Joyce Oates - Mudwoman

He hadn’t wanted her to become president of the University. He’d been frankly astonished that among several very strong candidates, M.R. had been chosen.

M.R. had not said to him You could dissuade me, if you wanted to. If you wanted to badly enough.

For maybe this wasn’t true. Maybe—M.R. contemplated the possibility—she did prefer the public position, the opportunity to serve, to lead, to hold in the Light—to a more private life.

At any rate, she’d accepted the offer of the board of trustees of the University. Leonard Lockhardt had drawn up her contract. The faculty of the University overwhelmingly approved of Neukirchen for the presidency—this had been crucial to M.R.’s acceptance. Never had she felt so—vindicated.

Almost, you might say—loved.

For this was the high point of Mudwoman’s life—to be admired, loved.

The phone rang: 9:09 P.M.

Not the president’s phone but M.R.’s cell phone for which very few people had the number.

She saw—the caller ID wasn’t LITOVIK.

She pushed the little phone away, she had no desire to answer it.

She’d fallen asleep at her desk. The massive cherrywood desk with its numerous deep drawers. Folded her arms on the desktop and laid her head on her arms and drifted into an exhausted sleep. For the day—this ignominious day!—had begun so long before, in the dark preceding dawn.

FREE CHOICE IS A LIE!

NOBODY’S BABY WANTS TO DIE!

Salvager Hall was empty and darkened except for the president’s office where a single desk lamp was lighted. Three floors deserted as a stage set from which actors have departed. The new female president had a plucky-loyal staff to work closely with her and to defend her against her critics and detractors while conferring worriedly among themselves Is something wrong with M.R.? Is she—ill? She seems to be making mistakes—misjudgments…. Since the accident in October …

“No. I can make things right again.”

The cell phone had ceased ringing. Then, within seconds it rang again—the opening bars of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

M.R.’s (secret) lover had bought her the cell phone. So that she could call him, and he could call her. That had been years before in an earlier and more idyllic phase of their friendship.

It was not Andre. In the caller ID window was KROLL.

She was appalled, that Oliver Kroll would be calling her at such a time. And on her cell phone, not the president’s phone. She wouldn’t have thought that Kroll had her number or that he would dare to call her, after what had happened that afternoon.

For M.R. had no doubt, Oliver Kroll had conspired with Stirk to record their conversation. This is war. Our war has begun.

They would gloat together. They would play the tape, and laugh at her.

And now—Kroll was calling her.

M.R. felt a swirl of nausea. She was not so strong as people thought—even Leonard Lockhardt who’d come to know her painfully well misjudged her as a stronger woman than she was.

Remarkable woman. Such enthusiasm!

A natural-born leader.

She’d been in hiding. She’d been eating at her desk. The remains of M.R.’s supper on a greasy paper napkin: dry pita bread, strips of lettuce like confetti, “grilled” vegetables dry and tasteless as wood chips and a can of Diet Coke.

She’d canceled her dinner for that evening—she’d needed to be alone. As president of the University M. R. Neukirchen was scheduled for luncheons, receptions, dinners through the semester virtually day following day.

And such a friendly—accessible—person … So sympathetic, and so informed …

Such energy!

What comfort in being alone—at last. No one to observe the wounded “leader.”

The little phone ceased ringing. After a brief wait M.R. checked her messages hoping that Kroll hadn’t left a message but that—somehow—Andre had left a message instead.

Thinking Love is a sickness for which the only cure is love.

Of course—there was Kroll’s unmistakable voice. M.R. steeled herself for irony/mockery which was the politics professor’s usual style but this was very different.

“Hello? It’s Oliver—Kroll….” Haltingly Kroll spoke like one uncertain of his way. M.R. could hear his breath close against the mouthpiece. “I’m calling to say—to explain—I hope you don’t think that I had anything to do with … I don’t know what Alexander told you or hinted at but—it wasn’t—it isn’t—so … I did not have anything to do with him recording your conversation…. If I’d known what the hell he’d intended, I would have tried to dissuade him.” Kroll’s voice was strained, urgent. This was hardly a message M.R. might have expected from Oliver Kroll and so she listened surprised and fascinated. “He’s a—an—excitable young man … He’s brilliant but—obviously troubled. … Some things have come to light, Meredith, he’s told me about—just tonight—that will have to be revealed tomorrow, to the township police, to the security office, and to you…. Could you call me? Regardless of how late it is, call me? It would be better if we could talk, before. … Please call me at—” Hurriedly Kroll gave his number, and repeated it, though he’d have known that M.R. already had the number in her cell phone memory. He was breathing—panting—as if about to say more but broke the connection instead.

Meredith he’d called her. Beyond that, M.R. scarcely heard.

How they’d met, M.R. could not clearly recall. How they’d parted, M.R. hoped to forget.

It had been a time when M.R.’s (secret) lover had abandoned her.

Sent her into exile she’d joked. Sadly joked.

Somewhere in the hinterland of north central New Jersey he’d sent her—this prestigious Ivy League university floating like an improbable island of academic excellence amid vestiges of quaint-Colonial American history and a hilly-rolling ultra-affluent rural/suburban landscape which, until M.R. was invited to be interviewed for a position in the philosophy department, she had not visited and had not envisioned. Reporting back to her lover This can’t be a real place! It is too perfect.

She hadn’t quite been willing to think that Andre Litovik wanted her—hoped her to be—gone.

Not permanently gone—only just a respectable distance from Cambridge, Massachusetts. From his house on Tremont Street, and his household. From his family.

Nor had she been willing to think that really it was a good idea—a very good idea—for M.R. to leave the force field of her lover, a gravitational pull roughly equivalent to that of the planet Jupiter. With her instinct for self-effacement M.R. had planned to seek a teaching position in the Boston area, to be near Andre, at one or another far less distinguished university or college, which would have fatally sabotaged her career at the start; with her Harvard Ph.D. and early, much-admired publications in moral philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics, M. R. Neukirchen had been an extremely attractive candidate, and female.

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