Fall Semester

by Stephanie Fournet

  “I believe you,” she said, finally. Her words allowed him to take a full breath of his own. “Explain what you mean. You made a mistake how?”

  Malcolm looked at the floor again and chose his words carefully.

  “I…tried to meddle in her life,” he managed.

  Helene gave him a skeptical look.

  “It’s a bit more complicated than that,” he added. “I did something she told me not to do, but I’m not saying any more. If you want details, you’ll have to ask Maren.”

  Saying her name soothed him. It made her seem not so far out of his reach.

  “How is she?” he asked, and he could hear the longing in his voice. It was shameful. He scarcely cared.

  Helene’s eyes softened.

  “I saw her last night. It’s hard, but she’s strong.”

  One side of Malcolm’s mouth lifted in a smile as he pictured her in all her righteous glory.

  “Yes, she’s very strong,” he agreed, half whispering. His eyes focused on Helene again. “Did you go to her house? Was she at home or at her parents’?”

  Helene’s gaze narrowed again.

  “Why? Are you going to stalk her?” she asked.

  “No…I…I’ve been sending food to her parents’ house where she was staying last week,” he said.

  “Aah. That was you! I should have guessed.” Helene was smiling again, highly amused at being in on the secret. “Thanks for the Thai noodles. Those were awesome.”

  Malcolm ached to ask if Maren had eaten any, if she had accepted his offering, but he managed to maintain that shred of his dignity. The fact that the meal had been shared with guests was a good sign.

  Feeding her is touching her, he reminded himself. He had already decided that tonight he would send Alessi’s meatball spaghetti and fettuccine alfredo. Perhaps he could bring it over himself….

  “Wow. You’ve got it bad,” Helene said, waking him from his reverie. “Who would have thought?”

  Irritation flared.

  “Will you keep what you know to yourself, or should I prepare for the worst?” he asked, struggling and failing to keep his tone even.

  She gave him her own irritated look.

  “Maren is my friend. I’m not about to hang her out to dry,” she sneered.

  Their meeting was decidedly over.

  “Then I thank you for your time,” he said, stepping away from the door and opening it for her.

  Helene made to walk out, then stopped, and turned back to him.

  “Maren’s a smart girl,” she said in a low voice. “So she must see something redeeming in you, but hell if I know what it is.”

  Malcolm bit his tongue until he’d closed the door behind her.

  “This from the girl who is currently screwing Jess Dalton,” he said to his empty office.

  One thing that Malcolm felt sure of was that Helene would tell Maren about their encounter. About his profession of love, no doubt. The thought both terrified and thrilled him. He wanted her to know. Of course, he did. Malcolm wanted her to know that she claimed all of his love, more than he ever thought he could feel. He also knew that allowing himself to tell her would double it, triple it, give it rein to grow stronger than himself. Engulf him. And when she didn’t return it, how would he find his way out?

  Still, if she heard it from Helene, might it touch her? Might she take pity on him and forgive him? He decided that there was only one way to find out.

  The obituary said that visitation that day was from 2 p.m. - 7 p.m. As Malcolm pulled up to the Gardner’s house at 7:30, he knew by the number of cars that lined the street that the family probably didn’t need his three orders of meatballs and two orders of fettuccine alfredo. Death ensured casseroles.

  His heart beat a frantic tattoo as he approached the front door. Malcolm was almost as afraid of seeing Maren as he was of seeing someone else from the university. He prayed that everyone inside was either a relative or friend of the family, not a fellow grad student.

  He rang the doorbell, and to his relief, Laurel answered. Dressed in black and raw-eyed, she looked wrung out, but she gave him a sad smile.

  “Hey, Malcolm. Come on in.” She stepped back to let him through, but he hesitated. Perhaps he could just give her the food and a message.

  “Are you sure it’s okay?” he asked. “I don’t want to intrude.”

  Laurel shrugged.

  “Maren’s in the den with some friends from St. Thomas More. They have her laughing,” she said, hopefully. “Now might be a good time to try to smooth things out. Why don’t you put those in the kitchen while I get her?”

  She turned on her heel, but Malcolm called her back.

  “Laurel, I’m really sorry about your dad,” he said, gently. “He seemed like a wonderful person.”

  She nodded at him, and, unable to say anything, Laurel stepped up to Malcolm and kissed him on the cheek. Then she bustled ahead of him, and he followed her toward the kitchen. Malcolm noticed that the hospital bed in the living room had been removed, but the furniture had not been righted, leaving an obvious hole in the space.

  There must have been two dozen people crowded into the kitchen, but seeing that he carried food, they parted for him and allowed him to approach the island and begin unloading the bags.

  “Malcolm.” Erin weaved her way to him and wrapped her arms around him. He hesitated a moment but then returned the embrace, squeezing as tightly as she did.

  “Erin, I’m so sorry about Mark,” he whispered.

  She pulled back but still gripped his arms.

  “Thank you, Malcolm. He liked you,” she said, smiling up at him, her eyes bloodshot and wet. “He told me that night at the hospital that you would be very devoted to her. You didn’t waste any time in proving him right….Thank you for all of the food. It’s been a blessing.”

  “It’s nothing,” he said, feeling his shame. “If I hadn’t let her down, I could have done so much more.”

  At that moment, he saw Maren skirting the crowd in the kitchen. Her hair was loose and hung down her back in waves. In her black dress, she looked both beautiful and sophisticated. Dangerous. Her face was expressionless, and her eyes purposely avoided him. His heart sunk. He and Erin watched her exit through the living room and turn toward the stairs.

  “You could try going after her,” Erin said, doubt ringing in her voice. “But she might need some time.”

  Malcolm couldn’t respond. He was too busy fighting the urge to chase after her, throw her over his shoulder, and carry her to his car. If he kidnapped her, at least she’d have to hear him out.

  “I’d better go,” he said, looking back at Erin. She nodded, regret evident in her eyes.

  “Will you be at the funeral tomorrow?” she asked. It was an invitation; Malcolm was certain.

  “I don’t know if she’d want me there,” he said, narrowing his eyes. He wanted to be there for her. No doubt.

  “I don’t know if she realizes it yet, but funerals have a way of…underscoring the finality,” Erin said, tears welling in her eyes again. When she spoke, her voice rasped against her words. “She might really need you to be there.”

  “I’ll be there,” he vowed. He gave Erin a parting kiss on the cheek and edged his way out of the kitchen.

  At the front door, his eyes drifted up the stairs. She was up there. Alone. Perhaps they could resolve all this right now, and he could hold her and comfort her all night.

  He put a foot on the bottom stair, and his phone chimed.

  Monday, Nov. 13: 4:41 p.m.

  I can only handle one heartbreak at a time, Malcolm. I need you to leave.

  The air left his lungs in a whoosh, and he sunk down onto the stairs.

  Monday, Nov. 13: 4:41 p.m.

  Maren, I’m sorry I hurt you. Let me come up and talk. I want to mend your heart. Forgive me.

  He waited. She was just a few feet above him, deciding his fate. He imagined that he could almost smell her warm jasmine scent. His chest ached with longing
.

  Monday, Nov. 13: 4:45 p.m.

  I’m not sure I can. Please go. I can’t deal with you being here.

  Malcolm rose, despite the fact that he had the distinct sensation that he was sinking, drowning. He walked out the front door and pulled it closed behind him. Perhaps she heard, but he wanted her to know that he respected her wish.

  Monday, Nov. 13: 4:46 p.m.

  I’m gone, my love. With a word, you can bring me back.

  He got back to his car and started it. Jack Johnson sang to him, strumming an acoustic guitar.

  “…I’m betting all of this might be over soon….”

  Malcolm punched the power button on the radio and drove home in silence. There was a nearly full bottle of Crown waiting for him. He filled a tumbler with ice and took the bottle onto the back porch where Maren had changed his life with her kiss.

  He drank. He drank until he began to curse himself in English. And then he drank some more until he cursed himself in Spanish. He drank until the porch beams on the ceiling began to list counter-clockwise and the floorboards rolled like the sea.

  Well into the night, he stumbled to the bathroom, puked fantastically, and careened across the hall into his bed.

  On Tuesday morning, Malcolm did something he hadn’t done in years; he cancelled his classes. He didn’t wake up until 9:20—when Ricardo had resorted to licking his eyelids—and by the time he staggered into his study and opened up his laptop to send an email to them, half of his 10:00 Survey of American students were probably already on campus; still, he had no chance of making it. In fact, his blood alcohol was probably still well over the legal limit. His Magic Realism class fell during Mark Gardner’s funeral, and if Malcolm was still alive by then, he was going to attend.

  The taste of his swollen tongue was criminal. His stomach felt like it had ascended to just under his tonsils, and he vaguely wondered how thought was still possible after his brains had clearly been scrubbed with a cheese grater. His only hope was Advil, water, a pot of coffee, and a monstrous breakfast.

  Malcolm could manage scrambling eggs and frying bacon with only one eye open, but he found that measuring coffee required depth perception. He tore through both pieces of toast as he buttered them, and he somehow got strawberry preserves between his toes, but he eventually sat down at the kitchen table and ate. Something close to humanity returned to him as fluids and nutrients met his cells.

  After a shower, he was cogent enough to judge that skipping a shave that day would not help his cause, given that he still looked like shit on a stick.

  A shave, a black suit, and a tie helped matters considerably, and at 11:30, he downed another couple of Advil and drained a glass of ice water. His stomach still felt rather wobbly, and his shredded brain had been downgraded to mere encephalitis, but he got in his car and drove the five blocks to Martin and Castille without veering into oncoming traffic or bursting into tears—both of which seemed equally desirable activities.

  If Malcolm had thought that the Gardner’s kitchen had been full, it was nothing compared to the viewing room dedicated to Mark Andrew Gardner.

  A young man’s funeral is always well attended, Malcolm thought as he signed the guest book.

  Malcolm found himself at the end of a very long receiving line, which he debated about following—until he saw Maren. She was standing with her family beside the casket, dabbing her lashes with a tissue. Even in grief, she was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. Maren wore her hair down again, but instead of natural waves, mahogany curls fell down her back. She was wrapped in a double-breasted charcoal jacket that hugged her slender waist, and though her skirt was very modest, it drew his eye to her lean legs.

  You’re leering at her at her father’s funeral. Get it together, you fool!

  Malcolm looked away, took a deep breath, and tried not to gag against the perfume of the tottery woman in front of him. His stomach was giving him doubts about his ability to stand indefinitely, and his knees were in agreement. When he chanced to look at Maren again, he almost choked. She was staring straight at him.

  Somehow, he found the courage to meet her gaze instead of falling to his knees. He let his features speak for him.

  You may not want me here, but I am not leaving.

  She glanced away, and he watched her chest rise and fall, a look of resignation coming into her eyes.

  At least I’m not being banished.

  Before he could get anywhere near the front of the line, a man who appeared to be the funeral director escorted the family to their seats in the front of the room, and organ music told the guests to find their own places. Malcolm checked his watch: 11:59.

  The rows of seating filled quickly, but Malcolm managed to find a place on the far right, just a few rows back. Maren and her family sat up front on the left. Extended family had joined them, but Lane and Laurel sat on either side of their mother, and Maren took the place on the end, and there he could see her fairly well. As the service started, Malcolm saw that her eyes kept settling on her father’s body, and her shoulders would quake with sorrow.

  Malcolm knew that—no matter the circumstances—he would never have been able to sit beside her and wrap a securing arm around her. The room was full of far too many people from the department. Most of them were graduate students, but MacIntosh and St. Martin had come, and he had seen Sheridan’s name in the guest book. Still, he wanted to be sitting beside her, holding her, absorbing the tremors of her grief.

  A lifelong friend of Mark’s, someone named Alan, came forward for the eulogy, and it was clear that he knew all of the Gardners very well. He recounted a story of Mark’s plan to propose to Erin. Malcolm found himself sitting forward with rapt attention when he got to the point in his narrative where the young couple had learned that they were to have their first-born child.

  “Your father named you, Maren, on the day you were born,” Alan said, speaking straight to her before addressing the room again. “After weeks of searching for the right name, Mark and Erin had a list, but when their first daughter was born, none seemed to suit her. Mark told me later that day that when he looked at his baby girl, he could see Erin’s nose and his chin. ‘She’s made up of the best of us,’ he told me, and the name came to him. From that moment on, Mark Gardner truly knew who he was. He was a father. An outstanding father.”

  Malcolm watched his beloved struggle to contain her sobs, and his heart twisted for her. Even from the short time he’d known Mark Gardner, he knew the words of the eulogy were true. The man had been a wonderful father.

  His thoughts turned to his own father, someone he had not seen since his university days. He wondered idly how his half-siblings saw the man. Had life and time made him a better parent? Had Malcolm been his practice run? Would the younger Vashals weep uncontrollably at the man’s funeral?

  And then his mind skipped ahead a lifetime. Would there be children at his own funeral to weep for him? Suddenly—and perhaps for the first time in his life—he hoped that there would be. In a flash, Malcolm could see a tribe of children with dark hair and green eyes. The thought was startling. Wholly surprising, but stunningly desirable.

  Could he be the kind of man Mark Gardner had been? Put his wife and children’s well-being and happiness above everything else?

  YES!

  He loved them fiercely, immediately. And they were mere figments of his imagination. Save one, of course. Maren was no figment. She was the source of this newfound hunger. With a clarity he’d never known, Malcolm wanted Maren to have his babies.

  On the heels of this wondrous thought came a roll of nausea.

  She had to forgive him. If she did not, he might never know a moment’s peace.

  Alan had finished his eulogy, and Malcolm emerged from his fog to see Lane rise. To everyone’s surprise, the funeral director approached him with a guitar and a stool. Lane took the guitar, looped the strap around his shoulders, and sat, beaming at his mother.

  “My dad had a lot of time to think abo
ut what today might be like,” he said. Lane paused to swallow hard before he continued. “He told me he wasn’t interested in the details except for one thing. He wanted my mom to hear from him one last time, so he asked me for this.”

  Lane’s fingers tested the guitar strings for a cord or two before he broke into the lone opening notes of “In My Life”. The Beatles’ song brought a collective murmur from the mourners in the front row. Lane’s voice, smooth and strong, carried over the room as he gave himself to the song.

  Erin, Laurel, and Maren clasped hands as they listened, all weeping openly, but managing to smile at the gift. Malcolm found himself clearing his throat at the poignancy of the moment.

  This is what it means to be a family.

  Malcolm was ashamed to admit to himself that he had more than a little envy of the man in the casket and the life that he had led. It suddenly seemed urgent to claim that kind of life for himself. If such a thing were possible….

  Lane strummed the last cords of the song and only just had time to free himself from the guitar before Erin crushed him in an embrace. The funeral director approached the lectern as the appreciative and tearful applause that followed began to fade.

  “The family has asked for a few moments alone with Mark before the casket is closed,” he said. “You are welcome to proceed immediately to Memorial Park or wait to follow the procession.”

  Malcolm desperately wanted to approach Maren, but now clearly was not the time. Some of the mourners exited toward the front, taking the opportunity to console and hug the Gardners before heading out the double doors that led to the parking lot. Malcolm instead left through the rear exit.

  Although the November air was chilly, there was a midday glare to the clouds that seemed to chafe against his optic nerve. He squinted, and pain plucked at the space between his eyebrows. His mouth felt like cotton as he cued up behind the slow-rolling centipede of cars that wound through the parking lot of Martin & Castille. He kept his eyes on the hearse outside the double doors. If Maren wasn’t leaving yet, neither would he.

  She and her family were in there saying their last goodbyes. The thought gave Malcolm a sigh. Not for the first time, he berated himself for his interference, for the way he had tried to commandeer her. His actions had only served to make all of this harder for her, and he truly regretted them.