Barefoot: A Novel

by Elin Hilderbrand

  So as she waited for her class to arrive, she rested her head on the Queen Anne table. It smel ed like lemon Pledge. She closed her eyes.

  And jolted awake! A minute later, two minutes? No, it was eleven-fifteen and stil no one had come. She checked her syl abus; spring break wasn’t for two weeks. But then she thought, April first, April Fool’s. The class was playing a trick on her. Ha, ha. But where were they?

  Brenda walked down the hal to Mrs. Pencaldron’s desk, and on the way, she was passed by the university caterers rol ing a tray of linens and dishes toward the Barrington Room.

  Mrs. Pencaldron was on the phone. She saw Brenda but looked right through her. She said something about shrimp in the pasta salad, Dr.

  Barrett was al ergic, if he ate it, he’d die. She hung up, huffing.

  “Impossible!” she said.

  “Am I missing something?” Brenda said.

  Mrs. Pencaldron laughed with a false brightness. It had become clear to Brenda over the course of the year that Mrs. Pencaldron regarded al the professors in the department as pets she was trying hard to train, but to no avail.

  “Your class,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “What are you doing here?”

  “No one’s in the Barrington Room,” Brenda said. “Except now it looks like they’re setting up some kind of lunch.”

  “The department’s spring luncheon,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “The notice has been in your box for ten days.”

  “It has?” Brenda was guilty. She never checked her box.

  “It has. Along with a memo informing you that because of the luncheon your class is being held in Parsons 204.”

  “It is?”

  “It is,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. She was al gussied up in a floral-print dress. Should Brenda have gotten gussied, too?

  “Should I go to the luncheon?”

  “Are you a member of this department?”

  That sounded like a rhetorical question, but was it?

  Mrs. Pencaldron sighed in a way that made Brenda feel like a hopeless case. “We’l see you at one.”

  Brenda booked it over to Parsons 204. It was a beautiful spring day—final y!—and the quad looked like one of the pictures on the university Web site. Champion University had grass after al ! It had daffodils! It had students eating Big Macs on beach towels! Brenda hurried, but she was almost certain her effort would be in vain. After twenty professorless minutes, the class would have left, and on such a sublime day, how could she blame them? So there was one precious seminar wasted. Brenda prayed that, at the very least, Walsh waited around. The weather had put her in a flirtatious frame of mind. Maybe they could go out tonight, to the Peruvian chicken place. Maybe they could strol in Carl Schurz Park and check out barges on the East River. She would tel him about the cottage on Nantucket, half of it now hers.

  Just outside Parsons 204, Brenda heard voices. She opened the door and there was her class, thick in discussion of the week’s reading, Lorrie Moore’s short story “Real Estate.” The kids were so into it, they didn’t even notice her standing there, and Brenda nearly burst with pride.

  Brenda’s good mood got better: Walsh grinned when she told him, after everyone else had filed out of the room, that she wanted to go on a chicken-eating, park-strol ing, barge-watching date, and then—because they were in a strange classroom in the Biology Department—they kissed.

  “I have to run,” Brenda said. “I’m expected.”

  The department’s spring luncheon was in ful swing by the time Brenda arrived. The Barrington Room looked very elegant with the layered tablecloths, flowers, tiered silver trays of tuna and egg salad sandwiches, radishes with sweet butter, the shrimpless pasta salad, a bona fide punch bowl. There was a cluster of female graduate students by the door, teaching assistants, who greeted Brenda like a group of teenagers might greet Hilary Duff. Brenda was the department’s rising star, but to the teaching assistants, Brenda tried to come across as a nice, regular, down-to-earth person. She complimented Audrey on her skirt and told Mary Kate that she’d be happy to proofread the first chapter of her thesis. Brenda chatted with Dr. Barrett, the Russian literature authority who had been friends with Aunt Liv, and then Brenda found herself in conversation with Elizabeth Graves’s secretary, Nan, about the gorgeous weather and the weekend forecast. Across the room, Brenda saw Mrs. Pencaldron, Suzanne Atela, and a graduate student named Augie Fisk, who was a Chaucer specialist and who had asked Brenda out to dinner no less than three times. It would have been a beneficent gesture to seek out Augie Fisk and talk with him, it would have been wise to schmooze with Suzanne Atela—but Brenda was tired, and hungry. She fixed herself a plate and took a seat in a chair along the far wal next to a stout gentleman in a gray suit.

  “I’m Bil Franklin,” he said.

  Aha! Bil Franklin was the drama professor, a famous queen, known among the students as “Uncle Pervy.” Brenda had never met him. He taught at night, in the university theater. He had an office in the department, but the door was always closed.

  “Oh, hi! It’s nice to final y put a face to the name. I’m Brenda Lyndon.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  She smiled, trying not to let his unfortunate nickname color her first impression. Bil Franklin was in his midfifties, he had a nondescript, semi-desperate traveling-salesman aura about him. Something about him was familiar. She had seen him before. Around campus, maybe. Brenda sneaked another look at him sideways as she nibbled on a radish.

  “This is a very nice event,” she said.

  And at the same time, he said, “You seem to be quite popular with the kids.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Wel , who knows? I like teaching. I love it. Today I was late and the class just started up without me.”

  “You’re very young.”

  “I’l be thirty this month,” Brenda said.

  “Much closer to their age. They must find you intriguing.”

  “Intriguing?” Brenda said. “Oh, I kind of doubt that.”

  Bil Franklin was drinking a Michelob. He brought the bottle to his lips. He had a gray handlebar mustache. A handlebar mustache. Something about the mustache rang a bel , but why? Brenda got a funny-sick feeling in her stomach. It was a real y bad paranoid suspicion. Real y bad.

  Through three bites of pasta salad, she watched Suzanne Atela conferring with the head caterer. Dr. Atela was pointing; Brenda heard the word

  “coffee.” Brenda had to stand up. She wanted to look at Bil Franklin from across the room. She pretended to be headed for the punch bowl, though the punch was the color of Pepto-Bismol, and no one had touched it. She lingered, trying to get a good, long look without getting caught. Okay. He drank from his bottle, he saw her, he winked. Winked.

  Brenda looked away, horrified. Horrified! We’re in Soho. It’s like another country. The man at the end of the bar would like to pay for your drink.

  The man at the end of the bar at the Cupping Room the night Brenda met Walsh, the night she kissed Walsh and flaunted her hot longing for al to see . . . the man who offered to buy her a drink was Bil Franklin.

  Brenda cancel ed Walsh without explanation, and nine o’clock found him leaning against Brenda’s buzzer until she let him in.

  On purpose, she was wearing sweatpants. Since they were no longer to be lovers, he could see her looking grubby. Ancient Philadelphia marathon T-shirt, ponytail, no makeup. Wel , a little makeup. Brenda took a long time with the dead bolts. She didn’t want to see him.

  “What’s going on?” he said. “You sounded bloody awful on the phone. What happened?”

  Walsh stepped inside, and she locked the door back up. Her apartment, at least, was safe. She took her clothes off before Walsh could get a good look at them.

  Later, as they lay in bed sweating and spent, Walsh kissed her temple. Some days he seemed much older than he real y was. Maybe because he was from Australia.

  “You’re upset,” he said. “Tel me what happened.”

  She inhaled. “One of the professors in
the department . . . the drama guy, Bil Franklin . . .”

  “Uncle Pervy?” Walsh said.

  “Yes. He was at the Cupping Room the night we were there.”

  “He was? How do you know? Did he tel you?”

  “I recognized him,” Brenda said. “He tried to buy me a drink. I remember him. At the other end of the bar. He was wearing the same suit he wore to the luncheon. And his mustache, with the curlicue ends al waxed, you don’t forget something like that. He winked at me. Oh, God. It’s awful.”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t some other bloke with the same suit?”

  “I wish it was,” Brenda said. “But I’m sure. And I mean, sure. Same guy. And he knows. I’m sure he knows. He said al this stuff about my being young. He said the students must find me ‘intriguing.’”

  “Intriguing?”

  “He knows. It was the way he said it. He knows, Walsh. Okay, that’s it. I will be fired. You wil be . . . wel , hopeful y nothing wil happen to you.”

  “Come on,” Walsh said.

  “We have to stop,” Brenda said. “If I get fired, my career is over. My whole professional life. Everything I’ve worked for, the things I’m building on.

  Because I would like to stay at Champion, and if Champion doesn’t want to offer me anything permanent, then I would like to teach someplace else.

  I can’t have a weird sexual thing on my record. No one wil hire me.”

  “I can’t stop,” Walsh said. “I don’t want to stop.”

  “I don’t want to stop, either,” Brenda said. “Obviously. But is this any way to conduct a relationship? Sneaking around, hoping nobody catches us?”

  “It hasn’t seemed to bother you before.”

  “Wel , now everything’s different.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “I can’t believe you care what Uncle Pervy thinks. I hear stories about that guy al the time.”

  “Yeah, but not with undergraduates. Not with his own students.”

  “No, but stil . That guy has too many skeletons in his own closet to blow the whistle on us . . .”

  Brenda slid out of bed and stumbled through the dark apartment to the front door, where she found her sweats in a pile on the floor. Brenda put them on. She thought about how much she loved her class. But Walsh was part of that class and part of why she loved it was because he was in it.

  She thought of Bil Franklin winking at her. Ugh! They must find you intriguing. Because I saw you kissing one of your students at a bar. But that night in the Cupping Room had been nearly two months earlier, and if Bil Franklin hadn’t said anything about it to Suzanne Atela yet, he might be planning to keep it under his hat. After al , he had no reason to sting Brenda. He didn’t even know her. There were only five weeks left in the semester, anyway. The other day Walsh had told Brenda he wanted to take her back to Fremantle and introduce her to his mother, and Brenda had gone so far as to check flights from New York to Perth on the Internet. Brenda thought about their names, side by side at the top of his paper. John Walsh /Dr. Brenda Lyndon. He was a col ege sophomore. He was her student. Romantic or sexual relationships are forbidden between a faculty member and a student.

  “Brindah,” he cal ed out.

  Her mind was a muddy puddle.

  . . . and will result in disciplinary action.

  “Brindah?”

  She couldn’t come up with an answer.

  I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop.

  I can’t stop.

  Brenda didn’t stop. Her relationship with Walsh had too much momentum. And so, they continued to see each other, but only at Brenda’s apartment. Brenda was firm in this. The beautiful weather beckoned; Walsh wanted to be outside. He wanted to walk with Brenda, lie in the grass with Brenda. It was against his nature to be cooped up in her apartment, where the windows didn’t even open. But no, sorry—Brenda said no. She wouldn’t budge.

  In class, Brenda was increasingly businesslike, serious, professional. She was young, but that didn’t mean she was frivolous! That didn’t mean she would fly in the face of the strictest university rule and sleep with one of her students!

  Brenda was consumed with anxiety, but she had no one to talk about it with. She couldn’t tel her parents or Vicki and she hadn’t spoken to Erik vanCott since their dinner at Craft. The bad news of Erik marrying Noel seemed very minor when compared to the bad news of Brenda losing her job and watching her good name go up in flames. Besides, what would she possibly say? I’m sleeping with one of my students. When phrased like that, which was to say, bluntly, without nuance or detail, it sounded tawdry and lecherous. It was the kind of secret that Brenda would have been ashamed to tel her therapist, if she had a therapist. The only person Brenda could vent to was Walsh himself, and he was growing weary of it.

  Brenda yammered on about getting caught, getting fired, what if, God forbid . . . until the words clinked like worthless coins. Relax, he said. You’re acting like such an American. Obsessing like this.

  Brenda’s class read Anne Lamott’s Crooked Little Heart, which was the book Amrita the brownnoser had chosen to write her midterm paper on, and yet Amrita’s customary seat, to Brenda’s right, was vacant first on Tuesday and then again on Thursday.

  “Does anyone know where Amrita is?” Brenda asked.

  There was throat-clearing, a noise that sounded like a sneeze but could just as easily have been a snicker from one of the Rebeccas, a bunch of downcast eyes. Brenda got a funny vibe, but she couldn’t pinpoint it and no one in the class was going to talk. Brenda scribbled, Call Amrita! at the top of her notes.

  Spring break arrived. Walsh had rugby games in Van Cortlandt Park, he wanted Brenda to come watch him, they could picnic afterward, but she refused. I can’t. Someone will see me. Someone will figure it out. Erik vanCott cal ed and left a message, asking Brenda to be the best man in his wedding. Brenda thought he was kidding, but then he left another message. Best man? she thought. Would she have to stand on the altar looking like Victor Victoria while “marriage material” Noel looked stunning in silk shantung and tul e? For her vacation, Brenda took the train up to Darien to see Vicki, Ted, and the kids. Vicki wasn’t feeling wel ; she’d been to the hospital for tests. Walking pneumonia, they thought it was. Brenda said, Ugh, are you contagious? She washed her hands, she kept a safe distance. She asked Vicki about being Erik vanCott’s best man. Tuxedo? she said. Black dress, Vicki said. But nothing too sexy. You’re not allowed to upstage the bride. One night, when Ted was out with clients, Brenda nearly confessed to Vicki about Walsh, but she held her tongue. Instead, they talked about Nantucket. Would they go, together, separately, when would they go, how long would they stay? Vicki said, I have a family, Bren. I have to plan. Brenda said, Just let me get through this semester.

  After spring break, Brenda started holding class outside, in the quad, under a spindly, urban tree. She was thinking of summer, of time on Nantucket, she was thinking: Walsh wants to spend time with me outside, here it is. She also wanted to keep a low profile in the department. If she wasn’t there, she reasoned, nothing bad could happen.

  She left three messages for Amrita—two on Amrita’s cel phone and one at Amrita’s apartment, where a roommate promised to pass the message along. Had Amrita dropped the class? That seemed so unlikely that Brenda figured she must have contracted mono, or had to fly back to India to bury a dead grandmother. Students like Amrita didn’t drop a class they were acing.

  And then, one day, two weeks before final papers were due, two weeks before Brenda and Walsh were in the clear, Brenda found a note taped to her office door. SEE ME! S.A.

  Brenda removed the note and held it in her hand. Her hand was steady. She wasn’t nervous. Suzanne Atela could want a hundred things. The semester was ending; there was next year to consider. There had been talk of Brenda picking up another section. It was either that or some other administrative thing. Brenda wasn’t nervous or worried.

  Suzanne Atela w
asn’t in her office. Brenda checked with Mrs. Pencaldron, who without a word uncapped her Montblanc pen and elegantly scripted a phone number on a peach-colored index card.

  “She wants me to cal her?” Brenda said.

  Terse nod. Mrs. Pencaldron picked up her own phone and handed the receiver to Brenda.

  Suzanne Atela wanted to meet at Feed Your Head, in the student union. Brenda agreed, handed the phone back to Mrs. Pencaldron, stifled a groan. She wasn’t nervous or worried; she was merely inconvenienced. She was supposed to meet Walsh at her apartment with take-out Indian food at one. In the stairwel , she cal ed Walsh to cancel.

  At quarter to twelve, Feed Your Head was packed. Packed! Brenda realized how removed she had been from the student body of Champion University. She knew twelve students out of six thousand. She’d been teaching for nearly an entire school year and she’d never once eaten on campus. And no wonder. She paid twelve-fifty for a soggy tuna sub, fruit salad, and a bottle of water. She wandered past a bunch of girl-women watching a soap opera as she searched for Suzanne Atela. It took a few minutes to find her because Brenda was, of course, looking for a woman alone. Dr. Atela was not alone, however. She was sitting at a table with Bil Franklin and Amrita.

  Brenda nearly turned and ran—it would have been easy to get lost in the crowd—but Amrita saw her and frowned. She nudged Dr. Atela, and Dr.

  Atela turned and drew Brenda over to the table with a steady, disapproving gaze over the top of her glasses. Bil Franklin was wearing a blue seersucker suit and a bow tie. With his waxed mustache, he looked old-fashioned and ridiculous, like a carnival barker. His attention was glued to the soap opera, showing on a screen over Atela’s head.

  As Brenda approached the table, her bowels did a twisty thing that made her think she might need a bathroom. She eased down in a molded plastic chair next to Atela.

  “Hi,” she said. “Amrita. Dr. Franklin. I didn’t realize this was a meet—”