Winter Jacket: New Beginnings (13 page)

“You hold your own with me,” I assured her.

“But you’re different, Ellio. You’re not like a regular professor.”

I didn’t know if that was meant to be a compliment or not. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a good thing,” she insisted. “You’re not The Job; you don’t talk about literature and sentence structures constantly. Plus,” she added with a cheeky grin, “I’m not sleeping with them.”

“You’d better not be,” I playfully growled.

“Although…” Hunter stroked her chin, looking thoughtful. “Emily
is
pretty attractive for an older woman.”

“Now we’re
definitely
not having dinner with her.”

+++++

It was raining the day Nikole and Troian left for California. The weather appropriately matched my mood. Rain splattered against the bay window in the open-concept kitchen where I’d had many a dinner with my two closest friends.
They hadn’t owned the townhouse for very long, but we’d collected memories in this place in a short time.

The rain accumulated on the
kitchen window, distorting the view outside of a small, green park. Down in the complex parking lot was a modest-sized moving truck. They weren’t bringing their large furniture with them in the Uhaul because they still had to find someplace in the Los Angeles area to rent. Troian’s employer was putting them up in company housing until they found something more permanent.

Because of that, t
he condo itself didn’t look much different; it would have been hard to tell that whoever lived here was moving away unless you knew where to look. Various mementos and knick-knacks had been packed away and all of Nikole’s houseplants were gone. She was taking a few with her, but most of them were going to friends’ houses, including mine. I’d inherited an adolescent banana tree that I would unintentionally kill as soon as they crossed the first state line.

Hunter leaned against me and we looked out the window at the dreary landscape together. “I’ve always liked this place. I bet it sells fast,” she mused. She’d volunteered to help Troian and Nikole pack up the last of their things with me. She’d already helped her old roommate Sara pack up her things earlier in the month. She was a living saint.

“Maybe,” I murmured. There was a person playing with a large black dog in the park despite the wet weather.

“Don’t forget I’m having dinner with my parents later, so you’ll have to fend for yourself tonight.”

I made a noncommittal noise that originated from deep in my throat.

“Are you gonna be okay, Ellio?”

“I’ll get through it,” I sighed, turning from the window.

I was so incredibly proud and happy for Troian and this new career opportunity, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for myself.
It was ridiculous, but I couldn’t restrain my emotions. I was losing my best friends. That never got any easier.

Friendships had been easy growing up in a sma
ll town. You couldn’t be picky – if someone went to your school and did a lot of the same clubs and activities as you, you were friends. I had a few friends on the faculty, and I guessed I could call some people who worked at Peggy’s my friends, too, but I had far more acquaintances than people I considered close confidants. And I balked at the idea of making new friends. I wasn’t naturally gregarious or outgoing. I could be stiff and standoffish, reserved and private, when meeting someone new.

The front door opened and Troian walked in looking a little damp. “I guess that’s everything,” she said, speaking as somber and as serious as I felt.

“Pack up all the sex toys and torture devices?” I half-heartedly joked. “Your realtor might get the surprise of her life if she finds your stash.”

Troian laughed, but it sounded hollow.
I wondered how she felt about the move. She and I hadn’t talked extensively about it, and it made me feel like I’d shirked my Best Friend responsibilities. I think we’d both been trying to deny that this was really going to happen.

Hunter and I followed Troian outside. The rain had mostly stopped.
The ground was saturated, but the rain was just a mist now.

“You still have your keys in case I need something shipped to me pronto, right?” Troian asked me as we made our way down to the moving truck where Nikole waited.

I touched my hand to my jacket pocket where the keys resided. “Yep.” I’d also promised to keep an eye on their condo until it sold.

“And if your mom starts driving you crazy, the offer still stands to let her stay at our house until she gets back on her feet,” Nikole noted.

“We will definitely consider that,” Hunter laughed. She bumped her hip into mine and I smiled for the first time that day.

Nikole opened the driver’s side door of the moving truck. “Time to get on the road. We’ve got a long couple of days ahead of us.”

I hugged my best friend. “Call me as soon as you get there.”

Troian pulled back from the hug and gave me a goofy grin. “Sure thing, Mom.”

I dismissed her with a growl. “I worry. I’ve seen you drive.”

Nikole laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m only letting her drive when we get to the flat states where the only thing she has to worry about is cows in the streets.”

Troian stomped her foot. “Enjoy it while you can, you two. This is the last time you get to gang up on me for a while.”

Normally her choice of words would have brought a quip about threesomes to my lips, but instead the truth sobered me. “When am I going to see you?”

Troian’s features became serious as well. “When can you come out to LA?”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “Maybe we can find a long weekend soon that works.”

Troian nodded. It would have to do.

I gave my best friend one final hug. Nikole and Hunter shared a brief embrace as well. Troian walked over to the passenger side of the vehicle, wiping at her eyes. I could only imagine the emotions she must have been feeling. Change like this was exciting, but also scary. Even Nikole, the more stoical of the two, looked a little frayed at the edges.

The rain picked up again and Hunter and I stood back under an awning as Troian and Nikole climbed into the moving truck. Hunter’s hand found mine. Our fingertips brushed against each others’ before she took a more forceful hold of my hand. We watched and waved as our friends began their grand adventure.

+++++

It continued to rain all evening. It was my least favorite time of year when everything gets covered in old, crusty snow or mud. At least the constant rain would help wash that away. I ached for warm spring days when I could sit on my front porch with a cocktail in one hand and a book in the other while gangs of chickadees chirped in the distance. Spring was too short in the upper Midwest. It was either winter or summer – spring usually lasted a long weekend when tulips began to poke up through the just recently thawed ground.

I was caught up with gr
ading and course prep, so I enjoyed a rare moment of free-time. I could have used the break from course work to work on my next manuscript, but instead I was rewarding myself by re-reading an old favorite,
Wuthering Heights
. I’d read all the similar classics when I was in 8th grade, just for fun, but I’d been too young and naive about the world to truly understand the predicaments of characters like Catherine Earnshaw or Lizzie Bennet or Jane Eyre.

I heard a key in the front door lock and the sound of the door swinging open. Hunter was having dinner with her parents tonight, so I knew not to expect her until later. There was a slight jangling of keys and then the frustrated grunt that belonged to my mother.

“How was your first day of school?” I smiled.

Even though the Monday morning after Troian and Nik’s going away party had been hell for me between confronting Loryssa and having my writing seminar evaluated, I’d kept my promise to my mom and had stopped by the university library to see if they had any job openings. I knew most of the circulation and reserve librarians from everyday interactions and the head of library services from being on a number of committees together. They were probably the one support-staff team I was closest to because of our mutual interest in books.
They usually hired students to fill the more mundane tasks like working the circulation desk or re-shelving books, but I’d hoped they could accommodate my mom. She needed a reason to get out of bed every morning so she’d leave my wine rack alone.

“My head is so full of number and letter combinations, it might explode.” She dropped her purse on the kitchen island and sighed. “I need a glass of wine.”

I laughed, standing up from my seat near the fireplace, and went to the dining room where my wine rack was located. I returned to the kitchen with a bottle of Chardonnay.

“So did you not like it?” I asked as I poured my mother a glass of wine. I started out conservative until she raised an expectant eyebrow as if to say, ‘that’s all I get?’

“It was fine,” my mom conceded. “The work is a little brainless, so it’s obviously not my dream job, but the people seem nice enough.”

“And the wages are more than fair,” I noted. When I’d originally seen the hourly pay, I’d considered hanging up my teaching shoes to become a librarian instead. Thinking about spending my days surrounded by all those books and words was like an English Professor’s erotic dream.

My mom nodded and took her first sip of the overly generous wine pour. “It’ll do for now until I figure out what I’m supposed to be when I grow up.”

I saluted her with the wine bottle I had no intention of drinking.
“Join the club.”

“What are you talking about?” my mom scoffed, sounding almost offended. “You’ve always wanted to be a professor.” She set her wine glass on the kitchen island.

“I know,” I agreed. “And for so long my goal had been to get tenure. But now that I’ve got that, I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life.”

I had always had an immediate goal in mind to guide me through my professional and private life from graduating high school to graduating college to getting my doctorate and my first teaching job. Then I’d been focused on publishing and getting tenure.

“Well, what’s the next step? How do you go from Associate Professor to Professor?”

“Keep doing a good job teaching and publish another book,” I said. “But I don’t have to worry about that for another six or seven years; they won’t consider me for another promotion until I’ve met that next milestone.”

“Wow. I had no idea it took that long,” my mom said, shaking her head. “And what happens after that? After you get to be a full professor?”

“I don’t know,” was my honest reply. I didn’t have the typical trajectory for my life – there wasn’t the goal to get married, buy a house, and have a couple of kids. I already had the house, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to get married, and I was sure I didn’t possess a single maternal bone in my body. “I don’t know what’s next.”

My phone rattled on the kitchen island with an incoming email to my campus address. The subject line made my breath catch in my throat: “Your Teaching Evaluation.”

I rushed to the back of the house to the den where my computer resided, leaving my mother sitting in the kitchen without an explanation. I didn’t bother turning on an overhead light as I headed directly for my laptop. My stomach churned as I waited for the campus email program to open.

I hadn’t thought much about the woman who had come to observe my writing seminar earlier in the week. She hadn’t mentioned when I might receive feedback or the format through which it would be communicated, and I’d been too annoyed that day to ask. Student evaluations at the end of each semester were stressful enough; although the majority of student comments were always positive, I had a tendency to linger too long on the rare negative review.

I opened the email with its attached document and briefly scanned its contents. The evaluation itself was surprisingly brief for the Dean to have gone out of her way to even bother with the observation in the first place. The review commended my level of inst
ruction with minimal criticism. To me it seemed like an inadequate tool if it was truly going to be used to assess merit raises.

“Is everything okay, Elle?” My mom hovered in the doorway of the den. The light from the hallway spilled around her silhouette and into the dark room.
I could understand her concern; I’d run out of the kitchen without a word to her like my hair was on fire.

I stared at the words at the bottom of the email:
Based on classroom observation and previous history, it is recommended that Professor Graft be reminded about professionalism in the workplace.

“Yeah, Mom,” I said. The words were tight in my throat. “Everything’s fine.

I laid in bed that night, listening to the soft rain clatter against the tin roof of my house, thinking about the conversation I had had with my mom. What did I want to be when I grew up? What were my goals now that I had an amazing girlfriend and had achieved tenure? Had I plateaued? Was this all I could hope to achieve in life?

Thinking about Troian and her brave decision to move across the country was making me second-guess the trajectory of my own life. Did I want to teach for the rest of my working life? Would I still find satisfaction championing the Oxford Comma and drilling the 5-paragraph essay into undergraduates’ heads 10 years from now? What about 20 or 30?

Sometimes I found myself being contemplative as I watched a group of students struggle over a midterm or final exam. Who would they become after graduation I wondered. Would they go on to do great things? Would they ever remember the skills they had learned in my classes?

The Dean’s evaluation did nothing to assuage the worries currently bouncing around in my brain. My teaching itself was irreproachable – the observation had said as much. But the final recommendation was weighing heavily on my mind.
Professionalism
? The statement had been too vague for my liking. Was she referring to my disrespect toward the evaluator? Had she overheard my conversation with Loryssa? Or, did this have to do with Hunter still? She’d be graduating in a short time, and in theory that would signal the end of a conflict. But with this new Dean at the helm, I wasn’t going to take anything for granted.