Chapter 34
Piper knows something is different the next time they walk into the English department. Open house begins tomorrow and normally the hallways would be buzzing with tension and conspiracy, especially given how last-minute their planning has had to be this year. And there’s some of that—more shut office doors, less idle chatter—but usually Piper would be buzzing, too, head full of instructions to steer the undecided new admits to their side’s professors and panels, rehearsed jokes and stories about the department, names and specializations and institutions of origin; usually the energy would be zinging up and down their spine, filling their gut with a roiling mixture of anticipation, anxiety, and excitement. Today it feels different: today, Piper can sense that energy, but not inside them. It’s radiating from under the cracks of closed doors and out of the grad lounge and department mailboxes and the humming half-functional copy machine. Schenley’s English department is preparing for battle, but Piper has been taken off the board.
They unlock their office door to find Katie, Phoebe, and Antonio cloistered inside, heads bent over a single desk. Their combined look up at Piper—swift and guilty—lands like a dart in Piper’s chest.
“Hey,” they say. “Uh. What’s up?”
For a second, as Antonio’s hand twitches in the direction of the desk, Piper can sense his impulse to hide whatever it is they’re looking at. Piper’s stomach drops.
“Hey,” says Katie. She glances at the others. “How’s it going?”
Piper puts their bag down on their desk and shrugs. “You know.”
They don’t reply.
“Is that the schedule for open house?” Piper asks, trying to repress the challenging note in their voice, which itself is trying to hide the hurt that’s slowly opening up inside them like a flower or a wound.
“Yeah.” Katie hesitates, then hands a sheet of paper to them. “Are you…going to be here for it?”
So. Piper had known from the moment their friends looked up at them that Isabel had told them about the conversation she’d had with Piper the day before. But the question still makes them catch their breath.
“Well,” says Piper, sitting down at their desk and looking over the paper. “How many admits are actually coming?”
“Four,” says Antonio, a little defiantly. Before everything, they’d had twelve new admits, ten of which were planning to show up at the open house. It’s not a good ratio.
“Hm.” The schedule for the two-day event contains more or less the usual stuff, in more or less the order they’d discussed during the meeting the day after Jack’s death: panels about degree requirements, teaching, living in Pittsburgh; seminars to sit in on; campus tours and lunches. On the second day, there’s an entry for a sexuality studies meeting with Francis Pace and his students. It’s been circled in red pen. Next to it is scribbled, Change room at last minute? Schedule alternate event? Fire alarm?
Piper looks at their friends. “Really?” they ask quietly.
Their friends glance at each other. Phoebe won’t meet Piper’s eyes, and Antonio looks shifty, but Katie says, “Listen, Piper, Isabel said you were in sort of a weird place about all this, and maybe it would be better if you sat this one out…”
It shouldn’t hurt. Piper is so fucking tired of the whole situation; they don’t even want to be part of it anymore, but—but this, the way Katie is looking at them with narrowed eyes, the way Antonio’s gaze offers challenge and suspicion, the way Phoebe is staring down at the floor through her bangs: this is how they look at outsiders.
A desire to flee floods through them. Get out, run away, leave all this confusing miserable bullshit—like Lu did. Presumably, like Lu did just in the nick of time. But they need to stay. They need to stay until they find Lu, until they finish their dissertation, until today’s office hours are over. As if on cue, one of their students pokes her head in, nervously glancing around at the unfamiliar faces until her gaze lands with relief on Piper.
“I wanted to talk about my essay?” she says.
“Yeah,” Piper replies, swallowing down the lump in their throat and relaxing their face into what they hope is a friendly expression. “Of course. Come sit.”
“We’ll get out of your way,” Katie says hastily, and as Piper’s student adjusts herself in the chair and begins rifling through her bag, the three friends file out without another word.
If Piper offers the student any real help with her essay, it is purely by chance. Five minutes after she’s left they’ve forgotten the entire conversation, too flooded with misery to think of anything else.
Later that day, Dean Hanley calls a meeting of the English department faculty and graduate students. Piper is dimly surprised that Hanley remembered to include the grad students; usually, although grad students teach undergraduates nearly every semester, they get left off mailing lists and meeting invites. But it’s clear when Piper shows up in the conference room (and sits next to Fatima, who is the only one who gives them a smile when they walk in) that Hanley has cast a wide net in order to ensure his displeasure travels as far possible. He is sitting sternly at the head of the table, next to an obnoxiously smug-looking Christopher Maynard, on whose other side is his grad student sycophant, the equally smug-looking Todd Burns. Other than these antiquated outliers, the table is split down the middle between Isabel and Pace’s people.
Pace looks exhausted. His sweater vest is askew. He’s flanked protectively by Marco Spina and Arla Catlin, and his students spread out on either side of him. Isabel, hair pulled back in a tight bun and mouth set in a grim line, is similarly guarded by Jordan and Sarah. Karen and Kevin are assessing the opposite side of the table; Piper glances at their friends and sees that Katie and Antonio are doing the same. Phoebe’s head is bent, eyes not meeting anyone else’s. And Fatima and Piper are at the end of the line of presentists, nearly spilling over onto the table’s far edge.
“Bianca, shut the door, would you?” Dean Hanley asks the English administrative assistant. Bianca looks worn as well, her usually cheerful smile fraying at the edges. “All right, everyone, let’s begin.”
No one is talking, but the room still manages to get quieter as feet stop shuffling and fingers stop fidgeting.
“This department,” Hanley says, “is a disgrace.”
He looks meaningly at both sides of the table, but save for a few brief flickers, no one’s expression changes.
“I would have thought,” Hanley continues, looking displeased at the lack of response, “that after one of your own students was killed, in these very halls, you would have managed to come together for once. But no. In the last several days, we have had police searches and faculty called in for questioning due to the frankly absurd levels of bullshit you persist in perpetrating on this campus.” He hits the curse word hard, clearly with the conviction, typical of administrators who generally insist upon “respect” and “decorum” in workplace meetings, that this single occasion of foul language will at long last get it into their heads that he means what he says. Isabel, whose use of the word “fuck” alone tallied at 18 during a single three-hour seminar early in Piper’s first year (they counted), barely suppresses an eye roll.
“The fact that listening devices have been found in numerous offices in this department is shocking. It is a gross violation of each other’s privacy. It goes against the principles of intellectual community and mutual respect that Schenley holds dear. Not to mention the fact that it opens the university up to litigation that would prove damaging to all of us. Until the perpetrator or perpetrators has come forward or been found, I have no choice but to look upon this entire department with suspicion.
“I have asked you all, again and again, to act civilly towards one another. Healthy scholarly debate is normal in any department; your constant conflict, escalated to a level that puts the entire university community at risk, is unacceptable. Faculty members, I hold you responsible for this. But I have also asked your graduate students to be here today, because it has become clear to me that many of you are deeply involved in this situation. I would suggest you ask yourselves if this is how you wish to begin your professional careers—if a reputation for pettiness and conflict is the one you truly wish to establish for yourselves.”
He takes a breath. His face has gone pink. Isabel is stone-faced, a muscle twitching in her cheek. Piper can tell she is bursting to fire back, to throw the history of the word pettiness in his face, telling him he’s dismissing them as hysterical women, gossipy queers, telling him he obviously doesn’t take the humanities seriously if he believes the departmental conflict has no actual ideological heft. They glance at Pace, whose hands are clenched in front of him, and guess that he is probably thinking essentially the same thing. But something else is happening inside Piper, something new; yeah, fuck the dean’s pompous referrals to risk and legal liability, to civility and professional reputations, but…they can’t quite align their own thoughts and feelings with Isabel’s this time. Can’t feel the tight invisible bond along which surety and conviction are passed, person to person, faster than lightning, at the first sign of trouble. That bond is still there, strong from one professor or grad student to the next; but somewhere on the way to the end of the line, it falters. Piper sees its power in the set of Jordan’s shoulders and the tilt of Katie’s chin, the energy it channels into Isabel’s tired face. But it doesn’t reach them. For the first time in a long time, they feel…individual. They feel like they feel when they step out of their parents’ car at the airport at the end of visits home—every move, every choice, once more their own.
“This is the end of the line,” Hanley says. “This is where it stops. On Thursday, this department is hosting a public event: the open house for newly admitted graduate students. From what I understand, due to some very harmful things posted online—which, I shouldn’t have to tell you but apparently do, are very bad for not only you but the entire university—you have only four students attending. Honestly, that’s just as well, given how poorly your last public event went. It is not often that Schenley hosts job talks that go so badly the candidate requests to withdraw himself from the hiring process. But apparently you managed it.”
A flicker of abashed anger on Pace’s face; a flicker of triumph on Isabel’s.
“Due to this unfortunate history, I will be personally supervising this week’s open house. I want to see schedules in advance, I want confirmation from all faculty that you will put aside your differences at this event, and I reserve the right to step in and alter, or even cancel, the event at any time if I see so much as a nasty look exchanged between you.”
That gets a reaction—the first one, Piper guesses, that is obvious enough for Hanley to read. A shock of outrage—and for a second Piper thinks Hanley is about to be struck with it full force. But both sets of eyes cut across the table, sweeping from the dean to their colleagues. Isabel’s pursed lips, eyes burning; Pace rumpled and furious.
“Understood?” Dean Hanley asks pointedly.
Neither Isabel nor Pace can manage acquiescence. “Yes,” says Jordan. “Understood,” says Spina.
“And please note,” the dean says, “that if you do require intervention at this open house, the consequences for the future of this department will be far-reaching and permanent.”
Christopher Maynard isn’t even trying to conceal his pleasure. A smug expression sits on his face like a dead rodent. Piper feels a flare of anger—he thinks he’s won, thinks he’s finally outlasted the faddish critical theorists and troublemaking queers. But it’s exhausting to feel so angry without the energy of their friends behind them. It’s not that Piper doesn’t care anymore; it’s just that they can no longer see how the ideological leanings of four freshly admitted graduate students at an open house for a program they likely won’t even attend, or will eventually drop out of, are significant enough to justify the brutal dissolution of this many lives, careers, and friendships.
Everybody files out of the room, the air crackling with tension. Piper keeps their head down, letting the others disperse.
“Hey,” Fatima says. Piper looks up. “You okay?”
Her voice is low, her face suffused with genuine concern. She is only three or four years older than Piper, and for once she looks it. Somehow the worry accentuates how young she is, the lines creasing her smooth forehead and the tiredness in her bright eyes.
“Not really,” says Piper. “But thank you for asking.”