Lost and Wanted(79)

Charlie hesitated. “I mean, I’m sure he doesn’t think it’s the best.”

I started to argue—or did I only think of arguing? I didn’t really believe that she would sacrifice her thesis and her honors designation in order to be free of him.

“So then he says, ‘So see you Thursday?’ And I wasn’t sure but I said I would, just to get rid of him, you know. And then I came in. Louise downstairs was having trouble with her stroller, and the kids were running around, and so I held the door for her, and maybe it didn’t close all the way.”

“Oh god, Charlie—what happened?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing like that. I was sitting on the couch, reading. He just came in and—” I was sitting next to her on the bed, and Charlie turned and demonstrated, putting her palms on the wall behind me, trapping me in the half circle of her arms.

“What did you do?”

Charlie took her arms away, releasing me. She leaned back limply against the wall behind the bed.

“I mean, did you scream?”

“No,” she said.

    “Louise would’ve heard you.”

“I know.”

“She would’ve come up.”

“Yeah, but I would’ve been so embarrassed.”

“That he was attacking you?”

“He didn’t do anything.”

“He pinned you to the couch!”

Charlie put her head down on her knees for a moment. I rubbed her back uselessly. I thought she was crying—we cried all the time at that point in our lives, over boys, midterm exams, the incomprehensible preoccupations of our parents—but when Charlie looked up, her eyes were dry.

“He didn’t touch me. He didn’t even say anything. He just stayed there looking at me.”

“Ugh, Charlie. If I’d just come straight—”

She shrugged, tired of speculating. “That girl warned me—Trisha. I didn’t listen.”

“You shouldn’t have to be warned.”

Charlie got up suddenly. “Just come with me to look.”

I didn’t know what she meant, but I followed her to my bedroom in the front of the apartment. I reached for the light, but she shook her head.

“Leave it off. Can you see him?”

“Pope?”

“He was walking up and down the block.”

“In front of the house?”

She shook her head. “No, over on Mount Auburn. Is he still there?”

I looked out to the main street, where people were passing under the streetlamps. Students with backpacks, but also people unconnected to the university, hurrying home after work. It was hard to distinguish faces.

“I don’t see him.”

Charlie turned on the light, looking visibly relieved. My room wasn’t exactly a model of tidiness either. Papers, problem sets, empty cups, and diskettes littered my small desk. My bed was covered with clothing, and the wooden seat in the bay window was serving as a home for anything I didn’t know what to do with, including the telescope my parents had given me as a gift, before I left home. It made me feel guilty to think of the money they’d spent on it, now that I had access to the much more sophisticated instruments at the Center for Astrophysics. Charlie moved it unceremoniously to the floor and sat down.

    “Jesus, Charlie—we have to call the police.”

“The police?”

“At least the Harvard police.”

“And tell them that the Elmer Blakely Professor of Comparative Literature is walking down Mount Auburn Street? Was walking down Mount Auburn, but has now gone home to his wife of fifteen years for dinner?”

“Tell them what happened.”

“Do you know who Elmer Blakely was?”

“A writer?”

“I bet that’s what he called himself. Class of ’02. Taught eighteenth-century poetry here, then went on to Illinois. A noted anti-suffragist.”

“Anti–women’s suffrage?”

“He published a book of essays—all by women, except for his introduction. Why the vote is too big a responsibility for women because of their ‘natural’ responsibilities; why ‘stay-at-home’ voters would make bad government; how states with male suffrage actually made better laws protecting women than the equal-suffrage states.”

“How do you know all this?”

Charlie gave me a rueful smile. “Pope told me. Or at least he said Blakely was a fraud—that’s the word he used—and so I was curious. I went to the library and found the book. It was incredibly weird, reading those essays.”

“Weird how?”

“Weird like looking at your own twat in the mirror.”

I laughed, but Charlie was serious:

“So ugly.”

“But Pope didn’t argue when they gave him the chair in Blakely’s name,” I said.

“Of course not.”

“It’s amazing they haven’t changed the name.”

    “Not really. They still have Agassiz Theatre, too—Louis Agassiz was a big creationist. And also into polygenism.”

“What is that?”

“All races have different origins, different purposes, so slavery’s okay.”