What She Saw... (17 page)

He didn't answer immediately. First he reached for his cigarettes, then his lighter, his dark eyes flickering in the flame. Then he sighed wearily. “Look, Phoebe,” he began in an unctuous tone. “You're a nice girl. We're just different, you and me. I'm just a simple guy, a quiet guy, the kind of guy who's content to exist on the margins, resigned to the knowledge that Homo sapiens are just one eco in the ecosystem. And you—you always need to be the center of attention.”

“But you were the one who encouraged me to assert myself!” Phoebe cried out in her own defense.

But Humphrey had already completed his closing arguments. He rested his cigarette in an ashtray by his feet. Then he lifted his guitar back into his lap and proceeded to pick out the opening chords of his new favorite Smiths song, “Meat Is Murder.”

IT WASN'T LONG afterward that Humphrey made the decision to drop out of the women's studies program in order to double-major in zoology and political science. Shortly thereafter, he broke his lease at Lakeview House and moved into Hoover's so-called nude macrobiotic house, where every night of the week a different member of the co-op was on tofu duty and the proceeds of the composting toilet were used to fertilize the herb garden out back. It was around the same time (early August) that Phoebe found out about Kera, the aspiring antifur activist from the local high school. According to Holly, who'd spoken to Gerald Stevens, who'd spoken to someone else, Humphrey had been two-timing since at least mid-May. Needless to say, Phoebe was devastated by the news. It was left to Holly to try to persuade her not to be.

Holly told Phoebe that Humphrey wasn't the kind of guy you fell in love with so much as you “fucked around with,” and that for future reference it was best to leave while
they
were still crazy about you. That way
they'd
never get over you. But it was never clear to Phoebe just how Holly knew. Because for all her ex-lays, she rarely had a guy around for longer than a week— that was the truth about Holly Flake. Which may have explained why she seemed as elated as she did by the news of Humphrey and Phoebe's breakup. Not that Phoebe was in any position to complain. She needed her best friend too much right then. She needed Holly to keep reminding her that she'd been using Humphrey all along. And maybe she had been.

That didn't mean she wasn't heartbroken to see him go.

And yet, it wasn't Humphrey Phoebe wanted back so much as it was a vision of herself that seemed to have vanished along with his feminism—never mind his anarchy. Where once she'd pictured herself floating eight feet above the earth, now she felt plodding and pedestrian. It didn't help that her dyed red hair had turned orange in the sun. Or that she was suddenly famished all the time, and gaining back weight. She couldn't imagine ever feeling hot again.

She couldn't imagine a time in life she'd ever aspired to going anywhere—except maybe back to sleep.

7. Claude Duvet

OR “Semester-Abroad Claude”

HE'D HAVE A name like Claude Duvet.

He'd be twenty-six, unemployed, and staying with a friend.

He'd be a tortured artist.

He'd be wearing eyeliner.

His parents would live in Brittany, or in the suburbs—in Roissy.

She'd meet him on the rue de Something-or-other.

He'd walk up to her in the middle of a crowd. He'd say, “Are you American?”

They'd take leisurely strolls along the banks of the Seine.

They'd hang out at O'Niel.

He'd drive a Vespa, and he'd take her on the back of it through the serpentine streets of the Left Bank. She'd lean left when he leaned left, and right when he leaned right.

They'd have dramatic fights in public.

They'd spend the weekend in Normandy.

They'd do Ecstasy in crowded nightclubs.

He'd tell her he loved her.

She'd only laugh.

She'd walk around barefoot in mint-green tap pants and a matching mint-green lace brassiere. It would be the morning, and the velvet drapes would keep the sun at bay.

The hair on his chest would be dark blond.

So would the hair
down there.

They'd plan a getaway to Florence. They'd have a huge fight about when to leave. She'd throw his
Guide Routard
into the Seine. It would be very dramatic.

It would be a foreshadowing of things to come.

In the sleeper car, he'd undress down to his boxer shorts in front of four other passengers.

She'd find it beyond gauche.

They'd have a bad time in Florence.

She'd tell him, “So long.”

He'd cry bitterly. She'd walk away unfazed.

She'd have her eye on someone new—the guy who tended bar at O'Niel.

He'd have a name like—Guy. He'd wear a leather jacket. He'd have a criminal record.

They'd have meaningless sex—at least, it would seem meaningless to Phoebe.

She'd come home with definitive views about the superiority of French birth control pills.

She'd come home dreaming in French, and wearing too much eyeliner, and smelling of clove cigarettes and underarm sweat.

You know how they think American girls are promiscuous? They'd be talking about girls like her.

She'd come home smelling of sex, sex, sex, and more sex.

She would.

Really.

But she didn't, truth be told.

She came home smelling of vomit—gamy, verdant, vertiginous, verisimilar vomit.

With a blotchy face.

And no adventures to recount, no snapshots to stimulate impromptu approbation of the “Ohmigodhe'sSOcute!” variety— only this sinking feeling in her heart that she was just one of those people who would always and forever be standing on the outside of things looking in, her nose pressed to the glass, a perpetual tourist, an Ugly American par excellence, a drooling, pink-eyed monster stuffing brioche into her mouth until she thought her stomach would burst, her heart give out. And then it did. She couldn't share that; she couldn't tell them about how, somewhere between Here and There, the world divulged itself in all its various shades of gray and brown, and it was disappointing, to say the least.

She came home haunted by the gleeful cackle of a stingy landlady with stiff black hair, who took her to task for using too much strawberry jam on her brioche, too much hot water when she bathed, too much toilet paper on her bottom. And (it's true) Phoebe occasionally forgot to turn off the forty-watt bulb that served as the only artificial light in the windowless attic bedroom she shared with Jo Ann Jones, her Mormon roommate from Brigham Young University with the fat ass and the enormous floral underpants. (“I'm just a poor old widow,” Madame Bertrand would moan—even though her husband was upstairs, albeit in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the neck down.)

And as if that weren't bad enough, Jo Ann Jones left her diary out on the bed. And Phoebe couldn't stop herself from reading it. And, well, it turned out that Jo Ann Jones thought Phoebe lay under the covers at night masturbating to the comforting twang of her Midwestern truisms. She'd written, “Dear Lord, Please save me from Phoebe Fine's devil sex and evil ways.” Is it any wonder she came home ten months early?

Her doting, adoring, distraught, moderate, moderately attractive parents were waiting at the arrivals gate.

She saw them before they saw her. She saw Roberta gripping the metal barricade, and she saw Leonard
just standing there
fingering the nadir of his beard, the way he always did—as if palpating a wound that refused to be diagnosed. And then she saw them see her. She saw that panicked look in her mother's eyes that made her want to pretend nothing was wrong, even though it clearly was. She had to tell Roberta, “Stop looking like someone died!” even before she said, “Hi, Mom.”

“I'm not looking like someone died!” (Roberta)

“Hello, Crumpet.” (Leonard)

“Hi, Daddy.” (Phoebe, breathing, but only barely there was never enough time no sooner had she breathed in than it was time to breathe out it was a vicious cycle really it was the same with the hairs down there she plucked them one at a time and it was an arduous process and sometimes it hurt but it had to be done but they always grew back it was the same thing over and over again there was never any progress never any resolution just this ringing in her ears just this chorus behind her eyes singing Handel's
Messiah
in the basement of an Episcopalian church in Mahwah Hallelujah Hallelujah Haaaa— leeee—lluuuu—yyyaaaahh necks jutting out like rapist swans she told them to be quiet but they kept singing they never stopped singing they never shut up Haaaaaa—laaaaaay— looooooo—yaaaaaaah it was a nightmare from which she never woke and maybe she never would she could already hear them I remember Phoebe Fine back when her legs were long and shapely her tits were small but perky she was the Nelly Bly of the Bedroom the Wicked Waif of the West the Mylar balloon dangling from the ceiling of a muscular dystrophy benefit she came with no strings attached boys she'd expound even when they were 30 40 50 60 70 to be perfectly frank about it was getting a little old such delectable creatures then she'd light another cigarette and another one after that and then another one after that and then she'd raise one eyebrow exhale it's all par for the course darling even though her golf skills were nil and she always remembered to blow the smoke out through her nose no matter that her skin was already losing that certain youthful dewiness she kept smoking darling because nothing got in her eyes that's the kind of girl she was a fearless girl a fun girl a damn fun girl just about the funnest friggin' fraulein in all of greater Fort Lee but the teeth so young and such bad teeth so many cavities such a tragedy really so sad for the parents they did what they could.)

“Phoebe, I have a little tea for you.” (Roberta standing in the doorway at home in Whitehead.)

“Oh, thanks. Thanks for everything.” (Phoebe, avoiding her mother's eyes. At that moment, they scared her more than she scared herself. So she looked away—out the window, at trees with no leaves, and a kid on a mountain bike doing wheelies in his driveway, and everything hush-hush beneath thick white sky. And then a car went by—a low rider with his brake lights on. And then she thought of Claude Duvet, who never was. And it made her pretty sad that he hadn't been.)

8. Bruce Bledstone

OR “The Visiting Professor of Critical Theories”

IT WAS HOLLY Flake who found Bruce Bledstone's picture in the local paper, in a photo spread called “New Face on Campus.” There were twelve pictures, a hodgepodge of students and faculty. He didn't look like either one. He was wearing a checked scarf that caught the tips of his overgrown hair. And he was squinting as if he'd lost his sunglasses, smiling as if he had a few secrets. He looked like a man who'd been around. Phoebe already knew one place he'd gone. “A Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Periphery, Bruce Bledstone recently returned from the hinterlands of Glasnost Russia,” read the caption beneath the photograph. “ ‘Contrary to popular opinion,' claims Professor Bledstone, ‘Siberian winters are actually quite mild.' ”

The same could not be said for Hoover winters, Phoebe thought to herself with a glance out the window of the corner booth where she and Holly sat chain-smoking Camel Lights over tepid coffee. Not that she could see much; it was snowing too hard. It was snowing so hard you couldn't tell where the sidewalk ended and University Avenue began. As if the weather mattered! She was just happy to be back. Back at school. Back at the twenty-four-hour greasy spoon with her best friend. Just like old times. Just like everything was back to normal, except it never really was, and it especially wasn't now. Now that she wasn't even supposed to be here. Now that she'd come back ten months early from her junior year abroad that never was.

Now that she wasn't half the girl she used to be, not so many months ago.

For one thing, she was devastated by the scope of her failure. For another, she felt strangely liberated by her own admission of defeat. She was through with keeping up appearances. She was feeling somewhat self-destructive. It wasn't precisely love she was looking for. She had this feeling that Bruce Bledstone would understand. “Maybe we should take his class,” she said, turning back to her best friend.

But her best friend had an even better suggestion: “Maybe
you
should take his class.”

“Oh, please,” Phoebe cried out in a protective show of false modesty.

“Why not?” postured Holly.

“He's probably married!” protested Phoebe.

“So?”

“So forget it.”

“Do what you want.” A triad of expertly spaced smoke rings filtered out of Holly's puckered lips. “In my personal experience, married guys are even hornier than regular guys.”

This time Phoebe didn't bother arguing back. Whatever Holly knew about married men, it was bound to be more than
she
knew, what with her own list of ex-lays still being no list at all—still just one name, Humphrey Fung. (Holly's list currently numbered thirty-eight.)

But then, it was one thing to have sex with “anyone,” and it was quite another to sleep with “someone”—someone who wasn't supposed to want you, wasn't even allowed to want you but couldn't help himself from wanting you. To Phoebe, that seemed like the ultimate test. And she was sick of failing, flailing, floundering like some kind of spastic fish laid out on the dock to die.

BUT HUMPHREY FUNG had to go ruin everything. At least, that was Phoebe's first thought upon entering room 324 for the first day of Hegemony 412, a graduate level seminar open to juniors and seniors. There she found her beautiful ex-boyfriend seated at the far end of a long oak table. He was decked out in a sky-blue mechanic's jumpsuit with the name Joe scripted on the breast. He must have been over animals and back into workers. Pretending not to know him, Phoebe sat down at the near end of the table and surveyed the rest of the competition: a bunch of political science majors in plaid shirts and ill-fitting jeans; a girl in a hairband with visible gums; a guy in a Star Trek T-shirt with an enormous, protruding Adam's apple; some pretentious-looking graduate students in black overcoats and cat-eye frames. Phoebe was wearing her best black miniskirt, a cropped turtleneck sweater, and a pair of knee-high black suede boots that zipped up the side. She'd spent a good deal of time selecting that outfit.

She wondered how long Professor Bledstone had spent selecting his.

He arrived ten minutes late in a black blanket-wool suit jacket, a pair of black jeans, and a dark red button-down buttoned to the neck. And he was a big man, somehow bigger than she'd expected. And if he wasn't precisely cute, he was certainly formidable. His eyes were luminous and green. His blond-brown hair was flecked with gray. There was a transparent quality to his skin. He removed his jacket and walked toward the only vacant chair at the table, two seats away from her own. He didn't seem all that happy to see them. “My name is Bruce Bledstone,” he began, “and I'd be happy to give every one of you an A this semester, provided you complete the necessary course work and make regular contributions to class discussion. I'm not much interested in grades.”

Then he droned on about the syllabus—about the major concepts they'd be covering (genealogy, resistance, territorialization, the state apparatus, the political unconscious, the poverty of everyday life) and the major thinkers they'd be reading (Foucault, Fanon, Deleuze, Althusser, Jameson, and Debord). And Phoebe did her best to concentrate, but found her attention drifting anyway. She was thinking about how, growing up, she'd force herself to look at the sun. Just because you weren't supposed to. Just to prove she could. Except she couldn't.

She couldn't stop torturing herself with that blistering impossibility.

It took what seemed like an eternity for the visiting professor to notice her. She had to tap her nails against the table and stretch and yawn and recross her legs about one hundred times and blurt out, “Excuse me?” at two minutes to two. “I was wondering if you wouldn't mind—um—defining ‘
heg
emony'?”

“He
gem
ony,” Professor Bledstone corrected her pronunciation, inciting giggles from the graduate-student contingent and a belly laugh from Humphrey. (She wanted to strangle all of them right then and there.) “And who are you?”

“I'm Phoebe,” she must have whispered out loud. “Phoebe Fine.”

She watched the visiting professor scan the class list before he scanned her. “In answer to your question, Phoebe Fine, it was the preeminent Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, who coined the term
hegemony
to explicate the moment when the ruling class is able not only to coerce a subordinate class to conform to its interests but also to exert total social authority over subordinate classes. You'll be hearing a lot about hegemony this semester.”

Phoebe couldn't wait. Humphrey must have felt differently. He was out the door at the stroke of two, and he never came back. The rest of Phoebe's classmates huddled around Professor Bledstone like dogs near a carcass, mouths gaping, heads wagging in agreement with whatever it was he was saying. Phoebe stayed in her seat, doodling hearts and flowers and high-heeled shoes, hoping to be mistaken for an overeager taker of notes, wondering what she would say when she was the only one left. Then she was. She stood up. She was going to ask the visiting professor where he was visiting from. But he opened his mouth before she had the chance to open hers. “Phoebe Fine,” he said. “Would you mind doing me a favor?”

“What will you do for me?” she asked him back. (Those were the days before she understood the value of fear in love.)

He smiled cautiously before producing a book. “I'm actually on my way out of town. Assuming you're walking through the quad at some point this afternoon, would you mind dropping this off at the Political Philosophy Library?”

“Why would I mind?” she said.

Then she walked toward him. Maybe it was her imagination. She could have sworn he held on to that book for a second longer than he had to. (She could have sworn he was looking at her like she was more than just another stupid undergraduate.)

They left the classroom together. On the footpath outside, they exchanged pleasantries about the unseasonably warm temperature.

“Well, bye now,” was the last thing he said before he left.

He left her standing there holding a book by Gramsci called
The Prison Notebooks.

HOLLY THOUGHT HE was trying to send Phoebe a message. “Maybe he's trapped in a bad marriage,” she speculated over frozen yogurt later that evening.

“Maybe,” said Phoebe. But inside she was wondering if the only reason the visiting professor asked her to return
The Prison
Notebooks
was that she was the last one standing there after class.

Conversely, it could hardly be called an accident of fate that Phoebe ran into the visiting professor the following Monday in the Political Philosophy Library. That he conducted his research there wasn't hard to figure out. Sure enough, he was standing by the checkout desk, his arms piled high with books. She was standing behind him. “Hi, Professor Bledstone!” is how she began.

“Phoebe!” he said, whipping around, a startled expression on his ghostly face.

That he remembered her name! “Hi,” she said again. (She hadn't meant to repeat herself; it just happened.)

“What are you doing here?”

“Just studying,” she shrugged.

“For my class?”

“Not today. I have to conjugate some verbs today.” She waved her French book in his face.

“The language of the colonizer . . .” he trailed off. “I always regretted not learning Spanish.”

“I already know Spanish,” she assured him.

“I see,” he said.

But it wasn't clear he saw anything. And Phoebe wondered if he wanted to get away. (She wouldn't have blamed him if he did.) But she wanted him to stay. And when he advanced in line, she matched his steps, asked him if he had had a “fun weekend.” (She didn't ask him where he'd gone.)

“Not particularly,” he told her.

“Me neither,” she told him. “I had really bad cramps.” (She thought he'd care if only he were given the opportunity.)

“I'm sorry to hear it,” he said.

That he was sorry! It made Phoebe weak with joy. “So how do you like it out here in the boondocks?” she asked him.

His eyes traveled someplace she'd never been—maybe Siberia. “It's fine for the moment,” he said. “In general, I prefer the city to the country.”

“What about the suburbs?”

“I've never lived in one, but I can't imagine I'd want to.”

“You probably wouldn't,” she agreed. “I grew up in New Jersey, and it wasn't even fine for the moment.”

The visiting professor nodded like he understood. But he didn't laugh. He didn't even smile. Phoebe was hoping he would. In fact, she was all but counting on it. “By the way, I'm looking for a job,” she said, begging for resurrection, thinking maybe she could help him keep track of all those books. “If you hear of anything . . .”

“What can you do?” he wanted to know.

She looked straight at him before she answered: “Anything you want me to do.”

He ignored the innuendo. “Actually, I'm supposed to be writing a book.”

“About hegemony?” She made sure to pronounce it right this time.

“Something like that,” he said. Then he paused. Then he looked straight at her, straight through her—or so it seemed to Phoebe. “If I got approval from the Center, I could probably hire you as my research assistant.”

“You're kidding!” she squealed. “I mean, that would be amazing.”

“I probably wouldn't be able to pay you much.”

As if money mattered. (Those were the days before money mattered.) “That's fine—I mean you don't even have to pay me,” she spluttered. “I mean not that much or anything.” She smiled.

He smiled, too. Then he set his books down on the counter and said, “Talk to me after class on Thursday.”

And it was, just maybe, the happiest moment of Phoebe Fine's entire life.

But she had one more question. “Professor—” she began.

“Please,” he broke in. “Call me Bruce.”

She couldn't believe he'd said that. It filled her heart with something like pride. “Okay, Bruce.” The name stuck to the roof of her mouth like peanut butter. “Can I ask you a question?” But she didn't wait for an answer. “Do you like to teach?”

He laughed then, an old studied laugh, and said, “Not very much, but don't tell the other students in our class.”

“I promise,” she told him.

It was their first secret.

It wouldn't be their last.

ONCE SHE BECAME his research assistant, every Thursday after class, Phoebe would follow the visiting professor up the three flights of stairs that led to his office in the colonial mansion that housed the Center for the Study of the Periphery. Unruly stacks of books and clippings littered his desk. The walls were bare, the carpet imitation Persian. A little window under the eave offered scenic views of the lake and outlying mountains, except when the fog was so thick you couldn't see past the pane of glass, which was all the time. It was there Bruce Bledstone would present Phoebe with her research assignment for the week. And Phoebe would present Bruce Bledstone with a carefully edited version of her tragicomic life. She'd leave out the part about how she'd become this
drooling pink-eyed monster.
Instead, she'd regale him with horror stories about suburbia— about the rich idiots she went to high school with and the wacky parents she grew up in the same house as.

She'd tell him about how Leonard and Roberta recycled paper towels and tinfoil and loved Handel's
Messiah
even though they called themselves atheists. And her older sister, Emily, thought she was hot shit because she was going out with this suspected member of the PLO who also managed to be on the guest lists of all the coolest nightclubs in New York. And her best friend, Holly, was such a slut she couldn't remember the names of half the guys she'd slept with. And her ex-boyfriend, Humphrey, had turned against her after she'd insulted the spiders in his peat-moss outhouse. And France wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for her landlady, Madame Bertrand, who spent all her waking hours poring over photos of yachting royals in
Paris Match
and took Phoebe to task for using too much jam on her brioche. (Is it any wonder she came home ten months early?)