EQMM, May 2011 Read online

  That night . . . He remembered how cold it was, and how the wet snow had pelted down, and how he'd wished he hadn't had to go out at all. But the candidate had flown in all the way from some fancy Ivy League university, and this guy was the prize hire, the one they were competing for, so he had to take him to dinner at the finest restaurant this little Iowa town could boast. Sandy was to have come, too—good old Sandy, professor emeritus, so full of bonhomie and erudite wisecracks and unfailing good humor that he was guaranteed to coax any up-and-coming young scholar to join this faculty in the middle of the cornfields. But Sandy had succumbed to some kind of bug, and Bernard had called Callie at the last minute.

  He knew she'd be alone: She always was. He knew she'd probably be working—and in fact, she had just settled down to grade a pile of essays, the big orange tabby in her lap, the required snifter of brandy glowing in the lamplight beside her to help unkink her brain. When the phone had started ringing, she'd been irritated. In fact, she had let it ring. She was aggravated at the very idea of pushing the heavy cat off her lap, setting aside the brandy and the grading (which she was really getting into), and trundling across the room to the hallway to answer it. But the machine had clicked on, and when she'd heard the note of despair in Bernard's voice, she'd known all was lost.

  "Callie, I know you're home,” he pleaded, his normally fruity baritone turned tinny on the machine. “Pick up, pick up. We have to take this candidate out to dinner, and Sandy can't do it, and I need someone else there. We could lose this hire if you don't come, Callie. It's for the good of the department."

  She could not resist that plea, of course, and Bernard knew it. Callie's life was her work. She was the one he could always count on to attend every faculty meeting, to read every administrative memo, to be on every committee, to hold endless office hours so she could counsel students at length on prereqs and course sequences, to wear school colors on game days. Others commented uncharitably that it was because she had nothing else going on: no love life, no kids, no hobbies. Bernard suspected there was some truth to this—that Callie worked so indefatigably to fill all the gaps in her life. But that, he thought, was not fair: Perhaps Callie didn't see them as gaps. After all, it was the twenty-first century. Not all women wanted babies or partners or escapist pastimes. And Callie was an asset to the department, a productive scholar, a dedicated professor, and a loyal colleague: He'd be hard-pressed to find another like her.

  She had sighed, pushed the cat away, and walked over to the telephone, catching Bernard before the machine clicked off. “I'll come,” she had said. “Where do you want me to meet you?"

  "Callie, you are an angel,” he'd trilled. “We're taking him to Chez Hélene, of course. I need to show him we aren't as provincial as people think we are out here in flyover country."

  She sighed again, heavily. Chez Hélene would require changing out of her limp old cotton skirt and well-worn Hawkeye sweatshirt into something that resembled sophisticated attire.

  "You know I hate driving in the snow,” she grumbled.

  "I know, Callie, and you are truly an angel,” Bernard repeated. Will work for crumbs, he thought with satisfaction: good old Callie.

  She replaced the receiver and contemplated the cat, the fire roaring in her grate, her pile of papers, the amber liquid glowing in the glass. Then she shuffled down the hallway to her late mother's room. The only decent clothes in the house were the ones her desperately stylish mother had painstakingly acquired on trips to Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City. Her mother had despaired of Callie's utter disinterest in fashion or personal grooming.

  "You could be so pretty, Callie,” she had moaned, when Callie was a teenager, and later, as she grew into young adulthood. She'd been particularly offended by Callie's graduate-school slovenliness, even though Callie had looked like every other English doctoral student on campus in her baggy jeans and stained T-shirts. “If you'd just take the trouble to put on a little makeup, get your colors done . . . you're an autumn, I think, like me, dear: You should wear warm colors instead of those awful grays and drabs.” And Callie had just looked at her dismissively over her glasses.

  Now she was grateful for her mother's obsession with staying chic in the middle of the pig farms. Her mother had been more slender than she, and shorter, so the clothes would be a little tight and short, but Callie wasn't worried about that: They'd be better than anything she owned.

  She fingered the fabrics falling in lovely lines from their hangers. Her mother had died in this house just a year ago, pancreatic cancer bringing the end swiftly. Callie had not troubled herself to consider disposing of her mother's possessions, and she knew nothing about taking care of fine things, so the Chanel suits and Prada coats and Fendi bags were precisely as her mother had left them, carefully arranged in closets and on shelves. She had to admit the colors were beautiful; the fabrics gleamed in the lamplight. She pulled out a claret-colored outfit that turned out to be a dress with a bolero jacket. Callie pulled it on, cursing as she pressed her lumpy body into the fitted garment. It was tight under the bodice—an empire waist, she believed it was called—and the skirt flared out. The jacket was a squeeze; she could not button it, so she let it hang open. She found a pair of black pumps on a shelf and crammed her feet into them: her mother wore a half-size smaller than she did, and she could tell her bunions would be killing her by the end of the evening. The things I do for work, she muttered to herself as she slung on her old down coat and limped out to her car

  * * * *

  She had not been in love before, had only read about the concept in the classical literature that was her specialty, but she recognized the emotion when her eyes met those of the candidate. He's beautiful, she thought in confusion as she extended her hand to him. He is the most gorgeous man I have ever seen. Adonis, she called him privately forever after.

  "Callie, this is Nikhil Lakshman,” Bernard explained, his voice now back to its usual velvety baritone. “And Nikhil, this is . . ."

  "Oh, I know your work well, Dr. Chambers,” Nikhil interrupted, turning a dazzling smile on Callie. “Your reading of Aeschylus in last month's Mythic Review was absolutely masterly—it caused such a stir in academic circles, too! To be honest, you are one of the main reasons I decided to apply for this position at the University of Iowa."

  His large, liquid gray-green eyes, fringed heavily with long dark lashes, never left hers; he gazed at her ardently throughout the evening. She could feel the color mounting to her cheeks. Indeed, he seemed entranced by her, directing his comments almost exclusively to her, deflecting Bernard's questions to seek out her opinion, gushing about her writing: He seemed to have read everything she'd ever published. She had never been paid so much rapt attention by any man, not even by students trying to wheedle a higher grade out of her. Bernard seemed puzzled, then amused, then on top of the situation, recognizing that this could result in a hire. He joined in, heaping fulsome praise on Callie and refilling her wineglass frequently, so that by the end of the evening she was lightheaded, muddled, and ridiculously happy: happier, she believed, than she had ever been in her life.

  When she got home, she caught a glimpse of herself in the hallway mirror and stopped to consider her reflection. Why, she was pretty, she thought with surprise. Mother had been right! Her hair was mussed—it had escaped from the sloppy chignon it had been in and curled about her flushed cheeks, and it sparkled with melting snowflakes; her eyes glowed from the wine and the unaccustomed stimulation of the evening; and the lines of the dress hid her bulges, making her suddenly graceful. No wonder he has fallen in love with me, she thought, and I with him. He is much younger than I, of course, but such things happen, she thought with satisfaction. She had read of these things: May-December relationships, cougars and kittens. Such romances had been known to blossom, she believed.

  * * * *

  Her feelings were confirmed over the next few weeks, as the position was offered and Nikhil/Adonis accepted it. He would teach postcolonial literatur
e and theory; his specialization was mythology in South Asian poetry. He was, she learned, a second-generation immigrant from the Indian subcontinent. His parents had arrived in Manhattan when he was a toddler. She thought of his bronze skin, olive eyes, glossy black hair, so different from the pallor and freckles of the boys she'd grown up with, so different from herself. He e-mailed her frequently during the negotiation process (he had a quick, literary wit even in two-line messages), and thanks to her he landed an unheard-of starting salary and benefits, even for a sought-after new Ph.D. from a prestigious graduate program. She had fought for this, with Bernard and the dean, and she felt a surge of power when the terms had been written into Nikhil's contract. This is just the beginning, she thought smugly. Once we are lovers, I can do wonders for him; I can give him the moon.

  That outcome was destined, she was sure. The way he had looked at her at dinner! The way his hand had curled around her elbow as he had helped her up from her chair, the way he had tenderly draped her coat around her as he had seen her out the door, his eyes never leaving hers! The little intimate witticisms in his e-mail messages to her!

  Of course, things moved even more rapidly once he moved to Iowa and began his job in the English department. His office was on a different floor from hers, but in the first few weeks he stopped by frequently to consult her on various issues. They began having a standing lunch (a lunch date, she said to herself) every Friday, meeting at a nearby bistro with intimate tables and shadowy lighting, talking shop but drifting eventually into the realm of the personal. He was the first one she'd ever told about her lonely, book-filled childhood in the chilly old prairie house she had now inherited; about her gruff, NRA-obsessed, right-wing father and the chic, severe mother she'd nursed on her deathbed. He, in turn, confessed the crises of identity that had beset him as an immigrant child grappling with an American upbringing, reaching for a never-seen homeland and culture. They talked about how their work resonated with the crosscurrents of their lives, how ancient mythologies and literature and poetry conjured the mysteries and sufferings of human life. Callie had never felt as close to anyone before.

  "You will inspire me to greater things,” Nikhil said one day, reaching for her hand across the table. “You truly are your name—Calliope, is it not? The muse of epic poetry. Why did anyone ever shorten it to ‘Callie'? I shall always call you Calliope; you're becoming my muse, you know."

  "Thanks for mentoring young Lakshman,” Bernard said to her in the hallway one day. “Not many of our senior profs would take the trouble to help a young faculty member out like that. You're a champ, Callie.” And Callie had smiled secretly to herself: “Mentoring” was not exactly the way she thought about their romantic tete-a-tetes.

  Callie could not remember quite when Nikhil had first mentioned the idea of an engagement; he had dropped it so casually into the conversation, she hadn't even registered it. But he brought it up again, until it became a motif in their weekly lunch talks: It seemed his mother was trying to arrange a match for him, in the traditional Indian way.

  "Arranged marriage?” Callie had inquired, stunned. “Surely not in a family like yours, here, in Manhattan?"

  "Oh, yes.” Nikhil had smiled ruefully. “All the best Indian-American families are brokering these things all the time, all through the Ivy-League-Seven- Sisters-Stanford-IIT network. A whole bunch of my friends, my cousins, they've all had their marriages arranged by their parents through the global Indian gossip circuit. Now my mom thinks it's high time I capitulated. Ridiculous, of course, to imagine I'd do anything of the sort."

  "I would think!” cried Callie. “You need to find your own partner, someone who really understands your complexity, your brilliance."

  "Someone who is my intellectual equal and who can yet handle my emotional tsunamis,” said Nikhil, smiling. “Someone like you, Callie."

  She had not imagined that: She remembered how he'd said it, later, when she was alone in her house that night. Someone like you. She gazed at herself in the mirror, recalling how his eyes had softened and rested on her face, so thoughtfully, so yearningly, when he'd said it. Any day now, she thought. Any day now he will confess his love, and I mine.

  At lunch the next week he was somber, pensive. “Is anything wrong?” she asked. “Are you having any trouble with your classes—or is it your writing? Did they reject that last article you sent out?"

  "No.” He put down his fork, staring into his plate. He sighed. “It's just that my mother has found someone here, here in Iowa, that she wants me to meet. You know, a girl, someone she thinks I should consider."

  "Consider?” echoed Callie.

  "Yes, to get engaged to.” Nikhil looked at her. “That's how it's done. They set you up to meet them, and then you go out a few times, and you both decide if you want to get engaged. They, the parents, have already figured out if you have, you know, compatible backgrounds in terms of family wealth, and religion and caste and all that."

  "Really?” asked Callie. “How archaic. You know, in most American families the one your mother likes is the last one you'd want to marry.” That got an appreciative chuckle out of him. “Honestly, does she expect you'll know whether you want a lifelong partnership after a few dates?"

  "It's crazy, isn't it?” said Nikhil. “But she's already given this girl my contact information and she's breathing down my neck about seeing her. And I can tell already I'm not going to like this Sharmila or whatever her name is. She's doing an MBA in Chicago, but her family lives in some podunk Iowa town. She's probably some over-made-up bimbo who's obsessed with ‘climbing the corporate ladder’ or some such thing. Hardly my type at all—I like quiet, brainy women, you know."

  "I know,” said Callie, beaming.

  * * * *

  He didn't mention the girl again, to Callie's relief; he was as eager and attentive as ever when they met, and she felt they grew closer every time, discovering a shared dislike of black olives and a guilty love of Merchant-Ivory films. One late spring day, as the trees were breaking out in delicate blossoms and the birds chirruped outside, Nikhil hesitated as they rose to leave the bistro and took Callie's hand.

  "Calliope, there's something I need to tell you.” He looked down at their clasped fingers, hers so white against his coppery skin, and then at her. “Can you meet here on Wednesday? I know it isn't our usual day . . . but there's a reason and I . . ."

  "Of course,” she said, her voice quivering. “I have a meeting but I can move it. This sounds important!” And she tried to laugh gaily, as though it were a splendid joke.

  "It's incredibly important,” he said. “And thank you for moving your meeting. God, Calliope, you are just so . . . incredible. . . .” His voice grew thick with emotion and he leaned toward her impulsively. He is going to kiss me! she thought with breathless excitement. She had never been kissed before. He is going to . . .

  His lips brushed her cheek; he made an inchoate sound and stumbled to the door. She stood gazing after him. He's Indian, she thought. They are so shy about public displays of affection. Well, so was she, really. It made her love him more. There would be plenty of time for all of that, in private, after he proposed to her on Wednesday.

  * * * *

  When she arrived at the bistro on Wednesday, he was already there, and a bottle of champagne listed in an ice bucket on the table. He sat drumming his fingers nervously on the arms of his chair; when he saw her, he sprang to pull out a chair for her.

  "Champagne!” she cried, pretending to be surprised. “How lovely! But why?"

  "You look beautiful,” he said. She was glad he thought so: She had struggled with what to wear—what did one wear to one's proposal?—trying and discarding one after another of her mother's outfits and ending up in a limp gray skirt of her own paired with one of her mother's lacy blouses. She was not sure if the combination worked, but Nikhil apparently thought so, so that was all right.

  "Hello,” said an unfamiliar voice. “Hi, Nikhil, sorry I'm late. And this must be Callie!" />
  "Trollop” was the first, old-fashioned word that sprang to Cassie's mind. The girl looked like a trollop in a tight straight skirt, a flimsy top that resembled lingerie rather than respectable outdoor clothing, and hot-pink lipstick. As she held her hand out to Callie her long shiny hair swung forward, and Callie caught a whiff of cinnamon or vanilla or some such thing. Cheap, she thought, wrinkling her nose. Cheap perfume.

  "This is Sharmila,” said Nikhil. “Callie, please meet Sharmila Balaram."

  "It's my pleasure, really,” said Sharmila. “I've heard so much about you, Callie—Nikhil never stops talking about you."

  Callie's head was in a whirl. She sat down, suddenly short of breath.

  "Why, Callie, you look winded. It must be the heat.” Nikhil reached out, lifted the champagne, began pouring the sparkling gold liquid into three flutes on the table.

  "Here,” he said. “Callie, I can't tell you how much it means to me that you're here. You're my dearest friend at this university, you've been like a mother to me, and I wanted you to be the first to know. Sharmila and I are getting engaged."

  * * * *

  She didn't know how she made it through that luncheon. She was wrenched with nausea the whole time, her head spinning, her palms clammy. She wanted to faint, to weep, to scream. Engaged to this harlot! Only because it was his mother's wish, she knew, and only because this half-naked harridan had gotten her hooks into him somehow. She got through lunch somehow, toasting the happy couple, smiling and nodding through her queasiness, her lips fixed in an artificial rictus that passed for a smile. She left before they did, claiming another appointment; they hardly noticed her departure, laughing and giddy, deep into their second bottle of bubbly.