Read Online Either Side of Winter by Benjamin Markovits - Free Book Online Page B

reaching conclusions that surprised him, assumed ‘A.’ was Anne, a woman he had been friendly with in the first few terms of his graduate course in Biology at NYU. They had parted awkwardly enough at the time, and had not seen each other for the better part of two decades – that is, for almost half their lives. Still, something about the writing must have suggested her to him; for they had exchanged more than a few letters in their day. He had plenty of time to sort through his memories of her, as he bought his coffee and made his wet way along 83rd street eastwards and uptown towards the subway.
    Anne Rosenblum was one of those Vermont Jews he used to know plenty of in college, arty and conventional both, well read, and handsome enough in a broad-shouldered way, unless it was only the shawls and cardigan collars banked around her neck. A countrified complexion, good-natured brown eyes, dry curly hair mostly twisted into a bun. He had always liked her: a straightforward girl underneath the rather self-conscious Bohemian wrappings, with a sharp mind and an affable gossipy manner that required none of the delicate insinuating condescension with which Howard habitually addressed most women. (And, he had to admit, most men as well as he got older.) Indeed, something about her struck him as manly – a certain bluntness, or intellectual vigour – and he remembered a phrase he used at the time (to her, in fact) to describe the effect of her company: ‘You always take me firmly by the hand.’ The analogy upset her, perhaps he intended it to: it suggested the rather hail-fellow-well-met manner of a woman unsure of her sexual charms. He suspected she was cleverer than he (a painful admission), but consoled himself with the thought that she lacked his reserves of discipline, of disinterest, of abstemiousness. Qualities by which he hadhoped to prune himself over time into a simpler, more functional shape.
    And in fact she dropped out of the Ph.D. programme in her second year to become a writer; a betrayal of her parents’ expectations she had spent much of their brief acquaintance worrying over and planning. But she never told him when she packed her bags – he remembered being surprised at the time. Occasionally, and more and more recently, he came across her name in the Science section of the New York Times . She wrote mostly about matters relating to genetic engineering (the subject of her aborted dissertation). And though these articles signalled success after a fashion, he remembered her well enough, he supposed, to know that such work fell short of her ambitions. She wanted to write plays – and to spend her literary life trading off neglected studies must have effected a painful coming down in her own estimation. The phrase pleased Howard as he thought of it, suggested to him the careful way we back down an unsteady ladder.
    By the time, however, he found his seat in the train, it occurred to him that he must have taught any number of Rosenblums in the past ten years, even an Aaron, an Amy. A few Hasids at Columbia stepped on with their dirty locks and ashy black coats, heading for Washington Heights. It was far more likely that some student, lately gone to college, or indeed the mother of some student, had written to thank him; or rather, to mention some recent success. A number of his kids had gone on to become doctors or professors, and liked to credit him for inspiring them, etc., to go one better than he had. The week after Thanksgiving was just the time you might expect to get such letters: two months into freshman year, or med school, after the first decent holiday, the first chance to reflect. It rarely pleased him, to be honest, such self-promoting gratitude; and it wouldn’t, to be blunt, surprise him to hear it coming from a Rosenblum. They tended to possess a rather odious sense of the honour of the teaching profession – not uninfluenced by the fact that teachers stood atthe gateway of their parental