exchange as for what he said. Hastily I launch into the introductions, and of course Karen’s friend is Lorna O’Neal.
“Your Selena is in one of my classes, isn’t she? I’m only just getting to know everyone.”
“Well, she mentioned you,” Lorna says sternly, and I don’t know whether this is good or bad. She is a big, tall woman—what fashion magazines nowadays call “full-figured”—with blond highlights and a little too much color around the eyes—but striking, and clearly a very pretty woman when she was younger. I wonder how she gets on with her studious, mousy daughter, and then I wonder how mousy Selena would look if she straightened her shoulders and put on some age-appropriate clothes.
“Selena’s a marvel,” Lorna continues, “so hard-working and ambitious! I know you wouldn’t think it on account of her being so quiet. She has to show more personality, I keep telling her, because she has every right to be confident. I don’t mind telling you that she is the first in our family to go to graduate school! That’s why the girls talk about you, Dr. Lieberman. You’re an example to them.”
A Jewish agnostic who talks to first-years about masturbation? I think not.
“Thank you, Mrs. O’Neal, you’re very kind,” I murmur mechanically. “But about this…rumor.”
“Bless you, I’m sure I needn’t to stress how very confidential this information is!” She is a self-assured woman, not easily shaken, but she knows perfectly well that she has committed a serious professional blunder that might even be cause for dismissal.
“So, who is it?” Tim asks bluntly. “If it’s a secret that can be shared with the general populace, I don’t see why you should be cagey about telling us.”
“I suspect Mrs. O’Neal feels she oughtn’t to tell us,” I supply helpfully.
“Can’t!” she insists. “And that’s the truth! I know no more than that, Dr. Blundell. No names, no details. But, as right is right, this is too shameful a crime to be swept under the carpet by the college—dearly as they’d like to, I have no doubt!”
“Neither have I,” Tim agrees.
I jump in before Tim can go on. “We’d best leave the matter to the authorities and interfere as little as possible. We appreciate the difficulty of your position, Mrs. O’Neal. Please give our best regards to Selena. Is she here, too?”
“No, she—” Lorna can’t quite get herself to release Tim from her glare of mistrust. “She decided to stay behind to study.”
Tim leaves shortly after the two women, promising to let me know if he finds out anything over the weekend. Through the shock and confusion I feel the pull of the woods. I could take out my new bike, but cycling would distract me from thinking, so I walk. Once through the poplars and across the creek, I cut left, away from the path that will take me past the pickers’ camp and round to Calderwood Lane. No more people!
When Tim demanded to know whether I ever had an affair with a professor, I could truthfully answer in the negative. Alex Gresham was no professor. He was a rabbi.
Now there’s a secret.
About half a mile along a path I never took before, the trees are thinning out and a grassland hill comes into view. Hare Hill, as I learned from the map of the surrounding area that I bought at the gas station. Today I will walk up Hare Hill, although it feels oddly uncomfortable to leave the cover of the forest and to venture out into the open grassland. Why do hares do that?
Alex and I weren’t exposed. Not that we did anything wrong, or morally turpid. It is just that a recently widowed rabbi, on a curative exchange from Manchester, England, will always prefer for his affair with a twenty-one-year-old volunteer tutor at the temple to remain undiscussed by the yentas. I preferred it, too.
He was the first man I ever made love with. I’d had sex with boys, two or three—but I had not made love with a man. His grief made him both needy and unavailable at the same time; the combination was irresistible to me. We both knew that come August I would leave for the marshy plains of East Anglia, and neither of us ever called that event into question. I was in love, but I was also ambitious.
I sit down on a grassy knoll on top of the hill—no hares to be seen—and rest my chin on my hunched-up knees. The surrounding tree tops, in differing shades of green, have