Tim Blatchford’s report was about what I’d expect from someone nourished on sleeping pills, whiskey, and chair shots to the head. When we met for updates he consulted frayed napkins and the backs of receipts. His e-mail correspondence was usually late, often lacking punctuation and capital letters. That was if he bothered to compose more than one sentence.
Even so, his work brought Dana Essex into focus. So much that when she phoned, it was difficult to feign ignorance when she embellished events from her past.
She’d grown up in Gatineau, near Ottawa, just over the Quebec border. Her parents still lived on the Rue des Invalides, working-class and stubbornly anti-French. Blatchford had visited them, been served coffee and ginger snaps in their living room. He’d told them he was with a reunion committee. Everyone was wondering what happened to Dana.
Her parents were wondering the same. Essex had gone from a sullen, poetry-obsessed high school senior, a straight B student, to making the dean’s list her first semester at Carleton. Scholarships and merit awards followed, a four point et cetera GPA. She’d met a research assistant, Graham, and married him, her first real relationship. They intended to apply to grad school together.
They made plans to leave . . . and Dana never left. Her parents didn’t know when or why she’d divorced Graham, but Dana was accepted into the graduate program and moved closer to campus. From there the story muddled.
She’d never matriculated, was still technically ABD—all but dissertation, her doctorate unfinished. Then she’d taken the job at Surrey Polytech, moved without talking things over with her folks.
Blatchford had asked and they’d flung excuses at him: Politics. Poor job market. Change of scenery. Met somebody. Enough excuses for him to believe that her parents didn’t really know what had motivated their daughter to move west.
Next Blatchford had visited Essex’s graduate supervisor, a professor whose specialty was “Poetry and the Long Eighteenth Century.” The faculty webpage showed a photo of Dr. Tillie Metcalf, a birdlike, veiny-throated woman whose meek smile Dana had echoed the first time I’d met her. I wish I’d been present to see her reaction to Blatchford, to witness that meeting of the minds.
Metcalf told him that Dana simply lost focus. Her graduate work had been on Mary Darby Robinson, whose contributions to the literary canon were finally receiving critical reassessment. Dana had presented a brilliant conference paper on the subject. While the brains of students and faculty alike were being turned to mush by deconstructionism and semiotics, Dana Essex represented a bright new critical voice. Someone in love with poetry, with close reading, someone ready to take up the tradition of the life of the mind.
And then it had all crumbled.
She’d stopped working on her dissertation. She’d missed meetings, under-delivered when asked to revise passages. Metcalf had taken on other students and moved on.
Blatchford asked what caused that rupture. Metcalf had seen it before in other promising students. Pressure could make them crack, as could money troubles or an ailing relative. It was important to remember this period was also a transition into adulthood.
It was also around this time, Metcalf remembered, that Essex started her other teaching job. Dana had found working with those people fascinating.
“Those people?” Blatchford had asked. He’d spent the day wandering the campus, eating soup in the cafeteria, watching a down-with-something-or-other rally on the lawn. If Metcalf meant students, then Essex’s definition of fascinating didn’t jibe with his.
“Prisoners,” she had replied. “Dana volunteered for two years at Milton Correctional. She was part of a group working with inmates on core learning skills.” She added with a rueful smile, “I might’ve even recommended Dana for the job.”