Free Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 05 - The Maltese Manuscript by Joanne Dobson Page A

“Opening reception of what ?”
    “Of the crime fiction conference. I’m serving as escort for our guest of honor, Sunnye Hardcastle.”
    “Oh, Women’s Studies. I suppose…Well, just don’t make a habit of it, Karen. Teaching comes first. And remember,” he said vaguely, as he wandered off, “your tenure decision comes up next year….”
    The chill migrated to the pit of my stomach: Bastard! “Remember your tenure decision,” indeed! As if I could forget it! Asshole! Pompous son of a bitch!
    My conference paper was completely drafted but needed fine-tuning. I thought I’d take the morning to slash clichés that had weaseled their way in despite my vigilance: gender binaries; cultural construction of identity; patriarchal power structures . I assumed that by four o’clock I’d have this sucker honed to a razor point, ready for a knock-em-dead delivery first thing tomorrow morning.
    Peggy Briggs was seated on the floor outside my door. No, Peggy , I thought. Not now! She saw me and slapped shut her dog-eared paperback, sliding it into her canvas backpack. “I know you don’t have office hours today, Professor,” she ventured, levering herself up. “But I hope it’s okay for me to talk to you.”
    I swallowed my sigh; there went a prime chunk of revision time. “It’s fine, Peggy. Come on in.”
    She shifted her backpack from one hand to the other. “I work in the library every day until just before my classes. It’s hard to make your regular hours.”
    “It’s all right. Really.” I dumped bag, briefcase, and coffee cup and hung my coat on the rack. Peggy sat down on the green chair, on the very edge of the seat, as if she felt she had no right to occupy the entire space. She wore a royal-blue ski jacket, the down kind with rows of horizontal stitching every three inches, and the puffy strips bulked out her already stocky body.
    “I want to apologize for missing class yesterday, Professor,” she said. “You see…I fell asleep in the closed stacks.” That was as honest an excuse as I’d ever gotten from a student: I fell asleep in the closed stacks . No dead grandmothers. No life-threatening gynecological symptoms. And, indeed, as always, Peggy did appear exhausted, her skin pasty, dark circles beneath her eyes.
    “Don’t worry about it,” I said. I’m a patsy for a student’s hard-luck tale. “It could happen to anyone.”
    Peggy began to say something further, hesitated, then gathered up her courage. “I don’t know what you know about me?”
    I couldn’t imagine an opening like that leading to anything I wanted to hear. I tried to swallow yet another sigh. “Why don’t you tell me what I need to know.”
    The plastic coffee-cup lid resisted my fingertips. I cast a yearning glance at my briefcase.
    Peggy balanced on the six inches of chair she had allowed herself. “Five years ago my twin sister Megan was murdered by her boyfriend.”
    “Oh, Peggy!” The top popped off the cup. I forgot about Miles’ vague threat. I forgot about the speech.
    My student’s eyes brimmed with tears. “He was abusing her. One week she’d have a split lip, the next, a black eye. Once he even broke her arm. I kept trying to get her to leave, but she was so afraid of him. Said he’d kill her if she left. Finally I found a battered-women’s center and talked Megan into going to their safe house. He tracked her down. He shot my sister right in front of her four-year-old daughter. She died on the spot.”
    “I’m so sorry!” Suddenly Peggy’s outbursts in class began to make sense. Of course the literary exploitation of violence would disgust her.
    She was practically whispering now. “I keep thinking that if Megan hadn’t listened to me, she’d be alive today.”
    “Peggy, there was no way you could have known.”
    That seemed to be what she wanted to hear. She slid back in the chair and let her body slump. “It changed my life, Megan’s death—working with the Women’s Center, talking