Easter Island (22 page)

“Nod, smile, tell him you like his ties. He can be a prick, but he’s the hotshot of the department. His angiosperm research is groundbreaking. Just remember, when he starts in on atheism, look really interested.” Jo widened her eyes, arched her eyebrows, let her mouth hang open—her parody of interest. She had thick brown bangs and always wore her hair in a ponytail, which she now tightened. “Remember. This guy doesn’t need to be lecturing first-years. He teaches because he
enjoys
it. Sick, huh? So play along. Try to lean forward in your seat—he loves that shit. You want him on your team.”

But Greer had wondered if she had cut him from her team with her poem.

“Holy shit,” Jo said when Greer told her what had happened. They were drinking beer at Jo’s apartment, and Jo had just pulled out two cigars. “Last year, a guy tried a deistic stunt like that and right in the middle of the lecture Jackass told him to gather his stuff, to leave and go sit in church instead. You left him a Whitman poem and he didn’t seem pissed?”

“He seemed amused.”

“Here, take the end off, like this.” Jo bit off the tip.

“Yum,” Greer said, spitting the end into the conch shell Jo held out.

“Amused. Uh-oh. Call the papers. I think Jackass in the Pulpit is interested.”

Greer paused; this had already occurred to her.

“Oh, shit.
You’re
interested.”

“I shouldn’t be.”

“Well, he is an ass.”

“An intelligent ass.”

“A mildly accomplished ass. I’ll concede that.”

“At least he’s not married.”

“He sounds pure dreamy now. Stop before I fall in love.”

“Well, he’s almost twice my age.”

“And that never happens.”

“I know it happens. It happens all the time. That’s why it’s less interesting. It’s a cliché.”

“Are you really looking for something non-cliché?”

“I don’t know.”

Jo settled into her couch and considered her cigar. “Cuba. We could go to Cuba and get real cigars. I’ve always wanted to live abroad. And what we really need is to get involved with some kind of revolution. We could be generalissimos. God, we would make great generalissimos. Or at least I would, but you’re a pretty fast learner. We could wear fatigues. Berets. Maybe keep the earrings and the curls. Now,
that’s
not cliché.”

Greer stretched out on the carpet, staring at the mildew stains on the ceiling. “Well, Castro’s not half bad-looking.”

“My God, you have odd taste. Number one rule of being a generalissimo, Greer, you cannot have the hots for the head guerrilla generalissimo.”

“Fidel happens to be prime minister now. That’s very respectable. And in my communist dictatorship, there will be special adjustments made for romantic relationships.”

“That’s not a communist dictatorship, that’s a commune.”

Greer laughed, and tucked one arm beneath her head.

“Well,” said Jo from the couch above. “Living a cliché is a lot better than living a deviance.”

“We’ll see.”

“Just remember, sometimes an older professor,” Jo said, waving her cigar before Greer, “is just an older professor.”

But, when Greer returned to Professor Farraday’s class the following week, it was as if nothing had happened. She arrived early in a yellow skirt and white blouse. She’d even put on makeup. In the front row, as she took her seat, she slowly tucked her skirt beneath her, but Thomas, reading through a paper on his desk, didn’t look up. Only as the last students filed in did he stand and make his way to the board. He was wearing his usual blue suit, wrinkled across the back; the sleeves fell an inch too long and when he wanted to write on the blackboard he had to shove them up his arms, although they promptly tumbled down again. His disarray perplexed her. Why didn’t this man have a suit that fit properly? A well-known scientist, the department’s darling—certainly he could afford it.

She knew he was unmarried, but now recalled hearing about his solitary habits. People spoke of his monastic existence, occasionally speculating about his love life, linking him to the department secretary, and to an assistant at the university greenhouse. So rarely was he seen in the presence of women, he was assumed attached to any woman he spoke with. Anything he did outside the classroom was cause for conversation. Mildred Ravener had once seen him at the grocery store, and when she mentioned it to other students, they wanted to know what he’d been buying. Something in the way Thomas carried himself implied he had no time for trivialities; he turned his attention only to what was essential, to things with the density of fact. And clothing must have seemed to him an inconvenience. Or perhaps Greer was wrong; his disorder might be the result of nothing more than simple arrogance. As if his intelligence were handsome enough.

When class ended, Greer was slow to gather her books—allowing him time for a hello, allowing them a moment when the room was less crowded—but he didn’t once look over. When another student approached him, however, with a question about writing grant proposals, he said: “Simple. State your credentials and your proposal. Don’t try to be charming, don’t try to be funny. And whatever you do”—his voice suddenly amplified—“for science’s sake, don’t quote Whitman.”

It wasn’t until a week later, when she was working alone in the lab late at night, that she knew she had his attention. Greer had gotten stuck with the two
A
.
M
. to four
A
.
M
. slot for lab time, which she didn’t mind—she liked staying up late. But the temperature had fallen early that year, the lakes were already freezing over, and the university hadn’t yet begun heating the buildings. With a rough wool blanket around her shoulders, two pairs of socks over her panty hose, and Elgar’s Cello Concerto playing on her radio, Greer was looking at unidentified pollen types, when the door creaked open. She wasn’t alarmed. She had a feeling it was him. Something had passed between them, a current, and it was as if for the past week she’d been awaiting this moment. His footsteps moved toward her, but she didn’t look up—she didn’t want to appear eager. A hand wrapped itself around hers and guided it to a warm metal cylinder.

“Fuel,” he said.

Greer kept her eyes pressed firmly to the ocular. A grain of black willow pollen loomed beneath her.

“It’s cold, Miss Sandor.”

“I have a blanket.”

“And it’s late. This building is deserted.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t think it’s safe.”

“I have heard rumors of professors who prowl the halls late at night.”

He chuckled. She could sense him exploring her work space, looking at her notebook, her taxonomy books, her pile of broken pencils, her radio.

“You like your work?”

“I love it.”

He adjusted the blanket over her shoulders, then retreated. When the door clicked closed, on the table she found a thermos of hot coffee and a ceramic mug.

The next night, he returned with a space heater. He said nothing as he carried the small machine across the lab. Greer sat at her microscope, watching as he plugged the black box into the socket.

“I liked your lecture on seed dispersal,” she said.

“Good.”

“I’m interested in cross-water dispersal patterns.”

He smiled.

He angled the heater toward her, flipped on the switch, and waited as the machine whirred to life. “There,” he said. “The dial in the back adjusts the setting. It sticks a little, so twist it hard.”

“Thank you.”

“Well, good night, then, Miss Sandor.”

“Good night, Professor Farraday.”

“Ah, Professor Farraday,” he mumbled, as though speaking of someone he had known once, and forgotten.

Thermoses of coffee, cookies and muffins, naturalist notebooks, lithographs, photographs. For months this went on; he arrived once or twice a week, in the middle of the night, always leaving something on the table. At times he must have found her asleep, her face pressed into the pages of a book, because she would awaken, bleary-eyed, to a gift beside her. Few words were exchanged—“You should eat” or “Get some rest,” always the admonitions of “It’s cold” and “It’s late”—as if the offering were conversation enough, as if the visits were the most natural thing in the world. It was as if they were a couple with their own linguistic shorthand:
Honey, lights. Door. The dog.
But she felt a slow seduction developing between them. As she sat examining grains of pollen, in he walked, a pioneer of palynology, her teacher, and yet, even when they spoke of science, the conversation inevitably became physical—it focused on the body, her body’s needs.

Greer now seated herself in the back of the classroom and avoided eye contact, yet she felt his attention even more powerfully. Had she discovered a mathematic principle: For each outward display of interest eliminated, inward interest was squared? Sometimes, during department talks, she would watch him onstage, beside Professor Jenks, Professor Mitzger, and Doctor Hawthorne, arguing and gesticulating with his usual bravado. Her thoughts would drift miles from the topic—the destruction of tropical forests, the extinction of the Mauritius dodo—toward him, Professor Farraday, or Thomas, as she now thought of him. In public he held himself with such authority, people treated him with such deference, it was sometimes hard to believe this was the same man who visited her at night with slices of apple pie. But this was part of what attracted her. The dichotomy. The knowledge that beneath his public self there lived a private, flirtatious self he shared only with her. And for now Thomas wanted the whole matter kept quiet. So did Greer, who never for a moment forgot she was the only woman in the class.

“Well, he’s either in love with you or he’s trying to fatten you up,” said Jo, when, toward the semester’s end, Greer finally confessed to the late-night trysts.

“I don’t know what it is.”

“But you like it.”

They were having lunch in a diner, sipping milk shakes.

“I guess I like it a lot,” said Greer.

“I don’t need to tell you that it’s going to make your status as a woman around here even weirder.”

“I know.”

“It’s worth thinking about.”

“You don’t think it’s a good idea?”

“Greer, I’m not the person to ask.”

They opened their books and began to review the material for their next lab assignment. “Sample purification,” said Greer. “I’m trying to get a handle on it. It’s taking up too much of my time.”

“It’s all about centrifuging. Watch each step, decant, centrifuge. It helps if you don’t daydream about professors between each step.”

“Ha-ha.”

“I’ll go through it with you if you want.”

“That’s all right,” said Greer. “I need to do it on my own.”

“I figured.”

“And what about the Wichita outcrop samples? Apparently there are some strange grains with echinae.”

“I looked at them on Tuesday. They almost have that weird pear shape of sedge pollen, and a definite echinate sculpturing. They’re late Miocene. The plant, whatever it is, has been extinct for a long time. I’ll get you a sample.”

“Thanks, Jo.” Greer flipped through her notebook, drew one last sip through her straw, and slid the glass to the side. “All right. Listen. If I deny myself an attraction because I’m afraid it will compromise my status around here . . .”

“Uh-oh.”

“I’m serious. If I deny myself something I want because I’m afraid it will compromise my status, what have I won? It still means I’m allowing myself to be trapped, to be dominated by the system that I’m not a part of.”

“That’s a positive way to think about it.”

“You think I’m deluding myself?”

“I think you’re in love and that feminist politics or anything else doesn’t mean shit to you right now.”

“He respects me, you know. He respects my work.”

Jo set her palms on the table and looked at Greer. “That should be a given, Greer. Not a privilege. You’re the smartest one in the whole goddamned program. You’re just a little preoccupied right now.”

“Don’t worry, Jo. I’m going to give it some time.”

“Good.”

“I’m going to take this slow.”

“Excellent.”

“There’s no reason to rush.”

“I’m totally convinced. Are you?”

“Barely.”

“Remember the barracuda.”

Greer laughed. “Jo, what exactly
is
the story with the barracuda?”

“I’ll tell you someday. But the details are irrelevant. The point is, you look into the face of death and you stay calm, you collect your own strength, and you tell yourself that life and death are in your own hands. They’re not outside you.”

Greer nodded. “Inspiring. Of course, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it’s inspiring nonetheless. Hey, someday, Jo, take me scuba diving?”

Jo turned the page in her book. “Anytime you want.”

At the semester’s end, when Professor Farraday’s class was over, Greer went to his office. It was December, the lakes were frozen thick with ice, and the city was dusted in white. From his window she could see people skating on Lake Mendota.

“I think it’s time we went out to dinner, or to a show, or for drinks. Something real.” She was in mid-sentence as she walked through the door, afraid of losing her nerve. “A date.” She lobbed the word at him.