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TWENTY-ONE
The next morning I heard Brock outside shoveling my driveway. I grabbed Ralph and ran downstairs to show him to him, only remembering halfway down the stairs the salacious passage I had read last night. I hesitated, feeling embarrassed. Did Brock have any idea that Dahlia had used him as a model for one of her most passionate heroes? Would he know I’d been reading those scenes? But when I opened the door the look he gave me was so open and innocent I dismissed those thoughts. He was a kind, straightforward man. No wonder Dahlia had liked him. When I showed him Ralph he was amazed and delighted that his creation had come to life.
“When I forged the doormice I added a spark from Muspelheim, the primeval fire from whence came the stars and the planets, so that they would be powerful enough to protect you, but I never dreamed one would actually come to life. You must have sparked his life force somehow…” He looked at me with the same admiration with which I’d seen him regard Drew Brees after completing eight passes in a row. “He’s devoted to protecting you now.”
I was glad to have a loyal companion, but I didn’t see how a mouse was going to be able to do much against most threats.
When I got back inside I sat Ralph in the teacup on my desk and checked my email. I was relieved to see one from Liz Book telling me she’d found a replacement for Phoenix. An Irish poet, Liam Doyle, whose name was vaguely familiar to me. I Googled him and saw that he’d done his undergraduate workat Trinity College in Dublin (where he’d won several poetry awards) and his DLitt at Oxford (where he’d been awarded a fellowship and honors for his thesis on the Romantic poets). He’d published two books of poetry with a small publisher called Snow Shoe Press. The picture on Snow Shoe’s website showed an earnest, bookish-looking man with shaggy dark hair hanging over thick square glasses.
I clicked on a link for the Mistletoe Poetry House in Klamath, Oregon, and found this profile for him:
Liam Doyle, the prominent poet, was the Spring 2001 Zalman Bronsky Writer-in-Residence at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. Liam has held visiting appointments at Macalaster College in Minnesota and Bates College in Maine. His interests are nineteenth-century Romantic poetry, the poetry of exiles and expatriates, and nature poetry. He spent the last eighteen months teaching poetry in an inner-city high school in Baltimore.
I emailed Liz back that I was happy she’d found a poet for the job because that would be great for Nicky Ballard. Did she still need me to take over today’s class?
By the time I’d showered and dressed she’d emailed me back to say that Professor Doyle planned to be up by the beginning of this afternoon’s class (“He was in New York City for a Wordsworth conference, wasn’t that lucky?”) but would I mind meeting him after class to give him the students’ papers.
I emailed back that I’d be happy to, but wouldn’t he rather I meet himbeforeclass to give him the papers and tell him a little about the students?
No, Liz wrote back immediately,he says that he likes to meet his new students without any preconceptions.
Pretty idealistic, I typed back to Liz, and then, afraid that I might have come off as cynical, added,He sounds great. Still unsure if I sounded snarky, I added a smiley emoticon.
“No preconceptions, huh?” I muttered to Ralph, who was still curled up in his basket. “Whoisthis guy?”
Ralph yawned and stretched, performing a miniature downward facing dog that was just about the cutest thing I’d ever seen. Since Ralph didn’t have anything to add, I decided to answer my own question. I still had Liam Doyle’s Google results up on the screen and I saw that he had a Facebook page. I clicked it, expecting it would be blocked, but it wasn’t. Good. I wouldn’t have to friend him to look at his profile. The picture on his wall didn’t give me a much better idea of what he looked like than his author photo did. It showed a dark-haired man in profile, the corduroy collar of his Barbour raincoat turned up covering the lower part of his face, rain-misted hair covering up most of the other half. He was gazing into the distance at a breathtaking view of mountains and lakes. The Lake Country, I deduced, from the fact that he listed “Hiking in the Lake Country” as one of his interests, along with playing the lute and studying languages.
I scrolled through his profile and discovered that his favorite music ranged from U2, Kate Nash and the Vivian Girls to Billie Holiday to Celtic fusion bands like the Pogues, Thin Lizzy, and Ceredwen. His favorite movies wereBeauty and the Beast(the Cocteau version),Bringing Up Baby, It Happened One Night, and, rather surprisingly,You’ve Got Mail.
His relationship status was posted as “It’s Complicated.”
I was just starting to read the messages on his wall when Ralph leapt onto the keyboard and skittered across the keys. I grabbed him before he hit a key that might inadvertently friend Liam Doyle and reveal that I’d been cyber-stalking him.
“Hey,” I said, putting Ralph down on my desk. “Stay off, you’re going to get hair all over my keyboard.” Ralph shook himself, puffing up his fur until he looked like a miniature tribble, and then began to lick his fur down as if offended that I’d maligned his handsome coat.
“Sorry,” I told him, closing my laptop so he wouldn’t getinto it while I was gone. “Just because you’re a magical doormouse doesn’t mean you don’t shed.” Then I glanced at my watch and saw that I was about to be late for class. I’d spent an embarrassing amount of time cruising Liam Doyle’s Facebook page. He really ought to block it or else all his students would be doing the same thing.
We were watchingWuthering Heights—the classic version with Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier—in class that day so I used the time to organize the writing workshop folders and attach a Post-it Note to each one with a few words about each student. Too bad if I gave Liam Doyle a few preconceptions. After class one of my students—the boy with all the leather and piercings—asked to talk to me about his final paper, so I didn’t get a peek at the new writer-in-residence before the workshop started. When I walked by the classroom the door was closed. I heard a deep murmuring voice coming from behind the door and then a ripple of laughter from the class.
Good, I thought, heading across the quad to the library, that class deserved a teacher who would give them all some attention. I just hoped he wouldn’t be waylaid by Mara the way Phoenix had been. Maybe I should give him a little warning about the situation when his class was done…which was in an hour and twenty minutes. I’d have to cool my heels in the library till then. Of course there was plenty of work for me to do there, but still, it might have occurred to Mr. Doyle that meeting with me after his class wasn’t the most convenient plan forme. He could have at least asked what worked best for me. Had he even asked Dean Book what my schedule was?
Instead of sitting at my usual table, I sat at a computer desk and logged into my email account. I saw that Liz had responded to my last email—the one I’d signed with a smiley face—after I left the house.
Oh, BTW, Mr. Doyle did ask which time was more convenientfor you, but I said that since you often worked in the library either would be fine. I hope that was okay. We are quite lucky to get such a prominent poet (and one with such a good reputation for caring about his students) on such short notice. I was trying to accommodate him, but I do hope I haven’t inconvenienced you:)
I sighed. Dean Book was obviously trying to soothe everyone’s feathers (a smiley face, for heaven’s sake! And what was up with that “BTW”?). I didn’t envy her her job. And she was right: writers-in-residence were notorious for bad behavior and shirking their students. An Oxford fellow who taught in inner city high schools was a pretty remarkable catch.
I emailed back that I was in the library and had plenty to keep me busy until it was time to go meet Professor Doyle. And I did—I had papers to grade and an article in the latest edition ofFolkloreI wanted to put on my reserve list, and the names on the casualty list from the Ulster & Clare train crash to start looking up. But instead of doing any of these things I Googled Liam Doyle again and read his poetry credits. A couple of the magazines he was in were web journals. I clicked on one calledPer Contraand found a poem called “Winter, Liar.”
What came once here will never come again,
no matter monument nor memory;
all sunwarmed green succumbs to winter’s wind.
And you, my love, were also my best friend,
and had your life to live. The tragedy
