Chapter Three Jonah
Chapter Three Jonah
The day I got the email was the day I finally told Fiona.
She was surprised when I asked her to Zoom with me.
She was always surprised, even though I’d made a point to chat with her and the kids at least once a week ever since I found out what Matt had done, and every time, that surprise was like a little knife in my heart.
‘I don’t want to get your hopes up, Fi,’ I told her, after I’d said my hellos to my twin seven-year-old nieces Rosie and Georgia and my eleven-year-old nibling Lex, ‘but I’ve just been shortlisted for a job in Hobart.
’
Fiona pressed her hands to her face.
The internet connection crapped out for a second and she was frozen there, like Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
‘Really?’
‘It’s not a guarantee.
Obviously it’s not.
I’ve been shortlisted for jobs before and not got them.
But they’re after an early modernist, and Elias and my old PhD supervisor both told me my application was strong – please don’t cry!
’
‘I’m sorry.
’ She wiped tears away with her wrist.
‘It’s just…
God, Jonah, this is such good news.
Everything’s such a mess – Matt’s totally gone off the grid and I don’t have anyone – and – and…
I could really use you right now.
’
For one perfect moment, my heart swelled in my chest.
I could do this.
I could mend what I’d broken, all those years ago.
I could help my sister.
And then reality sank in, and I realised that I’d made an awful error of judgment.
I’d considered it carefully before I’d told her.
If Fi knew I was up for this job – if she was counting on me – then I would have to keep my eyes on the prize.
There could be no letting Sadie get in my head if the prospect of letting Fi down was this real.
That was a decision I’d made to manipulate my own feelings, though.
I hadn’t realised, not really, not properly, not until she started crying, the actual weight of Fiona’s.
‘I don’t want you to get your hopes up,’ I said again.
But it was hopeless, because ‘I don’t want you to get your hopes up’ was not a magical phrase.
I couldn’t just tack it on the front of good news and expect Fi to say, ‘Oh, okay then, note taken. I won’t allow this to affect me emotionally in any way.
’
Of course she was going to get her fucking hopes up.
I was the worst brother in the world.
‘It’s no guarantee,’ I said desperately.
‘I know one of the other scholars who got shortlisted and she’s brilliant.
Unbelievably brilliant.
’
‘Is it Sadie?’
I blinked.
‘How do you know about Sadie?’
‘You’ve been talking about her constantly for fifteen years.
Like, constantly .
Painfully intelligent, never lets you get away with anything, the bane of your existence even though you defend her every time Dad’s like “ew, popular culture, how lowbrow”, right?
’
I blinked again.
‘I mentioned her to Elias and he barely knew who she was.’
‘It’s hard to get a word in edgewise with our family when you don’t have a PhD,’ Fi said, ‘so I spend a lot of time listening.’
The pit of guilt that had been sitting heavy in my stomach since that horrible birthday dinner deepened.
‘How do you feel about her being shortlisted?’ Fi asked.
I rubbed my hand over my beard.
‘I’d have been surprised if she wasn’t.
Offended on her behalf, even.
’
‘Those are all how you don’t feel, Jonah.
What about how you do feel?
’
‘I…’
I thought for a long moment, reaching for my water glass and taking a sip to give myself time to formulate a reply.
‘I don’t really know how to answer that question.
’
It wasn’t that I didn’t have any…
feelings about Sadie getting shortlisted.
I did.
A lot of them.
But I’d just sort of assumed it would happen.
That either both of us would get shortlisted, or neither of us.
It was difficult to imagine a world where we weren’t in the trenches of the precariat together, trying to clamber over each other to get out.
20
And anyway, it didn’t matter how I felt.
I had to get this job.
I had to get it so I could help Fi, and then all my feelings about Sadie would be irrelevant, because I would be in Hobart, and she would…
not.
‘No,’ Elias said, pointing his finger at me as we Zoomed to do a mock interview and I cautiously expressed my inability to imagine no longer being in Sadie’s orbit.
‘This is not helpful. This is not productive. This is exactly the kind of thinking that will kneecap you.’
‘I don’t know how to stop, though.
’ I took my glasses off to clean them.
‘I can make sensible arguments to myself all day long. There’s something in me that just doesn’t want to listen.
’
‘It’s your dick, Jonah.
Don’t romanticise it.
’
I nearly dropped my glasses.
‘Oh, don’t look so scandalised,’ Elias said.
‘I’ve been exactly where you are, remember.
I’m not going to let you make the same mistakes I did.
’
I let out a long breath.
‘Fine. What do I need to do?’
‘Avoid her. Out of sight, out of mind.’
‘I live with her!’
‘In a house with doors, presumably. Use them.’
Elias leant back in his chair.
‘And whatever you do, no bonding on the interview trip. That’s how she’ll get past your defences.
You’ll end up having a drink at the hotel bar and somehow the first civil conversation you ever have will turn deep and meaningful and then she’ll tell you something like “I’m thinking about leaving my husband” and your brain will dissolve into porridge and she’ll waltz right past you into the job you want.
’
Oh wow.
Next time I saw Elias in person, I needed to get him drunk and make him tell me the Julia story.
‘I would have noticed by now if Sadie had a husband.’
‘The detail doesn’t matter.
’ Elias pointed at me again.
‘This is not the time to get soft or nostalgic or anywhere within shouting distance of sentimental. Give a Julia an inch and she’ll take a mile – and then she’ll win and you’ll lose.
Focus on yourself, Jonah.
’
The memory of that night in the kitchen drifted across my mind.
The feeling of Sadie’s fingers, cool against mine.
The sound of her voice when she’d called our final truce.
But I couldn’t think about Sadie.
I had to think about Fiona.
I dug my knuckles into my thigh and forced myself to imagine what it would feel like, telling Fiona that I was sorry, but I didn’t get the job.
How much she would cry.
How alone she would feel, having the promise of support ripped out from under her – even more alone than before.
How much it would be my fault.
‘Focus on myself,’ I repeated.
‘I can do that.’
The university was flying us both to Hobart to interview.
Sadie and I agreed, in the longest conversation we’d had in over a month, 21 to share an Uber to the airport.
My headphones were on their last legs, but I’d brought them with me anyway, to provide a symbolic buffer between us.
I needn’t have bothered.
Sadie put in her earbuds the second we got in the car and didn’t take them out again until we got to the airport.
We were silent as we went through security.
Her laptop was covered in stickers.
I’d seen them from a distance many times before – in seminars, in lectures, in meetings – but the security line was moving slow, so I had a chance to catalogue them when she put it in the tray to go through the scanner.
Broadly, they fit into three genres: bookish ( smart girls read romance, read one); pop-feminist ( smash the demon lizard patriarchy was surrounded by three different coloured end period poverty stickers); and union.
I only had two stickers on my laptop, but she had the exact same two, prominent despite all the sparkly distractions: casual academics are always the first casualties and only 1 in 4 university workers have secure jobs.
I saw her notice when I put my laptop in the tray behind hers.
Her gaze flickered to mine briefly, and she gave me a look that might have been approval.
But then our trays disappeared into the scanner, she blinked, and it was gone.
‘Our flight’s not for an hour,’ she said, when we got to the other side.
‘I’m going to grab a drink at the bar.
’
I could murder a glass of wine.
‘I’m going to buy a new pair of headphones,’ I said, and fled.
Focus on yourself , I told myself, staring blankly at a wall of electronics.
I did not buy a new pair of headphones.
Everything was blurring together.
I might need a new prescription for my glasses.
Or possibly to re-learn how to read.
I did, however, get that glass of wine a little while later, when we were on the plane.
It was cheap, 22 but I didn’t care.
I would have necked the entire bottle if they’d put it front of me.
I had an aisle seat.
Sadie was two rows in front of me on the opposite side of the aisle.
She had her laptop out and was working on a PowerPoint presentation.
She must be polishing her job talk.
That was one of the components of the interview process: we had to present a thirty-minute overview of our research and teaching philosophy to the department before we did the interview itself with a smaller selection panel.
I’d put the finishing touches on mine last night after a practice Zoom with Elias.
He’d advised me to describe our combative battle-lecturing at Bass as ‘an innovative and successful example of team teaching, resulting in extraordinary levels of student engagement’.
I wondered how Sadie was framing the fact that we stood in front of a hundred and fifty students every week and tried to destroy each other.
As if she could hear my thoughts, she turned around and looked at me.
Fuck.
I could completely understand how Elias had let Julia take his legs out from under him the night before their job interview.
I had a doctorate in literary studies, but I did not have the words to explain what it felt like to be looked at – to be perceived – by Sadie Shaw.
I drank the last of my wine, instinctively licking my lips to get the last precious drops of cheap nectar.
She turned around and, pointedly, angled her laptop away from me.
The lenses in my glasses are about eight feet thick, Sadie , I wanted to say.
Do you really think I could copy your homework from this distance?
She would respond.
That old, familiar argumentative carousel would start spinning.
I might even enjoy it.
But I couldn’t let myself get distracted.
Everything was riding on this.
I had to focus on myself.
I woke up early the next morning to sun streaming through the thin hotel curtains and a message from Elias on my phone.
Big day.
How are you feeling?
You’ll never guess , I sent back.
Sadie sat me down in the hotel bar last night and told me she’s thinking of leaving her husband?
?
?
Hilarious.
Elias attached a GIF of an eye-roll.
Don’t worry, I followed your instructions.
We barely said two words to each other.
I’m feeling good.
He sent back a thumbs up.
It’s the middle of the night here so I’m going to bed, but send me a message when it’s done and let me know how you went, ok?
Out of nowhere, a lump appeared in my throat.
Thanks so much for all your help , I replied.
I really appreciate it.
He didn’t respond.
I dressed formally for the interview, tweed jacket over a shirt and tie, but I realised my mistake the second I stepped outside the air-conditioned hotel.
It was much hotter than I’d expected – wasn’t Tasmania supposed to be perpetually freezing?
– and the wind was so strong I instinctively grabbed at my glasses to stop them falling off my face.
‘Fisher!’ Sadie was standing beside a cab, skirt of her green dress held tightly in one hand in an effort to avoid a Marilyn Monroe situation.
‘Get in the car!’
I obeyed, sliding in beside her.
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it.
’
Then she put her earbuds in again.
Hostilities resumed.
The driver didn’t have the radio on, and without my own headphones, I could faintly hear what Sadie was listening to.
She was clenching and unclenching her fist over and over again and mouthing along to ‘My Shot’ from Hamilton .
Oh God.
What if one of us really did get this job?
What if one of us moved to Hobart and the other stayed in Sydney, alone in the house we’d shared for so many years?
What if one of us got to be an academic and the other got forced out of the profession entirely?
What if one of us finally won ?
‘Stop looking at me, Jonah,’ Sadie said suddenly.
‘I’m not – I wasn’t – I was looking out the window.
’
Her nostrils flared, just a little.
‘I’m not going to let you psych me out.
’
She went back to staring straight ahead, drumming her fingernails against her laptop.
I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath.
I should follow her example.
No letting her psych me out.
Focus on myself.
Focus on Fi.
The cab dropped us off at one of the campus gates, about halfway up a steep hill.
It wasn’t a long walk to the lecture theatre where we’d be giving our job talks – and, thankfully, it was down the hill rather than up – but it was enough to get a sense of the campus.
It was wildly different from the universities we’d worked at.
ESU and Bass were both classic city campuses, a mixture of new steel-and-chrome buildings and brutalist architecture from the 1960s and 1970s.
The Lyons campus, though, was sprawling, crawling up into dark green bush at the top of the hill and down to the Derwent River sparkling at the bottom, the buildings a mismatched combination of convict-hewn sandstone and 1980s brick.
From where we stood, we had a panoramic view across the river to where Hobart’s other university lay in the shadow of the mountain.
‘Is my hair okay?’ Sadie asked me abruptly.
I glanced at her.
She’d pinned her hair back tightly, much more severely than she usually would.
I didn’t like it.
The last time I’d seen her wear this green dress, it had been at some ESU Faculty of Arts holiday party.
She’d had her hair out then, fiery red waves rippling down her back, and it had made me want to find a dark corner to weep in.
‘You’ve got a pin sticking out.
’ I gestured to the back of my own head.
‘Here?’
‘No, it’s…
Can I?
’
She paused for a moment, then nodded.
Her hair was warm as I pushed the bobby pin back into place.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
Oh God.
Oh no.
I flexed my hand, trying to get the feeling of her sun-warm hair off my fingers.
This was exactly what Elias had warned me about.
It might be more subtle than I’m thinking of leaving my husband, but Sadie was too smart to use a sledgehammer when a stiletto would do.
She’d slid it right between my ribs and—
‘Your hair is not okay, by the way,’ she said sharply.
‘Make sure you look at yourself in a mirror before you give your job talk.’
‘Oh, um…’
She was walking away before I could get the thank you out of my mouth.
The other two candidates were already there when we arrived at the lecture theatre.
‘Jonah!’ one of them said, standing up and shaking my hand enthusiastically.
‘Nice to see you here, mate!’
I doubted I’d hear a bigger lie that day.
Rory Worland was another early modern scholar.
When I’d intermitted my PhD to take a research assistantship, he’d been the other RA, and he was not a fan of mine.
23 ‘Nice to see you too,’ I said, extricating myself.
‘And hello to you too.’ He turned his grin on Sadie.
‘You are…?’
‘Going over there.’
Sadie walked away, sitting down a healthy distance away from the fourth candidate – a modernist scholar, I guessed, given she’d brought along a copy of Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner as a job talk prop – and put her earbuds in again.
‘Nice girl,’ Rory said.
‘Friend of yours?’
‘Not really.’ If he thought Sadie was somehow allied with me, he’d spend the next twenty minutes trying to either make her life miserable or win her over to Team Rory’s Garbage Arguments.
‘Excuse me.’
Sadie had been right about my hair.
The wind had done a number on it.
I combed water through it in the bathroom with my fingers, trying to get it to lay flat, but it wouldn’t, a lock near the front falling stubbornly in front of my left eye.
There was a buzz from my satchel.
I fished my phone out.
FIONA flashed up on the display.
I hesitated.
I probably shouldn’t take it.
I should do what Sadie was doing outside, get myself in the zone, hype myself up.
But I didn’t have it in me to deny Fi, not right now.
‘Hey,’ I said, wedging my phone between my shoulder and my ear as I tried unsuccessfully to get my hair out of my eyes again.
‘How’s everything?
’
‘The same.’ Her voice was businesslike, but I could hear the quaver underneath it.
‘I just wanted to wish you good luck.’
‘Thanks, Fi. I’m going to do everything I possibly can.
I promise.
’
‘I don’t suppose you have time for a coffee afterwards?
’ There was a note in her voice, something between wistful and hopeful.
‘Or to pop round to the house? Bellerive’s not far from the Lyons campus, and the kids would love to see you.
I would too.
’
‘I wish I did.’ Why, why, why was I constantly letting my sister down?
‘But we have to head straight to the airport after we’re done here.
’
‘Oh, okay.’ I could feel, rather than hear, her sigh.
‘No problem.’
‘I’m so sorry.
I asked Lyons if I could stay a couple of extra days and take a later flight back, but since it’s so close to Christmas, airfares are getting ridiculously expensive and they wouldn’t fork out for it.
’
‘Don’t worry about it.
’ She laughed shakily.
‘You’ll be here for good soon enough.
’
‘Don’t get your—’
‘Hopes up, I know, I know. But I can’t help it, Jonah.
’
I swallowed.
‘The kids are so excited that you might be moving here,’ she added.
My blood ran cold.
24 She’d told the kids?
She’d got the kids’ hopes up?
‘Me too,’ I said faintly.
After we hung up, I bent over, clutching the edge of the sink.
I had to get this job.
I had to get this job.
I had to fight like my fucking life depended on it, or I was going to let her down worse than I ever had before.
If I didn’t get his job – if I didn’t—
‘Don’t panic,’ I told my reflection in the mirror fiercely.
‘Don’t you dare panic, Fisher.
’
Too late.
‘I, um, first of all, I’m so delighted to be here.
’ My fingers were sweaty, my eyes refusing to adjust to the lighting of the lecture theatre, putting everything and everyone in a blur.
‘It’s…
it’s a privilege to be able to talk to you today about, um, my research into Jacobean drama, and…
and my broader teaching philosophy.
’
It was all right, I told myself fiercely afterwards, sitting in the anteroom.
Everyone in there knew how high the stakes were.
They’d understand why I was so nervous.
The content of my job talk was good, even if the delivery was shaky.
I knew that.
I knew that.
I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my lungs.
I resisted the urge to put my head between my knees.
Rory came out of the lecture theatre.
When the door swung closed behind him, he leapt into the air and punched it, like he was some kind of sportsperson celebrating an epic goal.
‘Yes!’ he exclaimed.
Sadie cast her eyes up to the ceiling, shaking her head slightly.
I wanted to laugh.
I wanted to cry.
At least if neither of us got this job, we’d have a new point of agreement.
We could sit in the kitchen late at night again, drink tea, and talk about how much we hated Rory Worland.
‘Dr Shaw?’ one of the selection panel said from the door.
‘We’re ready for you.
’
Sadie rose to her feet.
Her footsteps were even and measured as she followed the woman into the lecture theatre, her chin high, everything about her body language as secure and assertive as it had been that day of the first ceasefire, when she shook my hand and told me that our grade was more important than the fact she couldn’t stand me.
That was the moment I knew, deep down, that I had lost.
I could take Rory Worland.
Even on my worst day, with my worst material, I could take Rory Worland.
But even on my best day – even if I produced my very best scholarship, even if I delivered my presentation flawlessly, even if I answered every interview question perfectly, even with all the advantages I had at my disposal – there was still a good chance Sadie Shaw would come out ahead.
Afterwards, I tried to keep my hopes up.
It went ok , I texted Elias in the Uber back to the airport.
Job talk was a bit wobbly but think I did well in the interview.
And the interview’s the most important part, I told myself in the Hobart airport bar, nursing another glass of wine.
That’s what they really care about.
‘I did my best,’ I told Fiona on our next Zoom call, back in my room in the share house.
‘Now we just have to cross our fingers.’
‘You’ve got this, Jonah,’ she replied, and I made myself smile, made myself ignore the gnawing feeling in my belly, made myself lie and lie and lie – to myself, to my siblings, to everyone – just in case I was wrong.
But I knew.
I knew long before I got the email, a few days before Christmas.
Dear Dr Fisher, Thank you for your interest in the position of Lecturer in Literary Studies at Lyons University.
Unfortunately, we regret to inform you…
I knew before I heard Sadie’s scream of ecstatic joy, echoing as loudly around the house as if she’d put speakers in every room.
I knew who the winner was, after all these years.
20 I realise that, in this metaphor, we would be clambering over each other to rush headlong into enemy fire, but given the crushing workload pressures faced by most academics and the bloating of non-academic middle management focused on profits over people, I stand by it.
21 Transcript of this incredibly lengthy conversation:
SADIE: We should share Ubers to and from the airport.
It’ll be cheaper.
JONAH: All right.
I’ll use my account for the trip there, you use yours for the trip back?
SADIE: Okay.
Practically a three-volume novel.
22 One of the downsides of growing up with money and then steadfastly refusing to take any of it once you became an adult was that you could tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine but had no way to obtain the good stuff without compromising your integrity.
23 Nor was I a fan of his.
If you want to hear some stupendously bad takes on the city comedies of Thomas Middleton and Ben Jonson, then call Dr Rory Worland.
24 The part of me that was a scholar knew this was not true.
The idea of blood running cold comes from the Galenic notion of the four humours, something which comes up regularly in medieval and early modern literature.
Blood was considered to be hot, so the idea of blood running cold was a way of expressing that your humours were out of whack and you were seriously ill.
I knew this, and still it felt like my blood very literally ran cold.