My Unsentimental Education

sheath.
The men talked about workers at our landlord’s factory. They talked about the senate race, a black former mayor running against the old, white incumbent. Neither the stockbroker nor the landlord admired the old, white incumbent. “But that doesn’t mean I’d vote for a black man,” the stockbroker said, ordering a drink from a black waiter. “Not that I’m against civil rights, but I draw the line when it comes to handouts.” I opened my mouth to object to the illogic, not to mention bad manners, yet I had no idea what to say. Chet kicked me under the table, a signal not to say.
The stockbroker’s wife turned to Chet and said, “And what do you do, pray tell?”
Chet started to explain what he used to do, but there were no oil pipelines in North Carolina. She looked bored. “What about you?” I asked, changing the subject. She was an interior designer, she said. Her husband said, “She shops with her friends, who sometimes take her advice.” She slapped him playfully. Chet was still talking about work he used to do, verifying himself as an earner. The stockbroker frowned and asked Chet why he’d moved to North Carolina. Red-faced, Chet said, “I moved for my wife’s career.”
Our landlord, named Wyatt, said, “That’s right. He’s a stand-up fellow.”
The stockbroker’s wife looked at me. “Oh my. What’s your job then?”
I said I was a professor.
She said she’d met her husband at the university where I taught. She made that old quip about earning her MRS. “So how do you all know Wyatt then?” Having missed cue upon cue, I said, “He’s our landlord.” Everyone at the table went silent. Nearby, diners murmured, clinked. I made a joke: “Every day we collect straw for Wyatt. What he doesn’t need, we use to thatch our roof.” Everyone laughed, relaxing. “Cute,” the stockbroker’s wife said.
First semester, I went to campus five days a week. I lost a lot of time walking a mile there and home again, stepping around puddles and, once, onto a big rat that ate poison in someone’s garage, then staggered out to the sidewalk to die. I was used to field mice, not rats. I was jumpy, besides. This was the peak of the crack epidemic in the South Atlantic states with a parallel uptick in crime, a woman abducted on campus on a weekday midmorning even. But I’d never before lived in a city, not counting Salt Lake City, which doesn’t count, so I tried not to act like a rube and kept it to myself that I felt scared.
I walked because I couldn’t afford the campus parking permit, $375. And most professors had schedules that put them on campus just Tuesday/Thursday or Monday/Wednesday/Friday. I made an appointment with my department chair to ask for a better schedule because I needed time to work on my next book. One of the recently hired women had published only short pieces, which would have been enough for tenure four years earlier when she’d been hired, but times change, so many PhDs, professors to spare. She’d been too servile, she told me, saying yes to niggling requests that had derailed her schedule, and now she was back on the job market, interviews at the big convention after Christmas.
Chet and I spent Christmas at a hunting camp down a dirt road in Texas—putting the plane tickets on one of my new credit cards, $3,000 credit line each. Misjudging his projected income, my father-in-law had lost the big fancy house with the stairwell just like Tara in Gone with the Wind. I helped cook for Chet’s brothers and spouses, Chet’s stepsiblings and spouses, Chet’s nieces, nephews, great-nephew, and crazy grandma, who’d socked away money and gave my mother-in-law the hunting camp for a place to live.
The furnace broke. My father-in-law made a fire outside and brought buckets of coals inside for warmth, reliving his bad childhood, my mother-in-law whispered, explaining his foul mood. The pipes froze, no baths. Chet’s brothers talked about living with the crazy grandma, how she used to hit them, then lock them outside. She followed me around with her walker, lenses in her glasses so thick they were gray, milky, and said: “Bet you would have liked to ride in my Cadillac when I went ninety, hey.” Or: “You know what they call a nigger in a Plano? A Plano nigger.” At night she’d go back to her warm cottage, and we slept in our winter coats, eight to ten people a room, most of them snoring.
I was tired when I got back in January and went to see my department head. But before I could ask about a schedule that would let me work at home at least two days a week, he asked if I’d reviewed my fall evaluations—forms filled out by students about how effective the professor is. I hadn’t yet, I said, worried that I was negligent already, scolded. I’d had good evaluations in the past, but I’d taught only Freshman English. Now I was teaching graduate classes, upper-division classes, and supervising my especially self-doubting teaching assistant, whose parents had asked to meet me to ascertain if a master’s degree was right for their daughter, and the question that had nagged them most was whether she might still get married. “Good,” the father said, relieved.
The department head smiled and said, “Your evaluations are great.” But when I asked about my schedule, his smile vanished: “No.” A male professor hired at the same time as me had a Tuesday/Thursday schedule, I knew. I didn’t say that. I stared at the tile floor with black heel marks, easy to remove with a bit of oil, then a swipe of Windex. I said, “I teach classes with heavy grading loads, and I agreed to supervise that teaching assistant, which you described as a favor to the department. Now I’m asking you for a favor.” He must have been shocked I hadn’t left the room yet. I was shocked. I’d