Bernice is now, without doubt, staring at Michael. Wendy can’t believe the waitress is even remotely interested—from what she heard in the car, Michael’s rapping is amateur at best—but she must admit that anything’s possible. And, maybe it’s the wine, but Michael’s looking more attractive than earlier, having stilled the nervous tapping and un-stiffened into someone seemingly capable of having a good time.
“Wait, so what happened in the rest of the class?” asks Michael.
“It doesn’t matter,” says Wendy.
“No, tell me,” says Michael.
“Forget it,” says Wendy.
“No, no,” says Michael. “I want to know.”
“Okay,” says Wendy. “Well, the class is a seminar, right? Class participation is a part of our grade. And Elizabeth tends to talk a lot, but every once in a while she’ll pause and ask the class a question. There are these two guys who always answer. They think they’re smart. But then Elizabeth will put them down and explain why they’re wrong. The guys go nuts for it. Anyway, I was sitting there alone, and she asked a question.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, nothing at first, but after a few seconds it became clear that she wasn’t planning to continue until someone else spoke. So I raised my hand.”
Wendy raises her hand. Tentative, like she’s not sure she wants to be called on. She mimes the professor looking around the room, trying to decide which student to choose. Michael laughs.
“Did she call on you?”
“Well yeah, she called on me.”
“What did you say?”
“I gave my answer.”
“Which was?”
“It wouldn’t make sense outside the context of the class.”
“Okay,” says Michael. He wonders if she thinks he’s dumb.
“I mean, it was something totally specific to something she asked about a particular scene in To the Lighthouse, and about this thing Woolf does, which is sort of not making a big deal of these characters’ deaths by making the deaths happen within parentheses. Like, the deaths are just announced in parentheses without commentary, as if it’s no big deal. Anyway, I think what she was asking was something about how we decide when death is significant and when it’s just death.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said death is significant to the dying.”
“Huh.”
“Elizabeth had the same reaction. I finished my answer and she just kind of stood there for a long minute without saying anything. I could hear the buzz of the overhead light.”
“That sounds awful.”
“It was at first. But after a second I realized something crazy, which is that Elizabeth was actually thinking about what I’d said, which, it occurred to me, is the exact thing most professors don’t do. Usually they already have a kind of automated response, you know? Like they’ve heard all your answers before and they’re just waiting for someone to provide the right one so they can move to the next part of the lecture. Maybe that’s what makes Elizabeth a good teacher. And when she finally responded, she didn’t, like, really respond, she just kind of said, “That’s interesting. I’ve never thought of it like that.”
“Cool,” says Michael. “So what happened in the rest of the class?”
“It just kept going. She kept lecturing, and occasionally asking questions, and I would raise my hand and answer, and she’d either engage with my answer and we’d have a short discussion or else she’d pause and say ‘huh,’ and move on. At some point I got up to go to the bathroom. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to raise my hand and ask or not, but I just got up and sort of mouthed bathroom and she nodded and I went. When I got back it wasn’t like she’d kept on with the lecture in my absence or something creepy like that, but she was just standing there, perfectly still, and I got the sense that she’d remained kind of frozen while I’d been gone, and that as soon as I re-entered the room she’d broken back into motion. Maybe I was imagining it.”
“Weird,” Michael says.
There’s more to the story that Wendy can’t get at, something beyond weird. She’s felt an unacknowledged intimacy with Professor Elizabeth in the month since, a feeling as if, although they don’t talk or otherwise interact, they are bound in an almost familial way, both complicit in something neither completely understands. Some days she thinks of going to Professor Elizabeth’s office hours and sitting silently opposite her desk, maybe taking out a book and reading while Elizabeth grades papers.
Music plays in earnest now. Bernice sings in a wilted, mannish voice that suits the thin strum of the instrument. The rest of the waitstaff have cleared tables toward the front, and the large party in back, probably friends of the waiters, has moved into the table-less space and begun to dance. They’re all on the young side—twenties or thirties—but they dance in the hand-holding style of old, men leading ladies, dips and spins.
Bernice’s voice cuts through with a depth of emotion one wouldn’t expect. Wendy wonders about the waitress’s world, both the world inside her brain, and the one beyond these restaurant walls; the local traumas that imbue her song with a certain beauty, sultry and melancholy, but also something else—pure, maybe—a voice that rises, in its highest registers, above the bullshit of our armored public selves.
“Pretty good,” says Michael. He nods toward Bernice.
“Makes you wonder,” says Wendy.
“Wonder what?”
“I don’t know,” says Wendy.
Bernice spots Michael and enthusiastically motions him over. Michael worries he’s being teased.
“Go on,” Wendy says.
“I shouldn’t,” says Michael.
“I don’t mind, seriously,” says Wendy.
The band continues to play, instrumental now. Michael half stands as if still undecided, and Wendy says “go on” again. Michael walks over to Bernice who takes him in her arms.
Michael’s eyes are on Wendy, watching for a reaction she refuses to give. Instead she inspects one of the tapestries, coming to the slightly buzzed insight that the love scenes and fight scenes are more or less interchangeable. She turns her eyes from the tapestry to catch Michael in periphery. Bernice has a finger
