In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
—WALT WHITMAN
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, ELLIOT CORBIN WAS the first person I noticed as I walked into the Stevens Memorial Community Room at the Enfield Public Library. The decor of the Community Room was muted, blues and grays accented with the warm tones of cherry-red chairs set up in rows before a spare charcoal podium. Dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and off-black jeans, my colleague had placed himself directly in the long, thin strip of wan November light admitted by the room’s one narrow, floor-to-ceiling window. The effect was dramatic. As intended.
At two o’clock, Jane Birdwort was scheduled to read from her forthcoming book of poems. I was curious about Jane and her work, especially since our odd encounter outside Dickinson Hall Friday evening. And besides, I’d been alone at home grading seminar papers all weekend: Anything was sufficient excuse to get out of the house. One more dangling modifier informing me that Blooming like roses, Emily Dickinson thought of her poems as flowers, and I’d be tempted to proceed directly back to truck-stop waitressing. On an impulse, I’d put the papers aside and changed from my jeans and sweatshirt into a better pair of jeans, a black turtleneck jersey, and a cardigan my daughter Amanda had given me for my birthday, a frivolous thing I would never have purchased for myself, bright persimmon wool knit cropped just at the waist. I donned the brown leather bomber jacket Amanda had not yet taken off to college and checked myself out in the mirror by the front door. Not bad for almost forty.
The lecture room was not crowded. A few Enfield students—probably members of Jane’s poetry-writing workshop—filled the front row. Several faculty members and a scattering of town residents had taken seats a little farther from the action. Amber Nichols and Ned Hilton sat side by side without speaking. Ned, tall and weedy, was a recently tenured colleague whose office was on the other side of mine from Elliot’s. Amber, honey-hued from her long smooth hair to her slightly tanned skin and beige pantsuit, was an adjunct teacher in the English department. A doctoral candidate at the state university in nearby Amherst, she’d had the supposed good fortune to land a part-time job at Enfield teaching one section of FroshHum. Neither Ned, chronically depressed since a nasty tenure battle, nor Amber, habitually taciturn, tempted me to make any social moves.
Dressed as usual in tweeds and tie, Miles Jewell stood by the podium, conversing in soft tones with Harriet Person, a senior member of the English Department and Director of the Women’s Studies program. Harriet had forgone her customary severe jacket and pants for jeans and a purple silk shirt. She had also forgone any hint of makeup, but her thin face with its large dark eyes was striking nonetheless, especially given the dramatic streak of white at the left temple of her otherwise dark hair. I was surprised to see this often antagonistic pair so deep in what seemed to be congenial discussion. Harriet’s intent expression and the chairman’s air of fervid agreement intrigued me. Without making a conscious decision to eavesdrop, I found myself wandering toward them. A tall display stand offered an oversized folio of local-history photographs through which to leaf. Thoroughly ashamed of myself, of course, I managed to overhear one enigmatic phrase as Harriet hissed to Miles: “I’m not about to let that s.o.b. screw up all my hard work—”
“Karen?” A hesitant voice startled me, and I spun around. Sophia Warzek. Sophia was my daughter Amanda’s friend and my former student—and a talented young poet. I abandoned departmental espionage and welcomed her with a hug. Sophia, blond and far too slender, wore the requisite Enfield cold-weather costume of bulky jacket, jeans, and lace-up leather boots. The heavy winter-weight fabrics overpowered her pale beauty. I briefly imagined a makeover for Sophia. Her almost emaciated frame would fit in nicely in lower Manhattan, I thought; with dark lipstick, eyeliner, and clinging layers of Greenwich Village microfiber, she would look every inch the part of the hot young poet. When she smiled tremulously in response to my greeting, the vision vanished. Sophia Warzek had a hard enough time negotiating the relatively uncomplicated social and economic life of Enfield: Manhattan would eat her alive.
“I wondered,” she faltered, “if I could ask your advice on something?” She clutched a manila file folder to her chest as if she were attempting to keep its contents warm.
“Sure. I’ve always got time for you.” I sat, and pulled her into the chair next to me. “What’s up?”
“Well … Professor Birdwort asked a couple of us in her Creative Writing seminar to read one poem each when she’s finished with hers. I wondered if you could help me choose. That is, if you have time.… I mean, I wondered … I mean …”
After much urging, I’d finally gotten Sophia to drop the Professor Pelletier and simply call me Karen. But her general insecurity and habitual deference to authority weren’t quite so easy to eradicate. Every claim to individual attention, every assertion of her singularity, took an enormous psychic effort. But at least she was finally venturing those claims, no matter how timidly. Her father was in prison, but the effects of his brutal domestic tyranny would always imprint Sophia’s personality. Like me, Sophia had grown up desperately poor. Like mine, her restless mind refused to accept the limitations poverty attempted to impose.
“Hand ’em over,” I replied cheerily, then opened the folder. The first poem was entitled “Birdsong,” and began: Lonely, the pond keeps its silence … I glanced up at Sophia, smiled, then turned back to the page: lonely, indeed. After two delicate verses on the separation of nature and humanity, the poem concluded:
I am not tempted by the cry of feathers;
wings flash ebony and red in vain.
Only one urgent bird pierces my solitude;
his shrill remonstrance cannot be called a song.
Incessant, he tenders his three harsh notes,
cries, “come away, come away, come away.”
“This is very nice,” I said sincerely, “this one’s a good possibility,” but before I could read any further, Miles Jewell tapped on the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, gender- and class-traditional as always, “it is my distinct pleasure to present to you this afternoon Enfield College’s eminent visiting poet, Jane Birdwort. Jane will read to us from her long-awaited forthcoming volume of poems.” The fickle beam of light had deserted Elliot Corbin and now illuminated Miles’s shock of white hair, his round cheeks with their high color.
Miles led the small audience in applause, and Jane Birdwort stepped primly to the lectern. She wore a pink suit, and her graying hair was curled as if she’d had it cut and permed in her youth—sometime in the late fifties—and had never seen the need to change her style. The vagrant shaft of afternoon sun turned the outdated hairdo to a radiant silver halo. “So very nice to be here,” Jane twittered, then opened her slim book. I settled into my chair, anticipating adept, sensitive poems about birds and flowers. “ ‘Doing Violence,’ ” Jane announced unexpectedly, and the first words jerked me to attention.
Night and day to cruise
the streets in my high red boots
screwing all the sullen gang,
cigarette hanging from my lip
like another fang, this is the silent me.
This one knows death,
reads the paper, thrives on rape.
But she is apocryphal.…
“Wow!” I said, under my breath. “Wow! Who would have thought it!” Jane Birdwort’s demure facade obviously concealed a passionate, and fiercely angry, consciousness.
“Isn’t she amazing?” Sophia whispered, her pale blue eyes aglow with adulation.
Amazing didn’t begin to cover it. I sat riveted as Jane continued with her startling verses. After the third poem, as Jane paused for a sip of water, I glanced around, wondering how the audience was responding. Harriet Person sat catty-corner in front of me, beaming in approbation. Miles Jewell, next to her, as their seeming new-found alliance dictated, frowned in puzzlement. Both responses were predictable: Harriet was a feminist scholar of modern poetry and had written a number of articles on the poems of Sylvia Plath; Miles was most comfortable with the Puritans. Then my eyes lighted on another listener. Elliot Corbin had focused on Jane Birdwort a curiously contemptuous glare, one that seemed genuinely out of sync with the powerful poems she was reading. It wasn’t likely that any informed literary critic—and Elliot was certainly that—could despise these poems, I thought. But, if it wasn’t Jane’s poetry that elicited such a hostile reaction from Elliot, what could it be? The inoffensive-seeming Jane herself?
As Jane Birdwort neared the end of her reading, Sophia began rustling restlessly through the sheaf of poems on her lap, anxiously scanning first one, then another. I sympathized. Jane would be a hard act for any poet to follow. The sweet melancholy of Sophia’s bird poem would surely be swamped in the wake of Jane’s passionate voice. But, when the applause had died down, and Jane called Sophia to the lectern, she went. For a few long seconds, she stood silent at the podium, clutching the chosen poem, and I feared she’d been struck mute by anxiety. Then she breathed in deeply, released the breath, and began. This was not the birdsong poem I’d seen earlier. This one was called “A Dream of Statues.” In a clear, high voice, Sophia read:
I know this place, this tangle of old night, this clutch of dark.
Rose trees sprung into a wilderness of withered hands.
(What strength our ancients grip, our briers.)
But, no matter. I float along this garden path more like a ghost, more like a whimsy, than a woman.…
Sophia had chosen well. This was a strong poem, almost in dialogue with Jane’s startling work, and the applause was appreciative. My student remained at the podium for a moment after she’d finished reading, appearing overwhelmed by the approval. Then she nodded in thanks, and hurried back to her seat.
Following the reading, I left Sophia to her well-wishers and headed for the Brie and chardonnay at the long table by the window; I hadn’t bothered with lunch, and my stomach was clamoring. As I spread a crusty slice of French bread with soft cheese, Amber Nichols sidled up to me. “Karen,” she said, “we never get a chance to talk.” That was true—mostly because I made it my business to stay out of Amber’s way. Something about Amber really put me off, something in her faint, sidelong smile that was annoyingly suggestive of secret knowledge. Don’t be judgmental, I admonished myself, you don’t really know this woman. Maybe she’s merely extremely shy.
“Amber,” I replied, popping a fat green grape into my mouth, “how’s FroshHum going?”
“Fine,” she replied, much too hastily. “Just fine.” Given Amber’s golden appearance, she should rightfully have been gifted with a rich, butterscotch voice, but instead she enunciated her words in a thin, pedantic tone that rendered everything she said just a little bit more academic than it needed to be.
“Uh huh,” I said. FroshHum, with its semiweekly papers, was a killer to teach, and everyone knew it. But Amber was probably terrified she’d lose the job if she admitted to a full-time faculty member how difficult she found the labor-intensive course. And, for someone in her situation, not yet quite finished with her dissertation, good jobs were difficult to find. In the current academic job market, neophyte English teachers were caught up in a merciless round of exploitation, often teaching four or five courses a semester at two or three different colleges for salaries that could most generously be described as exploitative. My own graduate-school career was recent enough that I was deeply sympathetic to doctoral candidates, but every time I tried to empathize with Amber, she said something so obnoxious she put me totally off.
Like right now, tossing back her silky hair. “Of course, bourgeois ideology in the neocanonical curriculum lends itself with particular immediacy to the deconstruction afforded by postmodernist pedagogy.” Amber flashed her supercilious smile.
“Well, that’s good.” I responded, inanely. “As for me, I’m totally swamped. All those papers to grade!”
The honey-colored hair fell in smooth waves along Amber’s cheek. If it weren’t for the faint, dark semicircles under her eyes, I would have assumed she had the key to all serenity safely tucked away in the pocket of her beige wool pants. There was a long pause. Then she asked, “Are you coming to the study-group meeting?” The nineteenth-century American Literature study group met monthly to share research and discuss developments in the field. Composed of scholars from several colleges in the area, meetings rotated from campus to campus, and often from home to home.
“Sure. Tuesday evening, right? At Elliot’s.”
Another long pause, then Amber replied, enigmatically, “Elliot’s. Yes, that’s right. Elliot’s.”
And speaking of Elliot, I could see him over the adjunct teacher’s shoulder, refilling his glass with the fairly decent chardonnay I’d only gotten to take one sip of. “Elliot,” I called out, anything—even a chat with Elliot Corbin—to get me out of this awkward conversation. Amber’s countenance altered from enigma to chill blankness, an instantaneous negation of all expression. But, when Elliot appeared at her side, sipping his newly replenished wine, Amber turned to him with her customary knowing smile.
“Professor Corbin,” she said, “how nice. We were just discussing you.”
“Oh,” he replied, and his tone seemed hedged.
“Yes. The meeting Tuesday? The study group?” Amber’s mask of civility slipped, and her voice abruptly took on so hard an edge that several nearby conversations ceased. “Karen reminds me that it’s to be held at your house, Professor. And I do expect it might be an occasion of genuine …” She paused. “… genuine revelation. Don’t you think revelation is an appropriate word, Professor?”
Elliot’s olive complexion blanched. He opened his mouth as if to reply, closed it, stood frozen for a long wordless moment, then spun on his heel and strode from the room. With each step chardonnay sloshed from his plastic glass onto the pale blue carpet, as if he were a Hansel leaving a trail of wine puddles instead of bread crumbs. Her odd smile firmly back in place, Amber excused herself and followed after him.
“What the hell was that all about?” Harriet Person demanded, abrasive as only a full professor can afford to be.
I shrugged. “For once,” I replied, “Elliot seems to have found himself at a loss for words.”
“Would that the loss were permanent,” Elliot’s longtime colleague replied, and reached for the cheese knife.
At Amazing Chinese I picked up a carton of General Tso’s chicken and headed for home and class preparations. In the car, I kept remembering lines from Jane Birdwort’s haunting verses. I’d misjudged Jane, I mused. I’d thought of her as a chirpy little woman of the type Betty Friedan had killed off with the publication of The Feminine Mystique. But Jane’s poems were genuinely passionate—vivid and immediate—if a trifle raw. Then I realized I probably hadn’t read anything other than nineteenth-century poetry since I’d come to Enfield. That was the downside of being a scholar; I was living the most meaningful part of my intellectual life in the long ago and far away. The twentieth century had happened without me.
Once again, the phone started ringing the minute I entered the house. I hastily twisted the thermostat to a temperature that would support human life, and grabbed the receiver.
“Hi, Mom!” caroled Amanda. Although she was hundreds of miles away at Georgetown University, I could envision my daughter’s plucky grin. All by myself, in that chilly, half-lit house, I grinned in response. I was not a total, abysmal failure with young people; Amanda had turned out pretty damn well. And in four—no, three—days, she was coming home for Thanksgiving break.
“Can’t wait to see you, kid! You eating meat this month? We doing tofu for Thanksgiving?” Amanda’s vegetarian commitment vacillated, and I never knew where I stood with holiday preparations. “Or should I get a turkey?”
“Sure,” she said, with resignation, “get a turkey. I seem to be into chomping flesh again. Just can’t free myself from my carnivorous instincts. And, besides, the stuffing’s never any good if it’s not cooked in the bird. And, Mom?…”
“Yeah?”
“Could Sophia and her mother come for Thanksgiving? I was talking to her last night, and things seem pretty grim at her house. She hasn’t been able to get her mom to go out by herself since they put Mr. Warzek in jail, and now Mrs. Warzek spends most of her time in front of the soaps.”
“Of course they can come. I should have thought of that myself. I saw her this afternoon.”
“Great! It’ll be good for Sophia to get out, and Thanksgiving Day might be the only possible time for me to see her. On the weekend, I want to—” She broke off mid-sentence.
“What? You want to what?”
“Oh—nothing. I’ll tell you when I see you.”
Probably none of my business. Probably something to do with a guy. “Tell me now,” I demanded.
“Mother!”
When I’d finished talking to Amanda, I shucked off my clothes, donned my bathrobe, gobbled the pungent Chinese chicken, and called Sophia. She answered with a thick, waterlogged sound in her voice that suggested she’d been crying, but eagerly accepted my Thanksgiving invitation. She even offered to bring the pies. Sophia had been a full-time student on scholarship at Enfield when I’d first met her. Now she worked full-time as a pastry chef at the Bread and Roses Bakery and Café to support herself and her mother. She’d been taking a course a semester, and was just about to complete her B.A. in English. With an ineffectual, emotionally fragile mother—an immigrant from Poland—totally dependent on her, Sophia was limited in her career options. As far as I knew, she intended to stay in Enfield and continue baking her delectable dainties at Bread and Roses. But I meant to keep an eye out for other possibilities. After today’s reading, I knew Sophia could make a name for herself in poetry even without leaving town. If she wanted to, that is.
On impulse, I picked up the phone again and issued invitations. By the end of the evening I had more guests lined up for Thanksgiving dinner. My good friends Greg and Irena Samoorian had begged off. New parents, they were dying to get the family holiday train on track, and Greg had already laid in the groceries for a complete soup-to-nuts feast. I hoped their twin daughters Jane and Sally, now a whopping, toothless, two months old, were feeling especially hungry. But Earlene Johnson, Enfield’s Dean of Students, and Jill were only too happy to sign on for turkey day. It had been a while since I’d had a chance to cook a big meal, and I found myself looking forward to it. This was going to be a good time.