Dear Chessie,
Ugggggghhhhhhhh I wish we were still having dinner twice a week so I could vent. I need your advice on how to deal with my horrible boss.
So it’s always been clear that Petrovski doesn’t like me, right? Like, from the first time I met him, he thought I was garbage. Julia said it’s probably because I was hired by Vargas (his boss) who he hates – he and Carmichael (the sex predator head of history) are gunning for her, and they try to undermine her every chance they get. But I think there’s a solid dose of garden-variety misogyny in there too (along with the classic tweed bro anti-pop-fic snobbery). I’ve never seen him look at a female colleague without contempt in his eyes.
Anyway, Petrovski’s hatred of me has mostly been coming out in little ways; e.g. he’s always ordering me to take minutes in department meetings like I’m his secretary (which Jonah has been great about, actually – he always volunteers to take them instead). Today, though, really took the fucking cake.
He rocked up to our Romanticism lecture (about twenty minutes in, just to make it extra rude). It was Jonah’s turn to lecture, but we’re doing this thing where we interrupt each other to clarify or build on what the other person is saying. We got this piece of student feedback when we were teaching at Bass about how they were always waiting for our entrance music to hit when the other one of us was teaching – likeprofessional wrestling – so we’ve been experimenting with dramatically interrupting each other (sans music) and teaching via argument.
So I got up and interrupted Jonah, just like we planned, and we had this – entirely scripted! – debate about Coleridge’s scathing review of Charles Maturin’s play Bertram. The students loved it (Bertram is a ridiculous play and Coleridge’s review is hilarious, so it was fun to argue about). But then afterwards, as the students were leaving – leaving! not left! some of them were still in the lecture theatre! – Petrovski grabbed my elbow, pulled me aside, and absolutely reamed me out for disrespecting another scholar.
Jonah jumped in immediately and tried to explain our teaching strategy. Our casuals Lin and Veronica were there too, and they backed him up, but Petrovski wouldn’t hear it. He just completely ignored the two of them like they weren’t even there, and said, ‘Jonah, it does you credit to defend your wife like this, but Sadie, this is unacceptable.’
Then – oh yes, there’s more! – he had the gall to ask me when to expect my next research output, because unless I achieve the requisite number of research points per year, I won’t pass probation.
As if I have time for research at the moment! Jonah and I spend basically every second of every day writing all these fucking lectures!
(Jonah is also subject to the research points thing – we have exactly the same job with exactly the same conditions – but do you think Petrovski asked him where his next output was?)
Jonah and I had a good idea, though. We’re going to co-author an article on our professional wrestling-style pedagogy for one of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning journals(more work, yes, but what’s another 8000 words when we already have to co-write, like, 300,000?). At least then, if Petrovski tries to formally discipline me for being a bitch to Jonah in lectures, we’ll have a publication to say that I was being a bitch for very serious, scholarly reasons.
I’m going to talk to Julia and brainstorm some strategies for dealing with Petrovski – conveniently, she’s also our union rep, so if he REALLY gets out of hand, she’ll know all the processes – but God, I miss you, Chessie. Every time I see his horrible little face, I think, ‘Chess would know how to handle this. Chess would know what to do.’
I know you need time and space and I respect that (I mean, I know it might not look like it, considering all these letters, but I promise, I do). But when you’re ready… it would mean everything to me, just to hear your voice. Please call me??
All my love, to the end of the universe and back again,
Sadie xxx
Every week, I slid my letter inside one of the romance novels I’d bought for her –Honey and Spiceby Bolu Babalola,Second First Impressionsby Sally Thorne,Iris After The Incidentby Mina V. Esguerra – and sent it off.
But Chess never replied.
And with every week of silence, I became more and more convinced that I’d lost the one person who I’d thought would love me forever.
APRIL
Chapter SixteenJonah
One chilly Thursday morning, a week or so after Easter, I took a coffee down to Sadie in the community garden and found her standing, arms crossed, frowning at her veggie patch.
She spent an hour or so in the garden each morning before we sat down to get stuck into the next of our fifty-two lectures,45and I brought her down a coffee every day. Normally, she barely looked up. I’d get a ‘Thanks, Fisher, appreciate it,’ maybe two seconds of her attention as she worked out the best place to balance her enormous mug, and then she’d go right back to what she was doing while I made a hasty escape, lest I think too hard about the image of her on her knees.
Not this time, though. ‘Something wrong?’ I asked her, handing her the mug.
‘Not wrong, exactly.’ Her breath was coming in little white puffs. ‘I just don’t have enough room for everything I want to do, that’s all. The plot’s too small.’
Sadie wrapped both hands around the mug, taking a sip. ‘I’ve got so many ideas for this section’ – she indicated the last bare strip ofdirt in the patch – ‘and they’re all tripping over each other. I’ve got decision paralysis, and I need to get over it before the ground gets too frosty.’
She shook her head, trying to get a stray piece of hair out of her eyes but clearly not wanting to let go of her coffee in the frosty morning air. I wrestled with myself for a few seconds before I said, ‘Can I…?’
‘Can you what? Oh, sure.’
Trying to be as businesslike as possible, I stroked the loose section of hair behind her ear. ‘What if we went plant shopping together after work? I don’t know shit about plants, but I do know shit about vegetables, so maybe I can help you narrow it down. I could see if Fi will let us borrow her car.’
Sadie thought about it, then nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘Great. Breakfast in about fifteen minutes, by the way. I’m making those corn fritters you like, so don’t dawdle or they’ll get cold.’
