Dead

and Gone
by Jane Kokernak In the photograph, hes on his bicycle. Hes smiling, and his wavy hair blows back from his high forehead. Riding up the hill to Green Hall, he leans over the handlebars; a small leather saddlebag is plumped between the grips. The date is circa 1986, but his look is perennially collegiate: open parka, cordoruy pants, sweater, low boots. The magazine was opened in my lap; his face, the brightest spot in the black and white picture, blossomed out from the past. Only upon the announcement of his death did I realize he was younger than I remembered him. When I knew him, I was a college student, and he was my history professor. I vaguely knew that he was married and had children. Perhaps his wife had even responded to the ad I posted in the Campus Employment Office under Babysitter Available, and I couldnt help her because I was busy babysitting another professor's children, as I often did: to make money, to be with real people. That he was grown-up a man, professor, scholar was a large part of his attraction. I was infatuated with him. Ten feet away, three times a week, for the 70minute class period, I studied him at the front of the classroom and worked myself up into love. I had not thought of him or my crush for more than a decade when I came across this picture and a long, glowing obituary of him in my Wellesley alumnae magazine. This was 1999, and I had been out of school since 1987. I hadnt seen him since college. Suddenly, though, I was overcome with shame. The obituary described his devotion to his children, scholarship, and students, and it elaborated his year-long battle with cancer. The colleague who wrote the tribute praised his service to the college, his intelligence, his generosity.

Dead and Gone -- 2

I am such a fool, I muttered, such a fool. My heart prickled. I thought back to a momentous meeting with him in his office that had left me shaken. At the time I thought he was crossing a line, reaching over that boundary between teacher and student, and this new information of his devotion and goodness suddenly complicated my recollection of our one private meeting. As a college student, and for a long time after, I thought he had been propositioning me. An obituary might cast a life in certain light, illuminating and enlarging it. The grandeur of this full-page one made my memory of that meeting seem overplayed: romantically, pathetically. I had been a jerk, a narcissist even, to believe what I did and for so long. I was 20 years old and a junior. Eric Zimmer was a man not young and not old who taught German history, something I knew nothing about, although I was studying the language. Intense and interior, he walked his way around the front of the room as he talked, showing us the play of his mind, sometimes facing us and sometimes glancing hopefully at the board, as if something scribbled there might feed him his next remark. His clothing was relaxed, seeming to be fastened at his shoulders, wrists, and hips, but then slouching over his body. When he turned to window or clock over the door, I studied his profile, wire-framed glasses, and wavy collar-length hair. I was smitten: Here was a bookish man. I went to a womens college. Men, bookish ones, were in short supply. On weekends, my friends and I could get on a bus that would take us into Cambridge to parties at Harvard and, especially, MIT, where the male to female ratio in the 1980s was like a capsizing ship. In daily life on my own campus, however, there were scant male students just a few taking courses via an educational exchange program yet there were plenty of male kitchen workers, campus police, finance office personnel, and professors. Surely there was plenty of dating, romance, and sex going on among women at my college, but I and many of my friends were attracted to men, and the lack of them on campus made the few who were there objects of our attention. Around the table at dinner and later in our rooms, my friends and I would gossip about and impersonate our male professors as if they were celebrities. Have you ever noticed how he blushes when he reads Sonnet 129 aloud? This about a new English professor. His wife is a maniac, a control freak, whispered an insider, who worked for a French professors family. Watch this, said Mary, and she perfectly mimed the way the handsome, foppish poet stroked his chin during a pause. On her narrow bed and the wooden floor, we whooped and begged her, Do it again. The densest concentration of men on campus was at Campus Police, where I worked as a freshman. A few times a week, Id show up at 10pm and sit in the station until 1am, waiting for calls for the escort service we called simply Campus Van. Occasionally I would go out on a call and ferry a late-night studier from the

The name Eric Zimmer is a pseudonym.

Dead and Gone -- 3

library or science center back to her dorm. Mostly I would sit around the station with the night officers and one or two other financial aid students. Kelly, wiry, stoopedover girl whose bleached hair showed dark roots and whose spectacles were oversized and green-rimmed, clucked over the guys and flirted with them. One instant shed be telling one that he looked tired and needed a nap, and in the next instant shed be slapping another playfully on the arm and pleading, Oh, stop. Kelly was transparent in her flirtations, and the officers were the same in their preening. Did they want to attract us or just show off? As I sat there on the leatherette divan, stared at the television, and tried not to fall asleep, two of the officers might be punching and teasing each other while a third one would be on his back on the weight bench, raising and lowering a horizontal bar and puffing his cheeks out and in, out and in. When the bar clanked back into the bracket, I sensed that an audience was supposed to look. I glanced over. He stared at the ceiling, as if contemplating the feat he had just accomplished. Too bad you cant save people from their efforts, because I could have told him in a sentence that I wasnt aiming for a cop boyfriend. From the same social class as Kelly and the cops, I had my sights set higher, not on a moneyed life but an intellectual one. I was choosy without having a lot to pick and choose from. I had no boyfriend, having broken up with my high school one. With my roommate, I went to a few MIT fraternity parties, didnt get drunk, and didnt have a good time. I wasnt shy, but I wasnt good at the kind of flirting that Kelly was. The only way Id ever met boys before was in a classroom, and, where I found myself, there were none. None my age, that is. It seemed that straight girls at Wellesley were presented with two possibilities. If, like me, you tried a few times at MIT and a couple of times at Harvard and struck out in both places, your other options were slim. There was always home, where a girl could reunite with a high school boyfriend (the return to the well, my mother called this tactic). But I was spending most of my time in school -- 32 weeks a year, 7 days a week and not much at home. Even when I had a boyfriend and relief of various kinds on weekends, there was still something high-pitched, singular, and unrelenting about the all-female environment. Female friendships were close and rich, yet fraught, too. We had no break from each other. It was all connection and no tension. I dont mean there was no conflict sometimes roommates fought, and girls gossiped about each other, and girlfriends slammed doors and wept I mean that there was no frankness and no lovely frisson. A person doesnt want to be too distracted from her studies and her friendships, but some distractions are good. For many girls, a male professor was not only the focus of the class, but a welcome distraction. It might have been difficult to be a male professor at a womens college. For some, and maybe for Professor Zimmer, their special status might also have been thrilling. In his classroom, I paid attention. I watched him pace; I followed his hand as he wrote on the board. I took notes. When he showed us slides of the works of Expressionist artist Kthe Kollwitz, I peered hard. Outside of class, I invested myself

Dead and Gone -- 4

in the reading and took copious notes. I over-serviced the paper assignments and learned a lot about the two World Wars and the interregnum period. My crush on my professor was a big part of why I cared. In his German history course, I also daydreamed. My eyes were on him, and my mind often, but not always on what he was saying about Churchill. As he dimmed the lights and advanced to the first slide, I imagined the two of us bumping into each other at the towns repertory cinema. The theatre would darken, and wed each be trying still to slip gracefully into our seats minutes before the show began. Oh, hi! Its you, one of us would whisper. Without speaking wed decide to choose adjoining seats. During the first few scenes, our elbows would touch. In the middle, he would put his arm along the back of my seat. Id tip my head up so he would feel my hair touch his arm. Near the end, I would press my cheek to his shoulder. During a lecture, as stood with his back to us and wrote on the board, I imagined being the only student in the room. Between us would be a lit tunnel of air, and the periphery of the room would be dark. On ghost feet, I would walk up to him as he wrote a long line of white, jagged letters. He would not hear me and not turn. I would put my arms around him and press the front of my clothed body against the back of his: my pelvis against his ass, my breasts below his shoulder blades, my cheek on his spine. My hands would feel his ribs and flesh and heat through a sweater. His right hand and forearm would come down hard on mine and hold us there. Passing back papers took a long time, and as he did this I imagined myself working on the next paper, staying late in the library with stacks of books and notes around me. The closing bell would startle me, and then Id gather up my things, tidy the carrel, and rush outside only to see Campus Van pulling away. I could wait for the next one or I could walk, and I would decide to walk. My head would be down, against blowing snow, and Id take the route I knew by heart. A moment before we collided, Id become aware, Its him. Our bags and books would drop to the sidewalk. Wed look at each other and then embrace. The kiss faded out, as did the standing embrace. What the next step looked like, I didnt imagine. But I could feel it. Sitting in the classroom, I was, under my clothes, flush and alert. Occasionally, my professor looked at me. He looked, too, around the room at other students sitting in the 14 or 15 chairs arranged in a semi-circle that sheltered him, like a harbor, as he traveled back and forth in front of the board. When his eyes met mine, though, I saw him pause. One day, back in the spring of 1986, I visited Professor Zimmer in his office. We sat, in wooden chairs, facing each other. There was no desk between us. Behind me, the door. Behind him was a window to the steps of Founders Hall, rhododendron masses, and Severance Green. In the room there must have also been bookshelves, and perhaps an ink drawing tacked to the white-painted plaster wall. It was beyond winter. Whether I arrived at his office in a coat or not, I was no longer wearing it. I remember I had on my best shirt, yellow broadcloth with a small foulard print, worn buttoned, tails out. There was a certain uniform that we

Dead and Gone -- 5

wore then, to show that we were serious young women. Looking back, my friend Marcia called it the Chinese Worker Party Look: khakis, the untucked shirt, often oxford blue, the flat shoes worn without socks -- a genderless uniform for future intellectuals. Still, my hair was gendered: I wore it shoulder length, dark brown and straight. In college I still wore contact lenses, and my eyes and hair I knew were good features: shiny hair, big eyes. In his sunny room, I could see dust floating in a stripe of light between us. He wore pullover sweaters all the time, so I'm sure he had one on this time, too. His wire frame glasses were gilt circles on his face, and he wore khaki or corduroy pants that were not unlike mine. His body was clothed, yet near. Could I smell him? Maybe his office just smelled good, filled with its mix of wood and paper and wool and cotton and the iron of the heated radiator. In his hands he held white paper. You're really good at this. You could be a history major. He smiled. Instantly, I was pleased. I looked at his eyes. Well, I hadn't thought of that. This is the first history course I've taken. Wow, really? His body hopped a bit in his chair, and he leaned forward. I'm surprised. You seem to be really interested. Well, I am interested. In you, I could have added, but of course I would not have said that. In class, you seem always to be engaged. I look around the room, and I see your eyes, following me. I felt dishonest. Yes, Id kept my eyes on him, but I was not always paying attention. Uh, thank you, was all I could think to say. I hoped he wouldnt start to quiz me on what Id absorbed in all the moments Id been gazing at him. And this paper! You have a natural talent for writing history, he added, exuberant. My paper was giving him pleasure, as if I had bought him a present, and it turned out to be exactly what he wanted. So, he shifted in his seat and put my paper flat on his knees, It would be a shame if you didnt continue in history. Although I didnt know what to say, I felt buoyant. I'm in love with him, and he wants me to join his club! I held myself still, keeping elation in its place. Im doing German Studies. Therell be history in that. He looked off to the side, gathering words. Right. You could do the language and also really focus on the history. Thats an option. He looked at me again. Or, you could just stick with history. I wanted to please him, to say yes, to be that history student. I was overwhelmed -- by his compliments, by this new knowledge of my own supposed talent, by the internal pressure to respond appropriately. Maybe. I could. His eyes twinkled, as though we were conspirators. Its okay to switch majors. Other students do. He leaned forward a few degrees. His bent knees were closer to my bent knees: Did they brush? My feet were planted on the floor. I held my legs very, very still, and I willed myself to be like a rock: solidified, petrified. Why were we suddenly so close? A second passed, or two. The room was still, my body pinned in the chair and in space. Without moving my eyes, I watched again the dust sparkle in the air

Dead and Gone -- 6

between us, and I looked at him and I did not look away. This was a test, and I wanted to pass it. The office was his, and the silence was his to disrupt. You know, if you ever want to talk about your major, or the class, we could meet again. In the afternoon, or later. We could even go get a beer. There was a pause. Sometimes I'm free in the evening. And he looked at me without looking away. I felt as though I was being dared: dared to be the object of attention, dared to interpret his offer, dared to say, Yes, I'd love to. I sat there, pinned and thinking. And the big billboard of my romantic fantasy gave way and fell into pieces. I saw us meeting in the parking lot near the town grocery store after dark, and him pulling up in the kind of old Volvo that all the professors drove and pushing open the passenger side door and me getting in, and me ducking down below the dash so nobody could see me as we drove and drove and drove away from town to somewhere he would take us. And on the floor of this car I saw all the crap thats always on the floor of these cars, because as a babysitter for other professors and their children I had driven these cars and ferried children not my own around town in them, and I recognized the bits of cereal and plastic lunch baggies and receipts and the discarded envelopes of mail opened in the car and the gloves and winter grit and the floor mats askew. And I had plenty of time to study this stuff on the floor because my head was tucked down, and there was no view out the window for me, because I was hiding -- he was hiding me - and this, I suddenly saw, is how our time together outside of school would be. Thank you, was all I could say out loud. I had no words for whether I would consider history or not, meeting or not, because suddenly I knew that all I wanted was to remove myself from what would only, it seemed then, become sordid. Old car, old motel room in some other town, old dirt. And I stood up and he stood up. Think about it, he said; the moment, to him, was still open. I smiled, to be polite. I went out the door, back into the hallway, and out onto the steps and into the sunny afternoon. Stunned, not sure of the meaning of what had happened, I walked back to my dormitory on the paved path that skirts the green. It was almost time to go down to the kitchen and eat dinner with whomever of my girlfriends was then around. In my adult life, I have a group of female friends and have known them several years. We met and came together around the time I was pregnant with my second child and quickly became a collective. We go out; we stay in; and occasionally we head to a house on Cape Cod for a weekend of bikes, beach, and talk. On the Sunday morning of one of our Cape weekends, a few months after I learned of Professor Zimmers death, we sat around in shorts and pajamas on the navy blue coach in the pine-paneled living room and talked. As the conversation unspooled, the coffee was remade at least once. Im often the listener, but on that day I wanted to talk. I told the four of them about reading the obituary, recalling my crush on the professor, and reliving the moment in his office. Then, with the perspective of time, I reinterpreted for them the moment in his office, and I scolded myself aloud for misreading him.

Dead and Gone -- 7

Finished, I looked around and waited for them to chuckle at my youthful foolishness and affirm my new take on the old event. Sue, the most impulsive talker, spoke first: Jane, that was riveting. Wow, that moment in his office Betsy, the most tolerant of others neuroses: Why are you being so hard on yourself? Brandi, the most concerned with justice, who went to another womens college: How dare these professors! You were right on. I looked at Liz, whom I knew the least. I did know that like me she graduated from Wellesley, and, unlike me, she remained there for many years as an employee in the alumnae office. Liz chuckled. Jane, she began. I know, right? I mean, he was a great teacher and Ive maligned him. Mea culpa, Professor Zimmer, I wanted to say. Jane. You were right, Liz said emphatically. I waited. She seemed reluctant, but she went on: Ah, he was pretty well known on campus. He came in front of general judish many times. General judish is short for the General Judiciary Board. There were a lot of students, and some complained. Liz implied what she didnt want to say. So he had affairs with students? I tried to get her to say it. Yeah. She added, He was not the man in that obituary. I was numb. This new knowledge had no place in my self recriminations. Now that Liz had reported what she knew, she seemed looser, almost wanton in her willingness to tell it all. We had a good laugh about that in the alumnae office when that one came in. A friend of his wrote it. I had one more question for Liz: Did his wife know? Everyone knew. It was ridiculous. Liz fluttered her hand in the air, as though discarding the topic, and the man. This is a story of an affair I did not have with my college professor. Even though I have tried to strip away present knowledge when recreating the scenes, I have struggled with trying to erase layers of memory and interpretation. It requires a ruse to time travel back, to be the self with less experience and adult knowingness. Then, I had little sympathy for the object of my desire, and now I have plenty: for the over-40 man, for a parents burdens and pleasures, and for a professors proximity to those always young students. The storys central incident happened to me when I was young, but it means most to me now: a woman in her 40s with all the future of romance, conquest, and beginnings behind her. Im done with all that, or so my adult life has been telling me. Eric Zimmer, too, may have been feeling then he was 42 in the year he was my professor what I feel now. The person who tells this story was, 25 years ago, a student; she is now a college teacher of writing. She is married and has three children: a boy and two girls. The oldest is 19, in college himself. With her husband she owns a house in a suburb

Dead and Gone -- 8

of Boston. In time that is never free, she reads, gardens, talks to and plays with her husband and kids, e-mails and visits friends, parents, and siblings, works on her work, putters around the house, and tends to her health. Its a regular life. She anticipates the years ahead to be generally good variations of the same. The good. The same. Thats what grownup life feels like, if youre lucky. And so, as the person who experienced this story, I find myself often looking back on that moment -- with my dead professor in his bookish office -- less as a potential disaster averted than as a lost opportunity. There are times in life to be impulsive, to take risks, to care not for the outcome and just see what happens. Youth is a good time for that, and middle, married age is not. When I think about Professor Zimmer, my desire for him, my chance, and the end of a moment, it is with the sadness I feel over the aborted what ifs of life. Did he ask me to meet with him? Yes. (I am not a jerk; I did not misremember.) What if, though, I had responded differently, or if I had been a different less cautious or sensible young woman? About my lost chances I sometimes console myself by constructing elaborate and even disastrous narratives about what would have happened had I taken up this proposition or that one. When I did not accept a tempting position at a prestigious Boston museum because my children were small, I imagined my daughter listless and sad over my absence. When my husband and I decided to turn down a chance to relocate to a city we love, Chicago, I pictured my Massachusetts friendships dissolving and my new life to be vacant of social connections. When, as a younger woman, a man stood close to me at a party and whispered a compliment or comeon, I glanced back uncertainly as though I was confused, while mentally I was picturing a frenzied yet ultimately sobering liaison: the gracelessness of new sex, glare of strange nudity, and lack of something to say to each other. Often, I have wondered if what people call this good head on my shoulders has been a barrier to taking the kinds of risks that might yield bounty, a bounty I seem unable to imagine. A few years after Zimmers death, and during a time I was thinking deeply about my college years, I told Jimmy, my husband, about my relationship with my teacher, including the scene in his office, and I concluded, with some hubris, I think I dodged a bullet. That could have been really embarrassing if I agreed to meet with him. It couldve started something that was hard to get out of. He looked at me. Well, thats one possible outcome. After a pause of several minutes, he added, You might have fallen in love. You might have been happy together. I hadnt thought of happiness as a possibility, only of secrets, guarded phone calls, a motel, loneliness, and inevitable demands. Jimmy and I sat there at our kitchen table and considered this for a while. Beyond our thoughts and words, however, there would be no way to explore what I would have experienced, with my dead professor and in my life, if I had stood in his office and, when he asked, said, Yes, lets.