“Well, um, we just wanted to say, um.”
Becca, a tall girl who took her emotions as seriously as cancer, wearing a baggy turtleneck over a baggy dress over baggy pants （Joke: How do you get into a hippie’s pants? Take off her skirt, first）， stepped up.
“Well, we just wanted to say, like, you don’t, you don’t have to, like, do the whole supportive silent wife thing.”
I breathed in, white-hot anger rushing up my forearms into my elbows.
Then Tabitha, in her mechanic’s jumpsuit, worn unbuttoned to the waist so that her bra was visible, stepped forward.
“Like, you’re this hot, brilliant lady. We think you’re really hot.” I could tell they prized their own opinion of my hotness, their ability to appreciate hotness in an older woman. “And like, it is totally unfair what he’s done to us.”
“You?” I asked
“Us women,” she said.
“Ah,” I said. “Not you personally.”
Kacee stepped forward again.
“We just want to know when you’re gonna dump his ass.”
“Cause you should,” someone in the chorus piped up.
Careful, Careful, Careful, I thought to myself. Careful. We professors talked about it all the time. Nowadays you must be so careful. It’s good, it’s good, we would say to each other. It’s good, that there’s safety. Though we all wondered what we were preparing these students for with all our carefulness, as if the world was going to continue being as careful. But then again maybe it was, we would say. Maybe if these were the people who were in the world, who were comprising the professional culture, then the world would have no choice except to be more careful. And that would be a good thing. People said this crop of youth was weak, but we knew differently. We knew they were so strong—so much stronger than us, and equipped with better weapons, more effective tactics. They brought us to our knees with their softness, their consistent demand for the consideration of their feelings—the way they could change all we thought would stay the same for the rest of our lives, be it stripping naked for male directors in undergraduate productions of The Bacchae, ignoring racist statements in supposedly great works of literature, or working for less when others were paid more. They had changed all that when we hadn’t been able to, and our only defense was to call them soft. They had God and their friends and the internet on their side. And perhaps they would make a better world for themselves. Their aim was not to break taboos, the way people born ten to twenty years before me, and, in a small way, my generation, had done. No, they worked in a subtler and stricter way. And perhaps it had to be so. And so Careful, I told myself. No anger, no personal attacks, just Grace, Grace, Grace.
The girls stood nervously in front of me, waiting for my response. I cultivated warmth in my chest and brought it up to my face. I pushed the warmth through my smile, letting it settle around my eyes.
“I want to thank you for coming to see me. I’m flattered on two accounts: for calling me a ‘hot lady’ and for the care that you’re extending toward me. It makes me feel hopeful for the future to be surrounded by young women who are as passionate and empathetic as you are.
“Sit down”—I urged them, and they crammed onto the couch and its arms, facing me.
“We all live and work within structures and institutions,” I told them. “We can’t help it. I work, I live, inside of institutional sexism, racism, and homo-and transphobia, for example. And the difficult thing to understand about these institutions is that we all, however aware of it we are or not, practice sexism, racism, and homo-or transphobia, even if we are female, a person of color, or homosexual or a trans person. And so I’m fully willing to admit that my remaining with my husband—not standing by his actions, necessarily, but simply remaining in relationship to him—may be a product of my own internalized sexism. Certainly how could it not be.”
“Right,” said Kacee, a band of saliva visible in her open mouth.
“That said, and I say this again, with such deep gratitude for the care you’ve extended toward me, that my husband and I have had a life together longer than any of you have been alive. And we’ve had agreements, and arrangements, and compromises throughout that time. And challenges. We’re now faced with another challenge. Both a public challenge and a private challenge. I know that you will understand if I beg for your understanding, and respect of my privacy, as I decide for myself, as a hot, brilliant lady, how I will handle my marriage of thirty years. Extending me that courtesy is an act of feminism in and of itself.”
Ten minutes later I closed the door to my office waving and blowing kisses as they beamed at me.
Assholes, I thought.
But their intrusion shook me. I am clandestine in general, most especially when it comes to my students, and they made me feel exposed. And so while I believed the case against John was both maddening and absurd, I regret to admit that my self-consciousness trumped my conviction. I didn’t like to be seen too frequently on campus in his company. And I had never liked him being physically affectionate in the office.
“Please get off my desk,” I told him, and he backed away, straightened up and addressed me as though I had been the unprofessional one.
“Did you see Florence’s email about the language of the department goals?”
“No,” I said.
“Did you see Tamilla’s response?”
“No,” I said.
“Did you see Andre’s response?”
“No,” I said.
“Have you checked your email today?”
“No,” I said. “I was prepping, and then I was teaching, and then I was researching.” He and I had long arguments about how available academics should be. He loved to answer all inquiries immediately, I couldn’t stand it.
“Well can you straighten it out? They need some diplomacy.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Unless you want to come to the gym with me?” He dangled his gym bag in front of me.
In years past, we had gone to the campus gym together from one to two thirty most lunchtimes—cardio on the elliptical, then a weight program given to us by a physical trainer we went to for a few sessions because we had won them in an auction. In Japan, there is the word nakama, which is most often translated as “friend” but, as a Japanese colleague once explained to me, is more accurately defined as “close people who do things together.” We used to value that idea and talk about it—companionship in marriage: doing things together—not necessarily having to connect, but giving our company. Our regular stints at the campus gym were that, as were our disciplined traveling and our attempts at cultural responsibility.
“No thank you,” I said. I now belonged to the YMCA in town. John knew I no longer felt comfortable parading in front of my students in stretch pants, hefting and sweating and bending in full view of their appraising eyes.
He nodded, determined to be amused by my firmness. Just before leaving he paused at the door.
“Listen, I know we aren’t really doing the entertaining thing these days.”
“We’re not, no.”
“Right, but I wanted to ask Vladimir and his wife and their daughter over to swim in the pool before the weather gets too cold. They don’t know anybody—they’re living over on Route 29 in some shitty condo, and I was curious if you wanted to be a part of it, or if I should ask them when you’re planning on being out of the house.”