Being a resident assistant suited me. I liked rules, because they eliminated choice. One was never at a loss when a rule was involved. Structure made me feel secure.
I managed to develop a social circle of sorts, although I would classify my contacts as more acquaintances than friends. I wasn’t close to anyone. But my residents and colleagues would always scooch over to make room for me in the dining hall, so I didn’t have to sit alone. I was an accepted part of a group, not an outsider, and that was important to me.
I was content with my life, although sometimes I reflected that it was missing something. It lacked passion. I felt like my world was black and white, and everyone else’s was technicolor. But I didn’t know how to change that.
Then I saw Dr. Ursula Reiter for the first time.
It was in the Student Union, before my 8AM math class. The woman was purchasing a cup of coffee. Among the chattering, jostling students, the tall, austere professor stood out, looking neither right nor left. Standing in the middle of everyone, she stood apart. That was the quality that attracted my notice. She reminded me of myself. A natural outsider.
I had the 8AM class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the unknown professor was always there at the same time, buying coffee. She never deviated from her routine to purchase a plastic container of cereal, or a banana. Never so much as ogled the pastries. Just the coffee, a medium black, paid for with the exact change already waiting in her palm, as if the woman was anxious to be done with the transaction as quickly as possible.
She acted the way I felt. I, too, was weary of trying to fit in, trying to act like everyone else, and wished I could just give up every attempt to socialize and go about my business as if other people were an unwelcome interruption of my day.
“Do you know who that woman is?” I asked a fellow Resident Assistant one morning, gesturing towards her retreating back with my chin.
He squinted at her, frowning. “I’ve seen her around,” he said. “She’s definitely a professor. I’ve never had her though. I don’t know her name.”
I found myself thinking of her at odd times of the day, particularly when I felt stressed or overwhelmed with the constant unending task of trying to play normal when I wasn’t. I wished I could be like her, just not care anymore, just accept my solitary lot in life, to drink my coffee black and eat no breakfast and ignore everyone, do just as I wished.
I knew I was projecting my own feelings onto a stranger, and that it was weird and probably unhealthy. But I couldn’t stop viewing this woman I’d never spoken to as an ally in this cold, unfriendly world. Perhaps it was a symptom of my own crushing loneliness, the next best thing to conjuring up an imaginary friend.
I hopped on my computer and went through the entire campus directory, looking for her photo, trying to find out the identity of the mystery woman. I turned up nothing. Not all professors had photos.
Registration for the fall semester was in late April. As I perused the course offerings, my eye was caught by an unusual course name. The Psychology of the Holocaust. The instructor was Dr. Ursula Reiter. I knew instinctively that the woman I saw buying coffee in the Union was her. She looked like an Ursula. It had to be her.
My major was early childhood education, and there were tons of psychology classes that could help me prepare for my chosen career as a kindergarten teacher. But I signed up for the course anyway.
Dr. Henry Heinrich was my advisor, and the chair of the psychology department. When I approached him to get his signature approving my course choices, I expected him to try to talk me out of taking Ursula’s class. After all, what relevance did it have to teaching small children?
To my surprise, he didn’t. “That’s going to be an interesting course,” he stated. “I wish I could take it myself.”
“Is Dr. Reiter a new professor?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Somewhat. She’s been here two years. She was a bit of a big shot in the City, so I’m glad she’s finally getting the opportunity to strut her stuff here. She’s considered one of the foremost experts on the psychological causes of the Holocaust in the world.”
She came to Baylor the same time I did, almost as if we were destined to meet. I felt that was significant, that it was a sign, but I couldn’t say exactly why.
Dr. Heinrich was feeling particularly chatty. “Dr. Reiter is the child of a Holocaust survivor,” he volunteered. “Her father was hidden by a Christian family, but it is believed they were betrayed by a neighbor. He was lucky. They had stopped gassing people by the time he was deported to Auschwitz.”
“Wow,” I breathed.
“Maybe not so lucky, though,” he added pensively. “The man is quite mad, from what I understand. He lives with her. He’s in his eighties now.”
A picture was forming in my mind of the real Ursula Reiter. It wasn’t too far from the stories I’d conjured up about her in my head. She knew what it was like to be saddled with a dysfunctional parent. Perhaps her father was not abusive, like Jana, but he’d harmed her just the same. I read it in her expression. I was right. She and I were alike, two peas in a pod. Our separate paths converged in this isolated, out-of-the-way place because it was our destiny to meet.
I stayed on campus that summer, as I went home as little as possible. I worked as a camp counselor at the various summer camps that boarded their campers in the empty dorms of Baylor. Basketball camp, ice skating camp, music camp, drama camp…it was all the same to me, ferrying children to lunch and activities, settling them down to sleep at night, wiping away tears when they got homesick. Although I had a cordial relationship with the other counselors, it was the same as during the year. I wasn’t close to any of them. We were merely pleasant to one another, not friends.
During the long lonely nights, as I lay awake listening to the mournful whistle of the freight train clattering through Baylor at two am, I thought about Dr. Reiter. I knew that somewhere, out there, not very far away, she was also alone, listening to the whistle and feeling the same way. I wanted to reach out to her, force a hand through the wall Dr. Reiter had carefully constructed, and throw her a lifeline. Throw us both one.
One night in July, in complete despair, I broke down and went to one of the dive bars in the village. Loneliness made me desperate. I was even willing to go home with someone for an empty encounter, just so someone would speak to me. The feeling of being alone was suffocating.
Going to the bar was a mistake. It amplified my loneliness. It was deserted except for a few people whispering together. There was no deejay or live music, since it was an ordinary weeknight in the middle of the summer. I sat at the bar nursing a beer and ordered a plate of wings, just to have something to do. They were so dry and crispy, I couldn’t eat them.
Staring into my cup of amber liquid, I wished I was someone who could lose myself in drink, and shed the social anxiety that crippled me. But I never acquired a taste for alcohol, and the few times I’ve been drunk I was hungover for days. It didn’t agree with me.
I sighed. Alone in a crowd, not a new experience. “I bet Ursula knows how I feel,” I mumbled. I stared hard at the door, willing the woman herself to appear, driven by the same unspeakable loneliness.
I paid for my drink and spent the next couple of hours rambling down streets filled with rundown houses by the railroad tracks. Walking around town by myself at night wasn’t the smartest idea, but all I saw was a skunk nosing around in the waist high weeds. The train came through as I walked, announcing its arrival with that mournful whistle that sliced through my soul. Suddenly, I was crying, and I didn’t know why.
After that, I began walking at dusk, when the setting sun was a glowing orange ball in the sky, casting the entire town in shadow. I told myself I was exercising, but I was searching for Ursula.
I hadn’t seen her on campus since the spring semester ended. She must not be teaching summer courses. I never ran into her at the town’s only grocery store, or the village pizza place, or even the convenience store with the gas pumps out front. The w
oman had vanished. Like a dream I’d once had.
Perhaps Dr. Reiter had a summer place somewhere, a “camp” as they were called in northern New York. Or maybe she took her father away on vacation.
The summer was nearly over before it occurred to me to google Dr. Reiter.
In my own defense, I never had internet access at home, so I didn’t automatically turn to it when seeking information. I had always been forced to make do with public access computers at the school and public library. Even though I now owned a smartphone, the notion of googling someone wasn’t second nature. Just another of the idiosyncrasies that made me a freak.
Unsurprisingly, there was little personal information available on the professor online. Most of it was related to her career. Dr. Ursula Reiter had received her PHd in Psychology from the City University of New York and taught there until two years ago, when she’d moved to Baylor.
My search retrieved several papers the woman had written. Dementia in Holocaust Survivors. I scanned the pages, expecting Dr. Reiter’s subject to be her own father, but instead she related several case studies of nursing home patients that survived concentration camps. One man was relatively happy.
“Everyone has good in them, sometimes you just have to look a little harder to find it,” he told Dr. Reiter during his interview. She expressed astonishment at his positive outlook, pessimistically chalking it up to his failing memory.
The other patient had delusions of being hunted and spoke to his caregivers in Yiddish. He was a difficult patient, fearful of strangers in his environment, screaming with terror when his roommate had visitors.
I’d read enough. Such a dismal, depressing topic, no wonder Dr. Reiter stalked around campus with such a forbidding expression on her face.
What sort of God would allow people to escape hell on earth only to imprison them in a hell created by their own minds? Not a fair one.
The hell with the paper. My search turned up the one shred of information that mattered: Dr. Reiter’s Baylor address. She lived at 45 Leroy St., right in the village.
I knew where that was. I often elected to take Leroy St., parallel to the busier Main St., to reach the strip mall at the edge of the village, which boasted a Target and a Chinese Restaurant. It was a picturesque road lined with mansions that once housed Baylor’s elite, the college professors. It was known as Professor’s Row. Most of the mansions had been sliced up into apartments or been transformed into sorority and fraternity houses.
45 Leroy Street was not difficult to find. It was only a mile away, halfway between campus and the shopping center. It was a three-story mansion painted a garish yellow with starkly contrasting black trim, a rather ugly house. It was awfully big for a single professor and her father.
Chewing my lip, I considered that I didn’t know for sure that Dr. Reiter was single. She wore no ring on her bony finger, and Dr. Heinrich hadn’t mentioned a husband or kids, but that didn’t mean much. For all I knew, she was happily married. Somehow, though, I doubted it. The stark tone of her paper and her shuttered expression pointed to a life of solitude.
I stood on the sidewalk in front of the house staring up at it for a long time. Too long. I was lucky the cops weren’t called.
The house looked empty. The windows in front had no curtains or drapes and looked in on bare rooms. I could see the sun reflecting off the white paint on one of the back walls.
Yet there was no for sale sign in the front yard, and the yellowing grass had recently been cut, although the foliage surrounding the house grew wild and untamed. Looking closely, I could see it had been carefully trimmed with a masterful hand, to give the appearance of lushness without being choking.
There was no vehicle in the driveway.
Suddenly I felt eyes on me. The hackles rose on the back of my neck. It was like someone had shaken me awake. I was acting strangely, studying some professor’s house. Someone was watching me, wondering what the hell that crazy girl was up to, standing on the sidewalk.
Was Ursula’s mad father watching from inside the house? It was a shivery, creepy thought. Then I remembered his past, and what he had survived, and a wave of guilt washed over me. He was probably more afraid of me than I was of him. Shame on me. I probably terrified the poor old man.
I glanced back over my shoulder at the receding house as I walked away. It would have been a showplace in Westchester County, where I’d grown up. Here in Baylor it was just another crumbling mansion out of dozens that dotted the town.
I reached Target, where I customarily purchased my clothing. I flipped through the clearance rack for summer clothing in my size, without registering the available choices. This obsession with Dr. Reiter was getting out of control. I wasn’t quite stalking her yet; but I was dancing close to the line. There was just something about her that drew me, like iron filings to a magnet.
Was I attracted to her?
I didn’t feel attraction like other people. I didn’t develop crushes on boys, mainly because they were all out of my league, and I would just end up hurt. I recalled Laila’s suspicion that I was a lesbian. I had dismissed it at the time. Since hitting puberty, Laila thought everyone wanted her, male or female. But maybe she was right. When we were little, I told her all my secrets. Maybe she guessed this one, a secret kept from myself.
I didn’t think about kissing Dr. Reiter, however. I never fantasized about her sexually. Honestly, I never fantasized about anyone sexually. I was still a virgin. I never had much interest in sex.
An image of Dr. Reiter lowering her head to lick my nipple popped into my head. Instead of immediately banishing it, I considered it. I felt nothing but passing curiosity, not disgust, not even a thrill.
But it was not an unpleasant image. I didn’t know what to make of it. I was probably overthinking things, as usual. One of my downfalls.
I left the store empty handed, troubled. For a moment, I contemplated taking Main street home, the direct route that went through the village, past all the bars and specialty shops, instead of the quieter Leroy street.
Enough with the sick obsession. I needed to start acting normal. Or I would wind up like Dr. Reiter, living in a creepy house with a mad parent.
But I retraced my steps past the Reiter home. The wind was up, and storm clouds threatened. Typical Baylor weather. It would be sunny when you left campus, but start pouring minutes later.
There was now an Indigo blue Toyota Rav-4 parked in the driveway. Dr. Reiter was home. Glancing up at the house as I hurried past, I wondered if the woman inside somehow felt my presence. It was crazy, but I believed Dr. Reiter was my destiny. We were meant to be together. I couldn’t deny the pull I felt towards her.
Chapter Five
Maggie
If I expected a flash of recognition to cross Dr. Reiter’s face when she called out, “Maggie Dunlap,” the first day of class, I was to be sorely disappointed.
Everything had gone awry. I had risen early, donned a sundress a bit too dressy for a college classroom, and fussed over my hair. Then I sat on my futon for an hour watching television. Time passed slowly. I couldn’t wait for class.
There was a frantic knock on the door as I was preparing to leave.
It was a red-haired college freshman, practically in tears. “I can’t find my card,” he said, referring to the keyless entry cards we swiped to access our rooms. “I think I left it in my room.”
I sighed. I was tempted to tell him to look for another resident assistant, but I knew the probability of finding someone else at this time was low. Nearly everyone was in class.
I glanced at my watch. I could let him into his room and still make it on time, if I hurried.
I desperately desired to make a good impression. I planned to sit smack in the middle of the front row, where she couldn’t miss me. I was going to make eye contact with Dr. Reiter, smile at her, let her feel the power of our magical connection.
But first, I had to schlep down to the resident assistant’s office on the ground floor to
retrieve the master card.
After I let the freshman back into his room, he shoved past me, not even pausing to say thank you. I fumed as I hurried away, praying I wouldn’t be late. As I sped down the winding path into the academic quad, crowded with students also on the verge of being late, I simmered over the attitude of some of the students toward resident assistants. They thought we were their servants, paid to be at their beck and call. It really made me mad sometimes. I made a mental note to look up 221 B on my roster later, so I could find out the name of the ungrateful freshman. Not that it mattered.
I cursed the no name freshman as I burst through the doors of the lecture hall to discover nearly every seat was already taken in the cavernous room. I managed to snag a spot in the back. Students continued to pour in after I was seated.
All these people couldn’t possibly have signed up for this course.
I overheard one man admitting he was shut out. “My cousin took a class with her in the city, and she said her lectures are worth hearing, even if you don’t get credit. So here I am.”
The roar of many voices talking at once subsided as Dr. Reiter made her way down the stairs to the bottom of the lecture pit, carrying a briefcase and a cup of coffee. She was so painfully slender a hard gust of wind could blow her away. No wonder, the woman never ate. She must survive purely on caffeine. I wished I could be like that. I cared too much about food. It had been my sole comfort in my tumultuous childhood, the one thing I’d never been denied, my only pleasure. I still ate to slake my loneliness, and it showed.
The lecture hall was equipped with a microphone. Dr. Reiter adjusted it smartly. “Good morning, class,” she said in a calm voice. She did not look out at the students but down at her notes, almost as if the throng of people before her was beneath her notice. “Welcome to Psychology of the Holocaust. I am Dr. Ursula Reiter. I received my BA in Psychology right here in Baylor, many moons ago.” She flashed a cold smile at the choreographed spurt of laughter. “But most of my academic work was done at the City University of New York, where I received my master’s degree and doctorate. After graduation, I taught there for many years. I lived in Brooklyn before moving to Baylor two years ago.”
Hiding Places Page 3
