heroic, some villainous, some true, some false, some funny, some tragic, and all of them combining to form the mystical, undefinable entity we call the school. Not exactly the building, not exactly the faculty or the students or the alumni-more than all those things but also less, a paradox, an order, a mystery, a monster, an utter joy.
The hallways of Oldie are warm and familiar. I like it here.
Most of the time.
Today, however, when I turn the final corner toward my office after my unfortunate class, I encounter an agitated Dana Worth, rapping imperiously on my office door, as though irritated that I am not present to open it. She rattles the knob, pushes, then pulls. Cupping a hand above her eyes, she peers through the frosted glass, even though the darkness within is plainly visible.
I look on in amusement, then concern, for I have not seen Dana this upset since the day she told me she was leaving my friend Eddie. .. and then told me why.
Dana, who teaches contracts and intellectual property, is one of our stars, even though her diminutive stature invariably tempts a few unfortunate first-year students to think they can walk all over her. Dana comes from an old Virginia family that once had lots of money (read slaves) but lost it in what she laughingly calls “the late unpleasantness.” She lives delightfully, even charmingly, in a world centered on herself. (“Your sister died in a car wreck? You know, back at the University of Virginia, I used to date a man who died in a car wreck. He was a McMichael, of the Rappahannock County McMichaels.” Reminded that my father actually knew the senior McMichael, the Senator, knew him quite well once upon a time, Dana would be undeterred: “But not the way I knew his son, I’m willing to bet.”)
Dana, three years older than I am, has survived, even transcended, the minor scandal of the way her marriage broke up. Eddie, whose life around the university was lived largely in his wife’s shadow, left us last year to return to his native Texas, where, he insists, the kind of thing that happened to him in Elm Harbor would not be allowed. (He does not say who would stop it.) His departure reduced the law school’s black faculty by twenty-five percent. Dana left him for a woman named Alison Frye, a nervous, fleshy New Yorker, all carroty hair and burning anger at the world. Alison is a novelist of slight accomplishment and runs a Web site full of airy but erudite social commentary, most with a “new economy” spin. Her courtship of Dana was a more or less public event, at least among the techie crowd. Three years ago, back when their affair was still secret, Alison posted on her site a composition entitled “Dear Dana Worth,” a love letter of sorts, which was downloaded and e-mailed all over the world, and, more important, all over the campus-Dana likes to say that Alison mortified her into falling in love. Many of us have adopted the essay’s title as a teasing nickname, although her husband understandably missed the humor. When Dana and Eddie were married, Kimmer and I hung around with them a lot, for Eddie and I played together as children. Eddie’s parents are old family friends, and he may even be a distant cousin on my mother’s side, although we never quite worked it out.
The end of the Dozier-Worth marriage two years ago soured my friendships with both partners. Eddie has become a stranger, his politics driven even further to the right. As for Dana, I truly like her, but she and I have serious differences on countless matters, the way she treated Eddie chief among them. Misha, please, you have to try to look at it from my point of view, she begged me in that last, hurtful argument before she left him. No, I don’t, I stormed back at her, unable to be charitable. Perhaps I feared I might be seeing in the disintegration of her marriage a prefiguring of the end of my own. Nowadays, Dana and I try to be friends, but, to quote Casey Stengel, sometimes it doesn’t always work.
Watching Dear Dana, I remember her tears at my father’s funeral. She admired the Judge, her onetime boss, perhaps loved him a little, even though he never quite made his peace with the gay rights movement. But, then, neither has Dana, who likes to insist, in her pedantic way, that she is far more interested in her freedom than in her rights. Dana opposes rules to tell property owners whom to rent to or businesses whom to hire, for she is a radical libertarian right down to her pedicured toes. Except on the question of abortion. After the Judge’s funeral, Dana joined the procession to the cemetery in her snazzy gold Lexus with its dual-meaning bumper sticker-ANOTHER LESBIAN FOR LIFE, it proclaims-which tends to confound people.
Dana likes to confound people.
“Dana,” I say softly as she continues banging on the door. “Dana!”
She turns in my direction, one tiny hand to her throat in the familiar gesture of generations of wounded Southern ladies. Her short black hair glistens in the dim light of the hallway. But her face startles me. Dear Dana Worth is always pale, but today her whiteness is unusually… well, unusually white.
“Oh, Misha,” she moans, shaking her head. “Oh, Misha, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m betting this is more bad news,” I say slowly, my speech inhibited by the block of ice that has formed around my heart.
“You don’t know.” Dana is surprised. Panicky. For a moment, she seems to be at a loss, which hardly ever happens. Sufficiently gutsy is Dear Dana that she spends most Sunday mornings at a small, conservative Methodist church twenty road miles and a thousand cultural ones away from the campus. I need to be there, she tells the few colleagues who dare question her.
“What don’t I know?” I ask, a little panicky myself.
“Oh, Misha,” Dana whispers again. Then she gathers herself. She grips my arm as I unlock the door, and we enter my office together. She points to the small, sleek CD player on the shelf above my computer. Kimmer bought it for me on one of her trips. My wife hates to spend money, so, whenever she buys me an expensive gift, I think of it as a second-place trophy, Kimmer’s own version of guilt money. “Does that thing have a radio?” Dana asks.
“Well, yes. I don’t use it much.”
“Turn it on.”
“What?”
“Turn on the news.”
“Why can’t you just tell me…”
Dana’s gray eyes are troubled and sad. One of her great weaknesses has always been an inability to deal with the emotional pain of others. Which means that whatever she wants me to know is going to hurt. “Please. Just turn it on.”
I swallow a retort about how much I hate these games because I can see that she is genuinely upset. I walk over to the CD player, always tuned to our local National Public Radio affiliate, which, when I switch it on, is playing insipid classical music-the Fanfare for the Common Man, I believe. I change to the all-news station, which comes in as clearly in Elm Harbor as it does in New York City. The anchor is waxing mournfully self-righteous about the latest act of racist violence, a black preacher who was tortured to death. My insides churn: stories of this kind are like a blow to my most sensitive parts. I always want to buy a couple of guns, grab my family, and run for the hills. And this time a preacher! I listen to sound clips, voices of national outrage: Jesse Jackson, Kweisi Mfume, the President of the United States. Two children discovered the body in the tall grass behind the swings in a playground earlier today.
I turn to Dana. “Is this what you wanted me to hear?”
She nods and perches on the edge of my desk, her voice faint. “Keep listening.”
I frown. I do not get it. But I listen a bit longer. The man was found with cigarette burns on his arms and legs and several fingernails missing. He was tortured, the announcer explains. Death itself apparently came from a single gunshot to the head, and was probably a blessing. I close my eyes. A horrible story, true, but why does Dana think-
Wait.
The victim’s body was found in a small town near Washington, D.C.
I turn the volume up.
A frightening lassitude begins in my toes and climbs slowly upward, until I am dizzy and swaying on my feet. The air grows heavy and oppressive, my stomach heaves, and my furniture begins to turn a ghastly, asphyxiating red.
Beware of the others… I would not want to see you harmed.
The name of the murdered preacher is Freeman Bishop.
CHAPTER 10
