Ordinary World (8 page)

            “More or less, yeah.”

            He looked at me with mock envy. “The perfect marriage.”

            The mower was a beastly John Deere ride-on. New Englanders loved their ride-on mowers, even if they had a patch of grass no bigger than a blanket. Jeff showed me how to work it, cutting the first couple of lines in the backyard and then instructing me to get on and do one by myself. I felt like I was twelve and back in the go-carts at ActionPark—the brakes went out on my cart and I slammed into another girl’s cart in front of me. She got a gash in her foot, and her dad was actually nicer to me than my own was about the accident.
Did you see what you did?
my dad scolded.
I told her I was sorry!
I replied, shamefully pleading for mercy.
Lay off; she didn’t mean it,
my brother Tony said. Tony always came to my rescue, even when I didn’t want him to.

            I hadn’t had time to go food shopping, but Jeff was content with the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I made for him and a cold Sam Adams, which he brought with him. We sat outside on the back deck, admiring our collaborative grass-cutting accomplishment. I drank a Coke, also uncharacteristic of me.

            “Have you thought about coming back to school?” he asked after taking a swig of beer.

            I looked at him, incredulous. “You’re serious?”

He nodded.

“I thought you were going to ban me for another semester.”

He shook his head after taking another swig. “Actually, I’m having a meeting with Jerry next week to discuss otherwise.”

Jerry Donnelly, the Dean of the College of Humanities at NU, had always been one of my biggest fans, but I doubted that he’d grant Jeff’s request to have me back so soon. Jerry was more politician than educator, and often made decisions based on reputation, how it made the College look. In an age of public screw-ups, my blunder was not so high-profile; however, I’m sure the NU grapevine had done its work in terms of exaggerating, mutilating, and fictionalizing the actual account of the story. For all I knew, word on the NU street was that Professor Vanzant went apeshit and threatened her students with a knife while telling them to go fornicate themselves while watching porn.

“Good luck,” I said.

“There were extenuating circumstances,” he said, presenting the case as if I were the dean himself.

“I hope that’s not your opening statement. ‘There were’ is so passive, a zonker.”

“What good are you doing anyone by being out of commission? You’re not an NBA player with shoe contracts who used an ethnic slur; you’re a damn good teacher who made a mistake.”

“You’re right—I’m not an NBA player. I have an even more important job and leave a greater impression on young minds.”

“It was a
mistake
, kid.”

“It was more than a mistake. It was an injustice to those students.”

“They’ll get over it. If you were a naturally mean person, then I’d be less tolerant. And so would they. But geezus, Andi—Sam was gone what, four months?”

“Five and a half.” And two days, to be exact.

“That’s not a long time. I think you gotta give yourself a break.”

“How would they know I’m not a naturally mean person?”

“Take a look in the mirror,” he said.

I stood up and took his plate and empty beer bottle.

“I don’t know,” I said, entering the house. He followed me.

“Are you afraid to come back?”

The words hit me in the stomach. Damn right I was afraid.

“I just don’t know if I’m ready,” I said.

“Why don’t you talk to your shrink about it and I’ll talk to Jerry and we’ll find out where everybody stands.”

After he finished changing washers and tightening nuts and bolts and checking my fuse box, I walked Jeff to his car, and hugged him as I did yesterday, thanking him.

“It was nice to have a man around the house the last couple of days, even if it was
you
,” I said.

“You’d have preferred a male hooker instead?”

My jaw dropped and I gasped.
How did he find out?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, my voice wavering between defensiveness and concealment.

“Relax, kid—it’s a joke. Geez, you look like you’ve just seen a ghost. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

He knew nothing, I realized. But the fucking coincidence!

“It’s too soon,” I lied, immediately feeling guilty that I’d just used Sam’s death to hide something that had nothing to do with him.

“I’m really sorry,” he said again.

“Forget it,” I said. “If you can’t joke around with your friends, then who can you joke with? Besides, it’s time for me to start moving on, don’t you think?”

Jeff bid me goodbye and said he’d call following the meeting with Jerry. As he drove away, a shiver ran up my spine.

Chapter Ten

           
I
SAT IN MELODY’S OFFICE THE FOLLOWING WEEK listening to the soft, tinkling sound of her new rock fountain nestled in the corner. It was one of Sam’s favorite sounds.

            “I’m bored out of my skull,” I complained. “I’ve read and re-read all the books we own, watched every episode of every crap show on TV, and it’s too damn hot to sit outside and feed the ducks.”

            Melody grinned in approval. “That’s good. It means you’re ready to stop living in a state of flux. So what now?”

            The question stood before me like a black hole waiting to suck me into its eternal oblivion.

            “Jeff asked me about coming back to school.”

            “He’s your friend who runs the department, right?”

            “Yes.”

            “How do you feel about it?”

            I squirmed in my chair. “I don’t know, Melody. Since I left in April, my assistant director Jackie, who’s been the interim director of the writing program during my absence, occasionally calls me with an administrative question. And for a split second, when I answer her I feel a charge of electricity, like the way it used to be.”

            “Do you miss it?”

            “I guess I do. I mean, it’s always been a lot of pressure, but it was something I used to thrive in. But this past semester, it just felt like I was buried under a pile of bricks the whole time. I’m afraid that if I go back that’ll happen again, and I’ll handle it even worse than I did before.”

            “What if you just go back to teaching, then?”

            I took a sip of water from my Dasani bottle and glared at her.

            “They won’t let me go back into the classroom.”

            “How do you know that? You can’t be the first teacher who’s had an outburst.”

            “I called my students ‘feckless crackbabies hooked on Ritalin and porn’.”

            Melody winced.

            “Yeah,” I acknowledged her gesture. “It’s harsh. Unforgivable.”

            “It’s not unforgivable. I don’t think there’s anything that’s unforgivable. Isn’t there something you can do? A formal apology?”

            I shook my head. “No one’s accountable for their actions anymore. I harp on my students all the time about responsibility, and taking the consequences of their actions. Say what you will about the guys involved in Watergate thirty-something years ago, but they all paid for their mistakes—most of them either wound up doing time or resigning. These days, if you fuck up you get a promotion, a commuted sentence, increased media coverage, and a book deal. You get ‘Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job’.”

            Melody cocked her head slightly to the side. “You don’t think you’ve taken responsibility or accepted the consequences? You voluntarily left your position, yes? You offered to resign.”

            “I never should’ve gone back to begin with. I should’ve taken another semester’s leave, like my friend Maggie and everyone else told me to do.”

            “It’s futile to ‘should’ on yourself,” she said.

            “Whatever,” I replied in an obstinate tone. “The point is that my behavior shouldn’t—
ought
not to be rewarded with a finger-wagging, ‘don’t do it again’.”

            “I don’t think it is. Everyone deserves a second chance. From what you’ve told me, this was an isolated incident. You don’t have a history of incompetence or abuse. You’ve been an advocate of the student body. Even now—you’re advocating on their behalf, considering
their
well-being by questioning your return. You’re living up to your lessons of integrity by being the example. And let’s not forget that you were under emotional duress.”

            “What, have you been talking to Jeff?”

            “Andi, your husband was killed by a drunk driver.”

            As if I needed reminding.

            “Let’s not use Sam as the get-out-of-jail-free card,” I said. “Let’s not insult him like that.”

            “Aren’t you already doing it? Isn’t that your reason for sleeping in, for watching mindless television and re-reading the books that the two of you used to read together? Isn’t that your excuse for not moving on?”

           
Shit, man.

            “I can’t go back into the classroom, even if they let me,” I said after a bout of silence.

            “Why?”

            “Because I
hate
them.”

            “Hate who?”

            “All of them. Those
kids
.”

I always resented teachers that called their students “kids”.

“They bitch and moan and take no responsibility and get drunk every night and have no regard for anyone outside their calling circle or their Facebook page.”

            “It’s not about them and you know it,” said Melody. “It’s about the one young man who made some despicable choices that night.”

            “Unforgivable choices,” I added.

            “You think he’s unforgivable?”

            “He’ll never get my pardon.” I took a swig of water so forceful it splashed.

            “So be it,” she said.

I looked at her, bewildered. I had expected her to advise me to make the effort to try.

“So, if going back to the university isn’t an option, then what is? Have you ever considered doing something completely new and different?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“You tell me.”

I gazed past her and fixed my stare on the new rock fountain.

“I can’t think of anything.”

“There must be something…when was the last time you saw your family?”

“Not since the funeral. I didn’t go home for Christmas.”

“Give them a call.”

“My brothers are usually on the road. My mother…” I drew in a breath and exhaled a huff, “I can only take my mother in small doses.”

I’d shared some of my experiences with my mother in previous sessions with Melody: her systematic destruction of my self-esteem during my adolescent years by criticizing my body; her lack of consolation every time I broke up with a boyfriend; her lack of affection (and affect) since my father’s death.