Vladimir(50)

“Not factually honest, emotionally honest. You’re a good judge of character. Think. She’s trying to disrupt you is all.”

“Should I drop the class? I want to go straight to a master’s program. I don’t want to fail—”

“No,” I said, though if I wanted to maintain primacy in Edwina’s affection, I knew I might be arguing against my best interests. “I mean, you could, if you didn’t enjoy it. Haven’t you ever had this kind of teacher?”

“Never,” she said. “Maybe I had teachers who said they were strict graders, but I could always handle that.”

“She just wants to get to you, believe me. I think you should stay. She wants you to prove her wrong. Think of it as a fun challenge. Trust me, by the end of the semester she’ll be in love with you. I promise.”

Edwina sighed, looked down at her paper, and placed it neatly back into her folder. She sat for a while, seeming to deliberate, and then without meeting my eyes she said, “John’s trial started today, didn’t it.”

It was the first time she had ever mentioned it directly and I found myself nervous as I realized she did, in fact, have opinions about it. “It’s a dismissal hearing, not a trial, but yes.”

She continued to look away. “Well, whatever you want, I hope that’s what you get.”

“What would you like to have happen?” I asked her. Edwina was so level, not inclined to melodrama or whipped-up outrage. Erudite and inclined to please, she always formally engaged with the literature in my classes. I thought of her as a rarity among her peers, someone who preferred succeeding to nursing wounds.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with me,” she said. Her face was tense and she was breathing hard out of her nose.

“Why not?” I asked. “You’re in this department—you can have an opinion. Everybody else does.”

“I don’t have an opinion because it would never happen to me.”

“Not to get into sordid details, but it has been several years since he’s been involved with a student.” I felt a prick of annoyance. How many times must this be said?

“Even so. It’s not about me. This is a white girl thing. White—woman thing.” Her chest heaved, and she turned to face me with daring eyes.

“I see,” I said. I nodded at her, and a feeling of dull dread opened in my rib cage, right below my heart. I hadn’t considered that she would have this response. If I interpreted her reaction correctly, this scandal brought up a different anger in her—an anger about a world of complicity between white teachers and white students, where they shared secrets with each other and patted each other on the back and sometimes fucked each other, all the while keeping students of different races out of their interior, intimate circles.

I fumbled, feeling the need to defend John, who was a cad, as I have said, but not, I thought, a bigot. “No, Edwina, the reason it wouldn’t happen to you is not because you’re not white—”

“Please,” she interrupted me. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t even want to talk about it, actually.”

“No,” I said, “I want to explain. Listen, the reason it wouldn’t happen to you is because you’re—” I struggled with my words. I wanted to say, “Serious,” but I knew the implications that would come with that—was I saying the women he engaged with weren’t serious?

“I’m going to go,” she said, and thrust herself forward in her chair, threatening to rise.

“No, listen. It’s because you know what you want,” I said. “He thrives off people who are conflicted, lost, adrift. You’re none of those things. He wouldn’t know what to do with you if he tried. And you forget—he’s a flirtatious man, don’t get me wrong, he has a reputation, but—mostly those women pursued him. You would never have done that.”

She sat back, crossed her arms and legs, and looked toward the door, shaking her head. “They were girls, they didn’t know what they were doing.”

“Do you think that about yourself? Do you not know what you’re doing? Is that how you want to be treated?”

“I know that I would do a lot of stupid things if I felt like I was allowed, but I don’t have that privilege.” I could see that despite her best effort, tears were once again pressing against her eyes.

“Would I ever have pursued a teacher? No,” I said, “but everyone has the privilege of having experiences and making mistakes and being forgiven.”

She sat back and huffed. Hurt dimmed her expression and she took a few deep breaths to calm herself. “No, they definitely don’t.” Her mouth twisted, dismissing me.

I knew I had made a misstep. The students she was surrounded with, all these white non-scholarship kids, these kids with so much money, they could make mistakes and have them cleaned up in a way that was impossible for her. “I understand what you’re saying, but they should, right?”

“I’m confused,” she said, though she wasn’t; she was using the word confused in the way so many of my students did, to mean they disagreed or didn’t like what one was saying. “Do you mean John should be forgiven? Or the women?”

I didn’t know what I meant, I felt turned around, my words weren’t coming out the way I intended. “I think I was talking about the women. But both?”