My Last Innocent Year(10)

“Isabel,” he said, adjusting his face into a suitably grave expression. I tried to match it. “Just smile and nod and get out as fast as you can,” Debra had said. “Admit nothing.” She’d promised to buy me cheese fries when it was over.

“I’m sorry to say your name has come up with regard to an incident in the residence halls last month. You and another student have been accused of vandalizing a dorm room?” His voice rose to a question as if the whole idea was so ludicrous, how could it possibly be true?

“I spoke with your friend,” he went on, checking his notes, “Debra Moscowitz, yesterday.” He looked as if he were going to say something about Debra, but thought better of it. “She said it was a misunderstanding, that the three of you were friends, and this was some sort of a joke? Is that true?”

A joke? Is that what Debra had called it? “It wasn’t really a joke,” I said. “I mean, not exactly.” I looked down at my lap. There was a white circle of skin peeking through a hole in my jeans. I covered it with my thumb.

“When I spoke to Mr. Neman, he told me your friend had a habit of doing things like this, but that you weren’t the sort of person who would.” As he spoke, saliva collected in the corners of his mouth. “Mr. Neman seemed to think you may have been under her influence. Or something to that effect.”

I held my breath, thinking of Zev—Mr. Neman—sitting in this chair defending me.

“Can I ask,” said Dean Hansen, “how long you and Zev have known each other?”

“Since freshman year.”

“And were you friends?”

“Not exactly. I always thought he hated me.”

“Well now, why would he hate you?”

“No—more like, he hates the idea of me.” I shook my head. Why was I telling him this? In what universe would Dean Hansen understand the kind of Jew Zev thought I was—weak and self-hating and content to let other people carry machine guns to protect the Jewish state, which had taken his family in after the shah was overthrown and Khomeini came to power? “Where would we be without Israel?” he used to say. “Look at what happened to our people in every other country in the world, Isabel. You think your family left Russia because they wanted to sell smoked fish on the Lower East Side? They left because they were being slaughtered.”

Dean Hansen was waiting for me to say something, but I had no idea what. I locked eyes with the girl in the photo on his desk—his daughter, I supposed. She was wearing ski goggles and a pale-pink parka and looked like the kind of girl about whom my mother would say, “Why can’t you be friends with a nice girl like that?”

“I guess we were friends,” I said finally. “The way you’re friends with people here.”

“In any event,” Dean Hansen said, “Mr. Neman said he didn’t want to get you into any trouble. And in light of your academic record, I’m going to let the vandalism charge go.” And with that, he slid the folder to the side.

“Oh, that’s great. Thank you so much.”

“There’s just one thing I’d like to discuss with you, if you don’t mind. Mr. Neman said the two of you had had a consensual encounter that same night. And,” he cleared his throat, “if that is the case, it is the nature of the vandalism more than the vandalism itself that concerns me.” He raised an eyebrow as if to say, do you get my drift?

Dean Hansen looked uncomfortable, and I could tell this wasn’t the conversation he wanted to be having, not today, not ever. “Isabel, forgive me if this sounds indelicate, but did some kind of assault take place? Because the word you wrote, even if it was a joke … That is to say, if something did happen, of that nature, that’s something we would need to address above and beyond a simple vandalism charge. We take this sort of thing very seriously, you know.”

“Nothing happened,” I said, louder than I meant to.

“Are you certain?”

Admit nothing.

“Yes. I’m certain.”

“Because I understand this might be hard to talk about.”

“It’s not.”

He sat back in his chair and exhaled sharply. “Perhaps you’d be more comfortable talking about this with someone else. Dr. Cushman, for example, has more experience with this sort of thing.” He flipped through his Rolodex, freed a card from its slot, and handed it to me. I knew Dr. Cushman, knew of her at least. Her office, in the basement of Potter Hall, was where girls were sent to talk about their bad sexual experiences and eating disorders—the full menu of women’s psychological issues. I wondered if Dean Hansen remembered the letter Debra had written him the year before, saying that the placement of Dr. Cushman’s office was “symbolic of how Wilder treats women: it tucks us away in the basement where our messy female problems can be hidden from view.”

“Of course,” Dean Hansen went on, “I have no reason to challenge your interpretation of events, but something made you go back to Mr. Neman’s room and write that word on his door. And if that is not what happened … I’m sure you understand we need to take these things seriously. Because they are serious.” He folded his hands and smiled, a grandfatherly sort of smile that was stern and condescending at the same time.

“Dean Hansen,” I said, looking down at the card in my hands. I could feel tears pressing on the back of my eyelids. I willed them not to fall.