Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 42

“We’re a little concerned about you,” says Lynda Wyatt without preamble.

“I know."

I am determined to be contrite. Dean Lynda called me on Tuesday afternoon and asked me-told me, really-to be in her office on Wednesday at three, and her tone told me I am in serious trouble.

“You’re family, Talcott,” she continues, her eyes hard. “Naturally, when a member of the family is having problems, we want to help.”

By we, she means herself, and Stuart Land, and Arnie Rosen, the three most influential members of the faculty and, by coincidence, the current dean, the former dean, and a strong candidate to be the next dean. The seriousness of the occasion is signaled by the absence of Ben Montoya, who usually does her dirty work. For this meeting, Lynda wants the heavy guns.

We are sitting in Lynda’s office on the furniture arranged for conversation. I am in a wooden armchair, Lynda and Stuart are on the plush sofa that runs off at a right angle from my spot, and Arnie’s wheelchair is right next to me. I can see where the mate to my chair has been pushed aside to make room. Usually Lynda has coffee and donuts on a side table, but not today.

Stuart takes his turn. He has less patience with circumlocutions, which is why he was a very bad dean and is a very good man. “Let’s look at the evidence, Talcott. The reasons we are worried. Number one, we have the increasingly wild conspiracy theories you have been busily pursuing, even though some of us have warned you. Number two, we have that bizarre incident with the police, not what we need with the racial tension in this town. Those are old problems, of course, so let us put them aside for a moment. Number three”-ticking them off on his fingers-“you haven’t been meeting your classes regularly. Number four

…”

“Now, wait a minute,” I interject, displaying my usual lack of feel for the nuance of a conversation. As a lawyer, I should know enough to let them lay out the charges first, take the time to think it through, and then rebut it all at once. But remember what they say about those who can’t do. “You know I had a good reason to miss those classes…”

“My father died on a Monday morning and I taught that afternoon and the next day and the day after that,” Stuart says coldly. “Besides, your family difficulties would explain only the classes you missed in the fall. Not in the current semester, which is only a month old.”

Arnie Rosen lays a restraining hand on my wrist before I can offer an ill-considered response. “Tal, please, just listen first. Nobody here is out to get you.”

I decide to hold my tongue.

“Number four,” Stuart resumes, “we have what I suppose we would have to call your little shoving match with Gerald Nathanson, a graduate of this law school and a prominent member of this community. Do you have any idea how many people overheard you? And, number five. ..”

“Just a minute,” I interrupt, forgetting my resolution. Having been through this with a livid and chagrined Kimmer, I do not want to do it again. “Just a minute! If you’re about to blame me for that argument, I’ll have you know…”

Stuart has no capacity for retreat: “None of this has anything to do with blame. We are talking about what is happening to you, Talcott.” Steepling his fingers. “Months ago, I told you that we needed the old, lively, optimistic Talcott Garland back. But you ignored that warning, as you have ignored the rest of my warnings.” He pauses. “And we have not even begun to discuss your efforts to sabotage Marc Hadley’s chances for judicial appointment.”

“I had nothing to do with that!”

“Number five,” Stuart resumes, relentlessly, “there is some talk around the place that you have written scholarship that is biased toward the needs of a paying client…”

“That’s completely ridiculous!” I sputter, having all but forgotten my interview with Arnie back a million years ago.

“Calm down, Talcott,” says Lynda in her steely voice, and it occurs to me that Theo Mountain, if we were still on the close terms that once marked our relationship, or if he were a few years younger, would be in this room, trying to protect me, for he used to be a power on the faculty and would never have countenanced this ganging up on his protege. “Stuart is simply explaining how things look from the law school’s point of view.”

“Gerald Nathanson was thinking of filing some sort of complaint,” says Stuart, “but I talked him out of it.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I mutter, my head swimming.

“There is a pertinent university rule,” Stuart continues in his blunt fashion. “Officers of the faculty do not go around abusing prominent citizens this way.”

“I didn’t abuse anybody,” I protest, hopelessly. “He started it.”

“The ethics of the kindergarten.” Shaking his head as though I am beyond redemption.

“What we’re saying,” says Arnie Rosen with plain reluctance, “is that it is time for the institution to think about how to protect itself.” Behind the small, round lenses his eyes are soft with sympathy. He is not the sort of liberal who can easily criticize a black man.

“Are you… are you firing me?” I blurt, my gaze leaping from one impassive Caucasian face to the next.

“No,” says Stuart icily. “We’re warning you.”

“Which means what, exactly?”

Stuart is about to speak again, but Dean Lynda holds up her hand. “Stuart, Arnie, will you excuse us for a moment?” Arnie immediately gets his wheelchair moving, and Stuart leaps to his feet with such alacrity that I am certain the entire display was orchestrated in advance, for no dean, not even the scary Lynda Wyatt, could ever make Arnie Rosen and Stuart Land jump if they didn’t want to.

A moment later we are alone.

“I’ve always liked you,” Dean Lynda begins, which is probably a lie, except that her definitions of words, in good decanal fashion, do not always match what others understand. Deans must have that trait to survive, for they must be able to say to some student activist, with the utmost compassion and sincerity, Oh, did you think what I said before was a promise of action? I just said I would look into it, but as Dean my hands are pretty much tied. It’s really up to the university provost. Good deans not only say these things every day or two, they have the trick of making the students, and sometimes the faculty, believe that they are telling the truth.

“Thank you, Lynda,” I say calmly, waiting for her to get to the point.

“You aren’t being fired, Tal. We couldn’t do it if we wanted to. You have tenure, so only the trustees of the university can dismiss you, and only for cause. I don’t think that there is cause to revoke your tenure. Not at this time. But you have to know that there are people on campus, and some in this building, who think otherwise. A few members of this faculty have suggested to me that I ask for your resignation.” I sit very still. I am stuck all the way back on Not at this time. “I wouldn’t want you to give them any more reasons for action. If you behave yourself from now on-don’t look at me like that, you know perfectly well what I mean-if you behave yourself, we can protect you. But if you keep on getting into fights in the hallways and canceling classes for no good reason and running all over the place searching for your conspiracy, and, especially, if you come anyplace close to another run-in with the police… well, if you do that, I’m not sure how long I can hold off the dogs. I’m not sure I would even try. Is that clear enough for you?”

“Yes, but…”

“I don’t want to hear the word but, Tal. I don’t want to hear you tell me you have to think about it. All I want to hear is your promise, your solemn word, that all this nonsense is over. I want you to say you’ll go back to being the serious scholar and hardworking teacher we all know and love, or did until October. I don’t want you to get so much as a traffic ticket for the next five years. That’s what I want.”

“Or what?”

Lynda brushes curly gray hair away from her long neck and shrugs.

“You wouldn’t dare,” I whisper.

“I wouldn’t dare what? Get rid of a professor who makes insane accusations, conducts a whispering campaign against a colleague, screams at people in the hallways, and abuses students in class?”

I hardly know where to start, so I pick the silliest charge of all. “I didn’t abuse Avery Knowland.”

“That depends on how you look at it. Or, more to the point, it depends on how I look at it. Right now, I imagine you’re thinking that it wouldn’t matter so much if we were to ask you to leave, that you have something of a reputation, that you could always get a position at another law school. But that depends a great deal on what I decide to say about you to the dean of whatever school considers hiring you. I could sink you with a word, and you know it. Theo couldn’t protect you. If you keep carrying on the way you have been, I doubt he would even try.”

I reflect again on my friendlessness. Suddenly my allies on the faculty seem very few indeed. Who would speak up for me? Lem Carlyle? Not if it would hurt his impeccable reputation. Arnie Rosen? Not with his run for the deanship coming up. Dear Dana Worth? Certainly, but nobody listens to her. Rob Saltpeter, perhaps. But he is a very long way from the top of the heap. I imagine the knives being sharpened even now up there in the top tier, where those who possess influence and reputation gather: Peter Van Dyke, Tish Kirschbaum, and, of course, the estimable Marc Hadley, not so long ago a friend, would all be delighted by my departure.

“Lynda,” I say at last, “I need time.”

“That sounds like a but to me.”

“Not time to think over what you’ve said. What you’ve said makes perfect sense.” I am not very good at obsequiousness, but I have to try. “I want to go back to that old Talcott Garland-the one everybody loves, you said-I want that very much. I just need a little time to figure out what’s going on.”

“That sounds like the conspiracy again.” Her voice is hard. When a dean’s voice is hard, the pressures are immense. Probably Lynda Wyatt is following somebody else’s script, which suggests that a part of what she says is true: she has gone to bat for me. The university administration may be pushing her to get rid of me, and perhaps she has persuaded them to give me one last chance. The administration, in turn, has dictated terms which she dares not vary. Still, if I am right, if she has gone to bat for me, then… maybe…

“I’m not seeing any conspiracy anywhere, Lynda. I don’t think anybody is out to get me. But it is a fact, not a fantasy, that the man who was asking me questions about my father is dead. It is a fact, not a fantasy, that somebody trashed my father’s house in Oak Bluffs. It is a fact, not a fantasy, that I was beaten up in the middle of the campus by somebody who asked questions about my father. And it is a fact”-I stop suddenly. Lynda is watching me closely. I was about to mention the pawn. Which would persuade her absolutely that I have gone round the bend.

Lynda sighs. “Well, then, Tal, your turn to listen. It is a fact, not a fantasy, that you were almost arrested. No, don’t say anything. It is a fact, not a fantasy, that somebody from up here sabotaged Marc, and a lot of people think it was you. It is a fact, not a fantasy, that you were shoving and screaming at Jerry Nathanson in the hallway day before yesterday. It is a fact, not a fantasy, that lots of people on this campus think you are beginning to lose it. It is a fact, not a fantasy, that I think…”

“Two weeks,” I say suddenly.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Give me two weeks. Two weeks to wrap everything up. If I-”

“I can’t let you miss more classes.”

“I’ll teach my classes. I won’t miss a class. I promise you. But I have to have a little more time.”

“Time for what?”

I take a breath, force myself to stay calm. What am I supposed to say? That whoever is on the outside trying to ruin me is being helped by someone on the inside, somebody here at the law school? Somebody who knows where I am going to be almost before I do-and is in a position to smear my ethics as well, perhaps to make it even less likely that anyone will listen to whatever I might discover?

I say quietly, “Just time, Lynda. That’s all. I won’t miss any classes, but I need to work things out.” She just waits. “I won’t hurt the law school or the university. This school has been good to me. And, right now, this school is all I have.” I hesitate, wanting to say more, but not daring to open the painful subject of my waning marriage. “I’ve asked you for very few favors since you’ve been dean, Lynda. Now, you know that’s true. There are people who are in your office every week, complaining about their salaries or their committee assignments or their teaching loads or the size of their offices. I’ve never done any of those things, have I?”

“No, you haven’t. That’s true.” The ghost of a smile dances over her face.

“So I’m asking this one thing. To hold off those pressures just two weeks more. And then, after two weeks, I promise you, either I’ll be a good little boy or… or I’ll resign from the faculty and save everybody the trouble.”

My dean shakes her head. Her look is unhappy. “I’m really not trying to get rid of you, Tal. I respect you and I like you. I know you don’t believe it, but it’s true. What Stuart said about biased scholarship, for instance. You didn’t hear me say it. I know you wouldn’t do it, and even if I thought you would, there’s no way to prove it. It’s ridiculous. Besides, we live in a world of only”-a wan, cheerless grin-“imperfect objectivity. Scholarship is argument, isn’t it? And argument is advocacy. Were we to take the claim of bias seriously, any one of us might be open to the same charge. But…”

“But you have to think of the school,” I finish for her.

“You’ll have to apologize to Jerry Nathanson. No way out of that one. And Cameron Knowland, bless his heart, is still waiting to hear from you.”

More pain. “I’ll call Jerry. I tried to call Cameron but he wouldn’t talk to me.”

“Then try again,” she says crisply. Professors are not ordinarily subject to the dean’s orders, not at a school as eminent as ours. But these are no ordinary times.

“I will. I promise.”

Lynda conjures a small smile. She stands up. So do I. We shake. We both know our meeting is over, and that the deal has been made. Probably it falls within whatever parameters she was given by the university. But, just to make sure, she repeats the agreement as she escorts me to the door: “Two weeks, Talcott. No more.”

“Two weeks,” I echo.

Hurrying back to my office, I am weak with relief: after all, I might have been asked to resign on the spot. By the time I am behind my desk, however, the burden of reality has settled once more upon my shoulders. I still do not know what the arrangements are. Or what my father meant by his cryptic note. Or which one of my colleagues is trying to ruin my career. I do not even know whether I will still have a job tomorrow or the next day… or, for that matter, a wife.

All I know for sure is that I have fourteen days to figure it all out.