Mr. Macklin's Question

Beth liked Mr. Macklin…until he asked her for a date.

Never in class, of course. He was too smart for that. But one day, they had run into each other outside Wheeler Hall, and Mr. Macklin had suggested coffee at The Student Union. The Berkeley campus was just now teeming with people, the campanile bells having rung out the noon hour.

Beth enjoyed Mr. Macklin’s class, the second semester of an introduction to English literature. She had learned he was some sort of expert on Shakespeare and, so, had taken careful notes when the class had been reading Hamlet. She couldn’t understand this Hamlet character, especially the way he treats Ophelia, who so loves Hamlet that his rudeness to her, his rejection of her, causes her to kill herself. Beth thought Ophelia was crazy to have done so, even as Hamlet’s treatment had driven her crazy. She had offered that opinion in class, which had gotten a few intakes of breath from some of the other girls. Mr. Macklin had nodded, actually disagreeing with Beth, although he had been nice about it. He had explained that this was Elizabethan England and not 1960s Berkeley, California, Miss Cronin, and that Ophelia’s actions were the very stuff of Elizabethan tragedy itself. “And what could possibly be the options for a girl back then, Miss Cronin?” he said. “Especially when Hamlet himself has lost his reason.”

Beth enjoyed being called “Miss Cronin” by her professors. It was standard practice in class at that time (Mr. Smith, Mr. Gomez, Miss Jones) and seemed to her an acknowledgement of the distinction a student had achieved, simply by being admitted to the University of California at Berkeley. He had then given a short description of the life that could be expected by women in 1600 in England, especially one high-born whose mistreatment by the equally high-born man she loves could ruin her forever. The explanation had finally made sense to Beth. Mr. Macklin had asked Miss Cronin to stay behind for a moment and had then told her that she was one of the most intelligent girls in the class and he hoped she didn’t mind his setting her straight about poor Ophelia.

But…coffee? No professor had ever asked her to coffee.

They sat down at a table outside The Student Union. Mr. Macklin placed his wallet and keys on the tabletop. The keys rattled pleasantly, their trite noise seeming even playful to Beth, as though she were some sort of girl being chortled by an amusing uncle. There was talk at many of the other tables, students enjoying themselves and the various conversations. Beth noticed that a few of the people in her class with Mr. Macklin had seen the two of them speaking with each other and were clearly discussing it, maybe even mildly huffing about it. She didn’t know whether to be mindful of their gossip or dismissive of it. Mr. Macklin was just Mr. Macklin, and Beth thought she really was one of the smartest people in the class, and she now knew a little better what life was like for a pretty, well-brought-up girl in England at the turn of the seventeenth century. Drowning herself was way extreme, but Beth now had sympathy for Ophelia, especially when she had been “pull’d from her melodious lay to muddy death…”, such a dark, self-contradictory description.

So terrifying a moment, Beth thought.

Mr. Macklin himself was very friendly, although he usually was a bit stiff in his conversation with Beth. She figured he was about thirty-five. He was actually handsome, she thought, his dignity as a professor being usually quite carefully presented with urbane chilliness. Beth liked his eyes. But especially she enjoyed watching him walk before the class, back and forth, his right hand held out to emphasize in various ways what he was saying. He was slim and carried himself slimly with fine shoulders held up as though with prideful welcome. He was best when reciting from some book or play, giving whatever passage the sort of authority it needed, whatever humor, whatever gravity, whatever sadness. His accent was American, and he had been humorous in describing how, were he to play Polonius in The Globe Theater, the way he talked would be laughed at by the groundlings for how weird this Polonius with the Chicago accent would sound to even the poorest of Londoners.

Beth had once noted the beginning…the very beginning…of a small bald spot on the back of Mr. Macklin’s head. He always wore a suit and tie, de rigueur for professors despite the fact these days that the students…even the women students…were becoming almost daily more sloppy, less careful of their appearance, and more and more hippie. Hippies, Beth thought. Sloppy, yes. But cute. Beth herself enjoyed dressing well. But even she was wearing jeans now, although with a pretty blouse instead of a dress, carrying her books in a dark green cloth “book bag,” as they called it, hanging from a strap over her right shoulder, lowering her standards to look a little hippie herself, so as to fit in. She was even wearing hippie sandals on this particular day, the fine weather permitting it. Beth seldom wore sandals.

Mr. Macklin always looked like a professor. A coat and tie every day. Rigorous sameness in his appearance, like a professor. Formal language devoid of any slang, like a professor. A nice man, Beth felt, unlike a lot of other professors. A little dull, maybe, although awfully handsome. And he sure knew his Shakespeare! And his Milton. And his Virginia Woolf. Beth had never even heard of Virginia Woolf before her class with Mr. Macklin.

Over coffee, he did ask Beth a question that surprised her. His own cappuccino rested, half-drunk, in its cup before him, his fingers holding to each side of the cup as he studied it. The same way he would look at whatever book they were talking about in class before speaking about it. Quiet perusal, almost like boredom itself. His forehead would furrow now and then. His hands would sometimes gather themselves together, fingers intertwined, as he would study whatever poetic lines, passage, or paragraph they were talking about in class. And when he spoke, he seemed actually almost dismissive of the moment, made tedious by it. Hamlet? Beth would think. Made tedious by Hamlet? But she was able to wade through Mr. Macklin’s seeming complacency because, despite its tone of disinterest, he really knew what he was talking about. Maybe he doesn’t like the teaching, she thought. Maybe he was just shy in front of an audience. But he sure knows what he’s reading!

And now…that question. “Miss Cronin, I’ve noticed that you seem pretty solitary. Is that so?”

“Solitary?” She swallowed. This was hardly the case. Beth had retained many of her friends from high school, some of whom were also now at Berkeley. She had a “crew,” too, as she called them, acquaintances from different classes whom she could meet on campus during a free hour here or there. Most were women, and one of the things Beth liked most about Berkeley was that people here were from everywhere, not just the U.S., but everywhere. So, she had made a plan for her second summer’s vacation, to go to France and Switzerland, to visit a couple of her new girlfriends who had been raised in those countries. Beth was friendly. She liked people.

Solitary? “No, not at all,” she said.

Mr. Macklin sat back, his eyes on hers. “Sorry. I hope I’m not speaking out of hand.”

The phrase, so old fashioned, surprised her. Its formality. Maybe he got it from Virginia Woolf, Beth thought. She had heard it before, of course. But from people like her grandfather.

“Oh, no, Mr. Macklin, I—”

He leaned forward over his cappuccino and touched her hand. “No. Please, Beth.” The touch was kindly. “It’s Morley.”

Beth, pulling back her hand, sat in silence a moment. Mr. Macklin had just called her “Beth.” She knew that he had her full name on his list of that class’s students. But no professor had ever referred to Beth as “Beth.” She was not prepared for this informality and was confused by the thought that Mr. Macklin’s name was Morley. He looked like a Morley, so formal appearing a man…like a professor! In class, he would stand before the students in quiet distinction, dismissive of them. No student was offended by it, since these men…there were few women…were authorities in their fields and so deserved the quiet respect of their “minions,” as Beth sometimes thought while smiling about the situation. Beth Cronin, even as a nineteen-year-old, was no minion.

“Oh, Mr. Macklin….”

“Morley.” He smiled affectionately. It was a quiet, authoritative… “gesture,” she thought…rather than an informality.

“It’s nice of you,” she said. “But I think we should keep it at ’Mr. Macklin.’”

He leaned forward. “Why?” He offered her another smile, which Beth suddenly decided was “smarmy,” as in the word she had learned a semester ago from her reading in some British novel, she couldn’t remember which. The discomfort Beth felt was not only real. She wished right away to remain just a student, which the name “Miss Cronin” afforded her. A smart girl reading Hamlet. “I would like to know more about you,” he said.

“Mr. Macklin—”

“Uh-uh. Morley.”

Beth glanced at the coffee before her. Suddenly she had little interest in it. When she looked up at Mr. Macklin, she saw he was smiling. But the smile was not pleasant. It was genuine enough and in no way threatening. But Mr. Macklin’s “smarminess” was in this moment…nonetheless…quite real for her. Here he was, an expert in the fine flower of William Shakespeare’s poetic genius, an explainer of James Joyce, for Lord’s sake, who Beth had tried with no success to read on her own as a freshman, the fine societies of Jane Austen, the pointed, noisy hilarities in Charles Dickens…. Here he was, Mr. Macklin, baring his teeth.

“Mr. Macklin, I’m a student. You’re a professor.”

“I know that. But can’t we be friends?”

Beth’s eyes, a bit shaky, looked away from the table. With sudden clarity, she realized she was looking at a man whose manners were anything but fine. Indeed, she recognized the manipulation he was attempting to put her through. No professor had ever attempted to be her friend. She had heard about such things and what they could lead to, but only in anecdotal ways. And that story, although rare, was always told by a girl, never by a boy. She knew the opportunity that some professor might have, to fail a girl in his class if she were to accuse him of anything out of line. Beth herself was on her way to a full-hearted “A” in this class. A “C” or worse from Mr. Macklin could scuttle her four-point average so far…. Well, 3.8, Beth’s having attempted the beginning course in Chemistry as a freshman and having found it leaden and colorless, like the guys who understood it, in which she had nonetheless achieved a “B”.

Now, Mr. Macklin appeared even older than thirty-five. His attempt at a look of affection across the café table, his fingers caressing the small plate on which his cappuccino rested, caused any attempt she might have to answer this affection to stall.

“I’d love to be your friend, Beth,” Mr. Macklin said.

A few girls whom Beth knew had talked about this situation, especially Cecily, a senior she had met by chance at the Student Union café a year ago. From Las Vegas, when she had learned that Beth had grown up in San Francisco, Cecily had told her how much she enjoyed that city. In one of their conversations, she had also mentioned how one of her professors had actually asked her for a date, a brief back-and-forth that had made Cecily very uncomfortable. “I didn’t think that was right. He was my teacher in an art history class.”

“What did you do?”

“I said, “No!’.”

“And what did he do?”

“He flunked me.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“And then what?”

“I reported him to the chancellor’s office.”

“And what did they do?”

“Nothing.” Cecily frowned, her head in slow back and forth sadness. “Well…. Not nothing, in the end. An ‘F’, you know, means that you didn’t do your work, didn’t show up to class, didn’t whatever! That’s what they told me, anyway. An ‘F’ is always a deserved ‘F.’ And I had done everything I was supposed to do in that class and was fascinated by what we were reading. You know, about Picasso and Caravaggio, all those guys.”

“But what did you do then?”

“I told my parents.”

“What did they say?”

“Well, my father…. My father’s an attorney.”

“Oh….”

“And he had a friend who agreed to help me sue the university.”

“Sue them!”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“They decided to void any record of my having been in the class, so that my ‘F’ wouldn’t appear.” Cecily lowered her head, and Beth recognized genuine disgruntlement. Both women remained for the moment silent. “I got erased from Art Appreciation,” Cecily whispered.

“And the professor?”

“He’s still here.” Cecily’s breathing had seemed to tighten as she shrugged. “The whole thing just…ceased.” She lowered her head. “Everything went back as it was, as though nothing had happened.”

“You didn’t stay in the class, did you?”

Cecily offered a brusque smile. “Are you kidding?”

Beth and Cecily were still in touch. Cecily had graduated with honors last year and now was in law school at Boalt Hall.

Beth sipped from her coffee. “But Mr. Macklin….” She frowned and then so slowly replaced the cup on its saucer that the cup seemed itself to grumble, as though emptied with offended disappointment. “Like I say. You’re the teacher. I’m the student.”

“I know that.”

“That’s the way it should stay.”

Mr. Macklin frowned, his lips wrinkling tightly against each other.

“I don’t want to go out with you.”

Mr. Macklin sat back, a note of bothered frustration in his eyes. He sipped the rest of his cappuccino. “I don’t mean anything by it, Beth.” He sat up straight, adjusting his tie and swallowing, looking away.

“It’s ‘Miss Cronin,’” Beth said. Thinking of Cecily, she leaned forward over her own coffee. “And what do you plan to do now that we’ve had this conversation, Morley?”

Mr. Macklin did not respond, at least with anything that was to be voiced. His fine posture suddenly grew bent, a bit to the side. He let out a breath that, although silent, nonetheless sounded offended. He crossed his arms.

“What now?” Beth said.

“What do you mean, ‘What now?’”

“Are you going to flunk me?”

“Of course not.”

“Even when I…. Even when I drop the class.”

“It’s too late in the semester for that.”

“So what? I’d get an ‘F’?”

“According to the rules, yes.”

“Whose rules?” Beth, thinking a moment about her friend Cecily, decided to up her resistance a notch. “Yours?”

“No. But rules are rules, Beth.”

She thought a moment about the rules and then considered for a longer moment her rights. She felt she had one important one, which was to not be hassled by a good-looking, notable, authoritative, knowledgeable, smarmy professor. Rules! She thought. Whose? His?

“And what if I…” Beth turned to the side, once more looking at the other table, where her classmates were now involved once again in conversation with each other. Two of them were girls, and Beth wondered if, once being rejected by her, Mr. Macklin would then pick on one of them. “What if I get a lawyer?”

Mr. Macklin gathered himself into a look of offended mortification, as though this girl before him were threatening him with a crime. Beth knew this was no crime. He was just flirting, although manipulatively. But there was such a difference in their situations here at Berkeley. Beth an undergraduate sophomore. Mr. Macklin a celebrated scholar, noted on campus for his scholarship and authority. But she enjoyed the sudden turn to defensiveness that now blanketed Mr. Macklin’s silence.

“Beth.”

“No. Miss Cronin.”

Mr. Macklin swallowed. “I—”

“Guarantee me an ‘A’, which I’d get anyway, I’m sure you’d agree.”

“Miss Cronin.”

“Guarantee me the ‘A’, I’ll leave the class the minute I leave this table, and you’ll be free.” Beth was plain amazed by her own behavior, and could hardly wait to talk with Cecily, to tell her what help she had been in all this. Mr. Macklin had returned to his previous formality, sitting across from Beth as though he had just finished a brief observation on the beauties of “Ode to A Nightingale” or some other. Suddenly, he was Mr. Macklin again, not the flirt Morley. He gathered his keys and wallet from the tabletop, nodded agreement, and stood from the table.

“Otherwise, you and the university will be hearing from my lawyer.”

“Beth, I—”

“Miss Cronin.”

“Yes, I…. I—”

“Is it a deal?”

Mr. Macklin jiggled his keys, surveying them in his right hand.

“Is it?”

Mr. Macklin nodded…. “Okay,” he muttered and, with morose hurry, turned away. As he fled, Beth noticed how this walk was like his walk in the classroom. Professor Macklin. Verve. Knowledge. Suave authority.

“And thanks for the coffee,” Beth whispered.

Copyright ©2026 Terence Clarke. All rights reserved.

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