress. She's levitating near the ceiling, checking her makeup in a small handheld mirror. “Without peer pressure, who would ever go through with the ‘I do'?” She snaps her compact shut. “When I was engaged, if I'd thought no one would have noticed, I would have hopped off the wedding-planning assembly line and bolted. And I'm so glad I didn't. It's been two years, and I'm nuts about him.”

The police officer previously sipping her coffee at a table near the window is on her feet. “Bullshit,” she barks. “Bullshit to leverage, bullshit to intimidation. And
why
is it considered romantic for the man to take the woman by surprise?” She thumps her fist on the tabletop, splashing coffee to the floor. “Don't you think the most important decision of a woman's life is one she should
not
make when she's been caught off-guard? Why would
any
woman like the idea of being shocked by a proposal? Why would
any
man trust an on-the-spot answer? If you're going to start a relationship in that system,” she says, glaring ominously at the wait staff, “all bets are off.”

“As goes the engagement,” says the cashier, looking glum as she hands me my change, “so will go the marriage. I'd turn back if I were you.”

Entering the elevator along with a half-dozen students drifting their way toward eight-thirty
A.M
. classes, I'm greeted by a grinning Steven Hilliard, who installs himself beside me with an impish thumbs-up. Before I can utter an automatic
Thank you, George is
wonderful,
Steven addresses me in a whisper. “Things look good,” he says. “Seems the Coordinating Committee is leaning heavily toward a pluralistic curriculum. Their report goes as far as to stipulate that students' writing-requirement classes
must include at least one ‘older' text.
If they have to say that, it means the traditionalists are on the defensive.”

“That's great. I've got nothing against older texts, though. I just want balance.”

With a sharp wave he dismisses balance. “Serves them right to get a taste of their own medicine. And it certainly won't hurt you in December.”

The elevator ejects us onto the ninth floor, and Steven takes his leave with a clap on my shoulder. I've been dubbed a team member—though this promotion seems more about Steven's political vindication than about camaraderie.

I stop at my mailbox. As I flip through my mail, dropping leaflets into the cavernous metal trash bin stationed here for this purpose, my gaze lights on Paleozoic's box, situated directly above mine. Lying atop a curled stack of departmental notices is a postcard sporting Jeff's handwriting. Tilting my head, I read the message Jeff has penned to Paleozoic in black ink:
Tuesday faculty meeting delayed until Thurs 4
p.m.
Wanted to make sure you knew. Best—Jeff Thomas.

Since when does Jeff take it on himself to notify the chairman emeritus of changed meeting times? With a swift glance confirming that I'm alone, I reach up and flip the card. On the glossy side is an enormous pink triangle.

In my office I check my voicemail. There are two messages, the first from six
A.M
.

Hello, my dear freaked lover.
George's voice is husky. He clears his throat.
I've got sunshine on a cloudy day
. . . For a full two verses his serenade tackles Smokey Robinson and wrestles him to the ground.
So I'm here in Buffalo,
he says.
I'm doing a little research on the Web before the day's meetings start. And I've been looking into conversion. Reform, Conservative, or Reconstructionist. Which flavor do you favor? Call me at the hotel.

The message service cuts in with its pleasant female accent. I breathe again.
Next . . . message . . . received . . . today . . . at eight
. . .
A.M.

Tracy,
says a voice to which I definitely never gave my office telephone number.
It's Aunt Rona. Your mother said I might catch you in. Just a couple thoughts about your wedding. I'm thinking buffet would be nice, if you can find a caterer with variety. Your uncle Ted lives for buffet.

I open a page of Flannery O'Connor. For an hour I try to haul my brain into an examination of her lushly perilous world, but every story frightens me—desperate men and women scanning the universe for a miracle, only to get thrashed by the very people they thought their saviors. The notes I make are scattered:
illness as catalyst, humanity, capacity for grotesque, for grace.
I give up and mark student papers. Shortly before noon I permit myself to go for a walk, heading downtown this time.

The afternoon is damp and cold, the few leaves on the sidewalk sodden. It's impossible to get warm. Each cozily lit storefront or warm café I bypass soaks me with regret. At Houston Street, I'm seized by an urge to telephone my parents in Seattle and demand to know the truth—any truth—about their marriage. About anyone's marriage—about what augurs doom, what happiness. Fingering my cell phone, I discover the battery is dead. Just as well.

“Never marry a man,” says the boutique owner in a soft Virginia caress of an accent, “whom you have not seen angry. Goad him until he gets angry: that's what I tell my daughters. Then see what he's made of. If he's a gentleman to you even when he's spitting mad, then marry him.”

(“George,” I will peremptorily summon the most loving man I have ever known. “You know that cap you wear? The wool one?” I'll sneer. “It's incongruous.”)

“Marry the ex of a friend,” says the woman trimming my hair at Horatio's Hair Design. I close my eyes as slippery trimmings rain past my nose. “It's a prevetting service.”

“A relationship is a building,” says the gardener, rake poised in the churchyard's meager garden. “Marriage is just the ivy that grows on it. It tells the world the building is old and respectable. But if you're not careful”—a scrape at sodden leaves—“that ivy can crack the stone.” He straightens. “Live in sin, if you ask me. You may not look as respectable, but your building will stand or fall on its own merits.”

In Battery Park, inside the wooden barricades erected for his demonstration, the balloon operator releases a final jet of flame into the multihued dome overhead. “For men,” he shouts, “marriage is a dirigible. They don't really understand how it works, but they like the view. The fact that they're not sure how to steer the thing doesn't trouble them, because now that they've gotten up so high there isn't really anywhere particular they need to go.” He hops into the balloon's basket and works at the knots that tether his bucking vehicle. “For women, marriage is a car with bad alignment. It has to be urged constantly in a particular direction just to avoid meandering off into the woods and crashing.” The last knot gives; the balloon operator recedes into the sky with a beatific grin.

“Marriage?” says Anna Karenina, pausing on the edge of the subway platform to gather her skirts as the express thunders nearer. “Yeah. Everybody does that once.”

I re-enter the department carrying a paper sack of sodas and cookies: enough fuel to power me through my afternoon obligation, an American Women Writers seminar I usually enjoy but today have no appetite for. As I exit the elevator I am summoned by Eileen, who beckons, a stack of papers in her hand.

Reluctantly I approach. She's holding a copy of my tenure packet, which by now must be in the hands of more colleagues and external reviewers than I care to think about.

Eileen hefts the pages in her open palm. “Feels like tenure-weight.” She smiles perkily, today's lipstick augmented by tiny silver sparkles.

“Only the committee knows,” I answer as spookily as I can, which succeeds in making her laugh. I start away from her desk.

“Ah, the committee.” Eileen murmurs, attaching a label to my file with a hot pink paper clip. “Committees, committees.” A few paces from her desk, I wait for her to emerge from this clumsy conversational roundhouse, new grist in hand. “Committees rarely come up with sensible solutions for personal issues, don't you think?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I've never gone to a committee with a personal issue.”
“I suppose not,” says Eileen with approval. “Anyway, I don't know who they think they're going to get to cover classes when Joanne's on reduced hours this spring.”

“Where is Joanne going?”

“You mean which hospital?”

I meant nothing of the kind.

“Whoops,” says Eileen.

“Whoops
what?
” My voice crests with anger: a momentary stay against the awful understanding overtaking me.

“You did know, right?” says Eileen. “I thought everyone knew.”

This time I keep my voice steady. “What's wrong with Joanne?”

“It's not official public knowledge,” says Eileen primly. When I don't take the bait, she relents. “Joanne has lupus, love. She was diagnosed at the start of the term. You professors, I swear. I expect the
men
to be oblivious, but I thought at least you women would have noticed how ill your coworker looks. For heaven's sake, Joanne's been on steroids for two months, and
no one
here has had a clue? Only Victoria picked up on it, and she came to me to talk.”

More likely, Victoria did her best to deflect Eileen's suspicions until some bureaucratic necessity required bringing her into the loop. “Joanne's going on leave?” I say.