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Version Four
It
is not the girlfriend who has written the paper for the student; in
fact, it is the father of the student. He has written every single paper
for this son while he has been in college, and the papers are brilliant.
It started with the college essay on personal initiative, and he could
not stop.
For
whatever reasons—selfishness, spite, lack of money—the father was not
allowed to go to college. He will go now through his son; they are a
team that will graduate summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa; then
Harvard Law School. His son pleads to let him do just one paper; he's
tired of pretending to work on papers his father has already finished.
Just give him a chance! He will not mess up! Fortunately not doing papers
releases his son to spend hours studying for tests, which he routinely
aces. In addition, he has something of a photographic mind. When the
student studies in England, the father sends the assignments by e-mail.
The
trouble comes when the father starts working ahead, planning the courses
a year ahead of time. Some courses, naturally, require specific assignments,
although by obtaining a copy of the syllabus the father can usually
guess, can approximate so that he need make only minor adjustments,
saving time for extra credit. And a course like creative writing is
a dream! He sends a story ahead of time, in a special file for later.
It is the girlfriend who opens it, looking for pornographic letters
and messages from earlier girlfriends. She is depressed, spending a
teary night trying to locate her boyfriend at his youth hostel. The
phone rings and rings, and she weeps. Earlier she went to a party and
threw up. She does not feel at all like writing, and Professor X never
gives a person a break, not a single one. She does not believe in inspiration.
Just write, says Professor x. But what if the story's crap? What if
there are much more important matters happening in your life? Nonsense,
Professor X always says. Nothing is more important than your writing.
In the early morning hours the girlfriend returns to the story—she has
nothing presentable, nothing but I love you written over and over on
a tear-stained sheet—and gives the father's story to Professor X, with
no one the wiser.
This
situation does not cause a problem until a year later, when the father
is begging to find out what he received on the story .The student has
since discovered that his girlfriend has used the story and has tried
to come up with excuses—unusual assignments (which the father produces),
too many re-writes (which the father happily does)—but has no compelling
response for his father's plea for extra credit. When the father finds
out what has actually happened, he is outraged! There has been an order—a
methodology—to his son's education, something akin to holy rites. He
and his son have worked together for something, and now the slutty girlfriend
has used one of the best efforts! He does not know what to do he is
so irate. He walks up and down in his office, banging his forehead,
throwing small objects. That girlfriend will be history, although his
son doesn't know it yet: much too unstable for the father's plans. And
the gall that she has dirtied something so beautiful between father
and son, between two parts of a perfect whole! So overwrought is the
father as he thinks more and more about the situation that he drives
four hours to see his son in person.
He
arrives on the campus and takes his son to a very nice restaurant—orders
merlot, filet mignon, even dessert—leading up to what the son already
knows: he will turn that story in to Professor X! The son pleads; he
begs; and he turns the story in.
He
is accused of plagiarism, and there is a hearing with the Dean.
The
father forgets what the issue at hand is, so caught up is he with the
girlfriend's deceit. They are all sitting there: the Dean, the girlfriend,
the girlfriend's parents, and, of course, the son and the professor.
After Professor X explains the circumstances of the situation, the father
breaks in and confesses that he has written every single paper of his
son's college career, that the slutty girlfriend would never have it
in her to produce such admirable work. He questions Professor X's judgment
in thinking this girl could be capable of such brilliance, when he spent
two solid weeks polishing every single sentence. He copied stories of
William Trevor by hand just to be inspired!
Everyone
in the room is silent.
"Well,"
the Dean says in his typical officious way, looking around the stunned
circle, "I guess that about covers it." He thanks Professor
X for her efforts, says good-bye to the girl and her parents, then asks
the father and son to stay so that they can work a few matters out.
Version Five
The
student is in the girlfriend's room—her roommate home for the weekend—and
he thinks his girlfriend is asleep. The night they met, he was so drunk
he would have slept with anyone. Presented with another such situation
in a few months, he knows he will sleep with somebody else.
He
is restless, snooping through her belongings. Finding her diary, he
immediately starts reading, noting with satisfaction that the entries
are about him. Finally he calls up one of his friends on his cell phone.
They are talking, and it is one of those late-night moments when you
reveal what's closest to your heart. He glances over at the bed and
continues the conversation. She hears him say, "It's not like I
would marry her or anything." She closes her eyes as tightly as
she can to keep back the tears. He pauses, answering an obvious question.
"Somebody smarter."
She
cannot believe that this is happening; they are soul mates. Her grades
are not as good as his, it's true, but they are like reflections of
each other in every other way—looks, tastes, sex—and she loves books,
as he does, in the way that most undergraduates find ridiculous. It's
just that at a certain point she loses interest in school itself, or
her own plans don't coincide with syllabi and fourteen-week schedules.
She gets so interested in one subject that she neglects another; her
cat dies, and she can't attend a crucial review session and even the
exam. But she accepts these facts about herself. Once you don't see
school as a life or death situation, you just live your life, she has
tried to explain to him. He doesn't understand.
Take
Professor X. The grades she received from the professor were erratic:
Cs and As. Sometimes she did assignments in an hour, and sometimes she
spent days rewriting, skipping every other class, drinking pots of coffee,
writing as if she would die if she did not write a perfect story for
Professor X. She understood that Professor X was puzzled by her performance,
as many other teachers were. Sometimes she could get an A on everything
in a course, but usually it was the other way: the everything or nothing.
So
it is now. Her heart, which has held everything for him, now holds nothing.
In a moment the call is over. He gets into bed with her and wakes her
up by making love to her. But now she is pretending; she is already
plotting how to get him where it will hurt him most. She smiles, and
he drowsily thinks she is pleased by their marvelous sex life. She will
get him to turn in one of her stories to Professor X.
Later,
when he has received his zero, she asks him how smart he thinks he is
now.
Version Six
Professor
X grades the story and does not notice anything is wrong. Professor
X is finally losing it; her memory is not what it used to be. The professor's
husband is dying of cancer, and the only other time she was this distracted
was years ago when her babies were small, and she showed up at work
with curlers in her hair.
Yet
the student thinks that Professor X is plotting some outlandish punishment.
He waits for this catastrophe, and in fact he seeks it out. He follows
Professor X. He peeks inside her campus window and waves. She waves
back. She is, after all, beloved, although it' s a little creepy to
see this student quite so often—every time she looks up from her computer
or a phone call. He is in the cafeteria when she gets lunch and offers
her a piece of baklava from a local sweet shop. He even shows up at
the hospital one day, after she hears the terrible results about her
husband. He has six months; she has waited too long to retire.
Her
husband is still with the doctor when she walks into the hall and goes
to get a cup of coffee. She cannot see for a moment and steadies herself
against the wall. Groping her way down, she finds the coffee machine
across from the elevators. Her student is there by the same machine.
She tries to be cordial:
"Do
you work here?" Her hands are trembling, and she's having difficulty
finding the exact change in her purse.
But
the student rails at her, banging the coffee machine with his fist,
wanting her to notice him, Goddamn it! Didn't she know that story was
plagiarized? Didn't she do her job, for God's sake? Didn't she know
that all he thought about was her? Didn't she know that he had waited
for years to do just this—get her attention—and she had denied him,
had graded him like all the others, treated him like all the others?
Professor
X backs away. This cannot be happening. Not today. When she collapses
and faints, the student cuts off a piece of her hair and wears it pinned
inside his shirt. The police find a shrine to Professor X in the student's
apartment, along with the professor hung in effigy.
Version Seven A
The
student calls up Professor X five years later and confesses to plagiarizing
the paper. He has become a priest, he says, and he is making his way
clean in the world. Professor X expresses her surprise—at the plagiarism
and the priesthood. She thought he would become a writer. He says he
has difficulty putting a sentence together.
Version Seven B
The
student calls up Professor X five years later and asks for a letter
of recommendation. Professor X, who has been haunted by this plagiarism
case and has been so outraged that she has lost sleep over it, says,
"Not on your life." She says everything she wishes she would
have said five years earlier. The student hangs up and commits suicide.
Professor X never knows, happy in her own righteousness.
Version Seven C
She
writes the letter and explains the situation: that the student plagiarized
and she cannot live with the original grade she gave him. The student
is never accepted to graduate school and ends up working as a manual
laborer. He works so hard that he eventually owns the company and becomes
a millionaire. Occasionally he chuckles when he thinks that he was once
an English major.
Version Seven D
She
writes a glowing letter, and the student has to live with his own conscience.
Version Eight
Shortly
after retirement Professor X is invited to be on an education panel
on standards and morality .She is on Oprah preaching tough love.
The former girlfriend practically chokes on a tuna fish sandwich as
she watches the professor. Her boyfriend—Mr. 3.85—had stolen her story
and laughed, knowing that Professor X would think that his girlfriend
had stolen it from him. For a long time she had not known that her boyfriend
had used people in just this way: to get whatever he wanted. When she
had the abortion, he wept with her, their tears all over each other's
faces, but two weeks later she caught him kissing her roommate.
What
does she have to lose now? She calls the Oprah show and exposes
Professor X and the student as frauds. Finally Oprah has to call for
a commercial break.
Version 9
Professor
X, frustrated that she cannot pursue the case, decides to write a story
about it. She will call it "The Plagiarist." As she writes,
she finds it is the easiest story she has ever written; she writes for
hours, she is intoxicated by the story, and in a way she thanks these
students for giving her this conflict to work through (although, as
she always tells her class, you would always rather have your peace
of mind). A little boy dies in a swimming boy, she tells her class.
Don't be afraid to go where your heart takes you, even if you don't
want to go.
This
story is not so tragic: just a small morality tale. Still, the story
becomes well known; it becomes anthologized; it becomes a classic. Professor
X is surprised; she simply wanted closure to an event that irritated
her like a scab.
She
is also surprised by responses to the story. Critics ask her why she
has given the boyfriend and girlfriend brown hair. Are there some ethnic
implications? Most of the people she knows have brown hair, she replies.
Why England? She knows more about England than other countries, she
says, although for the story's purposes, she could have chosen Italy
or Spain.
Some
people are surprised that she can speak about her students negatively.
She is astounded. She loves her students and is closer to some of her
students than she has been to most people in her life; she has loved
being a teacher even more than being a writer because she has been able
to link souls with her students, something profoundly rare and precious.
That's why she is so bothered by this case; that's why she has had to
write this story of the heart.
She
is surprised by the calls she receives as well: about ten. All these
students think the story is about them. They are, after all, beautiful
and have attended the school of Professor X. She is surprised because
as she wrote she made a composite of students, as she has always done
when she cited a student example in her classes, and then the story
became something separate from them all. Writing, caught in the force
of her language, held in the caressing arms of her Muse, she drew upon
what she knew about students in general—so many students have written
about foreign places, so many have been to England and France. She has
not known, however, that so many cheated.
Most
confess; two are angry; one wants to sue her. She has no idea who the
last student is, only that the awful words keep coming over the phone
wires. He plagiarized a paper on Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and
he never thought she knew. Yet those references to England gave her
away. When did she last teach that novel? Twenty years ago? She is trembling,
as the student goes on to point out the brown hair she used as a cover,
since he has blond hair. Admittedly, he says, his girlfriend at the
time didn't help him cheat. Still, these are insignificant details.
What gives you the right to plagiarize my life? he yells. Aren't writers
the biggest plagiarists of all?
She
hires a lawyer and gets a new number. Meanwhile, she does not hear from
the students who inspired the story.
Version 10
She
has retired, and she is walking in the parking lot to her car when she
sees someone out of the corner of her eye. So many times she sees former
students these days that she decides that it is a trick of her mind—like
a series of ghosts, all these young people who walked through her life
for four years. Since her husband died, she finds that she has difficulty
keeping things straight, and she realizes how much he gave her besides
love: order, beauty, balance. She weeps too often and has difficulty
writing, but she makes herself do it every day. In fact, in the months
following her husband's death, it's the one thing that saved her, since
her children had long ago moved away, and she realized how true the
advice she had given her students had always been, once she really had
to put it to the test.
Yet
sometimes she just needs to get out and see people. It makes her feel
good to be on the campus again, to see her colleagues, to have lunch
in the cafeteria. On other days, though, it's as if students from all
the years she ever taught wait to be recognized, wait for something.
She does not know what they want. It happens suddenly. A hal1way is
dark, and in a swirl of shadows the past is superimposed on the present.
She half-pictures a conversation she had fifteen years ago. Happy with
the enthusiasm of the moment, she enters this space that for her meant
so much: the exchange of ideas. She'll lean forward to answer the student's
question—see the earnest face, the sweep of red hair—and the student
will disappear into nothing. Has anyone seen? She looks around and shakes
her head sadly, frightened that this situation has happened so often.
It
has just happened in the English Building, and she feels discombobulated.
She has hurried out into daylight, which is not bright at all, on a
faded Friday afternoon. Still the contrast startles her. It will be
good to get home—read, write, take a nap, watch the news, the quiet
order that now makes up her life. Yet she misses the drama of those
earlier days, when she had a role, however small, in what happened to
people. Even all the paper grading and the occasional cheating have
a rose-tinted aura about them; she laughs, knowing her colleagues would
think she was crazy, when she has so much time to write, to think, and
to dream.
Hearing
footsteps she turns, and suddenly she is sure she sees that student
who plagiarized that story about the literary figures in England. He
is walking out of the English Building. Did someone tell her that he
was working as an adjunct? That he loved the school so much he wanted
to come back? Was he the one who was so hard on his students that it
was amazing the students flocked to him? Or was that somebody else?
What
will she say? And what is his name? The leaves are rustling above her,
and this time of day—late afternoon—always has the quality of a dream.
She
turns, and he turns. He has a glossy black BMW; all the students on
the campus have beautiful cars, and it is fitting that he, with his
sleek dark complexion, would have this particular car, like an extension
of himself. Then she remembers he is not a student anymore. Certainly
he did not buy that on his adjunct's salary! She smiles in spite of
herself and waits.
It
is at this moment that he is certain that he is looking at Professor
X. When he left the building a minute ago, he was caught by the fragile
gestures and thought: Is it? Could it be? Even though he has been teaching
at his alma mater for a few years now, part time while he's finishing
his doctorate, he hasn't seen her for years—in fact, not since the class
he took with her.
His
heart blooms.
The
night before his fateful assignment was due, he was looking at his girlfriend's
story for inspiration. His mother called, telling him his father had
been in an accident. His mother's voice had sounded lost and strange,
and he told her he would be home in a few hours.
In
the years following, he has always thought, Why didn't I tell Professor
X the truth? She would surely have understood, would have worked out
a new deadline for him. Instead, in a blur he retyped his girlfriend's
story, making minor changes. Leaving instructions for his roommate to
turn the story in, he went home, dazed, forgetting to stop at red lights,
stopping at green lights, so that it was a miracle he arrived home at
all.
His
father was fine, although his car was totaled. As soon as the student
got home, he ran in the door, embracing his father in a way he hadn't
done since he was a child. His father wept, saying My beautiful boy
over and over, weeping in his hair. With relief the student went back
to school the next day and on the way back was already trying to think
of what he could do to retrieve the story. But he could think of no
reasonable explanation, even given the circumstances.
So
he waited. And what was strange was that he always thought—and still
thinks—that she knew and didn't say anything. Did she hear about his
father's accident? He doesn't think so. He prefers to imagine that she
knew that this act was so unlike him that he would use the rest of his
life to show her—and himself—the truth.
He
has. He is a very good teacher, difficult and demanding, but he hopes
that in the crucial instance he will know when to show mercy. He still
remembers how proud his father was when his son received a prize for
his honors thesis, and it still sits in the drawer of his father's night
stand.
Even
though he hears that Professor X now talks to herself in the hall and
knows that some people always felt she was hard on them, he is inspired
by her and in love with the idea of her. Probably the real person has
little to do with what has been essential for him to believe in; even
so, he has always carried her, like a badge of honor, upon his heart.
She
is smiling. He leans toward her and smiles back. Then he pauses. What
is there they can say after all?
They
are held there in the fading light, not sure of where they could possibly
begin.
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