Before they left, the President and deans came over to shake his hand. Then, while the senior members of the Classics Department waited discreetly in the back of the room, Sara approached the podium to greet her former husband.
“That was great, Ted,” she said warmly. “You’ve done a lot of terrific work on that last chapter.”
“Hey, I don’t get it,” he responded, trying to seem nonchalant. “Shouldn’t you be in England teaching?”
“Yes,” she answered. And then added with a curious admixture of timidity and pride, “But Harvard’s invited me to apply for the chair. I’m giving a seminar on Hellenistic poetry tomorrow morning.”
He was incredulous. “They’ve asked you to apply for the Eliot Professorship?”
She nodded. “I know it’s silly. Clearly it’ll go to you. I mean, just on your publications.”
“They flew you all the way over just on the basis of three articles?”
“Four, actually. And my book.”
“Book?”
“Yes, Oxford liked my thesis and the Press is bringing it out this spring. Apparently the Harvard Search Committee’s seen a copy.”
“Oh,” said Ted, the wind knocked from his sails, “congratulations.”
“You’d better go now,” she said gently. “All the bigwigs want to wine and dine you.”
“Yeah,” he said distractedly. “Uh — nice seeing you.”
The post-lecture reception for Ted was in a private room at the Faculty Club. He knew that it was a social gauntlet he had to run, both to remind his old friends and to convince those who had once rejected him that he was charming, learned, and collegial. That year at Oxford seemed to have enhanced his status — and improved his dinner conversation.
At a late point in the evening Norris Carpenter, the leading Latinist, thought he’d enjoy a bit of Schadenfreude at the candidate’s expense.
“Tell me, Professor Lambros,” he inquired with a Cheshire grin, “what do you think of Dr. James’s book?”
“You mean F.K. James on Propertius?”
“No, no. I mean the former Mrs. Lambros on Callimachus.”
“Well, I haven’t seen it yet, Professor Carpenter. I mean it’s just in galleys, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes,” the Latinist continued mischievously. “But such a penetrating work must have taken years of research. She must have, as it were, begun it under your principate. In any case, she sheds some fascinating new light on the relationship between Hellenistie Greek and early Latin poetry.”
“I’m looking forward to reading it,” Ted said politely, as he twisted inwardly from Carpenter’s sadistic verbal stilettos.
He spent the next day wandering aimlessly around Cambridge. The Square itself had been concreted beyond recognition since his college days. But the Yard had the same magical aura.
At four o’clock Cedric called him at the family home. He got to the point without delay.
“They’ve offered it to Sara.”
“Oh,” Ted gasped, as his blood ran cold. “Is her book really that good?”
“Yes,” Cedric acknowledged, “it’s a tremendous piece of work. But just as important, she was the right person at the right time.”
“You mean she’s a woman.”
“Look, Ted,” the senior professor explained, “I’ll grant that the Dean’s office is anxious to comply with the Fair-Employment legislation. But, frankly, it came down to weighing the merits of two equally gifted people —”
“Please, Cedric,” Ted implored, “you don’t have to explain. The bottom line is that she’s in and I’m out.”
“I’m sorry, Ted. I understand what a blow this is for you,” Whitman said softly as he hung up the phone.
Do you, Cedric? Do you understand what it’s like to work forty years of your goddamn life with only one goal? To give up everything, to resist any human involvements that might detract from your work? Do you understand what it means to sacrifice your youth for nothing?
And can you possibly imagine what it means to have waited since childhood for the doors of Harvard to unlock for you? And now to know they never will.
For the moment, what Ted wanted most to do was get extremely drunk.
He sat alone at a corner table in the back of The Marathon and had one of the waiters make sure that his glass was perpetually filled.
Every now and then his brother, Alex, would come over and insist, “Come on, Teddie, you’ll be sick if you don’t eat something.”
“But that’s the point, Lexi. I’m trying to get sick. To get my body in the same condition as my soul.”
By nine, when he was becoming comfortably blotto, a voice interrupted his lachrymose inebriation.
“May I sit down, Ted?”
It was the last person he wanted to see at that moment — Sara.
“Oho, congratulations on your new appointment, Dr. James. I guess the best man won, huh?”
She sat down and chided softly, “Sober up enough to listen to me, Ted.” She paused briefly. “I’m not going to take it.”
“What?”
“I just called the chairman and told him that, having thought it over, I can’t accept.”
“But why, Sara?” Ted asked, gesticulating broadly. “It’s the top of the academic world — the goddamn tippy-top.”
“For you,” she answered gently. “Ted, when I saw you up there on the podium last night, I knew you were in your own special heaven. I couldn’t deny you that.”
“You’re either crazy or just playing some cruel-revenge joke. I mean, nobody turns down the Eliot Professorship at Harvard.”
“I just did,” she responded, still not raising her voice.
“Why the hell did you let them go to all the trouble and expense if you weren’t serious about it?”
“To be frank, I’ve been asking myself the same thing all day.”
“And—?”
“I think it was to prove to myself that I was really worth something as a scholar. I have an ego and I wanted to see if I could really make it in the big leagues.”
“Well, you certainly did, baby — if you’ll pardon the pun — with a vengeance. I still don’t understand why you’re handing back the crown jewels.”
“Because after the initial excitement wore off, I realized I’d be doing the wrong thing. Look, my career isn’t the be-all and end-all of my life. I want to make my second shot at matrimony work. I mean, the libraries close at ten o’clock, but marriage goes on twenty-four hours a day. Especially a good one.”
He did not comment. At least not right away. He was trying, in his slightly woozy state, to piece out what all this meant.
“Hey, Lambros, cheer up,” she whispered kindly. “I’m sure they’ll offer it to you.”
He looked across the table at his ex-wife.
“You know, I actually believe you’d be happy if I got it. Considering what a shit I was, I don’t see how you can feel that way.”
“All I feel is a kind of residual sadness,” she said softly. “I mean, we had some very happy years together.”
Ted felt a knot in his stomach as he replied, “They were the happiest years of my life.”
She nodded in melancholy empathy. As if they were mourning a mutual friend.
They sat silently for several moments more. Then Sara, growing uneasy, rose to leave.
“It’s getting late. I should be going —”
“No, wait just one second,” he pleaded, motioning her to sit down.
He had something important to say. And if he didn’t tell her now, he would never have another chance.
“Sara, I’m really sorry for what I did to us. And if you can believe this, I’d give up anything — including Harvard — if we could still be together.”