He’d been thinking of the conference in England for a long time. Not because of the subject matter, Victorian Literature, which he’d been teaching for too long and now found boring, but because there was a woman going to the conference with whom he thought he might have a chance of making love. They’d exchanged several passionate emails about their interest in literature and several that included details about the difficulties of a long-term relationship. From this, the man had derived a narrative, a story for the woman and himself, one that included passionate love making.
The man was no longer in his relationship, and the woman still was, which made the ethics thornier. But the man concluded, from her fascinating emails that the matter had already been decided, and he’d won or at least they’d test out their love making at the conference. In those emails, they’d talked about the books they loved, Dickens, the Bronte sisters. Though, for the man, his love was actually in the past tense. But when he was writing to her, he pretended as though it was in the present, his love, which is one of the things he loved about her, her ability to make him feel as though he still loved literature.
The conference was a quiet affair, held in Yorkshire in an old manor house. There were several large oaks on the property, which glowered over muddy looking grass. When the man arrived, he sent an email to this woman, asking if she’d meet him later in the day. Then he checked his phone, waiting for a response. When nothing appeared, he felt himself becoming increasingly agitated, wondering if she was now reconsidering making love to him or not, which was something he hadn’t prepared for. He’d only come to this dreary manor house in hopes of their affair.
During the morning session, the man sat several seats away from the woman, hoping to communicate, by his distance, that he too was having reservations about their meeting. In fact, he hadn’t even told her that his long-term relationship was over. He had this secret knowledge and could feign disinterest.
The rain was beating at the windows. In fact, as he sat there, he began to think that perhaps he too had lost interest in the affair, and he found himself thinking of his longtime girlfriend fondly, in a way he hadn’t in the last few months they’d been together. She’d have already responded to his email. They’d already be down by the river, complaining about the damp and the cold. He found himself almost hating the woman, who had led him astray, made him think he didn’t love his longtime girlfriend, enough to board a flight and arrive in this dreary weather.
Just then, he received a reply to his email. Of course, the woman said. Let’s sneak out after this ends. Looking forward to it. He now remembered what he’d liked about the woman, who seemed more attractive again, four seats down from him, the wan light catching the contours of her face. He’d made the right decision, after all.
After the meeting, the two of them walked down by the river or was it a brook? He didn’t remember the difference. There were starlings knifing through the air. They stood on a small bridge that crossed over the river, talking about the conference, and he realized, quite quickly, that they were not going to be making love. The woman was talking about her boyfriend and a job she was applying for in Columbia, Missouri.
He didn’t live in the Midwest. He lived in northern New Jersey. All this time, he thought, he’d assumed they’d been building a bridge toward one another, she’d been thinking about applying to a job in the Midwest, debating really, as she stood there next to him, walking through the merits of the position or staying at her current job. And he suddenly remembered how often her emails had included questions about jobs, questions about her career, all of which he’d answered but not paid attention to because he was certain that the subtext was about them, about their possibilities of meeting and perhaps making love.
He understood that his thought patterns had been mistaken. He was not the character in the novel he thought he was, Heathcliff or Edgar, the woman, as he’d pictured her, lying awake nights trying to decide if she wanted to make love with him and betray her boyfriend. No. He was more like someone in a Dickens novel to her, a minor character in the hero’s journey of her life.
And wasn’t that the central tension of Wuthering Heights anyway, the inability to cross over the threshold from one mind into another? There was only the great distance between them, Catherine and Heathcliff, and the moor.
Finally, the woman excused herself, and he looked across the water and the mist, which was pouring over the distant mountains. He wondered why it was so hard to figure out what people were thinking. He’d spent his life as a literary scholar, tracing the thought processes of authors and characters, gaining access to them. Decoding. And yet, he knew nothing. He looked at the starlings in the branches of the oaks, and he thought it was probably better to be a starling than a man.
He walked back on the muddy tracks, the mist rolling behind him, wondering what else he’d gotten wrong, what else he’d misunderstood, he thought of calling his longtime girlfriend, of apologizing for his leaving. He’d tell her how he had just discovered he’d been in the wrong story, the one he’d been telling all his life.
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Andrew Bertaina is the author of the essay collection, The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place (Autofocus 2024), and the short-story collection, One Person Away From You (Moon City Press Award Winner 2021). His work has appeared in The ThreePenny Review, Orion, Prairie Schooner, Witness Magazine, and elsewhere. His work has been athologized in The Best American Poetry, The Best Microfiction, and listed as notable in three editions of The Best American Essays and as a special mention in The Pushcart Prize anthology. He has an MFA from American University and more of his work is available at andrewbertaina.com
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Rejection Letters 