Want, стр. 20

I both do and don’t know. She’s ten years younger than me and, if this were me, when this was me, if I had spoken to this guy, I would have thought about it for weeks, for months, but I would not ever have recounted the experience out loud to someone else. I would have decided not to like this guy right after. I would have noted to myself that we would not be friends. I would have been quietly embarrassed by my sensitivity and discomfort. I would have felt very small and very sad throughout.

I tried to push him on it, she says. And he shut me down.

She is doughy, sweet and soft, and I want to tell her everything will be okay and to just not think about this. I don’t want to be one more person telling her what she says doesn’t matter, but I’m also not sure it does.

I called a friend of mine who goes to another college where he used to adjunct. She says her friend’s friend said he tried to kiss her during office hours.

Another of their friends was his babysitter, she says. And he tried to kiss her too. Asshole, she says, more to herself than me.

I think I’m supposed to only listen, but she’s stopped talking now and looks at me.

That sucks, I say.

I don’t want to tell her it’s expected. I don’t want to tell her that this is how things are, although it is.

It’s tricky, I say.

This was wrong, and I almost tell her that I’m sorry.

My friend says, she says, he shouldn’t be allowed to teach.

Can I help? I say. Do you want to tell me his name?

She says it and I think a minute and then place him, his perfectly shaven face, his short, squat frame. This man has health insurance from this job—a temporary appointment, but more solid than my own, and I wonder briefly if this is how I might take his job from him.

He didn’t do anything to me, she says. I’ve never talked to him.

I think of all the stories that I heard when I was a grad student, how we only ever whispered about them later, how embarrassed I was that none of them belonged to me.

Do you know anyone who has experience of this firsthand? I say.

The women in his class don’t like him.

I’m not sure— I say.

Never mind, she says.

I don’t want— I start.

How can I help? I say.

I just wanted to say to someone how awful it feels.

It sucks, I say, for the three thousandth time.

Why did that kid think it was okay?

I don’t know, I say.

If someone that you know knows more, you guys should tell someone, I say.

She nods, her shoulders red, folding her coat on her lap, waiting for me.

I am someone she has told.

Let me think about this, I say. Email me, I say, if there’s any way at all you think that I might help.

After my class, I find Melissa, who is older, whip smart, head of the department. She somehow willed herself into this job, which feels miraculous still now. She gave me this job. Each semester, I email to ask her if I can teach the next semester, and each semester she gets right back to me and says Yes, of course; I’ll find something.

Come in, she says. She’s always here. She holds extended office hours always. When I was a student here I came to see her once a week.

How’s class? she says.

I want to tell her about the thing with my student, but I’m not sure what I’d say, what there even is to tell her.

I’m tired, I say.

They need so much, she says.

I think of all the emails that I wrote her when I was a student, asking her for coffee, but really, asking her to tell me I could do this, it was worth it, I was special, everything would be okay.

How are you? I say to her. I think about how I’ve maybe never asked her this and how awful I’ve been for not asking. I’ve asked her this, but never wanted or expected a response.

She smiles. She has a thin-lipped, wry, large-eyes-closing-at-the-corners smile.

She has red, curly hair, tied up, but loose, random wisps around her face.

She looks down at her hands. Her fingernails are dark blue and she has a large black opal ring on her right middle finger. She wears a dark blue turtleneck and black pants. She smiles again, but this time her lips fold in toward her teeth.

When she looks up the smile’s gone.

My fucking dog is dying, she says.

I cross my legs and clasp my hands around my knee. I’m sorry, I say.

She shakes her head.

You’re the first person today to ask me how I am, so now you’re paying for it. She’s twenty, she says. Old, she says. Ancient for a dog. She looks at me and lets out a sort of laugh. I understand that she’s a dog and I’m not supposed to be so sad.

She works harder than any other person in this program. She writes the most letters of recommendation, the longest comments on student papers, theses. The day I defended my dissertation she took me out for coffee and put her hand on my hand and told me she was proud of me.

She’s the longest-lasting relationship I’ve ever had.

She’s fifty-something, I think, maybe early sixties, never married.

She has cancer, she says, arthritis. All the bad things, she says and laughs again. She’s really fucking old.

I still have my coat on and I unzip it slowly so she doesn’t think I want to leave her.

The vet wanted me to put her down two weeks ago, she says.

She looks past me toward the door and I look out the window so she doesn’t have to worry she might look me in the eye.

I’m torturing her because I can’t fathom coming home and her not being there.

The next morning I sleep