Ordinary World (5 page)

I trembled uncontrollably. This wasn’t me. God, what was happening to me?

Leaving my briefcase and coat, I took my purse and rushed out of the building, walked a half mile to my car just as a cold, light rain began, and pulled out my cellphone once I was in the car. Shivering, I turned the ignition and cranked up the heat. My breathing was so rapid I thought I might hyperventilate. I could barely touch the phone’s miniscule keypad. Maggie answered on the third ring, very professional-like.

“Oh, thank God you’re there,” I cried, my voice quivering.

“Andi? What is it?” she asked, alarmed.

“I think I just got myself fired.”

“What happened?”

“I just went totally apeshit on my class. Yelled at them, called them names, demeaned them. I don’t know what happened. This kid was talking about how drunk he was last night, and all I could see was the kid who killed Sam. The entire class. They all looked the same to me. Oh Maggie, you were right. I never should’ve have come back. What am I going to do?”

Maggie paused for a moment. I thought maybe she was crying too. Or mad at me.

“Okay. You can’t take back what you said. I don’t think you’ll get fired—you have tenure now. But this is not good. You have to go to your chairperson and tell him what just happened—he’s a friend of yours, isn’t he? Your students may already be lining up outside his door. They might even go straight to the dean. Then, you’ve got to take another medical leave, effective immediately. Offer to take it without pay, even. And apologize to your students.”

“Okay,” I said, sobbing. My eyes burned.

“Do it right now.”

“Okay,” I repeated. I opened the car door and stepped out. The rain stopped as quickly as it started and the sun looked as if it desperately wanted to reappear. The trees and bushes were budding, and the air smelled good.

“Andi?” Maggie said.

“Yeah?”

“I love you and I’m always here for you and I understand what happened. But you’ve got to get some help now. What would Sam say? What would he want for you?”

I didn’t answer. I just cried.

“I’ve got to go now, but I’ll call you as soon as I can,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I love you,” she said again.

“I love you too.”

I turned off the phone and headed back to Adams Hall. First I went back to the classroom to get my stuff. It wasn’t there. Then I went to Jeff’s office, located directly across Kay’s office. His door was closed. Kay’s, however, was open, and when she saw me, she picked up her phone, dialed four numbers (I heard Jeff’s phone ring once), and spoke very softly into the phone. Then she looked down, as if I wasn’t there, a hint of judgment glaring from her eyes as she did so. Ten seconds later, Jeff opened the door.

“Come in, Andi.”

I sat in the same chair as last time and sniffled. My briefcase, textbook, and papers sat next to his desk. Kay must have retrieved them.

“I am so sorry, Jeff,” I said in broken sobs. I sounded like a four-year-old apologizing to the neighbor for breaking her vase.

“I warned you.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to do it—it just happened. I know that’s not an excuse. I’m not even trying to make an excuse. But at the time I couldn’t stop it and I’m sorry now and I think I should take another leave of absence. I’ll even resign, if I have to. Just don’t fire me. Please don’t fire me.”

“You’ve got tenure—you’d have to sleep with a goat to get fired. But dammit, this is wicked bad. Five students, including the two boys you blew up at, just left my office. In fact, I’m surprised you didn’t run into them on your way here, and lucky for you, I might add. I even got calls from two parents whose kids text-messaged them as it was happening. I’m going to tell them why you’re not fired. But as of right now, you’re out of here for the remainder of the semester. Unpaid leave.”

“Yes,” I said. “I understand.”

“You’ve got to get help. You can’t do this on your own anymore.”

“I know.”

“Will you do it? Will you get help?”

“Yes.”

“Do you promise? I’m asking you as a friend. You’re killing me, here. You’re breaking my heart. I know this is not who you really are,” he said. “I miss you. We all do.”

“I miss me too.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes,” I said. I meant it, too.

“Okay. Do you need a ride home?”

“No.”

“Okay. Go home now.” Before I left, he said, “You know, they weren’t all mad. Some of them were actually really sympathetic.”

Hearing that only added to my guilt.

“The sad thing is that I was really trying,” I said, then turned and left.

I drove myself home. When I entered the house, I headed straight for Sam’s study and slumped in the faded leather chair that matched the sofa, my wet face buried in my hands. When I looked up, I noticed our wedding photo sitting on the table beside me, the Mikasa frame a wedding gift. Sam in his tux and white silk necktie, beyond perfect; and me, in an A-line Vera Wang gown that fell off the shoulders, my hair in a French twist and no veil, my makeup flawless. Standing against a backdrop of New England trees spattered with autumn hues. His eyes matched the sky rather than the ocean that day, while mine matched those leaves that hadn’t turned yet. We were glowing, full of love and hope and promise, death nonexistent. We didn’t even use the words “’til death due us part” in our vows. We said “for our lives and always.”

I didn’t sign up for this.

He was only forty-three years old.

I took the picture, flung it across the room, and cursed Sam to hell. The Mikasa frame broke into pieces. It was just a bottle of sparkling cider, dammit. Water would’ve been fine.

Chapter Six

O
N A TUESDAY AFTERNOON, TWO WEEKS AFTER leaving the university for the remainder of the semester, I sat in the waiting room of an office shared by a chiropractor, a massage therapist, and Melody Greene, a therapist who specialized in grief counseling. My good friend Miranda, whose best friend was on one of the planes that flew out of Logan Airport on September 11, 2001, recommended Melody to me days after I called and told her about the incident at NU.

            “You’ll love her,” Miranda said. “She’s very New Age, but not flaky. She’s into alternative medicine, nutrition, you name it. And she practiced in New York City for awhile too. The best part is that she takes insurance. She helped me out a lot.”

            “With a sterling recommendation like that, it’s too bad she’s not a man,” I quipped. I’d gotten very sarcastic as of late. Miranda called it my defense mechanism, no doubt to be confirmed soon by Melody Greene.

            The door opened at 2:02, and a woman of medium height, thin build, salt-n-pepper copper hair in desperate need of a coloring, and a long, shapeless, paisley cotton dress escorted her client out. Very earthy-crunchy, I thought. The short, heavyset client held a crumpled tissue and her eyes were red and puffy. I made a silent vow to hold it together better than she did.

            After the woman bid her client goodbye, she looked down at her clipboard, then up at me.

            “Andrea Vanzant?”

            I dropped the ragged, three-month-old
People
magazine back on the coffee table and stood up.

“That’s me.”

She smiled amiably, and her skin was shiny. “I’m Melody.” She extended her hand to me. “It’s so nice to meet you.” I took her hand and shook; my grip was much firmer than hers.

She held open the door to her office, which was painted in soft, soothing aquamarine colors and smelled of lavender and y’lang y’lang. I sat on one of those big round chairs that Pier One Imports usually sells to college kids for their dorm rooms. Right away I recognized it as “the client chair.” Melody’s chair looked more like something you might find at Office Max—a black leather, upright desk chair that actually looked more comfortable than the boat in which I tried to maneuver myself.

Melody sat and closed her eyes for a full minute, breathing deeply while I examined the layout and décor of the room. When she opened her eyes, she exhaled and was visibly more relaxed.

“So, Andrea. Tell me what brought you here. I know we spoke briefly on the phone last week, but please refresh my memory.”

For some reason, I distrusted her instantly.
The hell you forgot—you just want to make me say it,
I thought.

“Well, six months ago my husband was killed, and apparently I’m not handling it very well because I was forced to take another leave of absence.”

Her facial expression remained unchanged. She looked neither disturbed nor elated; she was simply serene.

“Where do you work?”

“I’m a professor of English and Director of Freshman Writing at NorthamptonUniversity.”

She raised her eyebrows in response to this bit of information, as if to say, impressive.

“What happened?”

The memory of the incident filled me with shame and humiliation. “I blew up at my class and cursed two of my students a few weeks ago.”

She jotted something on her clipboard. Great. It’s on the record now.

“What caused the blowup? I mean, did one of them provoke you or something like that?”

“They were talking about getting hammered, and I don’t know, it’s like I stepped out of myself and saw them all as the kid who killed my husband. Next thing I know, I’m ranting like a lunatic.”

She continued to write on her clipboard and talk to me without looking up. “Your husband was murdered?”

“In a matter of speaking,” I said, my stomach turning in knots as I replayed the memories of Sam rushing and kissing me, leaving without his jacket, the officers at my door… “It was a drunk driver.”

She stopped writing and looked up at me, a look of sorrow in her eyes. “I’m very sorry, Andrea.”

“Andi.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can call me Andi. Everyone does.”

She smiled amiably again. “Okay. What was your husband’s name?”

I resented her using the past tense. What the hell kind of therapist was she?

“Sam.” I reached into my purse, pulled out my wallet, and opened it to a cropped photo of Sam and me on one of our weekend getaways. The edges were frayed from its constant handling. I held out the photo for Melody to see. She raised her eyebrows again.

“He’s very handsome,” she remarked. I nodded in agreement, fixated on the photo and visually tracing Sam’s every feature: highly defined cheekbones, ocean blue eyes, short, dark tapered hair, Hollywood straight teeth. More than handsome. And he always called
me
gorgeous…

“Rob Lowe without the teenage sex video,” I said. She laughed.

“I was more of an Emilio Estevez gal until he did all those
Mighty Duck
movies.”

The corner of my mouth twitched upward. She earned a point for that one.

“Why did you associate your students with the drunk driver?” she asked.

“Because he was a freshman at NU, I guess.”

She nodded and gestured as if to compliment me for my insight. “How awful,” she said. I nodded.

“Andi, if the incident with your class hadn’t happened, do you think you would have come here on your own?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Maybe.”

She then fired off a barrage of questions: how much sleep did I get; what kinds of food did I eat, and how often; did I have any physical ailments—stomach pains, high blood pressure, allergies; did I have any suicidal thoughts; did I hear voices or have hallucinations; did I believe in ghosts; was I religious; had I ever been in therapy before, etcetera. I answered each question in a very rote tone, as if they passed along a conveyor belt for my quick inspection. She then conducted an inventory of my family history, both medical and mental. Any alcohol or drug abuse in my immediate family? Heart disease? Cancer? Allergies? Mental illness?”