Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) (26 page)

Jeff doesn't move. I look at him, accusing.

“Collating gives me a rash.” Jeff hoists the pile of marked papers from the floor to his lap. He loads them into his satchel and tucks it under one arm. “Besides”—he shuts the metal latch with a one-fingered tap—"I certainly don't have to worry about mak
ing friends here anymore. By New Year's I'll be the most popular guy on campus.”

I don't speak.

“I'm going to give all A's.” He strokes his satchel as gingerly as if it contained a bomb. “I've got thirty-six students. That's enough to throw the grade average for the department—in a display of the most spectacular grade-inflation Grub and his bulldog have ever seen.” He smiles broadly.

“What is
with
you? You take potshots behind Joanne's back, but you can't be bothered to stand up for what matters. You can't even be bothered to stand up for a friend.”

The grin evaporates. For a moment Jeff looks tired. “On the contrary, Tracy,” he says. “I absolutely do stand up for my friends. I just happen to have a different definition of what's truly in a friend's best interests, as opposed to lovey-sounding bullshit. And I stand rock-solid on my principles. You can trust me on that. Among my principles, however, is playing the game so I don't get played by it.”

“Unlike naive suckers like me?”

He cants his head. After a few seconds I turn from him in contempt. I direct my hostile gaze toward the softly steaming coffee-maker.

From behind me I hear Jeff sip his coffee, then set the mug on the table. “Your naiveté is refreshing.”

“If you like it so much you might consider backing me up next time.”

“Tracy,” he says. Turning, I'm met by the serious eyes of a Jeff whom Richard must know. “I think people should be practical. In career, in politics, in love. Naiveté”—he pauses for emphasis—“is suicide. I wish it weren't true.” He falls silent. A long time passes. Neither of us moves. Then he nods reflectively. “Atlanta made me an offer,” he says. “A strong one.”

“They did?”

“Mm.” His smile is wistful.

“Aren't you going to try to get Grub to counteroffer? Come up with something for Richard here?”

“Already did. Though I knew it was going to be futile. He just gave that smile he uses when he thinks someone's bluffing—he
doesn't believe I'd leave this place for Emory. And talking up Richard was never going to have much effect—you can imagine how stiff his face turned at the mention of yet another queer theory hire.”

I take this in. “Richard's going to be thrilled,” I say at length. “And I'm glad for you.”

He holds up a cautionary palm. “It's not final.”

“Why not?”

He seems disappointed that I have to ask. “I'm playing hardball with Emory on the details.”

Footsteps sound in the corridor and I hear Joanne's voice commanding the troops. Jeff scrutinizes me.

“And you?” he says. “Are you playing hardball with your man, Tracy?”

I have no answer.

Jeff's sigh comes from the depths of his lean body. “I wash my hands of this.”

I ride the shuttle bus to the airport with George. It seems imperative not to let him out of my sight a moment longer than necessary. When I'm with him my dread thins and some crude compass points unsteadily forward. I love this man. Everything else is up for grabs. My speaking voice has risen a register. I sound winded. I sound like one of my damn students, every sentence ending in a question. Secrecy, heretofore absent between George and me, burgeons.

What are you thinking?

Nothing particular.

Engagement has been, so far, the worst thing to happen to our relationship. According to Yolanda, this is all in my head. According to Jeff, I ought to refuse George outright until he comes to the table with an endorsable deal. And according to Hannah—the only one with a livable track record where relationships are concerned—I need to sort it out without George's help. I need, according to Hannah's womanly wisdom, to approach a man like a bomb defuser approaching an unexploded ego. Never mind that this parses with nothing in my experience of men. (And why, after all, have I felt so certain I understand men?
My years disappointing Jason? Jeff's harsh tutelage? A camaraderie with Adam—whose primary food group is pizza? My father who can't, it turns out, stay on the phone with me?) This is the big time. This is playing for keeps. If George knew how compassless I feel, according to Hannah, he would burst out from between the airport's magazine-and-candy racks, sprint down the Terminal 2 concourse, clear the jetway in a single grand jeté to the tarmac, and lift off for Buffalo under his own steam, flapping his way northwest beyond the runway until he's nothing but a contrail of wounded pride on the horizon.

There goes another good one,
the travel pillow saleswoman says wistfully in my ear.

Note to self: Investigate whether development of surrealism was concurrent with moments of intense psychic torque in individual authors' lives.

I insist on walking George to security, my arm wrapped tightly with his, stepping through the fluorescent-and-tile jungle of LaGuardia Airport. At the end of the snaking line, he takes me by the shoulders. His eyes are a vibrant brown that makes me want to cry. “Tracy, since we got engaged you've been very quiet. What's going on?” He brushes my face with a warm, dry palm. “You all right?”

Oh, George. If I could only roll out my heart for us to salve together. But I'm afraid you'll spontaneously combust. “I'm just a bit freaked,” I say. “But I'm okay.”

His hand stops moving. He looks stricken. “
Freaked?
By being engaged to me?”

“But okay,” I urge. “You know. Freaked-but-okay?” I bob my head, willing him to sign on to this diagnosis.

The line advances. Walking backward, his bag rolling between us, George moves with it. “But you're good with this, right?” he says. “With us?”

Hannah's urgent coaching blasts in my head. Before me lies a minefield of language. Gingerly I set down one foot, then the other. And how long, and what will it take, before it feels safe to step freely? “I am,” I say. “I love you.”

The lines of tension on George's face break into a beautiful, dazzled smile. His voice slips, loses its footing, after a short struggle
regains it. “It
is
strange, isn't it? I mean, we're
engaged.
” He grins, wraps one arm around me, then waves to catch the attention of a passing flight attendant.

“We're engaged,” George tells her. “And I'm the luckiest man in the world. I'd like to tell everybody. Think maybe you could, you know—announce it? On one of those?” He waves vaguely at the wall, where a speaker has just finished thrumming its rote security announcement.

The attendant dimples, calls a “Congratulations,” and continues on her way. A few people in the security line clap. “Good luck,” calls a grandmotherly woman at the head of the line. She smiles at us for a full half minute while the security officer waits impassively for her to turn back to business.

In fact, a good third of the line is smiling. This is an airport. They're supposed to be irate. Instead they've gone mad with satisfaction. Our relationship has had its IPO, and all these nice people own stock. We've made a deposit to the social security fund of love. We're good for America.

He bends and kisses me. “I hope you won't feel too freaked while I'm gone,” he whispers.

I press my cheek to his jaw, hook my elbows around his neck, and cling. “I won't, I just need . . . a little time.”

At this moment I am committing a relationship sin. I should tell George the depths of my confusion. I should inform the security officers that I'm not at all sanguine about this engagement thing, ask the flight attendant to announce that I have doubts about how George and I might fare within the institution of marriage. I should insist that George stay with me and hash this thing out until everything makes sense again, until we understand each other, until it seems safe once more to speak my mind. But the guardian angels pummeling my head with their wings tell me to kiss George sweetly and send him off to Buffalo. Which is what I do.

And let me make note here: I am not the only one behaving abnormally. The usual George would be inquisitive. He would chase after my doubts, address
me
rather than a passing flight attendant, even miss his flight to make sure I was truly all right.

Or would he? The doubt balloons too quickly to be contained: How well do I know him?

Engagement has made us fragile. Only the passengers and weary-looking security officer are sturdy. We shuffle to the head of the line. I hold his hand. A paunchy businessman slaps him on the back. Lovingly, the fiancé kisses his affianced.

Leaning forward on the edge of Hannah's bed, still dressed from my lecture, I drop another sodden tissue into her trash. As I straighten my head spins; it's been more than a week since I had a reasonable night's sleep. “I just don't know,” I repeat.

“Maybe you do,” says Hannah. “Tracy, why do you think you said yes?”

“Because I was too shocked to do anything else?” I rub my eyes with open palms.

“Maybe because you
wanted
to.” Hannah, fresh from her office and poised to launch into the afternoon with Elijah, digs into this crisis as efficiently as she might cut her son's food. “Maybe because you have a stupendous
hunch
about him . . . which is all
anybody
has to go on, anyway.” Balancing on one foot, she bends over her belly in an attempt to take off her stockings. When this doesn't work she squats, clutching the bed for support. “I think it was just a misunderstanding, the whole timing thing. It doesn't mean he's the wrong guy. Yes, he rushed things. But that's because he's ready. Plus, from what you say he's really lost his whole family. He's eager to start fresh.”

“Hannah, you think I haven't thought of that? But if being pushed into an engagement I wasn't ready for is part of helping him make up for bad voodoo in his past, what else is he going to need? What exactly did I say yes to?” As I talk, George's image thins and recedes, begins to resemble the outline of a man, vaguely menacing.
As we stray from love,
Amichai wrote,
We must multiply speech,

Words and sentences long and orderly.

Had we stayed together,

We could have remained a silence.

Hannah puts on socks.

“Listen, if you choose not to go ahead with this”—her voice gains a sudden, self-exculpatory vehemence—"it's okay. I mean, I have no real opinion on this. Yes, it's a bit worrisome that he
rushed you. I like George a lot, but that doesn't mean he's your fate, or that you
have
to get married, even. The right thing is whatever you choose. Only you can choose.”

I want to insist,
But what should I do?
but I know better.

Having issued her message of neutral support, Hannah peers into my face for confirmation of delivery. “Look, anyone would be a little shocked in your position. Anyone would have fears. Do some thinking while he's gone, Tracy. And give it time. You love him. He loves you.” She glances at her watch. Her mouth forms an unhappy
oooh,
and I realize, with the outsized terror of a child, that I'm about to be dismissed. “I've got to wake Elijah ten minutes ago. Today's his art class.” She rocks forward with a peculiar rhythmic motion that I don't recognize as an attempt to rise until she reaches for my arm. I help her to her feet and then continue clutching her smooth, cool hand. She squeezes back. “Call me any time,” she says.

As I step into Hannah's elevator, the thought of the full answering machine I will surely find in my apartment makes me balk at going home. I'm awash in well-wishers, and I've never been so isolated. Everyone wants to share the frisson: whirlwind romance, surprise proposal; the tide of romance that's swept me off my feet. Everyone asks eagerly about plans, no one about how I'm feeling now that my feet can't touch bottom. Great-aunts interrupting hours I've set aside for Faulkner. UPS at the door with engagement gifts: distant relatives cementing the edifice of our romance with nonstick pots. The tiny hints I've made:
a bit sudden . . . got to catch my breath . . .
are glossed over. Only Jeff and Yolanda have declared opinions, with Yolanda calling twice in the last twenty-four hours to quote articles from
Glamour
and
Modern Bride
in which experts discuss prenuptial panic and its treatments. But Yolanda and Jeff represent two sides of an ideological battle: marriage partisans and soldiers of the resistance, for whom ideology runs as thick and hardens as fast as glue.

And of course Hannah doesn't want to touch this decision. If she advises me to marry, and I'm miserable? No friend would want to be responsible. If I break off the engagement on her advice and die lonely? See above. If I marry, and she's advised me not to? The friendship takes a staggering blow. Remembering the argument
in which I once blurted to Hannah that I worried she was compromising with Ed, I'm shocked at my foolhardiness, and more shocked our friendship survived.

In the elevator's rattling solitude I think: A freaked-out engaged person is a grenade with the pin pulled. No one comes near.

The walk to my office is only fifteen minutes. The street is chilly, a few last leaves scuttling, the daylight draining from the November sky. It's late and the department is quiet. I unlock my door and drop into the chair opposite my poster of Zora.

In this portrait she might be thirty. She's dressed fashionably in a belted dark dress, thick necklace, and a black hat with a sloping brim. She's a big-limbed woman with powerful-looking shoulders, a relatively flat chest, and a large-boned face. She sits erect, but with shoulders rolled slightly forward, as though she were trying not to be as big as she is. Her eyes are averted.