“I wouldn’t want any of my actions to harm the department,” I say cautiously. “And—”
“And you’d be a fool to harm yourself.” His eyes glance past mine as he says this, and the sentence reverberates between us. “You can’t afford to refuse this…request by your Dean.”
“No, I can’t.” I look at Elizabeth to signal my acquiescence with the powers that be, and she shrugs, not unsympathetically.
“No, you can’t.”
“Right. Well, ladies, I’ll leave you to it.” Giles gets up, still angry, but he replaces the chair he had taken from the large table in Elizabeth’s office, and he does so quietly, and quietly he shuts the door behind himself.
Elizabeth unfolds her hands and makes a few pencil notes in the student files.
“I value Giles greatly,” she says finally, and I can tell that she, too, is upset; otherwise she would not speak to me about a tenured colleague. “But this puritan streak of his is a nuisance! Well. I’m sorry, Anna, that you had to bump up against the realities of private education so early in your term here. But don’t worry, I have to make a note of it, of course, but nobody will care about it when you’re up for your three-year review.”
“Unless it happens more often.” I feel defeated rather than obstinate.
“Well, I see no reason to start a debate about principles at this point, Anna. I share Giles’s view that a teacher who is popular with everyone must be doing something wrong.” She relaxes her manner a little. “How was Notre Dame?”
Oh, my God.
“Fine, thank you.”
She smiles at my hollow tone. “Don’t look so dismayed. Richard Prewitt is an old friend of mine. He wrote to me especially to congratulate me on our choice of junior faculty, and I can assure you his praise is not easily earned.”
I recall the elderly professor who was extremely complimentary about my paper, both in the discussion and over coffee afterward.
“Oh! Yes, he was very kind.”
“So, keep up the good work, Anna, but try to pull the New York brusqueness a little. Will you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Friday afternoon, reading week. The place is deserted. I need to regroup. Get my act together. Think. Sexual harassment. Will I ever live that down?
This might still work out. A slap on the wrist, yes, but in the balance also a commendation by a valued friend of the Dean of Studies. It seems all is not lost yet.
I have not been upstairs in the dome since I took Irene there on Family Weekend. Why I have the strong urge to go now, I am not sure. Maybe because I feel unfairly treated and so, to even the scales, I will do something forbidden. I will use my secret key. The box of tissues has long gone; maybe Selena and her seducer have found a new locus amoris.
This is not a space in which one would ever want to switch on artificial light. Candles, perhaps, but electric light would hurt the eyes. I walk across to the long, partitioned windows and ease one of the crank handles out of its holder. Amazingly, it turns, and inch by groaning inch one of the roof segments lifts and slides above its neighbor, revealing a slice of gray December sky. The wind blows surprisingly hard into the room, and the dome starts singing; the door slips off the latch and creaks.
I understand why Selena and her young man sometimes stay the night up here. It must be wonderful to hide out among the stars. It is overcast today, but on a clear day, or during a clear night, this must be a wonderful place to make love. Cautiously I climb the wooden steps to the biggest telescope that is mounted on a high oak table. I peek through it, but the lens is so grimy I can’t see a thing. My back will probably be covered in dust, but I stretch out on the table top, next to the thick round pedestal of the telescope. If the stars were out, I could see them all. Dizzy. Frightening, as if the firmament would fall and bury me. Me, tiny, tiny me; a speck, and yet, with the man inside me, his rod of life glowing, igniting me, we would be the center of the turning world.
I understand Selena.
Selene.
Σελήνη
Goddess of the moon.
The whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by