The Incoming Class

I knew Ansonia was working on a sensitive research project because my wife was the Head of Collections at the college library. I never spoke to Ansonia, nor she to me, the entire time she was there; near as I could tell she only ever talked to the other women in the group, and because they refuse to talk about her, I don’t think anyone else will ever know anything more about her.

 Of course that the women in the group never did talk to any outsiders, whether colleagues or even spouses, was something I only realized later, partly because the group isn’t made up of only campus faculty and staff: housewives, waitresses, business owners, one I’m sure is a highway surveyor for the state. I remember my wife would meet with some of the other women it seemed nearly two or three times a week, and though everyone knew they were always in touch with each other, no one seemed to know what they did at their get-togethers or what they talked about. Until I saw Ansonia that last night at the fundraiser, I’m ashamed to say I was entirely too self absorbed to wonder what they were doing, or to have noticed that they were doing something at all.

The Freshman Fundraiser is a grand event, a charity ball, complete with academic celebrities, auctions, speeches and a dinner comprised mostly of deserts, all on behalf of the incoming class. Yet despite the name there were never any actual freshmen present; the only person required to be there was the Dean of Freshmen, Yrev Bruto, a man many had found to be gruff and argumentative.

Thus very few people were likely surprised that evening when he could be heard over the pre-event dull murmur of voices and music in heated discussion with his wife. I was standing not far to the side behind Bruto, facing away and desperately trying to ignore him. But by the third or fourth exchange I, along with everyone else, was just beginning to turn my head when I saw Ansonia walk purposefully over to them, saw Bruto reach back to strike his wife, and saw him instead strike the intervening Ansonia.

I assumed I must have blinked against the thunderclap, briefly cringed in horror that anyone could do such a thing, let alone in public, regardless of the reasons or circumstances. But Ansonia barely seemed to move under the blow, and there was something about the way she seemed to straighten and stand yet even taller while everyone else drew back into the suddenly, even eerily silent room made me want to never even argue with my wife ever again.

And while Bruto seemed nothing more so than embarrassed at first, as I saw him get ready to speak I realized he would say nothing appropriate, if there were anything appropriate to such an occasion. But it was Ansonia who spoke first, and because I had overheard her speaking once or twice before, I could immediately hear something different in her voice: “To your gift I return in kind, from the time you leave my sight until you retrieve what you have given.”

I think everyone was a bit startled by her gravity and word choice, as if the neighborhood preschoolers at a birthday party began chanting sequential exponential primes instead of “Happy Birthday”, but Bruto barely spluttered before declaring he wasn’t about to leave his own fundraiser. He was incorrect of course, it wasn’t his or even for him, but his refusal made the other women in the group begin pushing forward through the crowd, nearly fully assembled behind Ansonia when she must have made some sort of signal I missed and they all stopped.

Then without taking her eyes off the offender Ansonia said, “The man who removes him shall have my trust.” I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant this time either, but I was certian whole thing was getting absurdly preposterous, and perhaps only because I happened to be already standing right behind him, I grabbed Bruto by the arm. Surprisingly he came along willingly and thankfully silently too; I think he realized he’s lost any sort of favor, position or social capital he might have had in that room. I took him to the side door where there wasn’t going to be a crowd and opened the door for him and followed him through. And this was when I saw Ansonia for the last time, because although clearly Bruto walking ahead of me before the door, it was surely she standing before me after the door swung closed. Ansonia winked at me without smiling and walked off into the night, apparently no one ever to see her again, no one willing to speak of her again.

When I returned to the hall there was no crowd tending to a struck woman because of course Ansonia wasn’t there, but strangely neither was there any of the hushed and halting gasping that accompanies the aftermath of these things. Indeed with the music restarted, Bruto’s wife taken to the bathroom or home and the remaining women of the group milling and murmuring once more as if nothing had happened at all. Yet because in this extremity it could still seem as if nothing had changed at all, I began to feel as if they of this Group were the collaborators, the insiders, the rule makers, and we few outside The Group, the real freshmen, might finally have gotten to come to our own fundraiser.

I did see Mr. Yrev Bruto again a few days later before they moved out of town. We passed on the sidewalk near the park, but upon slowing and recognizing each other he gave me such a haunted look I could find nothing to say. And after a pause he then turned away, running to catch up to his wife.