Dusk Settles
Sometimes I feel the bond to the past events narrated in this blog is losing its strength. It is not necessarily a bad sensation. Sometimes I wish I could forget everything, sometimes I feel the need to preserve everything, every single minute, every single detail.
One thing is for sure: there is no way of getting rid of the past, it is engraved on our flesh and skin, not only in the curled recesses of our mind. But sometimes we are so caught up in our present, in our daily activities, that we forget we are body and soul, and even if the soul should trick herself into thinking she can fly without the burden of our past days, there is no way our body ever forgets.
Therefore I know it won’t be long before I can sit and write you about my lunch with David or my meeting with Gwen. I just need dusk to settle first.
Alpha Females
Granted, I care to conceal the details about myself that make me identifiable. Granted, I’m not using real names (I could see your slight head nod when you first came across the surname “sourcil”because, of course, you didn’t overlook its meaning). Granted, I’m writing at home, in complete isolation, so there are no possible witnesses.
But today the possibility that someone I know might find this blog looks even scarier. As a matter of fact I’m going to write about my co-worker Pauline. To put it mildly, I’m risking my neck.
Now, I’ve known Pauline for many years and she’s a perfect co-worker, serious, hardworking, very dependable. She only has one flaw: she has no flaws. She’s practically perfect, she’s a great scholar and a great mother, she dresses sexily but not aggressively sexily, she is fluent in French, she cooks well and has proved helpful on a variety of occasions.
The thing is I find her intimidating. I’m biologically older, but definitely not wiser than her. I have more titles than her so she’s always very deferent, but I strongly suspect she respects my academic achievements more than she respects me. She has all the qualities that will allow her to have a soaring career, and she’s probably more strong-willed and talented than I ever was. She knows what she wants and she is not easily distracted. She doesn’t like teaching and it shows. She speaks too fast for students to follow her, she asks difficult questions, she just doesn’t care. Natalie, my PhD student, is a born teacher instead. I was with her the morning she delivered her first class ever. I had forgotten she was starting a module and I was just chatting casually with her when I noticed that she was playing with her hair – which she never does. I asked her what was wrong and she told me why she was so nervous. I volunteered to go to the room where she was delivering the class with her just to keep her company. She entered and closed the door behind her. I could hear the students’ voices trail away and then quickly fall silent, as their gaze fixed upon her, a skinny brunette who would sit among them only a few months before. Natalie started talking without the aid of the microphone, her voice steady, tranquilising, clear. It could have been her millionth class. I stood outside the closed door until someone started looking at me suspiciously, then I left with the distinctive feeling she was going to be a great teacher and, maybe, a not-so-great scholar, as rarely do the two things go together.
Needless to say, Pauline doesn’t like Natalie. She thinks Natalie doesn’t dress appropriately for her age and position and doesn’t work as hard as she should. I’m pretty sure Natalie doesn’t like Pauline either, but she never really told me. Once we were all in my office organizing a trip to Los Angeles where we would take part in a conference. Pauline said her husband could come at the airport and drive us home. I asked if Pauline was sure her husband wouldn’t mind and she replied “My husband does what he’s told”. I didn’t dare look Natalie in the eye because I was sure that if I had I could have hardly suppressed a laughter.
Pauline is like that, take her or leave her. She’s the last person in the world I’d tell my story to and I’d never tell her about this blog either. If my eyebrow did turn indigo I’m pretty sure she’d say “how trendy” but she’d probably think “he’s completely lost his mind, I knew it was going to happen, I just didn’t expect it to be so soon”.
She thinks I’m an eccentric (I so wish I was but unfortunately I’m not) and she often feels she has to organize my life. She knows my appointments better than I do. It was no surprise that, when David showed up a few afternoons later my phone call with Linda and asked if we could go out to lunch the following Tuesday, Pauline spoke before I could even open my mouth and said: “He’s got meetings at lunchtime on Tuesday and Wednesday, but you can meet him on Friday.”
I felt like a rockstar who’s completely lost control of his life, and David looked curiously at me. He said Friday was fine and added: “I also came here to tell you that Linda has accepted to let Gwen move to Portland. I’m so relieved!”
Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I knew already because Linda and I had discussed about it the night she had phoned me. And the night after. And the one after that.
Distances
Distance is such a relative concept. Sometimes we feel that the person we are living with is a far-off planet with which no form of communication is possible. Sometimes we have the impression that people who are far away from us couldn’t be closer to our heart.
I’ve spent most of my live studying far-off planets and stars and when I think of them I sometimes forget they are so remote: they seem so familiar, I could list their characteristics just like a priest can recite prayers, with my eyes closed, visualising the uneven crust of an unearthly desert under an alien sky.
With my inner eye I could see Linda as she was talking to me on the phone. She was in a house I had never seen, wearing clothes I had never seen and yet I could picture the scene. In my mind she was wearing no make up but she looked much younger, in spite of the small wrinkles around her eyes. I could see her in a white long-sleeved shirt and large tracksuit pants, managing to hold the phone with her shoulder and pour her nightly milk fix into a glass. The children were about to go to bed, the dog (I imagined an old, growling spaniel) had just laid down at her feet, his gaze following everything she did, mutely asking for attention. I could feel her tension slack when the first, embarrassing minutes of our conversation were over.
She had called me for advice; David had told her I had agreed on tutoring Gwen and she wanted to know why I had changed my mind. Did I think Gwen should quit school, too? She confessed my decision had really surprised her: she had always taken for granted that obliging Gwen to attend school was the best decision but now she was not so sure any longer. Why did I think Gwen should not be educated at school? She was full of doubts. Maybe she had taken the wrong decision, maybe Gwen really had a hard time at school.
I told her I thought she was a great mother and all she had been trying to do was simply protect her daughter. She felt that the difficult relationship between David and her had certainly influenced her: unfortunately the two were not able to put their grudge aside and, maybe unconsciously, she had wanted to punish David and had ended up punishing Gwen instead. I told her I knew exactly what she was talking about, since I had separated from my wife after months, if not years, of subtle hostilities. She sighed and I thought she must have been very beautiful in that moment. A beautiful and sad forty-year-old girl realising she had to let go of her child much before she had expected because she had an extraordinary kid and she needed to be an extraordinarily brave mother.
Linda was speaking her heart and I tried to win my natural shyness and do the same. And, in spite of her being so far away and her two-storey house being a little distant star in the black Saskatchewan countryside, I could feel that special warmth only proximity can produce.
