The Empty Room (6 page)
“Nice to meet you,” Colleen said, and shook hands. She noticed that after the woman pulled back her hand, she folded her arms for a moment to discreetly wipe her own palm on her jacket sleeve.
Pat Minot took the seat next to Colleen’s and turned her attention to David Moore. “Where are we?” she asked.
“I was just asking Colleen how she felt she’d been performing recently.”
“Very good.” Minot turned to her and smiled. She had a square, potato-y sort of face. If she’d been a man, Colleen could have imagined her as an Irish priest, about to have a heart-to-heart with a juvenile delinquent. “And how do you feel you’ve been performing, Colleen?”
Colleen suspected, in a wave of icy hopelessness, that it didn’t matter much what she felt. The scene must be played out. “I’ve been late a few times, and perhaps a bit distracted. My mother, you see,
she’s had a series of mini-strokes, and it’s resulted in brain damage. I’m her only living relative and it’s been very difficult, getting her into nursing care, dealing with the doctors, cleaning out her condo. She’d been hoarding, I’m sorry to say, and I can’t tell you the things I found in there. The shower stall was packed, floor to ceiling, with laxatives and toilet paper—and yes, I do see the irony in that—and bags of raisins, for some reason, and toothpaste …” Moore and Minot exchanged glances. “I’m rambling, I suppose, but I can’t tell you how difficult it’s been. If I’ve forgotten a thing or two at work, well, I would hope my co-workers would understand.”
“I see,” said Pat Minot. “What a stressful situation. Caregiving for a parent is awfully hard. And I wonder if that hasn’t contributed to what we suspect is the real problem.”
“The real problem?” And here it comes, she thought.
“Dr. Moore, perhaps, since you’re Colleen’s supervisor, and you work with her on a daily basis, you’d like to continue?”
“Oh. Right. Yes.” He took off his glasses and polished them with a little cloth he pulled from his inside jacket pocket. “It’s quite sensitive, I suppose, but the complaints have been frequent.”
“What complaints? From whom?” Colleen sat up a little straighter. The best defence might demand she bristle.
“If I might suggest, Dr. Moore, it’s best to simply be direct here. As direct as possible.”
“Right. Yes. The thing is, Colleen, we believe you have a problem that’s affecting your performance here in the office.”
“Do you?” Colleen stuck out her chin and pursed her lips.
“Let me be, as Ms. Minot says, direct. Colleen, do you have a drinking problem?”
Oh, Christ
. “What are you talking about?”
As though Moore hadn’t been tight as a violin string at the last start-of-the-semester party
.
“We believe you do.” He held his hand up to stop her from speaking. “You’re not really hiding it as well as you think you are.”
If ever there was a moment to bristle, this was it. “I find your tone pretty insulting.”
Moore sighed and replaced his glasses on his nose. “I am not here to judge you, Colleen, but the situation must be dealt with. We can’t go on like this.”
“It sounds very much like judgment to me. I resent this, David, I really do.” It was important to sound confident and insulted. It was important to give the impression of shock. “You’re making it sound as though I’m some sort of lush or something, and I don’t know who’s put these ideas into your head, although I suppose I can guess.”
“There’s no need to get excited, Colleen,” said Pat Minot. “We’d like to help you.”
“I don’t need any help. I need to get back to my desk and do my work.”
“Must we do this?” David looked at her as though he were a disappointed father.
Colleen realized it would be unwise, at this point, to say fuck you, but she reserved it for later. “David, come on. This is ridiculous; you’re questioning my integrity here, and I don’t like it one bit.”
He sighed. “Fine. We’ll do it this way, then, although I’m surprised we have to, since this is the third time we’ve had this sort of discussion about your performance—”
“You’ve never said anything about an alcohol problem!”
“Perhaps not, specifically, the drinking, but certainly your performance.”
Colleen said nothing. What could she say?
“Right, then.” He began to count off her failings on his fingers. “You are late virtually every day, and when you do arrive, you’re hungover and you smell of liquor. You do very little work until late morning, and then off you go to lunch, which is usually two hours, and sometimes, like last Friday, considerably longer, and when you come back, it’s clear you’ve been drinking. You are often inappropriate with co-workers as well as students, you lose things, forget to do what’s asked of you, and, often as not, what you do has to be done over. It used to be that your work only suffered Mondays and perhaps Fridays, and we all knew about it and let it pass because, believe it or not, we really do care about you, Colleen. However, over the past six months or so, things have gone from bad to much worse. I’ve spoken to you about your performance on several occasions, and I’ve given you written warning—haven’t I done that?”
“Well, yes, but given what I’ve been going through …” Her mind raced like a demented greyhound. “I didn’t think it was serious enough to warrant all this and I don’t know what you mean by
inappropriate
. What does that mean?”
“Did you, or did you not … how do I put this delicately? …
fondle
Max Sinclair on Friday?”
“I did no such thing!” And she thought: if I had he would have liked it.
“You did, I’m afraid. I saw it myself. You grabbed Dr. Sinclair’s buttocks and made a remark about coconuts—a song, in fact.”
Pat Minot coughed into her hand. “Excuse me,” she said.
I’ve got a luverly bunch of coconuts
, sung in a Cockney accent. Colleen squirmed. She might have done that. It was possible there had been some teasing, but Max was young and handsome and funny as hell in that fabulous British way.
“I was joking. He didn’t mind.”
“I’m afraid he did, Colleen, especially since there were students present at the time, students who were also less than impressed.” Moore cleared his throat. “And this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened, now is it? Do we have to go over what happened at the start-of-term party?”
T
he main dining room in the Faculty Club was a cool sea of Wedgwood blue and white. Fairy lights hung in the potted weeping fig trees. The gold chandeliers gleamed. Faculty and grad students mingled and chatted over hors d’oeuvres—shrimp wrapped in bacon, little egg rolls, mini-quiches, smoked salmon. The bar was fully stocked and a DJ played jazz standards near a small dance floor.
Colleen had a Manhattan, and then another. They were delicious. She’d had a couple of glasses of wine at home, and was just starting to feel that happy cloud of confidence and goodwill toward men, and women too, for that matter. She wore a slinky black dress with a high collar and long sleeves. It hugged her curves. She might have put on just a pound or two since her skinny-malinks days, but that didn’t mean she’d lost her sense of style. She hadn’t lost her allure, that lovely word.
Allure
… it rolled around the tongue like a pearl.
She talked with Max Sinclair. He was so charming, even with those acne scars. They made his face interesting. She suspected he was gay, since he never had a woman with him and surely a man that handsome would have oodles of women. Besides he dressed so
well. And he was funny. He gossiped about the other professors, especially Ron Porter, who he said had a tendency to dress in his wife’s clothing. “Such a shame,” he remarked, “since the poor old thing dresses like a vicar’s mother.” He told her how Mike Banville and Porter loathed each other. Mike was the sort of corduroy-and-khaki geographer most at home punting up the Orinoco. Ron was an urban planner with a model train set in his basement.
Colleen plucked the cherry out of her drink and sucked its potent juices. The liquor gave her such a lovely floating feeling. She arched her back. She imagined she was a ballet dancer.
“Did you know,” said Max, “when Mike visited Alcatraz a few years back he sent Ron a postcard saying, ‘Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.’ You have to love a man like that.”
The second Manhattan pirouetted through her veins. She couldn’t believe that glass, too, was nearly empty. She looked around at the groups of chatting academics, bottles of beer or glasses of white wine spritzers in their hands.
She drained her glass. “God, this party needs some spicing up, don’t you think?”
“Well, it certainly calls for another drink,” said Max. “Do you want one?”
“Absolutely. Go on.” She winked at him.
He went to get the drinks and it occurred to her that what the party needed was some dancing. To hell with all this jazz stuff; the DJ must have something with a little R & B to it. She’d get them going.
The DJ smiled as she approached. He was too old to be a really hip DJ. He had to be at least forty-five, but then again, she wasn’t exactly a twenty-year-old, was she. Still, she knew her music.
“Want to hear something?” he asked.
“Got any Motown, any Stax Records? Something with some life?”
“Stax, huh? You like that Southern soul?”
“The Staple Singers maybe?”
He grinned. “I might have a little Mavis here. Might have a little Albert King.”
“Some Otis? Al Green?”
“I’d rather not get fired though, you know.”
“I’ll take full responsibility,” Colleen said.
“You’re on, Mama.”
When the song that was playing finished, on came Mavis Staples’ big voice, her deep, chesty uh of delight. She asked for the listener’s help, so she could take them there … A couple of people looked around, but it was a brilliant choice, just jazzy enough to seem like part of the program. Colleen grinned and swayed to the beat. Yes indeed. People watched her. She didn’t mind. She looked good, didn’t she, in this slinky black dress, her hips swaying, a bit of belly-dancing roll here and there. She glanced around, looking for Max. He’d dance with her, get this thing off the ground.
She spotted him off by the bar but he didn’t meet her eye. He was talking to the Dean. She kept dancing. Then the song stopped, too soon.
“Don’t stop!” she called to the DJ.
He threw his hands up and shrugged.
“One more.” She folded her hands as if in prayer.
The DJ glanced around a little nervously and then put on “The Best of My Love,” by The Emotions. Perfect. That was it, a party song. A fun song. She motioned with her hands for some of the grad students to join her. A trio stood nearby. One was a bearded boy wearing a grey pullover. He tapped his foot in time to the song. She danced over and tried to pull him onto the floor. His friends laughed and he did, too, for a minute. And then he looked embarrassed.
“Thanks, but no. No thanks.”
He tried to pull away, but she tightened her grip. “Come on, don’t be a party pooper!”
“No, really! No
thanks
.” He jerked away from her and walked away, past his laughing friends, leaving her standing there.
“Party pooper!” she called after him.
She finished out the song, although she had lost the limber, loose feeling of a few minutes before. She felt awkward and suddenly aware of disapproving eyes. She needed that drink Max had promised her. When the DJ played “Body and Soul,” she glared at him, but threw in the towel and went off to get another Manhattan.
“Make it a good one,” she told the bartender.
Half an hour later, she cornered David Moore behind a potted palm near the men’s room and spent quite a bit of time telling him what was wrong with his department, zeroing in on the lack of women in influential positions.
“Universities are run by patriarchs,” she said. “There’s a lack of intuitive balance.”
The smile on his face was brittle. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, “I don’t think you want to have this conversation.”
He was right, she didn’t want to, but she couldn’t stop herself; the words tumbled out of their own accord. She knew she was making perfect sense, if only he’d see. Eventually he simply walked away.
She felt close to tears, in part because of her frustration. He wouldn’t listen, but then, too, as often happened when she’d had a little bit too much, a part of her mind stepped off to the left and watched the rest of her—watched and laughed. Practically brayed. She was not in control and knew herself not to be in control. She was at that point in the evening when she saw quite clearly things were happening that she did not want to happen. She was blurting out every little thing, and no one was more interested than she to hear what they might be. She feared she was making a fool of herself, but the train was hurtling down the track, the brakes completely blown. She tasted the whisky and orange of her drink. How many was this? Fuck it. Damn the torpedoes. She drained it.
That was a mistake. Within moments her stomach rebelled. There was no way she would make it all the way through the crowd to the ladies’ room. No, it was the men’s room or the potted palm. She lurched to the men’s room, praying no one was inside. Vacant, thank the gods. Burst into a stall. Kicked the door shut behind her. Retched and heaved.
Up it came. Not so bad
. Some smeared mascara, and a need for mouthwash, but she would live. She might even
get out of the men’s room with nothing more than a giggle.
Sorry, wrong door
! She stepped out of the stall, only slightly stained, and who should be entering but the Dean of Arts and Science, Dr. John J. Stachell, a man with the face of an irritated rooster, a man with no sense of humour or compassion. He took one look at her and turned tail.
She became teary then, and the rest of the night was clouded in Manhattan mists. Someone, possibly Gloria from the Dean’s Office, put her in a taxi.
E
ven if Colleen didn’t remember precisely what happened that evening, she didn’t see the necessity of going over it all again now. But David Moore persisted.