Vladimir(31)

“He wrote recommendation letters and gave grades. He was responsible for their future.”

“None of those women suffered professionally or academically because of your father.”

“They’re saying they did now.”

“They’re reacting to a moment now.”

“What about the ones who wouldn’t sleep with him?”

“They came to him. He didn’t pursue.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, Sidney, I’m not sure. I haven’t ever wanted to know as much about this as I know now.”

“But didn’t it hurt you? Or make you angry?”

“The only time I ever got angry was when it affected our schedule. Once he forgot to pick you up from soccer, and that made me angry. Once he missed a dinner with the dean. That made me angry. But in general it made him happy. And when he was happy my life was easier. I am not, and was not, some woman staring into the distance and waiting sadly for her husband to come home. I won’t be seen that way.”

“I feel like you’ve endured your whole marriage being tough for the sake of being tough.”

“What do you want me to say? That I’ll divorce him? Maybe I will. But I’ll do it because I want to, not because other people think I should, or the ‘optics’ are bad, because there are things you simply don’t understand.”

“Like what?”

I drove past the turnoff for our house, making my way toward a country road that would lead me into a neighboring town and then eventually back onto the highway and around again.

Sid didn’t know about the doe-eyed student. She didn’t know about Boris the artist, Robert from the business department, Thomas the contractor. She certainly didn’t know about David, whom she was familiar with from departmental gatherings, and whose daughter was only a year younger than she. She thought I was a faithful, saintly ostrich of a mother, head in the sand, while my dirty-dog husband romped wherever he pleased. I remembered, when she was eight years old or so and found a lighter in my purse. “Why do you have that?” she had asked. When I feigned like I was puzzled and told her I didn’t know, she said, “It must have been someone’s birthday,” and warned me to be careful in case it lit itself by accident and set my purse on fire.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want Sid to know. Part of me longed to tell her war stories, tell her of Boris’s barn, the half-finished art more erotic than his dry, anticlimactic kisses, or Robert, always in his suit and tie when he met me at the motel room we rented each week, or the time I got a rash from the sawdust on Thomas’s hands. I wanted to tell her about my obsession with David and how our romance was so intoxicating that I was ready to leave my whole life, including her.

I also wanted to keep my own secrets. It was a pact I held with myself, a game. If I didn’t tell anybody about certain things in my life (notably the things that I would most like to divulge) then, like the men who hold themselves back from orgasm to preserve their life force, I would accumulate some inexplicable strength.

In the corner of my eye I saw Sid bite her thumbnail and tear off a sheaf, layered like mica.

“Let’s cut your nails when you get home.”

“Let’s?”

“Cut your nails when you get home.”

“What about Lena?” I felt her eyes scrutinizing my face.

“Who?”

“Lena the babysitter, the one I had growing up.”

“Your father never did anything with Lena.”

“Yes he did. I saw them, I remember, it’s an early memory. I came into the kitchen and I saw his head in her neck and his hands wrapped around her, and she was giggling. She saw me and pushed his hands off her. I remember I asked if he was trying to get something from her pocket, and they both laughed.”

“That was me.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“Yes it was.”

“I remember what I saw.”

“No, sweetheart, you don’t remember it right.” And I told her how when she was little, John had been groping me in the kitchen as he was wont to do, and she came in and asked that exact question. And he had said, “Yes, I’m trying to get something from your mom’s pocket,” and she had said, “Give it to him, Mom,” and he had leered and said, “Yeah, Mom. Give it to me.”

“You know how unreliable memories are, my love,” I told her, but Sid just shook her head.

When we arrived home, John was gone again. I hardly minded, though this was the second night he had left the house without telling me where he was going. Sid had a bottomless hangover stomach, the kind that can be fed and fed and never gets full, so when we returned I warmed the carbonara sauce waiting in the fridge with fresh pasta and eggs and we shared a bottle of Malbec. She went to bed and I brought my laptop and cigarettes outside. There was an email from Edwina, apologizing for failing to confirm our appointment, telling me it was a busy time, telling me how much she valued my mentorship, asking if we could reschedule when things calmed down. Though I had completely forgotten we were supposed to meet, I was slightly offended. It seemed unlike her not to fix a new date. But then again, I expected my students to have dips and peaks in maturity and accountability, and I wrote her telling her not to worry and of course, and signed it with x’s and o’s. An email from John appeared, with the subject “D-Day.” Where was he that he was forwarding emails? In the dark in his office? His face illuminated by the blue light of his computer? Alone in some bar with his phone? It was the date for the first day of the dismissal hearing that would decide if he could stay on with the college: October 20.