The Cursed Canoe

by Frankie Bow

  At two minutes after the hour, a young woman entered the room and went behind the reception desk. She wore a black appliqué skirt with yellow and magenta flowers, a plain gray t-shirt, and no makeup. Her wiry black hair was pulled back in a bun. She busied herself at the computer terminal, and I checked the news on my phone as I waited for her to pull up my record.

  “Hello, Professor.” She grinned at me, flashing gold dental work.

  “Oh, hi Hermina!” I tried to sound nonchalant, as if encountering a former student as I was waiting for my appointment with a mental health professional were no big deal. “I didn’t know you were working at the clinic. Didn’t you graduate?”

  “Yeah, last spring. I went home, but there wasn’t no good jobs there. I came back and worked at the library for a while, but that didn’t work out. So here I am.”

  I wanted to ask her about the library job, but I didn't know whether her separation had been voluntary and I didn’t want to risk embarrassing her. My recent visit to our library had made me curious. How was our cash-strapped university able to hire dozens of library helpers?

  “Well, it’s nice to have you back in town.”

  Of course I’m happy whenever one of our graduates finds gainful employment. Unfortunately, I knew Hermina still had friends on campus. I wondered how long it would take before the entire student body knew I was seeing a shrink. I knew there was no shame in it, of course, but I was well aware that not everyone is similarly enlightened.

  “It’ll be just a minute, Professor,” Hermina said. “Make yourself comfortable. Someone will call you.”

  Nothing about this situation was comfortable, but the way she said it made it sound like I would be there awhile. At least I could get some work done while I was waiting. The Student Retention Office had recently upgraded their website to make it mobile-friendly. I navigated to the For Faculty page. It was the last tab, of course, after For Students, For Parents, For Community, For Media, and For Accreditors. The Student Retention Office always put faculty last. Every chance they got. To them we were a necessary evil, to be endured until the Ed-Tech Singularity or The Great Disruption or whatever they were hoping would finally make us obsolete.

  I pulled up the Weekly Departmental Report form.

  1. For each class in the department, list

  a) The instructor of record,

  b) The current enrollment expressed as a whole integer, and

  c) The number of student absences during the week, expressed as a whole integer.

  I don’t think anyone in our department actually takes attendance. Rodge Cowper, whose classroom usually looks half full at best, always reports 100% attendance. Larry Schneider rages that babysitting isn’t in our job description. Hanson Harrison proclaims that he's opposed to checking attendance because his students are adults (I don’t think anyone in Hanson’s social circle has ever had to punch a time card). I don’t mind taking attendance, as it helps me to memorize students’ names, but even I have given up. Our classes have become increasingly crowded as our university admits more students to increase tuition revenue (without hiring additional faculty), so we’re now at the point where reading through the roster of names takes up half the class period.

  2. For each class in the department, list the course learning outcomes for the week, describe how each learning outcome ties into the Strategic Plan of the University, and indicate each student’s achievements along these learning outcomes.

  No one ever fills this one in. One of our accounting professors once calculated that with our current course load, this task alone would take more than forty hours per week. No matter. I knew if I turned in incomplete paperwork again, Kathy Banks would—oh, right. Not Kathy Banks. One of the nine who had presumably sprung up in her place, then. I began to feel an unpleasant throbbing behind my right eye.

  You may copy and paste the current class roster from the enrollment management system. Irregardless of whether letter or numerical grades were assigned, please provide a qualitative description of each student’s efforts and how the faculty member honored the student’s unique learning style.

  Irregardless? I placed my hands over my eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Amelia?”

  I looked around the empty waiting room. Was I hearing voices now? Who was Amelia?

  “Amelia?”

  A young woman in pink scrubs stood in the entryway to the inner offices, looking right at me. We were the only two people in the waiting room.

  “Amelia Barda?” she said.

  I put away my phone and stood up.

  “Amalia,” I corrected her. “I go by Molly. Not Amelia.”

  “What a pretty name,” she soothed, using her now-put- the-knife-down-like-a-good-girl voice.

  She led me down a hallway into a small room that looked more like a corporate cubicle than a doctor’s office. A pale, desiccated man sat behind a hulking desk, twirling back and forth in his swivel chair. He braced his bony hands on the lip of the fake mahogany desktop and swiveled from one side to the other. Back, and forth. Back, and forth. It was making me dizzy. I sat in one of the two matching beige fabric chairs and read the nameplate on his desk. Dr. Gregory Spiner. That was unfortunate. I was going to think of him as Dr. Spinner from now on, whether I wanted to or not.

  Dr. Spinner peered at the computer terminal on his desk, then at me.

  “Amelia Barda? What brings you in today?”

  He looked sickly, his fair eyebrows invisible on his fragile skin.

  “My name is Amalia,” I said. “Not Amelia.”

  He started to type. The only objects on Dr. Spinner’s desk were the computer terminal and an oversized candy jar. In my rush to arrive early, I hadn’t stopped to eat breakfast. The candy jar lurked in my peripheral vision, tempting me, but I didn’t want to stare at it. I didn’t want him to start asking questions about sugar addiction.

  “A good friend of mine thought I seemed kind of stressed out,” I said. “It was his idea for me to come here. I’ve never been in before, so I’m not sure how this works. Do you ask me questions, or do I just start talking, or what?”

  Doctor Spinner stopped typing and looked at me.

  “Let’s start with a question, Amelia. What’s troubling you right now?”

  I thought of my conversation with Iker Legazpi.

  Everyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer.

  “That I may have committed murder?”

  He resumed typing.

  “No. Please stop typing! That’s not what I meant. I was joking.”

  He paused and looked up at me.

  “Um, I didn’t mean it was a joke-joke, I mean obviously it’s not funny. I would never joke about murder. I mean, not to you. Are you going to have to write one of those warning letters now? Here, let me start over.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “A COWORKER RECENTLY passed away. Some kind of boating accident, I guess. I’m not exactly sure how it happened. I was there, on the beach, though. And I...”

  Dr. Spinner watched me for a moment and started typing again. I shifted my position in an attempt to see his screen in the reflection of the glass cabinet doors behind him. No luck.

  “Okay. Here’s the thing. Maybe if I'd known she was going to pass away I would’ve been nicer to her when she was alive. I missed an opportunity and now I won’t have another chance.”

  Doctor Spinner kept typing.

  “She works, worked, I mean, for the Student Retention Office,” I said. “They have this enormous grant, and their whole job is to keep students from dropping out and to raise our graduation rate. Which is an admirable goal. No one could argue with that. Except we’re not allowed to use the grant money to do the things that might actually work. Make the dorms habitable, hire more professors so students can get the classes they need, or even just give out more scholarships so students can afford to stay in school. Everything we do has to be ‘new’ and ‘disruptive’ so the Student Retention Office forces one weird fad after
another on us. Then when that doesn't work, because of course it doesn't, they lean on us to pass everyone anyway, and they drown us in paperwork to make it look like they’re doing something. In fact, I was just trying to fill out one of my weekly reports while I was waiting.”

  Doctor Spinner stopped typing and looked at me.

  “You know, Amelia, women like yourself sometimes get caught in the role of people-pleasers. Have you thought about saying no?”

  “Say no to the SRO? The history department tried that. Why don’t we ask the history department how that’s working out for them? Better hurry, though, because pretty soon we’re not going to have a history department.”

  Doctor Spinner typed for what seemed like an unnecessarily long time.

  “You said you wish you had been kinder to your colleague when she was alive,” he said, finally.

  “I guess so."

  “And yet I still sense some anger, Amelia.”

  “It’s Amalia, not Amelia. Or Molly. Everyone calls me Molly. It was frustrating to deal with Kathy Banks. It was like trying to reason with a robot sometimes. As if she’d been pre-programmed with these few catch phrases. Honor each student’s way of knowing. Be a Guide on the Side, not the Sage on the Stage. Provide peak customer satisfaction. I could never talk to her like a human being.”

  “But she was a human being.”

  “I guess. You know, there was one conversation we had. We were going back and forth over some marginal student she wanted to place into our management program. I told her, this kid has no chance of succeeding in this program and we both know it. If we admitted him, we’d simply be shaking him down for his financial aid money. We’d be no better than those schools that advertise on daytime television. Of all things, that seemed to upset her. I don’t know why it touched a nerve, but it did.”

  I waited for Doctor Spinner to weigh in on this, but he sat with his fingers poised over his keyboard.

  “Well, of course she insisted I was wrong, Mahina State's mission was access and so on. What was strange, though, is I saw tears in her eyes. I couldn’t believe it. I pretended to change my mind and agree with her in the end, because I felt bad about hurting her feelings.”

  He pushed against the desk and launched himself around, holding his hands in the air as if he were riding a roller coaster. As he completed the full 360-degree turn, he grabbed the edge of his desk to decelerate.

  “Sometimes you have to trust people, Amelia. What did you learn from this experience?”

  He readied his fingers to start typing again.

  “I don’t know. The poor kid stuck around long enough to burn most of his financial aid, and dropped out. So I was right and Kathy was wrong. Maybe the lesson is people should listen to my good advice.”

  Dr. Spinner stopped typing and watched me. Wrong answer. I tried again.

  “Don’t let myself be manipulated by tears?”

  Doctor Spinner launched himself and his chair into another full turn. On the way back around he plunged his hand into the candy jar, pulled out a fistful of cellophane-wrapped goodies, and set them down in front of me. I reached for one of the wrapped candies and started to open it.

  “Now hold your horses there, Amelia. Let’s discuss this first.”

  "Discuss? Why?" I picked one of the candies up and examined it. It was an oval shape, and blue. Blueberry? Vanilla?

  “Take one when you feel anxious,” he said, “or twenty minutes before you think you might encounter a stressful situation. It can take our pharmacy a few days to get your prescription in, so these samples are for you to take with you today.”

  “Oh. A prescription.” I set the pill back down, hoping my disappointment wasn't too obvious. “What is this a prescription for, exactly?”

  “Anxiety. You will be pleased with this, I guarantee.”

  “Anxiety? Huh. Fair enough. Are there any side effects, interactions, anything I should know about?”

  “Oh no. Nothing at all.”

  “Nothing? Are you sure? That’s unusual. Well, I guess I can check the package insert. Just to be on the safe side.”

  He giggled as if I had made a clever joke. “Package insert. How quaint. I'm certain you know how to use the internet, Amelia.”

  He pushed off the edge of his desk and whirled around once more, and slid a printed piece of paper across the desk toward me.

  I gathered up the wrapped drug samples and the discharge slip. I considered shaking his hand, but he was busy spinning himself around. I left his office and found my way back to the reception area.

  “Hey, Professor!”

  The cheery voice was coming from behind the pharmacy window.

  “Oh, hi, uh...Peter. It’s been a while. Biz com, right?”

  I was proud I'd remembered his name. He was one of hundreds of students I’d had over the past few years. He seemed to take it for granted.

  “Professor, I graduated and then did my Pharm. D. on the mainland and now I’m back! Cool, huh?”

  “Yes, that’s wonderful. How do you like working here?”

  “I love it. I'm like the hub of the communication network, like we talked about in class. Pretty good I remembered that, yeah?”

  “Impressive."

  “You know what I mean, though? I get to talk to everyone. Like Professor Watanabe, the department chair?”

  “He’s our interim dean now,” I said.

  “Cool. Tell him congratulations! I see him here once in a while. We special-order him those cases of antacid tablets. He likes the sugar-free ones, cause he takes so many of them, if he had the regular ones, his teeth would all be rotten by now.”

  “And I saw Hermina on the way in."

  He grinned.

  “Yeah, we have a little alumni network going on here. It’s awesome. Hey, did you hear about us going up in the rankings?”

  “Yes. I was happy to see our graduates doing so well.”

  “Yeah, me too. Anyway, I got your order from Dr. Spinner here in the computer. It’ll take a couple days to get it in.”

  “You call him Dr. Spinner?”

  “Sorry,” he laughed, “Did I say that? I meant Dr. Spiner. Anyway, it’ll be ready in a couple days. We’ll call you. It’s worth the wait, though. You’ll love it.”

  “Really? I’ll love it?”

  “Oh yeah. Even people who are super uptight, no offense Professor, it calms 'em right down.”

  “Thanks, Peter. Good to know.”

  I walked back out to my car, tucked the pills into the side pocket of my purse, and forgot about them.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE APPOINTMENT AT Behavioral Health had taken a little longer than I’d expected. I walked into the classroom right on time, which was almost as bad as being late. The whiteboard was covered with leftover notes from Rodge Cowper's Human Potential class.

  Think outside the box!! was scrawled across the top of the board. Underneath was the famous drawing of nine dots run through by four connected straight lines. The rest of the board was filled with pairs of first names and positive adjectives in various handwriting styles. Heather: Helpful. Rick: Righteous. Nancy: Nice.

  I wiped Rodge’s insights from the board as my students entered and got seated in their discussion groups. When I'd finally erased everything I turned around to face the class.

  “Today we’re going to brainstorm brand-new ideas for your start-up businesses. No restaurants, no sports bars. Okay? And no grumbling. Listen. You've all done the break-even, so I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. None of those businesses made it. The problem with food and beverage type businesses is they have high fixed costs, many competitors and substitutes, and a fickle market. We can’t all be the next Donnie Gonsalves. You have to pivot. When your first idea doesn't work, think of a better one."

  I wrote on the board:

  Technology.

  Culture.

  Sustainability.

  "These are your prompts. I'll come around and talk to you individua
lly. Go."

  Sherry’s throaty rasp rose above the background murmur of discussions getting started around the room. “Sweetheart,” she was admonishing one of her tablemates, “you can talk about aloha all you want but when you actually look into it? Most of the time it’s a big pile of—”

  I rushed over to Sherry’s table in time to prevent her from finishing her thought.

  “Let’s try to keep it clean,” I said.

  I try to instill professionalism in my students, and that includes using appropriate language. This dictum usually needs some reinforcement throughout the semester.

  “Sorry, Dr. B. We were trying to do the culture prompt. I don’t know how we ended up talking about my control freak ex-husband.”

  “Well, the culture prompt doesn’t seem like it’s working for your group. Why don’t we try another direction? How about technology? Do you remember the story I posted about those entrepreneurs in Berlin? The ones doing custom clothing fittings online?”

  The group exchanged glances.

  “I just sent out the link,” I prompted gently. “The customers posed with a CD-ROM disk, and from that, the entrepreneurs could calculate the customers’ body measurements?"

  Their uncomprehending stares made me wonder whether any of them had read my post. I tried again.

  "Forget about clothing. Here’s something that’s been on people’s minds. Privacy. Right?”

  Everyone nodded, which could have meant anything from “I’ve been keeping up with the relevant news on privacy issues” to “I am nodding my head.”

  “The internet has changed our ability to be anonymous. And some people have more anonymity than others. If your parents had the foresight to name you something like Kathy Ba—like Bill Smith, you’re in good shape. A search would turn up so many hits, you could never be sure you found the right person.”

  “Yeah, my name’s pretty unique,” Sherry said. “DiNapoli. Sherrine DiNapoli.”

  “Oh. Sherrine is a very pretty name. Anyway—”