She rubbed her forehead.
“It’s one in the afternoon,” an intrepid student said.
“What’s your point?” Nora asked. No one answered. “You’re all college students so if at least half of you aren’t hungover by our next class, I’ll be very disappointed in today’s new breed of college freshmen. Bad behavior is not only allowed in this class, it is encouraged. Your final grade may depend on it.”
She ignored the stares of her students as she walked to the marker board, picked up a black marker and wrote on the board, “Did Oedipus overreact?”
“Professor Sutherlin?” came a girl’s tentative voice.
Nora spun around with the marker in her hand.
“Ms. Sutherlin,” Nora said. “I’m not really a professor, and I would feel weird about being called that. I also answer to Nora or Mistress Nora. I might even answer to Professor Nora, but I’m not sure. Did you have a question?”
“Are you going to take attendance or anything?”
“Do I look like the sort of woman who takes attendance?”
The girl opened her mouth but nothing came out.
“If you’re supposed to be here and you’re not, say ‘I’m not here.’ Anyone?” Nora asked.
No one said anything.
“There,” Nora said. “Attendance taken. What’s your name?”
“Geri.”
“Great. Geri. You’re in charge of reminding me I have to do something right after class. Before class is over say ‘Ms. Sutherlin, go do the thing you have to do and don’t be a pussy.’ Can you do that?”
“I can do that.”
“Wonderful. Grand. Fabulous. Now, I suppose you all should introduce yourselves. I don’t really care about your names, however. As hungover as I am, I probably won’t remember them. So instead go around the circle,” she said, waving her marker to draw a circle in the air. “Tell me your favorite story. Of the written fiction variety. I’ll start. As I said, I’m Nora Sutherlin. My favorite book is Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. It’s the book from whence we receive the word masochism, which is what me agreeing to teach this class is a prime example of. Now your turn.”
Nora rested her head on the podium. Her head pounded. Her eyes ached. The bright fluorescent lighting wasn’t doing her any favors.
And her students were so...fucking...boring...
“I’m Katie from Long Island. I loved The Awakening by Kate Chopin.”
“Ah, yes,” Nora said, not raising her head from the podium. “The book where a woman forced to choose between a shitty boyfriend and a shitty husband picks suicide by drowning because for adult women there’s only three viable paths in life to chose from—be a wife and mother, be a whore, or be dead. Try A Doll’s House by Ibsen instead. Much more cheerful. Next?”
“I’m Ahmed from Brooklyn. I loved Lord of the Rings.”
“That’s better,” Nora said. “Who needs books with fully formed female characters in them? Or, well, any female characters in them, for that matter. Women just drag a book down, don’t they? All that talking talking feelings feelings. Boring, right? Next.”
“My name’s Raquel, with a Q. I’m from Cambridge, you know, outside of Boston.”
“We know,” Nora said.
“Um... I loved Crime & Punishment by Dostoyevsky.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“What?”
“That’s not your favorite book. That’s no one’s favorite book. Down in his cold Russian grave, Dostoyevsky just rolled what’s left of his eyes. Stop trying to impress us. Tell the truth, Raquel with a Q.”
“Okay, well... I really like The Bridges of Madison Country.”
“That I can believe. Next.”
The next student spoke.
“I guess if I had to pick it would be ‘The Gift of the Magi’ by O. Henry.”
Nora looked up from her podium and scanned the faces of her students.
“Who said that?”
She saw a tentative hand go up and she looked at the hand. Then she looked at whom the hand belonged to and found herself unable to stop looking at the face that belonged to the hand that belonged to the student who had said ‘The Gift of the Magi’ was his favorite story.
Mister Magi had the proverbial big brown eyes, but as she looked into them she saw tiny flecks of warm yellow surrounding the irises. Looking into his eyes was a treasure hunt and she’d struck gold. His hair gleamed a warm blond in the morning summer sunlight. The kid needed a haircut. Yet she felt this nearly irrepressible urge to put her nose to his hair and smell it. He looked like summer with his bright face and bright smile and tan skin. Did he smell like it, too?
His was a handsome face, sweetly handsome, the sort of handsome that drew people in instead of scaring people off. A strong jaw, strong nose, strong neck, broad shoulders in his royal blue T-shirt that said Kentucky across the front in white letters. Around his neck he wore a cluster of hemp necklaces, a little silver cross hanging off one and lying in the hollow of this throat. He looked innocent, as if she’d shocked him and he’d just discovered he liked being shocked.
“Your favorite story is ‘The Gift of the Magi’?” she asked once she’d recovered her powers of speech.
“Well...yeah,” he said with a touch of Southern drawl. “It’s the most beautiful love story I’ve ever read.”
“Have you ever been in love?” she asked him.
“Not really,” he said, blushing slightly.
“Have you ever had to sacrifice something of great value for someone you love?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“Have you ever had someone sell their own hair to buy you your heart’s desire?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
“I can tell. Let me tell you something about that story. It’s a horror story. The husband gives up his most valuable possession, his gold watch, to buy his wife combs for her beautiful long hair. The wife sells her hair to buy her husband a chain for his watch. At the end of the day they gave up everything they had of value and ended up with nothing. How is that a love story?”
The young man shrugged, looking confused and flustered, and she knew she had him. She’d stumped him. He’d fold. He’d give up. He was cute and she liked looking at him but if he wasn’t going to fight back, she’d lose interest in him in five seconds.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
“They have each other,” the young man finally said. “That’s the point of the story. Who needs gold or hair when you have each other? Love isn’t about appearances, and it isn’t about money. It’s not a horror story. Only a cynic would say that, and I don’t think you’re a cynic.”
“I might be a cynic.”
“A cynic is someone motivated by self-interest. Teaching a class is the act of an optimist or at least someone motived by the public interest.”
“You talk like a college freshman. Anyone ever told you that?” Nora asked.
“It’s my first day as a college freshman. You’re my first time.”
She raised her eyebrow at him and was rewarded by seeing him blush.
“I’m just saying,” he said quickly, covering his embarrassment, “I don’t believe you’re a cynic. I do believe you’re trying to mess with us.”
Tryin’ he said. No g at the end. Nora liked the way he talked. The way he talked, the way he smiled, the way he looked at her as if he’d never seen anything like her before in his life and knew he wouldn’t see anything like her ever again so he better not look away in case he missed something.
“Little ole me? Mess with little ole you? Would I do something like that?”
“Yes,” the young man said nodding. “I think you would. Ma’am.”
In the back of her mind she heard Kingsley’s voice—This is a woman who can walk into any room, find the most handsome face in the crowd, look him in the eyes and know she will take him home with her on a leash.
Where was her lea
sh when she needed it?
“What’s your name?” she asked Mr. Kentucky Blue with the gold flecks in his brown eyes and the summer in his hair.
“Wesley Railey. Everyone calls me Wes.”
“Stay after class,” she said to him.
“Am I in trouble?”
Nora smiled at him.
“Yes, Wes. Yes, you are.”
“Ms. Sutherlin?”
“What is it... Gary?”
“Geri. I’m a girl.”
“I don’t judge. What were you saying, Geri?” Nora asked, still not taking her eyes off Wesley. It was unreal how much she liked looking at him. She felt a little dizzy, a little wobbly, even happy. The hangover was long gone and something like the opposite of a hangover had taken its place. Somewhere in the distance she heard something. It sounded like a door opening. A door she hadn’t even known was there. She could walk through it and she’d find herself on a path in the country with rolling green hills to the left and a silver singing stream to the right and a yellow summer sun in the bright blue sky. She wondered where this path ended. Didn’t matter. No matter where it ended she knew she had to follow it.
“Ms. Sutherlin—you told me to remind you that you had something to do after class, and you shouldn’t be a pussy.”
“Forget it.”
“What?” Geri asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nora said to Geri.
“But Ms. Sutherlin—”
She smiled at Wesley. Wesley smiled back at her. Then for some reason he laughed. He laughed as if he could read her thoughts and knew the kind of trouble he was in was exactly the kind of trouble he wanted to be in.
As for whatever it was she was going to do after class...
“It can wait.”
37
Forever
Scotland
2015
“IT CAN’T WAIT,” Søren said.
The sun had fled the chapel entirely. Halfway through her story she’d had to find candles and matches and light them against the dark.
“What can’t wait?” she asked, studying Søren’s face. The anguish was still there. If only she knew how to ease it.
“You’ve told me your confession. Here is mine. While I was in Syria those four months, I was a ‘good’ priest. Chaste. Celibate. Exactly what the church wanted me to be. And, as I’d feared, it didn’t help. I might have been a ‘good’ priest but it didn’t make me a better priest. I thought of you and Kingsley constantly. The early church never intended for clergy to be celibate. Even that pompous ass Saint Paul said it was better to marry than to burn. While apart from you and Kingsley, I burned.”
Søren met her eyes and she saw cold fire blazing in them, a reflection of the candles against his steel-colored irises.
“I had a choice to make. Continue down this path, the path of chastity like the church demanded, and let my priesthood suffer. Or accept that the rule of celibacy was not something God wanted for us and break the vow. I am a better priest because of you and because of Kingsley. You both keep me humble.”
“We’re miracle workers then.”
“You are,” he said with a smile, quickly there, quickly gone. “In Syria, I had a revelation. I was angry at you. And not because you left me, not because you’d taken a path I didn’t approve of or gone somewhere I couldn’t follow. That you had topped Kingsley and hurt him behind my back...”
“You were mad at me because I was doing the very thing with Kingsley you wanted to do.”
“The very thing I wanted to do but I couldn’t let myself do it. I was terrified of hurting him like I did when we were in school together, terrified of ruining his life again like I’d done before. I was angry at you. I resented your freedom, your fearlessness. I resented your nights with Kingsley. They should have been my nights with Kingsley. I know I shut the door on being with him, but you two locked it from the inside.”
She knew he wasn’t speaking figuratively. The night of his Final Vows he’d come to Kingsley’s house. She’d heard something, something that had woken her up. Søren had come to Kingsley’s bedroom that night seeking them out and the door had been locked from the inside.
“You didn’t know. I didn’t even know how much I wanted to be with him again until I came home that night and you showed me the riding crop he’d given you to beat him with. It was my own fault. I was afraid of hurting Kingsley, and I hurt him far worse in the process of trying to protect him. All of this I realized while I was in Syria. And that’s when I made my decision.”
“What did you decide?” she asked, feeling the foundations of her world shiver at the revelation.
“I decided two things—I would ask you to come back to me and be mine again. And you could still be Mistress Nora and you could still work for Kingsley as long as you would give me your blessing, give us your blessing.”
“You wanted to be with Kingsley again.”
Søren nodded.
“My plane landed the day after Christmas. It hadn’t snowed, so I rode over and parked my motorcycle at the church on the corner of your street. I went into St. Luke’s and prayed that you would say yes and come back to me. I believed you would. I knew you would. I left my motorcycle in the church parking lot—I even locked it so you wouldn’t think I was an idiot.”
Nora remembered her first words she’d ever spoken aloud to him—“You’re kind of an idiot. You know that, right?” And all because he’d been too arrogant to put a lock on his motorcycle.
“I walked from St. Luke’s down your street,” Søren continued. “It was dark. Kingsley kept tabs on you as well as he could and while we were apart he fed me bits of information to keep me going. You were safe. You were happy. That’s all he told me. I sensed he was keeping something from me. When I went to see you and ask you to come back to me, I found out what that was. Who that was.”
“Wesley.”
Søren paused before nodding solemnly.
“As I walked from St. Luke’s to your home, my heart swelled with hope and happiness. I knew you loved me. I knew it like I knew my own name. But there he was. Eighteen years old. Innocent. Untouched. And he was moving into your house. I watched from the shadows under an oak tree and saw you two carrying in boxes and talking. Laughing. Finally you’d brought all the boxes in. You stood by his car and asked him, ‘Did we get everything?’ And Wesley said—”
“He said, ‘Only one more thing.’ He made me hop on his back, and he gave me a piggyback ride into the house.” Details of that day had gone hazy in her memory. She hadn’t recalled that it was the day after Christmas that Wesley moved in, but what she did remember was the happiness she’d felt, the optimism, the joy of having someone to share her life and her home with for once.
“You smiled and bit Wesley’s neck to make him laugh. I know what you look like when you’re in love. You were in love with him. You might not have known it yet, but I knew. I saw it.”
Nora buried her face in her hands before looking up at him.
“And I had never known such pain,” Søren said, his face a blank mask. “Even the day you left me could not compete with the agony of seeing you so happy as he moved into your house and into your life and into your heart. Standing there watching you two together was pure masochism. Yet I couldn’t stop looking at you and him. It was my penance. I’d waited too long. I’d lost my Little One. St. John of the Cross spoke of the ‘Dark Night of the Soul.’ Then, finally, that moment, I knew what he meant.”
Nora lowered her head. Her eyes were watering. She felt shame and sorrow and regret—foreign feelings to a woman like her.
“I’ve always wondered what changed...” she said. “After that year with my mother, I came back and you and I fought. But it never felt like a real fight. At the club you always gave me a hard time, but it was a joke, a role we played for the sake of everyone watching. Two gunslingers facing off at the OK Corral but when I was alone with you, you were you. Loving. Caring. Someone I could go to when I wanted to talk. Someone I w
anted to go to when you needed me. But after you came back from Syria, I waited for you to call me and you didn’t. And when I saw you again, you weren’t you anymore. You were someone I didn’t know. Someone who scared me.”
“Kingsley enjoyed accusing me of making decisions solely to punish him—I became a priest to punish him for leaving me after his sister died, I chose you over him to punish him, I went to Syria to punish him. None of that was true. But when I came home and found Wesley moving in with you and Kingsley had known the whole time and not told me...then I punished you both.”
Nora shivered at the winter in his voice.
“You barely spoke to Kingsley after you came back unless it was to threaten him. And that night I went to you for our anniversary, you were brutal. So much more brutal than you’d ever been with me. You left bruises on my face that night...” He’d held her face in his hand hard enough to leave bruises on her cheeks, kissed her hard enough to leave bruises on her lips. Bruises she couldn’t hide under long sleeves and jeans. Wesley had seen those bruises and nearly left her when she defended herself, defended Søren. “You diabolical priest, you did it on purpose. You left bruises on my face and neck to scare Wes away.”
“It almost worked, didn’t it?”
It had almost worked. In fact, it had almost worked so well she knew if she ever needed to truly send Wesley away, that was the way to do it.
“Yes. But he didn’t scare as easy as you thought he would.”
“Much to his credit. I know I was unbearable that year.”
“You were an asshole.”
Søren gave her a tight smile. “I won’t argue with that assessment. I was punishing you for having the audacity to move on when I’d finally come around to the idea of you being Nora, punishing Kingsley for hiding your relationship with Wesley from me because he was afraid I wouldn’t come back from Syria if I knew.” Søren paused to laugh a cold mirthless laugh. “Wesley was everything I wasn’t—young and innocent and untouched. I couldn’t accept that he was what you truly wanted. I refused to accept it. I used every trick in the book I could on you, Little One. Every mind game I had in my arsenal.”
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