“Can’t the secretary get us that kind of information? Why do you need to put faculty on it?”
Donald was not through being helpful.
Grimes adopted a pensive look for about five seconds and then shot Willie down again.
“As you know, Professor Willie, Mrs. Frost is our one remaining secretary for the whole department. She has her hands full now—I can scarcely add to her workload.”
Actually, Frost did nothing but work for Grimes, and much of the rest of the time she seemed to sit at her desk doing online crossword puzzles. She worshipped Grimes, of course, since he let her do what she wanted and gave her regular doses of his charm that he seemed to be able to turn on and off at will. I’d made the mistake of asking her to find me some pens and legal pads when I’d first joined the department and she had not even looked up from her screen. I’d had to ask Henry and he’d told me where the faculty supply closet was. The key hung on a hook by Frost’s desk. I didn’t ask her again; I just went in to her office and took the key off the hook without a word. Her thin shoulders, hunched over the keyboard, tensed when I did it, but she didn’t look up.
“I think,” Grimes continued smoothly, “that this initial research would be an excellent introduction to the workings of an academic department in relationship to the curricular needs of the university—I’m going to suggest that our two newest colleagues take this on and use it as a way to orient themselves to the whole ecology of the humanities division.”
Grimes gazed at Henry and then at me, not bothering to hide his smirk.
Henry looked as stunned as I felt.
Neither of us had finished our dissertations when we had been hired, and we had received many assurances from the Dean and from Grimes himself that the university was “committed to protecting the time of junior faculty so they could complete their dissertations.” Finishing what was effectively a book length research project along with coming up with six classes per year, never having taught before, was already daunting enough along with the committee work we’d already been assigned.
Basically, we made up our classes as we went along, and we often asked each other how far ahead of the students we were in the material for a course. Sometimes it was a matter of hours.
I’d managed to get off a couple of unwanted committees as a rookie cop by suggesting we spend money. Police departments always had hidden pockets of money to spend, and actually so do humanities departments. Worth a try.
“While I think that’s a possibility, Dr. Grimes, I might suggest that we re-direct slightly and assign one of our graduate students to this project? We do have a budget for graduate student stipends.”
I looked at Grimes with what I hoped was my most academically neutral face. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Henry looking at me gratefully. Henry moonlighted at a convenience store in the suburbs four nights a week to help support his family, a pregnant wife and 2-year-old son. That was strictly forbidden in our contracts, supposedly because we were instructors and needed to focus on our dissertation work. Right.
Grimes brushed off my suggestion like he had dismissed Willie. Twice.
“No. That won’t work. We need those few dollars for other projects, Professor Ginelli.”
‘Nice try,’ his voice conveyed.
“We’ll start with you and Professor Haruchi gathering this data by . . . .”
He bent over his IPad and scrolled over a few screens.
“Let’s say, November 14.”
That was less than a month away.
And Adelaide, Donald, and even Hercules just sat there and let him get away with it.
3
Q: Could you briefly outline the route which led you from your work on madness in the classical age to the study of criminality and delinquency?
M.F.: When I was studying during the early 1950’s, one of the great problems that arose was that of the political status of science and the ideological functions which it could serve . . . [A] whole number of interesting questions were provoked. These can all be summed up in two words: power and knowledge. I believe I wrote Madness and Civilization to some extent within the horizon of these questions.
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge
The grey sky had lifted when I exited Myerson and a rarely seen setting sun tipped the gothic towers of the university with gold as though they had been heavily gilded. This display did little to lighten my mood, however, as I walked home with the rest of the academic community streaming from the campus toward the train and bus stops, or their homes in the communities surrounding the campus. There is no point in driving to work in Hyde Park, or what is called “Hyde No-Park.” There are very few parking spaces on campus, and on the adjoining streets ‘residents only’ stickers keep commuters at bay. The university ran shuttle buses that came in especially handy in the sub-zero temperatures of the Chicago winters, but today in late October it was actually pleasant.
I live only three blocks from campus in a Prairie-style Victorian (that meant there was a reduced amount of ginger-bread as Midwesterners had altered the fanciful Victorian style to fit their more sober tastes). The tall, thin houses have only thirty feet between them, with garages opening on to alleys in the back. Lined up along the street, they always remind me of rows of teeth, kind of housing dentures.
I was often told I was lucky to have found a house that was so close to campus. This was told to me by people who had never owned a home that was 125 years old. When we moved in, there was a dead rat in the kitchen. Carol, one-half of the live-in couple who helped me take care of the boys and the house, said, “At least it’s dead.”
Yes. I thought that was a plus. But I wondered what it had died of.
The house needed absolutely everything—new plumbing, new wiring, storm windows, paint, and new appliances. The list was endless.
Well, we’d started the painting. The boys, Carol and I, and Carol’s husband Giles were dabbing paint on from time to time. We had decided on bright yellow with green trim as an explicit insult to the grey of Chicago.
Giles was from Senegal and doing a Ph.D. in math at the university. Carol was from Iowa and at the School of Social Work. I had thought that tackling the painting would be a nice project for all of us to undertake together. But between caring for the boys, doing our various kinds of academic work and keeping up with the housekeeping, the boys would be graduating from college by the time we finished.
I will hire somebody, I thought to myself as I walked down our street and saw the expanses of beige peeling paint on my house illuminated by the setting sun. I could afford it. Unlike most instructors, I am not poor. I had that trust fund. When we’d married, Marco had wanted no part of my trust fund money, and I’d just thought we’d keep it for the boys’ education (since it was likely to cost a million dollars each by the time they reached that age). When Marco had died, I didn’t care. I used it to support us during my graduate school work and then, when I’d gotten the instructor job at the university, I’d plunked down the money for this over-priced piece of crumbling real estate without a qualm.
I saw the ladders from the weekend’s painting were still lying along the side of the house where we had left them. Not good. I made a mental note to ask Giles to help me lock them in the garage later tonight. We have a fairly high crime rate in Hyde Park. The surrounding communities are not affluent, and some are quite poor, and in our racist country, consequently mostly black. They seemed to regard the mostly white, upscale university as a deliberate insult to their existence (it is) and a shoplifting mall (it is). Students are incredibly lax about locking, picking up after themselves or the simplest security measures. The ones who are mugged are usually those who decided to walk alone to get a pizza at 2 in the morning. They leave their rooms unlocked and are surprised when they return to find all their