Straight Man

in it. He’s had the weekend to consider his rash position at the last personnel committee meeting, where he urged us not only to disqualify all male candidates from our search but to vote against him when he comes up for tenure next year. It’s not that he fears someone may have taken his admonition seriously. As he explained to June over the weekend, his contempt for the pervasive sexism of our culture is so powerful, so profound, that he wouldn’t mind being sacrificed to further the cause of gender equality. Still, he’s afraid that his position may have been misunderstood and possibly misstated. What if, in paraphrase, it sounded like he just didn’t
want
tenure? What if his deepest convictions were misinterpreted as personal dissatisfaction, which was the way June herself, he was horrified to discover, had taken them.
    What he would like the chair to understand is that, as a white male, he isn’t sure he
deserves
tenure, but he does
want
it. Actually, he’s seriously thinking about making an offer on a house in Allegheny Wells. His realtor keeps insisting it’s a buyer’s market, and June agrees. The problem is, how can you even
look
at houses, how can you contemplate the future, in such a climate of rancor and antagonism? Take today’s meeting. How he votes will be remembered. He hasn’t decided how he is going to vote yet, I’m to understand, but he knows that no matter which way he votes he’s going to make enemies. Even June says so. What did
I
do when I was in his position? he wonders. “It’s so hard to be moral,” he laments.
    If William Henry Devereaux, Jr., were a more honest man, he’d confess to his young colleague that he’s not going to think much of him no matter how he votes. Instead, my advice to Orshee is to listen to his realtor. I tell him I believe he will be tenured, that he will be chair before he’s through, which in fact I do believe. If he suspects he’s been insulted, he gives no sign.
    Jacob Rose’s secretary, Marjory Brownlow, has been at the university longer than anyone I know. A former secretary in English, she followed Jacob over to Liberal Arts when he was made dean. Since that time, she’s been offered half a dozen positions in the administration and turned them all down, out of loyalty to Jacob, I’ve always assumed, or contempt for the new regime of Dickie Pope. I don’t get over to this end of campus that often, and seeing Marjory reminds me of something I’m surprised to have forgotten. Back in late November she called me, wanting to know whether there was any chance of her returning to English. If Rachel was planning to leave, would I keep her in mind? I assured her that if Rachel were ever to give notice I’d pick up the phone, but that, as far as I knew, Rachel was enjoying her job, the fact that I was her boss notwithstanding. “Is this something you want to talk about?” I recall asking. “It sure is,” Marjory replied. “But it’s not something I can. Not a word to Jacob, Hank. Promise me.” So I promised and kept my promise in the same fashion Lily always accuses me of keeping such promises. By forgetting entirely whatever it is I’m not supposed to tell anyone.
    Seeing Marjory now, however, brings the conversation back in its entirety, and with it comes a suspicion—that whatever is happening or is about to happen on campus is something Marjory knew or suspected in the fall. Secretaries to the deans always know all the dirt, and only gender and class bias keeps department chairs from dealing directly with them and bypassing their bosses altogether.
    “Marjory,” I say from the doorway. “Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out. I can take it.”
    Marjory has been around, and been around me, too long to be taken aback by much, but this smart-ass hello seems to have caught her like a good left jab. She looks me over long and critically before observing, “You’re limping.”
    I plop down in one of the chairs reserved for people begging an audience of the dean. Actually, this is the inner of two offices, where people like department chairs and union representatives wait. The outer office is for students, several of whom I’ve made my way past already. They stare at me maliciously. “No cuts,” they’d like to tell me, and who can blame them? Not me, and I’m a cutter. I recognize a couple of them from Finny’s morning comp class, poor devils. They’re probably here to complain to Jacob about Finny’s dullness. This