Joyce Oates - Mudwoman

“Don’t know, ma’am. It’s a bad thing.”

Guardedly Carlos replied. What Carlos felt in his heart, Carlos was not likely to reveal.

“I think you said—you served in Vietnam….”

Fanning the flames. Served in Vietnam. How clumsy her stock phrases, like ill-fitting prostheses.

It hadn’t been Carlos, but one of her assistants who’d mentioned to M.R. that Carlos had been in the Vietnam War and had “some sort of medal—‘Purple Heart’”—of which he never spoke. And reluctantly now Carlos responded:

“Ma’am, yes.”

In the rearview mirror she saw his forehead crease. He was a handsome man, or had been—olive-dark skin, a swath of silver hair at his forehead. His lips moved but all she could really hear was ma’am.

She was feeling edgy, agitated. They were nearing Ithaca—at last.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘ma’am,’ Carlos! It makes me feel—like a spinster of a bygone era.”

She’d meant to change the subject and to change the tone of their exchange but the humor in her remark seemed to be lost as often, when she spoke to Carlos, and others on her staff, the good humor for which M. R. Neukirchen was known among her colleagues seemed to be lost and she drew blank expressions from them.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

Carlos stiffened, realizing what he’d said. Surely his face went hot with embarrassment.

Yet—she knew!—it wasn’t reasonable for M.R. to expect her driver to address her in some other way—as President Neukirchen for instance. If he did he stumbled over the awkward words—Pres’dent New-kirtch-n.

She’d asked Carlos to call her “M.R.”—as most of her University colleagues did—but he had not, ever. Nor had anyone on her staff. This was strange to her, disconcerting, for M.R. prided herself on her lack of pretension, her friendliness.

Her predecessor had insisted that everyone call him by his first name—“Leander.” He’d been an enormously popular president though not, in his final years, a very productive or even a very attentive president; like a grandfather clock winding down, M.R. had thought. He’d spent most of his time away from campus and among wealthy donors—as house guest, traveling companion, speaker to alumni groups. As a once-noted historian he’d seen his prize territory—Civil War and Reconstruction—so transformed by the inroads of feminist, African American studies, and Marxist scholarship as to be unrecognizable to him, and impossible for him to re-enter, like a door that has locked behind you, once you have stepped through. An individual of such absolute vanity, he wished to be perceived as totally without vanity—just a “common man.” Though Leander Huddle had accumulated a small fortune—reputedly, somewhere near ten million dollars—by way of his University salary and its perquisites and investments in his trustee-friends’ businesses.

M.R.’s presidency would be very different!

Of course, M.R. was not going to invest money in any businesses owned by trustees. M.R. was not going to accumulate a small fortune through her University connections. M.R. would establish a scholarship financed—(secretly)—by her own salary….

It will be change—radical change!—that works through me.

Neukirchen will be but the agent. Invisible!

She did have radical ideas for the University. She did want to reform its “historic” (i.e., Caucasian-patriarchal/hierarchical) structure and she did want to hire more women and minority faculty, and above all, she wanted to implement a new tuition/scholarship policy that would transform the student body within a few years. At the present time an uncomfortably high percentage of undergraduates were the sons and daughters of the most wealthy economic class, as well as University “legacies”—(that is, the children of alumni); there were scholarships for “poor” students, that constituted a small percentage; but the children of middle-income parents constituted a precarious 5 percent of admissions … M.R. intended to increase these, considerably.

For M. R. Neukirchen was herself the daughter of “middle-income” parents, who could never have afforded to send her to this Ivy League university.

Of course, M. R. Neukirchen would not appear radical, but rather sensible, pragmatic and timely.

She’d assembled an excellent team of assistants and aides. And an excellent staff. Immediately when she’d been named president, she’d begun recruiting the very best people she could; she’d kept on only a few key individuals on Leander’s staff.

At all public occasions, in all her public pronouncements, M. R. Neukirchen stressed that the presidency of the University was a “team effort”—publicly she thanked her team, and she thanked individuals. She was the most generous of presidents—she would take blame for mistakes but share credit for successes. (Of course, no mistakes of any consequence had yet been made since M.R. had taken over the office.) To all whom she met in her official capacity she appealed in her eager earnest somewhat breathless manner that masked her intelligence—as it masked her willfulness; sometimes, in an excess of feeling, this new president of the University was known to clasp hands in hers, that were unusually large strong warm hands.

It was the influence of her mother Agatha. As Agatha had also influenced M.R. to keep a cheerful heart, and keep busy.

As both Agatha and Konrad were likely to say, as Quakers—I hope.

For it was Quaker custom to say, not I think or I know or This is the way it must be but more provisionally, and more tenderly—I hope.

“Yes. I hope.”

In the front seat the radio voice was loud enough to obscure whatever it was M.R. had said. And Carlos was just slightly hard of hearing.

“You can turn off the radio, please, Carlos. Thanks.”

Since the incident at the bridge there was a palpable stiffness between them. No one has more of a sense of propriety than an older staffer, or a servant—one who has been in the employ of a predecessor, and can’t help but compare his present employer with this predecessor. And M.R. was only just acquiring a way of talking to subordinates that wasn’t formal yet wasn’t inappropriately informal; a way of giving orders that didn’t sound aggressive, coercive. Even the word Please felt coercive to her. When you said Please to those who, like Carlos, had no option but to obey, what were you really saying?

And she wondered was the driver thinking now It isn’t the same, driving for a woman. Not this woman.

She wondered was he thinking She is alone too much. You begin to behave strangely when you are alone too much—your brain never clicks off.

The desk clerk frowned into the computer.

“‘M. R. Neukirchen’”—the name sounded, on his lips, faintly improbable, comical—“yesss—we have your reservation, Mz. Neukirchen—for two nights. But I’m afraid—the suite isn’t quite ready. The maid is just finishing up….”

Even after the unscheduled stop, she’d arrived early!

She hadn’t even instructed Carlos to drive past her old residence Balch Hall—for which she felt a stab of nostalgia.

Not for the naïve girl she’d been as an undergraduate, nor even for the several quite nice roommates she’d had—(like herself, scholarship girls)—but for the thrilling experience of discovering, for the first time, the livingness of the intellectual enterprise, that had been, to her, the daughter of bookish parents, previously confined to books.

M.R. told the desk clerk that that was fine. She could wait. Of course. There was no problem.

“… no more than ten or fifteen minutes, Mz. Neukirchen. You can check in now, and wait in our library-lounge, and I will call you.”

“Thank you! This is ideal.”