But today she crossed a bright line, reading Nasira’s texts, and there is no justification for it, not even a self-serving one. Everything she learns only makes her feel more pain and more guilt. It’s time to look away.
CHAPTER 5
Nine days later, Jackie finishes her office hours and heads to the faculty meeting. It’s only Wednesday, and this is her third administrative meeting of the week. How is she supposed to accomplish anything? She takes a deep breath and resigns herself to the unavoidable.
Down the hallway, Ursula Kleinfelter is exiting her office. When she turns to close her door, she spots Jackie, waves, and waits for her. Jackie admires Ursula, a psycholinguist originally from Israel, for her take-no-prisoners attitude and would welcome a chance to socialize with her. Ursula splits her time with the Middle Eastern Studies Department and is intensely private besides, so Jackie has not yet found an inroad to friendship.
“Jackie! I never see you.” Ursula touches Jackie’s forearm in greeting. Ursula might be nearly sixty, but her brown eyes are bright behind her ultramodern glasses with emerald-green frames. Her outfit is on point, too—wide-legged trousers and an embroidered blouse—setting her yet further apart from her dowdy academic colleagues. Jackie pays attention to her clothes but never feels half as put together as Ursula.
“I was thinking that, too. Shame it takes a faculty meeting to bring us together.”
“Everything about a faculty meeting is a damn shame.”
Jackie laughs. As they set off together, she says, “Weren’t you in Jordan this summer?”
Ursula nods. “Mostly. Also, Iraq—Mosul—and three weeks on vacation in Tel Aviv, although we’re talking family, so ‘vacation’ is perhaps an exaggeration.”
The hallway spills into a wider area, banked on one side by elevators and on the other by the glass-walled entrance to the Psychology Department offices.
“And what about you?” Ursula asks. “You were here, right? That big study?” She stops talking as her attention is drawn abruptly toward the office.
Jackie follows her gaze. Next to the reception desk, at the entrance to the mailroom, Nasira leans against the doorframe, a package in her arms. She’s conversing with Harlan, who has his back to the entrance, but even from this vantage point Jackie notices they are practically touching. If it weren’t for the package Nasira is holding, they could be slow dancing.
Ursula comes to a standstill. “Who is Harlan talking to? A grad student?” Her tone suggests she also notes their proximity.
“A postdoc.”
“Oh, well, that’s a bit different, I suppose.” Ursula turns to Jackie. “Do you know her?”
“Nasira Amari. My postdoc.”
Ursula arches one eyebrow. “I see.”
Of course Ursula knows Jackie dated Harlan. The department is small, and five years is a long time, although in those five long years, Harlan never stood inside of Jackie’s bubble in full view of anyone who might pass by. Not once. It was one of Harlan’s rules. At this moment, Jackie cannot recall whether that was an explicit rule or an implicit one. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Harlan is flaunting a three-week relationship—one with questionable ethics—in their workplace. Since she peeked at Nasira’s phone, Jackie has been trying to stuff her curiosity or jealousy or whatever it is back in the box it jumped out of. This PDA behind the glass wall is not helping.
Ursula is calmly regarding her, awaiting a response of some kind.
Jackie shrugs. “I’ll admit it is weird.”
“Weird, yes, but perfectly understandable. He’s a man, and she is, well, stunning.”
Here’s some salt, Ursula. Rub that into the wound while you’re at it. Jackie looks at her watch. “We’re going to be late.”
As they start again for the conference room, Jackie thinks maybe Ursula wouldn’t be such a great friend after all. She’s a little too blunt.
The departmental chair is Amy Chen, a social psychologist with a strategic fervor more suited to Capitol Hill than a university. Successful faculty members—the ones who cause money and prestige to flow into the department—make her look good, so her favor shines more brightly on them. Not surprisingly, she adores Harlan and, provisionally, tolerates Jackie.
Chen opens the meeting with a detailed report of a university-wide technology initiative, the content of which was included in the email with the meeting agenda. Jackie skimmed it; there is nothing to vote on, and reviewing it now is a waste of time.
From her seat near the back of the room, Jackie sees Harlan enter. He opts to lean against the rear wall rather than take one of several empty chairs nearby. Jackie crosses her legs, angling away from him, and directs her attention to the tall windows on her right. Rain is falling in gray sheets, obscuring the view of the treetops and the science center that this sixth-floor room normally enjoys. A chill comes over Jackie, and the skin on her neck prickles. Her first thought is that Harlan is watching her, but given what she has just seen, that is unlikely. He has found someone far more captivating.
As Chen drones on, now about the ad hoc committee charged with assessing how space in Wolf Hall is allocated, Jackie conjures an image of herself, barely twenty-eight, lying in bed on a Saturday morning, Harlan’s arm folded along her side, holding her firmly, his hand on her hip as if they were standing on the deck of a ship pitching in high seas and he meant to keep her from falling overboard.
Objectively, she wonders what drew her to him. Ursula’s summation that men have license to ignore a woman’s age is true enough, and Jackie has been aware of her ability to attract men since the age of twelve. No doubt Nasira is similarly aware. But this accounts only for Harlan’s choice of her, not vice versa. Lying beside him ten years ago, his graying chest hairs were plain enough and consistent with the maturity evident in every aspect of his life: his remarkable career, of course; his spotless house, where clothes discarded in passion never lingered past noon; his manners, practiced and authentic; his wardrobe, displaying quality over quantity but curated to include T-shirts—notably ones featuring the Doors and a boutique Maryland brewery—to stop him from appearing stuffy. Did she have a daddy complex that placed a halo around Harlan’s head, obscuring his silvery temples? Maybe, but she had no history of dating older men. Rather, she had a history of relationships that didn’t last as long as her shampoo.
At first, Jackie didn’t mind that most of her time with Harlan was spent on his turf and on his terms. She was new in town, so it made sense to follow his lead. He had excellent taste in restaurants, and they usually agreed on which movie to see. If she wanted to see a play or visit a museum, she could do it during the remaining four and a half days of the week—or never, given her schedule. Staying at his place made sense, too, because it was larger and in a better neighborhood.
Before Harlan, Jackie had accepted the cultural norm that relationships should go somewhere, progressing from less intimate to more, from dating to cohabiting to mating with purpose. The sense of stepping onto an escalator leading inevitably to a family (to becoming her family) was what kept Jackie from sticking with relationships. Jackie’s father left when she was nine, and her mother, bitter to this day, instructed Jackie to not allow men to ruin her life. The lesson stuck; Jackie kneecapped relationships before they could go anywhere.