Page 15 of Given Our History

Before we get down to business, I introduce Teddy to the other committee members. I can’t quite bring myself to call him “Ted,” so I opt for his full name instead. I point my mechanical pencil at the woman wrapped in the shawl. “This is Trina Madhani from the Art Department. She’s our treasurer. And this is Dean Goodman, our secretary.” The lanky man looks up from scribbling on his legal pad and gives Teddy a curt nod. The notes he’s made so far are shorthand and indecipherable, like the Voynich manuscript, or a prescription from a doctor.

“Pleasure to meet you both,” Teddy says. His gaze lingers on Goodman for a moment before he clears his throat and adds, “Sorry, you’re the dean of…?”

Goodman sighs without looking up from his notepad. “Alas, I’m a Dean by birth, not by title.”

Teddy shoots me a quizzical look.

“What he means by that,” I clarify, “is that Dean is his legal name. He’s an instructor in the English Literature Department.”

“We mostly call him Goodman to avoid the confusion,” Trina says with a wink.

“And I’m just a committee member,” Gary adds. Despite the lack of any real responsibilities that come with his title, he manages to make it sound very burdensome.

“All right. So, first on the agenda,” I continue, “we have the matter of setting a deadline for the scholarship applications this year. Last year we set it at November thirtieth for spring applicants, but I feel like an earlier deadline might leave us more time for review.”

For the next forty-five minutes or so, we knock out items on the agenda. Teddy stays quiet throughout most of it, listening more than he speaks, but his presence is distracting anyway—my eye is repeatedly drawn to him. It’s true that I was always something of a social safety net for him when we were younger. But he’s a lot older now. He’s held down the same job for seven or eight years, brushed shoulders with scholars from Oxford and Stanford and Tsinghua. He shouldn’t need a safety net.

Not that I don’t like having him around. The problem is that I do, and I’m wary of liking it too much. Of a false sense of security, lulled by the thought that maybe, just maybe, we can be friends again.

“We’ve got about ten minutes to wrap things up,” Gary announces, jolting me from my reverie.

“Right.” I look back at the agenda. “Before we go, I wanted to touch on our fundraising efforts really quick. I’ve already mentioned to a couple of you that I’m putting myself forward for tenure in December.” This earns a half-interested nod from Trina and a few scribbles from Goodman. I’m the only member of the scholarship committee who’s not already tenured—it’s part of the reason I was elected committee chair, spring semester before last. With no dossiers to flesh out, none of the others were all that interested in taking on the responsibility. “Julien called to my attention that it might be helpful if we ramp up our fundraising efforts this year.”

Gary scoffs. “With what? Bake sales? Should we erect a lemonade stand on the corner of Pike Street and McCulloh?” He shakes his head. “It’s a drop in the bucket.”

“The majority of our scholarships are dependent on endowments,” Trina points out, scratching her eyebrow with the eraser of her mechanical pencil. “And the ones that aren’t typically come from the same pool of donors. Outside of finding someone with heaps of money on their deathbed, I’m not sure we can do all that much to move the needle.”

“I think we’re already doing all we can to raise funding,” Goodman adds. “It’s kind of the whole point.”

I’m a little crestfallen that their opposition to the idea is so immediate, but they’re not wrong—I’ve been grasping at straws ever since Julien brought it up. It’s not easy convincing people to fork over their hard-earned cash, and it’s complicated by the pervasive belief that upper education is a luxury. A lot of people advocate for students paying for it out of their own pockets, no matter how many integral jobs require a bachelor’s degree or beyond.

“What about a gala?”

Every head in the room swivels toward Teddy. He’s got his arms folded on the oak table in front of him, and at the sudden attention, his shoulders stiffen. “I know it’s not my place—”

“No,” Trina says slowly, watching him with her head quirked to one side. “Go on.”

Some of the tension seeps out of him, and he clears his throat. “A gala gives people something interesting to do, in a town this size.” While he talks, Trina clicks her mechanical pencil against her notepad, eyes narrow. “And it would appeal to both town and gown. You lure people in with food and entertainment. Charge some sort of cover fee. And Clara’s always been great at organizing things,” he finishes, almost as an afterthought. He glances over at me but looks away again just as soon. I didn’t think much of it when we first met, but as the years went by, I used to love studying his face in profile—the curve of his nose, and the hard angle where his jaw met with his ear. I force myself to look at the agenda, pretending to jot something down.

For a moment, only the clicking of Trina’s mechanical pencil fills the silence—not frantic or anxious, but steady, rhythmic. Click. Pause. Click. Then Goodman makes an odd sound, somewhere between a huff and a cough. “We’re not exactly the Met.”

That’s my cue to jump in. “We have countless applicants every year who would love to attend Irving if they had the proper financial assistance. But there’s an obvious shortage of scholarships to go around. If we could raise—”

“But just hosting the gala would cost out of pocket,” Trina interrupts, hesitantly. I know that tone—she wants to help me out here, but she’s pragmatic to a fault. “This isn’t some established tradition we’re talking about. There’s no guarantee we wouldn’t lose money on it.”

“So plan on a volunteer basis,” Teddy suggests. “Reach out to local businesses, see whether any alums are interested in helping out.”

“We could contact the local party supply store and see whether they’d be willing to donate old stock in exchange for putting their name on the flyers as a sponsor,” I suggest. “And we could see if there are any local restaurants that would be willing to cater.”

Trina leans back in her chair, arms folded, but she’s not rejecting the idea outright, and I take that as a positive sign. Goodman’s hunched over his legal pad, scribbling.

“Might I point out that this conversation is nowhere on the agenda,” Gary says. “I move to shelve it and discuss it next meeting.”

“We’re already discussing it,” Trina counters, a touch of impatience in her voice. She locks eyes with me. “It’s a good idea, but planning a gala doesn’t fall under our jurisdiction, so to speak. It’s the sort of thing that would normally be delegated to a subcommittee.”

I withhold a sigh. Trina is like a walking, talking copy of Robert’s Rules of Order, which is very helpful when we need to make sure we’re covering all our bases, but at times like this, it gets tedious. “In that case,” I say, “who’d like to be on the subcommittee?”

Gary doesn’t bother looking up from his phone. “Not interested.”