Mudwoman

  M.R. was on her feet behind the massive presidential desk. M.R. who had never been known to raise her voice, to betray upset or agitation, still less anger or dislike, staring at the smirking boy as if she’d have liked now to hit him.

  “You weren’t really ‘attacked’—were you? You’ve fabricated the entire incident—you injured yourself—filed a false report to the police—”

  Hotly Stirk protested: “I did not. How dare you—insult me—slander me! How dare you accuse me of—‘fabricating’—”

  “Well—did you? You did.”

  Never once in this austere presidential office—not once in her months—years—at the University—had M. R. Neukirchen spoken in so uncalculated a voice, with such vehemence; never once had her face betrayed any emotion so extreme as annoyance, still less dislike, repugnance. The effect upon Stirk was immediate—his pinched little boy’s face contorted with rage and in a sudden tantrum he overturned the chair in which he’d been sitting.

  M.R. cried angrily, “Stop! Stop that! You aren’t a child!”

  M.R. cringed as Stirk lifted the crutch to strike at the desk, or at her—he swept a stack of documents onto the floor—a small ceramic bowl containing pens, paper clips—M.R. tried to grab the crutch, to wrench it from Stirk’s fingers—Stirk gave a loud yelp as if she’d struck him—a yelp as of surprised pain—“Hey! Jesus! What’re you doing—that hurts”—for the benefit of the recording device in his corduroy jacket.

  “But I didn’t—I didn’t—”

  “Didn’t what, President Neukirchen? Hit me? You didn’t—hit me?”

  As M.R. stared in astonishment the gloating boy stuck his tongue out at her. His tongue! Within these swift and irretrievable seconds the conversation M.R. had believed so forthright had shifted to farce, and President Neukirchen was the butt of the farce. Quivering with mischief Stirk fitted the crutch into his armpit and turned to limp out of the office just as the door was being opened by the president’s secretary whom he pushed aside with the crutch, laughing—“Here’s a witness! Another female! Expect a subpoena, lady!”

  Limping noisily and conspicuously through the president’s outer office Alexander Stirk departed historic Salvager Hall like a sequence of mallet strokes against a just barely unyielding hardwood floor.

  So it would be shortly charged: not only had M. R. Neukirchen tried to “censor” Alexander Stirk, the woman had actually—in some sort of “scuffle” in the president’s office—struck him.

  In some versions of the lurid story, she’d struck him with the injured undergraduate’s very crutch.

  Should have known. Hadn’t she been warned.

  This is a war. There are enemies.

  Her heart beat in her ears. Barely she could hear the man addressing her, in an air of scarcely concealed exasperation.

  Lockhardt had been chief counsel for the University for more than thirty years. Presidents of the University had inherited him as they’d inherited the presidential office itself—its austere furnishings and leather-bound books, the portrait of grim Reverend Charters above the fireplace mantel. Lockhardt’s manner was unapologetically patrician—he had virtually no presence in the consciousness of the University faculty but his presence was essential to the board of trustees who looked to him as the president’s key adviser, beside whom the president could seem but a temporary and expedient hireling.

  Before taking office M.R. had imagined that she might encourage Leonard Lockhardt to retire and in his place she’d hire a younger attorney of her own generation and liberal convictions but as soon as she’d become president M.R. had known how she needed the man, his experience, his influence with trustees and “major” donors. He’d graduated from the University with a degree in classics in 1955 and he’d gone to Harvard Law and like most graduates of his generation he’d been opposed to the appointment of a female president at the University, though M.R. wasn’t supposed to know this.

  He was a bachelor. His long lean cheeks were clean-shaven and he exuded an airy sexless good cheer in all weathers. He wore suits tailored for him in Bond Street, London, long-sleeved linen and cotton shirts, bow ties. Can’t trust a man who wears a bow tie M.R.’s father Konrad Neukirchen used to say but M.R. had no choice, she had to trust her chief legal counsel whose thinning silvery hair was styled in swirls like wings rising from his high forehead. In the lapel of Leonard Lockhardt’s pinstriped suit was the small gold coiled-snake insignia of the University’s most selective eating club, to which he’d belonged as an undergraduate and which had barred from membership all categories of individuals except heterosexual Caucasian-Christian males from “good” families until, begrudgingly, the mid–1980s.

  M.R. had hoped to become so friendly with Lockhardt, she could suggest to him in the most casual of ways that it wasn’t a good idea to continue to wear that particular eating-club pin at the University and Lockhardt would understand and cease to wear it at such times. But this intimacy hadn’t yet happened and by late winter of 2003 M.R. had come to understand that very likely, it would not happen.

  Gradually and in his gentlemanly manner Lockhardt had become adjusted to the female president. He was not the sort of civic-minded individual who bears grudges—as soon as M. R. Neukirchen had been chosen by a majority of the trustees as the most exemplary of all candidates for the presidency despite her relative inexperience, Lockhardt was committed to her. He had come to like her as a person, whom he called “Meredith”—for “M.R.” seemed silly and pretentious to him, inappropriate for a female—and to admire her style of leadership which was perilously close to no style at all—just the woman’s unfettered personality. Neukirchen was guileless, zealous, far more intelligent and sharp-witted than she appeared. Shrewdly he’d sized her up as an indefatigable workhorse—one to be exploited. That the University had inaugurated its first female president in nearly 250 years was a glorious banner unfurled and flapping in the wind for all to behold.

  And so Leonard Lockhardt was anxious on Neukirchen’s behalf, and on behalf of the University, which he loved. When M.R. had had her “accident” in October—en route to deliver a keynote address at a convening of the American Association of Learned Societies at Cornell University—when she’d failed to show up at the banquet hall, and had gone missing overnight, to the great alarm of her colleagues, friends, and the conference organizers—it had been Leonard Lockhardt who’d explained the situation to the trustees and assured them that M.R. hadn’t behaved in a way at all irresponsible or eccentric, whatever he’d privately thought.

  To M.R. he’d been politely solicitous. He had not asked her, as others had not, why she’d been driving—alone—in a rented car—in rural Beechum County so far from Ithaca, New York—and not even near Carthage, which was her hometown; why she’d departed the Cornell hotel without informing anyone, even her assistant who’d been desperate—frantic—for hours when M.R.’s whereabouts were unknown. He hadn’t told her as perhaps he might have that she’d behaved not only irresponsibly and in an eccentric fashion but dangerously. You might have died there. Disappeared. Who would have known?

  Instead Lockhardt had told M.R. that she had been “very lucky” not to have been seriously injured “in such a remote setting”—and that in the future, should she decide to drive somewhere alone, she should leave word with her staff.

  M.R. replied that she believed she had left word with her assistant—a phone call, or an e-mail. She was sure.

  Of that afternoon in October in Beechum County M.R. had a confused recollection. All that had happened she both recalled with painful exactitude and yet could not grasp that it had happened to her.

  Or maybe—she couldn’t remember. Waking with a pounding head, a bloodied face, near-smothered by the exploded air bag and near-strangled by the safety harness—a stranger stooping above the car overturned in a ditch calling to her Hello? Hello? Hello? Are you—alive?

  Lockhardt hadn’
t pressed the issue of October 2002. Whatever he thought of M.R.’s utterly inexplicable behavior, whatever trustees of the University thought, or M.R.’s staff, or those faculty members who knew of her failure to deliver the keynote address at the conference in Ithaca—that period of some eighteen hours when M. R. Neukirchen seemed to have vanished—Leonard Lockhardt had not elaborated. His manner was discreet, diplomatic; he did not question motives, or even curious behavior, except as these threatened to erupt into public matters involving the University.

  Now, regarding the alleged assault of the undergraduate Alexander Stirk, Lockhardt most dreaded a highly publicized lawsuit in which his superior skills would not prevail. For it was a new era, this era of “diversity”—it was not Leonard Lockhardt’s era. The University was no longer his University. The lawsuit was coming, he knew—or some similar disaster.

  “Yes, you warned me, Leonard. But—I had to try, you know.”

  “Had to try! Try what?”

  “To communicate with Alexander Stirk. To show him that he could trust me.”

  “Of course he could trust you. But you couldn’t trust him.”

  Of all of her staff it was Leonard Lockhardt who could speak most forcibly to M.R. and it was Leonard Lockhardt whose good opinion M.R. craved. Sensing how Lockhardt would have preferred her predecessor in her place, who’d been a consummate politician, and no naïve female idealist to be manipulated by an undergraduate.

  “Oh, Leonard. Do you think I’ve made a terrible—irrevocable—mistake?”

  And she had not told Lockhardt—she would tell no one, for pride would not allow this—how, on the way out of her office, the smirking little bastard had stuck his tongue out at her.

  Andre. I have to speak with you. I know that this is a difficult time for you—I’d hoped to have heard from you by now—but—something has happened here, at the University—I will explain. . . . I need to know—have I made a terrible—irrevocable—mistake. . . . Will you call me back Andre please.

  Pausing before adding, with a breathless little laugh Love you so much dear Andre!

  For it was possible for M.R. to utter such words at such a time. At the very end of a brief phone message, in a voice of girlish exuberance—a kind of giddy drunkenness—what could not be bluntly, unequivocally stated

  Love you Andre so much. You must know.

  And never with the mildest hint of reproach, or hurt—or desperation—Love you so much Andre do you love me?

  Still less would M.R. dare to leave a message of unfettered emotion, yearning—Andre, when will you come see me again? Why don’t you call me? What is happening in your life? I feel so distant from you . . . I am so utterly lonely here. . . .

  Between them from the first—M.R. had been twenty-three, Andre Litovik thirty-seven—this had been the (unstated) agreement, the bond. M.R. would love Andre Litovik more than he loved her because M.R.’s capacity for love was greater than his as M.R.’s capacity for sympathy, patience, generosity and civility was far greater than his. I can love enough for us both. I will! M.R. had thought in the early years of their (secret) relationship but now she wasn’t so certain she could continue to retain the strength of her old loyalty.

  Loyalty: naïveté.

  And yet: loyalty.

  But as soon as Alexander Stirk departed, and M.R. was alone again in her office stunned, humiliated, hurt—the adrenaline rush of anger had quickly subsided—she called her lover in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on her cell phone.

  A (secret) call. No one among the president’s staff must know.

  M. R. Neukirchen’s (secret) life. M. R. Neukirchen’s (unacknowledged) life.

  No one knew, among her wide circle of friends, acquaintances, colleagues—that M.R. had been involved with a man, a married man, since graduate school in Cambridge. So many years! And so faithful to this man, who had—very likely—not been altogether faithful to her.

  As long as I know that I am the one he loves. To the extent to which he can love anyone.

  As no one knew how lonely M.R. was. Amid the busyness of her professional life like a sequence of blinding lights rudely shone into her eyes this loneliness persisted.

  She could confide in no one, of course. In this exalted position so many of her colleagues envied.

  In the president’s house, in which she was a perpetual guest. As in the four-poster brass bed to which Andre Litovik had come not once in the months since her inauguration, to sleep with her.

  In fact Andre had visited the University twice in those months. He’d come for M.R.’s inauguration in April and in November he’d returned to give a lecture for the astronomy/astrophysics department and at that time M.R. had hosted a dinner in his honor at the president’s house. But he hadn’t wanted to stay overnight in this house though it was understood—it seemed to be understood—that M.R. and Andre Litovik were “old friends” from her Cambridge days.

  M.R. had invited him of course—but she hadn’t pressed him.

  There are guest rooms here. We have at least one guest a week, often more. You would not be—it would not seem. . . .

  She’d meant, it would not have seemed suspicious.

  He’d told her no. He’d been adamant, not very gracious. He had seemed almost to dislike her, so emphatically he spoke declining her invitation.

  Still, they’d managed to spend some time alone together on that occasion—but not in the president’s house, and not in the president’s bed.

  M.R. understood—of course. It would be folly, it would be the most careless of blunders, to arouse suspicion. At least at this time while M.R. was president of the University and Andre Litovik was—still—married.

  Look, darling: I’m so proud of you. Don’t risk your reputation. Someday—soon—we’ll work this out. But not—not just yet.

  He’d gripped her hands in his, tightly. He had appealed to her to believe him and so she had believed him.

  Yet, he’d been eager to return home. For always—at home—there was a family crisis—which Andre must mediate.

  Of all men of her acquaintance M.R. had never known anyone so personally persuasive as Andre Litovik—whether the public man, or the private man. Waking from sleep he was, in an instant, fully awake—warm, suffused with energy, thrumming like a hive of bees.

  And the big fist of a heart quick-beating inside the barrel-chest yet calm, Olympian and bemused.

  If a heart can be Olympian and bemused, Andre Litovik’s was that heart.

  “Please call me. Please—I need to speak to you. . . .”

  The most piteous appeals are those we make in utter solitude, no one to hear. The objects of our appeals distant, oblivious.

  It seemed to be so—Andre was proud of her, now. He admired successful women—in particular, academic and intellectual women—he’d married a brilliant young Russian-born translator and Slavic studies post-doc at Harvard and very likely he’d been involved with a number of other women before meeting M.R.—(and after?).

  He hadn’t wanted her to become president of the University. He’d been frankly astonished that among several very strong candidates, M.R. had been chosen.

  M.R. had not said to him You could dissuade me, if you wanted to. If you wanted to badly enough.

  For maybe this wasn’t true. Maybe—M.R. contemplated the possibility—she did prefer the public position, the opportunity to serve, to lead, to hold in the Light—to a more private life.

  At any rate, she’d accepted the offer of the board of trustees of the University. Leonard Lockhardt had drawn up her contract. The faculty of the University overwhelmingly approved of Neukirchen for the presidency—this had been crucial to M.R.’s acceptance. Never had she felt so—vindicated.

  Almost, you might say—loved.

  For this was the high point of Mudwoman’s life—to be admired, loved.

  The phone rang: 9:09 P.M. r />
  Not the president’s phone but M.R.’s cell phone for which very few people had the number.

  She saw—the caller ID wasn’t LITOVIK.

  She pushed the little phone away, she had no desire to answer it.

  She’d fallen asleep at her desk. The massive cherrywood desk with its numerous deep drawers. Folded her arms on the desktop and laid her head on her arms and drifted into an exhausted sleep. For the day—this ignominious day!—had begun so long before, in the dark preceding dawn.

  FREE CHOICE IS A LIE!

  NOBODY’S BABY WANTS TO DIE!

  Salvager Hall was empty and darkened except for the president’s office where a single desk lamp was lighted. Three floors deserted as a stage set from which actors have departed. The new female president had a plucky-loyal staff to work closely with her and to defend her against her critics and detractors while conferring worriedly among themselves Is something wrong with M.R.? Is she—ill? She seems to be making mistakes—misjudgments. . . . Since the accident in October . . .

  “No. I can make things right again.”

  The cell phone had ceased ringing. Then, within seconds it rang again—the opening bars of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

  M.R.’s (secret) lover had bought her the cell phone. So that she could call him, and he could call her. That had been years before in an earlier and more idyllic phase of their friendship.

  It was not Andre. In the caller ID window was KROLL.

  She was appalled, that Oliver Kroll would be calling her at such a time. And on her cell phone, not the president’s phone. She wouldn’t have thought that Kroll had her number or that he would dare to call her, after what had happened that afternoon.

  For M.R. had no doubt, Oliver Kroll had conspired with Stirk to record their conversation. This is war. Our war has begun.

  They would gloat together. They would play the tape, and laugh at her.

  And now—Kroll was calling her.

  M.R. felt a swirl of nausea. She was not so strong as people thought—even Leonard Lockhardt who’d come to know her painfully well misjudged her as a stronger woman than she was.