Chapter 25

  

The next morning, Joe had not returned and still wasn’t answering his cellphone. I stared out my kitchen window. What was he thinking? Probably that I had betrayed him. Probably that I was no better than the fiancée who had ditched him for his rich roommate, or the woman who had stolen his wallet. Just another colossal disappointment.

I had to stop thinking about him.

I flipped through pages of Max’s manuscript and compared them to the pages Shaw had sent. The text was identical. I had found Henry’s thief.

Now what? First things first. I had to edit a finished rebuttal for Stoddard or I risked my job. I called Nell. I went to the journalism school and spent the day in my office alone with additional records Nell had compiled for me to incorporate into my response to Simon’s letter, all the while trying not to think about Joe’s anger or about Max.

By mid-afternoon I had finished up my letter for Stoddard and Lewis. Then I called Sadie. I wanted her eyes on my response before I delivered it to Stoddard. I also needed my friend.

Sadie came to my office, read through the response, and said she thought it was effective.

“Can I fire Simon for this? I sure want to.”

“Of course you do. But he’s tenured and has been at the university for decades. He’d probably file a grievance and claim you were stifling his freedom of speech.”

“But he trashed his school and his university.”

“Regrettably, academic freedom means the freedom to trash your university.”

“Is there any way I can punish Simon for this?”

“Oh, you can ignore him, assign him a smaller office, a less desirable teaching schedule. You can deny him funds for travel. But in the end you’re just piling more punishment on someone who already feels aggrieved. That’s why he wrote his letter.”

“How do I live with him after this?”

“You outlive him, Red. That’s what academics do when we can’t be rid of a nemesis. We outlive the bastard. Actually, it works out more often than you might think. Simon knows he’s done a terrible wrong to his university. He knows he is despised. Be patient, Red. He’s old. Sooner or later he will leave or die.”

Nell knocked and came to my office. I handed her the memo to Stoddard and the back-up data. “Please take this to the provost’s office for me, Nell. I cannot bear to see him today.”

Nell nodded. “I’m sure things will work out,” she said and left.

“I’m going home,” said Sadie, “and then I am coming over to your house.”

  

Sadie shared supper with me and then we retreated back to the comfort of the fireplace. She asked about Joe and I told her what had happened the evening before. She was wrapped in a long lavender sweater. Instead of her conventional short ponytail, she had piled her gray hair into a haphazard bun on top of her head. She looked younger, softer. I hoped she was still wiser.

She had listened to me without speaking for half an hour. “Have you sorted out your feelings about Max...or for Max?” she said, looking into the flames.

“I think so.”

Her face was sympathetic but her tone was admonitory. “Red, you are old enough to know better than to let a man like Joe, a man who cares for you, think for a minute you have yearnings for another man.”

I groaned. “I know Sadie. I know. I’ve called Joe several times today and he hasn’t answered or called back.”

“He’s hurt, Red. He may need some time away from you.”

“But I want to tell him he was right about Max and I was wrong. I want to repair this thing.”

“Joe isn’t hurt because you were wrong. He’s hurt because he suspects you have sexual feelings for Max and that’s why you made the decision you did. Send him a letter. Give him some breathing room and some space. Let’s talk again tomorrow. You’ll get through this.” Sadie moved forward in her chair as if to rise.

I must have looked as miserable as I felt. “So you don’t think I’ve lost him for good?”

Sadie rearranged the bun on her head. She leaned down and patted Charlie, who was lying at her feet. “I don’t know. I don’t know how angry he is or how hurt. I do know you’ve been foolish with his feelings.”

I had no defense against Sadie’s pronouncement. After she left, I sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, hugging my knees with one hand and stroking Charlie’s flank with the other.

My Ohio therapist had called it. As soon as I got close to committing to a man, I find a way to put him off. I replayed the moment I had hesitated when Joe questioned my feelings for Max. It wasn’t exhaustion. It wasn’t even some loyal impulse to save a friend who no longer deserved it. It was a test. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt Joe shouldn’t have had to ask. He should have known me better. He should have believed in me. Joe failed the test.

No. I failed. I failed to trust Joe. I was a neurotic, self-destructive idiot.

Charlie looked up at me and made a soft whimpering sound. “You miss him, too,” I said. “Sorry I drove away your best friend.”

  

Friday morning the streets were wet from an early rain. The deciduous trees were still barren, but a few had started tiny buds. That happens in Nevada when January warms up. No leaves were out yet. The first to bloom would be the pink flowering plum trees unless a deep frost bit the buds off. The big, bright sky stretched out behind the still bare limbs and over the mountains beyond. I loved Landry. I wanted to live here forever with Joe. But how long could I stay in Nevada with my heart so heavy?

I turned onto the campus road. There were still patches of snow under the tall pines near the north sides of the brick buildings.

I headed for Stoddard’s office. He and Philip Lewis were both there and, oddly, both seemed pleased to see me. Perhaps they looked forward to relieving me of my duties as dean.

Stoddard held up the draft Nell had delivered. Lewis looked intently at me and a faint smile appeared.

“This is useful, Meredith,” said Stoddard.

“I’ll probably use a short version of it for my own note to the deans of journalism,” said Lewis.

What? “Short version? Simon wrote a five page diatribe.”

“And it produced an interesting consequence,” said Lewis, his smile broadening. “Believe it or not, at 6:00 this morning a messenger delivered a lengthy response to Simon’s diatribe to my door. It was a copy of another letter that has been sent to all the deans to whom Simon sent his original letter.”

“And the response came from the most unusual sources,” said Stoddard.

I waited. Stoddard handed me a copy of the other letter. It totally refuted Simon’s assertions about the journalism school. It contained facts and figures about our research I thought only Nell and I would have known, plus a glowing description of our graduates’ success and the rigor of our curriculum. It was signed by George Weinstein and Edwin Cartwell.

Whoa.

“We were surprised, too,” said Stoddard. “As best we can determine, Simon sent copies of his diatribe to Weinstein and Cartwell.”

“Expecting their support?”

“Probably, but not counting on Cartwell’s love of the students or Weinstein’s fierce pride in the school’s reputation and independence,” said Lewis. “They both must have devoted considerable time to this and then had a messenger deliver copies of their letters to our homes early this morning.”

“So you don’t need what I worked on,” I said.

Lewis put his hand on my letter. “Actually we do, Meredith. It will help us with a follow-up to those whom Simon wrote. The back-up material you gathered will also help you with your report to the accreditation committee next fall. You may have gotten a good start on the major part of the work.”

I was still in a daze, when Stoddard said, “Red, we know how hard this must have been for you.”

I fought the impulse to scream. What do you mean you know how hard this was? Don’t you realize how often I have the feeling I have made mistakes and overreached, how often I have had major doubts about my ability to lead the school? How sure I was you both wanted me out as dean?

Instead, I swallowed hard and said, “I concentrated on developing a response to Simon Gorshak’s letter. I didn’t want to give you another reason to put us into receivership.”

“Meredith,” said both men simultaneously.

“My dear, you have to learn when you can count on our support,” said Lewis.

Yeah, sure. Stoddard had forgotten the coldness of the instructions he had given me yesterday.

Lewis might never understand how I felt hearing his offer to put journalism into receivership and under the thumb of another dean.

“What about Simon?” I said. “I’m told I can’t fire him.”

“True, you can’t Meredith,” said Lewis. “But I have ways of dealing with treacherous faculty. If I can’t persuade him to resign, well, I have put more than one faculty member on mandatory leave of absence for health reasons. Serious health reasons.”

“Like the fear that I might follow him into the parking lot and tear him to pieces.” Stoddard stopped with a grin, rubbing his massive hands together.

“I don’t think you will see much of Simon this semester,” said Lewis.

  

What a turnaround. I almost smiled as I walked back to the journalism school. The prospect of Edwin and George rejecting Simon made me giddy. Maybe Larry Coleman’s tenure prospects were not so troubled after all. Maybe there was hope.

Except for Joe and me.

In spite of the white-haired woman’s prediction, in spite of everything that had happened, I was afraid. Still afraid I would screw up the dean’s job. Afraid I would never be with Joe again. Afraid to go back to my office and face the faculty. I wanted to go home and curl up under my quilt.

But I kept walking to the school. “Courage is not the absence of fear,” my father had been fond of saying, mangling any number of quotes from Mark Twain and others. “Courage is acting in the presence of fear, even when you are scared to death. That’s what you did when you took the driver’s keys.”

Fine. I liked the notion I had courage, but I still waited for the fear to diminish. As you get older, shouldn’t you become less fearful? “It doesn’t work that way,” he had said. “Fear is just there. All the time.” And I knew then that he was also afraid. Afraid of losing his wife. Afraid of diminished reputation as a result of old age and weakened effort. And then dementia came and took away his memory and his fear along with it.

Is that what was in store for me?

  

Phyllis was in my office, her arms spread wide, her beautiful face wreathed in a smile. She gave me a great warm hug. “You make me believe the impossible,” she said.

Nell brought in mugs of coffee and a jug of milk.

“How did you ever get those two to write that letter?” Phyllis sipped her coffee.

“I had nothing to do with it. George and Edwin wrote it all on their own. How did you find out about this?”

“Oh, a copy of Simon’s trash made the rounds. And a copy of George and Edwin’s splendid rebuttal was in all our mailboxes this morning.”

“Events overtake me,” I said, feeling a surge of pleasure for the first time in days. “How nice.”

“Maybe things will get better now,” she said, putting her hand over mine. “Maybe the faculty fight will go away.”

“Die of its own weight?”

“Die of its own stupidity.”

“Maybe,” I said. “After all, the essential argument was never over the new media courses. That became obvious at the retreat.”

“It was always about Henry and the three stooges wanting Henry to be humiliated, wanting Henry to lose.”

“Except that two of the stooges turned on the third.”

“And you had nothing to do with their conversion?”

“I didn’t even know about their response until this morning. Stoddard thinks it was all due to their love for the students and the school.”

“Perhaps,” said Phyllis. “But maybe because Henry’s dead and Simon’s been such a jerk, George and Edwin decided to step up and do the right thing. Maybe they think you’re not so bad after all.”

“I’m having trouble seeing George and Edwin as the cavalry, but I’ll give it a shot.”

I went looking for George and Edwin and found them both in Edwin’s office looking as conspiratorial as ever.

“Thank you for the letter you wrote to the deans,” I said.

“No thanks required, Meredith. We did it for the school,” said Edwin.

“Simon’s missive was incredibly stupid,” said George. “There was no way I could let it go unanswered.”

“Do you think Simon wanted us put into receivership?” I asked.

“Hard to say,” said Edwin. “But it was clear he meant to do the school damage and sacrifice our reputation. He hates the idea of you as dean, but I think there was more on his mind. He’s been angry at the university for years.”

An unusually reasonable analysis from Edwin, but I took what I could get.

“Will he be fired for this?” asked George, who still looked gloomy. He was dressed in a large yellow ski sweater that emphasized his massiveness and reminded me of Nell’s warnings about him.

“According to Phil Lewis, tenured faculty can’t be fired even for this attack. But the president thinks he can encourage Simon to go away.”

They looked at each other but neither spoke.

“Well, anyway, I appreciated what you did,” I said. “The administration was impressed and that may help us keep our independence.”

I walked back to my office. “Any calls?” I asked Nell.

“Several,” she said, handing me a stack of messages.

Joe had not called, but almost everyone else had. I closed my door and wrote Joe a letter. I mailed it later that day—special delivery, overnight please.

  

I waited all weekend but no word from Joe. Four days without him. No calls. No response to my messages or my letter. I made some supper and drank a large glass of wine by myself. I left the dishes in the sink and sat in front of the fire, idly petting Charlie and feeling tired and overworked and very sorry for myself.

Around eight that evening, I resolved to do something. I took a shower, washed my hair, dressed in jeans and a soft red sweater, and headed over to Joe’s apartment house. It was after ten when I pulled up to a complex of three story brick buildings a block away from police headquarters. Joe lived in the nearest building on the third floor. The complex housed mostly police and firemen who were single or married without children. The apartments were all one-bedroom look-alikes. Joe’s was at the end of the hall. As I neared his door I heard music. That meant he was home and not watching television.

After a few moments of hesitation, I knocked on the door. No response. I knocked again. Joe opened it. He was barefoot, wearing shorts, no shirt. He looked incredibly desirable. I didn’t see anyone else over his shoulders, but I sensed he was not alone.

“This is not a good time, Red,” he said. His eyes were dark.

I said nothing.

“Sorry,” he said, and closed the door.

I drove back home and returned to Charlie and the wine bottle. I spent that night curled around the dog on the floor in front of the fire. Sometime before dawn I woke and put my hand on Charlie’s shoulder. His fur was still wet from my sobbing.