Saving Things

Yesterday, the department chair, Charles Sully, threw Lucie under the bus again, giving her two days’ notice to organize a recruiting talk for the Marine Biology undergraduates. Now, he’s insisting on another meeting this morning.

Despite Lucie’s recent promotion to Associate Professor, Scully treats her like a post-doc. And it’s petty, but when the new slide-in plastic nameplate for her office door finally arrived, her name was misspelled. Her name, her grandmother’s name, is Lucie, not Lucy.

She’s reviewing the slides for her lecture when an email from the department secretary at McGill lights up her inbox. Her ex-partner, Michael Sumner, is dead. Fifty-nine years old. Beloved husband of Claire and father of Brianna and Stéphanie. Humorous, collegial, and an outstanding mentor to his students. What else could they say? Irresponsible, philanderer, abuser.

The affair was a tragedy but not as terrible as her father dying of mesothelioma—all those years working with asbestos insulation. If her father hadn’t died that spring, if she hadn’t been so full of sorrow, would she have run away with Michael that June, seven years ago?

The alert on her phone rings. Time to get to Sully’s office.

“You’re late,” he growls. His shaggy beard and high forehead remind Lucie of the portrait of Melville in her copy of Moby Dick. She perches on the low folding chair before his desk like a schoolgirl in the principal’s office.

“First things first. The news about the death of Michael Sumner this morning. Sorry. I didn’t know him as well as you did…”

She flushes. Sully knew about Michael here at Dalhousie? Well, departments are small, and people gossip. She shouldn’t be surprised but the way he is staring at her is off like he’s making some kind of decision.

“But that’s not why you’re here. I’m assigning you the first-year biology course starting in January. Your teaching portfolio is thin for an Associate Professor.”

Thin. Really. Since she began to teach five years ago, she’s picked up more lower-level courses than any other staff. Endless batches of first years bullying her for higher grades. “That’s not fair. I’m more than qualified to teach 300 and 400 series courses.” Her tone is high-pitched and whiny, the opposite of how she wants to sound. 

“It’s not for discussion and what about tomorrow’s lecture? You’re prepared?” His lips tighten as though he’s suppressing a smirk.

“Of course.”

She feels the same uneasiness she had around Michael—all those edgy criticisms. She sits up straighter in the chair and stares past him at the pretentious painting of the fully rigged, tall ship hanging above his desk. Be agreeable. “The sooner the undergrads consider graduate work the more likely they are to commit to further study. A postgraduate program is essential to advancing the research of any department.”

“You’ve been enjoying the advantages of having PhD students,” he says steepling his fingers under his moustache. “All those first authorships.”

Her heart slams about inside her chest as he scans her face for a reaction. “I stand by the roles I’ve had in all my publications,” she replies coolly. But is she missing something? Has someone complained?

“It’s my responsibility to ensure the ongoing academic integrity of all the members of this department. You’ve been warned,” he says waving his arm towards the door.

She gets up, forcing herself not to run, not to trip over her self-doubt.

“Expect to see me at your lecture tomorrow. I’ll be evaluating the presentation for your teaching file.”

The news of Michael’s death and Sully’s insinuations have shaken her. That afternoon at coffee, she confides in her older colleague, Deborah.

“I’ve worked so hard. Teaching. Research. I deserve a medal for running all those 100 and 200 series courses.”

“Patience, girl. How old are you, mid-thirties? Already an associate professor. I’ve been here for two decades, stuck in an adjunct position,” says Deborah. “Undergrads around here get more respect.”

Lucie nods. “The Canadian abstract deadline is coming up. I’m behind with the analysis of my Bottlenose cortisol data. And I got stuck with that last-minute lecture at lunch tomorrow. Did Sully ask you to present?”

“Yes, and I told him no. I’m not at the stage in my career where I need to impress anyone. He’s not bullying me.” says Deborah, applying lipstick.

Lucie stares at the tan lipstick smudged on the corner of Deborah’s upper lip but doesn’t know her well enough to mention it. She’d sound paranoid if she mentioned Sully had implied she was stealing her PhD students’ work.

Lucie picks up her coffee cup and papers. “We’ll be late for the staff meeting.”

It’s evening and Lucie meets her boyfriend, Sam, at the local pub. He’s a speech therapist, who works with hearing-impaired kids. Sam is five years younger than her, newly thirty. But at least he isn’t one of her students.

They share some french fries. She nibbles four of them—Michael’s voice in her head—Don’t want to get fat, do we? But all his controlling didn’t work. He’s dead. She hasn’t told Sam about Michael or the hold he had over her during the nine months of their affair. The house band starts.

“Come back to my place. We’ll talk?” Sam signs as he licks the foam from his beer off his upper lip. “Friday night sleepover?”

He’s teaching her American Sign Language and Lucie loves it when they practice. She shakes her head and signs back, “I love you.” He’s allergic to her cat when they sleep together, they go to his place.

Her signing vocabulary is fragile and she must think more carefully before she signs. When flustered, she forgets the gestures but she likes the idea of another way to communicate, to be better understood. “I have that lecture to give tomorrow,” she says, emptying her glass of house white. “I’ll come over after.”

“Walk you home then,” he says, frowning below the brim of his toque.

They walk past the flickering neon sign of their favourite restaurant to her apartment. Would Sam be more insistent that they move in together if she didn’t have the cat? For now, Pattie protects her from such a decision. Since Michael, she’s afraid of commitments, even to a sweetie like Sam.

Lucie lies in bed, watching the shadows playing on the dimly lit ceiling. Pattie’s purring competes with the clamouring inside her skull—thoughts of Michael and the vague threats from Sully.

She remembers the department’s December drinks party when Michael approached her. It was four o’clock, wet snowflakes slapping against the windows of the seminar room. 

“Hello there, Beluga-Girl,” he said. “Did your cortisol stuff get published yet?”

An electrical thrill buzzed through her. He knew her work. 

After glancing around the room, he ran his fingers through her hair. “Magnificent,” he said.

After that, nothing else mattered—the differences in status, their ages or his marriage with two teenage daughters.

Lucie oscillated between her infatuation with Michael and the misery of her father’s incurable mesothelioma. She had nothing left for her belugas, so that January, she quit her PhD.

Nobody tried to stop her from quitting. If one of her grad students wanted to quit, she’d do something. But nobody helped her. Not Michael. Not her thesis supervisor. Not her parents.

But her brother, Jake, did try. “Dad’s death is messing with your mind. Michael is a middle-aged, stagnant academic looking for a thrill. You’re a striving PhD student starved for attention. Don’t quit. Don’t go with him.”

It was June when she moved with Michael to Victoria where his former Ecology department welcomed him back. He promised Lucie there’d be orcas and humpbacks to study. He promised her she’d be more successful than she could ever be in Montreal. She believed him.

The weeks passed in Victoria and the relationship soured. She couldn’t find an academic job and worked as a server. She was clumsy and forgetful—the wrong temperament for the job. Michael mocked her stories of spilled drinks and broken plates. “Get a real job.” But she failed to find one.

That summer, on her birthday, he gave her expensive sunglasses from MEC—cool and perfect for ocean research. But then, he told her that his first affair was when his wife, Claire, was pregnant with their eldest child. Lucie yanked off the glasses, stunned by the satisfied look on his face. “Joy robber.”

Since she left Michael, Lucie’s resisted an urge to contact his wife, Claire, and the two daughters he’d abandoned—to apologize for the shabby adventure. Instead, she found the courage to approach a Dalhousie prof, a kind man now retired in the desert. She begged him to supervise the final two years of her PhD. The Beluga data set and her publication saved her sorry ass. She was lucky to get back on track and she’s not going to let a creep like Sully push her off.

She’s thirty-five now, too young for a full professorship but getting old for other things, like having a family. Since Michael, it’s difficult to trust anyone, even Sam.

She takes a sleeping pill and crawls into bed. She rubs the special place behind Pattie’s tufted ears as he burrows under the comforter beside her neck. Eventually, she falls asleep.

At the auditorium, Mary Cosset, the department administrative assistant approaches her. “Sully’s cancelled the usual dinner for the presenter—too expensive for an internal speaker. And he’s grumbling about the cost of the sandwiches and coffee I ordered for lunch.”

“I’m on Sully’s shit list. Hope this lecture will get me off it.”

Mary smiles as she reaches over and straightens the collar of Lucie’s blouse under her blazer.

This morning as Lucie made her latté, Michael was right there, his voice in her head. He’d been a jerk but taught her how to make a great coffee.

“Good job, Lucie.”

You’re dead, Michael. Leave me alone. I’ve got a presentation to give.

“Sure. But Sully’s on to you.”

What does he mean by that?

Lucie scans the auditorium—about seventy-five students, more than she’d expected. For sure, they know about the free food. She’s skipped more of these lunch lectures than she should have. She could have learned more about the department’s dirty details at these events. 

Sully’s chatting in the front row with his deputy, Winchester—ignoring her and everyone else. 

After his introduction, she adjusts the height of the microphone and begins. “First, a bit about belugas from my McGill years.” She starts the video of her research team in orange survival suits in a Zodiac tracking a beluga pod in the St Lawrence River. There’s the clip of her launching the blubber biopsy dart from the crossbow. Her first time. There’s a gasp from the students at the thwack of the strike and the dark blush of blood washing out from behind the dorsal fin. She’d been terrified she’d hurt the whale.

“Now on to the big guys. North American Right Whales are critically endangered. Less than three hundred and fifty left.” Michael’s voice interrupts her. “Tackling Sully’s research, eh? Bad choice Lucie.”

Lucie highlights the summer when seventeen Right whales died in the Gulf of St Lawrence from entanglement or ship strikes. “Our group’s research convinced the government to close the snow crab fishery and enforce slower shipping speeds. Cruise ship routes were changed. The docks at Charlottetown were deserted.”

She senses the students’ interest and describes the acoustical tracking buoy network monitoring whale calls, showing their location in real-time. “You can’t protect whales if you don’t know where they are.”

Lucie licks her lips and clears her throat as she finishes. “Thank you for coming. I look forward to meeting you on campus.”

Sully presses his lips together in that weird way again. He is smirking. He approaches the microphone. The students are fidgety, looking at their phones—likely eager to get out to the lobby and into the food.

“Dr LeBlanc, thank you for your presentation.” He continues. “We’re a small department, small teams cooperating in the labs, in the field and on the research vessels. I’d have appreciated a little credit for the Right Whale research you’ve presented today but nevertheless, I look forward to your next contribution to this lecture series.”

Lucie squeezes her fingers into fists at her sides. She had referenced his research, but she hadn’t agreed to more lectures. She needs to escape before she does something regrettable. She glances at Mary.

“I’ll bring a sandwich to your office,” Mary says pointing her down the hall.

It’s six o’clock and dark outside. Lucie is at her computer combing through her presentation. Had she forgotten to mention Sully? Everyone is attributed even that pre-med student who showed up for one week that summer. She’d included pictures of all the team members—the vessel crew, the technicians, the students, the lab assistants, everyone. For sure, Sully was the Right Whale guy but all the stuff she presented was after his time. It wasn’t his work.

A text. Sully. Meet me in my office, now. Is he going to apologize for embarrassing her at lunch? She’s afraid of what she’ll say to him.

Sully gets up from behind his desk. He must know how rattled she is. “You’ve had a bit of a free ride here so far.” His pointy teeth flash below his moustache. “I’m wondering how we can get along better. Help each other out.”

She stops just inside the doorway. He reaches behind her and closes the door. Everything feels wrong.

“You think you would have been awarded that MEOPAR grant without my endorsement? Or your promotion would have happened without my influence?”

“Think about it Lucie. Both the promotion and the grant, with your experience.” Michael’s voice again. 

“Yes to both. I exceeded all the criteria,” she says staring at Sully’s piggy black eyes. But Michael did have a point. It was extraordinary.

“My girl, that’s only part of it. You do the bare minimum of committee work, cherry-pick the simplest research projects and ride on the backs of your students’ work. You’re not fooling anyone.”

“He’s on to you, Lucie.”

Lucie steps back as he approaches even closer. It’s not true. Or is it? There’s always more work to do in an academic department.

“Without my advocacy, the committee would not have approved your promotion.” He reaches and grips her forearm with his thick fingers. A worn leather belt slung below his belly is holding up his baggy jeans.

Her eyes water.

“You need me. You need to appreciate my support.” He leans forward squeezing her shoulder with his other hand.

He was too close—the smells of pipe tobacco and drug store aftershave. His shirt is untucked now, falling over his belly. Disgusting.

“Get. Your. Hand. Off. Me,” she says in her deepest voice. “I’ll scream.”

“Go ahead. Everyone’s gone. It’s just us.”

Rage strengthens Lucie. He steps forward to brace her against the door. She lunges forward and knees him in the groin.

He pulls away, staggering and groaning, “You bitch,” he gasps.

She yanks open the door and bolts down the empty hallway.

Lucie’s boot heels strike the pavement as she strides home across the poorly lit commons. She shivers in the wind blowing up from the harbour. She texts Sam. She’s not going over. She doesn’t want to explain why she’s upset.

She’s confused. She hasn’t done anything wrong but a person in Sully’s position could ruin her career in a moment.

At home, she showers, swallows another sleeping pill and crawls into bed beside the cat. As she drifts off to sleep, she hears Michael. “Being smart isn’t enough Lucie. It’s a complicated system.”

It’s Friday morning. Lucie strides with her head down through the crowded, blue-glass atrium of the Marine Biology building. She crashes into Deborah.

“Whoa, girl. What’s up with you?” Deborah asks.

Lucie bursts into tears as Deborah steers her into her office and sits her down on the small couch.

“Sully,” says Lucie wiping her eyes with her coat sleeve. 

“His name was on the work he’d done, and it wasn’t on anything he hadn’t.”

Deborah looks unsurprised as Lucie, trembling, describes the assault.

“We need to go to the human rights office,” says Deborah powering up her computer. “I’ll get the contact info.”

“It’s he said, she said,” Lucie says. “Sully’s the one with all the power here. They won’t believe me.”

“What he’s doing is wrong and there may be others, Lucie. You have to.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“You know he’s wrong.” Deborah pushes the tissue box across her desk. “Think of all the shit we’ve survived so far.”

“I don’t think I have the energy to start over again. To go where? Memorial? Back to McGill? Lucie snorts into the wad of tissues.

“When this is cleared up, it’s gonna hurt Sully more than you. The allegation of harassment is enough to stall his career.”

Maybe Sully knew Michael better than she thought. Deborah must know about her affair with Michael too.

“Sully’s, not a nice man. It takes courage to go up against this stuff.” Deborah hands her a mug of instant coffee.

Lucie’s teaspoon clinks as she stirs the clumps of Coffee Mate. Courage. The last time she summoned that amount of courage was the August afternoon in the apartment, the day before she left Michael, the day he found her plane ticket.

Michael pushed up against her and backed her against the window blinds. He spoke, massaging each syllable as though he expected her to repeat what he said.

“Go ahead. Leave. Try to pick yourself up. It won’t work.” He tapped his finger on her breastbone. “You’re unconnected. I’m the one who’s connected. He pulled his finger back and locked his eyes on hers. “I’ll make sure you never get an academic job again. Ever. Anywhere. I’ll make sure of that until I die.” 

Shaking, she wrenched her gaze free from his. The bare-branched ficus tree stood in the corner, dried leaves littering the parquet floor around it. She left him the following morning.