The Woman in the Fifth (25 page)

'There were a lot of people swirling around Robson that night, but Susan did manage to spend some time talking with him. Only later did I realize that there was a moment when I saw their eyes meet . . .'

'How romantic.'

'I thought nothing of it at the time. On the way home, Susan's only comment about him was, "He's not bad . . . for a Republican."'

'Around a week or so later, she came home and told me she now had a private drama student – some local highschool junior who was trying to get into the Julliard acting program. She said she'd be doing intensive dramatic training with her every Tuesday and Thursday from four to six.'

'And you didn't suspect anything?'

'No. Maybe that was completely naive of me, but there you go. I was simply happy that Susan had something to do with herself.'

'My, my, you were so trusting.'

'I just wanted my wife to stop being so bitter and selfloathing and, in turn, critical of me. The thing was, once she started to "teach" this private course, her spirits began to improve. Susan even began to sleep with me again. On the surface, things were better between us. Until something curious happened. Out of nowhere, the woman who replaced Susan in the Drama Department left to take a job offer at another college. Susan was offered a one-year contract to replace her.'

'Engineered by the Dean of the Faculty.'

'Once again, I suspected nothing. Susan was naturally thrilled. Once back teaching she seemed to mend her ways. No more of the old aggression or perfectionism toward her students or the other faculty members. Instead, she was a real "team player" . . .'

'A transformation also brought about under the tutelage of the Dean of the Faculty.'

'Well, all tracks were so carefully covered that I still had no knowledge that she had a "
jardin secret
". Even the following year, when she was suddenly promoted and actually became a tenured professor, I still didn't suspect . . .'

'Did others?'

'Being a small college, I'm sure there was a lot of talk about this promotion – because it's absolutely unprecedented for someone who has been denied tenure to suddenly get a second chance. Still, I heard nothing of this talk – because the rule of gossip is that you don't tell the person being gossiped about that they are the subject of whisperwhisper talk. But, as I found out from a faculty friend much later on, their liaison didn't become official until well after my—'

'Downfall?' she asked, finishing the sentence.

'Yes – after my downfall.'

'And that came about . . . ?'

'When I met a student named Shelley. But before I turn to that . . .'

'Susan gets her tenured job – and suddenly the domestic balance of power shifts again? She becomes arrogant and very preoccupied and busy, and begins to push you away?'

'Bull's-eye. Now that she too was a tenured professor, Susan started playing the arrogance card. As in, telling me that her time was now more important than mine, and that I had to be at home every day at four when Megan got home from school. And she stopped wanting to have sex with me. Or we'd be in the middle of the act and she'd push me away and say something like, "You're useless."'

'Charming.'

'That was one of the milder things she hurled at me. One night, mid-act, she grabbed my head in both her hands and looked up at me and said, "Do you have any idea how boring this all is?"'

'Did you think it boring?'

'Not particularly – but she let it be known that I now turned her off.'

'So she made you feel unwanted, unloved and all that. And you still didn't suspect . . . ?'

'Of course I suspected
something
. I even came out one night and asked her if she was having an affair. You know what her response was: "I should be so lucky."'

'And you still –
still!
– didn't suspect?'

'I was naive, OK? Or maybe I just didn't want to really see what was going on.'

'And then this Shelley student came into your life?'

'Shelley Sutton. From Cincinnati. Super-bright, superprecocious. A complete film nut and very pretty – if you like the artsy intellectual type.'

'Long black hair, little Lenin-like glasses, black jeans, a black leather jacket, and a dreadful family background?'

'And someone who was far too bright to be at Crewe College – but was a self-admitted screw-up in high school . . .'

'And she was in one of your lectures and came up to you afterward and started talking about . . .'

'Fritz Lang.'

'How romantic.'

'Listen, it's not every day that you meet a very attractive freshman student who knows everything there is to know about Lang's Hollywood noirs.'

'So it was a
coup de foudre
?'

'Not exactly – especially as all American colleges have insanely strict rules these days not just against student/ professor relationships, but even doing something mild and innocent like having a meal with a student of the opposite sex. At Crewe, we were even sent directives by some faculty committee on "sexual ethics", informing us that, if we had a student in our office, we had to keep the door open and that we should always maintain at least three feet of physical distance between ourselves and them.'

'No wonder America is insane.'

'Anyway, after that first lecture, Shelley and I had coffee in the café on campus – and I have to say that there was this absolute instant rapport between us. She might have been nearly thirty years my junior – but within a few meetings it was clear to me that her world view was so considerably more mature than her age.'

'Isn't that always the cliché with the significantly younger woman? Yes, she might just have stopped playing with Barbie dolls, but her insights into Dostoevsky are extraordinary.'

'OK, I do realize I was acting out certain Humbert Humbert fantasies—'

'But Lolita was only in her early teens.'

'Still, we had to be fantastically careful. So we started meeting at a coffee shop downtown. When the woman who ran the place noticed we'd been there around three times too often, we arranged that I would pick her up on a backstreet far from the college and then we'd drive to a small shitty city named Toledo—'

'Like Toledo in Spain?'

'Like Toledo – the rubber-tire capital of America.'

'When did you finally have sex with her?'

'Around two months after—'

'Two months!' she said, interrupting me. 'What took you so damn long?'

'I was nervous as hell. Naturally I was smitten with her – but I also knew I was playing an insanely dangerous game.'

'What made you finally decide to sleep with her?'

'Susan kept pushing me away at home, and Shelley kept telling me how wonderful I was . . . and how we should "give ourselves to each other" . . . even if it was just for one time.'

'And you believed that?'

'After two months of flirtatious chat, I thought I knew her. The thing was, I kept trying to patch up things at home.'

'So what triggered you finally sleeping with her?'

'I came home one night from the college and walked into Susan's study and put my arms around her and told her how much I loved her and how I wanted things to be put right between us again. Know what her response was? "If you think that's going to ever make me want to fuck you again, you're completely deluded."'

'Charming.'

'No – it was anything but that. The next day I saw Shelley again for coffee. She put her hand on mine and told me she wanted me, and that we had to stop being so damn cautious and . . .'

I fell silent.

'Where did you go?' Margit asked. 'A hotel?'

'A grim little place called Motel 6 in Toledo. It's a chain in the States, and only twenty-four ninety-nine if you check out of the room by six p.m. Twenty-four ninety-nine meant I could pay cash, as I didn't want the motel stay clocking up on my credit card. We really didn't care about the look of the place, we just wanted—'

'To fuck each other.'

'Well, that's a crude way of putting it, but—'

'Completely accurate.'

'Absolutely.'

'And the sex was wonderful?'

'I was in love with her. I know that sounds inane – and probably strikes you as yet another example of male midlife stupidity. But it's the truth. I fell completely for her – and she for me. Truth be told, I'd never been in this sort of realm before . . . never really felt this sort of . . . OK, I'll say it . . .
completeness
with another person. She might have been several decades my junior, but there was no sense of gulf between us. She was so damn smart – and not just when it came to movies and books and jazz and all the other things I also loved to talk about. She was just so wise about everything . . .'

'Very touching,' Margit said.

'Haven't you ever been so smitten by another person you couldn't stand being out of their presence?'

'Once,' she said quietly.

'Zoltan?'

'Someone else.'

'What happened?'

'This is your story, remember? So you were madly in love with your "student". And you kept meeting twice a week at the same
autoroute
motel?'

'No – after that first tryst in the Toledo motel, I ended it.'

'Out of guilt?'

'Absolutely. As smitten as I was, once we crossed that line I knew it had to stop immediately. Because—'

'You feared for your job, your career?'

'Yes, that. But also because I kept telling myself that things with Susan and I would eventually improve . . . that her disaffection with me was just one of those temporary dips that happen in a long marriage.'

'Why couldn't you have simply arranged to see your student discreetly a few times a week? That's what
she
wanted, wasn't it?'

'Once we finally did the deed, Shelley was head over heels. And she couldn't understand why I wouldn't sleep with her again. I tried to explain –
many times
– that I simply couldn't continue to be her lover . . . that as much as I was taken with her, this simply had no future . . .'

'She took it badly, of course.'

'Who could blame her? Especially as I'd been stupid. Wildly stupid – in the way that only a man can be stupid. I'd carried on an ever-escalating two-month flirtation with a very impressionable student, and then – once we finally consummated it – I broke it off.'

'But why was that stupid? All right, you enjoyed a quasi-platonic relationship with this girl. Then you both decided to become lovers. Then you decided that it was not wise to continue as lovers. Surely, had she been emotionally more mature, she would have accepted your decision—'

'The thing was, she was eighteen—'

'There are emotionally mature eighteen-year-olds. She wasn't.'