Sticks and Stones Read online

  The conversation, which was stalled into silence for a few minutes in the vacuum left by Dalgren, eventually resumed.

  ”A couple of reporters have been wandering the building.” Denise rolled her eyes.

  “Here in Humanities?” I asked. “You’d think they’d be scouring the Engineering Building or something. Not to make wild generalizations,” I hurried on, making wild ­generalizations.

  “It is odd, though. What do you think they want here?” Arno asked. “What faculty are the boys, er, students responsible from?”

  Denise shook her head. “It’s hard to gauge. From the looks of things, it was a wing of one floor of the residences, and they are mixed in terms of majors to provide a cross-mingling of people as a better university experience.”

  “Well,” observed Arno wryly, “it looks as if the wrong ­people mingled.”

  Denise looked at him and laughed. “I’ll say. Something poisonous sprouted in that gang, for sure. I refuse to believe that, coincidentally, twenty or thirty misogynistic psychopaths just happened to move onto the same floor in ­residence!”

  “You’ve obviously never lived in residence, Denise,” I quipped, and we all chuckled. The laughter was out of proportion to the level of the humor, but it was probably a ­pressure release.

  I poured another cup of coffee before gathering up my briefcase and papers. Arno and Denise were still chatting, and I had a feeling Denise would have yet another admirer to add to her metaphorical coup stick. Poor girl, she couldn’t help men falling head over heels for her. Just as the rest of us couldn’t avoid lint.

  I was leery of entering my class, but it didn’t seem any different from the previous Thursday. None of the fellows was wearing a mark of Cain on his forehead; none of the girls looked shell-shocked. In fact, they all looked perfectly ordinary—a little bored, perhaps a bit hungry. I turned my back on them to write the journal topic on the board.

  I’d been ready with a topic on unrequited love, but something, maybe a residue of Denise’s anger, gave the chalk in my hand a will of its own.

  “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. True or false?”

  There was a hush, and as I turned back to my students I saw the look in a few faces that made me realize my class ­hadn’t gone unmarked by the weekend’s events. I had been halfway hoping that this wouldn’t have to be one of my ­battles, that I could just go along supporting Denise in righteous indignation and be done with it. Now I knew that I would either have to deal with the poison pen incident or spend the rest of the year skirting the issue.

  “You’ve got ten minutes,” I told my class.

  4

  EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE IT OCCURS TO ME that life doesn’t imitate art, nor does it occur merely to be a catalyst for literature. It’s not an easy concept for me to admit, especially when I watch kitchen sink drama, or read some post-modernist work that insists on listing the contents of Aunt Betsy’s medicine cabinet as an exercise in verbal futility. In fact, I have entire days where I walk about in a dreamy haze that makes me think magic realism might be how the world really works.

  I like to think of myself as a woman of the world, but who would I be kidding? I am so caught up in the ivory tower world of academe that I’m not even able to name all the presenters at the Academy Awards. I still think they shouldn’t have done away with the self-deprecating little introductions. Suppose someone from the Amazon Basin, or me, for instance, happened to be watching?

  What I’m getting at is that given half a chance, I will liken real life events to situations in fiction. That’s why it was so eerily right that we were studying Twelfth Night as all this hoohaw unfolded.

  I’ve always maintained a sort of sneaking sympathy for old Malvolio, even though he is such a stickler for the status quo. Although I know I’m supposed to side with Maria and Sir Toby and the rest of the merry denizens of Illyria, the tricks they pull on Malvolio seem beyond the pale. And, of course, the trick itself is in the form of an anonymous letter. Anonymous letters were beginning to get on my last good nerve.

  There had been quite a lot happening in the last week and a half. The university had come out with a statement that the perpetrators of the so-called “invitations” had been taken to task, and that two demerits had been placed on their records. Some reporter had dug up the information that it would take three demerits to kick someone out of the university ­residence. Since demerits were invoked only for fairly major things, it seemed likely that the writers of the notes could keep their noses clean and stay in residence through graduate school. When the news came out that the boys weren’t being expelled, most of the girls involved withdrew their charges. I could understand why. It would be hard enough going through a court case, let alone having to see the offenders over breakfast every morning. Apparently some of the fellows involved tried to show their better sides by signing on as ­volunteer security walkers for lone women leaving the library at night. I made a mental note to leave the library before ­sundown.

  So nothing was going to happen. Maybe the administrators were right; if nothing much was made of it, maybe everything would die down and we could all pretend that the ivory tower was a safe haven for mind and body. Of course, the media didn’t see it that way.

  The local papers came out with printed excerpts of the offending invitations, and laid out the page with a massive reproduction of one of the worst: a death threat.

  It read :

  Dear Gwen:

  We would like to invite you to a party in your honor on 7th B.

  Dress is casual, and there will be refreshments.

  If you choose not to come, we must warn you of the ­consequences. Sodomy is an equal opportunities punishment, but don't make a sound, or the floor monitor might give you a ­warning. You wouldn’t want that now, would you?

  Any hey, since you threw away your kids you won't be needing your breasts anymore, will you? Remember … shhhhhh! We can’t disturb anyone else’s studying. Or the knife at your throat might dig too deep. That might be a bummer as well.

  Yours sincerely,

  The Party Animals of 7th B

  R.S.V.P.

  I suppose it would be only natural for the press to make hay out of that one. Although I’d almost convinced myself that leaving bad enough alone was the better part of valor, part of me agreed with their exposure of what was beginning to be spoken of as “boyish pranks.” To call this sort of thing boyish was to think of Jeffrey Dahmer as being an eccentric gourmet.

  On the other hand, I was shocked that the university would allow the letter to be published with the given name of the girl addressed. This wasn’t Wales. Gwen wasn’t the sort of name you have three of in any given class. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever having had a Gwen in my class. Until this year.

  5

  G WEN DEVLIN WAS ONE OF THOSE STUDENTS instructors long for. She was a bit older than the rest, maybe twenty-eight, if I had to guess. She always had the assigned reading done in time for class; her questions were thoughtful; she jumped in to initiate discussion but never monopolized.

  She was interesting to look at, too. Some of my students have turned up with nose rings and teased green hair, startling fashion statements difficult to ignore when delivering a lecture on Pride and Prejudice. In mid-sentence I stop thinking about Elizabeth and D’Arcy and wonder how those nose rings would feel when you have the flu.

  Gwen, on the other hand, dressed well but simply, and wore interesting earrings. Not gaudy numbers, but colorful beads and intricate symbols worked in metal. Her hair was reddish-brown, not quite auburn, and dropped to her ­shoulders. Sometimes she held it back with combs, which made the earrings easier to admire.

  She’d come to see me in my office after the third week of lectures, when she’d transferred into my class, in order to discuss a couple of the essay topics. She was returning to school after a long time away and seemed a little taken aback by all the writing required. That’s what I liked about mature ­stude
nts; they looked upon university as work rather than a four-year bunny hop into the work force.

  She was pretty forthcoming about herself during our visit. She had recently left her husband and two children (boys, I think) up in some oil-patch town. She had found herself yearning for fulfillment, or words to that effect without the woman’s magazine slant. She’d decided to go to university, a step she’d missed by getting married in grade twelve.

  I was impressed, despite the initial shock at hearing she’d left her children. I’m not sure whether it was the gumption to break away, or the undisguised delight with learning for learning’s sake that got to me the most. Gwen wanted to be at university more than anyone I’d ever met.

  She’d got a partial scholarship to return as a mature ­student, and was earning her room and board by acting as a floor manager for one of the residence halls. I knew that because it was the reason she had transferred into my class. The English class she’d been assigned to had several students from her floor in it, and she was concerned that they’d feel overwhelmed and spied on if she seemed to be everywhere in their lives, so she’d asked to move to another class. My gain. She had done some admirable research on two topics on my sketchy list of essay topics. And that was the third week of classes! I wanted to clone her.

  We had discussed both topics; she leaned towards one and then we had left it at that. So far she hadn’t been back to see me, so I had no idea how the first two months had affected her outlook. I was intrigued to read her class journal, to see what she had to say about the more personalized topics I’d assigned.

  And now she was up to her ears in this mess. It had to be her. How many Gwens lived in residence? That bit about the floor monitor had to be aimed at her. Part of me was grateful to think that the horrific piece of garbage I’d read in the paper hadn’t been shoved under the door of some seventeen-year-old naïf, but mostly I grieved for the disruption to the joy that was university for this gutsy woman.

  The lurid spread had appeared in the Thursday paper, but I hadn’t caught up with it till that afternoon, well after the class that Gwen attended. They had all seemed so calm in class, except for the few who had forgotten I was collecting journals and left theirs at home. Either none of them had seen the paper yet, or she didn’t mind her letter being used. I was suspecting the former. It never failed to amaze me how out of touch with current events students could allow themselves to get. Whatever the case, I resolved to speak with her on Tuesday morning. Maybe I could take her for a coffee.

  I was spending the weekend helping a fellow grad student move, so I decided not to haul my two boxes of journals home and left them on the closet floor of my office. Most of my students wouldn’t mind a break from writing for a week or so.

  Having shot my weekend, I stayed at home Monday catching up on laundry and apartment cleaning. I lived in a cozy apartment building two blocks from campus. It had no security door, which drove my parents crazy the time they came to visit, but it made up for that and other deficiencies in sheer charm.

  A dim hallway bisected the building. At either end a staircase led to the upper floor. Six apartments were situated on each floor, mine being the small one at the back. I had a lovely view of the garbage bins from my kitchen window, and an envious view of the neighbor’s lawn from the living room.

  I cleaned both sets of windows as well as the one in the bedroom. The bedroom was just big enough for a twin bed and a highboy dresser. A small closet hid behind the bedroom door, but most of my clothes hung off of hooks on the three doors—bathroom, bedroom and closet.

  The kitchen was divided from the dining area by a glass-doored cupboard, which I suppose was intended for dishes, but which housed the books that didn’t fit into the five bookcases I had lining the living room walls. The kitchen itself was rudimentary, with an old, low porcelain sink and shallow counters. The cupboards were plentiful for the size of the room, but I was still waging a battle with flour beetles the last tenant had invited in, so everything was stored in jars, and all my dishes had to be turned rim down on the shelves.

  The best part of my haven was that it was small (easy to keep habitable), close to campus, and above ground. I had sworn off basement suites three years ago, and I had no intention of ever moving out. Most of the other tenants felt the same way. There was an old man in number 7 who had lived there for twenty years and counting; an opera singer friend who played Scrabble and other assorted word games with me whenever we had time; a jazz musician and his wife who threw great parties in their bigger front apartment; a movie director in the other upstairs big suite; a lawyer friend who would look over my freelance contracts for a meal; and a librarian and her husband who handed over their key once a year for me to water their plants when they left to do volunteer work in Nicaragua. I didn’t really know the folks in the other five apartments, but we smiled when we met at the mailboxes, and nodded to each other at the local Safeway.

  I often brought marking home to the apartment, but I ­usually left most of my textbooks in my office, which was, after all, only a few blocks away. I liked the ability to shut out the university. Not that I minded the work; in fact, I thought it was great. Although, in the grand scheme of things, sessionals are overworked and underpaid, it was still a great way to make a living, and I didn’t need all that much to survive. You don't need a power suit to lecture about Alice Munro. I suppose it would help with Gore Vidal, but he wasn’t on the 101 curriculum.

  On Monday night I sank into a well-earned bubble bath in the abnormally large bathtub for such a small room. My apartment glowed; even the old venetian blinds were shining. I’d sorted through my summer clothes and packed them away in the suitcase under my bed. Fiona the opera singer and I had shared a meal of “prostitute spaghetti” (a joke of Fiona’s I’d never really understood, but the dish was always tasty) and a quick game of Scrabble, and then I’d cracked the latest Jane Urquhart, which was so full of water imagery that a bath seemed inevitable.

  No goose walked over my grave. No chill went down my spine at approximately ten forty-five p.m. Instead, I cuddled into a flannel nightshirt and slept the last good sleep I would have for some time to come.

  6

  TUESDAY MORNING I WAS FEELING MIGHTY self-righteous that I was the first to arrive at the House. I started the communal coffeepot going and trudged upstairs to my office, which was once a very small bedroom. The living room downstairs had the best view, but Leo and Greg had to share it, so I really didn’t mind the cramped conditions in my private space. My students couldn’t tell whether I was there or not in daytime, since I kept the drapes drawn against the winter sun, which seemed to get in my eyes no matter where it was in the sky. In Edmonton, one spent the winter either squinting or completely in the dark, once Daylight Savings Time came off. Pitch black at four-thirty p.m. Of course, summer nights were bright and sunny, but somehow that just ­didn’t register in November.

  Regular office hours didn’t start till the afternoon, so I had left the front door locked. Everyone who worked in the House had his or her own key. I left my office door ajar to listen for Denise and Leo—Denise, because I wanted to talk with her about Gwen’s name being used in the paper and how I was going to talk with her, and Leo because he owed me five bucks.

  Leo Derocher was a wildly flamboyant poetic type, who reminded me a bit of Kenneth Branagh the actor and more of an old boyfriend who was now doing post-doctoral work at U of Toronto. I missed Guy whenever I saw Leo, which is odd in that Leo is devotedly gay. He lives by the code that nothing succeeds like excess, and postures uncontrollably whenever it might embarrass the faint of heart. He’s working on the Romantic poets, and is only ever really serious when discussing his dissertation. He holds the record for writing the longest comprehensive exams ever seen in the department, and can chat with authority about almost everything, including most contemporary writers, which is amazing when you consider the concentration required by his own topic. He always has a Gatsby scarf trailing around his neck, thousa
nds of papers shoved into his satchel, and never-matching gloves.

  Part of my admiration for Leo is that I secretly wish I could be that comfortable in limelight. I skulk through life, hoping no one spots me and assigns me yet another task, while Leo jumps into everything with absolute joy. Mind you, he is always broke, and usually embroiled in something shocking, or so he would have you believe. He sponges off his friends all the time, but if it weren’t for Leo coming to dinner, I’d eat alone a lot more often than I do.

  I was still listening with half an ear for my friends to show up, nursing my first cup of Colombian, and sorting through my notes for class when I heard the banging on the front door. My first reaction was to ignore it. Surely even first-year students could read the office hours notice attached to the door. When the banging continued, I drifted toward the stairs, assuming that Leo had misplaced his keys again. I’d got halfway down when I realized that Leo would be hammering out the beat of a Broadway tune instead of the persistent staccato, but by that time I could see the uniformed man through the glass window of the front door.

  When I opened the door to the policeman, I noted with mild curiosity that he was City of Edmonton, not Campus Security.

  “Can I help you, Officer?”

  “I’m looking for M. Craig,” he said, consulting his notebook. He actually had a notebook, just like in detective ­novels.

  “That’s me, Randy Craig.” I stuck out my hand, then wavered. Did one shake hands with the police? He solved my dilemma by shaking it and smiling slightly. “‘The M is short for Miranda,” I said. I never reveal that. Just goes to show how a ­uniform can make you talk.

  “Steve Browning.”

  “Any relation to Kurt?” What was I doing chatting as if this was a social call? Later on, I figured that maybe my subconscious was trying to keep me from jumping to the panic stage. After all, how many times do the police show up to tell you you’ve won the lottery?