PART I
CHAPTER 1
Before I completely destroyed my life, I taught English at Sawyer College in Ohio. I wasn’t the world’s greatest professor, but I also wasn’t the worst—although it’s possible I would become that. The position was an amazing opportunity, or at least that’s what everyone kept telling me. When I got hired, someone from my grad program called it a “dream job,” but in my wildest dreams, I’m definitely not attending mandatory trainings on “new innovations in learning outcomes assessment tools.” Although to say I had bigger hopes for myself wouldn’t quite be true, either. I never put a lot of time into hoping, or thinking about my own future. What I wanted—or even what I could want—did not often occur to me. I just kind of slogged forward through each day as best I could.
Of course, I was relieved when I got the job. After eight years in a PhD program, a two-year post-doc, and an increasingly desperate year of adjuncting (a sign of my desperation: I bought an LSAT study guide), I was panicking it might never happen. And then it did. The school was founded in 1850 in the town of Sawyer, smack in the middle of Ohio, by a bunch of Lutherans from Pennsylvania. Despite its location, or I guess because of it, the small school flourished, attracting the sons (and later, begrudgingly, daughters) of wealthy families who hoped the pastoral setting would inspire a seriousness of purpose. Some things had changed since then—like you no longer had to be white to attend. And the school was now secular, though a kind of Lutheran stinginess lived on in its motto:vita studii, a life of study. But lots of things had not changed. Like many small, liberal arts colleges, Sawyer turned inward, shunning the locals and hiding behind its towering gray-green stone walls. In any given year, there were more first-year students from the Upper East Side than all of Ohio. After the last plastics factory shuttered its doors and shipped south to Mexico, townies were left with few options besides Walmart or McDonald’s or—if you were lucky—cleaning up the shit and spills of Sawyer students. A life of study, indeed.
While obviously much better off, junior faculty were hardly rolling in money. After student loans, credit card debt, used car payments—there was nothing left. I tried to talk with my department chair, Susan, about when the college might lift its pay freeze. (The college president called it “a necessary tightening of belts as we ride out the aftermath of the recession”—he lived rent-free in a small mansion and made $460,000 a year.) Given the state of the academic job market, Susan thought I should consider myself lucky. “We had over three hundred applicants for your position,” she told me, not for the first time. By May of that year, the monotony of it all had started to wear me down, and a simmering resentment kicked in. I’d arrive on campus already exhausted and park my sad little hatchback, hoping (after three recent stints in the shop) it would start when I returned at the end of the day. Crossing the lot, I’d pass students descending from gleaming, brand-new SUVs, shouting about plans to meet up in European towns I’d never even heard of, and I would think to myself—how did I end up here?
That summer, I stayed in Sawyer, supposedly to work on my book. I tormented myself through all of June, staring daily at the same blank Word document. By July I gave up, reasoning that Ineeded the constraints of a teaching schedule to motivate me. My first day back for the fall semester, I swore to god the hallways had shrunk, claustrophobic tunnels closing in around me, ricocheting with the hyped-up thrum of students as they reunited in boisterous, showy hugs—white teeth, fresh skin, clear eyes shining with anticipation of all the good things coming their way. I snaked along, hurrying past them, head down. Is this really my life? Is this everything?
And then, I met Tyler.
It was September 2012, the third week of the fall semester. A Tuesday. I had taught my morning Composition course. On my way to my next class, I stopped at the library to deal with some overdue fines. At the front desk, a work-study student played with her phone as I explained that while, yes, the books had been returned a few months late, faculty were exempt from penalties. Eventually, without a glance up, she tapped at a computer. “Okay,” she said and sighed, then grabbed a book from the shelf behind her and passed it to me. “This came in for you.” I had put in a request for it months ago and had forgotten all about it. I started to thank her but before I could say anything, she was back at her phone.
I checked the time—I was already late. I rushed from the library, down the steps, and across the quad, dodging a student making hazy, careless loops on a scooter. A group of boys, peacocking and shirtless, tossed a Frisbee across the grass. I made it to the building—TAFTHALLcarved across the stone entrance in pious letters—and was about to sprint up the steps when the high snap of a voice stopped me. I turned to look. There, at the other side of the landing, two students stood, arguing. One was tall and broad-shouldered, high Roman forehead topped in a pile of darkcurls. The other was smaller and stood rigid, legs clamped in a wide stance, as if to block any sudden movement. The morning sun caught his fairer hair, quick flashes of heat. He raised his voice again, but I couldn’t make out the words. Whatever was going on, the taller one looked relaxed, almost leaning back, long ropey arms loose at his sides. I was wondering what could be such a matter of life and death to cause a scene like this when, above me, a voice called out—“Hey, Dr. Lausson, coming to class?” I looked up—a smiling student held the door for me.
The classroom was full, buzzing with conversation in my tardiness. It was a large group, or large for Sawyer—thirty students. I was still figuring out who they all were. I got set up at my desk and pulled out my copy of the day’s reading—Patricia Highsmith’sThe Talented Mr. Ripley.The binding was split and a page slid out, worn from years of rereading. I tucked the page back in and raised the book. “Okay, sorry I’m late, let’s get started. How is the Highsmith going?” A few heads nodded, a couple groans. The class was calledSex and Death in American Literature,which I thought was a fun idea, but I guess not everyone was convinced. “Let’s stick with it and see what happens.” Though we were reading from an earlier era—Highsmith published the novel in 1955—I told the class I wanted to deal with the book on its own terms, in its own period of history. And to try to hold off thoughts about what it meant for today. “And that includes its relationship to the movie.”
Someone called out, “I could have just watched a movie?” The room laughed.
“Who said that?” A student cautiously raised a hand. “You don’t know the film?” He shook his head. “Matt Damon? Jude Law?”
“Who?”
Laughs again.
“Wait. Who here knows the movie?” Not a single body stirred. “None of you?” I couldn’t believe it. I, of course, had learned of the book from the movie, which came out—well, when I was their age, I guess. I could feel myself in the theater, seeing it for the first time. Terrified that everyone in the rows around me sensed the warmth spreading across my skin as I watched Jude Law lift himself from that bathtub, golden and dripping. And my cellular understanding that Matt Damon’s eyes, lingering a moment too long, were my own. The students had probably seen much more than that on the internet before they even hit puberty. I sometimes forgot how much the world had changed in the fourteen or fifteen years between us.
“Well, speaking of history, now I’m feeling old.” Some laughs again. “Let’s pretend this didn’t happen and get to the sex.” A few more laughs, now some nervous. “It’s okay, we can talk about sex, even if Highsmith won’t.” I explained that there wasn’t much recent scholarship on the novel. Highsmith was considered a bit of a relic, an embarrassing reminder of a less liberated, more ambivalent time. A recent essay had declared the book “largely homophobic,” which I found a shallow and obvious read. “Let’s approach the text in terms of its honesty, which doesn’t mean we have to like what it says. But let’s try to understand it first. I want—”
The door in back swung open and two students stepped in. A young woman, loose sandy hair and a light, patrician smile. I couldn’t recall her name—she hadn’t joined any discussions these first few weeks. And beside her was the smaller of the two boys who’d been fighting outside. Had he been in my class and I’d never noticed? He grimaced and mouthedsorry.They slid together into a row in back, coffee cups in hand.
“Well,” I said—I’d lost my train of thought—“let’s take a look at the first chapter. Will someone read those opening paragraphs for us?” A student raised her hand. “Go ahead, Marissa.”
Marissa began: “Chapter One. Tom glanced behind him and saw the man coming out of the Green Cage, heading his way. Tom walked faster. There was no doubt the man was after him …”
The discussion went well enough. Despite the early grumblings, the class was engaged, more so than the previous week. But I felt weirdly distracted by the late arrivals. The young woman of the pair followed along in a kind of neutral manner. And while her friend didn’t participate in the conversation, he kept flipping around in his book, scribbling notes in a way that didn’t seem to correspond with what was happening in the discussion; in a lull or a transition, he would be furiously writing, scanning a page, intent on something or other. Like he was having his own private experience of the story.
A group got into a debate about the pivotal moment, when the wealthy Mr. Greenleaf mistakes Tom Ripley as a friend of his wayward son, and asks Tom to travel to Europe to track him down. Marissa felt Tom’s motives were not totally clear, and the ambiguity was important.
“I don’t know if it’s ambiguous. The entire thing is premised on deception.” This was Constantine. I had talked with him last year about exhibiting patience with his peers, but the speech had done no good; if anything, he took it as confirmation of his superior intellect. “Tom isn’t at all who Mr. Greenleaf thinks when he asks for his help finding …” He looked down at his book, turning some pages. “What’s the son’s name?”
From the back, someone yelled, “Dick,” to laughs.
“Technically, Dickie,” I said. “But yes, his name might have some meaning for us.”
“Okay, going to look for Dickie,” Constantine continued, ignoring some giggles. “So from the onset, the whole thing is based on lies.”
At this, the mystery student looked up from his notebook and shrugged.
“Do you have some thoughts on this?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, stumbling, and I felt bad putting him on the spot.
“Or anyone else?” I asked, trying to let him off the hook I’d hung him on.
But he continued. “I guess I’m not sure the misunderstanding is all Tom’s fault.”
