Dinaw Mengestu - How to Read the Air

I suddenly felt disappointed that I hadn’t taken my story further. I could have given my students a full-on massacre in which hundreds of thousands of imaginary Africans were killed, and for that I would have been commended.

I was almost standing when the dean asked me to sit back down.

“We’re not finished,” he said. It was only then that I heard hints of the anger I had been expecting earlier.

I returned to my seat; he leaned back and exhaled again. I wondered if he did that only for effect.

“I had a phone call yesterday from the school’s president,” he told me.

He paused before continuing so I would have time to understand the direction this conversation was going. It was a cheap interrogation tactic meant to inspire an immediate rush of guilt. I doubt it worked even with the students who were called into his office daily to account for their infractions.

“He wanted to know why I hadn’t informed him of the changes to the teaching staff. He assumed someone was leaving or retiring in the English department and that you were being promoted to take their place. I told him that no such thing was happening. All of our teachers are staying. Imagine how confused we both were when we hung up the phone.”

When I didn’t say anything he continued.

“Apparently you spoke to someone on the school’s board and told them you were going to be teaching some new classes next year. You know that’s not true. We’ve never talked about that before.”

“I know that,” I told him.

“Then why did you say it?”

I never thought of trying to apologize, much less back out of what I had said. As the dean sat there waiting for my defense, I thought, if this is the only truth they were concerned about, then fine, they could have it, but they would never get it from me.

“I didn’t say that,” I told him. “I never spoke to anyone about teaching here.”

“Mr. Harris says you did. He said that you told him that you had intended to teach here full-time since last year but couldn’t because you were too busy. He said you were planning on leaving soon as well.”

“He must have been confused,” I said.

“Then what did you tell him?”

“Nothing. We only spoke once for three or four minutes in my wife’s office last week, but that was it. He seemed distracted at the time. He asked me what I was doing there even though we were clearly on our way to dinner.”

“So he invented this himself?”

“You’d have to ask him. He’s a busy man; I imagine he makes mistakes sometimes.”

“It was on his recommendation that we hired you.”

“Yes. I know. I even thanked him for that when I saw him. I told him how much I enjoyed teaching here.”

“And that was it?”

“Yes, that was it. I didn’t say anything else about the school. You can ask my wife. She was there as well. Although I’d rather not involve her since she works at the same firm.”

The dean gave himself a moment to consider what I had said. Hundreds of students had sat here before me and denied their culpability, and undoubtedly he considered himself an expert when it came to detecting a lie. He had nothing on me, though; the only thing he could have registered was my complete indifference to what he said.

“We’ll pick this up on Monday,” he said. “I’d like to schedule a meeting so we can clear this up quickly.”

I returned straight home after that, an act made easier by the fact that I hardly carried anything with me to the academy. The black leather bag Angela had given me contained only a few minor artifacts from my time as a teacher — a large spiral notebook, a collection of pens, and an in-class assignment that I had never handed out. As soon as I left the academy I felt that it was necessary for Angela and me to leave town immediately, even if it was only for the weekend. That feeling was confirmed once I stepped out of the subway and stood face-to-face with our apartment. I looked down at the steps leading to our home, and the thought occurred to me that as long as we were living there we were never going to make it; we would never have enough space to get through. Time was running out. The solid, yet thin walls around us were on the verge of caving in.

When Angela came home from work, I had two bags of heavy winter clothes packed for us. There was a motel at the far end of Long Island with a view of the Atlantic Ocean and a windswept, sandy beach. It was empty this time of year and now had a reservation in our name for what I said would be at the very least two nights. I had packed for six, and if I could have done so without alarming Angela, I would have packed for much longer.

“I have a surprise for you,” I told her as soon as she came in. Over the past couple of weeks she had steadily grown used to the idea that I was still capable of surprising her, and she greeted the news with a broad, enthusiastic grin.

“We’re leaving tomorrow for Long Island,” I said. “It’ll be the first vacation that we’ve taken together in years.”

As a general rule Angela did not operate well when it came to whims. She tried to take this one, however, as further proof of the progress we were making as a couple.

“The ocean in winter,” she said, betraying at least a hint of her usual skepticism. “Okay. With you? Why not?”

The train ride out of New York together was one of the best leaving experiences that either of us had ever had, and if I could do that part all over again, I would. We were never afforded a final sweeping vista of the city before the low-level homes of the suburbs began, but I think we could both feel ourselves slowly shedding some of its pressures and burdens until suddenly it was evident to both of us that we were miles away from home now and had never felt better about it.

“What do you think about living in the country?” I asked her.

She was still feeling excessively charitable toward me. She pushed herself over to my half of the seat and said, “If we were together I would.”

“Really?”

“No,” she said laughing. “Not really. What the hell would we do?”

I wanted to offer her a pitch, much like the one she had offered me years ago about the job at the academy. In this one, however, I would be the one selling. What we needed to do, I wanted to tell her, was start from scratch. We had been stuck on the wrong narrative, one that left us cold and bitter at each other; the only way to get off was to leave and begin again. We could have space out in the country, I wanted to tell her. Miles and miles of it, and there would be no one who could find us.

For the next hour and a half we both stared intently out the windows. There was something about being in motion together that set us off into our own private reflections. Angela, I assumed, was taking close notice of the suburbs we were passing through and imagining what it would have been like to grow up in one of these nice, semi-gated communities. She romanticized precisely what she claimed to hate the most — isolated and homogeneous privilege, which she had never had but was now in almost daily contact with. I was concerned only with the landscape, with the broad, flat stretches of the horizon that sometimes came into view. I pictured myself kicking a soccer ball across an empty stretch of grass or running with my arms slightly outstretched like a child pretending to be a bird.

When the train finally pulled into our station, we were the last ones in our car still left on board. A storm high over the Atlantic had caused it to snow thick, white flakes that appeared to be meticulously cut out of paper, and it was still doing so as we pulled our luggage off the train. The ground was too warm for any of the snow to accumulate, but we were draped in it by the time we arrived at the motel. It was just as I had hoped for; we were the only two people there and the wall of gray clouds blended straight into the ocean with the white sand dunes on the beach clearly standing out.