God, there are so many things wrong with that sentence. She “approached” him. It was not a relationship, which was the true source of her complaint, Gerry was sure. Also, how disappointing that Harry would use the word commenced in this context. Embarrassment must have rendered him less articulate than usual.
He took a deep breath. “Shannon made it quite clear that she wanted to have sex with me. It was not something that interested me, not really. But she was adamant. Determined. One night we were alone, going over applicants for next year’s Writing Sems. We had sex. Once. I was disappointed in myself, but it’s not a mistake I wish to repeat. And, no, I haven’t told my wife. Lucy has always been very clear that if I am unfaithful, our marriage is over.”
Lucy’s attitudes about sexual fidelity were more nuanced than this, but his boss didn’t need to know that. She would, in fact, divorce him if she learned about Shannon.
“Shannon’s version of the story is somewhat different.”
“I’m sure it is. I’m trying to be a gentleman here, Harry, but, I’m sorry, she’s a woman scorned. Well, not scorned—I like to think I’ve been cordial—but she didn’t get what she wanted. I’m not excusing my own behavior. I have regretted what I did every day since then. I’ve been waiting for the shoe to drop. I guess this is it. Humiliating as it is, I’m almost relieved that she decided to make it a professional issue, rather than call Lucy and make it a personal vendetta. Although I suppose she thought filing a complaint against me here might have a ripple effect.”
“‘Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, / Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.’” Coleman used his reciting voice, plummy and pompous. “Do you know the source?”
“One of the Restoration writers, I think?”
“Congreve, The Mourning Bride. His only tragedy. I was briefly enamored with Restoration comedy, as an undergrad. In 1969, it felt radical to care about Restoration writers. I was quite the pedant.”
Harry Coleman was still enamored of pedantic corrections of famous quotes, but that wasn’t something Gerry was inclined to point out.
“What happens now?” Gerry asked.
“It was a consensual, um, encounter, by your account, and you haven’t pursued it in any way. No calls? No trying to get her alone here in Gilman Hall, no repeat, uh, performances?”
“No. Is that what she’s saying?”
“More or less. More or less.”
Gerry felt a cold fury quite unlike anything he had ever known. Yes, he had done something wrong. But it wasn’t his fault. She had initiated it, after weeks, months, of insinuation and pressure. She put her hand on his leg, just above the knee, and began working it up. He had said no. He had said it was wrong. That was the problem. It was wrong and that excited him. Lucy had only one rule, a rule that most men would have been happy to live by. I know you will be tempted, Gerry, and that’s okay. I have only one rule. But who was Lucy to make rules for him? He was the one who had published a novel. It was successful. He had won a prize. No one got to tell him what to do. Especially not Lucy, who refused to own her envy. If Lucy were honest, he would be honest. But she wasn’t, she wasn’t, she wasn’t—
And that was all he had been thinking about as he plunged into Shannon Little. The next day, he called her and said it was a terrible mistake and it must not be repeated. He said she was a lovely woman, but he was married. She didn’t take no for an answer, Shannon Little. She had cajoled, she had threatened, she had cried, she had even claimed she would kill herself. He had gone to her apartment that night, taken pity on her, held her and—okay, so there had been a second time. Maybe a third. But he had never wanted those subsequent episodes. Now she was trying to destroy him.
“She’s a liar, Harry. I made a horrible mistake. But this is outright slander. And you know what? I won’t have it. I will not stand for these false accusations. How can I continue to work alongside such a woman? I recognize that this situation is my fault and therefore my responsibility. I will look at other programs—I know people at Columbia, Stanford—”
Coleman was rattled now. “Gerry, please don’t overreact. We’ll work something out. You can see why I had to have this discussion. I have no reason to doubt your version of things—it’s not as if you denied everything. It’s not as if there’s anything wrong with two colleagues having sex. Please don’t do anything rash.”
“I won’t.”
Was it rash to go home that very night and tell Lucy that he was going to leave the Writing Sems and use the Hartwell Prize to allow himself the gift of being a full-time writer, for at least a year or two?
Was it cruel to say that he wanted this adventure alone, that he no longer wished to be married to her? He had broken her only rule, a generous rule, a rule that most men would kill for in a marriage. If he told her the truth, she would kick him out anyway. So why not just go, without hurting her feelings? Wasn’t that the kindest thing to do? Make the break in a way that would hurt her the least—and deprive Shannon Little of whatever power she thought she had over him. By leaving now, he was offering everyone a clean slate.
He was so tired of women thinking they could control him. Be regular and orderly in your life, so you can be violent and original in your work, Flaubert had recommended.
Fuck Flaubert. There was no reason Gerry couldn’t do both.
March 21
MARGOT WAS DEAD, to begin with.
That riff on A Christmas Carol’s opening line plays in Gerry’s head. He keeps expecting Margot to haunt him, although in Chanel instead of chains. He waits for all his ghosts—past, present, future.
Yet since Margot’s death—since the accident—everything has stopped. No more phone calls, no more “visits.” The obvious answer is the obvious answer. Margot had been taunting him, Margot thought she had something on him. But what?
Life goes on. For everyone but Margot. Aileen no longer arrives with her insulated sack; the freezer has been donated to a local homeless shelter, along with a side of beef from New Windsor, Maryland. Clever Aileen—the shipping address was for the shelter, not her home. It’s a fine little story, as clever and compact as the ones he used to read in those Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies. Kill your husband with a leg of lamb, serve the leg of lamb to the detectives. And maybe this is a dream from which he will finally wake.
As if on cue, the phone rings, the short staccato tone signaling a call from the front desk. So, no, he’s awake.
“Mr. Andersen?” Phylloh from downstairs, still phrosty. Were you Margot’s collaborator? He knows that someone had to be helping Margot. Why not Phylloh? It would explain how Margot got back into the apartment that night.
“Yes?”
“There is a man here to see you.”
“A gentleman?”
“A police officer.”
The first o is long, the tone skeptical. Phylloh probably has many reasons, life experiences, not to think that Officer Friendly is friendly, whereas Gerry is a white man who has spent six decades driving, walking, running, existing without fear of police officers. Oh, sure, he has known the frisson of nervousness when glimpsing a patrol car in his rearview mirror, but the fear is of a ticket, not death.
Now his heart feels as if it’s throwing itself against his rib cage, a bird stuck in a soffit, trying to escape. (This happened in his mother’s house when he was away at college. She listened for days to the terrible scratching and did nothing until Gerry came home from Princeton and found an infestation of flies in the linen closet, as the bird had finally starved to death.)
Terror has feathers, too, Emily Dickinson. A woman has died in his apartment. He may be responsible. (He is definitely responsible.) The body is gone. Another person has made that possible, which gives that person significant power over him. Gerry is in bed, taking far more Ambien than he should. He could use his condition, his pain, his fog, to send the officer away.
Yet when an inspector calls, the suspects always open the door to him. The only way the guilty can pretend to innocence is by acting as if they have nothing to hide.