“Who IS
that woman?” Max wondered. She was
standing in the line at the campus coffee shop. He didn’t think he’d seen her
there before, yet something about her eyes looked so familiar. She smiled. At
him? He wasn't sure. He nodded slightly in her direction -- just enough so that
he wouldn't appear rude if she knew him, but not so much that she'd think he
was hitting on her if she didn't. He hated his inability to recognize people
out of context. In his position at Kentwood College, he met a lot of people and
really was expected to remember them. He occasionally wondered if he had some
kind of neurological disorder-- he was THAT bad at recognizing faces. He once
spent an hour talking to a visiting professor at a reception and was mortified
when he didn't recognize her the next day as they walked from the parking lot
to his classroom where she was to be the guest speaker.
But those
eyes were so familiar. He was sure he knew her from somewhere. A donor dinner?
The wife of the new endowed chair? That new hire in HR? No, he didn't think so.
He scanned his memory for all the women he'd met recently but simply could not
place her. Sighing, he turned his attention back to his laptop computer.
Checking
his Facebook newsfeed, he learned that his son, a junior at Kentwood, was
attending “Filmaddicts: Tarantino Festival.” He smiled, wondering what could be
considered festive about Tarantino. He checked 'relationship status' -no
change. That was good. Michael had some ups and downs with his girlfriend
Janie, but for now at least, they were still 'in a relationship.' No drama this
week. Maria, his tenth-grade daughter had recently changed her profile picture.
She replaced the summer theater camp photo with one of herself proudly modeling
her new Homecoming dress. He thought the dress was a little too revealing but
was voted hopelessly Puritan by Maria, with the full support of Michael and
Janie. Max tried to recruit his wife,
Pam, to his side but she helped Maria choose the dress. With no allies, he was forced to concede. Maria
was trying her best to look adult and seductive and might have pulled it off if
it weren't for her mouthful of braces. $7000 for a perfect smile and a few more
years of childhood. Not a bad deal, all in all.
He took a
sip of his coffee and glanced around the room. Now that woman was sitting at
the next table, facing in his direction. Like him, she was working on a laptop,
engrossed in her work. She nodded as she read, frowning slightly. He realized
he was staring at her but felt protected by the two laptop screens that
separated them. He studied her carefully, hoping that he'd remember where they
had met. She reached absentmindedly for her coffee, tipping it over.
“Shit,” she
said. The coffee covered the small table, endangering her laptop. She picked it
up and noticed the mess dripping off the edge onto her purse and coat. “Damn
it!”
Acting
quickly, Max pulled the last paper napkin out of the tabletop dispenser on his
table. He set the paper cup upright again and tried, somewhat ineffectively, to
wipe up the spill. “Hey! You're wiping the coffee right onto my stuff,” she
wailed.
Still
holding the open laptop in one hand, she tried to move her coat and purse out
of the way. Her coat dragged across the table knocking the cup over again, this
time directly onto Max. “Shit!” he said. The coffee left an embarrassing wet
spot on the front of his Dockers. “Jeez! Look what you have done! I was trying
to help you!”
She looked
directly at him, eyes filled with frustration and anger. That was when he remembered. Sally Mansfield.
They were both in the English Department at Columbia, years ago. She looked
different now- hair color maybe.
“Sally?”
She eyed
him uncertainly.
“Sally
Mansfield? Max Trowbridge.”
“Max! Oh my
God! It's been a long time. I didn't recognize you. You look...”
“Older,” he
interrupted. “Older, fatter and balder. But you look great!”
She smiled.
He did, in fact, look older, fatter and balder, and she did, in fact, look
great. Nodding imperceptibly, she
changed the subject. “It must be what, eight years now? What brings you to
Kentwood College?”
“Actually,
I work here. Dean of Arts and Sciences. And you? “
“I'm
leading a couple of workshops in the honors creative writing classes. Nora
Walsh invited me. She's an old friend of mine. And I am doing a reading of a
new piece.“
Max smiled.
“Well then, on behalf of Nora Walsh and the English Department, welcome to
Kentwood! Care for some coffee? In
a cup?”
Laughing,
Sally replied, “Sure. But you better put your laptop away first.”
Max ordered
more coffee for Sally while she gathered her belongings and moved to his table.
“Administration,
huh? When did that happen?” she asked as he sat down across from her.
“About 5
years ago. I needed some new scenery and some new challenges. And here I am.
Are you still at Springfield?
“Yup. It's
not Columbia, but I like it. And, I am very excited because my third novel is coming
out next month.”
“Wow!
That's great! Congratulations.”
“Thanks. I
am really pleased. How's your work going? I guess I sort of lost track.”
Max looked
down. “Well, the administrative gig is pretty much all-consuming. I keep
promising myself that I'll revise that textbook I wrote in '09, but I just
haven't done it yet.” Max's book was big news, even at Columbia, when first
published. “War over Words: Blasting the
Canon” was widely heralded as
the textbook for advanced lit courses. Those were heady days for
Max, but in fact, the book was the last original thing that he did, if a
textbook could even be considered original.
Sally
smiled. Kindly? “Yes, I am sure that the administrative work keeps you pretty
busy.”
“So, you've
written three novels now? “
“Yeah. I
had the first one nearly done when I came up for tenure at Columbia. I
submitted the manuscript with my tenure file, but since it hadn't been
published, it didn't count. I know they reviewed it though. My tenure rejection
letter was a pretty detailed account of why I'd never rise above mediocrity to
be a successful writer.”
Max took a
sip of his coffee. Her tenure case was coming back to him now. He wasn't on the
tenure review panel, but the chair had asked him to review her manuscript. He
found it to be stunningly average. Not bad, just nothing special. It was never
going to win any prizes, no Bookers, certainly no Pulitzers. If it got published, and that
was a big if, it would disappear into the black hole that consumes books that
are neither popular nor literary. It certainly would never have the impact of …
well … of “Blasting the Canon.”
Sally
continued, “It was really tough having to start all over. It took another 7
years, but last year, I finally got tenured and promoted.”
“Well,
congratulations on that!” Max paused slightly and asked, “Your husband was a
biology professor at Columbia, wasn't he? “
“Yes, and
still is. At Columbia, that is. Not my husband.”
“Oh.
Sorry.”
“Another academic
casualty. Bob was very close to his tenure decision when my denial came. His
tenure looked secure, so it made sense for him to stay behind after I went to
Springfield. The idea was that once he earned tenure, we'd try to find new
positions in the same place. But, in our case, distance didn't make his heart
grow fonder, or at least not fonder of me. So, he got tenure, stayed at
Columbia, and had an affair with a grad student." Again, her eyes gleamed with anger and
frustration. Suddenly, she relaxed. "Yeah, so anyway, I got rejected. Twice. And… I moved on. All because some asshole
reviewer who didn't know anything about me said that I would never win a
Pulitzer prize!”
Sally
sipped her coffee. She looked at Max who sat gazing off into space. Suddenly
ill at ease, he shifted in his seat, as if he were about to say something. She
looked at him expectantly and he looked straight back at her. Nothing in her
eyes suggested that she suspected his role in her story.
He took a deep breath, cleared his
throat and mumbled, “I've got to run. I've got a meeting at 4. But, hey, it was
really nice to see you again.”
Max quickly put his laptop in his
briefcase and hurried down the hallway. Remembering the unfortunate spill, he
ducked into the men’s room to do something about his pants. Glancing back towards the coffee shop, he saw
Sally watching him. Forcing a smile, he waved as the restroom door closed.
Alone in the restroom, he looked in
the mirror. The coffee spill was large,
dark and could not have been in a more embarrassing place. First, he tried to dry the spot with a paper
towel. No impact. He then dampened a paper towel to clean the
front of his pants. No improvement. Finally, he stood in front of the hand dryer,
trying to position the spot under the nozzle. It would probably leave a big
ring around his fly, but dry had to be better than wet. He faced the hand dryer,
bending his knees. He turned sideways.
He did squats. He jumped up and down. He leaned back thrusting his pelvis toward
the nozzle. His efforts were in vain; the hand dryer was not positioned to
effectively dry trousers. He kept
trying. He had a meeting with a student group and could hardly stand in front
of them with a big wet spot over his fly.
The door opened, startling
Max. He turned towards the door.
“Max? What on earth are you… My God! What happened? Oh wait, I know what happened, but...!” Jeff Stanley, the chair of the history
department stifled a laugh.
“No, no, it’s not what it looks like” Max said, “I ran into an old colleague at
the coffee shop and she spilled her coffee on me. Not on purpose. At least I don’t think it was on
purpose. But I need to clean up before the student
meeting that starts in exactly…” He looked at his watch. “7 minutes.”
“Don’t you keep a spare suit in
your office?” Jeff, asked.
Max shook his head. Leave it to Jeff to always be prepared. An Eagle Scout, no doubt. “No, I have a spare shirt and a couple ties,
but no pants. I mean, how often do you need a spare pair of pants?”
“Well, I haven’t needed them yet,
but I do have a pair. 36 waist. You?”
“On a good day. And let’s hope this is a good day. Can you
bring them here?”
“Sure, I’ll go get them... but…” Jeff turned toward the urinal while Max
continued his slow dance with the hand dryer.
A few minutes later, Jeff returned
with his pants. Max pulled them on but
no matter how vigorously he sucked in his gut, the pants were not going to
button. Clearly not a good day. Desperate with no other choices, Max left his
shirt untucked to cover the unclasped waistband. There was nothing to do about the inseam that
was at least 2 inches too short. But unclasped
high waters were definitely better than wet spots. Besides Max had on a great pair of socks.
Picking up his briefcase, but
leaving his questionable pants hanging in a stall, Max left the restroom. Glancing back, he saw Sally and Nora sitting
together and laughing. He desperately
wanted to believe that not he, his pants or his stalled career was the
punchline of the joke they shared.
“I hadn’t thought about Max
Trowbridge in years,” Sally told Nora.
“I had no idea he was here at Kentwood.
He was so full of himself, especially after his textbook was adopted by
the entire SUNY system. He even had
tee-shirts made with a picture of a cannon shooting cannonballs at a stack of
literary classics. On the back it said
“Maxwell Trowbridge, Canonblaster.” He gave one to every grad student and
English professor. He personally signed each one with a sharpie.”
Nora laughed. She didn’t know Max all that well, but she
just could not imagine him wearing a tee shirt, let alone distributing
autographed ones!
“Really, his ego was the size of the
Empire State Building, but he wasn’t a terrible person. His grad students liked
him and he had some good advice on finding a new position when my tenure denial
came through. I was so angry at first, but he helped me land my job at
Springfield. I wonder why he left
Columbia. Seems like he had a pretty
good gig in New York.”
Nora shrugged. “He came here before I
did. In fact, he hired me. He has been helpful these last few years,
helping me find journals to publish my stories.
Two were published last year; one in Antioch Review and one in The
Threepenny Review. No one gets rich
publishing short stories, but I hope to get tenure that way.”
Max entered the small classroom
where he was hosting an open forum for students. The room was already filled and some students
were standing around the perimeter. His
associate dean, Kaiyo Sato was already there, chatting with a few of the
students from the Physics Department.
Seeing Max, Kaiyo rushed to the
door. Quietly, she said, “Max, I was
wondering what happened to you. You’re
late.” Looking down, she added “And you are
sporting a whole new style.”
Glaring at her, Max walked into the
classroom and grabbed a chair. Sitting in front of the students, he began, “As
you know, I come to these meeting with no agenda. This is your time to ask me whatever you
want, so I ask you, what are you thinking about? What questions do you have? What do you want us to know?”
As always, an awkward silence
ensued as no one wanted to be the first to speak. But finally questions started coming.
Parking. As
always. Students at Kentwood ALWAYS
complain about parking. Clearly, they
have never been to Columbia!
Rumors of department closures. More
common lately.
The New York Times print
subscription. Students were unhappy when the administration discontinued the free
print copies that were distributed across campus, telling students to instead use
the online edition through the library.
Max liked the print copies too, but going digital saved about $25,000
per year. That savings allowed the
library to maintain the exorbitant Elsevier subscriptions.
Free feminine products in the
women’s bathrooms. Really? Is that
expected of a college these days? Kaiyo came to the rescue. “This is already under consideration by
Campus facilities”
Parking. Again.
Extended library hours. Max could
definitely get behind that one. He replied,”Great idea. I will have Dr. Sato look into that for you.”
Finally, with about one minute of
the hour left. one student, a senior, asked “Dean Trowbridge? Ummm….Nice pants… I mean… Great socks!” Max smiled.
“Thanks,” he replied.
Back at the dean’s office, Kaiyo
asked, “Max, what on earth happened?
Your pants…they look like they belong to …”
“Jeff Stanley? As a matter of fact, they
do. I was in the Daily Grind and ran into an old colleague and she spilled her
coffee on me. I couldn’t go to the
student session with a spot here,” he pointed to his crotch, “so he rescued me.
Sort of.
Kaiyo laughed, “The tie with the
wrinkled shirttails is a nice look!”
“Yeah, right. Anyway, it seems that Nora Walsh invited this
novelist to campus. Sally Mansfield. I
am sure you’ve never heard of her. She was junior faculty at Columbia when I
was there, but didn’t get tenure. Her
work was just not very…”
“You know Sally? She is doing a
reading of some of her work tonight at Willard Hall. I encouraged my students to go; the
pre-publication reviews of her new novel are outstanding and I am hoping she'll give us a preview!"
"Your students? Physics students?”
“Yes, Physics students. We do know how to read, you know. AND as an
added bonus, we can do math.”
“Funny. That isn’t what I meant, but what interest would they have in Sally
Mansfield’s work?”
“Her newest novel explores human
existence, death and behavior in probabilistic terms, drawing on parallels to
modern physics and cosmology. She tells
deeply human stories, with the underlying premise is that humans are essentially
sub-atomic particles in a vast unknowable universe, subject to a set of
complex, but defined rules.”
“So, now she is writing science fiction?” Max chortled dismissively. “By the way, did I
know she was coming?
Sally checked her watch. “ I
assumed you knew. Anyway, it is time for
me to gather the troops. The Physics and
English faculty are taking her to dinner tonight. And yes, you are paying. But seriously, you should come to her
presentation. She’s amazing. I’ll even give you extra credit,” Kaiyo teased.
“Just like I give my students, although you’ll have to write a one-page summary
of her presentation.”
“Gee thanks,” Max replied. “Does it have to be on graph paper?”
Max retreated to his office. He pulled up his calendar and saw that there
were three events that evening. A donor
appreciation reception at 6:00, a senior voice recital at 7:30 and Sally
Mansfield’s talk at 8:00. How had he not
seen that before? He called Pam to tell
her that he wouldn’t be home for dinner.
“What else is new?” she said. “Really, you need to find some way to share
your calendar with me. Anyplace I need
to be?”
“Well, there is a donor reception
at the Alumni house at 6, and an English department visiting scholar at 8. Also a voice recital, but I don’t think I can
get to that. I should at least stop by
the other two, but I will probably slip out the back of the visiting scholar
talk once it starts. I am always happy
when you are here, but it is really up to you. I know you get tired of all the
evening events”
“Yeah, sometimes I do.” Pam agreed.
“But tonight, Maria is out at a basketball game, so it’s just me and your cat.”
“My cat?” Max asked.
“Yes, YOUR cat. She hacked up three hairballs on the new
carpet and hid a dead mouse under my yoga mat. So yeah, YOUR cat.”
Pam considered her options—a lonely
evening in the empty house with an evil cat or smiling at potential donors. “I’ll come.
I’ll be fashionably late. 6:30
ok?”
Max smiled, glad she was joining him.
“Can you make it 6:15? And ummm,
speaking of fashion. Can you bring me a
pair of pants? I’ll explain when you get
here. Meet me in my office ok?”
Max tried to review departmental
budgets, but his thoughts kept returning to Sally Mansfield and her three
novels. THREE!?! He googled her name and found not just the
three novels but a slew of essays and short stories, including one that
appeared in the New Yorker a year ago. Kaiyo was right. Her reviews were outstanding. Her first novel was heralded as “a brilliant
debut by a soon-to-be important voice in American literature.” “Mansfield depicts the grittiness of human
relationships with candor, humor and compassion.” And her second novel, “with this new novel,
Mansfield proves that she is not a one-hit wonder. With words as her scalpel,
she explores social class with surgical precision, cleanly exposing the wounds,
but still leaving us hope that these wounds can heal.”
Sighing, Max pulls his lit textbook
off the shelf. Published ten years
ago. Written twelve years ago. He flips through the pages, woefully out of
date. His thoughts returned to the
reviews of Sally’s novels. “Brilliant debut? “soon-to-be important voice?” Well, she must have had one hell of an
editor—the draft he read was neither brilliant nor were there any hints of an
important voice. About his own book,
still in his hands, well, next week, maybe he’d outline the sequel. Hmmm.. canon blaster should be followed by something
even more powerful… nuclear meltdown?
Rocket fire? Or maybe more laser
focused. He’d have to look up something
about lasers. Kaiyo can help. He knew there was SOME reason he hired a physicist
to be his assistant dean.
The auditorium was nearly full when
Max and Pam arrived for Sally’s reading.
Max was glad to see so many students in attendance. The Physics and English departments did a great
job getting the students out for events. There would be a lot of extra credit
points earned for sure. In addition to the students, quite a few of the college
faculty came too along with a surprising number of community members. Maybe Sally Mansfield was a bigger deal than
he thought.
Nora began her introduction. “I am so thrilled to introduce Dr. Sally
Mansfield, author of two successful novels along with numerous short stories
and essays. Her newest novel, “If by
Chance” will be out next month. As you can see in her bio, she graduated summa
cum laude from the University of Massachusetts with a double major in English Literature
and Physics. She completed a doctorate
in Literature, with a focus on contemporary women writers before enrolling in
the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She began
her academic career at Columbia University and now holds the position of
Associate Professor of English at Springfield College. Tonight, she will read excerpts from her
recent essays and stories. I am hoping
she’ll give us a sneak preview of her new novel as well. After her
presentation, she will be happy to take questions from the audience.”
Sally walked confidently to the podium and began:
of 7.6 billion persons on one of
eight planets that revolves around one of the 100 billion stars in the
Consider
this: You one out of about 8 billion
persons on one of eight planets that revolves around one of the 100 billion stars
in the Milky Way galaxy which is one galaxy in over 100 billion galaxies in the
universe.
Your
mass represents about 2 x 10-49 % of the known mass of the
universe.
Sally
projected a slide that said:
2x10-49%=0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002%
Your
mass is so inconsequential, your existence so unlikely that if I were a
statistician, I would say with great confidence that you do not exist.
But
you do. Did you ever wonder why?
And
did you ever wonder why we humans think the universe exists to serve us?