Quoth the Raven(3)

Now she looked down at the piles of pink message slips spread out across her desk and sighed. Back then, it had never occurred to her to do the obvious and apply for admission. Half a dozen students in her own high-school graduating class had been taken on as commuters, all tuition paid by the Crockett Memorial Valley Scholarship Fund. Maybe it was the fact that those students had all been from the other side of town, where houses were neat and conscientiously painted and fathers were present and meticulously sober, that had made her believe, unconsciously, that she was not qualified to be among them. Maybe it was just that, in that time and in that place, “secretary” was the job most women were taught to aspire to. Either that, or “teacher.” Miss Maryanne Veer had never suffered from the delusion that she had the talent to be a teacher.

Sometimes she wondered if she had the talent to be sixty-three years old. Maybe that was her problem. Under the old rules, she would have been forced to retire in just two years. Now she could stay on until she was seventy, and until the Great Doctor Donegal Steele turned up she had been looking forward to that. She had come to The Program—Miss Maryanne Veer always thought in titles and capital letters; The Program was her interior designation for The Interdisciplinary Major in The American Idea—at its inception, years ago. Since then, through a succession of weak-minded and weakly educated chairmen, she had pretty much run it on her own. She would go on running it on her own, too, as long as the Great Doctor Donegal Steele didn’t get himself installed in the chairman’s office.

She heard a squawk in her ear, and realized with some embarrassment that she still had the phone wedged up there, and that Margaret was still on the line. When Margaret started talking, she also started blithering. When Margaret started blithering, Maryanne tuned her out. It was a simple matter of self-defense. If Maryanne had listened to everything Margaret said, she’d have gone crazy in a week.

Once, back in 1975, when the college employee educational program was first started, Maryanne had taken a course in introductory psychology. Most of it she had considered criminal nonsense. Part of it she now had to admit the truth of. She and Margaret were the quintessential example of what that course had called The Female Couple: Margaret “feminine” and dependent to the point of ludicrousness; Maryanne herself rigid and rational to the point of caricature. The only thing the course had got wrong was the bit about sex. Miss Veer couldn’t imagine having sex with Margaret. Miss Veer couldn’t imagine having sex with anybody.

She adjusted the telephone receiver and said, “Margaret? I’m sorry, Margaret. I got distracted.”

“Did you put me on hold?”

“Only mentally. I’ve got a desk full of message slips here.”

“I know, dear. You’re very busy. I ought to get off the line. But I think what I was saying had a lot of merit in it. Don’t you?”

Because Maryanne hadn’t heard a word Margaret had said beyond “hello,” she grunted. Margaret would take the hint.

Margaret did. “I don’t think you’re giving enough weight to the seniority business, Maryanne. I really don’t. After all, Dr. Steele has only been at the college since the start of the semester—”

“Dr. Steele came in as a full professor. Tenured. The administration likes him, Margaret.”

“I know they do, dear, but—”

“And he wrote that book.” Miss Veer made a face, and then wondered why she’d done it. There was nobody here to see her, “That book,” she said slowly, “has sold six hundred thousand copies. In hardcover.”

“The Literacy Enigma. Yes, Maryanne, I know. But you said yourself it wasn’t very scholarly.”

“It’s famous,” Miss Veer said patiently. “He’s famous. Famous authors attract students. And with a dwindling student candidate population—”

“Yes, yes, Maryanne. I understand that. You explained it all yesterday. But I don’t see how you can leave the seniority out of it. I mean, the college really doesn’t know a thing about this man. And look at what’s happened now. He’s disappeared. He isn’t reliable.”

“He hasn’t disappeared, Margaret.”

“Well, what would you call it? He didn’t show up for his ten o’clock class. You told me that yourself. And he hasn’t shown up since. Have you tried calling him at home?”

“Of course I have.”

“And was he there?”

“No, Margaret, he wasn’t. If he had been, I wouldn’t be fretting about these messages. But—”