education and never left. Looking around, she saw overqualified writers and artists and historians and architects and educated faculty spouses competing for the same menial jobs, and suddenly she realized what people were talking about when they said they stayed in this scenic college town for the lifestyle—they wanted to be around people like themselves, hardcover-book-reading, museum-going, white-wine-drinking underachievers. Playful yet pragmatic, liberal yet sensible, they reveled in the pleasant weather and the beauty of the place, they had exquisite dinner parties and took occasional trips to local mountain inns. They recycled (paper, plastic, and aluminum), they petitioned for carpaccio at the local supermarket, and they subscribed to The Washington Post.
For the next two years life was good. Life was comfortable. And it began to terrify Kathryn. She saw herself at fifty, living in a house on Altamont Circle or perhaps out in Keswick, publishing seasonal poetry in the literary supplement of The Daily Progress and serving cocktails and grilled shrimp to the backstabbers in her husband’s department who were scheming to deny him the chairmanship. She felt a desperate urge to escape. Itwas as if she had arrived in hell and found it to be a pleasant, comfortable, even interesting place. The only way you knew you were in hell was that it slowly began to dawn on you that you were never going anywhere, never doing anything. You were never getting out.
Paul, meanwhile, had become friendly with three hard-edged women from the English department, and several undernourished men. He played guitar in an all-male rock band that called itself Sons and Lovers, and soon developed a little following. People would call the apartment and, when Kathryn happened to answer, hang up. “It’s your groupies again,” she’d say. “Or one of the three harpies.”
“Don’t call them that.”
“They’re depressing. You only like them because they have crushes on you.”
“Sounds like you’re jealous.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Should I be?”
“Oh, please, Kat,” he said. “God. You know, ever since you quit the program, you’ve been nothing but nasty about it.”
“I have not,” she said, her voice rising to an unnatural pitch.
“If you have such disgust for what I do, then why did you marry me?”
“Because I liked your shoes. And because you promised you’d finish in three years.”
He lifted his chin, an old prep-school gesture, and said coldly, “Let me explain something to you. Writing a dissertation is not like writing a six-hundred-word story for the arts section of a lame-ass weekly newspaper, with its bullet points and catchy little hooks and Monday-afternoon deadlines. This is my fucking profession. This is my life. And if you don’t like it …”
“If I don’t like it, what?”
“You can go to hell,” he said.
“I’m already in hell! This is hell!” she shouted, laughing maniacally.
“Well, you know what Eliot said,” Paul said dryly. “Or maybe you don’t. ‘What is hell? Hell is oneself, hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections.’”
The marriage lasted another six months. Paul confessed to having slept with one of the harpies (“She bolstered me,” he said. “She helped me find a piece of myself I’d lost”), and Kathryn confessed to being bored to tears with the minutiae of his academic research. Neither of them had much in the way of assets, so the break was fairly clean. The only sticking point was their dog, a pug named Frieda they’d bought in their first year of marriage from a Turkish rug dealer on the downtown mall.
“I should keep her,” Paul said. “After all, you’re the one leaving me.”
“Only because I’m leaving,” Kathryn said. “You wanted the divorce.”
“You suggested it.”
“Oh, come on, Paul. You were the one having the affair.”
“Let’s not go into all this again,” he said. “I think we should think about what’s best for Frieda.
For the next two years life was good. Life was comfortable. And it began to terrify Kathryn. She saw herself at fifty, living in a house on Altamont Circle or perhaps out in Keswick, publishing seasonal poetry in the literary supplement of The Daily Progress and serving cocktails and grilled shrimp to the backstabbers in her husband’s department who were scheming to deny him the chairmanship. She felt a desperate urge to escape. Itwas as if she had arrived in hell and found it to be a pleasant, comfortable, even interesting place. The only way you knew you were in hell was that it slowly began to dawn on you that you were never going anywhere, never doing anything. You were never getting out.
Paul, meanwhile, had become friendly with three hard-edged women from the English department, and several undernourished men. He played guitar in an all-male rock band that called itself Sons and Lovers, and soon developed a little following. People would call the apartment and, when Kathryn happened to answer, hang up. “It’s your groupies again,” she’d say. “Or one of the three harpies.”
“Don’t call them that.”
“They’re depressing. You only like them because they have crushes on you.”
“Sounds like you’re jealous.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Should I be?”
“Oh, please, Kat,” he said. “God. You know, ever since you quit the program, you’ve been nothing but nasty about it.”
“I have not,” she said, her voice rising to an unnatural pitch.
“If you have such disgust for what I do, then why did you marry me?”
“Because I liked your shoes. And because you promised you’d finish in three years.”
He lifted his chin, an old prep-school gesture, and said coldly, “Let me explain something to you. Writing a dissertation is not like writing a six-hundred-word story for the arts section of a lame-ass weekly newspaper, with its bullet points and catchy little hooks and Monday-afternoon deadlines. This is my fucking profession. This is my life. And if you don’t like it …”
“If I don’t like it, what?”
“You can go to hell,” he said.
“I’m already in hell! This is hell!” she shouted, laughing maniacally.
“Well, you know what Eliot said,” Paul said dryly. “Or maybe you don’t. ‘What is hell? Hell is oneself, hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections.’”
The marriage lasted another six months. Paul confessed to having slept with one of the harpies (“She bolstered me,” he said. “She helped me find a piece of myself I’d lost”), and Kathryn confessed to being bored to tears with the minutiae of his academic research. Neither of them had much in the way of assets, so the break was fairly clean. The only sticking point was their dog, a pug named Frieda they’d bought in their first year of marriage from a Turkish rug dealer on the downtown mall.
“I should keep her,” Paul said. “After all, you’re the one leaving me.”
“Only because I’m leaving,” Kathryn said. “You wanted the divorce.”
“You suggested it.”
“Oh, come on, Paul. You were the one having the affair.”
“Let’s not go into all this again,” he said. “I think we should think about what’s best for Frieda.
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