Character Flaw (491 hits)
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Submitted by Coyote (View user info) at 2005-07-17 18:35:36 EDT
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All morning I've been imagining how badly my afternoon writing seminar is going to go, but the worst of my Starbucks-fueled forebodings have failed to prepare me for the no-holds-barred awfulness into which it has so quickly degenerated. My students are examining their fingernails with almost comic intensity and shooting furtive glances at each other out of the corners of their eyes. No one knows quite what to say about the piece that my most enthusiastic, least talented pupil has submitted for open discussion this week.
In fact that's not precisely true: one of the jocks here to fill a humanities requirement thinks Nicky's story is the bees knees, but he's not about to say so, not with his girlfriend practically radiating contempt for the piece as she snaps her gum aggressively.
Nicky Hansen himself is squirming in the atmosphere of ominous foreboding that builds further with each moment of embarrassed silence. Or maybe he just has to go the bathroom. Sullen at first when my request for opinions failed to produce a shower of praise, then embarrassed, he has already lapsed into a seething rage that has no outlet. He glares at me from beneath his drawn-together brows and if looks could kill, my ex-husband would be happy to find alimony payments struck off his list of financial obligations.
It's not normally my policy to fill the uncomfortable silences in my seminar with the sound of my own voice. For one thing, it's too much like letting the students off the hook, something I try to avoid on principle. For another thing, there's my increasingly absurd belief that in each class may be an undiscovered burning talent, a diamond in the rough waiting to be discovered; if the next Bellow or Pynchon can't think of anything to say about a piece, what light could possibly be shed by an untenured junior adjunct professor at a tiny state college who hasn't published a story in seven years?
The hell with it. No one in this seminar, myself included, is ever going to do anything that will be noticed beyond the county line. Not now that the school restricted access to the clock tower, anyway.
"Nicky, I'm sensing some uncomfortable feelings from the class regarding your story. I think it's possible that the subject matter may be preventing some of us from making a clear analysis of the piece." There are nervous giggles from around the table, but no one says anything, or even meets looks in Nicky's direction. I decide to forge ahead like the intrepid scholar I am.
"As a class, as readers, if we want to get to the heart of Nicky's story we have to look beyond the incestuous rape and necrophilia, and identify the basic elements of characterization, voice, and plot. Now, Nicky, it seems to me that your story is largely character-driven, would you agree with that assessment?"
Nicky mumbles something that might be "Yeah," and although he doesn't look up from the table any longer than necessary to shoot me another killing glance, I can see his cheeks are flushed with embarrassment. Or perhaps, it occurs to me belatedly, arousal.
Since this opening hasn't led to the hoped-for exchange of constructive criticism, I continue. "Okay, now, in a character-driven story it's not always necessary for the reader to empathize and identify with the main character. But as an aspiring writer just starting out, it's probably best to start out with characters that somehow connect to people. Especially when your piece is so lacking in distinctive voice and original plot."
Nicky is gripping the edge of the table so hard his knuckles are turning white, and I think I can hear his teeth grinding. The students on either side of him, a bland screenwriter-wannabe with a bad goatee and a plump, taciturn young woman with a safety pin through her lower lip, are throwing alarmed glances at each other and inching their chairs away from Nicky's place. It's not clear whether he's choosing to rise above my critique by ignoring it, or whether he simply can't find the words to express his reply. Based on the attitude and lack of talent he shows in his writing, my bet is on the latter.
It's too late to back down, and too early to simply wait for the end of the class period, so I decide to favor young Nicky with a few more choice pearls of wisdom. "Your story seems to exist solely as a vehicle for the protagonist-- if I can call him that-- to extract terrible vengeance on all the women who have been wronging him all his life. Now, let's leave aside for the moment the plot holes and the unnecessarily graphic necrophilia scene, and focus on character. He's one-dimensional, and he moves one-dimensionally: he doesn't develop, he doesn't learn anything, he feels nothing but rage and the satisfaction of revenge."
"He's the hero. He triumphs." Nicky bites off the words and spits them at me.
"But there's no drama. We don't have a reason to care about him, and we don't have a reason to care about his victims. Clearly with so much at stake and so much death, you're aiming for tragedy and not comedy. What's missing is that in every tragedy the characters overcome obstacles of one kind or another but are ultimately brought down by a fatal flaw. Hamlet's indecisiveness, Achilles' pride. You know the list. But your guy, your hero-- there's no character flaw, he's just the good guy. His enemies, his victims, you don't show any of their character flaws either. They just get introduced, beg for mercy, and get disembowelled. Or raped. Or both. You haven't written a short story, Nicky, what you've written is a pornographic comic-book revenge fantasy without pictures."
"Yeah, next time draw some pictures," snickers the jock, at last unable to contain himself, and with that Nicky snatches up his backpack, crams his pristine copy of the story into it, and flees the room with a choked sob.
The rest of the class look at each other, then at me, then at the clock. I put my pen down and close my notebook, and there is a collective sigh of relief from the fourteen reprieved students. They file out the way you're supposed to in a fire drill-- quiet, orderly, and fast. The last girl to leave stops in the doorway and turns as if she's forgotten something; it's Isobel, the editor of the campus literary magazine.
"Ms. Parry? I just wanted to say thanks for saying what you did about Nicky's story. He submitted it to The Campus Review, and we didn't know whether it was new and cutting-edge or just plain bad. I mean, I thought it was bad, but now I can tell the staff we're definitely not publishing it. So, thanks. See you next week!" With a flash of teeth and a flick of her hair, Isobel is gone, and I'm left in peace at last.
When I head in to campus the next morning, I've already pushed away the memory of the least successful seminar of my teaching career. So thoroughly, in fact, that I stare over the rim of my coffee mug and out the window at the flashing lights of five police cars by the frozen campus pond for a good twenty minutes before the first uncomfortable twinges of guilt and fear start to prickle between my shoulder blades. That's way much commotion to be connected to so something simple like a drunken fratboy freezing to death. I know what it's all about. I shouldn't, but I do.
I tell myself it's to prove how foolish I'm being, but when I walk across the hall to Mike Lowry's office and ask him what the hell is going on over by the Lehman East dorm, I know it's just to confirm what I already know.
He stares at me like I'm a creature out of one of the obscure Norse epics he's made a career out of studying. "What, did your paperboy steal your car radio and then get electrocuted cutting your cable?" Mike likes to think he's witty. He slapped a hand on his desk to indicate the rather dubious student paper. "Hell, even the Drake has got the story. Homicide. Student. Isobel Alves-- isn't she in your seminar? She aced my course last year. It's a real shame." When Mike leans forward, all traces of his smile gone, he speaks with an uncharacteristically lowered voice. "From what I hear, it was a rape too, and they think it was probably another student. I don't know if they figure the townies just don't have the initiative to come on campus for that or what, but that's what they're saying."
My heart is pounding and my peripheral vision seems to be going all blurry and grey, until all I can see is one tiny section of the front page of the paper ("ODY FOUND NEAR P"), and I sit down heavily in the chair Mike keeps around in the vain hope that one of his students will stop by to discuss Beowulf with him some afternoon.
"You alright, Liz? Jeez, I can't believe you hadn't heard about it. It's everywhere. Stay right here, I'll get you some water, you don't look so good." With that, he's shuffling off down the hall, returning a few minutes later with a mugful of tepid, chalky-tasting water. I drink it down in a few deep gulps, and roll the empty mug between my palms. I hadn't expected the debate over Nicky's story, such as it was, to come to a close just because class had adjourned for the day, but never in my darkest moments had I suspected it would lead to violence. It's an English class for God's sake. Not even I take it seriously. My hands are trembling and I put Mike's mug firmly back on his desk to cover it.
He's gallant enough to glance over at his computer, pretending not to notice my sudden case of the shakes, when something catches his attention. He nods twice, decisively, and as he's turning back to me he's already sweeping his left arm across his desk to pile stacks of papers into his briefcase. "Email from the Dean. Classes cancelled rest of the week. Grieving period. Vigil tomorrow night outside Commons. I'm gonna head home, I can't stand to be here with all that detecting going on just across the way, it's morbid."
I still can't seem to bring my heartrate back under control, so I excuse myself to the ladies room, where I splash some water on my face and the back of my neck, and relieve myself of the coffee that's managed to work its way through my system with preternatural quickness. I take a moment to stare at myself in the mirror. I can't help but wonder what fatal flaw in my character has doomed my career to the point where not only do I end up untenured at this dead-end institution but my writing students rape and murder each other as a direct result of my tutorials.
The toilets on our floor are at the end of the hall, near the main entrance, so my path crosses Mike's again when I'm on my way back to what I've started thinking of as the safety of my office and he's on his way home to the feminist theory critic he's been fucking behind his wife's back. He grins and flips me a thumbs-up. "Enjoy the four-day weekend is what I say," he advised. "Oh, and you've got a student waiting in your office. Better you than me." With a parting wink, he pushes out through the heavy double doors, and I realize after they swing shut just how quiet the department is.
We don't exactly work ourselves to death out here at the state college; everyone's either already gone or not even bothered to come in. I consider the strong possibility that I'm the last staff member in the building, along with the equally strong possibility that the student waiting in my once-safe office is none other than Nicky Hansen. Mike never said there was a suspect in custody, and a murder-suicide was too much to hope for. Each moment I stand there in the hall I grow more certain that Nicky was waiting to attack me as he had Isobel; I'd put it down to woman's intuition if I didn't have a long and painful history of unbelievably bad judgment calls that put not only my intuition but that of every woman I'd ever crossed paths with into question.
I think about simply leaving, but then I think about the weather, and I also factor in my car keys nestled comfortably in my purse, sitting under my parka on the spare chair in the office. Faced with a choice between the probability of confronting a violently irritated student with a taste for necrophilia and a grudge against his writing instructor, and the absolute certainty of freezing to death, I opt for the office. Maybe I could snatch my coat and purse before he could react. Maybe it wasn't even Nicky. Right.
I stride into my office trying to project a confidence that I don't even remotely feel, and am absolutely unsurprised to see Nicky Hansen's backpack slung atop my coat, and Nicky himself pacing the small office like a hyena. He startles when he sees me in the doorway, and I jump too in response.
Instead of lunging for me, he hurriedly sits down and clutches his backpack to him like a security blanket, the way I've seen him do in class. This is an encouraging development, since thus far I've shown all the reflexes of a deer in headlights and am caught halfway between my car keys on the one hand and the door on the other. He's playing it cool so it seems a little undignified to bolt for the door. Instead, I collect my purse, get the nice solid desk between me and him, and sit down behind it.
My shoulder blades are getting that uncomfortable sensation on them again and I wish I'd had time to close the blinds so I'd be able to ignore the lights of the police cars flashing like Christmas decorations over across the pond. "What can I do for you Nicky?" I say, because it seems like something I've heard someone say once. There's a letter opener on my desk.
"Uh, hi Ms. Parry. I want to talk to you about what happened in class yesterday."
Somehow this taps into a hidden vein of professorial instinct buried deep within my psyche, because it occurs to me to say "With all respect to your writing, don't you think what happened over by the campus pond last night takes a little priority over the assignments I hand out in my seminar?"
His face flushes with color and his knuckles tighten on the straps of his backpack. He fumbles with the zipper and tugs it partway open before he answers.
"No, that's not right. That wasn't supposed to..." he trails off, flicks his eyes to the window, then back to my face, then back to his bag, and starts again. "You were talking about character flaws."
The backpack is bulging oddly and from the way he's holding it looks to be quite heavy. I wonder if Isobel Alves was shot or stabbed or strangled. Judging by Nicky's stories, it was probably all three. His right hand is creeping into the pack, and I can picture him curling his stubby, sweaty fingers around the handgrip of a pistol or the handle of a knife. I wonder what else he's got in there. Did he keep a memento from Isobel's body? The adrenalin is building up inside me and I know I'm going to have to either fight or flee real soon now. What with my imagination filling in all the details of the contents of his backpack of death, his comment about character flaws leaves me a little confused. Not so confused that I don't subtly put my hand on the desk and stretch my fingers out to caress the handle of my nice brass Colonial Williamsburg letter opener.
"Nicky, I'm afraid I just don't have the time to talk about this today. Something very tragic and horrible has just happened to one of your fellow students, right outside my office, in case you hadn't noticed, and I really need some time to gather my thoughts, and anyway, the college is officially closed today, so maybe you could just email me..." I'm babbling, not making any sense at all, because I'm hoping I can stall him or something, anything but to reinforce the connection between me and his utter failure as an author.
As it happens Nicky doesn't need any reinforcement at all, and stalling's not in his gameplan either, because he thrusts that creeping right hand deep into the pack and stands up as he starts to draw his weapon. He's not making too much sense himself, but I can hear him yelling "You want a character flaw? Well, here's a character flaw for you bitch!" and I can see my wasted life flash before my eyes.
When he stands, he's right up close to my desk, and it's a simple, effortless thing to stand up myself and bring my right hand around in a short arc that ends with the letter opener sheathed deep in the side of his neck and a thick river of blood gushing out around the blade. I fall back against my chair, trying to duck out of the way of his attack, but it never comes. I scramble away as he slumps first to my desk and then to his knees, and I can't tear my eyes off his suddenly pale face when he tears at the blunt brass blade that's shuddering with the beat of his pulse. His mouth is working soundlessly, and blood his flecking his lips as he tries with all his ebbing strength to speak.
He finally topples to the floor, out of my field of view, and I'm frozen in place behind my desk, waiting for him to spring back to life, attack renewed. Mike Lowry should be here to bring me a glass of water because as bad as I felt before, that was like having an orgasm compared to how I feel now. I stay huddled and silent, eyes focused on nothing, until a rivulet of blood creeps under my desk and spreads toward me. Somehow the movement shakes me out of my trance, and I have to see what he had planned for me.
I'm breathing in heaving, ragged sobs now, and I have a strange detachment that allows me to hear myself panting and notice that I sound ridiculous. I must be doing great though, holding up like a hardened combat vet, because I'm inching my way around the desk, gripping its edge for support with my left hand, holding a pen like an icepick in my right in case Nicky's only faking.
I need to know what he's got stashed in that backpack, what was the intended instrument of my doom. I can't think of any way to reach out and snatch it away from his still-clenched fingers without exposing myself to attack, so I stop to think until the look of surprise and frank stupidity on Nicky's face starts to make me nervous. His right hand is still thrust deep into the backpack in a tableau that reminds me of a weirdly inverted version of a scene from one of his stories.
There's nothing left but to quickly reach into the bag, plucking the contents of his hand from its lifeless grip. I feel a chill that has nothing to do with the weather outside because I can tell immediately that it's not a gun or even a knife. It could be an envelope filled with anthrax spores, but incredibly, unbelievably, horribly, it's not the weapon I was so certain of just seconds ago.
I smooth out the two crumpled sheets of paper, spotted with blood, on the floor. The top of the first page says: SCRIPT, in bold type. Beneath, I see a few lines of dialogue, 12 point Times New Roman font with one inch margins.
---
Me: Hi, Ms. Parry, I want to talk to you about what happened in class yesterday.
Bitch: Nicky! What more could you possibly have to say about your pathetic attempts at writing? Unless you want to drop my class of course.
Me: You were talking about character flaws...
Bitch: Yes, in tragic heroes. Or any well-developed character really.
Me: Well, here's a character flaw for you. You're an arrogant, lazy, selfobsessed bitch. Well I got news for you, you paranoid cunt: Writers ain't killers, stories ain't nothing but stories, and they ain't always about you.
---
I can't read any more because my eyes are filling with tears, and for some reason I can't think anything at all except the poor stupid dead bastard forgot to hyphenate "self-obsessed".
User Reviews
Submitted by Alter (user info) at 2007-09-26 20:33:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No, Comment.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-02 04:53:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Saw it coming, didn't matter.
Loved the last sentence.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-10-27 23:34:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I liked it too, in the end... I had nothing that weekend, until I killed off that bottle of Laphroaig.
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2005-10-27 21:19:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I really liked this post.