Ellen’s fall honors seminar was reassigned to a junior faculty member. This, she knew, was to punish her for many failings over the spring and summer—ignoring the retention committee, skipping the semester planning meeting. She accepted the change without comment and taught two standard courses, Intro to Literary Theory (although by rights she was due a break from this one) and Twentieth-Century Women Writers. Mark was still incredibly pissed off; she could tell by his ferocious cheer whenever they met in the mailroom. Whether anyone else was gossiping or speculating about her Ellen didn’t know and mostly didn’t care. She had regained a kind of numb equilibrium and wanted nothing more than for it to sustain. She met her classes and gave her lectures. She graded essays and assigned tests. She mentored two grad TAs, and even showed up, briefly, at the cake-cutting for an assistant dean’s retirement party.
It was strange to be at work and not in the middle of a years-long book project. The teaching part of her job had been a second priority for so long that occasionally she was confused by the extra time at the end of each day, each week. What am I supposed to be doing now? Ellen would think, stilled at her desk. It was the sensation of having forgotten something important. She only felt the weight of all those hours of research and writing once they had receded from her life.
As if in answer to that absence, Ellen’s feverish letter-writing to Michael also fell away. She still wrote him, but they were letters now of a conventional format, or so she guessed. Weather, Maisie, Wes and Janey news (minus any of Jane’s real news, that is), little stories about her day, innocuous questions about how he was faring. These Ellen handwrote instead of typed. She stopped scouring texts for a way to understand, a way to help him. It made her feel scared to think about those thousands of words she had written on fear and shame and death and what it means to be a human caught in war. She never opened those files on her computer. A brush with madness.
Jane was living at home. They found a good ob-gyn and a comfortable routine. At the last checkup, Ellen read a P. D. James novel in the waiting room, which she tucked away when Jane came out. “Soon I do the ultrasound thingie,” Jane said, waving a piece of paper. “They’ll be able to tell whether it’s a boy or a girl. But I don’t know if I want to know yet.” She waited, as if Ellen would tell her what to do. But Ellen merely smiled and nodded, and gathered their coats. On the way out, Jane said, “Will you come with me? Into the room, when they do it, I mean?” Ellen had had to use all her strength to hold back her surprise and delight, of course.
Jane had even picked up a part-time job, thanks to Debbie Masterson, who paid her to help out with her new twins twice a week. Ellen had awkwardly offered to pay for this, had wanted to give Debbie the money to give to Jane, but Debbie refused. She was grateful for any chance to rest, she said, and Jane was gentle and good with the babies. But Ellen knew that Jane was getting more out of the arrangement, in real-life lessons of what was to come.
Even Ellen’s stomach turmoil had lessened, the sudden inner lurches, the rush for a bathroom. She still avoided the international news, but it was easier now. “Maybe I’ve acclimated,” she said to Maisie one morning, who had no clear reply.
Only the fact of her coming grandchild could shock Ellen awake, every once in a while, a looming life change for her, for Jane. And for Mike. Jane was having Michael Cacciarelli’s baby. It would wake her up at night, this tacit knowledge, confounding and new each time, and Ellen would press her hands against her eyes and shake her head, no, no, which did nothing to dispel all her disbelief and betrayal, not to mention the truth of the pregnancy itself. But every time she confronted Jane—How did this happen? When did it happen?—she was met by such a withering stay-out-of-it response from her daughter that all she could do was recede. Eventually, on the subject of Mike as father, they built up a wary silence. Luckily, she and Jane had plenty of practice with that habit.
* * *
Ellen always included a ten-minute break in every class that met for two hours or more; often students praised her for this in their course evaluations, but the truth was she needed it mostly for herself. A few minutes of quiet, a stroll around the halls, a drink of water. Then, recharged, she could continue the discussion or take a new direction as needed. As a younger teacher, she had considered any kind of pause a waste but now she knew enough to pace herself.
One drawback: occasionally a student tried to corner her for a one-on-one during the break, with “just a quick question” about a grade or an assignment, a wishy-washy substitute for making an actual appointment or just stopping by office hours (something they resolutely avoided). With a hidden sigh, one Thursday afternoon in October, Ellen sat next to Kim Watkins on a bench in the hall of the Helen C. White Building, going over the girl’s essay on Jacques Lacan and “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious.”
“It’s not ‘the unconscious is a language,’ it’s ‘the unconscious is structured like a language.’” Ellen swiftly circled the offending phrase and wrote in the correction. “Do you remember what that means to Lacan’s idea about no central point of reference, for the self?”
“Um…” Kim squinted at the page, trying to figure out whether she was being asked a real or rhetorical question.
Deep within Ellen’s leather briefcase, at her feet, her phone rang. With one hand she reached in for it, then stopped. “About returning to the self, after a trauma, for example?” she prompted. Kim’s work so far was dutiful but low on insight.
“That there’s … no way back? After? Because of…”
Ellen nodded encouragingly. The phone continued to ring, but she withdrew her hand.
“Everything changing?”
“Kind of.” Ellen wrote in the margins of the paper as she spoke. “Language exists as a system of relations—remember Saussure from last week?—so when Lacan talks about self-recognition as a system of relations … here, you begin to touch on this but it needs to be developed much more clearly … what he’s arguing is that there can’t be any central point of reference for the self, and that’s noticed most after some kind of change or—”
“Looking in the mirror!”
The phone stopped. Kim was so pleased with her connection that Ellen let it go. They all loved the mirror theory best—probably because of their own high levels of self-absorption—dropping it in even when not relevant.
She walked back to the classroom with Kim, who was visibly relieved their talk was over. “I like the psychoanalytic theories,” she confided. “I mean, they do a good job at some things.”
“Well, I’m glad,” Ellen said, amused.
“I just don’t always get what they have to do with, like, literature.” Luckily this was Kim’s form of rhetorical question, and Ellen wouldn’t have to answer. She too wondered why so many of these older theories needed to be part of the survey course, but her current M.O. was to go along and get along, so she tried not to engage in long defenses or explanations.
Students were still trickling in with soda cans, or texting; there was at least a minute or two left. Ellen found her phone at the bottom of her bag, but she didn’t recognize the MISSED CALL number. NEW VOICE MAIL the screen flashed. Ellen almost put the phone away but decided to check, in case Jane needed something. She walked back out into the hall, listening, until the first crackly seconds of the recording stopped everything.
“Hold it up some?—can’t hear her—”
Michael’s voice. Barely audible, broken up by static and pauses. Other voices, sounds, in the background.
“You want to—okay, now or—”
This time the pause was so long Ellen thought the call was over. When his voice returned, closer now to the receiver, she folded forward into a shaking crouch at the front of the classroom.
“Hi, it’s me. All right, just, it’s not as bad as they’ve told you. I’m okay, I’m fine. We took a hit—I don’t—” The sound broke off, unintelligible. Students were kneeling next to her, standing over her; she jerked away from them.
“One’s all right, one’s … well, I don’t.” Michael’s voice slurred away. He was gone.
Clattering, then a new voice, clear and serious. “Mrs. Silverman. This is a message for Mrs. Ellen Silverman. Please stand by this number. You will receive a phone call at approximately”—pause, mumble—“hundred U.S. Central Standard Time. Please stand by for the phone call.”
“What? What time?” she cried, into the phone. But the connection was broken. She couldn’t make her fingers work, they were numb and shaky. “Call that back,” she said, pushing the phone into the hands of the nearest student: Robbie Wenner. “That—that number. Call it back.”
The class was silent. Robbie touched the screen a few times and listened briefly. “Okay, I think it’s—”
“Give it to me.” Ellen listened as hard as she could, but the call wouldn’t go through. What had he said, that male voice? Something at hundred o’clock, that military time. But what did it mean? When? Where was Michael?
“Professor, are you okay?”
She held out a hand, and Robbie helped her up from the floor. Ellen patted him briefly on the arm. She could barely see. The phone was a live thing in her palm. She walked out of the room and then back in.
“Can you—I’m sorry, but I…”
They nodded, worried, urging her out. “Go, it’s okay.” “Sure.” “Hang in there, Professor!”
Ellen fled, without her books or briefcase or coat. She held only her phone, cupped in front of her.
Down the elevator, mercifully empty, across the lobby and out into the windy fall afternoon. Ellen went as fast as she dared without taking her eyes off the phone. She took the path up to Park and went past the Union, past Bascom Mall and the parking lots, across the grass and into the back entrance of Humanities.
The first classroom she tried was wrong; a startled instructor looked up from passing out photocopies. Ellen went up one floor—yes, this must be it. Without knocking she pulled open the door into a darkened lecture room.
Serena was midlecture, clicking through images on a digital screen. When she caught sight of Ellen she cut across the stage, still speaking to the class, flooded by the blinding projector light.
“What’s wrong?” Serena said, covering the microphone clipped to her lapel.
“I think … I think Michael must be hurt.” She said it in a rush, full of wonder.
Serena uncovered her mike. “Class dismissed. Check your e-mail later tonight.”
* * *
Now they were in Serena’s office, a narrow, high-ceilinged space with tall windows, staring at the phone on a table between them. Six replays of the message had convinced Serena that the man said “sixteen hundred” U.S. Central Standard Time, that is, 4:00 p.m. It was a few minutes after four, and Ellen was alternately numb and crazed.
A burst of adrenaline shot through her. “This is good, right? He was speaking to me. He’s— This is good, right? They’ll send him home. He’ll come back to me, it’ll be like nothing happened.”
Serena tipped her head, maybe. Earlier, at her desk she had googled “military time,” “sixteen hundred,” “phone calls from Iraq” while Ellen huddled on a chair, and now they could only wait.
“I should call Wes and Jane. Or—”
“Let’s get all the information first.”
“He said, ‘One’s all right, one’s…’” Ellen gripped the hem of her sweater. “What does it mean? One of them? One of his … friends? ‘We took a hit.’”
“I don’t know.”
“It can’t be that bad, if he called me himself! How could he possibly call me if…?”
“Ellen.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t pick up. He was right there. He was right on the phone and I let it ring. And now he could be dead.”
“Stop.”
“At least they’re with him. Someone’s with him, they’re taking care of him.”
“Yes. Now be calm. When they call, you need to—”
The phone rang. Area code 910. Ellen’s breath drained away and she answered, staring straight ahead.
“Yes?”
“Is this Mrs. Ellen Silverman of Madison, Wisconsin?”
“Yes it is.”
“Please verify your date of birth and address, ma’am?” She did. Serena slid over a pen and pad of paper.
“Mrs. Silverman, this is Rear Detachment Colonel Balton. I am calling about Lance Corporal Mic—”
“Is he alive?” Ellen shouted. “Is he all right? He just called, though I didn’t get to talk to him. But he was talking! What happened? Can you put him on the phone?”
“Ma’am. Yes, he is alive. I’m calling from Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina. The information I have states that Lance Corporal Cacciarelli sustained injuries yesterday morning in the field and has been medevaced to Baghdad for evaluation and treatment. He—”
“Can I talk to someone there? In Iraq, I mean? I’m sorry, I know you have things set up this way but he literally just called here, and I—”
“Mrs. Silverman. I am your contact for all communications. The area medics have determined that once stable Lance Corporal Cacciarelli will be transported to Walter Reed via Ramstein base in Germany. As soon as I have the timeline I will call with his arrival date and your transportation options.”
Ellen looked at Serena, lost and frightened. “You said, ‘once stable.’ What is his exact condition now?” Serena nodded, good.
Short pause on the other end. “‘Your Marine has primary injuries in the following systems: skeletal, skin/muscle, cardio, vestibular, and neurological. The full extent of the injuries is not known at this time. Lance Corporal Cacciarelli is responding to treatment and will be transported as soon as stable.’”
Serena saw what this did to Ellen and scooted her chair as close as it would go. She touched her head to Ellen’s, the phone between them, and wrote rapidly, copying down the information, sketching out questions.
“Is he going to live?” It was all she could do to manage this question. The man’s careful response evaporated Ellen’s strength.
“Ma’am, I can promise he is getting the absolute best care possible. Now I have some information and forms to send you about traveling to Walter Reed. Is there an e-mail address you have access to right now?”
Ellen sank back from the table. Serena took over the call, identifying herself and giving the needed address. She went on to ask several clarifying questions, ones Ellen herself should have thought to ask. Calm and taking notes, Serena pressed the man: When will we know more? Who can we call after this, to follow up? How soon until she travels to Washington? How do we make arrangements to…?
There was a hot burble inside her, a nauseated melting. Ellen stood in a panic, groped around. There was no way she could make it to the restroom, even if she knew where it was in this building. She couldn’t even talk. In the corner of the office, behind Serena’s desk, she pulled down her pants and squatted over the plastic-lined garbage can, sweating and shaking as a toxic mess poured out of her.
Serena, still on the phone, found a box of tissues and pushed it near Ellen. Then she locked her office door and continued with her crisp, precise questions to the man on the other end. Ellen hung on to the side of the desk, half naked but without shame. There was only a basic primal relief. And, in the last moment before facing what she had to, gratitude for the luck of Serena, elegant and unflustered and bearing this moment with her: the terror, the shit, the unknown.