usual buffer of his parents and an occasion like Christmas or graduation, it had been hard to know how to greet Julian. He’d wanted to hug him, something he hadn’t done since Julian was a pre-adolescent, but sensed the desire wasn’t mutual. He patted his shoulder instead.
“Dad’s going to be all right,” he said, “but it’s good that you could get here.” Julian had been at the beginning of his Afghanistan assignment then. “How are things?”
“Busy. You?”
“Oh, fine—busy.” He searched for something more to say as the silence dragged out. Then, inspired, he’d blurted, “Hey, one of my grad students is a portrait photographer on the side.”
“Yeah?”
“I thought you’d find that interesting. A lit major who’s also a photographer.” He knew he was trying too hard, knew his eagerness would be plain on his face. He was one of those people whose expressions translated every thought, every emotion as it happened.
But Julian wasn’t looking at him. “Sure, interesting,” he’d said.
“So … are you getting a lot of work?”
Julian nodded. “Too much.”
Julian was making a name for himself documenting human tragedies, people who were victims of governments, of bureaucracy and neglect. That day, Mitch had stood there next to his mature, experienced, world-traveler son and for the first time felt just slightly lesser in comparison. A strange feeling—chagrin and pride and envy, none of which had any place in a Miami hospital ICU ward when a man they loved was lying ill a dozen feet away—and yet there it was.
“Good that you could get here,” he’d said again.
Before he found the nerve to call Julian a few weeks later, to ask for his help with Lions, he’d tried to anticipate all possible objections. There was Julian’s lack of interest in the subject matter—Hemingway, Julian had declared once during a Thanksgiving dinner at Mitch’s parents’ home, was too depressing. And Faulkner, God, spare him from ever reading Faulkner again! Even back then, as a sixteen-or seventeen-year-old, Julian hadn’t wanted to read about problems, he’d wanted to read about solutions.
Then there was the lack of funds from which to pay Julian very much beyond basic expenses, and his fear that his low-pay offer could be interpreted as disregard for the value of Julian’s skills, given how Mitch had so steadfastly resisted Julian’s photojournalism career choice. In Mitch’s limited experience, Julian was an emotional minefield and, while he didn’t blame him for it—blamed himself, in fact, he also didn’t relish treading there with no detector.
So when Mitch finally did place the call, he did it after two shots of whisky, then rushed through his pitch, making the project sound as appealing as possible, braced for resistance, for disdain. That he’d gotten neither was still difficult to believe.
He was both anxious and eager to see Julian, to spend some quality time with him, as the saying went these days. He was both anxious and eager to get the project underway, to open people’s eyes to the joy and value of literature. But … suppose Lions didn’t ultimately win the interest of PBS. Suppose he invested so much—his time, his money, his ego—only to see the door slammed in his face.
He stood up and went again to the window. There were worse things than rejection, worse things than disappointment. But he’d had enough of both.
A knock on his open door startled him, and as he swiveled toward the door, he stumbled slightly and reached for the bookcase for balance.
“Mitch!”
“I’m fine,” he said, holding off Brenda McCallum with a raised hand. “You surprised me is all.”
“You looked—”
“No, really, I’m fine. See?” He did a few soft-shoe steps on the bright Cuban rug to prove he was not about to end up as her husband had last April, in this very office. Craig McCallum, fellow professor, best friend and biking buddy, had suffered a brain aneurysm and died on Mitch’s small sofa while they’d all waited helplessly for the paramedics to arrive. Today was Mitch’s fifty-first birthday; Craig had been just fifty.
Brenda continued to watch him. “I saw your door was still open. Aren’t you running late?”
“Yes, but they won’t start without me,” he joked, and gathered the books he needed for the morning’s ENG 620: The Twentieth-Century Novel. His fifteen graduate students, if they were all in attendance, would be seated around the conference table, most with their noses buried in The Age of Innocence because they’d failed to read all, or any, of what was to be discussed today. His late arrival would not be troubling.
Brenda was frowning at him. “What’s going on? You look funny.”
“Thanks for that vote of confidence.”
“You know what I mean. Odd.”
“Really, nothing at all. Just lost in thought. I’ve been on the phone with a guy in Key West, about how to shoot part of the Lions pilot there at the Home and Museum. I’ll fill you in later.” He squeezed her shoulder and nodded for her to precede him to the door.
She took his hand. “Mitch …”
“Why don’t we get lunch when I’m done?” he said, letting her keep hold for a moment longer. “I’m in the mood for barbecue, how about you?”
In part because he was so distracted, he devised an exercise for his students that would take most of the class period. While they sat in groups of three or four outlining literary elements in the novel and discussing possible intentions, he stood at the podium thinking about Brenda. Things were warming up between them, certainly. If he was ambivalent, well, that was to be expected. She was not only Craig’s widow; she was the head of the English department. As his friend Tony had put it, if Mitch wasn’t careful, Brenda could easily have his balls in a sling.
Better, maybe, to think about Hemingway.
After thirty years of teaching, Mitch knew his ideas about literature weren’t going to change the world. Oh sure, he’d managed to impress his colleagues a time or two or three, he’d won teaching awards, he’d set at least a dozen students on the path to respected literary scholarship. He’d also faced down a handful of annoyed students over the years who demanded to know what the point of it was. Who cared about evaluating whether Hemingway’s prose was more effective than Faulkner’s? What difference did it make that Hemingway had a tough time as a soldier, that even with the respect and awards—a Nobel for literature, for God’s sake, plus the devotion of a forgiving wife (or four), he’d pointed a shotgun at his head and killed himself? What about what was happening to ordinary soldiers now, friends of theirs, in Iraq in the nineties, in Afghanistan and Iraq again today?
He’d nodded his agreement. He’d said, yes, my son feels this way too. There was no convincing some people—or he was not persuasive enough to convince them—that they would find their positions right there in the texts if they just gave the books a chance. Wharton, Hemingway, Faulkner—they had it all: passion, romance, existential questions, the human condition imbued in every story. “Give it a chance,” he’d say. “Give me a break,” was the answer he usually got. Or, what Julian had said that day some fourteen years ago: “Get a life. That’s what I’m going to do.”
But what Julian hadn’t understood then was that not everyone was interested in, or equipped to travel, his chosen path, either. Some people were spotlights, some were reflectors. The world needed both. Yes, he’d pushed Julian too hard at the time, he saw that later. He’d been too passionate, too single-minded, hadn’t recognized that Julian was so much like him—and still was. Just not in the ways he had wanted him to be.
Well, he’d mellowed. Which didn’t mean he was any less passionate about literature’s relevance. Literary Lions grew from his urge to demonstrate that relevance in a new way … and, if he was fully honest,