A friend had reached out to me by then about J.,
to let me know he’d been complaining for weeks
that I was off ered the job over him. He had also told
others about Marta’s Title IX investigation — some-
thing he shouldn’t have known about on his own.
After talking to that friend, I no longer doubted that
he was behind everything that was happening to
us. But I still had no idea how to prove it. ( The New
York Times reached out repeatedly to J. and a law-
yer who has represented him for comment about
this article. No one responded to the queries.)
Eventually, we decided to tell Melanie about
our suspicions. She wrote back almost immedi-
ately: ‘‘I would actually like to meet with you both
a second time, as I received some new informa-
tion yesterday.’’
We hoped she was dropping the case,
or maybe she’d talked with someone from
Michigan about the information they’d
received, as we’d recommended. Instead, when
we arrived and took seats together across the
table from her, Melanie said: ‘‘I’ve received
another anonymous complaint.’’
The accusation had come from a diff erent
email and ostensibly a diff erent person, someone
calling herself ‘‘Jessica P. Newman.’’ It had been
sent on April Fools’ Day.
The opening paragraph identifi ed ‘‘Jessica’’
as one of Marta’s graduate students and repeat-
ed parts of the previous complaints. Then the
email took a turn I should have expected but
still didn’t.
‘‘One night,’’ ‘‘Jessica’’ wrote, ‘‘Marta and her
wife Sarah had a party for queer students and
faculty at their house, and off ered me glass of
wine after glass of wine and eventually shotsof whiskey. When most of the others had left,
Marta asked to show me a painting in her bed-
room, and when we entered, Sarah was on the
bed, topless, and asked us to join her. I said I
would be calling an Uber now, but before I could
leave the room, Marta took my hand and placed
it on her wife’s bare chest.’’
The interview room we were in was smaller
this time, and Marta and I sat on the same side of
a table, reading the email together, while Melanie
watched us. It felt like a test we were failing or
a novel that had stopped making sense. I imag-
ined everyone who would read or had read this
email — Melanie, her supervisor, the university
provost — and how they would all picture me
topless on my bed, trying to seduce a student,
while presumably my kids slept in their bedroom
down the hall.
In closing, ‘‘Jessica’’ wrote: ‘‘I do not know
how to proceed at this point, but thank you for
your guidance. I do wish to remain anonymous
at this time.’’
When we fi nished reading, Melanie said she
wanted to talk to us separately. I watched Marta
leave the room and set my phone on the table
to record the interview. Melanie told me I was
now also under investigation and said she needed
to ask me some questions. ‘‘I want to talk about
these parties,’’ she said. ‘‘So tell me what that
looks like.’’
‘‘So, there’s never been a party,’’ I said. I
told her that we’d hosted two staid dinners for
Marta’s graduate-seminar students. But at some
point both evenings, I had put the kids to bed,
and after that no one went near the bedrooms.
‘‘And I defi nitely was never topless on the bed,’’ I
added, interrupting whatever question Melanie
had next. I wanted to move past that part of
the interview as quickly as possible, but saying
the words out loud only made it worse — as
if by negating the accusation I had somehow
reinforced it. ‘‘I’m trying to think if we even
have a painting.’’
Melanie interrupted this time: ‘‘That’s what I
was going to ask.’’
I tried to picture our bedroom walls while she
waited for me to answer. I saw a print of a map
of Galveston hanging above our dresser and the
antique mirror I bought at an auction in Iowa on
another wall. Then I remembered a third wall,
and my favorite painting hanging there. I’d
found it at a garage sale while working my fi rst
newspaper job in Florida. It’s of an androgynous
kid in a fl at cap smoking a cigarette, looking
out with a brazen stare I immediately loved. So
much so that I’d put it in our bedroom — just as
the email claimed.
And that fact — or the fact that one fact in
my life lined up with a fi ction being created
about us — disoriented me. For a second, I could
almost picture myself on the bed, just like what
‘‘Jessica’’ had described. ‘‘There is a painting,
a small painting,’’ I toldPhotograph by Ryan Pfluger for The New York Times The New York Times Magazine 39
The writer and her wife at home with
one of their children.
(Continued on Page 49)