Chapter Thirteen #3
Whit realized his mistake and spoke again before Ian could.
“How’s the Atlantic piece going?”
She could hear the pain in his voice at having to ask this and almost laughed. First Carpool Guy, now this. How many more
men in this town had earned Whit’s utter disdain?
Ian was evidently thrilled to have the subject raised and launched into a speech about how he couldn’t believe The Atlantic continued to be interested in hearing from him. Whit caught her eye and she had to physically restrain herself from smiling.
“But now,” Ian said eventually, “they want me to write something about this new Graydon Lyons novel.”
Instant lightheadedness. Immediate shortness of breath. The words were a blow.
“I mentioned on a podcast recently that I was planning to teach it in my Life Writing and Autofiction course next semester
at Plymouth College—they’re having me back—and I suppose that ruffled some feathers, because, you know, Lyons is going out
of his way to say it’s neither of those things. But then, as I’ll explain in the piece, that’s why I’m teaching it. Beyond the fact that it’s my prerogative as a professor—”
“Visiting professor,” Whit interrupted.
Ian almost scowled but kept his cool.
“Indeed. But when it comes to what counts as autofiction, it’s a game of inferences, and those inferences don’t really include
what Graydon Lyons has to say. Once a book is published, I don’t actually care whether an author believes he’s written something
personal or not—that’s for us to determine. And I’m fairly certain this thematic departure for Lyons has to do more with his
own proclivities than it does with a desire to reinvent himself.”
This second speech was accompanied by more hand flourishes than Merritt thought strictly appropriate for anyone who was not
a nineteenth-century British dandy. The half of her brain that was not melting down like a nuclear reactor watched Whit as
it was delivered, and her only source of comfort in this wretched moment was the way his eyes turned shark-dead as the skin
around his mouth grew more and more taut. He was melting down, too, but while hers was a cold-sweat situation, Whit looked
to be experiencing whatever emotions precede a Dateline-style crime of passion.
“That’s really interesting, Ian,” he said, in a voice that might have come from a text-to-speech phone app. Ian seemed to
have sobered him up.
Sensing that Whit was about to make an excuse to get away from the man, Merritt heard herself asking, against her better judgment,
“What makes you so sure it’s autofiction?”
Ian seemed surprised that she was capable of further speech, much less apprised of the definition of autofiction. He looked at her again in the way you might look at a precocious child, and Merritt clenched her jaw.
“Have you read it?”
The words were saturated in condescension.
“Not yet.”
Ian took a breath as if he were humoring her.
“Well, are you familiar with his work?”
“Yes,” Merritt said. She wanted to stop there—this man didn’t deserve her explanation—but she couldn’t resist. “I’ve read everything else he’s written.”
His eyes widened, and his lips formed a smile that seemed to suggest she had passed some sort of test.
“Oh, well then. A true fan, I see.”
“Well,” was all Merritt could say, and when she looked at Whit, something passed between them. A sad sort of understanding,
perhaps. Had he figured it out? Was this what dying felt like?
“Well,” Ian said back, “then you know, I’m sure, that the man is a creative writing professor, like the man in the book. And
after a truly negligible amount of snooping, I’ve learned that this supposed champion of progressivism also has a history of—how do I put this delicately?—unscrupulous behavior. He likes to sample the merchandise his university offers.”
Whit laughed humorlessly. “He what?”
Ian looked at him. His face was suddenly prudish and disapproving. “You know.”
“He samples the university’s merchandise?”
“Yes.” Ian’s posture was pure superiority, as though he would never stoop so low.
“So in this scenario,” Whit continued, “the university is selling something that Graydon Lyons samples?”
Ian opened his mouth, his forehead crinkled.
“Well—”
Whit laughed again. Merritt wanted to hug him.
“So, what, Graydon Lyons likes to audit classes? Borrow T-shirts from the spirit shop? That doesn’t sound as nefarious as
all that eyebrow work you’re doing would suggest.”
Ian’s hand went instinctively to the brows in question.
“No, you’re overcomplicating it, I was just saying—”
“We know what you were saying, Ian,” Whit interrupted, his voice now flat. “You’re just not saying it very well. The metaphor
seems to have gotten away from—”
“He fucks his grad students, how’s that?”
Like Whit, Ian’s voice had lost all traces of amusement, but Merritt hardly noticed as she absorbed the sheer forcefulness,
the harshness, of the verb. Sweat spread across her body like sudden condensation. Her stomach felt as if she were looking
over the edge of a sharp precipice.
“As I said, Ian, we get the picture.” Whit turned his whole body to look at Merritt, positioning himself between Ian and herself.
“Would you like to get some air?”
“Yes, please,” she said, her voice faint.
Whit’s eyes filled with an empathy that was equally comforting and mortifying.
“The back porch is that way,” he said, taking her empty glass mug. The fingers of that hand brushed hers as his other palm
came to rest, just briefly, on her elbow. “I’ll get us refills and meet you there.”
He held her eyes in his for a moment, then nodded once and walked toward the kitchen, and she watched him go.
“It was nice seeing you, Ian,” he said without looking back.
Behind her, Ian scoffed. She looked at him, almost against her will.
“He’s been like this since his wife passed,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Prickly. Sad how grief changes people.”
Fuck you, she wanted to say.
Get a fucking life, she wanted to say.
“I guess so,” she said instead. “Nice meeting you.”
“You too. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
He did something with his eyes that wasn’t quite winking, then left.
There wasn’t space in her brain for much besides he fucks his grad students, but there was space enough to hate herself for not being the first one to walk away.