by Hadas Ashby
Great. He’s back.
It’s my professor, Elmhurst Rittenhause. I met him in grad school.
He taught creative writing and poetry at C.W. Post. He was a real fancy, real smart teacher.
At the top of his class at Yale, then Harvard. He had close clipped, salt n pepper hair, cynical dark eyes, and he was a very mature man – nearly 70. He was the poor man’s John Irving. Or Roth. And I was trapped in his movie.
The movie of us: me and him. The heated sultry fantasy only a loon could concoct. He must have daydreamed about me a ton. I could feel the vibe all the way to my split-level home in Brookville.
All aside, I loved Long Island. I really did. The big homes and CW.W Post University and Billy 
Joel. And the luxurious feeling you can only feel in summer; with all the New York uptown coterie of families returning to their mansions and pools, Gatsby style.
Rittenhause started this nonsense over the phone.
recommendation letter.”
I was transferring to Columbia U. switching from the cozy home of C.W. Post to the Ivy League. I wanted to study painting.
I checked my computer. There were 3 messages from Rittenhause.
Dammit.
Couldn’t he tell I hated him? Loathed his preppy sweatshirt from Yale. Despised his “aww shucks it’s just me” attitude. His sexist lingo, the enemy to any feminist. His belly from beer guzzling.
At one point, Rittenhause must have been a great man. You could see the remnants of handsome, around the forehead and the patrician nose. It was a serious nose. It was long. With a big bump. A WASP nose – though he claimed his grandmother was Hungarian Jewish. He told me, in his office, one night.
That was when I still adored him. Saw a brilliant and kind man. The good days.
I know him. He lives in New Hampshire.”
An equal opportunity teacher. Before the mood swings.
I typed an email.
“Stop harassing me.”
And not 56 minutes later, he replied.
“In your dreams.”
Huh?
Was he totally batty? Didn’t he know C.W. Post was completely liberal. That I could go straight to the dean with his email?
But I didn’t. On one hand, I was embarrassed. I worried that the TV news would become aware.
That all the catty conservative housewives of America would see me in the newspaper. And blame me like Monica Lewinsky and Anita Hill. I deserved it, they would say. I was the girl in the proverbial red miniskirt, that deserved to be raped. Etc.
I was caught “between a rock and the ocean,” my uncle used to say warmly “take your surfboard and float out with the current. Quick and easy.”
I dialed the dean’s secretary Alice.
“Elmhurst Rittenhause keeps calling and writing me.”
voice. I resented it. She wasn’t going to do shit. She was a lackey to, “The Man.” Stupid secretary. She probably wanted Rittenhause, herself.
I walked the campus of C.W. Post that night. It was so ravishingly pretty. The night. The rich kids. The village style of the buildings. The sleepy trees. This was the best of Long Island. This was my home, and I would never leave it, I decided. Not for a millions Columbia scholarships (and all they did was put me on the wait-list anyway.)
A year later, Rittenhause quit. Seven other female students had come forward with complaints and rather than the deal with the controversy, he just plain quit.
He changed his name, and moved to the city to teach at CUNY. I looked at the photo on the website.
Calvin Bright, he went by specializing in astrology, mythology, literature, and pretty.
His hair was totally white now. His dark eyes looked haunted and scared. And his shoulders were hunched, sadly. In defeat.
He looked like he’d lost someone deep that he would never got back.
I clicked on my email. It was my bespectacled boyfriend Solomon. Inviting me to sushi in New York. Downtown.
I smiled at myself, and brushed my long dark hair. Nails glossed.
“Yes,” I typed. “I will.”
I was free.
[Featured]Photography Image Credit: John Updike / Image 2: Janice Dickinson (characters from Rittenhause). ©Copyright 2015, Hadas Ashby.
Snapping Twig – Summer – 2015
Vol: May 2015 thru Jul 2015
Snapping Twig 