Mudwoman Read online

  “I—I don’t think so, Mr. Schneider. . . .”

  “Yes. Of course—you knew. You are not stupid.”

  Boldly Meredith stepped forward—blindly. She must take the risk, to escape from this strange quivering man.

  It must have happened then—swiftly, and confusedly—that Mr. Schneider took hold of Meredith: her right shoulder, and then her right upper arm. How strong his fingers were, and how unexpected! Yet she twisted from him, at once. For it was Mudgirl’s instinct to save herself, to flee her opponent. And how quick, strong, agile she was—her opponent was shocked for he’d expected a more docile girl.

  “Meredith! I have not given you permission to leave—come back. . . .”

  She fled. Flung open the door, ran into the hall. And in the hall lined with lockers, running.

  She told no one. Never would she tell anyone. Her bruised upper right arm she hid beneath sleeves, until the talon-marks faded. To her basketball teammates that afternoon she apologized stammering and flush-faced so they stared at her in amazement—(had they even missed her?)—and to the Neukirchens she said nothing for she knew she must spare them at all costs. And the next morning at school it was announced in all the homerooms that Hans Schneider had had an “accident” and would not be teaching his classes that day; a substitute would teach in his place.

  And the following day, it was announced that Hans Schneider would not be teaching for the rest of the week. The same substitute, a middle-aged woman with a nervous smile, would continue to teach his classes.

  And so finally, the following week, it was announced that Hans Schneider would not be returning to Carthage High for the “foreseeable” future.

  Meredith didn’t tell her parents about Mr. Schneider’s behavior with her—certainly not that he’d tried to restrain her from running out of the room—but it was altogether natural for her to mention to them, that her math teacher had had some sort of accident and wasn’t teaching any longer and that the woman who was substituting for him was “nice, but not nearly so smart” as Mr. Schneider.

  And afterward Meredith overheard her parents discussing Mr. Schneider in their private, lowered voices which were not for “Merry” to hear.

  Poor man! They said it was asthma medication. . . . And some sort of arthritis drug. Ster-oid? It was an overdose.

  Only twenty-nine! He looked so much older. . . .

  But he is alive, they said. In the hospital.

  In Watertown, in the hospital. Not here.

  I knew that there was something wrong with him, y’know.

  You did? How on earth?

  When he didn’t come here for dinner, dear. When I invited him to one of my darling wife’s delicious homecooked meals and he looked at me as if I’d invited him to swallow poison.

  Mudwoman, Challenged.

  May 2003

  Ready! She must be made ready.

  In this shadowy place trying desperately to see into a mirror—to see her face—for there was something wrong with her face, that had betrayed her; something wrong with her face, that had to be remedied; something disfiguring, that had to be disguised and made ready.

  For this event—this “meeting”—was crucial in her life. She had no idea who the individuals were or even where they were—(in a distant building? Was this the University campus?)—but she knew that they were sitting in judgment of her—and they were waiting for her—for she was late, already she was late and—desperate to disguise the singular ugliness of her face, where the blood-bruise-splotches had worked their way down her cheeks and into the soft tissue about her mouth like an accusing finger of God so she looked as if she’d been devouring something raw and bloody—she was going to be even later.

  The end, when it came, came swiftly.

  For M.R. it would not have seemed like the end. For M.R. it would have seemed at most a kind of interruption, a minor mishap.

  An annoyance, a misunderstanding. Maybe even—a blunder.

  But not—the end.

  Like one who, amid an afternoon of pressing appointments, is told by her doctor that her condition is inoperable, untreatable—terminal: that she will die within a few weeks, unavoidably: yet seems not to hear, only just continues with the remainder of the afternoon of pressing appointments chiding herself How busy I am! How important I must be.

  Late! In fact yes she was late.

  The very word late thudding in her ears like a demented pulse.

  Late you are late late—late.

  A principle of Time: once you are late, you cannot be not-late.

  Once you are late you cannot undo your fate.

  Inexplicably, inexcusably—eighteen minutes late.

  Eighteen minutes! For the trustees’ meeting in Charters Hall. For this crucial May meeting for which M.R. had planned for countless hours.

  Hours, days, weeks. President Neukirchen had planned!

  Budget for the upcoming year, admissions issues, student aid proposal, “development” . . . And she was late, and there was not a thing she could do, breathless, eyes feverish, hands trembling—(but shrewdly like many afflicted with tremor she knew to keep her hands still, clenched or clutching something, to disguise the trembling which was new, this very morning)—to render herself not-late.

  “Excuse me! So sorry! A—an emergency—phone call. . . .”

  Did they believe her? Why would they not believe her?

  (M. R. Neukirchen did not lie: why would they not believe her?)

  (Had she used this explanation before? These words—had she stammered these words before? To this very gathering of people? She did not think so. She did not think so. She was sure, she had not. And yet—why did they stare at her, as if disbelieving? And the expression in their faces—alarm, surprise, concern? What did this mean? Because they were trustees—why did that mean M.R. must trust them?)

  This May meeting. This crucial May meeting. An annual meeting, and a crucial meeting, and these were trustees.

  These were trustees of the University, who had hired M. R. Neukirchen. They were her employers, you could say. They were her overseers. Her salary and contract were set by the trustees. The president is the hireling of the board of trustees and cannot disobey them, or offend them—cannot lose their trust.

  Yet: eighteen minutes late! There was a record of this, M.R. supposed. Sessions of the Board of Trustees were meticulously recorded for legal as well as practical purposes.

  Meetings of the distinguished Board of Trustees of the University took place, by tradition, in the Octagonal Room of Salvager Hall. A beautiful old rotunda with a stained-glass ceiling, ornately carved antique mahogany furnishings, an octagonal table and plush chairs and on the walls portraits of the University’s earliest revered presidents and of these the most prominent was Reverend Ezechial Charters whose views of the female sex, children, Indian “savages” and “blacks” and all religious sects save his own Protestant sect were exactly antipathetic to President Neukirchen’s views in fact repulsive to her, obscene. Yet, she and Reverend Charters were of a single—singular—lineage.

  Smile, smile! The God-damn face is the same.

  “President Neukirchen? Is something—wrong?”

  Quickly she answered No.

  No—of course!

  Wanting to say how ironic it was, how—fitting?—that she’d inherited the presidency of the University, when, in the eyes of the first president Ezechial Charters, she’d have been dismissed as a mere female, worse yet a non-God-fearing female savage.

  No—of course—not.

  The only possible answer to so insulting a question.

  These people—trustees—twenty-eight of them, around the octagonal table. One by one she counted them: she could not stop her brain from counting.

  The governor of the State of New Jersey was an ex officio trustee of the University but the governor of th
e State of New Jersey embroiled in his own hazardous politicking in Trenton was not present today.

  Other individuals at the octagonal table were M.R.’s advisers—director of the University Corporation, vice president for finance, vice president for development, provost of the University, president of the University Investment Company—names she knew very well—of course—as she knew their faces—but had forgotten, temporarily.

  “I think—if we are all here—those of us who are here—the meeting will begin.”

  M.R.’s bright smile! Eighteen minutes behind schedule.

  But now it had begun, and would continue until the end.

  Never can you anticipate the end, from the perspective of the beginning.

  For she would have thought—had wanted, desperately, to believe—that this was still the beginning for her, or nearly.

  Her first year as president. Scarcely completing her first year.

  First woman, first year. First president of the University who is a woman.

  How grateful she was! Yet, how resentful.

  First woman, first female. Why did it matter so much. Why did sex matter so much!

  It was a classical paradox in philosophy: where is the self?

  In the body, or in—the soul?

  Is there in fact a soul?

  Is there in fact a self?

  Or rather—selves?

  Or rather—(this horror the more probable contemplated in the stark bright sunshine following an insomniac night)—no self except brain-matter on the perpetual verge of being extinguished.

  She was breathless and distracted and agitated like one wakened abruptly from a dream. Her clothes were—not disheveled exactly but somehow not quite right—and her hair was certainly disheveled as if she’d hardly had time to run a comb or a brush through it and her face—M.R.’s poor ravaged face!—would betray her after all for it was strangely swollen about the mouth and hastily, bizarrely made-up with a pasty sort of makeup that, drying, had darkened like mud.

  Not a shining-faced girl-Valkyrie any longer but one of those primitive mask-faces in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

  Yet President Neukirchen was speaking with unusual clarity like one enunciating words in a foreign language whose meanings were not altogether clear to her. And President Neukirchen was gracious welcoming the trustees to the University, and thanking them for having come. And in the midst of her welcoming speech there came abruptly into her (left) field of vision like a figure popping out of a box a gentleman with a familiar face—an older gentleman, silvery-haired, in an elegant suit, necktie—she knew his name: Lockhardt?—only just not his first name—and chided him gently, to disguise the annoyance she felt at being interrupted in so clumsy a way: “Why Lockhardt! Are you sneaking up on me?”

  It was a strange, strained moment. Leonard Lockhardt stared at M.R., speechless; then, murmuring an apology, taking his seat at the octagonal table.

  M.R. had no time to wonder how her chief legal adviser had somehow appeared in the octagonal room out of nowhere, to sit with the others as if nothing were unusual.

  She supposed then—it came to her in that instant, irrefutably—that her chief legal adviser had been meeting previously with the trustees, without her knowledge.

  He is my enemy. My enemy here at home.

  And her staff, too—some of them—were probably aware of the conspiracy.

  Yet she would say nothing—of course. Her hurt and her indignation she would temper with cunning.

  She was speaking with unusual clarity and so she meant to listen with unusual clarity as officers of the University gave their reports and questions were asked of the officers by individual trustees and answered and M.R. marveled that nothing was said—nothing was asked—of the boy who had tried to kill himself, not very far from Salvager Hall; she could not recall his name except the surname began with S but how vividly she could see him! The young aggrieved face, the wounded eyes, mouth!

  His voice, defiant and anguished. As if accusing her.

  He was alive, still. He was alive on a life-support machine in Florida. His brain had been extinguished, more or less. The self that had so unjustly accused President Neukirchen had been extinguished yet the undersized boy-body existed, still. This was a cruel, terrible fate. This was the life that awaited him.

  The lawsuit hadn’t yet been initiated, by the Stirks’ attorney.

  (“Stirk”: that was the name.)

  Very likely, the Stirk case was in the trustees’ minds but they were not speaking of it, just yet. The meeting had just begun, they had plenty of time. The University’s chief legal counsel would confide in them I’d warned her. Not to speak with the boy personally. The foolish woman didn’t take my advice—of course. And now . . .

  Which of the trustees were her friends, M.R. wondered. And which her enemies.

  Initially she’d been persuaded that all of the trustees were friends—supporters—of M. R. Neukirchen. All were enthusiastic about her—“admirers.”

  This naïve supposition she’d had to discard. For now they were sitting in judgment of her.

  Certainly there had been an edge to their greetings. Not all had smiled at her as warmly as she’d wished. Not all had called her Meredith! in that special way that signals I like you, I am your friend.

  For—(of course)—they’d been reading about the Stirk case, they’d seen coverage on TV—they did not think so highly of President Neukirchen any longer.

  And how steely the look in the eyes of one of the older trustees—a wealthy businessman from the Midwest whom M.R. had inherited, as she’d inherited so many trustees, from her predecessor. She could not recall his name—the surname began with D—and the first name was deceptively affable, commonplace: Bob, Rob, Ron. A graduate of the University from the long-ago era before women were admitted and before more than a frail fraction of non-whites—(these would include Jews)—were to be seen on campus; and, if seen, were to be attributed to the protocol of the quota.

  Here was a man whose appraisal of a woman was swift and blunt and unsentimental and who had been able to accept M. R. Neukirchen not as a woman but as a sort of honorary man, if an inferior sub-species.

  Or maybe D___ wasn’t from the Midwest, maybe M.R. was confusing the man with someone else. That brisk hard handshake that is both a greeting and a warning.

  Don’t think that you can put anything over on me. I am not one of your liberal lackey-assholes.

  Still M.R.’s brain was counting figures at the table: twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two. . . . A part of her brain counting even as another part of her brain, like a beacon shining into darkness, perceived the situation with heartstopping clarity.

  That no one had brought up the subject of Stirk! This was significant.

  That it had been planned, perhaps rehearsed, that D___ would surprise President Neukirchen with a prepared statement about Stirk—(you could see how D___ had something contentious to say: his bulldog jaws quivered)—but cunning President Neukirchen guided the meeting in another direction, skipping items on the agenda so that she might present to the trustees her ambitious new plan for student-aid reform: full-tuition scholarships for all students who are admitted to the University regardless of their family’s economic status; with particular emphasis upon the children of lower-middle-income families who had been seriously neglected in the University’s zeal for racial diversity.

  For the University was very wealthy, as the trustees well knew—even with the downturn in the economy, the University’s endowment was the highest per student in the country. Tuition provided a small fraction of the University’s operating costs in any case.

  As M.R. spoke, in even her somewhat distracted state she was aware that she wasn’t receiving, from the individuals seated at the gleaming octagonal table, the sort of affirming smiles, nods, murmurs of approval to which she’d bec
ome accustomed at such meetings. Somehow it had ceased—the flow of flattering attention to which she’d become accustomed.

  For few of the trustees were looking persuaded. M.R. had prepared for this presentation with charts, graphs—statistics. . . . It would be her strategy to wear down opposition, if no other strategy would prevail!

  With a part of her brain trying desperately to recall D___’s name. It would be terribly embarrassing if this belligerent-looking individual, bald-bullet-headed, clench-jawed, a Forbes billionaire who’d endowed one of the new, lavish science buildings at the University, realized that M.R. had forgotten his name.

  He is my enemy. One of my enemies.

  Questions were put to M.R. about the practicability of her proposal.

  For there was a fixed number of undergraduates at the University—it was the University “tradition” not to expand—the University was an “elite” institution and must remain “elite” and not succumb to pressures of “socialized education.”

  And there was the need to keep places open for legacies of course.

  Children and grandchildren of alums.

  Wealthy alums: donors.

  Trustees.

  (For this was the unspoken “tradition” at the University, as one of the most coveted of Ivy League universities: college-applicant relatives of the trustees were granted a special status by Admissions. Legacies was the term.)

  “Excuse me. You haven’t been listening, I think. This is not ‘socialized education’—it’s private education meeting its responsibility in a public sector. It is ‘elite’ education for anyone—anyone!—who merits it. Our nation is a meritocracy—not an aristocracy. Think of it as noblesse oblige—you can supply the noblesse, and we educators will supply the oblige.”

  Poison toads! These remarkable words leapt from President Neukirchen exactly like the little poison toads of yesteryear.