her. She can’t teach, and she is neither mentally nor intellectually equipped to do top-notch research. That said, she is neither dumb nor lazy, and that was sufficient to secure her an excellent first degree. But she is simply not good enough to continue!”
“But how must she feel right now? It was irresponsible to let them trample her like that!”
“It’s equally irresponsible to allow someone unsuited to an academic career to waste her time in grad school. So she failed! She will go home, think it over, talk it over, and revise her dissertation! And if she doesn’t, she’ll fail again, and if she keeps failing, she’d better come up with Plan B, because she won’t make it in academia!” He pauses and looks at me, oddly. “What’s your Plan B?”
“Plan B?”
“What are you going to do if this doesn’t work out?”
“Are you talking about what if I don’t make associate?”
“Well, for the syntax of that sentence alone you should be blackballed.”
“No, but—but this isn’t about me! And it isn’t about this particular student’s potential as a young academic! This is about common decency!”
“Oh, bollocks!”
And he stomps past me, two steps at a time with his long legs, up the stairs and along the hallway to his office. Just leaves me standing there, swaying with adrenaline. A student comes down the stairs and avoids my eyes so clumsily that I know our fight was audible all through the staircase. I hurry up two flights of stairs to my office, hoping that I will make it into my little sanctuary before I burst into tears. I am in such a state, my hand is trembling so badly I can’t even fit the key into the lock.
What’s with this freakin’ door?
The key does not fit the lock. It isn’t my trembling fingers at all. The lock has been changed. I hadn’t noticed it right away, in my rush, but the handle is different, newer; the whole thing, lock, handle, and all, has been changed. Thirty-six hours after I scrubbed it to get the stench of motor oil off it. And no one told me.
If a last straw were needed, this would be it.
Up the stairs…up the spiral staircase. The door to the old observatory under the dome will be locked, too, bound to be; Selena and her demon lover won’t have left it open, but at least it’ll get me out of sight. I crouch at the top of the stairs by the heavy carven door that looks as if it had not been changed since the eighteen fifties. Lean against the wall among broken chairs and wooden casks, and slide down into a pathetic bundle.
It is pouring out of me. Floods of silent tears, when I hate crying, when I haven’t cried since my bubbe died last spring, and why the hell does Cleveland keep reminding me of my grandmother? When he looked at me back there on the stairs—What are you going to do if this doesn’t work out?—for a split second I saw my grandmother’s anxious face. But no one is going to look at me ever again with such affectionate concern and say “But are you happy, lemeleh?” It would be foolish, the supremest of all follies—to think that anyone will. Or would.
Or just did.
Tears of fury—God, yes! But not about Cleveland.
And I don’t even have a—I wipe my face and nose with the sleeve of my blouse, and detect, in the dusky light of the landing, a box of tissue paper wedged between two moving boxes. Chances are, there’s a rat living in there. Or a huge spider. Gingerly I push my fingers in and have to bite on a squeal; something hard touched my fingertips. A key. Not a flat key like the ones on my key ring; a metal skeleton key, like the key in a fairy story.
It does make me feel childishly implausible, but how can I indulge in a fit of Weltschmerz when I may be holding the key to the fabled Ardrossan observatory in my hand?
It is like stepping into the apse of a church. The dome is a ribbed vault divided into eight segments, each designed to be slid open by a long crank handle. The windows are as high as the ceiling—long, slim lancet windows all round, in keeping with the neo-gothic style of the building, the walls between covered by high bookcases. This is a marvelous space.
The bookcases are full of junk; there are piles of broken office chairs,