My Last Innocent Year(27)

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EVERY FEBRUARY, THE English department hosted a party for seniors called the Senior Mingle. It was always the source of the best department gossip and was always hosted, as far as we knew, by Joanna and Tom. But this year, given the circumstances, it wasn’t clear if the Mingle would take place as usual, or if it would happen at all.

When we got to Professor Connelly’s class on Wednesday, invitations still hadn’t gone out. There was a collective sense of disappointment that we might be denied the chance to dress up and drink alongside our professors as legions of Wilder English majors before us had done. These feelings of injustice outweighed whatever concerns we might have had about Tom who, I’d heard, had called in sick to class last week, or Joanna, whom Ramona had seen at the Grand Union late Saturday night wearing sweatpants and dark glasses and pushing a cart filled with toaster waffles, maxi pads, and Motrin. Or was it Pop-Tarts, diapers, and Excedrin? We giggled, like assholes, at the absurdity of these details. I hadn’t told anyone about the fight I’d seen them having, and the more time passed, the more distant the memory became. I’d seen Tom only once since then, standing outside the student center staring into space. I didn’t know what to say to him, so I’d taken the long way around to avoid passing too close.

It was a miserable day, rainy and gray, the kind of damp cold that made your bones ache. Room 203 was usually so bright we didn’t have to turn on the light, but today we did. Across the table, Linus was reading the newspaper. “Logs at White House Show 3 Dozen Visits by Lewinsky,” a headline read.

Whitney sat down and ran her fingers through her wet hair.

“If I’d known it could get so cold my hair would freeze,” she said, “I would have listened to my mother and gone to USC.”

Connelly walked in a few minutes late. His shirt was buttoned wrong and there was a smear of shaving cream under his chin. I blushed remembering our conversation in the library. I’d had crushes before, but there was something different about this. Debra always said that when it came to guys, “If you feel it, it’s there. You don’t make that shit up.” I agreed. There was something that passed between two people when there was a mutual attraction, a frisson. But Connelly was older, married, my professor—there were rules about these things. Later, I would understand there were not rules about these things and would run from inconvenient attractions, to a colleague or a friend’s boyfriend, as quickly as possible. But back then, I didn’t know any better. Or maybe I did: when I’d gotten home from the library that night, I’d taken Connelly’s handkerchief and author photo out of my underwear drawer and put them both in the trash can at the end of the hall.

“Let’s get started.” Connelly unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves and rolled them up. “Andy, you ready?”

“Yup.” Andy sniffed loudly. He had a box of tissues next to him and an insulated mug from which he took slow, careful sips. His nose was red, his cheeks flushed like someone had slapped him. With his coat on and wine-red scarf wrapped around his neck, he looked like a consumptive nineteenth-century poet. All that was missing was his garret.

“Did she just unwrap a Halls for him?” Whitney whispered. I looked over as Kara slid something to Andy, her smooth, hairless forearm barely brushing his.

Andy’s story was short, only three pages. I appreciated the brevity; last week, Linus had submitted a thirty-page excerpt from his work in progress, something about a serial killer stalking prostitutes. I’d barely read it. Andy’s story was about a woman suffering from dementia. Her name was Agnes, and she appeared to be in a hospital or nursing home. A couple of characters floated in and out—a nurse maybe, and a granddaughter, or maybe it was her son. The overall effect was one of wispiness, reflecting, perhaps, Agnes’s tenuous hold on life. It was beautifully written—Andy’s work always was—but something about it felt forced. Cold. I’d always found Andy’s work hard to understand, which I’d blamed on my deficiencies as a reader. But Connelly had been telling us, “You write for your readers. It’s your job to make sure they understand.” Also, there wasn’t anything about Agnes, aside from her name, that made it clear she was a woman and, despite it being a story about someone close to death, I was surprisingly unmoved by it. This is what I would have said about the story if asked, but I’d already decided I wasn’t going to say anything.

Professor Connelly opened the discussion the way he always did, asking for our “thoughts, impressions, biases, and confessions.” Holly was the first to raise her hand.

“You can totally tell a poet wrote this.” Holly sat up straight with her shoulders pulled back. I could never tell if she had a big chest or if it just looked that way. My mother would have liked Holly, would have said she made the most of what she had.

Connelly had one leg crossed over the other, like a figure four, his foot vibrating like a hummingbird’s wing. “Tell me why you think that, Holly.”

Holly pointed out phrases that were signature Andy, where you could see the work on the page, the effort it took. It reminded me of my mother and the way she’d made being an artist look—difficult and painful. It wasn’t like that for me. Stories and words flowed out easily. I was starting to think that maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

“The language you’re describing is poetic.” Connelly broke the word into syllables, as if he were biting it. “But I would argue that the language functions as a mask in this work. A way to hide from the truth. This is a woman at the end of her life. Maybe beautiful language isn’t what’s called for.”