Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,7

drop out of things, for Charlene Turner to stop returning my telephone calls & letters.

So when she did stop returning my telephone calls, I was almost relieved. & when she continued to return my letters, I was gratified & happy. In May I received a note from her that said she was having some family trouble & would not be able to see me for a while. She was very sorry, she said, & very sad, & she would miss me.

When I responded, saying I understood & I wished her well, I assumed it would be our last exchange. But she kept writing to me. For years & years she wrote to me.

What she could not have known, & what I decided, after some deliberation, not to tell her, was that our brief relationship had several serious consequences for me.

I never felt the need to be furtive about our friendship, & so once or twice we were seen by my colleagues when Charlene met me at the end of a school day, & I would smile at them obliviously, & say hello. Another time, while out with Charlene for a Saturday dinner in a nice midtown restaurant, I saw the dean of Arts & Sciences, & said hello to her, & introduced her to Charlene by name. Certainly the thought had crossed my mind that what we were doing might be—frowned upon, in some vague way, but in general my relationship with Charlene felt so innocent, so lovely, that it was hard to imagine that anyone would sanction me for it. Besides, I told myself, Charlene was no longer my student, nor even a student at the university itself.

Therefore I was very surprised to be rung up in my office one afternoon by the dean, who asked me if I could come by. This was at the very end of spring semester, after Charlene had already announced to me, by letter, that she would be unable to continue to see me. I thought perhaps I had forgotten to do something—it was my weakness as a professor. I was constantly forgetting meetings, forgetting paperwork, forgetting compliance with one initiative or another.

I rumbled into the dean’s office & sat down across the desk from her, expecting to be asked for a favor, or to be scolded for some small item or other. But she did not engage in small talk.

“There has been some discussion,” said the dean, “about you and a student.”

She paused and looked at me for a moment as if trying to determine my innocence or guilt by the look on my face.

Which must only have registered as surprise—truly, I was so surprised that I couldn’t even speak. I opened my mouth and closed it again.

“Are you currently having a relationship with a student?” she asked me. She was attempting to be courteous, professional. She asked me the question as if she were a doctor.

“No, I am not,” I said. It was the truth.

“Were you,” said the dean, consulting some papers before her as if they pertained to our conversation, “with a young woman named Charlene Turner at Franco’s when I saw you there earlier this spring? Was that Ms. Turner?”

“Yes,” I said. “But Charlene Turner isn’t a student here anymore.”

“She is indeed,” said the dean, and proffered to me the paper she had been holding in her hands, which, as it turned out—did pertain. It was Charlene Turner’s transcript. On it was a course from that spring, Modern Literature, which I had recommended to her specifically at the end of fall semester, but which I thought she had dropped.

“She hasn’t been attending,” I said.

“I believe that’s beside the point,” said the dean. “As you’re aware, it violates the university’s code of ethics for a professor to be engaged in a romantic relationship with a student—especially a student whom he or she has taught.”

“Who made the complaint?” I asked her. I’m not sure why I did, knowing that she would not answer. It came out of me unstoppably. I had my suspicions. Hans Hueber’s face popped into my head.

Of course she would not answer. She told me that it was her duty, since the situation had been brought to her attention, to report it to the university’s ethics board. The ethics board, consisting of five of my colleagues, two administrators, and three elected students, would then determine whether a hearing was necessary.

Needless to say I was quite upset. My relationship with teaching was fraught, it is fair to say, but