Barefoot (38 page)

Brenda stared at her inedible lunch. She wanted to dump the bottle of water over Amrita’s head.
You little snot!
she thought
. Is that why you’re doing this? Because I gave him the grade he deserved? Or because you yourself are in love with him?
She wanted to smash the tuna sub into Bill Franklin’s face. He had shown his true colors that night at the Cupping Room. Sitting at the end of the bar, getting drunk, waiting to prey on any young woman—or man—who came in unescorted. Uncle Pervy—
that
was disgusting. And then there was Dr. Atela. She was the worst of the three because Brenda could see that beneath the somber concern and measured disapproval, she enjoyed watching Brenda suffer. If they were in ancient Rome, Atela would have thrown Brenda to the lions and applauded at the sport of it. But why? Because Brenda was young? Because she was a good teacher? Was Suzanne Atela jealous of Brenda? Did she feel threatened? Another department head might have emitted disappointment, but Suzanne Atela’s face conveyed resignation, as though she’d known all along this would happen, as though she had predicted it. Brenda was so appalled, she stood up.

“I have a lunch at one myself,” she said. “So if you’ll excuse me . . .”

Brenda picked up the bottle of water but left the rest of her tray for Suzanne Atela to deal with. In seconds, Brenda was swallowed up in the crowd of hungry undergraduates.

She reached into her bag for her cell phone. Call Walsh, instruct him to deny everything. They had no proof! Bill Franklin saw them together at the Cupping Room. And maybe someone saw them kissing in Parsons 204. Why had she been so stupid, so cavalier? It didn’t matter if they had proof or not, it was true—Brenda could deny it, but she would be lying. She was having a romantic and a sexual relationship with one of her students. Disciplinary action would be taken. Her job was gone and with it her good name, her reputation. Brenda might have walked off Champion’s campus, taken the crosstown bus home, and never looked back, but there were things in her office she could not leave behind—certain papers, her first-edition Fleming Trainor. She raced back to the English Department.

Mrs. Pencaldron’s chair was empty, and a half-eaten Caesar salad sat on her desk blotter. When Brenda reached into her bag, her fingers came across a single key on a thin wire ring with a round paper tag that said (in Mrs. Pencaldron’s penciled script)
Barrington Room
. Brenda looked down the hall at the heavy, paneled door. There wasn’t time! She had to get out of there! Go to her office, get her things! The door seemed even more formidable now than it had been at the beginning of the semester, but in spite of that, or maybe because of that, Brenda was drawn down the hall. In the copy room, Augie Fisk stood at the Xerox machine, and his presence almost deterred her, but when Brenda breezed by, he didn’t even look up.

In her deposition, Brenda had admitted to being only partly conscious of her actions that afternoon. What she said was,
I was upset. I was stunned, mortified, terribly confused. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t planning on stealing the painting. I just wanted . . .

Wanted what, Dr. Lyndon?

To see the painting one more time,
she’d said.
To say good-bye to it.

Brenda punched in the security code and unlocked the door to the Barrington Room, fully prepared to find Mrs. Pencaldron sitting at the Queen Anne table, waiting for her. But the room was empty, hushed, just as it had been in the moments before Brenda’s class all semester long. Brenda felt an enormous sense of loss, the beginnings of mourning. Her career was dead, but the body not yet cold. And it was all her own stupid, stupid fault. Temptation had been placed in Brenda’s path, and instead of swerving around it, she had met it at a bar.

Brenda set her purse and the bottle of water down on the Queen Anne table, and she stood before the painting. She was trying to absorb it, to internalize it, because, certainly, she would never see it again. She wanted to rest her face against its surface, feel its texture under her cheek; she wanted to climb into the painting and lie down.

Brenda heard a noise. She turned to see Mrs. Pencaldron clapping at her, like she was a wayward dog. Mrs. Pencaldron snatched up the bottle of water from the Queen Anne table (it would indeed leave a pale ring).

“What are you doing in here?” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “You don’t belong in here! And this—” She shook the bottle of water and wiped at the table with the bottom of her blouse. “What were you thinking? You know the rules!”

“Sorry,” Brenda said. “I’m so sorry.”

“You know the rules, but you don’t follow them,” Mrs. Pencal-dron said. “Sorry does not begin to address your transgressions.”

Brenda held up her hands. “Okay, whatever. I came to get my things. I’m leaving.”

“I will pack your things properly and send them to your home address,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “I suggest you leave this room and the department now, otherwise I will call campus security.”

“Campus security?” Brenda said. “There’s no need for that . . .” Brenda was dying to address Mrs. Pencaldron by her first name, but she didn’t know what it was. “I’m leaving.”

Augie Fisk appeared in the doorway. He looked at Brenda with a combination of pity and disgust. “We all heard,” he said. “Everyone knows. Did Atela fire you?”

“She didn’t have to,” Brenda said. “I’m leaving.”

“This isn’t going to be something you can walk away from,” Augie said. “This is going to
stick.
I mean, you can try to find another job, but you won’t be able to work anywhere accredited. Hell, you won’t even be able to teach
high school.
Maybe you should look into one of those online universities, where they don’t care what crimes you’ve committed.”

“It’s disgraceful,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “I knew something wasn’t right with the two of you. Couldn’t put my finger on it, though, and certainly never expected that . . . but
something,
yes, I sensed something from the beginning.”

“We all thought you were a flash in the pan,” Augie said. “A woman as attractive as you, with your boutique subject matter, a specialty that no one else on earth knows about, that has no relevance to the rest of the canon. I knew you weren’t for real. There was something fishy about you, something artificial. We all knew it.”

“Stop it,” Brenda said. Couldn’t they see she was upset enough as it was?

“You stop it,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. She pointed to the door. “Leave, or I call security.”

Not in her right mind. Terribly confused.
And angry. Brenda
hated
Mrs. Pencaldron. She had never liked her but now she really despised her. And Augie Fisk—yuck!—with his thick shock of red hair and his pale, pinched lips.
Flash in the pan?
He had asked her out again and again, and each time Brenda turned him down, she felt worse. Not in her right mind.
Fishy and artificial? An online university?
After eight years of graduate school, the thousands of hours of reading and research? All that
work?
The slavish devotion? Suddenly, Brenda was furious. She would not be ordered out of this room. She had done a good job; she was a good teacher.

We all knew it.
Well, wasn’t it easy to say so. Now.

Brenda reached into her bag and grabbed a book—one of the nearly impossible to find paperbacks of
The Innocent Impostor
that she had ordered for her class—and flung it. She threw it, she told the university counsel in her deposition, just to throw something.
Have you never thrown anything in anger? Have you never felt that impulse?
Brenda was not aiming the book at Augie Fisk or Mrs. Pencaldron or the painting. But hit the painting it did. (Lower left quadrant, three-quarter-of-an-inch “divot” or “gouge.”) Brenda sucked in her breath, horrified, and Mrs. Pencaldron shrieked, and Augie Fisk said, “Oh, shit. You’ve really done it now.”

Mrs. Pencaldron said, “I’m calling security. Block the door, Augie. We are not letting her leave. She has to answer to this.”

Brenda gazed at the painting through her tears. She understood it perfectly now. The splatter, the mess, the tangle, the chaos. That painting was her life.

Settle,
she thought. It was a word with multiple meanings. On the one hand, it was comforting. The matter would be settled, finally. Cleaned up, laid to rest.
Champion University v. Brenda Lyndon
would become another file in the law offices of Brian Delaney, Esquire, closed away in a drawer. But settle also meant doing without. She would have to settle for a life excluded from academia, and for a life without Walsh.

Her heart longed for him, her body ached for his arms around her. She wanted to hear his voice; it didn’t matter, particularly, what he said. But Brenda couldn’t make herself call him; her relationship with Walsh was intertwined with the loss of her career, her life’s work. Brenda hurt now, but it would hurt more to talk with Walsh, to relive, day in and day out, the humiliation of that afternoon with Suzanne Atela, Bill Franklin, Amrita, Augie Fisk, Mrs. Pencaldron, and, finally, campus security.

Where was she going to find the money? Could she declare bankruptcy? Would she be forced to ask her parents? In Brenda’s mind, a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars was no different from a hundred and sixty—they were both unattainable. She would have to sell her half of the cottage, but she couldn’t drop that on Vicki now—and what if Vicki and Ted, for whatever reason, didn’t have the money to buy Brenda out? Would Brenda force a sale of the whole property? She could just hear the thoughts of Vicki and her parents:
Brenda is book smart, yes, but she has no common sense. She is unable to make her way in the world. We always have to bail her out.

How to defend herself? What else could she do? One thing. There had always been only one place for Brenda to hide.
Lowly Worm, bookworm, nose always in a book.
She pulled her yellow legal pad out of her bag, poured a cup of coffee from her thermos, and started to write.

It was nothing he would ever be able to use on his résumé, but Josh was proud of his Wiffle ball pitching ability. Josh gave the ball perfect arc and speed—and in addition, Josh had taught Blaine stance and swing so that Blaine hit the ball nearly every time. Yes, the Wiffle ball was satisfying, it was one of the things Josh would miss most about babysitting, and he was glad that he’d been able to show off his pitching prowess for Vicki.

Vicki was feeling better, she looked healthier and stronger, and Josh found himself wanting to spend more time with her. She was his boss, yes, but she was also his friend and he found her easy to talk to and fun to be with. Josh’s relationship with Brenda had basically been whittled down to pleasantries and an occasional short conversation about the progress of her screenplay—and Josh’s relationship with Melanie had morphed into a whole, huge, complicated and secret thing. Josh’s feelings for Melanie were running amok; they were growing like some crazy, twisting vine, strangling his heart. He wanted to talk to someone about Melanie—and strangely, the person who came to mind was Vicki. But this was out of the question.

Melanie was thirteen weeks pregnant. Her stomach held the slightest swell—rounded, smooth, tight. She was luminous—always smiling, radiating good, sweet, sexy Melanie-ness. He was crazy about her, he couldn’t wait for the day to pass, for night to come, for his father to switch off the TV and retire to his bedroom, because this was when Josh left the house, driving out to ’Sconset with a sense of fervent anticipation.
Melanie.

Since the beginning of August, his longing for her had intensified. One night, she didn’t come to meet him at all. Josh waited patiently in the beach parking lot until eleven o’clock, then he drove, as stealthily as possible, past the house on Shell Street. The house was dark and buckled up for the night. In the morning, Melanie told him in a quick whisper that she had simply fallen asleep.

Simply?
he thought. What had developed between them was well beyond simple.

She admitted to him that she was talking to Peter. Not just the one time and not just to discuss “household matters.” He knew about the baby; she had told him.

“I had to,” she said. “He’s the father. He deserves to know.”

Josh disagreed. “Is he still having the affair?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you asked him?”

“No.”

“Well, what does he say when he calls?”

“He says he misses me. He asks when I’m coming home.”

“That’s just because of the baby,” Josh said. “He cares about you now because you’re pregnant.”

Josh said these words without realizing how hurtful they were. Melanie’s eyes widened in shock. Right away, he knew he should apologize, he did apologize, and Melanie said, “No, no, you’re right. I can’t trust him. I don’t trust him. He’s only calling me because I’m pregnant.”

“He’s stupid,” Josh said. And when Melanie didn’t respond, he said, “It might be better if you didn’t tell me about the phone calls anymore.”

“Okay,” she said. “Sure thing. I just don’t want to keep anything from you.”

But this wasn’t exactly true. What she kept from Josh was how the phone calls made her feel and what she intended to do about Peter once the summer ended and she returned to Connecticut. Peter was her husband, yes, but was she going to take him back? Melanie never said, and Josh was afraid to ask. He needed someone to talk to, but there was no one. He spent all day with a four-year-old, throwing perfect pitches, fielding perfect hits.

“Josh? Josh?”

Blaine was standing at “home plate” with his bat poised when Josh, who had been ready to pitch, froze. It was his custom, between pitches, to check on Porter, who was asleep on the blanket under the umbrella. Was he still asleep? This was increasingly important now that Porter could walk; the last thing Josh wanted was for Porter to toddle off down the beach unnoticed. But when Josh checked on Porter this time, he was taken by surprise. There was a person sitting under the umbrella next to Porter, a person who had appeared out of nowhere, like a ghost, like a bad dream. It was Didi.