“I bet you thought I was only famous for my books,” I say, laying my folder with the day’s manuscripts on the desk. The famous part is a joke, of course. I make tidy royalties on my Giselle’s Spells series, but I’m not big on the whole promotion thing. In my author photo I’m a concoction of hair and makeup and leather that I barely recognize, so it’s not like my young readers would know who I am if they saw me, anyway.
The girls titter like middle-schoolers, and I smile at them but don’t volunteer anything else. It’s my own business, right?
The workshop goes well, except for one uncomfortable story about a girl whose sister runs away with the Turkish Muslim gardener who works on their family’s estate in the English Cotswolds. The sister goes to Turkey thinking she will be a spy against IS and becomes deeply disillusioned when she discovers that her lover is not a militant as he told her but from a family of fig farmers. And she’s meant to work with him on the farm after they marry.
The other students love the story and laugh a lot. In fact, while we have to discuss its many issues, including cultural stereotyping and a huge number of the comma splices I constantly rail against, the story is far and away better than the navel-gazing self-portraits that most of them turn in every few weeks.
I’m the one who’s uncomfortable. Do they—or at least the writer—know about Carlo and me, or is the story a coincidence? They could have spray-painted the overpass as a prank, if they do know about our affair.
We all startle when a terrible grinding, whining noise erupts outside. It’s as though some machine is trying to eat the building’s brick. Several of the girls rise from their chairs, but I’m up faster.
“Everyone sit down. I’ll look.”
I hope it’s my imagination, but do I catch a couple of side-eyes on my way to the window?
Looking down, I see Carlo, seated on some small machine with long metal tines half-buried in the dirt. Two bushes lie nearby, their root balls wrapped in knotty brown burlap. The grinding continues for a moment but stops when Carlo pushes back his sweat-darkened red cap back on his head and looks up at me.
“For Christ’s sake,” I whisper. “Why?”
“Is everything okay, Professor Jensen?”
I guess my whispering isn’t whispery enough.
I don’t turn around. “Everything’s fine, Heather. They’re planting bushes.” Below me, Carlo waves and makes a call me gesture with one hand. Then he blows me a kiss.
Dear God, what have I gotten myself into?
Carlo looks like a sculpted Roman god. While his hawkish nose and small eyes keep him from being conventionally handsome, everything else about him is pretty much perfect. Believe me, I know. His hands are rough, but every other bit of his olive skin is sensually, kissably soft. (Forget that old stereotype of hairy Italian men!) While he could delegate a lot of his manual labor to others, Carlo savors inhabiting his muscular body, likes that he’s built it up naturally, and not just in the gym. He loves being outdoors. Loves nature. And so much about him is proportional. Symmetrical. Even the cheeks of his butt match each other exactly.
When he came to the college from Italy two years ago, there was some discussion of nepotism because Mother Mary Joseph is his aunt. But he was highly qualified, spoke beautiful English, and, of course, was Roman Catholic. That suited the administration just fine.
Not that Carlo is so religious that he worries about breaking the adultery commandment. There were rumors right away that he was involved with the engaged chair of the horticulture department, but she denied it vociferously to several of us at a local bar after a faculty dinner. “Not that, you know, I wouldn’t be interested. Well, if it weren’t against the rules, of course.” Then she blushed like a virgin bride.
Whatever sexual adventures Carlo was having then, he wisely kept them off campus, despite the many students who flirted, shyly or bold as you please, whenever they ran into him.
Not having strict religious scruples myself, and finding him very, very attractive, last spring I started making up reasons to go to the grounds offices to ask his advice about my own garden. He answered my questions. And then he offered to come by my house and assist me in my garden. And that was that. Maybe I was vulnerable because I was still grieving Sister Mary Paul’s death, or maybe because it had been a year since I’d last had sex with anything that didn’t have batteries and live in my bedside table drawer. It doesn’t matter. Here we are.
I give Carlo the slightest of nods but don’t wave back. I already know why he wants to talk to me. It has to do with the gold ring, with its small but flawless diamond, that he insisted I keep on Friday night.
“Think about it, cara mia.” He set the box on the kitchen table. I stared down at it for a moment and looked back at him. His deep brown eyes were sincere, but I knew they could shine with mischief in a split second. Or harden with intention whenever he put a hand to my cheek or lightly stroked my breast.
Carlo is a wonderful lover, and would no doubt be a fun and generous father. He will be a fun and generous father. But I don’t love him. And I know that if I married him it would only be out of a sense of duty. Perhaps old-fashioned propriety. I’ve been reading articles on how important it is for a child to have married parents. Also articles that say that as long as the child feels loved, they’ll be just fine in a one-parent home. Except I don’t want to be married to him. It’s not that I think I’m above being a gardener’s wife. It’s that I can’t see us together in five years. Ten. Forty? We have so little in common besides sex and the baby. I don’t love him. No child should have to grow up in a home without love.
Before I turn back to the classroom, I rest one hand on the taut, shallow oval of my belly.
I want to give you everything you need. My thoughts reach for the baby’s thoughts. This is the only time in our lives when we can communicate absolutely without prejudice, without possible misunderstandings between us. We are one body.
I breathe, waiting for an answer. Behind me, the dozen girls are waiting, too.
————
By lunchtime, Kelly has left me three texts. I avoid the dining hall so I won’t run into her—or anyone else. My lunch is a cup of yogurt and two mandarin oranges from my office fridge. Oh, and a Baby Ruth bar. It’s cheap chocolate, but it has peanuts for extra protein, right? These days, no matter how tense or busy I am, I make myself eat. When I was a kid I remember people on television patronizing women who were supposedly pregnant, saying, “I see you’re eating for two!” I’ve always thought it was kind of a dig, as though pregnant women just wanted an excuse for pigging out. There are few things I hate more than being judged or condescended to. But I’ve never been great about eating a healthy diet, and I don’t want to screw the baby up, too. Plus, I’ll need all my strength for later in the afternoon.
With a free hour before I have to go to my 2 p.m. scolding tea date, I put a note on my door to indicate that my office hours have been rescheduled to 3 p.m, and slip down the back stairs. The rear doors open onto a mulch path through a picturesque, heavily manicured wood of less than an acre. The path continues past the horse stables and ends at the road. Across the road is a cul-de-sac of hundred-year-old staff cottages.
I’ve only ever been to Carlo’s cottage at night, and arrived by the road so no one on campus would see me. But with the notoriety the graffiti has given me, I figure, what the hell. Mother Mary Joseph might tell me I’m fired this afternoon, anyway.
I’m joking. I think. Surely I can’t be fired for graffiti someone else has written. But then there were all those women burned as witches because their accusers said they had cast spells on them. Is the world really so different now?
Perhaps she can’t fire me for that, but there’s a morals clause in my contract. I thought it was funny and antiquated when I signed it, and didn’t give it a second thought. Until now.
Opening the front door of the cottage
, I feel the rush of cold air from Carlo’s living room window unit. He doesn’t just like it cold, he likes the air to be on the verge of forming ice crystals. And this despite the fact that outside, the temperature is a pleasant seventy-two degrees. The cottage is tidier than my little house, as well. While a lot of the furniture is simple IKEA, it’s accented with colorful throws and pillows in a variety of textures, and strategically placed candles. A row of three vases in different shades of red sit on the bookcase that separates the dining room from the kitchen. There’s little other decoration. There are no clothes strewn about (as at my house), only the throws and a folded newspaper that might have been read and carelessly refolded. A faint odor of tobacco hangs in the air; an (empty) ashtray is parked way too close to the espresso maker for my taste. So much about the man feels unexpected to me. Foreign—although I don’t intend the pun.
“Carlo?” It’s obvious he’s not here, and although it’s lunchtime, when he’s usually home, I realize I should have called him first. Unless I secretly meant to come here while he was out. You might suspect me of that, and you might be half right.
Carlo exhausts me with his care. With his need. With his overtly affectionate ways. And the sex. Did I mention the sex? Practically gymnastic! As well as several other words that end in –ic. It’s hard to believe I’ve gotten tired of it. Kelly told me that with all of her pregnancies, she wanted sex every night, just as soon as the first trimester was over. That’s not me, at all. And after we have sex, we have very little to say to one another.
I walk from room to room, feeling melancholy.
In the kitchen, I turn on the tap. Not wanting to dirty a glass to let Carlo know I’ve been there, I take a long, sloppy drink directly from the faucet. Don’t ever do that, okay? I tell the baby. Always use a cup.
Outside the window, the sky is dark, and fat raindrops scare up dust in the ragged brown patches of dirt in the yard. It’s twenty minutes after 1 p.m. If it starts raining hard, Carlo might even come home until the storm moves on. But this afternoon—before I even find out what’s going to happen with Mother Mary Joseph—isn’t the right time to tell him I don’t want to marry him. That I don’t want to be his cara mia anymore. And I especially can’t tell him here, in his own house, where he would have to relive it every day. It isn’t fair. I feel like I could’ve answered him on Friday night, and not dragged this out. It’s obvious to me that we aren’t right together.
I look around for an umbrella, or at least something I can put over my head before I start back to my office. In the bedroom I find my blue Nike hoodie I bought back in March. It will do. I slip my arms into it, tuck my hair back into the hood, and start the zipper. As I pull the tab upward, the hoodie hugs my body and feels more snug than it did the last time I wore it. Standing sideways in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the door, I can’t help but smile at myself. Well, both of us.
————
Every school I attended as a child was a public school, so I never had a nun as a teacher. Sister Mary Paul was a wonderful introduction to nuns, but I’m afraid she made me think that all nuns must be generous and kind, despite what I heard from my friends about them. I was wrong.
What I didn’t expect was that they would be so very old. There are only a dozen women left in this particular Sisters of Mary of the Holy Cross Convent, and all of them are in their late seventies or eighties. Most smile benignly, pushing their walkers or holding on to nurses as they take exercise, as Mother Mary Joseph refers to it. None of them teach any longer. The mobile ones show up for commencements and graduations, sitting in their stall high above the crowd like a row of silent crows. Sister Mary Paul was the last one to work in the college.
Mother Mary Joseph has never seemed like a kind person. While I’ve never known her to be publicly cruel, she isn’t afraid to tangle with the lay administration or anyone else who gets in the way of her plans for the convent. Everyone is a little afraid of her. Including Carlo, including me.
When I hear her heavily accented come in in answer to my knock, I want to turn and run away. Instead, I go inside.
Today, Mother Mary Joseph is more frightening than ever. Rather than sitting behind her grand walnut desk, watched over by a massive painting of Mary kneeling at the foot of her son’s cross, she is seated on a tufted leather sofa. The low table in front of her is laid with a silver tea service, china cups, and dainty matching plates. A nearby pastry stand holds piles of cookies and pastries. Feeling like Alice in Wonderland, I glance around the room for signs that my head is about to be chopped off at Mother Mary Joseph’s command.
“How do you like your tea, Professor Jensen? Milk? Sugar?” She furrows her wrinkled brow. “I believe we have some almond milk, too, but I have no idea how one goes about milking almonds.” She smirks at me like a naughty freshman.
Dear God, what have I done to deserve this?
Once we get the tea sorted out, she tells me how delightful the cookies are.
“Only one or two cookies for me, thank you,” I say, stiffly. “I try not to eat too much sugar. They say it causes inflammation and all kinds of other health risks.” Apparently when I’m nervous I turn into a talking Reader’s Digest.
Mother Mary Joseph’s small, birdlike eyes flicker to my stomach for the briefest of seconds. Her strange smile doesn’t falter.
She knows.
Thanks, Carlo.
But what did I expect? I should have anticipated this the night I let Carlo inside me even though I’d forgotten to take my pill the previous night, and didn’t have them with me to take that night, either. I could have scripted this whole meeting. Okay, maybe not quite. She’s not acting like the Mother Mary Joseph I know.
Holding out a plate with two shortbread cookies half-dipped in chocolate, she says, “Your dean tells me your writing workshops are very popular.”
“The girls seem to like them, and they show up prepared for class. This is a slight exaggeration, but I sense this is all a kind of stage play, anyway. I’ll stay in my role.
“I get so little opportunity to talk to members of the faculty except for official functions.” She sips from her teacup, making the faintest of slurping sounds, and puts it down. “I can only assume they’re happy teaching here if they stay. We haven’t had a faculty member choose to leave us in…” She narrows her eyes, considering, and looks to the ceiling, which is laid out in a grid of elegant wood-framed squares. “Five years.”
Cat and mouse. My turn.
“Right before I came here. My predecessor left to take care of her elderly parents? That’s what I remember.”
“Family. With Joseph’s love for Mary, God showed us how powerful the bonds of human love can be. How we need each other.”
Ah, here we go. I can’t help but offer, “Didn’t Jesus leave his family?”
“As did I.” Her smile is gone, her voice subdued. “We were both called to serve. Not everyone is. God and the sisters are my family. And Carlo, of course.”
A silence as heavy as the raindrops on the window hangs between us. She’s mentioned Carlo. At last.
“Mother Mary Joseph.” I start to stand up, but realize I have a plate in my lap. Moving it and then standing up seems melodramatic. This entire situation feels melodramatic. If a student wrote this scene I’d make gentle fun of it in class, telling her she should consider writing for a soap opera. Why can’t I just have a baby, and go on with my life? I don’t care about the stupid graffiti, but I’m not going to play this game with her all day. “I’m guessing you wanted me here to speak about the graffiti on the overpass. I don’t know who put it up there or why. It looks bad for me, and for the college, I know. I’ll contact the police this afternoon to see what they can do.” I suddenly feel like a supplicant, even though I haven’t done anything wrong.
The nun gives me a smile I can only describe as smug. Gone is the whimsy of the almond milk smile. “I
have always believed that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But I don’t want to be harsh with you, Mia. Paint can be removed. The stain of shame is harder to erase.” She steeples her forefingers and rests them against her lips for a moment. “Still, there are ways. Some easier, some more difficult.”
“Shame? Why should I be ashamed?” But wasn’t shame my first reaction when I saw the overpass? I’d had to beat it back, decide not to own it. The whole thing was really just an inconvenience. A curiosity. “I did nothing to be ashamed of. I don’t know who wrote that about me. I don’t even know why they didn’t call me something more…” I falter. “More in the current vernacular.” Out pops Mia, Class Vocabulary Champion, to join Reader’s Digest Mia.
She shakes her head and moves her own cookie plate from her lap to the table. Emboldened, I set mine down right across from hers. So there.
“Are you sure you have nothing to be ashamed of, my dear? I hope you know you can talk to me. Or I can pick up the phone right now and call Father Hubert. He can meet you in the chapel, and you can talk to him. As you’re not of our faith, you can’t enjoy the sacrament of confession. But he’s a very good listener. It’s good to unburden one’s soul.”
“I’ve heard that,” I say. “No, thank you.” The idea of sharing anything about my relationship with Carlo, or even my own feelings, with a stranger who—for all I know—enjoys hearing the gritty details of people’s lives, rankles me. God and I speak directly.
Mother Mary Joseph leans forward. “Well, if you need any assistance with the police to rectify that particular situation, please let our public safety manager know. And should you require legal assistance to address it, we have very good lawyers on retainer. Very good.”
We both know she’s not talking about help with the graffiti. They’ll get rid of me if I try to have this child without being married.
I could take it to court if they fire me, but there’s a chance that I’ll lose. And I can see that it wouldn’t bother Mother Mary Joseph a bit. Except for what she said about family. The child inside me is related to her through Carlo, of course. Maybe she’s the one who has something to lose.
A Thousand Doors Page 22
