Sharyn McCrumb - If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him…

The room was quiet; the lights were dimmed; and Elizabeth was now alone with her mother, who was determined to sit by the bedside of her ailing off-spring.

“You didn’t give me a task, dear,” she reminded the patient.

“I saved a hard one for you, Mother,” said Elizabeth solemnly.

“Really? And what is that?”

“Don’t you think someone should notify Daddy that I’m in the hospital?”

“Oh, my, your father. I’d forgotten all about him.”

“So it seems,” Elizabeth remarked, with a glance toward the closed door. “Would you like Casey to come in? We shouldn’t leave her alone in the hall.”

“Yes, of course.” Margaret MacPherson hesitated. “You know, dear, when we heard that you were seriously ill-dying, for all I knew-I resolved to tell you something, if I ever got the chance. And now that you’re going to be fine, it all seems silly, but after all I did promise your guardian angel, or whoever listens to mothers’ prayers.”

“In your case, I should imagine it’s Saint Jude, Mother.”

“I’ll just go and get Casey.”

Elizabeth tried not to imagine what new culture shocks awaited her with the coming revelation. Surely, no one was using the hospital visit to price sex-change operations, were they? Before she had time to raise her blood pressure significantly, Margaret and Casey appeared, and sat down in the two metal chairs by the bed. “All right,” she said wearily. “I’m under sedation anyhow. What is it?”

Margaret and Casey looked at each other. “It will all come out anyway when Virgil resigns,” said Casey, shrugging.

“True. All right. Elizabeth, I don’t necessarily want you broadcasting this about. In fact, don’t even tell Bill unless you think you absolutely must, but Casey-”

“Call me Phyllis,” said the small dark-haired woman, smiling faintly.

Margaret MacPherson nodded. “Oh, of course. Phyllis . Sorry. It has become a habit. Anyhow, Elizabeth, Phyllis and I are roommates.”

“Yes, you live together. I know. I came to your housewarming party. So?”

“You don’t understand,” said her mother. “Phyllis and I are roommates .”

“Not lovers,” said Phyllis Casey helpfully.

Elizabeth’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. “You lied?” she whispered. “You lied about your sexual orientation? About this whole political lesbian business! You lied? Why would you do such a thing?”

She was prepared to go on for several more minutes in the same vein, but Phyllis Casey interrupted her. “Actually, Margaret did it as a favor to me. Please don’t be cross with her. She was being extremely kind.”

“‘A little more than kin; a little less than kind,’” snapped Elizabeth. She only wished her cousin Geoffrey had been present to hear her riposte. Geoffrey, an amateur actor with an inclination toward Shakespeare, regarded barding as his chief form of recreation. Elizabeth admired his displays of erudition, but she rarely managed to find an opportunity to use one of the few phrases she knew. “What do you mean, doing you a favor?” she asked Phyllis Casey.

“Phyllis is an English professor at the local college. She has taught there for years, and because she has always been conservative and diligent, the rest of the faculty has taken her for granted. Lately, the department has become increasingly radical. First it was deconstruction, then it was multiculturalism-”

“They ditched Chaucer and Melville in favor of Comanche war chants and readings from the Bhagavad-Gita ,” said Phyllis Casey, scowling.

“I see,” said Elizabeth. “And you were upset over this?”

“Disgusted is more like it,” Phyllis replied. “But what really enraged me was the notion that one had to be a radical to get any attention. Nobody cared about good teaching, or decent scholarship anymore. It was all show business. Who can be the most militant; who can make the most shocking assertions regarding conventional texts.”

Margaret MacPherson nodded. “I think what finally sent Phyllis over the edge was the course on the Brontes. The young professor who taught it called it Incest and Literature.”

Phyllis sighed helplessly. “It did upset me. He said some very nasty things about Emily and Branwell, without a scrap of evidence. Why, the National Enquirer has more credibility than that young swine.”

“Then the department started assigning all the upper-level lit classes to the flamboyant types, while poor Phyllis was left to teach freshman comp and all the other scutwork courses. She was getting ready to quit, but I told her that two can play at that game. ‘You fight back,’ I said. Didn’t I, Phyllis?”

The English professor nodded, looking a little embarrassed. “It really did seem to be the only course of action,” she murmured. “So logical.”

Elizabeth gasped. “You told them you were a lesbian?”

“Yes. I announced it at the next department meeting. And I said that as a militant feminist lesbian I objected to having courses about women writers taught by a member of the white male patriarchy who are our oppressors.”

“She meant the clown who taught Incest and Literature.”

“Yes. I did a good bit of reading to get the terminology right. My colleagues were stunned, I must say. They just stared at me, openmouthed, like the bowl of goldfishes in Goldsmith’s poem. So before anyone could recover I told them that I wanted to teach a lit course called Man-Free: the Creative Spirit of the Unencumbered Woman.”

“Let me guess,” said Elizabeth. “Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson-”

“Precisely.” Phyllis Casey beamed with satisfaction. “All the authors I had been teaching all along. As soon as I announced that I was a lesbian feminist, they gave me back all my old courses. They’ve all been quite deferential to me ever since.”

“How did you two pull off this scam?”

“It was quite easy, dear,” said Elizabeth’s mother. “Phyllis and I had already arranged to be roommates, because sharing the house seemed like such a safe and economical measure. But people are rather contemptuous of middle-aged women who are simply housemates, so we decided to spice up the act a little.”

“People believed you?” asked Elizabeth, still incredulous.

“ You believed us, dear. I find that most people will believe anything that scandalizes them. And we never resorted to public displays of affection, or even to sharing a bedroom. People simply took our word for it. People seemed so eager to be tolerant and accepting of us that it never occurred to them to wonder if we were conning them. We were amazed ourselves at how easy it was.”

“It’s a pity we have to give the game away,” said Phyllis.

“Why? What happened?”

“Virgil Agnew and I are engaged.” Phyllis Casey smiled at Elizabeth’s look of astonishment. “You may remember him from the party. He is the professor of theatre and dance who was introduced to you as our token heterosexual.”

“Oh yes,” said Elizabeth. “He claimed to be in therapy for it.”

“He was. His psychiatrist pronounced him incurable, though, so he gave up trying to be like everyone else, and we started seeing each other. Last week Virgil proposed to me, and I accepted him.” She sighed. “I suppose I’ll lose my lit courses again.”

“You’re jilting my mother for a guy named Virgil?” Elizabeth demanded. “No, wait. I think I’m relieved. I think.”

Margaret MacPherson and Phyllis Casey laughed. “Really, Elizabeth, I’m delighted for both of them,” her mother assured her. “I think Phyllis and I were growing tired of the nouvelle cuisine crowd anyway. It will be quite a relief to close the show.”