Tenure Track (24 page)

Lewis breathed a sigh of relief that Dr. Stevens seemed to approve of his companion, if not of his delay in naming the mongrel. “I’m still getting to know his personality, ‘trying to figure out what fits him best,” he explained.

“
Canines are very good for the soul,” Dr. Stevens commented.

He agreed wholeheartedly. “He is kind of good therapy.”

Just as Sheila steadied herself on the curved handle of her cane, Perry Waters rounded the corner. “My god, what kind of beast is that?” the owner of three pampered Persian cats sneered disdainfully. Lewis could feel his blood pressure rise just at the sound of his foe’s voice. “Are we allowing wild animals to roam the halls now?”

Before Lewis could formulate an appropriate comeback, Sheila spoke up. “Sir, I’ll have you know that this is a therapeutic dog. He should be treated with respect!”

As expected, Perry mistakenly assumed that he had insulted a trained assistant for his ailing colleague. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I apologize, Dr. Stevens. I didn’t mean to offend.” Lewis and Blanca glanced at one another in silent collusion with Dr. Stevens’s subterfuge. Properly chastised, Dr. Waters slunk off for a consultation at Isobel’s desk, not noticing the glint in Sheila’s eye.

“
Come, Ms. Dejean,” Dr. Stevens ordered, with a tap of the cane. As she passed by Lewis’s shoulder he mouthed a silent, “Thank you” to which she whispered, “You give that dog a proper name, Sir.”

“
Yes, Ma’am,” Dr. Burns replied, still somewhat shocked to receive a sign of favor from the formidable teacher.

Trying to avoid Perry, No-Name spent most of the day in his master’s office, save for two classroom visits in which his noisy breathing proved most distracting. After Lewis returned from a meeting to find that the beast had chewed through one electrical cord and a volume of Richard Slotkin, he decided that he might have to limit his companion’s campus visits.

Still, he was glad he made the choice to bring the dog to school. If nothing else, it had offered a bonding moment with Sheila Stevens and a chance to tweak Perry Waters.
All in all, a satisfactory day.

They walked back home in the evening at a brisk pace. By the time they arrived at their destination, Lewis had settled on a name for his furry friend. In keeping with his affinity for the West, violent guy movies, and the dog’s unofficial moniker of No-Name, the choice seemed obvious. “Whaddya think, Clint?” he asked the dog as they arrived home, to which the mongrel gave an approving snort.

Lewis laughed as he unlocked his front door in unison with the arrival of a courier who asked him to sign for a letter from Laura’s attorney. Sifting through the legalese, he realized it was the official notification that Laura had filed for divorce.

Just looking at the papers made his head spin. It also made him angry. He resisted the urge to call his wife and tell her off for ruining his pleasant mood.
Halfway across the country and she is still making me miserable!
He wondered if she had specifically requested that they be served to him on Valentine’s Day, just to stick it to him further.

He put the papers aside and tried not to think about them, but they kept creeping into his thoughts. He wanted his good mood back, that happy sensation he had felt right before opening the mailbox, when he felt glad to know that Sheila Stevens liked his dog; the dog he had saved from death and for whom he had finally thought of the perfect name. He wished he had a drug that could bring back that upbeat feeling.

Looking at a photograph stored in his cell phone, he was sorely tempted to dial the subject’s number, but he stopped himself.
It might seem awkward, given the day. Plus, she probably has plans. Some hot date.
A surge of jealousy coursed through him at the thought. For the moment, he would be content to let Mandy’s smiling image bring him some comfort.

Chapter 13

Damage Control

The department office was unusually noisy, as a maintenance man worked to reconstruct the ancient lounge doorframe to meet current ADA requirements. Most of the faculty complained loudly about the racket, asking why there was no warning and questioning why the work could not have been completed over the weekend. Of course, the reality was that it usually took so long to get a work order request filled that no one dared send workers away when they presented official paperwork and declared
, “Tenemos nuestras órdenes.”
To avoid the noise, Jane had tried to stay out of the office most of the morning, but finally dropped in to pick up her written messages. One small Post-it note stopped her in her tracks.

Dr. Roardan: Please call me. Mandy Taylor. 555-9890.

Jane stared at the scrap of paper for several minutes. The last update she had received from Gary said that the legal department had delivered a response to Katherine’s formal complaint, using all the correct legalese. They had yet to present the case to the ethics committee. That would probably drag on for awhile, as nothing moved quickly in the college bureaucracy. Jane had met with the tenure committee a week earlier and convinced them to postpone a decision on Lewis’s application. He was not happy about the delay, but knew it might work to his advantage in the long run.

Now Mandy was calling Jane for some unknown reason. The Chair hesitated to return the call, unsure whether she should consult with Gary or legal first, just in case they preferred for her not to speak to the student one-on-one. Finally convincing herself that the administration was making her needlessly paranoid, Jane dialed Mandy’s number.

“
Hello, Dr. Roardan.” the student answered after three rings. The transparency of caller I.D. still threw Jane off kilter. Mandy thanked her for returning the call, explaining that she had to duck out of a class to answer. This girl sounded much more confident than the person she had met during the conference with Katherine. She asked Jane if they could set up a meeting together, just the two of them, but refused to say why. Jane felt a little uneasy about meeting alone regarding such a sensitive case, so she asked if Dean Jones could be present.

Mandy declined, but suggested perhaps Dr. Stevens, to which Jane agreed if her colleague was amenable. Hanging up the phone, Jane replayed the conversation, looking for clues as to Mandy’s motive. She sincerely hoped that this was not some kind of ploy to get Jane to reveal information that would help the other side’s case. She felt better about having Sheila present. It occurred to her that, for someone who professed no interest in campus gossip, Dr. Stevens was constantly being drawn into the middle of this drama as a mere “witness,” reflecting the advantages of being a listener among a sea of talkers.

The next day, Isobel strained her head to watch Sheila and Mandy enter the Chair’s office. Jane was beginning to wish that she had convened the meeting in Sheila’s office, so as to avoid the big ears next door. Mandy looked very different from their previous encounter: shoulders back, head up, much more confident than in the conference with her mother. Jane could tell she was still nervous, by her absent-minded chewing on a thumbnail. Dr. Stevens parked herself in one corner, while Jane sat behind her desk. “Well, Ms. Taylor,” she began, resting her folded hands in front of her. “What did you want to see me about?”

Mandy cleared her throat and looked directly at Jane. “I want to see how we can end this thing with Dr. Burns.”

“
End it?” Jane queried.

“
Ya see,” Mandy sighed, “this complaint wasn’t my idea. I never wanted to get Dr. Burns in trouble. When Momma saw that picture of him, she freaked. She’s a divorce lawyer, so her answer to everything is to file papers. That’s not what I want. I don’t wanna hurt him. Well, okay, I did, that’s why I posted the picture, but that was stupid, I know. Anyway, that’s my fault. I don’t want him to lose his job. He’s a good teacher and his job means a lot to him. I don’t want to be responsible for him losin’ that.”

Jane was impressed by the girl’s concerns, but had to make sure that she fully understood what she was doing. “But if he violated university policy, we have a responsibility to take action,” Dr. Roardan pointed out.

“
He didn’t violate any policy,” Mandy replied confidently.

Jane raised an eyebrow.

Speaking like a future attorney, with words well-rehearsed and carefully chosen, Mandy stated emphatically: “No sexual contact occurred between Lewis Burns and myself while I was an actively enrolled student in this university.”

Jane wanted more clarification. “What does that mean?” Mandy merely repeated her previous statement, adding, “Should anyone ask me to testify before any group regarding this matter, that’s what I’ll say.”

The professor could tell that there was some kind of linguistic hair-splitting going on, but she could not identify its source. “So you’re changing your story?”

“
It was never my story,” Mandy noted. “My mother filed the complaint. I didn’t verify any of it in our meeting together.”

This girl was smart, Jane concluded. Out of the corner of her eye, Jane caught a bemused smirk on Sheila’s face as the student out-maneuvered the Chair. The department head pressed, “What about the accusations of him serving you alcohol?”

Mandy did not miss a beat. “As I recall, I once gave him a beer from my fridge and a couple of times served him alcohol as part of my employment duties as a waitress, but I don’t recall him ever serving alcohol to me. You’d have a hard time proving otherwise.”

“
And the text messages?” Jane pressed.

“
If you look at the dates,” Mandy noted, “No inappropriate messages were sent while I was enrolled as a student nor while I was his employee. I do admit that, over the summer, I may have sent some messages to Dr. Burns to which he responded in a manner that could be misconstrued if taken out of context. However, it might also be considered harmless joking between friends.”

Summer. Ah, there was the hair-splitting. A crafty technical point that could be countered as violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.
Was this really worth the fight?

One last shot: “What about the videos you made for ‘In the House’?”

“
Dramatic license,” Mandy countered. “It’s entertainment; we make stuff up. Photos can be doctored too, ya know.”

At this, Jane accepted defeat. The girl had prepared a plausible explanation for all of the evidence. If she refused to cooperate, there would be little the school could do. At this point, that was just as well with Jane. She was getting tired of spending her time delving into other people’s personal lives.

Jane glanced at Sheila, who was still smiling slyly in the corner, then back to Mandy. “Ms. Taylor, by any chance are you going to law school?”

Mandy grinned, knowingly. “Yes, Ma’am. I take my LSATs this spring.”

“
It figures,” Jane sighed. “And you know that if you don’t cooperate, this case won’t get very far, but we still have a complaint that has been filed and the ethics committee may have to look into it. Plus, I’m not sure your mother will be as willing to let this drop. She threatened some trouble for the university in the legislature.”

“
I think I have a solution for that.”

Again, Jane was not surprised.

Mandy explained, “Sometimes in Momma’s divorce cases, the two parties’ll take their complaint to a mediator instead of to court. They get to tell both sides of their story and the mediator makes a decision that everybody agrees to live with. That’s what I wanna do. I want mediation with Lewis, to work some things out.”

Jane furrowed her brow. “I don’t understand. If you’re not going to pursue a complaint, what’s the point of mediation?”

Mandy looked to Sheila for support, then back to Jane. “Well, it’ll probably get my Momma off your back, which is your main problem now.” She paused, indicating that there was more. “Plus. . . ,” she finally admitted, “I need closure. Ya see, that picture of Lewis got posted ‘cause I was mad. He wouldn’t talk to me. I have things I need to say to him, but he won’t listen. Now we’re not allowed to talk to each other. Momma, my girlfriends, everybody’s pissed at him. But I’m tired of bein’ pissed.” Mandy paused and cleared her throat again, her voice beginning to crack. “I just wanna move on. All I want is to tell him how I feel and for someone to make him listen. Maybe a mediator can do that, ya know? I’ll take whatever happens and I’ll make everyone else accept it, too. I promise.”

The professor sat back in her seat, in awe of this wise-beyond-her-years young woman. Jane pointed out that Lewis would have to agree to the mediation, but if he did, she was fine with the plan. All parties shook hands as they finished, with Sheila hanging back for a moment. When they opened the office door, there stood Perry, leaning over Isobel’s desk. No doubt both had been straining to hear the conversation within. Jane made a mental note to hold the mediation on a neutral site.

Watching Mandy retreat from the office, Jane looked at Sheila and commented, “That girl is sharp.”

“
Yes, she is,” Dr. Stevens agreed.

“
Lewis always seems drawn to the smart ones,” Jane noted, “though I can see why it didn’t work. She’s way too mature for him.”

“
On that point I would agree,” Sheila concurred.

Jane then headed straight to Lewis’s office, hoping to catch him before he left for the day. He was just packing some books into his satchel when she interrupted and relayed Mandy’s suggestion. She thought he would be thrilled, but instead his reaction was rather muted.