Untrue Love Page 4

  Ellie smiled. “You get an A by teaching me something. Write an essay that changes my mind, one way or the other, about one of the books on the reading list. Argue a point in class so well that you convince me that you’re right. That’s an A. I don’t give a lot of them, so when you do get an A in one of my classes, it’s something you can be legitimately proud of.”

  She looked around the room, wondering if she would be giving any A’s to this group. At that moment it didn’t seem likely. Already she could see three or four of the students mentally calculating whether it was too late to transfer to another class. Students had surprised her before, though. She wasn’t ready to give up on this lot quite yet.

  “All right,” she said, leaning against the podium. “Someone give me the name of a great book. Just one.” Inwardly she smiled as she saw the students grapple with the question; they hadn’t been expecting questions on the first day of class. “One title of a great book. Someone want to try?”

  “Ummm … Moby Dick?” asked a boy near the front of the room.

  Ellie pointed at him. “Thank you! And your name is?”

  “George. George Thompson,” he said uncomfortably.

  “Why was that the book you suggested, George?”

  He looked to the side for support from the other students. “Ummm … you asked for a great book?”

  “And you would say that Moby Dick is a great book?”

  “I guess.”

  “And why is that?” she asked. “What makes Moby Dick great?”

  “Because it’s on the reading list?” he answered with a smirk.

  Ellie held one finger up in the air. “All right, we have our first criterion for greatness: authority. A lot of highly-educated people will tell you that certain books belong on a Great Books list, and one of these is Moby Dick. Eventually I want to hear from each and every one of you whether authority is a reliable indication of greatness, but let’s move on for now. Someone give me another great book. This time one that’s not on the syllabus for this class.”

  Her question was met with an extended silence as every student in the room earnestly sought to avoid eye contact with her. Early in Ellie’s career she would have jumped in with another question or comment to fill the silence, but now she knew to wait it out. She stood with a half-smile on her face and watched the students impassively, mentally counting off the time before someone finally answered.

  A tentative hand came up. Ellie nodded in the direction of the girl who had raised it, the same one who had asked about grades before. “What’s your name, please?”

  “Kelly,” the girl answered.

  “What book do you suggest, Kelly?”

  The girl answered in a clear and confident voice. “The Satanic Verses.”

  Ellie stood up a little straighter, more attentive now. “Interesting choice. What made you suggest it?”

  Kelly answered quickly; clearly she had known the question was coming. “First, the author has a strong body of work,” she said, holding up one finger. “Second, the book deals with important themes of culture and history. And third, it was controversial, and the author knew it would be, but he wrote it anyway. He put his life at danger.”

  Ellie considered the factors before her. “OK, so we have three more possible criteria. The first is that we should expect the author of a great work to have other significant works to his or her credit. That’s not a necessary criterion, of course, because we can imagine some super-genius author who writes his first novel and then keels over from a heart attack, but I’d agree that in most cases a significant gift for character or narrative is likely to show up in more than one work. Second, Kelly suggests that a great work should deal with big and important themes. That’s an interesting point—I’m wondering whether maybe the greatness of the book imbues its themes with importance rather than the other way around? And Kelly’s third suggestion is that the book is made more great if the author showed courage in writing it. Any thoughts on that one?”

  One of the boys in the front row had an uncomfortable look on his face. Ellie gave him a sharp nod. “I can tell you have something to say. What’s your name, and what’s on your mind?”

  “Bruce,” he said. “I don’t think courage has anything to do with it. Just because someone wants to kill you doesn’t make your writing any better or worse.”

  Ellie raised her hands in celebration. “We have our first disagreement! This is how you’ll do well in my class: You’ll form opinions and argue intelligently for them. I’m already impressed with Kelly and Bruce. Who wants to be the next student to impress me?”

  The discussion continued from there, with Ellie jumping in strategically to prop up a flagging argument or play Devil’s Advocate when there was a little too much agreement in the room. Mentally, she was already sifting the students into two boxes: the ones who would do well simply to survive her class, and the ones who were worth watching.

  10

  LATER THAT DAY Ellie was walking slowly homeward down the tree-lined road that led to her apartment building. The September evening air was beginning to lose the humidity that had so troubled her during the summer, and she was enjoying the light vegetal aroma on they air and thinking fondly of the wine she would drink on the couch that evening. Being alone in a small city, she was learning, had a few advantages, one of which was that there was no one present who might criticize the lazy and slovenly way she planned on spending the evening.

  Except for the voice inside her head, of course, but she was getting better at silencing that one.

  Her classes had gone well enough. A lot of her students seemed bored and disconnected, but it was always that way. That was simply the price you paid for spending your working day in the company of people in their teens and early twenties. In each of her classes there were at least a couple smart, interested students, and that meant she had enough to get a decent conversation going. As for the rest, Ellie could motivate them by making discussion—every day, in every class—a requirement for a passing grade. As far as that went, it was no different from the way she had always done things.

  Ellie had found that her new hometown was not without its charms. It was quiet, for one thing—so quiet that she found it a little disconcerting. The silence almost had a physical quality, as if she could feel it pressing against her ears from the outside. Sometimes it was a relief when a car drove by or a dog started barking at a squirrel, simply because it gave her something to listen to. As time passed, though, she was beginning to appreciate the quiet, and even savor it at night when she turned out the lights and there was nothing outside her building to keep her awake.

  That could be a mixed blessing, however. No sound meant there was no one with her, in her bed or otherwise. For as long as Ellie could remember she’d had someone by her side, either friends or lovers. Now there were times when she longed for Jackson, wanting so bad just to hold his hand and talk to him about nothing. She had expected that she would miss him, of course, but she had thought that she would most miss his laugh, his smile, or the strong muscles of his back. As it turns out, though, what she missed most of all were the most simple and basic aspects of him being there.

  As she drew near to her building, Ellie noticed an elderly woman standing with a big, black dog on leash in the yard out front. Ellie gave the woman a half smile as she headed up the walkway towards the front door.

  “You must be the new girl,” the woman called out.

  “Excuse me?” Ellie asked.

  “You must be the new girl,” the woman repeated, walking forward and extending her right hand as she held onto the leash with her left. “You teach in the college, right? My name is Janice.”

  Ellie extended her own hand and took Janice’s delicate fingers in a gingerly grip, considering that other the woman was holding an empty plastic bag in it. “Glad to meet you,” she said, not really feeling glad at all.

  “So how do you like it here?” Janice asked, glancing back at where her dog was sniffing the grass
and turning around and around in circles.

  “I’m getting used to it.”

  Janice let loose a friendly guffaw. “I guess you have a lot to get used to, huh?” Her dog had finally settled on a good place to do his business, and was busily squatting on the grass.

  Ellie wrinkled her nose in distaste at what was coming out of the dog and the smell that was sure to follow. “It is pretty different from California. But I’m doing what I can.”

  “Well, good luck with that!” Janice said, slipping the plastic bag over her hand and reaching down to pick up the steaming pile of dog poop her pet had just left behind. “Let me know if I can help with anything.”

  “Will do,” Ellie called over her shoulder, not wanting to see any more of the poop-scooping than she needed to. She had never been much of a dog person, and had never been able to understand people who were. A dog needed to be fed, washed, and walked, and you could count on it to shed fur over everything, chew things it wasn’t supposed to, jump on you, sniff your crotch, bark at nothing in the middle of the night, and—if the dogs Ellie had met were any indication—fart with distressing regularity. Where was the up-side?

  In her apartment and with the door locked behind her, Ellie collapsed into the couch with a great sigh. Another day was done, and she had roughly twelve hours before she had to worry about the next one. Sixty more days like this one, and she could start getting excited about Jackson visiting her for Thanksgiving.

  She remembered the wine and headed for the kitchen. Outside the window, she could hear the dog angrily barking at something—a squirrel, no doubt. Ellie sighed and decided to listen to music this evening. With the help of her headphones, she might be able to drown the entire world out.

  11

  ELLIE WAS SITTING on her couch with her iBook open on her lap, feeling glum. For the last hour she had been hunting through the Zappos website for the pair of boots she’d need when the weather got colder, but she couldn’t find anything that was exactly right. From screen to screen she flipped through dozens of options until her head started to hurt. She missed the days when shopping for boots meant a fun trip to her favorite stores—trying on the merchandise, flirting with the beautiful and probably gay salesmen, and maybe stopping off for a drink on the way home. Shopping used to mean adventure and discovery and self-indulgence, but this…this wasn’t nearly as much fun. With a sigh Ellie closed the cover of her laptop and thought about getting something to eat, not because she was hungry but just because she wanted to chew on something.

  Her phone rang. She glanced at the front screen and groaned before answering it. “Hi Dad,” she said as chirpily as she could manage.

  “Hey, little girl!” his voice called out in return. “How are things in your new home? Are you all settled yet?”

  Ellie glanced at the scene that surrounded her. Piles of boxes, some opened and some still taped shut, were arrayed in heaps that bore mute testimony to the work she still had to do. “My stuff arrived a couple days ago. Jackson had it shipped to me.”

  “Great! So are you all unpacked now?”

  “Ummm…more or less,” she lied. “I’ve been a little busy, but I’ll be done soon.”

  “Tell me about your apartment. How many rooms do you have?”

  Ellie rolled her eyes. “How are things with you, Dad?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Things are fine with me, as they always are. But I want to hear about you right now. Walk me through your apartment. Let me see it through your eyes.”

  Ellie gritted her teeth in exasperation. It wasn’t like her father to take so much interest in other people’s living situations, but it was just her luck that he would call and insist on this little virtual tour when she was already in the middle of a bad day. She couldn’t see any way around it, so she set her laptop to the side and stood up from the couch.

  “OK, I’m standing in the living room,” she said. “The apartment has hardwood floors, which is nice.”

  “Not for me,” her father demurred. “I like carpets.”

  “Carpets stain.”

  “They keep your feet warm.”

  “That’s what slippers are for, Dad.”

  “You should get a throw rug or something. Those floors will be cold in the winter.”

  Ellie ignored him. “There’s a couch in this room, and eventually I want another couple chairs.”

  “Is it a sleeper couch?”

  “No! Those are terrible.”

  “They’re pretty convenient when you have guests.”

  “I don’t have guests, and I don’t plan on inviting anybody.”

  “You never know. I’m just saying you should consider it.”

  Ellie rolled her eyes again and walked towards the kitchen. “The tour is continuing through the dining area—which right now is a wooden table pushed up against the wall—and now we’re entering the kitchen. On your left is the stove and the counter. On your right is the refrigerator. Directly ahead is the back door, which I never use because the fire escape is out that way and it’s gross.”

  “Gross how?”

  “It’s dirty and dilapidated. The fire escape is basically a big, wooden staircase that runs down the back of the building. That doesn’t seem safe to me. Shouldn’t a fire escape be made out of metal? A wooden one will just catch fire.”

  “If you ever have to use a fire escape, you’d better hope that you’re just getting away from some smoke. If there are flames because the building is burning from the bottom up, you’ve had it.”

  “Thanks, Dad. That makes me feel so much better.”

  “I trust you with the truth, sweetheart. Tell me about the bedroom.”

  “It’s a room,” Ellie answered, walking back toward the couch. “It has a bed in it.”

  “And the bathroom?”

  “It has a bathtub! Why all the questions?”

  “I’m just curious. I want to know how you’re doing. You moved thousands of miles, and now you’re all alone there. I want to make sure that you’re doing OK.”

  Ellie misted up for a moment, and it was a while before she could trust her voice enough to speak. “Thanks, Dad,” she said, and meant it. “I’m doing OK. Really, I am. I miss San Francisco, and I miss Jackson, but otherwise things are OK. I’m busy with classes, and I’ve been meaning to get back to work on my book.”

  “Have you made any new friends?”

  Ellie chuckled. The question made her feel like she was ten years old again, and getting a call from her father during the first few days of summer camp. “I’ll get right on that, Dad.”

  “You should. Friends are important.”

  “So is fresh air and sunshine, and right now I’m going outside so I can soak in both of those things.”

  “Sounds good, sweetheart. Do you think you might make it back West for Christmas?”

  “We’ll see, Dad. I’m hoping that Jackson and I might be able to go somewhere. Skiing, maybe.”

  “Well, keep me posted.”

  “Will do,” she said. “I love you.”

  “I love you too, baby.”

  When he hung up Ellie stood at the window, looking out at the fresh air she was supposed to be enjoying. Instead she picked up her laptop and got back to the search for cute boots.

  12

  KAREN JEFFERSON LOOKED across the expanse of her immaculate desk at a graduate student who, she felt, should look a lot more guilty than what he had shown her so far. She had a rule of thumb that any student whose dissertation she was supervising should meet with her every two or three weeks, and yet this one hadn't shown his face in months.

  Karen scowled at him. “Do you have a new draft of that chapter we were looking at? I made some suggestions and I'd like to see how you handled them.”

  The student, whose name was Warren, glanced away in a manner that reminded her of a teenage son rebelling against his mother’s commands. “Actually I've been working on the outline. I feel like I need to change direction a little bit.”<
br />
  Karen sighed. This was not the first time that Warren had “changed direction,” and she knew that her role as dissertation supervisor was to help students like him stay on course as they navigated the largest and most challenging project of their young lives. She couldn't say that she particularly enjoyed it, though. “That's why I need you to meet with me more often, Warren. When you feel like you need to change the direction of your research, that’s a sign that you and I have things to talk about.”

  He looked uncomfortable, and was still unable or unwilling to hold her gaze. “I was thinking about something else, actually.”

  “Oh? What is that?”

  “I was thinking that maybe it would be good if Professor Stanton was on my committee.”

  Carefully Karen kept her expression neutral, even as inwardly she dwelt unhappily on the unappealing prospect of working with Ellie on the student’s dissertation. They would not have to meet frequently, it was true, but they would have to talk and reach some form of agreement, and even that seemed like an unpleasant and daunting challenge to overcome. Still, Warren was well within his rights in selecting members of his committee, and Karen knew there wasn’t much she could do to prevent it.

  “I suppose that can be accommodated,” she allowed. “Have you talked about it with her yet?”

  He shook his head no. “I wanted to clear it with you first. I wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t…that there wouldn’t be any issues.”

  Karen’s mental security alarm sounded, and she squinted her eyes at him. “What do you mean, issues?” she asked suspiciously.

  Warren blanched. “Well…I…the thing is, I was thinking that maybe Professor Stanton should be my supervisor. Because I’ve been reading some of her articles,” he hastily added, “and it just feels like her line of research is closer to mine. Plus I’ve taken a bunch of classes from you, and this would be a chance for me to get to know her point of view a little better. To make the dissertation better, of course,” he added lamely.