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Authors: Keith Scribner
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chair, whom he hadn’t seen since his interview last February, had asked him to come in for a meeting.
She could smell the lemonade in her urine. How would she tell him her nose was back? Olfactory pleasure had been their shared experience: he perceived and described; she summoned a memory, tricking her brain into sensation. She and Scanlon had been one. Now that she was wandering the world without him, drunk with lusty stimulation, she’d need to break the news in a way that didn’t make him feel that some old lover was encroaching on their marriage, a lover with whom she’d had a passionate connection that Scanlon himself was neurologically incapable of matching. To make matters worse, that old lover was standing between them, even as they kissed, and didn’t much like what he perceived of the husband.
“I don’t want to make a scruffy impression,” Scanlon said.
“You could shave it and forget the whole thing.” The oils collecting in his new facial hair had, in fact, amplified his scent.
“Screw that.” He combed over a bald patch on his jaw. “I can’t do my research if everyone suspects I’m from Connecticut.”
“But you
are
from Connecticut.”
“That’s a low blow,” he said, poking her with the comb.
Her wish that his scent was what she’d imagined for him—or else a pleasing surprise—weighed on her like regret. “But you still want to get back east as soon as we can, right?”
“We haven’t even been here a month. What’s your hurry?”
“I’ve had …” She was on the verge of telling him about her nose, but not now, not when there was tension between them. She took a breath and said calmly, “I just want to make sure the plan hasn’t changed. That your first priority’s getting the book out—not just entering lumberjack contests.”
“This is just for fun,” he said. “And who knows? Maybe it’ll lead to something that gets me going on a chapter.”
“So you haven’t started writing yet?”
“Let’s just focus on settling in for now. There’s a baby to birth, a nursery to paint.” He set the comb on the counter, inches from her nose. “Maybe you should rest today,” he murmured, patting her head, “and try the pool tomorrow.”
She took hold of his wrist and moved his hand away.
· · ·
That afternoon, he cut through the quad to the simple brick building that housed the Political Science and Sociology departments. FORESTRY was chiseled into a slab of granite above the front door. Inside, the building was quiet—a desolate, tumbleweed silence that only summer and Christmas break can bring to a campus. The polished floorboards squeaked with each step.
Although it had been thirty years since the Forestry Department left Blodgett Hall and moved to its sprawling new quad, a floor-to-ceiling painting still wrapped around the walls of the two-story lobby rotunda. On Scanlon’s left, young men depicted in clothes circa 1950 planted seedlings while others inspected their needles, making notes on clipboards. Beyond them, in a forest thick with ferns and moss, lumberjacks (two of them bearded) were felling trees beside a logging truck. Next to them, a saw mill and a pulp mill floated along the horizon like the Land of Oz, then a nuclear family stood arm in arm, their eyes cast up at carpenters nailing rafters atop the framing of their new home. Finally, curving over the building’s front door, stacks of newspapers rolled off a conveyer belt and led back to the beginning—a young man digging a hole for a seedling. The cycle of life, as clear as in grammar-school filmstrips.
The staircase was wide, chunky wooden steps with worn edges. The banister belonged in the mansion of a Victorian lumber baron. Deep turnings in the spindles, ornate moldings, relief carvings of trees and axes on the massive newel post. Repairs through the years—split moldings and a medallion that didn’t match—were all coated in thick layers of varnish. He squeaked to the
She could smell the lemonade in her urine. How would she tell him her nose was back? Olfactory pleasure had been their shared experience: he perceived and described; she summoned a memory, tricking her brain into sensation. She and Scanlon had been one. Now that she was wandering the world without him, drunk with lusty stimulation, she’d need to break the news in a way that didn’t make him feel that some old lover was encroaching on their marriage, a lover with whom she’d had a passionate connection that Scanlon himself was neurologically incapable of matching. To make matters worse, that old lover was standing between them, even as they kissed, and didn’t much like what he perceived of the husband.
“I don’t want to make a scruffy impression,” Scanlon said.
“You could shave it and forget the whole thing.” The oils collecting in his new facial hair had, in fact, amplified his scent.
“Screw that.” He combed over a bald patch on his jaw. “I can’t do my research if everyone suspects I’m from Connecticut.”
“But you
are
from Connecticut.”
“That’s a low blow,” he said, poking her with the comb.
Her wish that his scent was what she’d imagined for him—or else a pleasing surprise—weighed on her like regret. “But you still want to get back east as soon as we can, right?”
“We haven’t even been here a month. What’s your hurry?”
“I’ve had …” She was on the verge of telling him about her nose, but not now, not when there was tension between them. She took a breath and said calmly, “I just want to make sure the plan hasn’t changed. That your first priority’s getting the book out—not just entering lumberjack contests.”
“This is just for fun,” he said. “And who knows? Maybe it’ll lead to something that gets me going on a chapter.”
“So you haven’t started writing yet?”
“Let’s just focus on settling in for now. There’s a baby to birth, a nursery to paint.” He set the comb on the counter, inches from her nose. “Maybe you should rest today,” he murmured, patting her head, “and try the pool tomorrow.”
She took hold of his wrist and moved his hand away.
· · ·
That afternoon, he cut through the quad to the simple brick building that housed the Political Science and Sociology departments. FORESTRY was chiseled into a slab of granite above the front door. Inside, the building was quiet—a desolate, tumbleweed silence that only summer and Christmas break can bring to a campus. The polished floorboards squeaked with each step.
Although it had been thirty years since the Forestry Department left Blodgett Hall and moved to its sprawling new quad, a floor-to-ceiling painting still wrapped around the walls of the two-story lobby rotunda. On Scanlon’s left, young men depicted in clothes circa 1950 planted seedlings while others inspected their needles, making notes on clipboards. Beyond them, in a forest thick with ferns and moss, lumberjacks (two of them bearded) were felling trees beside a logging truck. Next to them, a saw mill and a pulp mill floated along the horizon like the Land of Oz, then a nuclear family stood arm in arm, their eyes cast up at carpenters nailing rafters atop the framing of their new home. Finally, curving over the building’s front door, stacks of newspapers rolled off a conveyer belt and led back to the beginning—a young man digging a hole for a seedling. The cycle of life, as clear as in grammar-school filmstrips.
The staircase was wide, chunky wooden steps with worn edges. The banister belonged in the mansion of a Victorian lumber baron. Deep turnings in the spindles, ornate moldings, relief carvings of trees and axes on the massive newel post. Repairs through the years—split moldings and a medallion that didn’t match—were all coated in thick layers of varnish. He squeaked to the
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