Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Nina
One Year Ago
A t a springtime barbecue, it was first suggested that Nina and Daniel might become the first married couple at Princeton to receive tenure together. Nina was barefoot in the grass with a dark-orange negroni and a smile that hurt her face. She was talking to one of their colleagues Caitlin, a professor five years Nina’s senior who’d spent much of her earlier years raising three children and therefore wasn’t up for tenure for another ten or so.
“You deserve it,” Caitlin was saying, smiling sadly down at Nina from her six-foot height. “You both have balanced parenting and the life of professorship remarkably. You should teach classes in it.”
Nina blushed and gazed across the lawn, watching as Daniel helped seven-year-old Will and nine-year-old Fiona play croquet. Will kept waving the croquet bat around, which made Nina nervous. It felt like a given that Will would accidentally strike Fiona on the head, and they’d have two crying kids on their hands. But Daniel seemed to have everything under control. He set Will up and helped him click the ball into the first iron hoop, and Will jumped up and down with excitement, giving first his father and then Fiona a high five.
“Does Daniel know?” Nina asked.
“I’m sure you two have talked about the possibility of it,” Caitlin said.
It was true they had. Nina and Daniel had allowed themselves a few nights of whispering about it, eager to peel back the days between now and when they’d receive tenure, eager for the safety and authority that brought. But in their conversations, Daniel had been sure that Nina would get tenure before him. Nina had written far more books. She hadn’t allowed herself many days of rest. This was partially because Nina didn’t have the social circle that Daniel did. Sometimes Daniel had to maintain appearances, attend his family’s parties, or catch up with old Ivy League friends. On Nina’s nights away from her kids, she wrote herself silly and prepared herself for another round of publishing.
She knew she was more driven than Daniel. But she knew it was because being driven was the only thing that had gotten her this far—out of Michigan and into an Ivy League professor position. She didn’t know how to stop.
Later that night, after the kids were in bed, Nina told Daniel what Caitlin had suggested.
“Mark mentioned that to me tonight, too,” Daniel said, his smile twisted up. He walked to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of white wine, and said, “Should we celebrate?”
Nina giggled and strung her arms around him. “There’s nothing to celebrate yet.”
Daniel kissed the tip of her nose. “You know how it goes. The gossip around this stuff is powerful and almost always accurate.”
“But a married couple? Both receiving tenure? Isn’t that a bit much?”
“We’re a bit much, baby,” Daniel declared.
Nina laughed and wondered if she deserved to be this happy.
It was during that summer that Daniel’s mood shifted. At first, Nina thought he was overly immersed in his work, lost in research and planning his next trip to South America. Sometimes he snapped at Will or Fiona, and often, he wasn’t home for dinner. Nina was hard at work finishing the edits of her next book, which she did after the kids were asleep, and she knew very well what it was like to be obsessed, so she tried not to bother Daniel about it. Later, when she learned what Daniel was really up to, she cursed herself for not realizing earlier. She was an academic person. She should have seen the signs.
Caitlin pulled Nina aside a few days before Thanksgiving to tell her she’d seen Daniel with one of his graduate students. They were in the staff lounge, and Nina had just spilled a bit of coffee on her palm. It was scalding her skin.
“Okay?” Nina asked, furrowing her brow. She knew that Daniel often got close with his graduate students, that they were drawn to his fiery intellect and often wanted his help writing their theses.
“You know the one, don’t you?” Caitlin asked, crossing her arms and biting her lip. It was clear she didn’t want to have this conversation, either. Nina wanted to ask her to leave the staff lounge and forget she’d said or seen anything. It would be easier for everyone.
“The blond one?” Caitlin pressed. “I think her name is Angie?”
Being a professor herself, Nina had met all of the graduate students and had, of course, noticed the beautiful Angie. You’d have to be blind not to. She was slender and lithe and quick to laughter, floating between groups at the graduate party in a way that suggested she was beloved by all. Like Nina and Daniel, her specialty involved South American tribes, but that wasn’t such a strange thing, either. It was part of the reason she’d come to the Princeton program in the first place. She’d wanted the expertise that Daniel and Nina could provide.
Angie had been placed in Daniel’s cohort of graduate students. Nina had another cohort. And as a result, because she had papers to grade and undergraduates to manage and two children to raise and a house to take care of and dinner to cook, Nina hadn’t really thought about Angie since before the semester started. Not till now, anyway.
“Okay,” Nina offered, “I mean, it isn’t so strange you saw them together. I’m sure they were working on something. I’m sure Angie’s a bright girl, and…”
But Caitlin just shook her head and said, “I saw them.”
Nina’s stomach felt icy and strange. Saw them doing what? She didn’t want to ask.
“And I heard a rumor they’re traveling together to South America this summer?” Caitlin offered. “Do you know anything about that?”
Nina forced a smile. “Of course. But as you know, Daniel and I pledged to ourselves and to each other that we’d continue our research long past having children.”
But Daniel hadn’t told Nina anything about this new research trip. He hadn’t mentioned it, nor Angie.
“Oh! He told you?” Caitlin asked.
Nina nodded and smiled and wanted to say something like, don’t believe everything you see.
But she still wasn’t sure what Caitlin had seen or thought she’d seen. She looked into Caitlin’s eyes and tried to be brave, to ask the question she knew needed asking. But instead, she sipped her coffee and said, “Do you have any burn cream? I really got my hand.”
She wanted to leave Caitlin with the impression that nothing was wrong. She wanted to leave the entire campus with the idea that Nina Whitmore Plymouth was handling everything perfectly—that, if her husband was spending any extra time with a young and beautiful grad student, she’d blessed it first.
She didn’t want anything to get in the way of her tenure.
Tenure , she thought, comes first.
Throughout the holidays, Nina didn’t mention to Daniel anything of what Caitlin had said. They ate a decadent Thanksgiving feast at his mother’s house, went Christmas shopping in Manhattan, were guests at numerous holiday parties, and even threw one of their own. Nina thought long and hard about her gifts to Daniel and decided to splurge on a Rolex because she knew he’d always wanted one. When he opened his gift on Christmas morning, he looked so surprised and touched that Nina thought, Caitlin has it all wrong . They kissed by the tree as their children played with their new toys, and Nina thought she’d probably never been happier. Not even when she was a little girl at the White Oak Lodge. Not even when her father gifted her a doll on her eighth birthday and gave it to her in private, telling her not to mention it to her mother. (It was a doll her mother had specifically told her never to ask for because it was really expensive, and Nina didn’t know what it was like to work for a living.)
But spring semester arrived, bringing with it a shimmer of anxiety. Soon, their tenure would either be announced or not announced, and Daniel and Nina were on their best behavior, coming up with elaborate lesson plans, saying hello to all administrators, and trying to exhibit all the qualities they felt were essential to tenured professors. Nina’s book was released to wide acclaim, and she gave several interviews for magazines that suggested she was on her way to tenure. After each magazine was published, Daniel brooded in his study, clearly jealous of the praise she’d been given, and he sometimes complained about all the work required of him at the university, work that disallowed him from throwing himself completely into his research. But Nina knew how to balance everything a whole lot better than he did.
Nina ran into Angie for the first time in early March. Well, “first time” isn’t quite right since Nina had for sure seen Angie around from time to time, had seen her at the coffee shop, in the offices of the anthropology department, and reading at the library. Always, she’d ignored her, shoving what Caitlin had said into the back alley of her mind. But in March, as Nina turned a corner too quickly and Angie was coming around it the opposite way, they literally ran right into each other and dropped the things in their hands to the ground. Nina immediately burst into nervous laughter. But Angie’s face was pale and strained.
Among Angie’s things, Nina thought she saw something about tribes in Argentina, something about an upcoming research trip.
“Angie, right?” Nina asked, looking Angie in the eye as they gathered up their belongings.
“Yes, Professor,” Angie said. Her voice shook.
“And you’re South American studies, too?”
Angie nodded, looking so much like a nervous child. Nina almost felt bad for her.
Nina didn’t know what to say. In running into Angie like this and looking into her eyes, Nina almost felt as though she’d just heard her confess to what was going on.
Nothing is going on, Nina, she told herself as she hurried away. Focus on what’s in front of you. Focus on tenure. Focus on your beautiful life.
But two weeks later, it was announced that Daniel was to be given tenure and Nina was not. One of the older men on the committee sat Nina down to explain that it wasn’t her year. Nina heard a ringing in her ears and bit her tongue to keep from asking why.
“Of course,” she said over and over again. “These things are tricky. I understand.”
“But we love having you here,” the committeeman explained. “We don’t want you going anywhere.”
“I love it here,” Nina stuttered.
“And of course, now that Daniel has tenure, we can’t imagine you’ll want to go anywhere else!” the committeeman joked.
Nina picked up the kids from school and brought them home. It was a blue-skied day of seventy degrees, and Nina opened all the windows to bring in a soft breeze. She chopped vegetables, trying to keep her mind busy with menial tasks, and listened to a podcast about a woman who’d faked her own death, changed her name, and moved to Paris. She’d left three children and a husband behind. Of it, the woman said, “I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to live.”
Nina fed Will and Fiona dinner and wondered when Daniel was coming home. She’d avoided him at the university, waiting for a call from him that never came. She’d decided, though, that the minute he came through the door, she’d throw her arms around him and celebrate with him. She’d remind him that their successes belonged to one another, that neither would be where they were in their career without the other. But bedtime came and went, and Daniel was still not home.
Nina took a few minutes in the bathroom to cry. When she got out, she found that Caitlin had called her. Nina had begun to think of Caitlin as the bearer of bad news. She braced herself and called her back.
Caitlin answered the phone in a loud bar. Nina could barely hear her.
“Can you go outside or something?” Nina asked.
It took a minute or so for Caitlin to duck out of there and speak clearly. Nina pictured her on a curb near a university bar, all six feet of her, towering over the students who’d gone out for the night.
“Hey. I wanted to ask if you’re okay?”
Nina swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’m happy for him. Really.”
Caitlin sighed. “It’s just like all men, right? When they get a little success, they run away with it.”
“He deserves tenure,” Nina assured both Caitlin and herself. “He’s a terrific professor with a brilliant mind. Our marriage comes first.”
Caitlin coughed. “I was wondering about that. Like are you guys open or something?”
Nina felt so dizzy that she had to sit down. Why, why, why? Her head echoed.
“Nina?” Caitlin called.
“We aren’t open,” Nina said in a small voice. “Why do you say that?”
Caitlin groaned and said something Nina didn’t understand.
“Come on, Caitlin. Tell me,” Nina urged.
“I already told you. I saw them together,” Caitlin said. “But they’re not even being discreet about it anymore. I heard Angie say it earlier. They’re going to South America together. They’re going to be together. They’re basically announcing it to the rest of the staff and graduate students tonight. I’m sorry, Nina. But I really did try to warn you. I did.”
Nina hung up the phone and pressed it against her chest. Somehow, she was on her back in the living room, staring up at the ceiling.
It was six weeks later that they left for South America.
It was six weeks later that Nina left for Nantucket.
The whiplash made her body ache.