Chapter 14 Holly
I’m wandering the labyrinthine campus of Emory University in search of the Modern Languages Building—the place where I, Holly Simmons, college dropout, will be meeting with Professor Hugh Pridmore, a sociolinguist and world-renowned scholar of dialectology (I had to look up what that last word even means).
He’s come all the way from Cambridge University to serve as Emory’s Distinguished Visiting Professor of Linguistics.
And, miraculously, he agreed to meet with little ol’ me.
Days after our late-night session at La Barna, I was driving to work and stressing that, despite Eli’s fabulous makeover and the great success of Operation Maid in Manhattan, his terrible Mississippi accent was going to do us in.
To distract myself from our impending failure, I turned on Lunchtime Luminaries, just in time to hear the Atlanta radio icon Doris Lorenz, in her charmingly wobbly voice, introduce the esteemed Professor Hugh Pridmore.
Listening to their interview, I thought: If he’s doing this sort of research, would he consider helping us?
Could we arrange some sort of barter? I’ve become a master of the barter, given my years of negotiating with stingy vendors on behalf of the club. So I’ve shown up here to make a deal.
I finally locate the building, tucked behind the campus’s leafy quad, and rush to his second-floor office.
The door is open, revealing a sparse room with nothing but a crammed-full bookshelf and a laptop, open and abandoned on an otherwise bare desk.
I lean against the doorway, waiting, watching the wall clock.
Fifteen long minutes pass. Did he forget about our appointment?
Maybe it was all too good to be true. Maybe Professor Hugh Pridmore isn’t the rhetorical miracle we need.
I had been so hopeful when he replied immediately to the message I fired off through Professor Pridmore’s Emory Contact page.
I used the same story we cooked up for Luisa’s mom: We’re working with a promising actor from the north Georgia mountains, and he is having a hard time nailing the Mississippi Delta accent.
Might Professor Pridmore be of assistance?
He replied immediately, asking me to meet him in his office. Now pushing twenty minutes ago.
Defeat begins to creep over me. We only have one more phase of the plan to get through: Operation My Fair Lady.
Of course, neither of us expected that Eli’s accent would pose such a big problem, and there’s no way we can move on with the etiquette lessons until we have this little setback squared away.
But I feel it in my gut. This Pridmore guy just might be our very own Henry Higgins, the key to our success.
First, though, I need to track him down.
Hearing muffled sounds from the adjacent language laboratory, I decide to walk over to investigate.
I peer through a transom window to see two men inside a large booth with thick gray foam undulating along the walls.
One appears to be a college student, wearing a backward baseball cap over an impressive low drop fade, speaking into a large tabletop microphone.
The man sitting across from him seems a little older, but it’s hard to tell, since his back is to me.
He’s lean, with broad shoulders and a full head of thick dark hair, wearing a crisp white linen button-down and jeans.
He’s sitting at the very edge of his seat, grasping a hand-held recording device. Maybe he manages the research lab?
I tap on the glass. The student seems amused. The other guy scowls, visibly annoyed.
“May I help you?” the researcher asks in a posh British accent, his almost boyish face twisted into a grimace. Did Professor Pridmore bring this guy with him from Cambridge? Is he such a big deal that he travels with an entourage?
“I’m sorry to interrupt your…” I pause, unsure exactly what I’ve walked into.
“Acoustic-phonetic research,” he says matter-of-factly. His face is smooth and tanned, his eyes deep brown. He has incredibly thick eyebrows and dark stubble. The only indication that he may be as old as me is the subtle crow’s-feet around his eyes.
“Do you know where I can find Professor Hugh Pridmore? I have an appointment.”
“Oh, bloody hell,” he exclaims, pressing his palm to his forehead. “I’ve gone and lost track of time again, haven’t I?”
I stare at him, confused. Could this linen-and-denim-wearing thirtysomething be the distinguished visiting professor of linguistics? No way.
“Hugh Pridmore, at your service,” he says, grasping my hand to shake it.
“So sorry about that.” His hand is cool and smooth in mine, and while his grasp is firm, it’s not the sort of handshake that’s designed to project dominance or bravado.
I stare at our intertwined palms for a beat too long and, when he pulls his hand away, I glance quickly toward the glass booth, hoping that my cheeks haven’t gone pink or, if they have, that the distinguished professor hasn’t noticed.
I hear Professor Pridmore clear his throat softly as he steps back to put more space between us.
“Raymond,” he says, gesturing toward the student in the glass booth, “is from Louvale—are you familiar with the town?” I shake my head.
“Southwest Georgia,” he clarifies. “And when I heard him calling across the quad to a friend this morning, it was simply imperative that I get him into the lab for elicitation. He has the most fascinating patterns of morphology.”
Patterns of morphology? Elicitation? I have no idea what this man is talking about.
He’s clearly one of those high-and-mighty academic types.
When I come up with absolutely nothing in reply, he grins awkwardly, and I’m sure he must already have decided: meeting with me is a waste of his precious time.
As if on cue, Raymond of the “fascinating morphology” comes out of the booth.
The professor gives him a broad, white-toothed smile that disproves the British bad-teeth stereotype.
“Well, Raymond. I’m sorry we were interrupted, but I’m afraid I’m already late for a meeting with Ms. Simmons,” he says, glancing toward me in acknowledgment, “who has an appointment. I’d like to have you back next week. Does that work?”
Raymond smiles sheepishly. “Just to talk into a microphone some more?” he asks. “Yeah, okay, cool,” he says as the professor escorts us both out of the lab.
“I’m afraid we’ll need to walk and talk,” the professor tells me, glancing at his watch. “I’ve squeezed you in during my lunch hour, between engagements.”
“No worries,” I mumble, suddenly feeling annoyed by Mr. Oh-So-Important and his packed schedule. Personally, I take great pride in my punctuality. It’s essential to my job. But not the professor, who seems perfectly comfortable making me sit around and wait.
We head outside, walking at a rapid clip, neither one of us saying a thing.
“I’m sorry if you missed lunch on my account,” I launch in, nervously filling the silence as we make our way along a redbrick path. “I’ve probably got some Nabs somewhere in my purse, to hold you over.” I fish around in my enormous bag, then lift the pack triumphantly. “Found ’em!” I add.
He glances at the crumpled package of cheese crackers in my hand with what can only be described as mild disgust. Admittedly, they’ve seen better days, and Professor Pridmore doesn’t strike me as the type to tip up a baggie and down the crumbs, as I’ve been known to do in a blood-sugar emergency.
“That’s enormously kind of you,” he says, his voice dripping with condescension. “But I’ll have time for a proper meal after my class.”
A proper meal. I can almost see it now: The esteemed Professor Hugh Pridmore perched at a gleaming mahogany table, set with a linen place mat and silver candelabra, nibbling on canapés served on a dainty china plate. Well, he’s definitely snooty enough to be our Henry Higgins.
Professor Pridmore pauses, looks over at me.
“You’re Mississippi-born,” he says, lifting a finger to his lower lip.
“Jackson, I presume? Lovely cadence. But masked.” He studies my face, which makes me mildly uncomfortable.
Or maybe it’s the way his fingertip strokes that plump lip, grazing the top of his five-o’clock shadow.
“I’d gather you’ve spent your entire adulthood in Atlanta. ”
“You’re freaking me out a little,” I say, feeling a blush rise to my cheeks. “How did you know that?”
“Nabs,” he says. “A simple matter of word choice.”
His eyes gleam as he smiles, clearly pleased with his sleuthing. I’d never thought about it, but no one around here calls those little cracker packets “Nabs.” I guess I did pick that up in Jackson.
I don’t smile back. Instead, I shove them back into my purse, focus my attention straight ahead, and keep walking.
“It’s a shibboleth, a linguistic giveaway. But I digress,” he says, stopping and gesturing for me to sit on a bench in the shade of an elm tree. I plop down, trying to recall whether I’ve ever heard anyone use “digress” in conversation.
“Now, back to your request. The predicament facing your actor friend is in my field of inquiry.” He takes a seat beside me.
“My research interests have long centered on the relationship between social class and dialect,” he says, then crosses his legs on the bench, “beginning with my graduate studies, when I examined variations in my mother’s first language of Punjabi.
It’s always fascinated me that a person’s accent can open or close doors to their social mobility. ”
“I guess I never thought about it that way,” I reply, thinking about my own social standing. Because in a way, it’s the very reason I’m here: a rich and powerful man has me completely trapped.
“Well,” he says, “I grew up with an Oxbridge father and a mother for whom English was a second language. She was entirely fluent, of course. But that didn’t seem relevant.
” His hands fold on his knee, as his top leg slowly taps out a silent rhythm.
“As a child, I noticed how differently people in London perceived her—and by extension, me—particularly when my father wasn’t with us. ”
“I get that,” I say, even though I have no idea what an Oxbridge father is. I’m assuming from context it’s someone very fancy. “My neighbor is from Eastern Kentucky,” I add. “And her accent’s a bit twangy. She thinks people treat her like a country bumpkin.”
“And is your neighbor, as you say, a ‘country bumpkin’?” he asks.
I shrug but don’t answer. Professor Pridmore here is a piece of work.
I can just feel the judgment rolling off him in waves—me, living next door to a country bumpkin, using such charming turns of phrase as “freaking out,” while he’s over there piling on the SAT words.
It’s as if a snobbish old British dude got trapped in the (frankly not unattractive) body of a worldly thirtysomething.
“If I can find the time, we might perchance arrange to bring your actor friend into the lab,” he says, his expression suddenly thoughtful. I watch as he lifts his hand to the nape of his neck, then runs his fingers through his thick, dark hair. “I occasionally take on outside consulting.”
Consulting? That sounds expensive. I’m studying him too closely, trying to tear my eyes away, wondering how much this is going to cost us and where in the world we’ll manage to come up with the money. I’m fresh out of sapphire tennis bracelets. I absolutely must convince him to do this for free.
“You know,” I say, “our young actor friend also has… what did you call it?” I pause for effect.
“Ah yes. Fascinating patterns of morphology.” I bring my hand to my chin and squint my eyes a little, in a feeble attempt to look smart and thoughtful.
“Among the most fascinating I’ve ever heard in the South, and, believe me, I’ve been around. ”
As soon as I say it, I feel that pink flush return to my cheeks. I’ve been around? Sounds like I’m sharing the details of my sex life, which I’m obviously not. (Since it’s basically nonexistent.)
“Wonderful,” he states, his voice rising with enthusiasm. “I’d love to investigate his southern Appalachian speech patterns.” Clearly, he hasn’t picked up on my unintended double meaning, which emboldens me to try closing the deal.
“So.” I paste on my most guileless expression. “It’s an even swap? In exchange for his time in the lab, you can help him learn—”
“I like it,” he breaks in, nodding vigorously. “He’ll record in the lab for me, and I’ll teach him that…” He pauses, leans in toward me. “What did you term it? Ah yes, that Mississippi drawl.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” I respond, thrusting out my right hand for a shake.
“Fabulous,” he says, clasping my hand with his and smiling, but—this time—also gently squeezing, as if the two of us are entering into some sort of secret pact.
I can’t help but smile back. After all, I’ve nabbed a world-renowned dialectologist to help us—and for free.
Sure, he’s a little snooty, but he knows what he’s talking about, and the price is right. Luisa will be so proud.