Woman in the Fifth

naturally appreciate her high professional standards and wouldn’t get offended by her acerbity.’

‘Such a happy woman. How did you deal with all that?’

‘I chose to ignore it … especially as it always came out when she’d had a few glasses of wine.’

‘So she was drinking heavily?’

‘Hey, we were living in a small town with not much to do at night — and she was, for all intents and purposes, depressed. So what else do you do but drink? Like I started to hit the hard stuff a bit as well. Largely because her own negativity was beginning to corrode things between us …’

‘So you decided that the only way to combat this negativity was to have an affair?’

‘It was actually she who had the first affair … though I didn’t know that until some time later.’

‘And who was the lucky man?’

‘Around two years ago, the college got a new Dean of the Faculty — a true smoothie named Gardner Robson.’

‘They actually name people such things in the States?’

‘White Anglo-Saxon Protestants do. This guy was a real Mr Preppie. Ex-Air Force. Ex-management consultancy. Early fifties. Super-fit. Super-straight. Super-corporate — and brought in by the Board of the College to “streamline management”, whatever the fuck that meant. There was a reception for Robson when he became Dean — and, having already met him briefly at some administrative thing, I remember telling Susan on the way over to the party that she was bound to loathe him — as he stood for everything Republican and conservative that she hated about Bush’s America.

‘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 cafe 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 cliche 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