Want, стр. 35

I want to tell her the names of all the professors who never looked at me when I walked by them, when I was in a circle of people talking to them, how it felt like there were prerequisites for being heard or read that had nothing to do with what I thought I’d come there to try to do or say or be or learn. How it felt like smart was one thing for the men, obvious and uncomplicated, often self-appointed; the women who were chosen were anointed instead of self-selected, brilliant, they were called instead, which felt like it demanded more of the senses, which always seemed to be attributed to girls some of the male professors liked to look at during and after class.

I think of Sasha then and how she would almost certainly have a concrete grievance in this situation. Someone would have done something to her. If we were still talking, I could talk on her behalf.

Is there anything else you might want to tell me? asks the lawyer.

I’m confused now. I feel almost impossibly tired.

Did a student report anything more specific to you? she says.

She tells me a story then that I haven’t heard: a student overhearing this same professor in his office with another student, hearing sounds that sounded inappropriate, watching the student and the professor walk out mussed up.

We were told she reported this to you and you reported it to Melissa, who did not follow up with us.

Melissa, who’s been kinder to me than most anyone.

None of that’s true, I tell her.

She nods.

It’s not. I feel somehow now like I’m accidentally on his side. False allegations is what I’m saying. Who would say that? I want to ask. I want to give her something irrefutable, but I don’t have anything like that.

But the other stuff, I say.

She names the student who supposedly told me this story.

I don’t know her, I say.

Melissa’s wonderful, I tell her. It’s an adjective that means nothing, least of all to lawyers. She’s one of the most supportive people, especially to women, in this whole place, I say.

All right, says the lawyer.

She’s stopped writing down any of what I say.

I don’t go back to work. I miss a meeting, but I text my co–homeroom teachers; I ask them to tell my boss that there’s an issue with my kids. I text the babysitter and tell her that I will get the kids from school and I get on the train and pick them up. They’re surprised to see me and they smile at me and I pick them up and it feels like the first time I’ve breathed in days. I take them to the park and they play and I watch them and then I take them home and we have dinner and I bathe them and I put them to bed.

I call Melissa. I tell her about my conversation with the lawyer.

I think somehow, I say, you’ve been accused of something?

She’s quiet a long time.

I just wanted you to know, I say. None of what she said is true, I tell her, about the lawyer.

I know, she says. Thanks for telling me.

We talk a long time without either of us saying anything substantive. She tells me about her classes, her dog’s second round of chemo. We talk as if, if we keep talking, some of what we’ve both just learned will make more sense, but it does not.

I hear my phone buzz and beep around 2:30. I remember that those stupid Instagram stories track who watches when you watch them. I know before I know that Sasha’s found me out.

I don’t know how to do this, her text says. Tell me I won’t do it wrong.

Our two-year-old is sleeping with us, curled up in a ball against my stomach, hot-skinned, breath thick with phlegm from her never-ending late-spring cold. I pull her closer to me and I hold my phone, staring at the screen with her name up at the top, then back down at the baby’s hands that she has wrapped around my other wrist.

WHY DON’T YOU call her? asks the Chilean writer. I’ve left work already and we sit and split a large plate of eggs and vegetables and French fries at a small, large-windowed restaurant on West Tenth Street in the middle of the day.

We don’t talk, I say.

The only other patron in the restaurant is an old woman with long, thick hair wearing all black.

I say: So much time has passed.

The Chilean writer’s shoulders hunch and her shirt dips in the middle. She has a mole on her right clavicle; her bones are long and thin.

I can’t look at her. For a long time I thought she’d be the person who would somehow make me be okay, I say.

The Chilean writer nods, as if we are all, at some point, this deluded.

I was only good at needing from her, I say. When she needed me, I failed.

The Chilean writer stays very quiet, stirs some milk into her coffee.

She lost a baby, I say. Years ago. We were still children.

I can feel her face get closer to me.

I left her, I say.

It sounds less violent than I feel it. The Chilean writer sips her coffee and looks past me toward the door.

More than once, I say. I say it louder than I meant to and she faces me again.

There is no Big Awful Crime I’ve hidden. I want to hold the Chilean writer’s face tight in my hands and make sure that she knows that sometimes violences are small and subtle, but that only makes them harder to make sense of, to figure out how they might be forgiven, how one might make amends for them later on.

At every moment that she might have needed me to be there, I say, I shut down and disappeared.

I’M TWENTY-TWO AND Sasha’s twenty-three. I live in