“I have no idea how I am. I just feel so guilty because I have this other world, my respite, and he has nothing.” I sipped my coffee. It was foamy and cinnamon-y. “Thanks for this.”
I told Keith how diligently Stefan was working since he came home to find a job. He made lists of A employers and B employers, so that he wouldn’t wreck his mood by trying all the top places first, in case he was rejected. His parole officer had given Stefan the names of employers who proudly hired the formerly incarcerated; and in a Twitter chat about Stefan, one vocal community influencer wrote that no one ever prospered without help. But, strangely enough, that man didn’t have a job for Stefan, nor did anyone else the man could think of. Stefan tried a painting company and a moving company. He tried the French patisserie, the Russian deli and the New York bagel bakery. He tried the garden supply, the pool supply, the art supply, the pancake house, the steak house, the Omelet House and Gandalf’s House of Games. As soon as he identified himself, people standing right next to Help Wanted posters said there were no openings. His mood sank deeper with every rejection. I would pass by his door sometimes in the early morning and peek in if it was open a crack. He often slept on the floor, curled like a shrimp with no pillow, always fully dressed in a sweatshirt and sweatpants and socks, as if he might have to spring up at any minute. I guess the floor felt more like the shelf in his cell. It seemed so cruel, but I dared not bring it up with him, for which humiliation might be the endmost one?
I was afraid to leave for campus this past week, afraid that I might come home to find him hanging by an electrical cord from the garage door opener. I would waste time staring blankly out the window as protestors gathered; then push past them to my car with a sheaf of folders in front of my face. I tore into my classroom door a few times at twenty after, perhaps ruining the morning for my students who had just begun to dream that the two-hour seminar would be canceled. Like some woman in a sixties comic strip, one day I was still wearing my Minnetonka bedroom slippers when I arrived.
Not my finest pedagogical hour. But that was why they called it “tenure.” I was popular, published, respected. Mourning Becomes Her: Bereft Women of Fiction from Olivia to Olive Kitteridge and my other seminar, Ghost Stories: Shades in Short Fiction, turned away students every semester.
I told Keith, “I shouldn’t bend your ear.”
He said, “Ah, Thea. Someone from Dateline called me the other day. And she called the dean, too.”
I said, “Ugh. Sorry.”
“Well, the thing is, Thea, maybe this is an opportunity for you.” His voice went official. “No one would blame you for taking a year or so leave of absence. Call it a sabbatical. You’ve been wanting to write Women of Obsession for years. Given the circumstances, why not turn lemons into lemonade?”
“Did you just make that up?” I asked. “If I did that now, it would look like I was running away. And Stefan is probably going to enroll in summer school next semester.”
Keith said, “Here?”
“Where else?” I got free tuition for family members at Thornton Wilder. When Stefan decided against the football route, we re-evaluated. He was young in years, almost a full year younger than many of his classmates, and he was no scholar. So my institution became the plan for him, after he’d taken some community college courses to start. Now the latte in my hand looked like my cup of hemlock. I set it down, too hard. They didn’t want a murderer matriculating at Thornton Wilder College; they didn’t want a murderer’s mother teaching there either, especially my new seminar, which would be about fictional women and obsession. Tears blurted from the corners of my mutinous eyes. Keith looked wretched.
“I told them, she’s a great teacher,” he said. “She’s my friend. If it were up to me...”
“It is up to you. You should defend me and Stefan. Doesn’t everybody deserve a second chance? Isn’t that one of our cultural precepts? Or does all that righteousness go bullshit when you really have to double down?”
“Come on, Thea.”
“Come on, Thea, what? I have a right to my job.”
“I have a right to protect this department’s...”
“What? This department’s reputation? I thought its reputation was for excellence in teaching, not blandest-personal-lives promised?”
“It’s a long way from blandest personal lives to...”
“To what? Okay, Stefan’s situation is one thing, maybe. But me? I’ve done nothing. I’ve done nothing but do my job well for fifteen years, Keith.” I asked him, “Why didn’t people ostracize me when it happened? Why now, when my son’s done his time?”
“That’s the thing. To some people, it doesn’t seem like much time.”
So I wasn’t the only one. Shame only intensified my anger. “He wasn’t charged with murder, Keith. The most he could have been sentenced to for involuntary manslaughter was about five years. He didn’t mean to kill Belinda. He didn’t even mean to hit her. He was seventeen, Keith. He had never even had a speeding ticket...”
“The fact remains that a girl is dead. And she died violently...with her skull smashed in.” He fixed his eyes on me defiantly, as if no one had ever dared to say the words before.
“As if I don’t think of that every day of my life.” I wanted to tell him how, for the past few years, my sole refuge was the first moment of each morning, before I was fully awake, when I could hear the tapping of sweet rain or the trill of a cardinal and think, it’s Saturday at last, or only two weeks until spring break, the kinds of thoughts that a person has who lives a small life populated by small dreams. But then the reality of Belinda’s death would rise up like a miasma.
“Back then, he was only seventeen. And he was...well, lots of people have had kids get caught up with drugs, and the feeling has usually been, there but for the grace of god...”
“He was what?”
“He was going away then, Thea, not coming back.”
“Okay,” I said, absorbing this. “Okay. But it’s different now, how? Do I seem insufficiently miserable?” I was on my feet by then. I didn’t know where all this hostility was suddenly coming from, but there seemed to be no way to stop it. “Wouldn’t anyone be at least relieved that her child was out of prison? Wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know, Thea. As a parent, I don’t know honestly how I would feel. I don’t know if I could feel such righteous anger. A lot of people would say that your anger is misplaced.”
“And would you be one of those people?”
“I’m torn. But I see where others are coming from.”
“Well, maybe we should get started right away then. Maybe my TA can teach my classes, given the circumstances, and we’ll just give all the students an A. How would you like that, huh?”
“I don’t see any huge problem with that, Thea. Of course your salary will continue during your leave as well, if that’s your choice.”