The Seven Boxed Set

by Sarah M. Cradit

  “I just did!” Catherine sobbed. She buried her face in her palms. Her small frame shook, and it took everything in him not to go to her, to fold her into his arms. “I love you, Charles! I love you, and if you said it back, if you told me you loved me, too, I’d throw away all this safety for love.”

  Charles exhaled into the cool night. He thought he’d be weaker… that he’d even enjoy being right. All along, she’d loved Colin for his steadfast safety, a Sullivan trait if there ever was one, and her heart fought for something more. Here’s where he should tell her that he could offer her stability as well. There wasn’t anything money couldn’t buy, nothing she needed he couldn’t provide. Every day didn’t have to be new. It didn’t have to be anything she didn’t want or need.

  But she hadn’t come to him with a cool head and a level heart. And Charles had the rare presence of mind to imagine her seeking out Colin on her wedding day to Charles, turning to the same indecision and irrationality her parents had taught her in their nomadic lifestyle.

  “I do love you. I’ve never loved anyone else, and I can’t see myself loving anyone else again. I’m not made for love the way other men are, and I can live with that.” Releasing the words came with the relinquishment of a tremendous burden. “But you can’t look to me to make this decision for you. Whether you marry Colin or not should have nothing to do with me, and I can’t tell you what to do, Catherine. I can’t do this for you. I won’t.”

  Charles let himself look at her, take her all the way in, one last time before he shuffled off into the night.

  * * *

  Charles showed up to the wedding off his gourd. He’d taken eight bumps of coke, two more than usual, and even that didn’t dull the ache in his chest, and the regret forming a hard lump in his belly.

  The morning after, when he awoke in his own bed, he mercifully remembered almost nothing at all from the ceremony or the reception.

  What he did remember came in brief, chaotic flashes.

  The length of Catherine’s train that seemed to stretch all the way to the river.

  Colin’s father breaking down into tears of joy.

  Chelsea sneaking a flask out of her bosom when she thought no one was looking.

  Patrick’s long sigh, followed by, under his breath, “She’s a stunner. How did Colin… of all people…”

  For better or worse. Richer or poorer. I now pronounce you man and wife.

  Olivia, the cousin, sitting on Charles’ lap in the horse barn, bouncing away with her frilly dress hitched up over her waist. His first Sullivan conquest, though he suspected Chelsea would find her way to him sooner or later.

  Sleeping it all off in the backseat as Colleen and Augustus drove him home in silence.

  Home. Where he was the master. Where emotion, and love, and pain couldn’t touch him.

  Nine

  Only Lunch

  Colleen raced to Magnolia Grace, coming so close to breaking the speed limit that this near-rebellion only made her heart beat harder and faster.

  She angled the car against the curb on Prytania and slammed forward as she braked too hard. She was halfway to the front door when she realized she’d left her purse in the front seat, and even in the Garden District, even in her state of mind, that was too big of a risk.

  Evangeline stepped out onto the porch. Her hand came up to shield her eyes from the midday sun, which today was too hot, too bright, even for New Orleans.

  Her body language shifted as she watched Colleen race down the path toward the wide steps.

  “Colleen, what is it? Is it Mama?”

  Colleen shook her head and took Evangeline by the arm as she led her inside. “No, nothing so serious. I didn’t mean to scare you, but for once, I’m the one who’s desperate for some advice.”

  “You? I’m intrigued!” Evangeline’s worried lines dissolved from her face, replaced by a wide grin.

  “You won’t be smiling when I tell you the trouble I’ve gotten myself into.”

  Evangeline stopped just inside the front door. “Real trouble, or your idea of trouble, which would be speeding tickets as mortal sins?”

  “This is bigger than that.” Colleen looked around. “Augustus is at the office, right?”

  Evangeline snickered. “Where else would he be? If you want to catch him at home, try between one and three in the morning.”

  “Okay.” Colleen pulled at the bun sitting at the nape of her neck. She spun around with her eyes closed. “Okay, okay.”

  “Jesus,” Evangeline said. “You are in a state.”

  “Do you remember me telling you about Professor Green?”

  Evangeline’s mouth parted, and her eyes widened. “Let’s go sit down for this.”

  “Don’t look at me like that!”

  Evangeline pulled her lips back together into a tight line. “I remember you talking about Philip.”

  “I’ve never called him that, don’t be catty.”

  Evangeline sat on the couch, and Colleen joined her after a pause.

  “Okay, so your professor. You just got back from shagging him in his office, I take it?”

  “Evangeline! I said I needed advice, not your attitude. No, I didn’t shag him.”

  “Then I don’t know why you look like you need a lawyer.”

  “I do not.”

  “So, what? If you didn’t screw, then what?”

  “Well…” Colleen tried to sit back, to nestle in and get comfortable, but she was too stiff. She ran her hands over her green slacks and inhaled a deep breath. “He’s very nice. Most of the teachers I’ve had in college look at students a certain way. Like they’re just children, or less than. Not worth their time. They look past you, not at you. And even if they like you, once you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind. But not Professor Green. He looks me right in the eyes when he speaks to me, and he doesn’t go somewhere else in his mind when I’m talking. He seems to be genuinely interested in what I’m saying. In who I am, and what matters to me as well. I didn’t notice it at first, because I figured this special treatment was thanks for grading his papers and making his life easier. I’m very efficient, you know. But I realized at the start of summer that it was more than polite interest.”

  “You seem surprised that this guy is into you,” Evangeline said.

  Colleen thought for a moment before answering. “That’s not an indictment of me, but rather the system. I’m just a student. But he seems to have seen something more in me, and we’re past the point of convincing myself I’m just imagining it.”

  “So something did happen then?”

  “Not what you think, but yes… and I could have prevented it, but I didn’t, and that’s why I need advice. You know me. You know my values… my moral code. My willpower isn’t easily compromised.”

  “No,” Evangeline agreed. “You’re goddamn Mother Theresa, relatively speaking. You know, if Mother Theresa was a Deschanel and slightly fucked up.”

  “I’m sure you committed blasphemy somewhere in there,” Colleen said with a sigh.

  “Okay, I need to ask you something first. You need to be honest with me.”

  “You don’t have to say that. Of course I’ll be honest.”

  Evangeline nodded. “This all doesn’t have something to do with Rory and his shotgun wedding to Carolina, does it?”

  Colleen didn’t tense at the mention of this, as she once had, not very long ago. “No, and if I’m being perfectly honest, meeting a man like Philip has helped me to see that what Rory and I had wasn’t lasting. It wasn’t enough for me, and I was holding onto a childhood romance out of nostalgia.”

  “Philip.” Evangeline smirked. “Now I feel like we’re getting somewhere.”

  “I never called him that until today.”

  “About today, then. Wanna start at the beginning? Or skip to the good stuff?”

  Colleen waved her hand in the air, pretending to smack her. “I used to study in his office, because I had a key and it was quiet, but I started to thin
k perhaps I was giving him the wrong idea. So I’ve taken to studying in the cafeteria. Even though it’s loud, it’s the noise of people who have nothing to do with me, so I’m not distracted like I am at home.

  “He came in, and I pretended not to see him. You see, I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea about spending all that time in his office, but I also didn’t want him to think I was avoiding him.”

  “Oh, tangled web!” Evangeline cried in delight.

  “You’re enjoying this far too much.”

  “If I am?”

  “Anyway, he saw me. We made small talk, and then he asked if I’d had lunch. By this time he’d been talking to me almost five minutes, which was enough to start to draw attention to us. I told him I hadn’t, he asked me to have lunch with him, and I started to say no, but… God, as my witness, Evangeline, I swear it wasn’t me who said yes. I said no in my head, but yes is what came out.”

  “Maybe you are a human, after all.”

  Colleen swatted the air again. “People were looking at this point, so I said, I’ll meet you there. He was amused by this, which made me feel like a child, because if he wasn’t concerned, why should I be? But I was, and so I said, we need to leave the area. He suggested Carrollton, but I don’t quite think he was getting what I meant, so I told him Metairie instead. I don’t know how he came up with a suggestion so quick, but without hesitation he said to meet him at Salvaggio’s, which he said was a quiet little Sicilian restaurant near Metairie Cemetery, just behind the New Orleans Country Club. I was just working up the nerve to correct my answer to no, when he winked and left. I couldn’t exactly run after him without making the audience situation worse, so I returned to my studies for a few more minutes.”

  “So you had no choice.”

  “I detect sarcasm, Evangeline, but no, I didn’t feel it would be good form to not show up, seeing as I had no way to reach him to let him know I’d changed my mind. Nor did I have time to point out that Metairie Cemetery and the New Orleans Country Club are actually within New Orleans city limits, and not in Metairie.”

  “So you went to Salvatore’s…”

  “Salvaggio’s.”

  “Salvaggio’s. And then?”

  * * *

  Colleen drove around the block twice before she spotted the restaurant. It was easy to miss, a small brick building nursed behind two large buildings. The parking lot was almost empty, and the four arched windows were blacked out, giving it the air of a place forgotten. If she hadn’t spotted Professor Green’s Volvo parked to the side, she wouldn’t have exited her car.

  The inside was as empty as the parking lot, but the colorful décor eased her mind. An older couple sat under a brick arch that was wrapped in faux olive branches, and a businessman ate alone, reading the newspaper.

  Professor Green sat alone in a corner, looking oddly out of sorts. She was so used to seeing him commanding an audience in the dark lecture hall, or poring over his syllabus and notes in preparation. He was an unusual, almost painfully assured man, but at present he looked like an apprehensive teenager.

  He didn’t think she would show, Colleen realized. He wasn’t nervous to be around her, he was anxious he’d played his hand and lost. If Evangeline were here, she’d have all sorts of insights into the professor’s body language, choice of seat, choice of restaurant. Evangeline was a walking tome of interesting but ultimately useless information in social settings; a veritable mix of Gray’s Anatomy and Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life. She would analyze his decision to wait without something to do or read; why he sat instead of waiting for Colleen in the parking lot.

  And as she imagined Evangeline’s assessment of such things, Colleen became aware she was doing it, too.

  It’s only lunch, he’d said, but they’d both understood, without words, without anything other than the strange energies that exist between humans, that this was more.

  She could have read his mind, but two things prevented her. Firstly, this crossed her own self-imposed ethical boundary, where she’d promised to herself, and to the unknowing world around her, that she’d never employ this unless she believed herself or someone else to be in danger. Colleen so seldom read minds anymore that she was no longer very good at sifting through the randomness for anything useful. This realization was both maddening and also a relief.

  Secondly, and she only knew this because she had broken her one rule, but only for a second, just as he’d asked her to lunch: Professor Green was either a most unusual man, whose mind was closed off to the telepaths of the world, or he himself was blocking.

  Tante Ophelia once said that there was no such thing as a mind that couldn’t be read, so long as the host wasn’t aware to stop it. If her great-aunt, who’d lived close to a hundred years, whose father and grandfather had lived through the Civil War, believed this to be true, who was Colleen to question it?

  If Philip Green was blocking, where had he learned it, and why would he know to do it around her? Blocking took tremendous energy, too much to continue the effort endlessly, so if he was blocking, then it was happening selectively.

  If he was blocking, then he had a specific reason. What could it mean? And how could she ask without outing herself?

  Professor Green noticed her shuffling through her mental conspiracy theories, smiled broadly, and waved from his table. Colleen returned the smile and made her way over, now sufficiently even more nervous about agreeing than she had been sitting amongst hundreds of students in the cafeteria.

  “You made it,” he said, with a light note of surprise.

  “The place wasn’t easy to find,” Colleen said. She let him pull her chair out and ease her back in, even though this felt more and more like a date every minute.

  Professor Green chuckled. “I’m sorry. I should have mentioned that, but I was in a hurry to leave.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I could already see you working through your very calculated and reasonable list of refusals.”

  “Was it that obvious?” Colleen, without consciously realizing it, reached for her cloth napkin and settled it into her lap. Her hands went to work on the hard cotton, a way of keeping at least part of herself busy and centered.

  He laughed again, a bright, sparkling sound that matched his brilliant eyes. “What would you like to hear? That you’re the master of misdirection? The authority on avoidance? The expert in evasion?”

  “Your alliteration is quite impressive for a science teacher.”

  “When one commits themselves to scholarly endeavors, one must commit to them all.”

  “Do you also espouse terrible puns? Someone might commit you for that.”

  “My, wouldn’t that be a dramatic way to show one’s jealousy.”

  Colleen regarded him very seriously, and he in return, and then they both erupted in laughter that broke the surface of the ice formed around the witty returns to keep things on the level.

  “Professor Green—”

  “Philip.”

  “I can’t call you that,” Colleen said before he’d even finished the second half of his name. “I’m your student.”

  His smile faded some. “You’re not my student anymore.”

  And what would Evangeline have to say to that?

  “You’re not a child, Colleen. And you’re more than a student. I teach many, many young men and women each year, and I remember some of them years later. The ones who took the lessons seriously and made time after the lecture to engage me further. Those are the students who went somewhere, I’m certain of that. I know where several of them landed, and I may have played a part in that.”

  Colleen’s heart sank a little at the insinuation she wasn’t the first, or the only, student he’d written a letter for, and she felt ridiculous for this disappointment, because his recommendations were a part of his job.

  “I won’t tell you how long I’ve been doing this, because it will reveal I’m not the young, svelte man I know you believe me to be.” He grinned, but she d
idn’t miss the hopeful gleam. “My biography is out there, in several publications, if you’re so inclined. But I don’t think you care how old I am.”

  “No, I don’t,” Colleen said. “Age is either a number that holds us back or pushes us forward.”

  “Of course you’d say that,” he said. “I’m never surprised with you, but I’m always amazed. I enjoy not knowing where I stand with you. I don’t even mind the disadvantage, or the vulnerability. Many men are afraid to be vulnerable, but I don’t think you can face the idea of your own strength without first understanding how to be exposed to another, for their review and assessment.”

  Colleen prayed she wasn’t wearing the heat building within her on her face as well.

  She thanked the waitress who brought them water. She started to order a glass of cabernet, when Professor Green—Philip, he had insisted—instead ordered a bottle of what he said was his favorite Sangiovese from Tuscany. He then said they’d share a plate of carbonara, assuring Colleen with a laugh that neither of them could finish a plate themselves.

  “I spent a semester studying in Florence, when I thought I had a call to be an art major.” They both laughed. “Ask me about the Renaissance and prepare to be dazzled.”

  Colleen had very little interest in art, but she’d always been drawn to the dark, rich colors of the Italian Renaissance… of the strange mix of beauty and finance that lay over the history of Florence. In her less modest moments, she even fancied the Deschanels as the Medicis of New Orleans.

  “Who is your favorite Renaissance artist?”

  “I can’t pick one, because they each contributed in such powerful ways,” Philip answered. “Most would say Botticelli, and certainly Venus and the Primavera are incomparable. But I can tell you the artist and the painting that made me both realize I was in the right and wrong place at the same time.”

  Colleen leaned forward, listening.