Mathematical Science Building, but now he enjoyed passing by it and even felt affection for its pebbled exterior and its rusting I-beams, considered avant-garde in 1972. Lee often missed his old ground-fl oor office in this building, with the slender floor-to-ceiling pane of glass by the door so that privacy was impossible, although at least then he’d been spared his current fastidiousness about the angle at which he propped open his door. That old offi ce also had a fl oor-to-ceiling window in its rear wall, and because he had been on the ground floor, the grass seemed to grow right to the pane. Esther would sit cross-legged on the floor, staring out at the squirrels. There had been a time, when Esther was six or seven, that Lee had taught an evening class three times a week, and Aileen had bought a hot plate for his office, and then every evening at six she and Esther arrived with a pot of something, Irish stew or goulash, and after reheating they all ate together off Tupperware plates. That had been happiness, he knew now, the three of them cross-legged in an intimate circle, Esther in some sort of plaid jumper that Aileen had sewn and thick cable-knit tights, thoughtlessly talking away, thrilled to be in his office. As a younger child, she had even been happy to sit in his calculus class, in the back, with a coloring book. He had probably never thanked Aileen, perhaps never even noticed her tenacity in maintaining a family meal. At the time he had probably thought it was only her duty.
Now his old building housed the Department of Romance Languages; Mathematical Science had moved to its new building, or “facility,” in 1987. The new building, called contemporary by the school administrators, to the naked eye shockingly cheap, with curved hallways in colors like “shell pink” and “mint green” and strange, unnecessary circular and triangular holes cut into second-story walls to look down on the cold “atrium” full of shivering, leaf-shedding fi cuses, had been built around a vast computer center at its core and intended as the strongest manifestation of the school’s new commitment to computer science. In truth the building had loomed like a folly, by the minute growing grimier and less used and more dated, until the fresh windfall of alumni funding that had enabled the triumphant hiring of Hendley, in 1993. Then the building’s shabbiness and laborious A P E R S O N O F I N T E R E S T 39
whimsy had been reconstituted as the appropriate background tribute to Hendley’s good-humored self-sacrifice, in consenting to join the department. Lee had never been comfortable in the building, beneath the incessant harsh whine of its arctic fluorescents, along its right-angleless halls, in which, at least for the first year, he was constantly lost. Doors to the outdoors and to restrooms opened only with the swipe of a magnetized card that Lee always forgot in his desk, as if the Mathematical Science Building were top secret, vulnerable to dark espionage. Lee’s new offi ce, where he eventually shared his left-hand wall with Hendley, had an untethered quality to it, each surface seeming not solid but more like the taut skin of a drum. When large delivery trucks passed the building, he would feel his fl oor tremble.
It startled him to see a policeman stationed at the door to Hendley’s office, although he understood it must be to prevent any tampering with the crime scene. Now that he was inside his building, he felt less placid than he had while outdoors. As he passed down the pink hallway, an oc-tagonal window at the far end framed the crown of a tree. Outdoors, spring had been sweetly indifferent to the disasters of man, but from this vantage the budding branches Lee saw appeared frozen in postures of horror. It must be the youth of this building, Lee thought; not enough had transpired here for the palimpsest theory to work. From its cold lobby tile to its dirty skylights, the place was all about
Now his old building housed the Department of Romance Languages; Mathematical Science had moved to its new building, or “facility,” in 1987. The new building, called contemporary by the school administrators, to the naked eye shockingly cheap, with curved hallways in colors like “shell pink” and “mint green” and strange, unnecessary circular and triangular holes cut into second-story walls to look down on the cold “atrium” full of shivering, leaf-shedding fi cuses, had been built around a vast computer center at its core and intended as the strongest manifestation of the school’s new commitment to computer science. In truth the building had loomed like a folly, by the minute growing grimier and less used and more dated, until the fresh windfall of alumni funding that had enabled the triumphant hiring of Hendley, in 1993. Then the building’s shabbiness and laborious A P E R S O N O F I N T E R E S T 39
whimsy had been reconstituted as the appropriate background tribute to Hendley’s good-humored self-sacrifice, in consenting to join the department. Lee had never been comfortable in the building, beneath the incessant harsh whine of its arctic fluorescents, along its right-angleless halls, in which, at least for the first year, he was constantly lost. Doors to the outdoors and to restrooms opened only with the swipe of a magnetized card that Lee always forgot in his desk, as if the Mathematical Science Building were top secret, vulnerable to dark espionage. Lee’s new offi ce, where he eventually shared his left-hand wall with Hendley, had an untethered quality to it, each surface seeming not solid but more like the taut skin of a drum. When large delivery trucks passed the building, he would feel his fl oor tremble.
It startled him to see a policeman stationed at the door to Hendley’s office, although he understood it must be to prevent any tampering with the crime scene. Now that he was inside his building, he felt less placid than he had while outdoors. As he passed down the pink hallway, an oc-tagonal window at the far end framed the crown of a tree. Outdoors, spring had been sweetly indifferent to the disasters of man, but from this vantage the budding branches Lee saw appeared frozen in postures of horror. It must be the youth of this building, Lee thought; not enough had transpired here for the palimpsest theory to work. From its cold lobby tile to its dirty skylights, the place was all about
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