The Part Timer

The double-entendre in the name Ralph Touchett had escaped the professor for several decades, and he was visibly perturbed when Ed pointed it out to him in the class discussion. “I am, of course, fully aware of that,” he snarled, but of course, he hadn’t been, and it was clear. For Karen Wescott, who sat next to Ed at the seminar table, it was a tiny, brief, surprising glimpse into the nature of the universe, or at least of the faculty, and it gave her a case of the giggles. They arrived without warning, like hiccups, and like hiccups, they wouldn’t go away.

Several times, she’d had to reach out and grasp Ed’s forearm to steady herself, which in turn led the professor, who felt himself for the first time in his career losing control of a graduate seminar, to threaten to separate them like a pair of unruly eighth graders. Karen felt in turn that this, with the insight that had provoked it, made a special bond between her and Ed.

She was quite attractive, but there was also a diamond ring on her fourth finger that strongly suggested to Ed the presence of a husband, which was likely to restrict the scope of any special bond that might arise. The husband, in fact, was on the upward arc of an important career, and Karen moved with him from city to city every few years, always, as the expression goes, the trailing spouse. It was a good arrangement; they lived well, and she could take part time classes, part time teaching jobs, and part time assistant deanships. Anything you signed up for with her, for that matter, was likely to be part time.

The next day, Ed was in the coffee room with his live-in, Megan. Karen came into the room, looked at Megan, and said “Megan, I’m borrowing Ed.” She paused. “I’m taking him to the bookstore.” There were implications that the borrowing referred to purposes beyond just the bookstore. But Megan wasn’t as disconcerted at this announcement as one might expect. Since she and Ed lived together, she had his schedule down, and there were few slots in it available for assignations. Beyond that, Ed, living with Megan, had no place of his own to take Karen, and he didn’t have the money to conduct a traditional affair with her anyhow. She looked, in Megan’s eyes, to be the sort who’d want drinks and dinner, and those weren’t in Ed’s wallet.

Ed had no problem if Karen’s idea of special bonding meant trips to the bookstore. In principle, he wasn’t opposed to anything else, though he saw the same obstacles Megan did. And he’d gotten accustomed while teaching to occasional mash notes from girl students, which mainly went to establish that, when certain kinds of opportunity knocked, the door was best left unanswered. He also knew that whatever the outcome of Karen’s ideas about borrowing him, Megan would find a way to turn it to her own advantage.

But to focus on obstacles was to underestimate Karen’s resourcefulness. She and Ed had two classes together that semester: the other one was Prof. Thromsen’s course in Renaissance poetry. Some people took it because it was a requirement, but it was easy and the readings were pleasant, which meant it was also popular with the rich dilettantes who took graduate seminars simply to pass the time. And Prof. Thromsen wasn’t averse to allowing the wealthy students to rotate hosting class sessions in their well-appointed homes—it was far more comfortable than the classroom, and they usually served refreshments as well. A few words between Karen and Ellen Thromsen set the whole thing up: the next meeting of the Renaissance poetry seminar would be in Karen’s home.

It was an afternoon class, and on the appointed day, Karen’s husband was absent, presumably busy as ever with his important career. Karen passed just the slightest look to Ed when he arrived. Her body language gradually made it clear: all Ed needed to do to further their special bond would be to leave last when the class was over. His departure, of course, would then be an hour or so after the departure of the others. The question, as far as he was concerned, was simply what time her husband normally made it home, and how reliable that schedule was.

In fact, his discomfort went a little farther than that. Ellen Thromsen thought well of him as a person, and he felt certain she’d divine what was going on if he kept hovering and dilly-dallying over heading out the door at the end of the class. But the overriding consideration was what might happen if her husband came home unexpectedly: he had visions of hiding in a closet like some jerk in a cartoon out of a dogeared, decades-old issue of Playboy. The route from here to there, he finally decided, was insufficiently straight. The straighter route lay in leaving with everyone else when the class was over, which he did. And since the end of the school year was approaching, everyone was too busy to do any further follow-up.

And over the summer, the flirtation with Karen moved farther back in Ed's mind, since it hadn’t come to anything. Even so, now and then he thought of the giggling fit in the Henry James seminar and their one trip to the bookstore. It was a very small bond, but it was something.

When Todd Weatherbee, who ran the first-year writing program and was the boss of all the graduate assistants, held the usual kickoff meeting at the start of fall semester, he gave the standard pep talk—he was on their side, he wanted them to succeed, he understood their problems, the whole routine—and concluded, "By the way, remember that my office door is always open. Anyone who wants to come in and talk about any problem—not just related to your teaching or your grad school career, but any problem at all—just come on in and do it. I want to listen."

Poor Tim Felton. Even for a TA in his early twenties, he was especially naive, and people knew it, so nobody was terribly surprised when he actually did go in to talk to Todd about a problem. "I'm in love with a married woman," said Tim when he went in to see Todd. The situation may have caused Tim some emotional torment, but it was also the case that Tim felt he finally had something in common with his hero, Raymond Chandler. The love of Chandler’s life had been married to someone else at first. It’s likely Tim simply wanted to announce his accomplishment to Todd, expecting him to be impressed.

But Todd came from rural Utah, and he made no secret of his Mormon background, though he was a jack Mormon, which is to say a Mormon who smoked and drank. In fact, he kept a bottle of sherry in his bottom desk drawer, from which he tippled frequently during meetings with his teaching assistants. Todd was normally full of sherry-soaked smiles—usually he was a bright, joking guy, and he didn’t screw you until later. But Todd’s latent Mormonism and love of respectability came through right away this time. “I’m in love with a married woman, too,” roared Todd. “My wife!” He fired Tim on the spot. Someone else took his classes. Everyone learned about it only because someone ran into Tim while he was cleaning out his desk.

Not long after that, Karen’s husband was transferred to Washington, DC, and of course she followed him, and they moved into a big house in Chevy Chase. And a couple of months later, she sent a postcard to Megan, of all people. “Doing really well here,” she said. “Teaching part time at GW. Say hi to Linda, Bob, Tom, Ann.” No mention, reflected Ed, of himself and their special bond, nor for that matter of Tim Felton.