Testing Kate (28 page)

Sullivan pressed her fingers to her temples and closed her eyes. She held this position for so long, looking like the before picture in an aspirin commercial, I thought she’d forgotten I was sitting there.

“Um…should I go?” I asked.

Her eyes flew open, and the hands dropped down from her face. “No, I’m sorry. It’s just…I really thought he was going to hit me.”

“I did too,” I admitted.

“Anyway, we should probably talk about what happens next,” Sullivan said, slipping back into her professional mode. “Now, as far as your Constitutional Law exam, no matter what Dean Spitzer decides to do about Professor Hoffman, I can promise you that a neutral party will grade your exam book. And I think there’s ample evidence of bias to warrant having another professor look over your Criminal Law exam book from last semester, to see if the grade you received in that class was fair.”

But before she had finished speaking, I was already shaking my head.

“That really won’t be necessary,” I said.

Sullivan frowned. “But you have an excellent chance of grading onto Law Review. If you do as well on your exams this semester, that is. I would have thought you’d welcome a chance to have your Criminal Law grade reviewed.”

“It’s not necessary because…I’m withdrawing from school,” I said. I was amazed at how calm and clear my voice was. “I won’t be returning in the fall.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Y
ou’re dropping out? But why?” Teresa Sullivan asked. “Is it Professor Hoffman? Because Two and Three-Ls get to choose all of their own classes. You don’t have to ever take another course with him.” She paused. “If he even remains at the school, that is.”

Hoffman really made a mistake screwing with her, I thought. She wasn’t going to forget what he’d done—or how he’d towered over her, his face purple and his hands clenched in fists.

“No, that’s not why. I’m not leaving because the work is hard or because of Hoffman. I’m leaving because I finally figured out that the law isn’t the right path for me,” I said.

Dean Sullivan nodded and looked thoughtful. “It does get easier, Kate.”

“I’m not looking for easy. I just want to do something meaningful with my life. Meaningful to me. And I know that the law will never be that. If I stayed here, it would only be because I was too afraid to admit I’d made a mistake. Too afraid to leave. And I’m tired of being afraid.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to revisit your Crim grade? If nothing else, I’d think that you’d want to know if another professor thinks it warrants a higher grade. Don’t you want to find out if you made Law Review?”

I shook my head again. My hair was tied back in a short ponytail, and the curly ends dragged against the base of my neck.

“No. If I did grade onto Law Review, it might make me want to stay. But I wouldn’t be staying for the right reasons,” I said, wondering if it made as clear sense spoken out loud as it did in my head.

Sullivan looked at me levelly, and then finally she smiled and closed my file shut.

“Good luck, Kate,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said, returning her smile. “I’ll take all the good luck I can get.”

The thing about huge life changes—breaking up with a lover, leaving a job, dropping out of school—is that there isn’t always a clear future to fall into. As much as you might want to think that you’re moving toward a different and better future, there’s always that one lucid moment when you suddenly realize that you don’t have the first clue about what’s going to happen next.

Which is pretty much exactly how I felt when I stopped at my locker after leaving Sullivan’s office. My hands were shaking as I twisted the combination on my lock and then pulled the door open and stared into the space that had, for the past academic year, housed the flotsam and jetsam of my life as a law student. I pulled out the extra legal pads and pens I’d stashed there, the casebooks and the mirror with a magnet on the back that had hung on the door, the textbooks and Nutshells, and stuffed them all into the enormous camping backpack that I’d been dragging around all year like a punishment. I leaned down and grabbed my bag, and then heaved it up onto my shoulder for the last time as a student at the Tulane School of Law.

Nick was waiting for me on our front porch when I got home. He was sitting on a folding beach chair, tossing a football up into the air.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi.”

Another storm had blown through and moved on, leaving the sticky hot humidity in its wake. It felt like we were living inside a clothes dryer. Sweat beaded up on my forehead, and the green T-shirt and khaki shorts I was wearing had wilted, molding damply against my skin.

“Did you talk to Sullivan?” Nick asked.

I nodded. “She told me you’d been to see her. Thanks for that,” I said. “And for sticking up for me in front of Hoffman.”

Nick shrugged and looked down at his football. “I don’t know what good it will do. Your word, my word…we’re not exactly the administration’s favorite students. I doubt they’ll do anything.”

“They already have. I was there when Sullivan confronted Hoffman. She pulled my exam book out of the stack and saw for herself that the corner was folded down,” I said.

“No way! Really? What did Hoffman say?”

“He was pissed,” I said. I smiled at the memory. “His face went purple, and that vein on his forehead was throbbing.”

“Oh, man, I would have given anything to see that!”

“He and Sullivan really went at it. She told him she was going to scuttle his nomination to be the new dean, and he called her a bitch and stormed out of her office,” I said. I leaned against the railing that enclosed the front porch.

“Then you’re off the hook!” Nick said, delighted. “They can’t let him grade your exam now.”

I nodded, not yet ready to tell him about my decision to drop out of law school, not now when we were—for the moment, anyway—back to the easy companionship from which our friendship had originally sprung. And I didn’t want him to think that what he’d done for me, standing up to Hoffman in front of the entire class, had been for nothing—because it meant so much to me.

“What if we both make Law Review? Wouldn’t that be amazing?” Nick said. He grinned at me.

“What are you doing this summer?” I asked.

“Going back to D.C. I’m going to work at my dad’s firm,” Nick said.

“That’s fantastic. It’s hard for One-Ls to get summer associate positions,” I said.

“That’s nepotism for you. It’s going to be awful, but at least the pay is decent.”

“Are you staying with your parents?”

“No, I’ve got a buddy in the city whose roommate is going to be away for the summer, and I’m going to sublet his room. How about you? What are you doing?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” I said honestly.

“I can have my dad ask around and see if anyone’s hiring interns,” Nick offered.

“Thanks, but I think I might stay here for the summer. My lease runs through August, so I have to pay rent on the apartment no matter what. I’ll see what summer in New Orleans is like.”

“Hot,” Nick said.

I laughed. “Yes, I expect so.”

Nick tossed his football up in the air, caught it easily, before tossing it to me.

Nick stood. “Throw it back.”

I looked at him. All I wanted to do was dive into his arms and feel his body wrap around mine. In fact, I wanted it all—the cinematic ending, complete with crashing waves, a thunderous drumroll, and a fireworks spectacular. And for just a moment, as we stood there staring at each other, I could sense that it
was
there, just a heartbeat away.

I tossed him the football.

One step forward, I thought. One step, and I’ll be able to touch him, to brush my finger down the angle of his cheek. One step, and I won’t be alone.

Nick opened his mouth, about to speak. But I shook my head, stopping him.

“Have a good summer, Nick,” I said, turning to unlock the door to my stairwell.

I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to lose my nerve.

Five Months Later

A
t first, I wasn’t sure whether I would stay in New Orleans. But I loved working for Armstrong and was thrilled when he offered me a full-time position as a research assistant for his new book. I spent my days holed up in his book-lined library or trolling around the D-Day Museum, downtown in the Warehouse District.

“Blasted Internet,” Armstrong would mutter, peering at the blue computer screen over his bifocals and pecking at the keyboard with his index fingers. “My editor sent me a list of websites she thought would be helpful, but I can’t understand how the damned thing works.”

“Give me the list, and I’ll look them up to see if there’s anything useful,” I’d say, and leave him to his writing while I tracked down bits of history, like a detective chasing clues.

I loved every minute of it.

One Sunday afternoon, while I was walking through the Quarter, I saw a sign hanging on a house on Chartres Street that read: T
HE
B
EAUREGARD
–K
EYES
H
OUSE
. Something about the place intrigued me, so I typed the name into Google when I got back to the office, and a moment later I was reading all about the house’s racy past. It turned out that the original construction had been financed with the sale of the pirate Jean Lafitte’s plunders. Over the next one hundred fifty years, it housed a chess champion, a Confederate general, the writer Frances Parkinson Keyes, and, in the early 1900s, when it was owned by the Sicilian Corrado Giacona, it had been the scene of a bloody gunfight.

Suddenly I was envisioning writing the colorful history of the house as a kind of biography. Coaxing out the words, smoothing over the passages, laying out the rich details. Or maybe, I thought, with a thrill of excitement, I’d write it as a historical narrative. When I closed my eyes, I could practically see the French Quarter as it was in 1828 when the first bricks were laid—the dusty streets lined with horses twitching their tails and stomping their feet, the rattle of carriage wheels, the swish of the colorful silk dresses favored by the Creole women sauntering down the narrow sidewalk, the steamships clogging the Mississippi River.

And before I could even think it through, I had fished out a yellow legal pad from the box of school supplies I hadn’t bothered unpacking and started to take notes.

When the lease was up on my Magazine Street apartment, Armstrong overheard me on the telephone with yet another landlord advertising in the classified section of the
Times–Picayune,
trying—and failing—to convince them that, yes, I technically did have a dog, but Holmes was so small he wouldn’t damage whatever shoddy property they were renting.

“Why don’t you move into my carriage house? Rent-free,” Armstrong offered.

“No, I couldn’t do that,” I protested.

“Absolutely. It’ll help make me feel less guilty for the truly paltry salary I’m paying you,” he’d insisted. “Really, it’s disgraceful how underpaid you are.”

“I have a dog,” I warned him.

“He can keep Elvis company.”

For my part, I was glad I took Armstrong up on the offer. The little carriage house had a working fireplace, high ceilings, and was furnished with squishy armchairs and antiques that glowed with lemon oil. Tucked away in the back house, which was shaded under ancient oak trees and perfumed from the honeysuckle vines creeping up the east brick wall, I sometimes imagined that I lived in an earlier, less complicated age. And Holmes loved chasing lizards around the yard and barking at bigger dogs walking by, from behind the safety of a wrought-iron fence. It very quickly felt like home.

“How’s school going? What’s it like being Two-Ls?” I asked Lexi and Jen when I met them for lunch at Martin Wine Cellar, a deli housed inside an enormous liquor store.

It was the first chance the three of us had had to get together. I missed them but understood that they were busy with school.

“Same old, same old,” Jen said.

“Except that now we finally get to choose our own classes,” Lexi said, as she took a delicate bite out of her turkey club sandwich. “Thank God.”

“Have you heard from Dana?” Jen asked. “I got a postcard from her a while back, but that was ages ago.”

“We’ve talked a few times. She checks in from time to time to find out how Holmes is doing,” I said. “She really misses him.”

“I assume she’s not coming back to school,” Lexi said.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “She’s going to start working on her master’s degree next semester, though. I think she’s planning to live at home and commute in to school.”

“Good for her,” Lexi said. “What’s she getting her degree in?”

“Psychology,” I said.

Jen whistled. “That’s ironic.”

“And she’s dating someone. Dana said they’re taking it slow, but I think he sounds pretty special.”

“Good. I’m happy for her,” Lexi said.

“Hey, have you heard the news about Hoffman?” Jen asked.

I shuddered. Just hearing his name made my stomach feel sour. “No, I’m totally out of the law-school loop,” I said.

“They
fired
him,” Jen said. She leaned forward as she dropped this bombshell, her eyes sparkling. “And Professor Legrande is the new dean.”

“No? Really?” I gasped.

“Yup. Our national fucking nightmare is over,” Jen said.

I looked to Lexi for confirmation.

She nodded. “It’s true. Officially Hoffman’s on a leave of absence, but Jacob told me that he’s being forced to take an early retirement.”

“Jacob?” My eyebrows rose. “Are you and he…?” My voice trailed off in a question.

“God, no! I just bumped into him the other day at school. But he did ask me what I was doing this weekend.” Lexi smiled coolly. “I laughed and told him that he’d missed his chance.”

“Are you still seeing that Swedish guy?”

“Ian. Yeah,” Lexi said, nodding. “Things are going really well between us. You should meet him.”

“I’d like that.”

Jen had become uncharacteristically quiet during this exchange, focusing all of her attention on her ham-and-brie croissant.

“What about you, Jen?” I asked gently.

“Sean and I separated,” she said flatly.

From the shocked expression on Lexi’s face, I guessed this was news to her too.

“What? When?” Lexi asked.

“Because of Addison?” I asked.

Jen laughed humorlessly. “No. Addison and I broke up—is it breaking up? I don’t even know if that’s the right thing to call it, since technically we weren’t ever really a couple—anyway, we ended it over the summer. I thought I told you.”

“No,” I said. “I think I would have remembered that.”

“Yeah. Well.” Jen sighed. “The night before I was supposed to leave to visit him in Los Angeles, he called to tell me that he was seeing someone.”

“Ouch,” I said. I reached across the table and rested my hand on her arm. “I’m so sorry.”

Jen shrugged. “I couldn’t care less about Addison. I’m more concerned about my husband. And the internist at the hospital I think he’s screwing,” she said bitterly.

“Sean’s having an affair?” I asked, careful to drop the “too” from the end of the sentence.

“He says no. But then last week he came home from work and said he wasn’t happy and was going to move out for a little while.” Tears flooded Jen’s eyes. She picked up the toothpick that had been holding her sandwich together and began stabbing at the croissant with it, leaving a pattern of tiny holes in the flaky crust.

“Why do you think he’s having an affair?” Lexi asked.

“I sort of followed him one day after work. He went to the Bulldog with some coworkers, and I saw this doctor he works with. Her name is Indigo—Indigo!—and she was at our Thanksgiving party last year. They were flirting.” Jen looked like she felt sick to her stomach. “You know, I really don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“Okay. We don’t have to talk about it,” Lexi said.

We sat for a few minutes. Lexi and I ate our sandwiches; Jen continued to poke holes in hers.

“I just wish I knew that everything was going to work out,” Jen said suddenly. “Do you know what I mean? I just want to know that it will all be okay in the end.”

I nodded. “I know. We all want that.”

I knocked softly on Armstrong’s open office door. He looked up and brightened when he saw me.

“How about if we blow off working for the rest of the afternoon and go shopping?” he said. “I need new china.”

I happened to know that he did not need new china. There were five different sets of tableware downstairs, from his mother’s good wedding china still housed in an ornate, gilded cabinet to the plain white Crate & Barrel plates he used every day.

“Do you remember a while back you told me about Hunter?” I asked.

Armstrong sighed and put down his pen. “It’s going to be one of those conversations, hmmm?”

“We don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want to,” I said.

“No, I don’t mind talking. There’s just not much to say. He was on the faculty with me at UVA. We had some good years and some bad years, and when we split we were both sure it was time. I’m over him now. I have been for a long time.”

“But the night that you mentioned him, you told me…well, you told me I should be careful with love,” I said.

Armstrong looked surprised. “I did? When did I say that? Had I been drinking?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that explains that.” Armstrong grinned. “You should never hold anything a man says while under the influence against him. It’s unseemly.”

“It’s just…I’m worried that I wasn’t. Careful with love,” I said. “I’m worried that I made a mistake.”

“Not the academic?”

“No, not him.”

“Thank
God.
”

“It’s just that for so long, I was always trying to do the safe thing. I stayed in relationships that I should have left because I didn’t want to give up the security. But now I’m worried that I’ve gone and done the opposite,” I said.

“Well, I’ll tell you this. Once you meet the right person, it’s harder to be apart than it is to be together. Someday you’ll meet someone you feel that way about. And you’ll just know,” Armstrong said. He looked distant for a minute, and I wondered if he was thinking about Hunter or some other long-ago love.

“I think I may already have,” I said softly.

As soon as I walked in the back door of the law school, the all-too-familiar smell of the place hit me: a combination of institutional floor cleanser and freshly printed newspaper. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the hallways were mostly deserted, save for a few students who had ventured downstairs on a study break. I didn’t recognize any of them.

One-Ls, I thought. I could tell by their expressions of fear mingled with exhaustion.

I climbed the stairs and, once I reached the second floor, turned right. I walked past the administration offices and my old locker, down to the end of the deserted hallway. I veered left and then stopped at the first door on my right.

There was a brass plaque mounted on the door:

TULANE LAW REVIEW

I drew in a deep breath and then pushed the door open.

The Law Review office was humming with activity. Two rows of cubicles—most of them occupied with former classmates that I recognized, including Scott Brown and Jasmine West—were lined down the center of the room, and a cluster of tables littered with case reports and stacks of papers were set up at the front. Doors on the right and left led to tiny private offices for the editors. There was a laser printer and copier and fax machine, along with a water cooler and a coffeepot set up in the back.

I stood at the door, hoping that no one would notice me, while I scanned the room. And then I saw him.

Nick.

We’d only spoken a few times since the end of our One-L year. Those conversations had been pleasant, congenial even, as we’d chatted about his summer job and my decision to leave school. We were careful to stay on safe ground, both of us pretending to ignore the undercurrent of everything that had happened between us.

Nick was now at the back of the office, standing with a petite woman with thick dark hair and a big toothy grin. They were laughing as they talked, and the woman kept finding reasons to touch Nick’s arm or hand. She was pretty, I thought, with a stab of jealousy.

Nick looked so familiar…and yet somehow different. Maybe it was his hair, which was shorter than it had been the previous year, the waves cropped close to his head. His face and arms were a golden brown, the last traces of a fading summer tan.

He looked up, smiling at something the brunette had said, and saw me. When our eyes met, I felt a jolt of excitement, quickly followed by a small tremor of fear. How was he going to react to my coming here? I had no idea what to expect. For all I knew, the woman he was talking to could be his girlfriend. Or, if he was back to his old tricks, yet another of his conquests.

Nick broke off his conversation and started across the room toward me.

“Kate,” he said. “Hi. What are you doing here?”

I smiled nervously. “I wanted to see if the rumor that you’d made Law Review was true. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. It’s a mixed blessing. It takes up a lot of time. I feel like I never leave this office,” Nick said. He rolled his eyes comically.

“Uh-huh. So you love it?”

“Maybe ‘love’ is too strong a word, but…yeah, I like it. And they keep telling us that it’s the key to getting a judicial clerkship, so it’s worth it.”

“Is that what you want to do after graduation? Clerk for a judge?”

He nodded. “But the positions are competitive, so who knows if I’ll get one.”

“Still, that’s great. I’m really happy for you.”

“Hey, you too. I heard that you’re still working for Armstrong McKenna.”

I nodded. “Full-time. And I’m doing some research of my own. I’m thinking of writing a book…and maybe going back to school for my master’s degree.”

“Wow. That’s amazing,” Nick said approvingly.