The Dudley Dilemmas

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Book excerpt

Chapter One 

“You can’t be serious, Pru,” sputtered Roger Wolcott. The dean of Dudley College, which had been one of the finest in New England, stared in alarm at the irate chairwoman of the English Department. “I had no idea that this was happening. It’s hard to believe. It’s . . . it’s almost impossible to believe.”

But Professor Prudence Applewhite was serious. Deadly serious. Earlier that day Doris Buxton, an adoring but agitated student, had appeared in her office clutching a copy of Need to Know, the student daily newspaper. A few lines in the Personals section had fueled Ms. Buxton’s concern. “Wanted: Real-life stories of sexual experiences for forthcoming book. If you’re going to be mealy-mouthed and beat about the bush (hah!), don’t bother to respond.” The ad waved the matador’s taunting cape in front of Professor Applewhite’s thirty-something attractive face. Embarrassment and anger morphed into shock and rage when she read: “Reply to Professor Willard Slick, Department of English.”

Willard Slick was not a mere professor, a tenured professor, or a full professor. He was the celebrity in the English Department and by many accounts the brightest star that illuminated the entire faculty. (Granted that its repute was not what it had once been, the college’s professoriate maintained a remarkably high opinion of its worth.) More than this—as if more were necessary—Slick had attained national prominence and  international recognition for his several books, numerous articles, and frequent appearances at scholarly conferences. No doubt about it: his name graced the college’s faculty. But now he threatened to disgrace both his name and the college’s, although not in that order.

“Well, Roger, what are you going to do about Slick’s latest escapade?”

The troubled dean tugged at his rep tie, adjusted his fashionable

Luxottica eyeglass frames, peered over his bifocals, and said … nothing.

“Roger! Are you just going to sit there? Say something, for God’s

sake! Are you or are you not the dean of this supposed place of higher

learning?”

Many of the college faculty would have been aghast at the effrontery and tone of the chairwoman’s tirade. Fewer would have dared to ask her to calm down, since her skill at verbal flagellation of both students and colleagues was legendary. Moreover, it was doubtful that the besieged dean would ride to his own defense. Mild-mannered by inclination and upbringing, he knew his limitations, especially avoiding unpleasantness at all costs. Female professors generally took his placidity and engaging smile as a sign of a simpatico gentleman; their gender opposites on the faculty were more inclined to regard him as timid, indecisive, and pacifistic—in short, a wuss. The latter wisely kept their commonly shared opinion to themselves. They were not ignorant that the college’s president, who had appointed Roger to the deanship, was the wuss’s father-in-law and a constant meddler in the college’s affairs, and who rode shotgun on questions of tenure and promotion.

“Pru, I simply don’t know what to say. I know that Willard has presented us with problems before—plenty of them—but, but . . . to place this add in our paper knocks the socks off me. What was he thinking?”

Professor Applewhite gave the dean an intimidating look, folded her arms across her ample bosom, and waited to see if the dean had asked a rhetorical question or was searching for an accommodating answer. Only the tick tock of an antique ormolu clock, a gift that Clara Wolcott had bestowed upon her husband on the occasion of his elevation to high collegiate office, punctuated the silence. After giving some thought to smashing the clock to pieces in order to evince a reply from the dean, Professor Applewhite resigned herself to a smile, which was intended to convey warmth, but which would have instilled dread in far more heroic men than Roger.

“Roger,” she sighed, “it’s this inability to come to grips with matters that led to our undoing. Have you forgotten that for months I’d pleaded with you to decide between Clara and me. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore and decided that we had to give it up, lovely as it was.”

A lapse had marred Professor Applewhite’s ordinarily faultless memory. While it was true that Pru and Roger had generally relished their four-month liaison despite Roger’s fits of guilt and gastric ulcer, Pru had ended the affair, she had said, because she no longer could bear to see his mental anguish and physical deterioration. Selfless and caring, she thought of herself, like the various female victims she lectured about in her literature classes.  She had forgotten, at least for the moment, that it had been Roger who had called for an end to their clandestine meetings. It was not clear whether she had also forgotten that she had initiated their carnal rites shortly after her department had turned down her application for promotion to full professor on the purported grounds that evidence of her scholarship was lacking. Her colleagues, she had raged at that time and ever since, had refused to consider as sufficient her latest two articles: “Hotties and Babes: Tess D’Urbervilles, Anna Karenina, and Molly Bloom,” and “Why Madame Butterfly Should Have Castrated Pinkerton.” Fortunately for her, Roger, after a more than usually fervent tryst, had agreed that her department had been unjust and that he would use the powers of his office to override the decision.    

Roger had enjoyed his abode in the arms of the English Department’s sensual chairwoman. Mostly. Her lusty appetite, prowess, and inventiveness amazed him, alarmed him, and made him think of his fifteen years of dull, almost ascetic fumblings with Clara. His wife was without headaches only when she had a special favor in mind, such as the purchase of jewelry or a fur coat or a cruise. Had this been why he had promoted Pru despite the negative vote of her fellow professors? He had hoped not and had attempted to banish the debasing thought whenever it attacked his conscious mind.

But the affair had ended. Guilt gnawed; fear of discovery ate voraciously. He and Clara had convened their traditional Christmas party for select members of the faculty. Clara had raised an eyebrow when he asked to include Pru on the guest list. Mrs. Wolcott had never met her but had heard through the far-reaching grapevine of gossip that she was “a tart-tongued bitch.” Rumor had it that she also thought little of making advances at male professors, irrespective of their marital status. When Clara saw the hussy plant a long kiss on her husband’s lips at the party, she raised both eyebrows. The affair imploded. A shaken Roger denied that anything untoward existed between him and Professor Applewhite, who, he insisted, must have been drunk. All was forgiven but surely not forgotten by Clara or her father. Wolcott called Roger into his office a few days later, wondering if there had been any connection between Professor Applewhite’s bestowal of the now almost legendary Christmas kiss and her promotion. Assured that none existed, he harrumphed, glared at his son-in-law, and warned that he would tolerate no college scandal or cruelty to his favorite daughter. The end of the affair proceeded apace.

“Well, Roger, I’m still waiting.”

The dean shuffled a few papers on his desk, silently regretted that he hadn’t moved up his next week’s dental appointment to this hour, played with the knot in his tie, and realized that he would have to say something.

“Pru, dear, I think that we have to be circumspect with regard to this matter. We have to weigh carefully, very carefully, both the merits and lack thereof concerning possible courses of action open to us. In no way can we afford to be overly zealous in seeking a resolution to what clearly is a serious matter. It could cause endless concerns for our beloved college, our engaged faculty, our serious-minded student body, and, of course, for our esteemed colleague, Professor Slick himself.”

“Cut the bullshit, Roger. We know each other well enough to speak frankly. We’ve got what amounts to a hornet’s nest on our hands, thanks to our ‘esteemed colleague.’ What are you going to do about it?”

The dean took off his glasses, without which, even at this proximity, his ex-lover was not fully in focus, as if this would blunt the force of her anger and disturbing demands.

“I think, yes, I think, Pru, that you might want to have a serious heart-to-heart with Slick. After all, you’re his chairwoman.” Pleased with his solution to the thorny problem, the dean picked up and repositioned the glasses on his aquiline nose.

Professor Applewhite reached for the antique clock that graced the dean’s desk but had second thoughts. She bit her bottom lip and half-closed her eyes. “Roger, you are the dean; I am a mere professor and chairwoman of a less than illustrious department filled with assorted has-beens, were-nevers, wannabes, and will-never-bees. Don’t you think that it’s your responsibility and duty to call in sicko, sex-crazed Slick and read him the riot act? For God’s sake, something has to be done, and soon, and you have to take the proverbial bit in the mouth and do it. Who are you, T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, that you don’t dare eat a peach or give those ladies speaking about Michelangelo a good ride in the hay?”

The barb stung. Not because he dared not eat a peach—he loved peaches, especially the white ones—but because, like Prufrock, he had been noticing the alarming loss of his hair, which had luxuriated, it seemed, only yesterday. As for the romp in the hay, he thought it best to remain silent for fear of exacerbating a still open wound.

“All right, Pru,” he sighed, “I’ll have a talk with him and see what he’s up to.”

“No, Roger, you’ll see him and tell him that he is to take out a retraction in the student newspaper and inform its readers that he had made his request as a jest. It wasn’t, of course, but that’s neither here nor there.”

The withering look that hardened her features and reminded him of the mythical Gorgon convinced the dean that further debate was pointless. He had seen that look many times before.

 “I’ll do it,” he sighed. “I suppose I have no choice in the matter.”

“No, you don’t have any choice. You must resolve this hideous matter once and for all. Call the slime ball now.”

“But Pru, it’s Friday and it’s almost noon. I need some time to consider what I’ll say to him. I promise that I’ll call him over the weekend and have him come to my office first thing Monday morning. The student paper won’t go to press until late that afternoon or early evening, and by that time Slick will have prepared a suitable apology to all concerned.”

Or so the well-meaning dean hoped. He was not sure how Professor Willard Slick, an egomaniac and disturber of the peace, would react to his demands, which he fully intended would take the form of collegial blandishments. A little sugar never hurt, his mother had contended.

Professor Applewhite accepted the dean’s temporizing. Grudgingly. “So be it, Roger, as long as you don’t procrastinate. Think what could happen if the president gets wind of this.” She gave him a rueful smile. “You don’t think that he reads the student rag, do you?”

Roger Wolcott, a busy dean, reasonably good husband, and natty dresser, knew that a nerve-wracking weekend lay ahead. Not only he had to devise tactics and strategy that would convince the troublesome Slick to mend fences, he would have to keep the news from his formidable father-in-law. The visit to the dentist’s that he had postponed until next week promised less pain.

Dudley College had survived perilous times over the past several decades: student protests of the 1960s; lack of funding that periodically necessitated cutbacks, recently made worse by a severe national economic recession; bitter faculty disputes; the viral texting of the chairman of the Art Department caught wearing women’s undergarments at a small private party. Could it survive this latest threat, or would it prove to be the proverbial straw that broke the college’s venerable back?