Justin reached into the pocket of his coat, and to my surprise pulled out a pair of black-rimmed glasses. No case, no protective glass-cleaning cloth, just straight out of his pocket. He studiously put them on, and the heavy frames only served to highlight his chiseled cheekbones. Watching this reverse-Clark Kent process, it was impossible not to notice that this visitor of mine was actually pretty cute, and that perhaps my nervous vigilance was more butterflies than boundaries.
Then, with no sense of self-consciousness at his awkward formality, he extended his hand across the faux wooden threshold of the podium, knocking past the computer monitor and the desk light. “Justin McBride.”
I took his hand in mine and gave it a firm shake. His skin was pleasantly warm.
“Morgan Kalson. Nice to meet you, Justin.”
When he let go of my hand, the inside of my palm tingled for a few seconds afterwards. That’s how I knew I was in trouble.
Again.
7
I lock my office door, wrap my scarf around my neck, and slip out the side stairwell and into the fresh, biting air of December. I avoid the elevator in my building. There’s no need for forced, awkward encounters with faculty and students alike in the shoddy lift that threatens to reject at any moment its one purpose of moving up and down. Youngstown State’s psychology department is still housed on the fourth floor of DeBartolo Hall, and the outer façade of the building remains a devotee to burnt orange coloring and smokers who attend classes in the English department on the third floor.
Justin’s department, anthropology, is in Tod Hall, which is a short walk across the center portion of campus.
Youngstown State’s campus is an odd mix of 1920s-era brick with Ivy League aspirations, 1960s angularity, and the gleaming starkness attributable to the new donor money that’s been flowing in ever since our new university president, a local boy done good by way of a big league football coaching position, came on board. I don’t recognize half the buildings on campus from my own undergraduate days, and I don’t have much reason to frequent the new buildings anyway. Most of them are sports training facilities with the scope of a blimp hangar.
As I walk I hear a distinctive chirping in the trees, and look up to see a thuggish group of robins puffed out on an almost barren crab apple.
It occurs to me that they should have left for warmer climes already, and a flash of worry for the birds flits across my mind. We aren’t even into the thick of “lake effect” winter yet.
Campus is barren today, save for a few bundled masses of students in their puffy winter coats in various shades of bruising. And then I spot her, in her iconoclastic bright red coat.
Maria.
I’m going past the large rock in front of Kilcawley Center, which students regularly paint over with different themes—this morning the rock is blue and white with a mixture of blurry Hebrew lettering from the university’s Hillel group—and just when I think I can move behind it and avoid Maria’s line of sight, it’s too late. She’s caught me with her big smile, a creamy Starbucks cup in hand.
“Morgan!” And she actually lifts her arm in the air, her hand flipped down at the wrist like she’s the star of a romantic comedy come to commiserate with her best friend. Maria and I aren’t that close, and although I don’t know if it’s my already anxious state, given the way my morning’s been going, the hairs on the back of my neck prickle as my colleague gets closer to me.
Maria arrives where I’m standing, and I consider how it probably looked odd that I didn’t move closer to her as she beckoned me over.
“I’m so glad I caught you.” Maria’s mouth does the impossible and opens even wider into a bright white grin, her red lipstick matching her coat perfectly. I glance at the lid of her cup, hoping that a scrim of lipstick would have worn off as she sipped it, but the entire top is pristinely white. Not even a speck of coffee that’s whorled itself out of the drink opening. The woman looks perfect and I can’t help but feel homely in contrast.
“I was just going for a coffee,” I say instinctively, hoping this will speed up our interaction.
“Oh great, then I’ll join you.” Maria holds up her coffee in salute. “I was hoping to pick your brain on something.” She scrunches up her face a bit. “I thought you only drank tea.”
Even as I consider telling her that I have an appointment back at my office and was just grabbing a quick hot beverage, I know she’ll maneuver through that as well and suggest that we walk back together and chat until my meeting appointee arrives.
“That’s what I meant,” I say, resigning myself to at least spending the next half hour trying to stay focused on whatever it is Maria wants my opinion—or support—on. A recent faculty meeting with her passionately arguing that the microwave should only be used by individuals capable of cleaning up after themselves comes to mind.
We walk over to the Starbucks embedded in Kilcawley Center—the same one where Justin and I went earlier this week for my hot chocolate—but the atmosphere of the café is entirely different with Maria as my companion. The soft lighting and tinkling sounds of coffee beans grinding and steam rising have been replaced today with a tableau of student workers sloshing around tepid coffee, their eyes hollow under the fluorescent lights and dark stray hairs poking out of their caps like wires.
Or maybe it’s just me.
“Here, let me pay,” Maria says, and when I try to object, she adds, “I’ll owe you more after you hear the favor I want to ask.”
She winks at me, which serves only to unsettle me further. Does she want me to form a microwave hygiene committee with her? And exactly how long is this impromptu coffee date going to take?
I thank her for my tall chai tea, and she directs me towards a small table with minimal sugar grains and only one creamer splotch at the very center. I notice Maria wipes it up with her finger before rubbing her hands on a stack of napkins she’d grabbed at the cashier stand.
“Filthy undergraduates, am I right?” Maria gives a little cackle from the back of her throat. “God love ’em, or else we’d be out of a job.”
I decide that I am going to take back control of this situation.
“So, what’s this about?” I ask. “And just so as you know, I have a meeting across campus in a few minutes.”
This declaration does not appear to faze Maria in the slightest. She simply leans back in her chair, unwinds her scarf, and drapes her blaring-red coat across the backrest.
“You know I just got that new National Institutes of Health grant money?” she begins, and I cringe internally. This is much worse than any communal kitchen drama.
I nod. “Congrats. Do you need recommendations for research assistants or something?” Fingers crossed.
I take a sip of my chai tea, and the foam manages to burn my upper lip.
“No, no—nothing like that. You didn’t happen to hear what the grant is for, did you?”
I had, and that gave me all the more reason to cut this meeting off at the jump. But then a tinge of guilt rises up my throat, because Maria has never been unkind to me. I take a deep breath.
“Just a little bit. It sounds really groundbreaking,” I offer as my olive branch.
“Look, I know you’re busy,” she says, and her words are a small balm on my distracted mind. “But as you’ve probably already heard, we’re looking at how termination of parental rights influences maltreated children’s symptoms of PTSD.”
Finally, Maria is speeding up her speech as she hurtles forward into what she and I both know is a sensitive subject. She continues:
“And you speak in your classes about your own history with child welfare, right?”
I nod, my eyes feeling beady even though I don’t mean them to.
“Sorry, a mutual student of ours mentioned that to me earlier this week when we were meeting about a resident assistant position for the grant. And I thought, well, why don’t I talk to Morgan about it? So here I am.”
I don’t say anything.
“
Soooo. . .” Maria extends the word while looking down at the dirty table. “Do you think we could meet a few times while I get this data collection up and running, and you could help give me some insight into how I could ask kids about their experiences of leaving home and spending time in foster care?” Maria is getting nervous. Her smile strains at the corners and there’s a tiny smudge of lipstick on her front tooth. “I want to make sure I ask the right questions, you see?”
Part of me wants to ease her discomfort, but a larger part wants to end this conversation as soon as possible.
“I don’t see how I can help. I don’t remember much about that time.” I stare over her shoulder at a photo of one of YSU’s former presidents hung on the café’s wall.
Maria’s mouth twists into a skeptical frown.
“Children’s memories often fail during points of trauma,” I add. And then I can’t help myself, because I don’t think Maria is being kind anymore. “Surely you know that?”
She flinches a little as my not-so-subtle jab registers with her. I can’t have insulted her too badly, though, because she barrels ahead, undaunted.
“Sure, yeah—but you have to remember something. Don’t you and your siblings talk about it?”
I let out an audible sigh, my patience spent. She’s grasping at straws, and I just can’t understand why she’s digging around in my past.
“I don’t have any siblings.”
“Oh, sorry. I just assumed. . .” but Maria doesn’t go on to explain herself.
“Like I said,” and I stand up, “I can’t really help you much. Except to tell you that removing children from the only home they’ve ever known, no matter how awful their home life might be, is traumatic, and one of the best tools humans have for coping with trauma is simply forgetting it ever happened.”
“Is that what you did?” Maria asks, and her voice is so sincere that I almost decide to sit back down with her.
“I survived, didn’t I?” And with that I thank her for the tea and head away from her questions and towards my own.
8
Outside again, and free from Maria’s gaze scratching at my back, I shove my hands in my pockets and walk as quickly as the throngs of students switching between classes will let me. When I arrive at Tod Hall, the door opens with the suction of brand new construction, even though it’s one of the oldest buildings on campus. There’s construction plastic hanging from the ceiling in corners of the lobby and a note indicating that the main stairwell is unavailable due to renovations. I’m supposed to take the annex stairs at the back of the building.
I smell fresh paint as I walk, and the telltale printouts stating “Do Not Touch: Fresh Paint” are scattered on the floor in the odd way Youngstown State physical plant painters like to inform the general public that the wall has wet paint. Never mind that most people don’t look for signage about painting projects by scanning the ground.
The back stairwell doesn’t match the newly refurbished front of Tod Hall, and I almost trip on the stair guards that peel up like the tongues of thirsty dogs as I climb to the second floor.
Like I said, I never take the elevator.
Similar plastic draping decorates the walls when I arrive at the anthropology department, the stagnant air of the hallway mixing with the smells of wet plaster and the knocking sound of something being hammered. The doors lining the hallway are still in the old-fashioned style, with wood paneling and a large window in the center fitted with frosted glass with the professor’s name etched across the top.
It’s only then, as my eye scans down the hallway of faculty names, that I realize I don’t know the name of Justin’s advisor. I have no idea which office he was just sitting in earlier this morning. I have no idea where I’m going.
But instead of giving me pause and making me rethink my decision to come over and ambush my boyfriend, the state of my mind is such that this only makes me walk faster.
I assume the department is set up similar to psychology, where some communal office in a less than ideal corner is designated for graduate students’ desks. The hallway carpet is worn down the middle and ripped at the edges where the baseboards have been torn out, but it still manages to muffle my footsteps as I walk down the hall. I don’t pass a single door where the office is lit from the inside.
The department feels oddly abandoned, and I can’t hear any of the ambient noises of academic life—typing, the whoosh of copies, fits of coughing, murmurs of conferences from behind doors, the odd crying of a grad student receiving mentor feedback for the first time. It is entirely silent. I pull out my phone and text Justin.
Where are you?
I go to hit send, and then reconsider. I add a smiley face after the question mark. Not because I feel it, but because I want Justin to reply and I’m beginning to think that perhaps his quick responses these first few weeks were a temporary delight.
The phone vibrates in my hand almost immediately after I hit send.
Thinking of you, it says, with three heart emojis. A brief instant of relief floods my synapses, but just as quickly it’s gone.
He didn’t quite answer the question.
So I ask again. Where are you? adding, Want to grab lunch?
This time my phone stays silent. As I’m waiting for Justin to reply I hear rustling coming from the door directly opposite me. I move closer to it, and although there’s no etching on the glass door I find a handwritten sign in spidery script listing the names of five different people, with the heading of ANTHRO 260 Grad TAs.
And sure enough, the office sits next to an ancient-looking janitor’s closet, with the men’s lavatory on the opposite side. Of course this is the graduate student office.
I scan the names and don’t see Justin’s listed, but then again, I tell myself, he’s never mentioned a teaching assistant position before. Just his advisor’s existence, if not name, and certainly anthropology grad students are put on grants to fund themselves, just like psychology students. I force myself to knock on the frosted glass.
A woman with a short red fringe, freckles, and an underbite opens the door, and promptly scans me from top to bottom.
“You’re not here for office hours, are you?” she asks. She offers a toothy smile.
“No, I’m looking for Justin McBride,” I say, clipping my words to hide my growing agitation at the situation I’ve created for myself. “Is this his office?”
The redhead turns her eyes to the poster on the door as if to remind herself who the other students are, and I feel slightly reassured. Perhaps the department’s grad student group is larger than I imagined.
“I don’t think so.” She pauses for a moment to consider, and then adds, “At least, I’ve never heard of him.”
I can see into the office behind her, and the familiar settlement of desk carrels with ancient-looking computers takes me back to my own graduate school days spent in dusty, poorly lit offices, sharing half a desk with another student who you eventually came to loathe because of their penchant for Luna bars and garlic.
My phone buzzes, and it’s Justin.
Great—where do you want to meet?
When I read it, my shoulders hunch automatically as if loaded down. I want to shout, Just answer the damn question and let me stop being this person—this paranoid, nervous, desperate person. But of course I don’t, and instead ask my new redheaded friend if there are grad student offices in other parts of the building, or other parts of campus.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe, but as far as I know, this is where they stick all of us. I’ve been here three years, and have yet to see a window.”
And with this she winks and closes the door in my face.
I text Justin back.
Your office.
And then I wait.
9
It takes Justin twenty minutes to show up outside the TA door. I feel like a moron waiting by it, staring at my phone and skulking around the darkened hallway. Thankfully, the redheaded grad student doesn’t leav
e her office while I’m waiting, and my pacing of the hallway goes unnoticed by everyone except myself.
Just as I’m about to give up and call Annie for a reality check, Justin appears at the end of the hallway. At first I only see his figure through the plastic sheeting, and the effect is disorienting. He looks like a bloated, distorted version of himself, with mad shoulders and a sloping paunch. The shadow makes a menacing eclipse of the little light in the hallway before he slips through the plastic and emerges as his normal self on the other side.
“Here you are!” he exclaims. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“Yeah, and now I’m going,” I say, fully aware that I sound like a Real Housewife.
Justin stands in front of me as I try to move past him. His face is all concern. “Hey, what’s wrong? You sounded strange earlier. Is everything okay?”
I take a step back. “I sounded strange?” I put a hand on my chest, feigning amazement. “I’m not the one pretending to be a grad student. I’m not the one sitting in on classes, pretending to have offices and advisors. I’m not the fraud.”
The thoughts topple over themselves as they clamber to the front of my brain.
Justin isn’t who he says he is. He’s some sort of imposter.
He’s a liar.
He doesn’t love me.
I look up, hoping to see comfort or at least irritation in Justin’s expression—something to let me know I’m being as ridiculous as I sound—but instead I see something else, something alien and frantic working in Justin’s features. I don’t wait for an explanation and start to move past him towards the stairs. He reaches out to take a hold of my coat, murmuring, “Wait. I can explain,” but before he can grip it with any purchase, I am past him and flying down the stairs, and then across the lobby to the outside.
I’m running now. Away from my boyfriend. Away from the mess I’ve made.
“Morgan,” Justin calls from the steps of Tod Hall—he must have moved fast after I passed him—but I keep on running. There are footsteps behind me, and so I turn around and call back to him, “Leave me alone, you liar!”
It Was Always You Page 4
