Marcia Talley: Sing It to Her Bones

A few minutes later the blasted thing rang again, but this time Paul ignored it. “Jeez, honey, I feel like an insensitive clod. Sitting here, drinking beer and feeling sorry for myself, after what you’ve just been through. Are you okay?”

The phone continued to ring-four, five times-making a sound like a strangling turkey-six, seven. “I might be, if you’d pick up the damn phone. Aren’t you going to answer that?”

“Let it ring, Hannah. We need to talk.”

“I’ll say we do. Didn’t I just say I’ve been trying to reach you for days?”

Paul caressed my cheek with the back of his fingers. “I am sorry, honey. I should have been there for you.” His face took on a look of such infinite sadness that my heart seemed to turn in my chest. Suddenly he was not looking at me, and I panicked.

“Paul, what’s wrong?” A cold fist of fear began to form in my stomach. Mom? The last time I’d talked to her, she’d had a persistent cough that she’d promised to see the doctor about.

“Not Mother?” I struggled to my feet. “Don’t tell me there’s something wrong with my mother?”

Paul stood and began to pace back and forth on the slate slabs that formed the patio. “No, it’s not your mother.” Then, seeing the look of alarm in my eyes, he quickly added, “Or Emily.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked at me. “God, Hannah, I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“What?” I grabbed his upper arms and shook him. “What? For Christ’s sake, Paul! Tell me, what?” The knot in my stomach had grown so huge that I thought I would throw up.

Paul took me gently by the shoulders and eased me back into my chair. He sat down, too, and pulled his chair up to mine until our knees touched. I remember thinking that the last time he’d done this was at the doctor’s office, the Friday before my mastectomy, a few moments after Dr. Wilkins had told us the results of the biopsy and reported that the fast-growing tumor was already six centimeters long. The doctor had scheduled my surgery for the following Monday, and I was in shock, hardly feeling the molded plastic chair underneath my legs or the warmth of Paul’s hands as they cradled both of mine.

Now I sat in my own backyard, rigid again with fear, feeling the gentle pressure of Paul’s hands and waiting for him to say something, thinking, Three . My mother always said that bad luck comes in threes.

“I’m in trouble, Hannah.” Paul cleared his throat. “It could be big trouble. One of my students has accused me of sexual harassment.”

I felt the world shift on its axis. Sexual harassment! After the Tailhook fiasco sexual harassment was one of the few things that could get a tenured professor at the Naval Academy booted out on his ear.

Paul studied my face, as if searching it for understanding. “It’s not true, of course.”

I sat frozen, momentarily unable to speak. My breath came in rapid gasps, and I felt light-headed. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this!”

“It may be all right, Hannah. Simon Westlake’s this year’s division head, and I’ve been meeting with him. He says he doesn’t believe a word of it, but he has to treat her complaint seriously.”

“Her?” I repeated numbly. It crossed my mind to be relieved that at least it wasn’t a he. “Her who?”

“Jennifer Goodall, a firstie. She told her company officer that we were”-he took a ragged breath-“she says we were intimate and that I promised her a higher grade in Probability Theory if she would-oh, God, Hannah.” He covered his eyes with his left hand. “She’s failing the course. She claims I’m flunking her in retaliation for her decision to break off our so-called affair.”

I didn’t know Jennifer Goodall, but I could imagine her: a “firstie,” a senior, and, like all midshipmen, a perfect physical specimen. I pictured lustrous blond hair done up in an intricate braid and impossibly blue eyes, a crisp white uniform fitting smoothly and snugly around firm, young breasts. Big tears began to slide down my cheeks and drip, unchecked, onto my T-shirt, a T-shirt I had chosen because it was loose and tended not to emphasis what little there was in the way of breasts underneath.

“Hannah. Hannah.” He reached for me. “You know it’s not true! Not a word of it! She’s desperate, Hannah. As a poly sci major she needs my course to graduate.”

I took two deep breaths and tried to think reasonably. This was serious. If Midshipman Goodall were to flunk out at this late date, the navy could send her to the fleet as a lowly enlisted person for two years.

I recalled Paul’s grueling teaching schedule, the days at work giving extra instruction, the long hours he spent each night at home grading papers and found the girl’s accusation hard to believe. “When is all this supposed to have happened?”

“At the Army-Navy game. At the Sheraton Hotel near the Meadowlands, where a bunch of us were staying.”

“But that was last December, Paul! This is May! Even if her story was true, why did she wait so long to report it?”

“I don’t know, honey. I can’t explain it. The only truth I know is that I spent the night at the Sheraton and that I slept alone.”

Just as I had slept alone. Too sick from chemo to attend the annual football rivalry, I had passed that chilly autumn evening alternately watching the game on TV and miserably hugging the toilet bowl.

“What about her roommate?”

“She didn’t sleep with her roommate. Apparently they’d had a fight. No one seems to have any idea where Midshipman Goodall spent the night, Hannah, but it certainly wasn’t with me.” Paul poked at the beer bottle with his index finger, toppling it onto its side. Half a bottle of tepid liquid dripped through the holes in the wrought iron table onto the slate below. “We had one drink together-”

“You had a drink with her?” I couldn’t believe my ears. “How could you have been so incredibly stupid?”

“I didn’t invite her to, for Christ’s sake, Hannah. I was sitting alone in the lobby bar, nursing a beer and reading a paperback, when she walked up and spoke to me. I recognized her from Differential Equations her plebe year. She sat down. We ordered a round of drinks. Then, when I realized how drunk she was, I tried to convince her to go back to her room. She refused saying, ‘no, no,’ she was fine, so I left her sitting in the bar and went back to my room.”

“But someone must have seen her! Another mid. A waitress. Hotel staff. Maybe she slept on a couch in the lobby.” I shook my head, trying to clear it.

“You could end up in the Washington Post ,” I muttered. “You could lose your job.”

“I know.” There was a long silence. Wind rustled the newspapers. A blue jay somewhere nearby jeered at the neighbor’s cat.

Paul lifted my chin and tried to look into my eyes, but I turned my head and stared, unfocused, at the stone wall that separated our property from our neighbors, refusing to meet his gaze. “Look at me, Hannah! You’ve got to believe me! I was never alone with her. Never! Not for a single minute!”

“But it doesn’t matter, does it, Paul? In this political climate, who’s going to listen?”

“Simon believes me, and I hope you do, too. You are my rock, Hannah. If I lose you…” He looked as if he were about to cry.

“Does Emily know?” I whispered, wondering if Paul had called our daughter.

“No, and I’m not planning to tell her, unless I have to.”

We sat for a while in silence, each waiting for the other to speak. “What happens now?” I finally asked, after what seemed like hours. “What can we do?”

“Nothing. Simon is handling it, and believe me, he’s going by the book. There’ll be a formal investigation, of course. Until then it’s business as usual. Officially no one knows anything.”