“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.”
My breath snagged in my chest. I thought I was being wronged. But I was only being wrong. I had meant to call his bluff, and he called mine. Grabbing up my big leather tote, I barreled past Keith, then past a wide-eyed Frank Timms—Frank Timms, protest marcher!—who leaned against his office door frame not even pretending detachment—past Robin, the department secretary and Jolly Ames, the security guard who’d worked in the building since I was an undergraduate there. Out the door I ran, painfully grateful that I had disobeyed policy and parked in the emergency lot. I tried not to look around me, tried to ignore the peal of the carillon, which randomly alternated between songs by Mozart and songs by Madonna, and the bright bursts of laughter and voices as kids streamed out of the cafeteria into cold sunlight, their eight-foot-long scarves wrapped around their faces, their slouchy suede boots chumbling the new snow.
Ferber Humanities Hall was my home, my safe haven, sometimes even more than my house. I gave myself a few minutes to bawl out loud in another parking lot, where I was sure I wouldn’t run into a colleague. Crying was such a trope now. Crying was an occupation, a daily constitutional. I didn’t know if it was anger or confusion: A few years ago, during the trial and all the news coverage of Belinda’s death, they had all been so supportive—or if not supportive, I thought now, at least silent.