by Elise Juska
Anna shook her head. “No way.”
“Why?”
“That’s too depressing.”
“The whole fucking world is depressing. The question is, is it true?”
“It can’t be true,” she said. “I mean, if it is, it’s seriously subconscious. It would be too sad if people got married sensing they wouldn’t stay together.”
“I bet it happens way more often than you think.”
“Maybe so,” she allowed. She looked into her mug, a simmer of caffeine in her veins. “Actually,” she said, “when I was little, I used to have this anxiety dream—a sort of premonition, as it turns out—that my dad was going to leave.” As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. Just offering up the word anxiety made her feel vulnerable, as if James could now peek into corners she didn’t want seen.
But James replied by giving her knee a light squeeze. “So it was your dad who wanted out,” he said—which is how Anna found herself opening up to him about her parents’ divorce. About how, in hindsight, they had never really seemed to love each other. How her mom was preoccupied with school, and her dad was having an affair. How it was February, freshman year, sitting in the front seat of his truck, snow dusting the windshield, that he’d told her he was leaving, and she’d felt a crack run down the center of her life: There was life before this moment, there was life after. As she spoke, James was listening so intently not a muscle was moving in his face. She was amazed that talking to him could feel so easy (though she of course edited some parts out: how the night in the truck had been Valentine’s Day, and like an idiot she’d thought her dad might be giving her a present; how the night he left she cried so hard she had to breathe into a bag; how there followed years of related anxiety attacks and food issues and a failed attempt at cutting; how hurt she’d been that her father had moved three hours away from her, and how she felt this obligation to protect her mother, and yet, illogically and immaturely, didn’t blame her dad for leaving so much as she blamed her mom for making him so unhappy that he left).
“Sorry,” she said. “That was a lot to unload on you—” But James reached out and took her hand.
“I like you, Anna,” he said. Then he kissed her, right there on the couch. An hour later, when he walked her home, still holding her hand in his, the long light on the quad dusky and golden, leaves quietly turning, Anna felt so full, so replete with happiness that she was buzzing—like anxiety, if anxiety could feel good.
Ten
After twenty-eight years, Maggie knew precisely where a class should be at every point in the academic season. Week Four: when the flush and novelty of the new semester wears off. The workload is more intense, the routines more familiar. The students’ initial wariness turns toward cautious interest and the latent talent begins to surface, the guardedness to fall away.
But this semester, something wasn’t right. Maggie’s freshmen were not there; they were far from there. Their first set of essays had been lacking in the expected ways—vague, generic—and that was fine, even useful. Correctable. Later, they would see how far they’d grown. But the next batch was even weaker—hasty and halfhearted, margins gaping and type size ballooning—tricks so obvious she couldn’t help but take them personally. She’d sat through countless staff meetings listening to colleagues complain about the epidemic laziness among their students—their eroding writing skills, the gadget-obsessiveness, the growing sense of entitlement—and had felt defensive on their behalf. When Marta Crane complained that her students no longer seemed motivated, Maggie felt a quiet sense of superiority: That’s on you. If the students don’t care, the teacher hasn’t inspired them. She rejected the notion that this generation was somehow fundamentally different from those that came before it. Eighteen was eighteen.
But now Adam Gillis occupied a corner of her classroom with knees sprawled, Red Sox cap shadowing half his face. Popular and good-looking, but a dedicated slacker—an unfortunate combination, for it gave his shallow presence weight. Kara DiCiccio had boasted about her first essay, I wrote it in literally ten minutes. Maggie knew that such disclaimers came from insecurity, but still, it was audacious, and lazy. Jess and Nicole, the roommates, were forever whispering and peering at their phones. If Maggie tried breaking the class into small groups, they dissolved into socializing. Twice already she’d had to tell students: I have eyes, therefore I see you texting—a line that in the past might have elicited an apologetic cringe, but with this group it was as if the reprimand had been issued through an intercom. The offending phone would slide into a pocket until, minutes later, it crept back out.
Some kids are just bad apples, Robert would say with a shrug when Maggie sat in his office after class prattling on about her students. She always needed time to review a class, transition gradually from that world back to this one. When she and Robert first started spending time together, she’d liked the prospect of being with a fellow academic, someone who could appreciate those instincts, but Robert saw teaching differently than she did. He found Maggie’s obsessiveness endearing, mildly amusing. For him, good teaching was about delivering an impressive lecture. Of his own students, he rarely said a word.
Maggie acknowledged that, this semester, she might be distracted. Shaken by the shooting, by missing Anna, by her fraught wanderings on Luke Finch’s Facebook page. She still checked it sometimes—on the computer in her office at school, where the connection was reliably quick—though she found nothing new, or noteworthy. When after repeated attempts she finally got in touch with Anna, she mentioned the post, and Anna seemed not even to have heard of it. In the semester’s first faculty meeting, Bill had addressed the shooting, their shared connection to Nathan Dugan. He’d spoken to the police, he told them, and relayed any information he had. He reminded them to read their students’ work carefully—Maggie was certain he glanced in her direction—to report any concerning subjects, concerning behaviors. Some younger faculty nodded solemnly. But what’s the point of reporting it? Marta Crane complained. Nobody does anything unless there are actual threats made. For once, Maggie agreed with her. Through the frustration, though, she allowed herself a moment of relief—Nathan’s essay, however strange, hadn’t threatened anyone.
Today, Maggie resolved, she would turn her class around. It was not too late. It was not even October. She would focus on the students who showed glimmers of early promise, like Andrea Gardner, whose essay about her high school boyfriend was clichéd but earnest. Or Pete Brown, whose work was rushed and sloppy but had a voice. You can’t change them, Robert told her, but Maggie knew this wasn’t true. She’d had her share of challenging students and had always gotten through to them. Or, almost always.
“Good afternoon!” Maggie announced as she entered the room. A quick scan revealed two absences, neither one critical. Andrea was fanning herself with one lacquered hand. Nicole and Jess were whispering, heads bent over a laptop screen. Adam slouched, sleepy-eyed, in the corner. Maggie faced the board and wrote in tall, deliberate letters: ANGER, HUNGER, NOSTALGIA, then faced the group as chatter began dying down.
“Today, we turn our minds to places,” she told them. “Places that carry some sort of personal importance for you. Places that are specific and memorable and emotionally resonant.” She pointed at the board. “Take five minutes, right now, and describe a significant place you associate with each of those three words.”
“You mean write it down?” This was Kara. Phone on desk, whine in voice.
“Yes. This is, in fact, a writing class,” Maggie said, but smiled. “And lose the phone, please.”
Slowly, they stowed away their electronics and unearthed old-fashioned pens and notebooks—a medley of tearing loose-leaf and unzipping backpacks, a few lost souls asking to borrow missing items from their neighbors. Maggie paced the aisles, trying to inject some energy into the room. “First! A place that you associate with anger. And remember,” she said, “write without censoring yourself. Without crossing out. Whatever comes to mind.”
It took a few minutes, but hands began moving, heads lowering over pages. In the age of laptops, Maggie still insisted on pen and paper; she believed in the pressure of hand to page, in escaping the diabolical barrier of screens.
“Next,” she said. “Hunger. Summon your hunger-inducing place in all the detail you can muster. Don’t overthink it. The first place that comes into your head.”
“Now I want Taco Bell,” someone muttered—Pete. Goofy, but harmless. Maggie smiled again. In her cache of exercises, this one was as reliable as any: She could recite both parts, hers and theirs.
“And lastly,” she said, a few minutes later. “A place that evokes nostalgia.”
Andrea raised her hand. “What if we can’t remember it exactly?” She was wearing a baseball cap and CMSU sweatshirt, but her face was made up as if for a party, eyelashes carefully curled.
“Then just write what feels true,” Maggie told her. “Remember, fact and truth can be two different things.”
She observed, with satisfaction and a measure of affection, the hands scribbling, breaths deepening. Even Adam seemed reasonably engaged, fist wrapped around one of those fat plastic pens the local bank gave away free. Then Maggie noticed Jess and Nicole hunched over something on Nicole’s lap—a phone, undoubtedly.
“Jess,” she snapped. “Nicole.”
They looked up, sheepish. “Sorry,” Jess said as a few students lifted their heads.
Maggie stopped in front of the girls’ desks, on which she saw they’d each written exactly nothing: two open notebooks, both blank. “Tell us about one of your significant places,” Maggie said.
The two traded a cringing look. I can see the expressions on your faces, Maggie almost said, but stopped herself before she lost them completely.
“Um,” Jess said. “What was the question again?”
“A place,” Maggie said, still patiently. “Evoked by one of the three words on the board.”
“So like a place that makes you hungry,” Andrea offered.
Pete said, “Like the fine dining hall cuisine.”
“Ew.” Nicole wrinkled her nose. “That place is vile.”
“Excellent. Evoke it for us in all its vile detail, Nicole,” Maggie said, drawing a few knowing chuckles. She was happy to meet them on their level, if it meant she could carry them somewhere else.
“Okay,” Nicole said. “Well, the frozen yogurt tastes like plastic.”
“There is literally nothing normal there. The cereal is covered in actual dust.”
“The tacos are dogshit in a shell.”
“No way,” Adam said, speaking voluntarily for the first time all semester. “Those tacos are fucking tasty.” The students looked at Maggie, wondering if she would react to the swearing, but she said, lightly, “He wakes,” earning a small laugh herself. “Okay,” she said as she returned to the front of the room. “Let’s hear from someone else. Nostalgia.”
The room went quiet. Maggie was undeterred. She had learned, through trial and error, to let a silence happen; her class would get uncomfortable before she did.
It was Andrea, again, who dutifully raised her hand. “I wrote about this beach on Cape Cod my family used to go to when I was little,” she said. “Should I just read it?”
“Please,” Maggie said.
“It’s really rough,” she warned, but plunged gamely ahead. She wasn’t wrong—the place Andrea was describing might have been any beach town anywhere—but it was heartfelt and, Maggie was secretly grateful, not good enough to deter anyone else.
“Thank you, Andrea,” Maggie said, nodding. “Another. How about anger?” To her surprise, Kara DiCiccio raised her hand. “Yes? Kara?”
“Mine’s about the Millview Mall,” she said. “Where that shooting happened.”
Maggie paused, taking her in: Kara’s chin was raised, defensive, her color high. She was a commuter, Maggie recalled. It would have been her nearest mall growing up.
“Of course,” Maggie said, trying not to sound thrown. She had no desire to open up the subject of the shooting but she did want to encourage Kara, who had never raised her hand before, who until now had shown only the barest interest in the class. Obviously, this mattered to her. “Would you like to read?”
Kara took a breath and blew it out, then picked up her notebook with two hands. “A place that makes me angry is the mall where some sick asshole started shooting people.” As she read, Kara’s eyes never left the page. Her delivery was rushed, barely concealing the tremor in her voice. “The mall was a place I went my whole life. Now it’s the place where four innocent people lost their lives. I don’t count the shooter because his life wasn’t worth living. I knew one of the victims. It was my algebra teacher from high school.” She stopped then, glancing up, and Maggie nodded: sympathy, encouragement. Kara shakily recounted memories of Mr. Tremont, her disbelief when she heard his name on the news. “This monster stole his life from him and from all of them,” she said, and then looked up again at Maggie, tears in her eyes.
“Thank you,” Maggie said, and she meant it. She surveyed her students, lapsed into a respectful silence, waiting for their professor to speak. For once, she had the entire room’s attention, but she was struggling to find the words, to even form coherent thoughts. “To be robbed of something that you loved—” There was a break in her voice. Oddly, the parallel that came to mind was that of Anna and her swimming: how much joy it had given her, before it turned on her. Then Jess, of all people, raised her hand, and Maggie nodded, relieved. “Jess, you wanted to read?”
“Oh—” Jess said. “No. This is kind of off-topic, actually.” She looked around the room, and the room looked back, and Maggie steeled herself for what she suddenly knew was coming. “Wasn’t that guy—the shooter—wasn’t he in your class?”
Maggie’s first thought, however shaken she felt, was that it was important to appear composed. She had invited the topic and, not surprisingly, this was the result. At the faculty meeting, Bill had encouraged them to facilitate conversation in their classrooms, make students aware of the counseling services on campus. Be vigilant, be available and open. If Maggie’s class had heard somehow that Nathan had been her student, had taken this same class just four years ago, naturally they’d have questions. Maybe they’d read the post on Facebook. Maybe they just hadn’t felt comfortable bringing it up with her until now.
Maggie leaned on the desk, where she could see all thirteen faces. “He was,” she said. “It was an excellent group, actually. A dedicated and hardworking class.” She couldn’t help herself—to dip into the pool of past students and assert how different they could be.
“What was he like?” Jess asked.
Maggie considered the question, the audience. “Quiet,” she decided. A neutral word: not provocative, not untrue. “He wasn’t as engaged as his classmates.”
“What did he write about?”
“Well,” she said. “I can’t go into detail about other students’ work—just as I wouldn’t talk to anyone outside this class about your work,” she added, but if her hope was to convey how much she respected them, how seriously she regarded the integrity of their work in the class, they appeared unmoved.
“The article said he was deeply troubled,” Jess offered, and it was then that Maggie understood: the article. Of course. That email. Juliet someone. After writing to Maggie, she’d left the same message, word for word, on her office phone; Maggie hadn’t returned her call.
“I see,” she said. “Well, I haven’t read it yet—”
“It came out this afternoon.”
“Yes. Of course. I knew about it, but I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know exactly what was written,” she said, a bit more briskly than she’d intended.
The students glanced at each other, then back at Jess, their unofficial spokesperson. “Well, there’s this other kid,” Jess said. “He was in the class too. And he put this thing on Facebook—”
“You mean Luke,” Maggie said. “Luke Finch.”
“You remember him?”
“Of course. I remember all my students. And I read his Facebook post.”
“Okay, yeah. Well.” Jess hesitated then, and winced slightly, and it was this that made Maggie go preemptively numb. “In the article he said this guy Nathan wrote this paper for your class that was pretty disturbing. It was haunting. It basically said that he was messed up, and the other students all knew it—”
Maggie completed the sentence: but you didn’t. She tried to keep her expression neutral, to remain in character, not betray her alarm. Not let on that the very essay was sitting right there, still burning a hole in her canvas bag. Haunting—no doubt Jess had lifted this word from the article directly. Before she could respond, Maggie needed to see it, to read it. She considered asking if anyone had a copy—it may well have been what the girls had been huddled over earlier—but that wouldn’t be appropriate. She didn’t want them watching her react. Which was precisely what they were doing now, a room full of eighteen-year-olds regarding her closely, a bit anxiously, even Adam Gillis, and she remembered then how young they were.
“This was a terrible thing,” Maggie said. She looked deliberately at Kara, whose eyes had returned to her desk. “Naturally, there are strong feelings about it—deservedly so. I haven’t read the article yet, so I can’t speak to what’s in it, but I think it’s safe to say I don’t remember Nathan quite the way Luke does.” Her head felt light, but she pressed on. “That’s human nature, though, isn’t it? Right? I was Nathan’s teacher and Luke was Nathan’s classmate. Our perspectives on him were quite different. It stands to reason that we’d remember him differently four years later. It’s inevitable, really.”
