Ann Beattie - Another You

It was not Cheryl Lanier in his office, but Sophia Androcelli, sitting with her pleated skirt tucked between two large mounds of knees, reading from a spiral notebook. She registered no embarrassment at occupying his chair; she looked up as if she was slightly surprised and dismayed to see him — this girl who, he immediately understood, had come as Cheryl’s messenger, just as Cheryl had once approached him as Livan Baker’s. If she was slightly dismayed to see him, he was more dismayed to see her: if Cheryl had been there, he could have revealed how perturbed and imposed upon he felt and begun the process of his own salvation by laying down the new ground rules, but Sophia Androcelli’s presence did him no good at all. That was why he simply looked at her, disappointed and vaguely bothered by her existence, saying nothing. For the first few seconds she met his eyes but said nothing, either. Then she ripped two pages out of a notebook and held them out to him, planting her Doc Martens on the floor astride the backpack as she rocked forward to look him directly in the eyes. Mickey Mouse stared up her pleated skirt from the red leather backpack dropped in front of his chair, and Marshall thought: Yes, this has all been pretty Mickey Mouse . Mickey Mouse except for McCallum’s wife’s version of let’s-turn-Marshall-and-Sonja’s-house into Frontierland.

“Just one thing before I go,” she said, picking up one strap of the backpack with a sweep of her hand (the nerve! not even saying “Hello,” let alone “Excuse me,” as she rose from his chair!). “Cheryl thought I’d be a good person to talk to you and explain more than she explained in the note, but while I was waiting for you, I realized that even though you’re a good lecturer and you’ve always been perfectly fine toward me, the bottom line is that I don’t trust you. I think Cheryl made a big mistake getting involved with you, and personally, I’m glad it’s over.”

“You waited here to express your dislike of me and to hand me two pieces of paper?” he said.

“Buildings and grounds was waxing your floor; I said I had an appointment with you, you must be late. Somebody making minimum wage apparently didn’t care to argue the point. At first I was going to sit at your desk and write you a note of my own, telling you what you’d done wrong, but before I’d even begun, it seemed like wasted effort. Because you condescend to people, you know? The look you get on your face when you start using ‘Ms.’ very histrionically. The ‘Ms. Lanier, Ms. Androcelli’ stuff, while at least the guys in the class you like get the respect of being addressed by just their last name. The minimalist approach to male bonding. The secret society wink.”

“Sophia,” he said. “In the past twenty-four hours I have noticed a remarkable lack of civility in my life. Perhaps you could enlighten me: You’re saying you sense mockery on my part? Mockery, when I should take seriously, say, a teenage girl’s accusations of sexual trauma that are quelled by the delivery of a Domino’s pizza? Colleagues whom I should address seriously about matters of the human heart when they are so narcissistic that the simplest polite question from me results in a blow-by-blow account of their encounter with a bag lady near Boston Common, hoping to impress me with their deep sensitivity toward schizophrenics? Colleagues who have made the sort of marriages in which one member expresses herself by stalking her husband to my home and attempting to stab him to death because he is insensitive? ‘My weariness amazes me,’ to quote a prophet of my generation. My weariness fucking amazes me.”

“Your weariness doesn’t ‘fucking amaze’ you; it amazes you because you’re fucked. Get it?”

“Sophia,” he said, after catching his breath. “Look at it from my point of view. After too long a period of being involved in the problems of others, after a very traumatic event, I come into my office to find you having taken over my desk, after lying to the floor polisher about your right to be here — and let me point out that you are as guilty of stereotyping as you accuse me of being, if you assume that being paid minimum wage was necessarily the reason why the floor polisher did not throw you out — let me just say that it seems to me I should occupy less of everyone’s attention, if everyone has the amount of equilibrium he or she claims.”

“Cheryl was right,” Sophia said. “You really are impossible.”

“What does that mean? That I don’t take shit?”

“Listen,” she said, sinking back into his chair, pushing pleats between her legs, “you just don’t get it. You don’t get it that things have changed and now you’re required to be a more genuine human being. For example: many people might look at what had been put in their hand before starting in with their own complaints. Even normal human curiosity might have set in with a lot of people. But all you want to do is banish me, like you’ve banished her.”

This was the first time Sophia Androcelli seemed disturbed; he watched her bottom lip as if watching a once-tugged fishing line. But the fish went free, the lip relaxed into a ripple as her expression devolved from angry to blank. “Banished her” hung in the air, more perplexing to him the longer it hovered.

He sat in the chair beside his desk. He unfolded the pieces of paper and scanned what seemed to be a hastily scrawled note from Cheryl.

Marshall ,

I’m writing this to explain, as best I can, some of my thoughts before I get the bus and get out of here. When Timothy came back from the library and found me gone, he hitched a ride to the house in Dover and we had a long talk that resulted in my realizing that I’d gotten very caught up in Livan’s situation because it bore very strongly on my own life — things I was going to tell you that we never got around to talking about because everything got so hectic. You were the first person, male or female, I’d ever felt as mature as I know I am around, because in spite of the way you act sometimes, I could see that we were (forgive me) kindred spirits. I put up blockades too, and like me, I’m sure you have your reasons. It’s not your fault that I also fell in love with you, but as Timothy says, I have to suspect that reaction, too. Let me tell you something you have to know. When Livan was telling me about what McC. did to her, it was pretty vague. I sort of told her how to embellish it, though what I thought I was doing was sharing some private things about my life with her, and then she picked them up and said them back to me as if they were hers. That thing with her godfather never happened, but it did happen to me, but not when I was very little, only five years ago, because my mother had me baptized and then later she insisted I have a godfather. I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye because next year I’m going to come back and I’d like us to be comfortable when we pass each other in the corridors. I understand that you didn’t do anything to me and that you were just reaching out to me in the car, but it made me see that there was a subtext — that we weren’t that far away from being Livan and McC. This is an apology as well as a confession, because if I hadn’t told Livan about my experience with my godfather she probably would have chilled out eventually, but once I did tell her, and then she told it all back to me as if it was hers, it was like I’d really given it away and it was someone else’s. I know that you’re closer to McC. than you say, so I’m asking you to tell him about this because inadvertently I did cause McC. problems, and I’m very sorry for that and also sorry that you and I (I know this is going to sound stupid, but I’m going to say it anyway) aren’t the same age, that I couldn’t really be close to you. But we’re close enough that I had to write this note. Goodbye, and take care .