by Frankie Bow
First and foremost, I attempt to comply with the often conflicting, and always paperwork-intensive, diktats from our university’s Student Retention Office. I also run department meetings, schedule classes, counsel students, and listen to complaints.
Oh, the complaining: Students complain about professors, professors complain about administration, the Student Retention Office complains about my faculty members failing to complete their reports on time, and so on. All I can do is listen and try to appear sympathetic.
Here’s what I can’t do: I can’t force faculty members to fill out their weekly Teaching Philosophy Statements and Customer Interaction Reports for the Student Retention Office. I can’t make money appear in the department budget, no matter how badly someone might need office furniture or whiteboard markers or copier paper. And I can’t tell people how to teach their classes.
I have to explain this to our two most senior professors, Hanson Harrison and Larry Schneider, whenever they come storming into my office to gripe about our colleague, Roger Cowper. “Dr. Rodge,” as he tells his students to call him, doesn’t give midterms or final exams, assigns no homework, and gives A's to everyone who signs up for his Human Potential class. I can’t force Rodge to “maintain academic standards worthy of our university” (Hanson’s words) or “teach a real college class and knock off that feel-good bullshit” (Hanson’s contemporary, Dr. Larry Schneider). As long as Rodge shows up when he’s supposed to and stays out of trouble with the students, there’s not much else I can do. Especially not when the Student Retention Office keeps nominating him for the campus-wide teaching award every year.
The top message in my email inbox was an announcement for what was politely termed a “destination conference.” The call for papers invited “original contributions on topics related to any of these topics or others” and proceeded to list just about every discipline in existence as well as a few that the organizers had apparently invented. I could certainly use another presentation on my vita when I went up for tenure, but I wasn’t desperate enough to sign up for a phony conference sponsored by the nonexistent “Las Vegas University.” I deleted the message and the one after it, a reminder to attend Tuesday’s emergency faculty senate meeting.
The next message was from the Student Retention Office.
ANNOUNCEMENT.
This was uncharacteristically cryptic. Normally the SRO’s email headers are more descriptive: Meet Our New Student Parking Advocates! Learning Styles Workbooks Now Available Online! Fifty Shades of Play: Show Your Students Some Love This Valentine’s Day with These Engaging Classroom Role Play Exercises!
A tentative knock on my door interrupted my reading. The SRO’s announcement, along with the hundreds of other unread messages in my inbox, would have to wait until after lunch.
Lunch! One more thing on my to-do list. I had told Emma I would go with her to see Kathy Banks. I hoped the visit wouldn’t take too long. With any luck, Kathy would be resting quietly and we wouldn’t even be allowed in to see her in person. I could drop off a card and slip away. Kathy would probably want something with glittery flowers or a kitten in a basket.
I opened the door to a line of students stretching down the hallway, all waiting for me to sign off on their late adds to one of the courses in the management department. Maybe their financial aid didn’t arrive in time, or they wanted to switch to an easier professor or a more convenient time slot. My heart broke a little for them. We were already in the second week of the semester. I had seen the numbers from past semesters. I knew that students who joined a class after the first week had practically no chance of passing. But our administration had made it clear: maximizing enrollment (and tuition dollars) was Job One. My standing orders were to let everyone in.
Despite their eagerness to accommodate late registrants, the administration wasn’t able to waive the late registration restriction (something to do with our IT department), so I, as department chair, had to process each course-add request manually. I was starting to understand why Dan Watanabe, my predecessor, had always gone around looking like he’d been trampled by elephants.
I finally had a chance to call Emma at around one in the afternoon. She answered after half a ring.
“Molly! How come you didn’t answer? I musta called you about a hundred times.”
“I was doing registration overrides all morning, so I had my ringer off. Are we still going up to see Kathy at lunch? Or did you already go?”
“Don’t you read your email?”
I jiggled the mouse to wake up my computer, but the screen stayed black.
“Not recently. What’s going on?”
“You didn’t get the email from the Student Retention Office?”
“I get about a hundred emails a day from the Student Retention Office,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. I didn’t get it until after I already left for the hospital. Wasted trip.”
“You went without me? What do you mean wasted trip? Is Kathy better already?”
“I’ll read it to you. Announcement: We are saddened to announce the loss of one of our 'Ohana. Associate Student Success Advocate Kathy Banks passed away over the weekend. We will miss her.”
I stared at the computer screen as it blinked awake.
“Emma,” I stammered, “I’m so sorry.”
“Eh, no need apologize to me. Wanna go get lunch now?”
“Better not,” I said. “I’ve got students coming by nonstop. In fact, I see one waiting for me now. Maritime Club tonight, though?”
“Yeah, Maritime Club sounds good. Mind if I invite someone from the crew?”
“Fine with me.” I waved the next student into my office.
“Don’t be late,” Emma said as I hung up.
CHAPTER FOUR
ST. DAMIEN’S CATHOLIC Church is an incongruous pink confection, conspicuous on a narrow street of rusty-roofed plantation shacks and jungle-infested vacant lots. It’s not exactly on the way to the Maritime Club, but I made the twenty-minute detour. I wanted to stop in before I met Pat and Emma for dinner.
The church’s wide double doors were open, and the interior was quiet and dim. I slid into a pew in the back and allowed my vision to adjust to the candlelight. The only other person in the sanctuary sat in the front. The round head looked familiar. I stood and approached him.
“Iker?” I whispered.
“Molly.” Iker stood up and clasped my hands, his plump fingers squeezing mine with enthusiasm. Iker is probably around my age, but with his shiny side-parted helmet of brown hair and his plump, pink face, he seems both old and baby-like: ageless. I wondered if he was uncomfortable in his red sweater vest and long-sleeved madras shirt. St. Damien’s isn’t air conditioned, and the air was sticky and warm.
“I have not seen you in Mass,” Iker said.
“I know,” I said. “I’ve been sleeping in. I need to be better about my attendance. What are you doing here?”
“At the start of the school year, we are distracted by so many things. It is good to rest and worship and remember. These things are not for the Sabbath only, yes? Molly, you are troubled. Please sit with me.”
Iker Legazpi is one of my favorite colleagues, despite his sunny attitude. He must get the same underachievers, plagiarists, and grade-grubbers in his accounting classes as the rest of us have, but he never complains. He gives every student his full attention and the benefit of the doubt.
“Did you go to the Student Retention Office meeting this morning?” I asked. “I couldn’t make it. I was doing late registrations.”
“Yes,” Iker said. “It was a long meeting of many hours.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Oh, Molly, these meetings, they are as dull as a dishwasher. Many people stood and left.”
“But you stayed until the end?”
“I did not wish to be impolite,” he said.
Iker is a saint. Not a real one, of course. You have to be dead for that. But close enough.
“So I
ker,” I said, “You’re right. I do have something on my mind. Could I ask you about it? I’d love to get your perspective.”
Iker studied my face. “Perhaps this is a matter for Confession?”
“No. I mean, this is a hypothetical situation.”
Was that a lie? I just told Iker a self-serving lie. Great. Now I really was going to have to go to Confession. Not all lies are bad, of course. Some are deployed to spare feelings and soften hard truths: I'm so sorry you have to leave; that was such an interesting story; there's no such thing as a stupid question.
“Molly, if you do no wrong, you need not to be afraid."
“How do you know I did something wrong?”
“It is only a proverb. I mean to say that you should not be worried over something that is hypothetical only. Perhaps you can explain me the situation.”
I inhaled deeply.
“Okay. What if, and I’m sure you’ve never experienced this, but bear with me. Imagine there was someone you really didn’t like.”
“What a terrible thing!”
“Well, wait. What I just told you wasn’t supposed to be the terrible part. So it occurs to you that the world might be a better place without her. Them. Without them, I mean.”
“Oh, Molly.” Iker clasped his plump hands together in dismay.
“It gets worse. Suppose, in this hypothetical example, the person actually goes and, um, passes away.”
Iker’s silence made me uncomfortable, so I continued to talk.
“In this fictional case,” I asked, “am I, I mean, is hypothetical person A responsible for hypothetical person B’s, uh, demise? At all?”
Iker’s sigh was compassionate, rather than impatient. “Molly, you know First John 3:15, yes?”
“Um, sure, it’s, uh...” No. I wasn’t going to sit here in church and lie to Iker’s face.
“I don’t quite recall the exact verse,” I said.
“It is simply this. Everyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer.”
“What? Seriously?”
“Yes. The main character of your story, Person A as you say, is already guilty of murder. This is even before someone dies.”
“Does it really say that?”
Well of course it did. Iker wouldn’t make it up. This conversation wasn’t going at all the way I had hoped it would.
“And Matthew 5:22,” Iker continued. “It is also like that. One who is angry at his brother, it is the same as a murder.”
Iker must have been raised Catholic, as I was. So where on earth had he learned all these Bible verses?
“I’m so sorry I bothered you with this, Iker.” That was no lie.
“I believe you know the answer to your question,” Iker said. “You already knew it before you asked me.”
I shook my head, hopeless.
“But what if it’s too late to fix it?”
“No. It is not too late, Molly. It is never so late that one must abandon what is right.”
I walked out alone to my car. I should have invited Iker to join us at the Maritime Club, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Pat and Emma both like Iker, so they wouldn’t have minded. I was the problem. Although I knew Iker had only meant to be helpful, my conversation with him had felt like a reproach. I couldn’t face sharing a meal with someone who thought I was a murderer.
CHAPTER FIVE
BY THE TIME I ARRIVED at the Maritime Club, Pat had already secured a table out on the lanai, with a full view of the ocean. Emma, who had made a point of warning me not to be late, wasn’t there yet.
“Did you make an appointment to see someone about your nerves?” Pat asked. “Like you promised?”
“I’ll get around to it.” I shielded my eyes from the sparkling ocean, too distressed to enjoy the view. “Did you say my nerves? Like I need to loosen my corsets and lie down on my fainting couch?”
“That’s a fab jacket, Molly. Is that what you wore to work today?”
“Yeah, what’s wrong with it?”
My vintage wardrobe isn’t particularly comfortable in the tropical humidity, and my dry-cleaning bills are horrific, but there’s really no modern substitute for a 1940s Lilli Ann suit jacket in carnelian red with black piping.
“Nothing’s wrong with it,” he said. “It’s fab. Molly, I can tell you’re stressing out. Try to calm down. Breathe. Do you want something to drink?”
“I’ll wait till Emma gets here. And you don’t have to tell me to breathe. I do know how to do that.”
“Okay.” Pat watched me carefully.
“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.”
I took a slow, deep breath (which I was going to do anyway).
“It’s not your fault, Molly. What happened to Kathy.”
“Who said it was my fault? You? Do you think it’s my fault too?”
Pat placed his elbows on the table and leaned toward me. “Molly. I just said it isn’t your fault. Remember what I said—”
“I do remember. You said you didn’t think it was going to turn out well for Kathy. How did you know?”
“I didn’t. But I’ve covered enough murder cases. Sorry to be so blunt about it, but something about this stinks.”
“So you think there’s a story here for Island Confidential? Are you going to investigate?”
“Yeah. I am.”
I sighed. “I still feel a little bit responsible. I mean, I was having not-very-kind thoughts about her.”
“That’s fine, Molly. Go ahead and wallow in your Catholic guilt if that’s what you want to do. But whoever did this is still out there. How do we know this’ll stop at Kathy?”
Pat half-rose from his chair and I turned to see Emma bustling in through the back gate, her husband Yoshi close behind her. Following Yoshi I saw a pale, skinny woman with an outsized nimbus of curly black hair, walking with the blond muscleman I’d seen at the beach. These two leaned close together, hands in each other’s back pockets. The woman looked vaguely familiar.
Pat leaned over to me and muttered, “There he is, Molly. Feast your eyes.”
“Pat, stop it.”
“Oh, pardon me. I guess your eyes aren’t in the mood for junk food today.”
The man was wearing a metallic silver leather blazer with cutoff sleeves, matching low-rise leather trousers, and no shirt. He sported a clump of leather bracelets and steel chains at each wrist. A studded dog collar circled his throat.
“At least he’s wearing a collar,” Pat said. “He’s technically complying with the club’s dress code.”
As they got closer I noticed the artificial, sculpted look of the man’s face. His perfectly tousled beach boy hair had about an eighth of an inch of mousy roots.
I nudged Pat. “Bet you a hundred dollars he’s from California,” I said.
Pat and I got up to help scoot two of the plastic outdoor tables together.
“Oh hey, Doctor B,” said the big-haired woman, extending a slim, chiseled arm. Her East Coast rasp was like chain link fence scraping concrete. As I accepted her handshake she said, “I’m Sherry. I’m in your business planning class.”
“Right,” I said. “Of course.”
“I’m on Emma’s crew,” she added. She introduced her companion as Glenn, two n’s. Up close, his face looked weathered. I guessed he’d spent a lot of time in the sun.
“I was so sorry to hear about Kathy,” I said, as we all got ourselves seated. Across the table, I heard Yoshi say, “You went up there to see Kathy? Emma, why didn’t you tell me?” I looked up to see Emma aiming a look at Yoshi that should have frozen him solid on the spot.
“She’s about to take our order,” Emma snapped. “You better choose.”
I turned my attention to the waitress. She smiled at me.
“Hey, you two are sisters, right? Are you twins?”
I realized she was talking about Sherry and me.
Sherry broke out in a gravelly laugh. “Yeah, you’re my evil twin. Right, Doctor B?”
“S
ure,” I agreed. Why not? Sherry had clearly partied hard in her youth, but she still looked good. I’m vain enough not to mind being told that I look like an attractive person.
“I’m ready to order,” I smiled back at the waitress. “I don’t need to hear the specials. I’d like the prime rib, end cut if you have it. And a baked potato with sour cream and butter. Real butter, please, not margarine.”
“Whoa, Dr. B,” Sherry exclaimed. “That’s kinda rich, huh?”
Yes, well, I thought, this is why I’m the fat sister.
“I’ll work it off later,” I said.
“Really?” Emma interjected rudely.
Yoshi ordered filet mignon, and Emma chose seafood pasta. Glenn and Pat both opted for the vegetarian curry. Sherry requested a green salad, no dressing.
“Girl, you still on that crazy diet?” Emma shook her head at Sherry.
“Yes, ma’am. I want to be sure I get to race on Labor Day.”
The table fell awkwardly quiet. Kathy’s demise had brought the number of Emma’s crew from seven down to six, the exact number of seats in the canoe. The odds of Sherry getting a spot had just jumped up to one hundred percent.
“I don’t want to weigh down the boat,” Sherry added quickly, patting her bare hipbone. She wore snug low-rise jeans and a shrunken t-shirt that showed off her belly button jewel. For long-lost sisters, Sherry and I sure didn’t inherit the same style sense.
Yoshi glanced warily at Emma. “Do they know what happened? With Kathy? I can’t believe it. So unexpected.”
“They didn’t give us the gory details, Yoshi.”
“I wonder if there’s anyone who misses her.”
I had meant to be kind, but my words came out sounding mean.
“What I meant was,” I added quickly, “I wonder if she has any family or longtime friends or anything. It’s sad to think you can go, and no one would miss you.”
Another uncomfortable silence. No one at the table claimed to be sad about Kathy Banks. Yoshi opened his mouth as if to speak, but Emma shot him a death glare and he clammed up.
