“Oh, you’ll see,” he said, nodding knowingly, “you’ll see.”
That exchange created small ripples of uncertainty in my mind. After all, I was one of the most recent hires. If anyone was going to be reorged, there was a good chance it would be me, especially after my lackluster performance as faculty coordinator. Plus, I hadn’t published all that much since I’d started here, either.
“Zero point seven points,” the chair had told me. “That might do during the honeymoon period, but it won’t cut it over the long haul. We’re evaluated based on our output, as you know. The bibliometric indicator system may not be the soundest system in the world, but fair or not, it’s how we are assessed right now.”
I had nodded vigorously, but the fact of it was that after completing my dissertation I wasn’t really up to starting a new research project. My plan was to put off the problem by signing up for conferences now and then. Then at least I would have something to pull out of my hat. Though the conference I’d received a grant to attend was still a few months off, it was already starting to bug me. The plane could crash. I could be raped and murdered. I could get stress cancer from excessive dread beforehand. To put it succinctly, my life could be torn asunder. All in the attempt to score a few idiotic career advancement points with my department chair and a colleague who hardly knew what my name was and certainly had no idea what my research interests were.
Luckily it wasn’t raining and the bicyclists were back doing their thing again, so there was less traffic. In just under half an hour I was able to carry a beaming Alva off the playground and into the hallway, where I immediately started stripping off her hat, mittens, rain gear, fleece jacket, and wool socks.
“You came to get me before snack!”
“Yes, sometimes I pick you up before snack.”
“But not always.”
“No, not always.”
“Not on Saturday.”
“No, but there’s no school on Saturdays. Now we have to get your bag.”
Only then, when I looked up into the cloakroom, did I notice Titus’s au pair digging around in his cubby.
And I’d gotten here early. To be on the safe side.
I straightened up and took a few steps forward.
“Hello,” I said, smiling uncertainly.
The au pair jumped.
I took another step in her direction and held out my hand. Not to touch her. More to show her that I meant well.
“Ahem . . . about yesterday. It didn’t occur to me that you were from the Philippines, but of course you are. And they just had a typhoon there, I know that. Is everything all right with your family?”
Up until the last sentence it didn’t seem like she understood any of what I was saying, but at the word family the muscles in her face started contracting. Her eyes filled with tears and her lips began to quiver.
“I have no contact,” she said, her voice trembling. “One week. I cannot reach.”
Wind started blowing inside my head.
Tears began pouring down her cheeks, and I suddenly felt the need to offer her some helpful advice. Hadn’t they said something about Twitter on the radio? Something about the names of people who were accounted for being tweeted?
“Do you have a Twitter account?”
“Who?”
She had pulled out a tissue and was now trying to mop away the enormous tears still running down her cheeks.
“Twitter. Social media.”
“Twitt?”
“Twitter.”
“Twitt?”
“T-W-I-T-T-E-R. The Internet. There are lists or something like that there. Ask your family.”
“I cannot reach.”
“I mean your host family, Titus’s parents. They can help you. With Twitter.”
Shut up! a voice in my head was screaming. Stop going on and on about Twitter! But I couldn’t stop, because I didn’t know what to do. Should I hug her? How do people in the Philippines feel about personal space? Is hugging OK?
So, I just repeated the bit about Twitter while she tried to calm down.
“Do a search on Twitter,” I said, “not Twitt.”
“I try to call!”
“No, you can’t call Twitter. It’s on the Internet.”
“I pray,” she said.
“Yes.” I nodded. “Prayer is good. Very good.”
We stood there for a moment without saying anything, until Titus started tugging her arm and I agreed with relief that it was time to go.
6
All the attention I had paid to the pancake party and the au pair had resulted in my being even further behind on my conference paper, so on Monday morning I was up at five. I stacked the books from my office in a big pile next to my laptop and planned to open them as soon as I checked Facebook. I always did this, even though the news feed was only ever filled with birthdays and nuggets of wisdom like, “All the days that came and went—I never realized those were life,” and pictures of people’s kids and Starbucks cups. I sent one birthday greeting and clicked “Like” on three random posts, then moved on to the real estate site, where there were now 289 listings. As expected it was mostly a disappointing mix of “condo in co-op building with large balcony” and “new high-end, modern single-family home.”
Everything looked the same. Everything was the same. All the time.
Which is surely why I didn’t react right away.
Because it didn’t look like anything from real life. So I sat there looking at a picture of a big red imposing house with ivy and crushed white rock in the yard, without really seeing it. “Birdsong in the city,” I read, without really taking it in. “Rare opportunity.”