On April ninth, Julia walked through the melting snow to
Professor Picton’s house, clutching her printed thesis in one hand and a bottle of Chianti in the other.
She was nervous. Although her relationship with Professor Picton had always been cordial, it was never warm. Katherine wasn’t the kind of person to dote or fawn over her students. She was professional and demanding and decidedly unsentimental. So Julia was quite concerned when Katherine invited her to submit her thesis in person and to stay for dinner. Of course, there was no possibility of a refusal.
Julia stood on the front porch of Katherine’s three-story brick home and rang the doorbell. She wiped her palms on the front of her pea coat, trying to eliminate the clamminess.
“Julianne, welcome.” Katherine opened the door and ushered her student inside.
If Julia’s small studio was a hobbit hole, then Professor Picton’s house was the abode of a wood elf. A wood elf with a taste for fine, old furnishings. Everything was elegant and antique; the walls were paneled in dark wood with expensive carpets blanketing the floors. The decorating was aristocratic but spare, and everything was extremely ordered and tidy.
After taking Julia’s coat, Katherine graciously accepted the Chianti and the thesis, and directed her to a small parlor off the front hall. Julia promptly sat herself in a leather club chair in front of the hearth and accepted a small glass of sherry.
“Dinner is almost ready,” Katherine said and vanished like a Greek goddess.
Julia examined the large books about English architecture and gardens gracing the low coffee table. The walls were lined with pastoral
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scenes interspersed with the occasional severe black and white portrait of the ancestral Pictons. She sipped her sherry slowly, savoring the warmth as it slid down her throat to her stomach. Before she could finish, Katherine was escorting her to the dining room.
“This is lovely.” Julia smiled, in an effort to mask her nervousness. She was intimidated by the fine bone china, crystal, and silver candlesticks that Katherine had set atop a white damask tablecloth that looked as if it had been ironed.
(Not even the linens would dare to wrinkle without Professor Picton’s permission.)
“I like to entertain,” said Katherine. “But truthfully, there are few dining companions that I can stand for an entire evening.”
Julia felt a sinking feeling in her middle. With as little noise as possible, she took her place next to Katherine, who sat at the head of the long, oak table.
“It smells delicious,” said Julia, trying not to ravenously inhale the scent of cooked meat and vegetables that wafted from her plate. She hadn’t been eating much in the previous days but Professor Picton’s offerings seemed to have stimulated her appetite.
“I tend toward vegetarianism, but in my experience graduate students never eat enough meat. So I’ve prepared an old recipe of my mother’s. Normandy hotpot, she used to call it. I hope you don’t mind pork.”
“Not at all.” Julia smiled. But when she saw the lemon zest atop the plate of steamed broccoli, her smile narrowed.
Gabriel had a thing for garnishes.
“A toast perhaps?” Katherine poured Julia’s wine gift into their glasses and held hers aloft.
Julia raised her glass obligingly.
“To your success at Harvard.”
“Thank you.” Julia hid her mixed emotions behind the act of drinking.
Once a polite space of time had elapsed, Katherine spoke. “I brought you here to discuss a number of different things. First, your thesis. Are you satisfied with it?”
Julia swallowed a piece of parsnip hastily. “No.”
Katherine frowned.
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“What I mean is, there’s room for improvement. If I had another year, it would be so much better. Um…” Julia wished a hole would open up under the floorboards and swallow her.
Inexplicably, Katherine smiled and sat back in her chair. “That’s the correct answer. Good for you.”
“Pardon?”
“Students these days think they’re far more talented than they actually are. I’m glad, with all your success, you’ve maintained some academic humility.
“Of course another year would improve your thesis. You’ll be a better student and a better scholar next year, if you continue to work hard. I’m pleased you realize you have room for improvement. Now, we can move on to something else.”
Julia tore her eyes from Katherine and focused on her knife and fork. She had no idea what was coming next.
Katherine tapped an impatient finger on top of the table. “I don’t like it when people pry into my private life, so I leave others’ private lives alone. In your case, I was dragged into something by David Aras.” Katherine grimaced. “I’m not privy to everything that went on at that McCarthyite hearing, and I don’t want to be.” She glanced at Julia meaningfully.
“Greg Matthews at Harvard is looking to hire an endowed chair in Dante studies. I’d hoped that Gabriel would be offered that job.” Katherine saw Julia move out of the corner of her eye, but quickly continued. “Unfortunately, the chair has been offered to someone else. They foolishly tried to lure me out of retirement, but I declined.
“How that dreadful Pacciani man ended up on their short list, I’ll never know. At any rate, Cecilia Marinelli will be the new endowed chair. They stole her from Oxford. It would be good if you could work with her. Provided all goes well with your thesis, I’d be happy to telephone Cecilia and let her know of your arrival.”
“Thank you, Professor. That’s very kind.”
Katherine waved a casual hand. “Not at all.”
The two women spent the next few minutes finishing their dinner in relative silence. While Katherine cleared the table, after refusing her student’s repeated offers to help, Julia finished her wine.
Although she felt badly that Gabriel did not get his dream job, she was relieved that he would not be following her to Harvard. His
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presence in the department would have caused all kinds of problems. She could never work with him now. And it would have been extremely painful to have to try to maintain a professional and detached relationship with him. No, it was much better that Gabriel would stay in Toronto, while she moved to Boston. It was a mercy, albeit a severe one, that Harvard had hired Professor Marinelli.
After dessert and coffee, Katherine suggested they retire to the parlor. Once again, Julia sat in the comfortable club chair next to the fire and gratefully received the small glass of port that Katherine pressed into her hand. Although Katherine’s decorating style was quite different from Gabriel’s, it seemed as if Dante specialists enjoyed drinking by the fireplace.
“You will have a fresh start at Harvard, and no one will have an inkling of what transpired here. Until then, it would be wise not to draw any more attention to yourself.” Katherine gave Julia a look that was piercing, if not severe.
“Graduate students, especially female graduate students, are vulnerable with respect to their reputation. There are still those in the Academy who would choose to mislabel the fruits of talent and hard work as the results of preferment and prostitution. It’s best if you never give anyone the slightest suspicion that you haven’t earned your accomplishments through hard work.”
“Professor Picton, I swear that I worked very hard in the Dante seminar. He didn’t help me with my essay or give me any special treatment. That’s why he asked you to grade it.”
“I’m sure that’s true. But you deceived me, and quite frankly, I’m a bit put out.”
Julia gazed at her advisor with undisguised horror.
“Nevertheless, I understand why I wasn’t taken into your confidence. I’m sure Gabriel forbade it. I’m annoyed with him as well, but for reasons I won’t divulge, I owe him a debt.”
Professor Picton sipped her port thoughtfully, staring off into space. “When I was a student at Oxford, it was shamefully common for dons to develop romantic relationships with their students. Sometimes the relationships were what we would now consider harassment cases. Other times true love was involved. I saw both.”
Katherine fixed Julia with an unblinking eye. “I know the difference between a Willoughby and a Colonel Brandon. I hope that you do too.”
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P
The following evening, Julia walked to Paul’s apartment. They’d agreed to meet for coffee so they could debrief after Julia’s dinner with Professor Picton.
Paul turned to face Julia on the couch. “Now that the semester is over for you, when are you moving?”
Julia sipped her coffee. “My lease is up the end of July, but I was hoping to persuade my landlord to let me leave mid-June.”
“After graduation?”
“Yes. My dad is going to help me move.”
Paul placed his mug on the coffee table.
“I’m heading back to Vermont in June. You could drive with me, and I could help you move.”
“My dad is coming for graduation.”
“We can drive together. You two could stay with me at the farm for a day or so, then we could drive down to Boston to get you settled. Are you going to live in residence?”
“I don’t know. They sent me something saying I couldn’t get into the residence halls until August. But I’d need somewhere to live before that.”
“My friend’s younger brother goes to Boston College. Let me talk to him and see if he knows of a place you could sublet. Half the population of Boston is under twenty-five. There are a lot of students.”
“You’d do that? Help me move and find an apartment?”
“I’d expect to be paid, in beer. I like Krombacher, by the way.”
“I think I can do that.”
Julia smiled and they clinked their coffee mugs together.
“Who are they?” She pointed to a photograph of four people, two men and two women, that Paul had partially hidden behind a penguin on top of his television.
“The girl on the far left is Heather, my little sister, and her husband, Chris. That’s me on the right.”
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“And the other girl?” Julia gazed at the face of the pretty young woman who was clutching Paul’s waist and laughing.
“Uh, that’s Allison.”
Julia waited politely for Paul to elaborate.
“My ex-girlfriend.”
“Oh,” said Julia.
“We’re still friends. But she’s working in Vermont and couldn’t handle the long-distance thing. We broke up a while ago,” Paul explained quickly.
“You’re a good person.” Julia shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
Paul pulled her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles chastely. “I think you should say whatever is on your mind. For the record, I’ve always thought you were a good person too.”
She smiled but withdrew her hand delicately, so as not to give offense.
Shortly before midnight, she was asleep on his shoulder, their bodies close together on the futon. Paul’s mind was drifting, imagining the feel of her lips against his, her skin beneath his hands. He turned his face into her hair, tightening his arms around her. She stirred, mumbling Emerson’s name before burrowing her head in his chest.
He realized that he had a decision to make. If he was going to be Julia’s friend, then he would have to suppress his romantic feelings for her. He couldn’t kiss her or try to move things forward. It was far too soon. And it was quite possible she’d never want him, even when her broken heart was mended. But Julia needed a friend; she needed him. He wasn’t going to abandon her in her time of need, even if it was going to be painful to set aside his true feelings.
So instead of falling asleep with her in his arms, he carried her to his room and placed her on the bed. He covered her with the sheet and blankets, making sure that she was comfortable, then he picked up an extra pillow and a quilt and retreated to the living room.
He spent much of the evening frustrated and staring at the ceiling, while Julia slept soundly in his bed.
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P
While Julia was spending the night at Paul’s apartment, Gabriel sat in his hotel room, glaring at his laptop. He’d received another terse email from his Chair, Jeremy Martin, reminding him of how much personal and political capital Jeremy had expended to “save his ass.” As if Gabriel needed a reminder.
His gaze drifted to the ring on his finger, resisting the urge to reexamine the words he’d had engraved on the inside. He spun the platinum band around and around as he cursed his most recent failure.
Harvard had kindly informed him that his candidacy was unsuccessful and that they’d hired Professor Marinelli, instead. Gabriel’s lack of success was one more way in which he’d failed Julianne. But it mattered little, now. What use would it be to be at Harvard, if she wouldn’t forgive him?
He cursed bitterly. What use was it to be anywhere, if she wouldn’t forgive him? Even in the hotel, she was with him. On his computer, on his cell phone, in his iPod, in his head.
Oh, yes, in his head. He was correct when he said that he would never forget what it felt like to gaze upon her naked body for the first time, the way her eyes were fixed on the floor shyly, the way her face flushed under his heated touch.
He remembered looking down into her deep, dark eyes as she trembled beneath him, ruby lips parted, breathing heavily, and the way her eyes widened as he entered her.
She’d flinched. Somehow he could remember every time he’d made her flinch. And there had been many — when he shamed her for being poor, when he first carried her to bed, when he wove his fingers through her hair and she begged him not to hold her head down, when he admitted that he’d agreed to separate himself from her…
How many times could he hurt her in one short life?
He’d tortured himself by listening to the voicemail messages she’d left for him — messages he hadn’t returned. They’d grown progressively more despondent until they’d ceased altogether. He couldn’t
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blame her. It was clear that his messages had not gotten through, with the exception of a single email. He opened it again, imagining her reaction.
Stop contacting me.
It’s over.
Regards,
Prof. Gabriel O. Emerson,
Associate Professor
Department of Italian Studies/
Centre for Medieval Studies
University of Toronto
A bitter laugh that he recognized as coming from his own throat echoed in the room. Of course, that would be the message she believed — not the others. He’d lost her now. What hope was there without her?
Gabriel thought back to a conversation he’d had with her about Grace’s favorite book, A Severe Mercy. It was clear in the story that the main characters thought that they’d made an idol of their love — worshipping it and each other to their own detriment. He’d done the same with Julianne, he knew. He’d worshipped her very being, convinced that she was the light that would shine in his darkness.
He’d loved her enough to leave her in order to protect her future. And having left her, he was in peril of never possessing her love again. It was the bitterest twist of fate, that his love for his Beatrice would be precisely what separated him from her.
And what of Paul? Surely he’d use this as an opportunity to comfort Julia. And where would that comfort lead…Gabriel couldn’t entertain the idea that she would be unfaithful. But he knew through her messages that she thought it was over. Paul would simply have to provide a shoulder for her to lean on and he’d be back in her life, in her apartment, in her thoughts.
Angelfucker.
The only relief he could find, if relief it was, would be to torture himself with music and poetry. He clicked a button, and Sting’s retelling of the story of David and Bathsheba filled the room. As the song swirled in the air, he gazed at Dante’s poetic reflection on the death of Beatrice and found his heart echoing the words from La Vita Nuova.
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“An abject wretch like this
May not imagine anything of her, —
He needs no bitter tears for his relief.
But sighing comes, and grief,
And the desire to find no comforter,
(Save only Death, who makes all sorrow brief,)
To him who for a while turns in his thought
How she hath been among us, and is not.
With sighs my bosom always laboureth
On thinking, as I do continually.
Of her for whom my heart now breaks apace;
And very often when I think of death,
Such a great inward longing comes to me
That it will change the colour of my face;
And, if the idea settles in its place.
All my limbs shake as with an ague-fit;
Till, starting up in wild bewilderment,
I do become so shent
That I go forth, lest folk misdoubt of it.
Afterward, calling with a sore lament
On Beatrice, I ask, ‘Canst thou be dead?’
And calling on her, I am comforted.”
Gabriel closed the document on his computer and traced a light finger over the photograph of the lovely woman who graced his computer screen. He would discharge his duty over the next few days, but he would do so without his Beatrice to comfort him. In her absence, perhaps he would succumb to his old temptations to deaden the pain.
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