Better Deeds Than Words (Words#2) (31 page)

“Deal,” she agreed.

The relief I felt after Cara left the Arbor Room was so palpable, I had to share it with Aubrey. An email wouldn’t suffice. I went to the Hart House quad, eager for some fresh air. Without hesitating, I dialed her number. She answered on the third ring.

“Well, hello there, handsome. The rules have gone right out the window, I see?”

I let out a huge breath. Was it possible I’d been holding that lungful of air since two o’clock?

“You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve had a stressful day. I—well, to be honest, I just needed to hear your voice. I’m sorry if I’m putting you in a difficult position.”

“It’s okay. How did your tutorial go?”

“It was fine. But I called to tell you that I met with Cara afterward. She just left, actually.”

“Really? Shit, you didn’t confront her, did you?”

“No, I didn’t. We had a scheduled meeting to go over her paper one more time before Friday, but I think it’s safe to say that we have an understanding. I’d be amazed if she said anything to anyone. Seriously. Put it out of your mind.”

“I have no idea why you’re so confident, but I have to admit, I think you’re right. I can’t imagine her throwing you under the bus. She may hate me, but she really likes you, and if she wanted to get at me for whatever reason, you’d end up as collateral damage if she reported us. I don’t think she’s prepared to sacrifice you to hurt me.”

“Well, that’s piqued my curiosity. What the hell are you basing that comment on?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Oh, no you don’t. No secrets.”

She paused, and I listened to the dead air.

“Aubrey?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Look, there have to be exceptions. What if it’s a secret that can’t hurt you? There must be
some
things I’m allowed to keep from you. You seem to know something about Cara that you’re not telling me.”

“But that’s different. It would be a conflict of interest. As a TA, I can’t tell you what I know.”

“Oh. Well, if you want to put it that way, then as a
student
I can’t tell you what
I
know. But I promise this secret can’t hurt you. In fact, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. It’s your turn to trust
me
, now. Do you?”

I rubbed my eyes in frustration, but I was also strangely intrigued. I had to believe she wouldn’t withhold important information from me again, especially if it could affect my reputation or academic career.

“Yes, poppet, I trust you.”

“Good. Then it’s decided. You’ll find out soon enough. Until then, you just need to have some patience.”

“Patience? I’m really beginning to hate that word.”

“Do your best, okay, sweet knees?” she asked.

“All right. Look, I should go. Will you email me later? Something to look forward to while I’m marking?”

“Of course. I’ll drop you a line after dinner.” I heard her take a deep breath. “I love you, Daniel.”

I closed my eyes as her words washed over me.

“I love you too, sweetheart. I wish I could come over there right now and show you how much.”

Tell me I can. Please tell me I can come get you and take you home with me—

Aubrey interrupted this errant thought, grounding me firmly in reality. “You can in fifteen days,” she said. “I can be a slow learner, though. You might have to show me
several
times.”

Oh, you can count on that.

Chapter 20

All’s Well

Our wagon is prepared, and time revives us:
All’s well that ends well; still the fine’s the crown;
Whate’er the course, the end is the renown.
(
All’s Well that Ends Well
, Act IV, Scene 4)

I H
AD
M
IXED
F
EELINGS
as I walked to Hart House for the final Friday tutorial. We’d been through a lot together as a group, especially with the loss of Mary at the beginning of the term. These Friday tutorials had been the highlight of my week for months now, and I’d be sad to see this group go. This feeling was compounded ten-fold as I sat at the table with everyone.

“Well, here we are. Our last tutorial, then one more class and you’re finished. How do you feel?” I quickly took attendance before settling back in my chair.

“Weird,” Trina said. “I can’t believe I’m almost done with university.”

“I remember that feeling,” I said. “The thought of entering the real world was so terrifying that I decided to stay in school. I may never graduate.”

This wasn’t a joke. Sometimes the doctoral process seemed interminable.

“I don’t think I could afford to get my master’s, even if I wanted to,” Vince said. “I’m so in debt.”

A few people around the room nodded in agreement. Aubrey looked sideways at Julie. No knee tapping today. Perhaps they’d made a pact to be more discreet than usual. I noted the weariness in her eyes. She’d mentioned a potential all-nighter in an email the day before. The end of semester crunch was taking its toll.

“The sooner we get this tutorial over with, the closer you’ll be to finishing.” I flipped open the text and scanned my notes. “Let’s start with genre.
All’s Well that Ends Well
. Comedy or tragedy?” I opened the question up for debate. The answers were predictable.

“Neither.” This from Shawn.

“Both.” Neil’s rebuttal.

“Neither and both,” I mused. “That’s an interesting dilemma.”

Julie frowned. “I don’t know—it’s like Professor Brown was saying today, it’s a problem play, right? I suppose that’s part of the problem, trying to pigeon-hole it.”

“I agree, Miss Harper. It is hard to categorize. It’s neither a typical tragedy, nor a definitive comedy.”

“I came across some interesting critiques in doing my paper,” Aubrey said. “Shakespeare might have been experimenting—trying out a new form or structure when he wrote this. The themes and ideas he’s exploring in
All’s Well
predate some nineteenth-century drama—with female protagonists pushing the envelope and the conclusions of the plots being open-ended. Audiences back then didn’t care for the headstrong female.”

Even when she was wiped out, she was still able to rise to the occasion.

“You’re absolutely right, Miss Price,” I said. “Jacobean audiences found Helena too forward in her comments about sexuality and her frustration with the lack of control over her own fate.”

Aubrey’s tired eyes came alive with enthusiasm. “Helena does seem to set a precedent for Ibsen’s heroines if you think about it. Even Strindberg’s and Chekhov’s female protagonists. Shakespeare was so ahead of his time in his thinking.”

This was another thing I’d miss about tutorials—seeing Aubrey’s mind ticking over during these discussions. This was the last time I’d get to watch her in action.

“So, Shakespeare’s not a misogynist, Miss Price?” I asked.

She shook her head, eyes sparkling mischievously.

“I’m so glad he’s off the hook. And you make some excellent points.” I looked around the table. “That’s one of the reasons you don’t see many staged productions of this play. In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, Helena was a very difficult character to sell. Many critics still don’t buy the way the king and the countess characterize her as wholly virtuous given the things she says and the way she uses the bed-trick to fool Bertram into consummating their marriage. She’s a perplexing character, especially on paper.”

“Daniel, are you saying that this play isn’t fully realized until it reaches the stage?” Aubrey looked at me with a cheeky grin. I’d never forget this line—the basis for our first clash of opinions.

“Yes, Miss Price. I suppose I
am
saying that, and this time I don’t think I’ll let you talk me out of it. It takes a very fine actress to reconcile the two distinct aspects of Helena’s nature—her quiet virtue and her willfulness and sensuality—but, done properly, the play works much better on the stage than on the page.”

Aubrey may have had a ready rebuttal, but she didn’t have a chance to share it because Shawn elbowed Cara and said, “Hey, Cara, it’s that thing you were talking about yesterday. What did you call it?”

Cara scowled at him. Apparently she didn’t want to share. I wondered if she’d shown him her paper. She’d made some insightful sociological observations about the relationships in
All’s Well
. Did I dare ask? Oh, what the hell. Last chance to have a little fun.

“Something interesting you could share, Miss Switzer?”

“Go on, Cara. Tell him,” Shawn said. “It
is
interesting.”

“Well.” She looked reluctantly around the table. “From a sociological angle, you’d call it the Madonna-whore complex,” she said.

“Hey, I’ve heard of that,” Vince said. “A lady in the streets, but a freak in the sheets.”

I shot him a look. He really seemed to enjoy courting castration. Trina sat up. She ignored Vince’s comment and looked at Cara.

“Right! Feminists argue that it’s wrong for women to reject their sexuality because it validates the societal view that a woman who is comfortable with her sexuality is a slut, right?”

“Yeah, basically,” Cara said. “Sexuality is one of the layers that should be, like, integrated into her personality. If you say a woman can only be sexy in private but she should be all lady-like in public, that creates this thing, it’s a sociology term, a
bifurcation
of her identity, so she can never really be herself.”

Around the table, jaws dropped as, one by one, Cara’s classmates struggled to come to grips with the fact that she’d just used a couple of four-syllable words and seemed to know what they meant.

I wasn’t surprised. We’d had several discussions about sociology in the last couple of weeks, and I was becoming aware that the girl wasn’t stupid—she just didn’t intuitively understand Shakespeare and exacerbated the problem by disguising her literary ineptness as ditziness. But Julie and Aubrey were stunned, looking as if Cara had just told them that the world
was
flat after all.

I glanced at Shawn. He was giving Vince an I-told-you-so look. Perhaps he’d also discovered that Cara’s brain wasn’t
actually
pea-sized. Cara clamped her mouth shut, seeming to have surprised herself in addition to everyone around the table.

“That’s a really astute comment, Miss Switzer,” I said. “This sociological lens you’ve been using to examine Shakespeare’s works is an effective analytical approach. And, yes, a feminist lens works really well here too, Miss Collins.”

“I don’t know about all that,” Lindsay said. “All I know is the characters are weird. I don’t get why Helena wants to be with that Bertram guy even after he’s so nasty to her. She’s sorta lame.”

“It’s no different than a girl having a major crush on a guy and seeing past all his faults because she’s so infatuated,” Julie said.

Lindsay shrugged. “Whatever. I still think it sucks that he’s forced to marry her and it’s not till the very end that he sees that she might be worth his time.”

Cara turned to look at Lindsay. “Sometimes guys are so dense, they totally can’t even see what’s right in front of them.”

Lindsay smiled and raised an eyebrow. Shawn rolled his eyes and swatted Cara’s hand. How entertaining. Out came the dirty laundry, and thank the Lord, for once it wasn’t mine.

“And they had sex for the first time without him even knowing it was her! He honestly thought he was with that Diana woman. That’s the most unromantic thing ever,” Cara said, this time responding, true to form, by seizing on the romance angle.

“Maybe that’s why she’s still into him at the end, though,” Vince suggested. “She does say he was great in bed.”

“God, shut up, Vince! You’re such a knob,” Trina complained.