Chapter 33 Harrington
Harrington
The weight of the ring was still unfamiliar on Sam’s finger when she drove off the property later that week. Everything was
strange: the height of her Jeep; bumping up the causeway and the logging track, which had taken William a full day to plow
out. Just being off the island was surreal. Since their pre-Christmas shopping trip to Augusta, Sam hadn’t left once. She
felt like an Amish girl on Rumspringa, marveling at her speed, travel plazas, other cars on the highway. And she kept checking
her rearview to make sure nobody was following her. The Rabbit, for instance. Intent on driving her off the road.
But the farther from Maine Sam got, the more those unpleasant fantasies faded. Sam was heading to Harrington, William’s graduate
alma mater, to teach a workshop for the MFA program. He’d been going to do it and then got offered a last-minute, irrefutably
generous keynote opportunity at the San Diego Writers’ Conference when their headliner got food poisoning, so he’d passed
the workshop to Sam. See if you can spot the ghost of Young William quoting e. e. cummings in the halls, he’d said, grinning, and although Sam didn’t want to see ghosts of any sort, she was excited about the opportunity to teach.
It had been far too long.
By the time she drove onto campus, it was her life with William that seemed like a dream.
Sam felt like herself again, slammed back into her author body.
She stopped at the entrance to take a photo of the guild sign—HARRINGTON COLLEGE, est. 1824—and texted it to William, then navigated to the guest parking lot.
How often had Sam done just this, parachuted into some
unfamiliar college or university to give a lecture, run a workshop, teach? She applied lipstick, grabbed her bookbag, and
stepped out of her Jeep, the heels of her leather boots gritting on pavement in a way she hadn’t heard in months. “Showtime,”
she said to herself.
Harrington was pretty, a typical liberal arts school with stone buildings, big old trees, snow-covered quads bisected by icy
paths. Sam located the English Department on the map the assistant had sent, and the graduate program director, Dr. Zahra
Alaam, came to greet her. Sam just had time to slough her coat in Zahra’s office and use the bathroom before she was escorted
to a room she would have recognized in her dreams: oak paneling, mullioned windows, the students sitting in a circle. Sam
smiled at the aspiring writers, remembering what it was like to be one of them, a twentysomething slouching in her black leather
blazer, reeking of cigarettes and trying to appear both ambitious and blasé—i.e., literary—yet having only one question in
mind. She was therefore not surprised when, after Zahra introduced Sam, a student raised her hand and said, “How did you get
published?”
After workshop, Zahra took Sam to the student union for quinoa bowls, which they brought to Zahra’s office. With the exception
of a large red beanbag chair and the leg lamp from A Christmas Story, the space was like all academic offices: small, cramped, overheated, crowded with books and papers. “That was so much fun,”
said Sam, sitting in the non-beanbag chair across from Zahra’s desk, taking the lid off her eco-friendly bowl. “Thank you.
I haven’t taught in months.”
“You are very welcome,” said Zahra. “They loved you. But your website says you teach a novel workshop?”
“Oh yes, I do. I’m just taking a little break. An intermission.”
Zahra smiled. She was an East Asian woman in her mid-fifties, Sam guessed, in leather pants and a purple cashmere sweater, a nose ring, peacock earrings Sam greatly coveted, her hands covered with the red tracery of mehndi.
Zahra’s debut novel, The Woman with Delicate Skin, had been a New York Times Notable Book, and she had published a few more since, including a memoir about linguistic diaspora.
“It can’t be too serious a break,” Zahra said, patting her own hair. “You have a pen in your braid.”
Sam’s hand rose. “Ha! I always forget about that. Habit. I’ve been doing that since I was in my Harriet the Spy days.”
“Ah, Harriet. She was a great mentor to so many of us.”
“She was. Besides, you never know when you might need a pen.”
“That is true,” Zahra agreed. “And how is it going, your intermission?”
“It’s weird,” said Sam, and they both laughed. Sam thought about it as she speared roasted vegetables and tofu prepared by
a stranger. Her last months on the island seemed as harsh and lovely as a Russian fairy tale, all snow and passion and wolves
and the Rabbit.
“I did this crazy thing,” she confessed to Zahra. “I stepped out of my life in Boston without a second thought.”
Zahra ate a forkful of kale. “That sounds like a novel waiting to be written.”
“Maybe. Except I think Anne Tyler already did it. Or Anna Quindlen.”
“Probably. The Annes and Shakespeare have already written everything. What is your new life like? Is it liberating? Exhilarating?
Frightening?”
“Mostly happy,” said Sam. She couldn’t begin to think how she’d explain the Rabbit, even if she were inclined to. “A bit disconcerting
sometimes.”
“I can imagine. How are you spending your days?”
“Not writing,” Sam said, and laughed. “Spending time with my fiancé, who is writing.” She smiled. “It’s the first time I’ve called him that. We just got engaged.”
“Congratulations! First marriage?”
“For him. Second for me.”
“The happy one. Come on, let’s see it.”
Sam held out her hand. The ring fractured rainbow light all over the office.
“That is a rock,” said Zahra. “True congratulations. If your betrothed is a writer, he either is very successful or has a trust fund. Or
a secret life of crime.”
Sam squinched up her face, puzzled. Did Zahra not know who William was? Did she not remember she’d gotten Sam’s name from
him? But then, maybe William had presented Sam as a professional colleague instead of saying they were together. Their engagement
was so new. It would take time for his privacy policy to erode.
“Actually, he’s an alum of your program,” Sam said. “He was the one who recommended I come teach for you today, because he
had a conflict. William Corwyn?”
Zahra blinked and sat back in her chair. “I see.”
She didn’t make a face, but her sudden impassivity was such that she might as well have. “What is it?” said Sam. “Is something
wrong?”
“No, certainly not. I know William. He was in my years here.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you were a Harrington alum as well. That’s so funny. And so great. Congratulations yourself!”
“Thank you.”
“So,” said Sam, “you must know all the young William stories. Give me the dirt!”
Zahra did not smile, and Sam felt her own grin wilt. “Wait. Is there actual dirt?”
“I would not feel comfortable talking about this,” said Zahra. “It is not my place.”
“Zahra,” said Sam. “Please.” A shiver rippled across her skin despite the stuffy office. “I know we don’t know each other,
but you’re right. My first marriage was not happy. Or rather, it was not wise. And if I’m making a mistake with this one,
if there’s something I should know, please. I’m asking woman to woman. Tell me.”
Zahra was silent a moment longer, then got up and shut her door, which had been open a few inches in case a student came by.
“You attended an MFA program, am I right?” she asked, sitting back down.
Sam nodded. “In the late nineties.”
“So you remember what they were like. Cutthroat. Mercilessly competitive. Like the Roman arena. Especially then. Especially
for women.”
“Mine was more like Wendy and the Lost Boys,” Sam said, and recounted for Zahra her experience as the only woman in her graduate
program—how she’d had to prove herself via belching, swearing, drinking, ruthless expurgation of adverbs and adjectives, and
participating in the workshop torture ranking system: How bad had the author’s experience been while in The Box, unable to
speak?, tickling, slapping, punching, waterboarding, or the worst, Zahra should forgive her, the anal pear? How all the guys
wanted to be posthumously famous and Sam wanted to be on Oprah, and how her friend Jean said God save us if Sam gets published, she will be all the more insufferably bourgeoisie, and how, when Sam did sign with Mireille, they had hauled her to the student pub and toasted her with tequila shots: To Sam, the fucking bitch!
Zahra smiled faintly at Sam’s description. But still she did not laugh.
“You were lucky,” she said. “Our program was not like that. We had the dick-swinging, of course. Women as well as men. But
it was not friendly. It was vicious. It was designed to push out the weak. And I am sorry to say William was the worst of
them. The ringleader of the lads. A real bully.”
Oh God, Sam thought. “How so?” she asked.
“Nobody’s writing was ever as good as his. It was not good, period. He was very charming about it—at first. The iron fist
in the velvet glove. He would begin with praise, citing a real skill or talent or pleasing turn of phrase the author had.
Then he would cut that person down. Mercilessly. A sword to the ankles. The things he called the stories! Jejune. Perfervid.
Execrable. As flavorless as overmasticated gum. A sleeping potion he wished were deadly. A literary lobotomy. On and on.”
“That’s awful,” said Sam through numb lips.
“Yes. He had a flair for the dramatic as well. Once he threw a story into the center of the room and did the hopak on it. Another time, he made one into a paper airplane and sailed it out the window. He set one of my pieces on fire with
a Zippo and burned it in the wastebasket. He made people cry. One woman had a nervous breakdown and left the program altogether.”
“Oh my God,” said Sam. “Why didn’t anyone stop it? What were the teachers doing?”
“Smirking, mostly,” said Zahra. “Sitting with their arms crossed. They said it prepared us for the real world, that as cruel
as we were to each other, it was only a fraction as nasty as reviewers would be, or readers. That if we didn’t have a thick