by Jamie Knight
“Is there anything that you want to tell me?” she said, leaning across the table and gathering my hands into hers.
I wished that I could tell her everything, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to give her the chance to be right about me going to school by telling her that I had managed to get pregnant in my first semester there. My heart sank as I swallowed hard and shook my head. The smell of the cookies in the oven were starting to waft from the oven and fill the kitchen.
And it made me nauseous.
I clapped a hand over my mouth and made a beeline to the bathroom just in time to unload a mouthful of yellow bile into the toilet. I stood over the toilet, wretching, my eyes watering as I struggle to suck in air between convulsions. When my stomach had finally settled, I ran the cold water, leaned down to take a drink, and splashed a few handfuls into my face.
“It was always eggs, for me,” came my mother’s voice from the doorway of the bathroom. I whirled around, startled. She stared back at me, smiling a knowing smile. My heart landed with a thud into my feet. But I still played dumb.
“What do you mean, mom?” I asked, trying to sound as innocent as possible. My mom ignored my fake ignorance, took a step toward me, wrapped her arms around me, laying her head on my shoulder.
“I mean, every time that I was pregnant, it was the smell of eggs that would send me running to the toilet with morning sickness.”
She did know.
“But, how?” I said, voicing my thoughts. “How long have you known?”
“I thought that something was up a few days ago at dinner when you turned down steak and potatoes with the lame excuse that you were trying to watch your figure, but you had a look on your face like you were sick. But, I didn’t say anything then. I really had been hoping that you would have brought it up yourself.”
I was in utter shock, watching my mother stand there calmly. There was a hint of sadness in her eyes that seemed to come and go.
“So, what are you going to do?” she asked me, her voice even. I was actually surprised that she wasn’t standing there yelling at me. I was sure that she would have been furious once she found out that I was pregnant. But, she wasn’t.
I broke down in tears before I could even get any words out. My mouth jumped back in surprised before recovering, putting her arm around my shoulder, and walking me out the bathroom back into the kitchen. The cookies sat cooling on top of the oven. I grabbed one, tossing it back and forth in my hands since it was still hot.
“Come sit down,” said my mother, grabbing the tea kettle from the stove and filling it with more water. “Tell me what’s going on so that we can figure this out.”
I sat down, not waiting for her to join me before I started rapid firing the whole dilemma.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I went out with my friend Layla one night and ran into this really cute guy. But he was there with some girl, who I accidentally poured a drink all over. I didn’t think much else about it until I saw him at school in my organic chemistry classroom.
“He was the professor, the one that you met. He invited me to be a part of an internship and I agreed because I want to do anything that I can to make my resume really pop and I thought that that would be a really good chance to make my resume shine.
“Well, one thing led to another and we ended up sleeping together. I was trying to make sense of it all and started kind of avoiding him. And then, I found out that I was pregnant. Now, I don’t know how I’m going to tell him. I don’t know how he will react. And I’m sure that he won’t want anyone to know about us because it will ruin his career. And to make it all worse, our last interaction was one where everything almost came out, confirming that, if the truth gets out, it will be as bad as I think that it will be. Or worse.”
My mother had her back to me while I was talking, idly wiping the counter. When I finished talking, she turned to face me, walked slowly to the table, and took a seat next to me, her hands folded in her lap. She stared at the table like she was trying to figure out how to ask her next question.
“Do you think that he loves you enough to go public without being bitter about any fallout?” she asked.
“I really don’t know,” I said, shrugging, fidgeting with my cup of tea. “We never really talked about how we felt or if we loved each other or anything. I think that we both were just caught up in the moment of it happening. We didn’t want to think about anything else. I know that I certainly didn’t. And even now, with a baby in my belly, I am still struggling with wanting to face what is going on.”
I pushed my cup to the side and laid my head on the table. I felt exhausted all of a sudden. But I knew that I didn’t need sleep. I just needed to figure out a plan.
“Do you love him?” my mother asked, her voice a shaky whisper.
I looked up at my mother, my lip trembling as I fought back tears.
“Yes,” I said, tears streaming from my eyes in large rivulets. “I think I really do.”
There it was, the truth that I hadn’t even been able to say to myself.
“Do you love him enough to let him go?”
I stopped crying immediately.
Let him go? How could I let him go? The person who had taken my virginity? The first person that I had ever loved? The person that I was having a baby with?
I wished that I could just easily tell my mother that I could let him go. But I couldn’t say that. So, I didn’t answer. I just stared into space forlornly.
My mother sighed deeply, worry lines etched on her forehead.
“I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone, and I’ll deny if it you ever repeat it. I got pregnant with my high school sweet heart’s baby and got rid of it before he even had a chance to know that there was a baby. My mother was the one who came up with the idea, telling me that my life would be better without the baby. Of course, I can never know for sure, but sometimes I wonder how different things would have been if I had made my own decision. Now, I was lucky to meet your father and have you girls, so I don’t regret that. But what I do regret is not including the father of my child in the decision to have him or not.”
I looked up at my mother, shocked, sure that she was lying. The look on her face told me that she wasn’t.
“Wow, mom,” I said. “You have been through more than I thought.”
I think that you should call him, honey,” she said, her voice feather soft. “This isn’t something that you should be deciding alone.”
She had a kind understanding in her eyes as she patted my hand, stood up from the table, and walked out of the kitchen. She looked like she was holding back tears as she disappeared around the corner.
I sat thinking about my mother’s words, staring into my now empty cup of tea.
There was no way that I could call him and just drop a huge bomb like that on him, especially with everything that had been left unresolved. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to handle that much rejection.
But I wasn’t exactly sure what I was all that afraid of. Was I afraid of him rejecting me? Or was I really afraid that he would accept the baby and I and have his career and, essentially, his life, come to a crashing halt.
I felt trapped between a rock and a hard place.
I heard my father muttering as he appeared in the kitchen, rummaging through the refrigerator. After a few minutes, he decided that there was nothing that he wanted and yelled for my mother to fix him something.
“But, you’re already in the kitchen!” yelled my mother from the back of the house.
“But, you’re so good at making food, Marilyn” he said, his voice almost a whine.
The house was silent for a couple of beats before my mother called back.
“Give me a few minutes,” she called.
My dad smiled and sunk down into a chair at the table across from me.
“It feels good to have things getting back to normal,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table as he waited for my mother.
I nodded
in agreement but started to feel queasy again. I knew that things would never really be normal again.
I excused myself from the table and all but ran to my room. I needed to be alone.
Chapter 17
Jace
Three months seemed to drag on while I did my best to get my classes back on track. I had found three students who were willing to be researching assistants, Tina, Roman, and Candace, but working with them was nothing like working with Trent or Izzy. Most days, I felt like I was working with the three stooges.
Roman, the only guy of the group, acted like I was his personal cupid and kept making off-colored jokes about threesomes. I kept scolding him about it, but he just kept right on slime-balling away.
One day, when he and I were sitting cleaning up after an experiment, he pulled me to the side.
“Hey, you’re an old player,” he said, leaning on the table toward me, his eyes full of eager wonder. “Tell me what I need to do to have a threesome with these girls.”
I grimaced, irritated to be having this same conversation with him.
“I’ve already told you, Roman. If it hasn’t happened already, it’s probably not going to happen. You really need to let it go.”
He looked at me with vacant eyes, like nothing that I said had even registered.
A few days later, a student walked in on Tina, Roman, Candace, and another boy in one of the empty classrooms, having sex. They were all expelled right away, never to be heard from again. The rumor mill began to churn as people started to put together the connection that I had had with them as their mentor. Those rumors seemed to bring up old rumors of Izzy and I that I didn’t even know existed until a girl in one of my classes made a comment.
She had been dozing off in my class and I kept telling her to wake up. The third time that I caught her sleeping, I walked past her desk, slapped my hand on it so hard that it started to sting, and barked at her to stay away. Her eyes drifted open sleepily and she clucked her tongue, visibly irritated. She propped herself up in the chair and muttered something under her breath that I will never forget.
“I guess I have to be one of the students giving you ass for you to cut me some slack, huh?”
Those nearby who had heard her remark broke out into a smattering of laughter. After the immediate shock of her statement wore off, I glared at her and asked her to leave my classroom. She did. But I could tell by looking at the faces of the other students that they had questions, questions that I wasn’t ready for or felt obligated to answer.
After what had happened with my research team, though, I thought that it would be a better idea to handle my classes and the research on my own from now on.
It was hard at first, trying to carry the heavy load all on my own, but after a while, I got used to it. Nothing exciting really happened, but, then again, nothing terribly tragic happened, either. I mostly just felt like I was going through the motions.
I was bored.
I was almost considering throwing in the towel on my teaching and exploring different career options until I got a call from Belva. I had been at home eating a bowl of soup and spilled a spoonful of it all over my blue oxford button up shirt, cursing as I reached over to grab a napkin, dabbing at the warm stain as I answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Jace. It’s Belva. You got a minute?”
I hadn’t talked to Belva since the day that I had left her office. I had been purposely avoiding her, hoping that the more time that passed, the more of a chance that the embarrassing incident that took place in her office would be forgotten.
“Sure, what’s up?” I said, trying to sound casual, but standing up from the table, pacing back and forth.
“I am calling to share some news with you,” she said, her voice sounding upbeat. “I have a meeting with the board in about an hour and I will be putting in my recommendation for you to get tenure.”
I dropped the phone, watching as it clattered to the floor. I snapped out of my momentary shock, picked up the phone, and screeched into it.
“Really?!”
“Yes, really,” said Belva, chuckling softly. I could tell that she was thoroughly amused by my reaction. It was rare that I was ever this shocked. I was sure that after what had happened in her office, that she would have me under investigation, not suggesting that I get tenure. I guess that I had completely underestimated Belva.
I started to do a happy dance, but then stopped abruptly.
I knew that the reason why she was recommending me for tenure was because she didn’t know the truth about what happened with Izzy. The realization hit me like a ton of bricks and I felt empty. I had wanted tenure for so long, but not based on lies. I wanted it to be based on my expertise as a teacher and my character as a good man.
I couldn’t stop the confession that was pouring out of my mouth.
“Belva, I slept with Izzy,” I said, the words hanging in the air like a thick cloud.
She was so quiet on the other end of the phone, I had to look at the phone to make sure that I hadn’t accidentally hung up. Or worse. That she had hung up to call in someone for investigation.
“Jace, I know,” she said pointedly.
“What?! What do you mean you know?”
Belva sighed, her voice sounding worn when she started to speak.
“Look, I knew that you and her had something going on from the moment when I saw you two together in the hallway that day. That’s what made me say something to you. I did want to make sure that there was nothing going on in terms of it being nonconsensual, especially with the #metoo movement going on and impacting our university in the way that it had. But I gave Izzy every opportunity to tell me what was going on and she chose not to. If she would had said that something was going on, then I would have had to investigate. But, she didn’t, so I didn’t. Plus, seeing you two together told me everything that I needed to know.”
I blinked a few times.
“What do you mean?”
I could hear her light laughter over the phone.
“I mean, you two are super cute together. You looked like you have a pretty good thing going on. It’s really adorable actually.”
I rubbed my neck, trying to fathom the fact that Belva and I were having a conversation about this and it was actually going really well.
“Thank you, I guess?” I said uncertainly.
I walked into my bedroom and closed the door, as if that would make the conversation more private.
“Don’t get me wrong; if I would have had any inkling that there was something going on that was nonconsensual, I would have nailed your balls to the wall” said Belva, her voice getting the edge in it that I was so used to hearing.
“And I would have expected nothing less,” I said, respecting her so much for her firmness. “I’ve got a question for you, though: what would getting tenure mean in terms of my relationship with Izzy?”
I almost instantly regretting asking the question, especially since Belva had already been so generous in not nailing my proverbial balls to the wall, so to speak. And I still hadn’t even talked to Izzy since she left.
But I had to know.
“Well, the semester will be over in three days, anyway,” she explained. “So, she won’t be your student anymore. Administration frowns on dating previous students, but as long as she’s not going to be signing up for your class in a future semester, there are no real rules about it."
“Well, that’s good to know,” I said, letting out a breath that I didn’t even know that I had been holding in.
“Yes,” she continued, her voice lowering so much I had to press the phone to my ear to hear her. “And the reason why I know this is because before I became the dean, I was involved with a student.”
I started coughing, choking on my own spit.
“What? You have GOT to be kidding me! You?!”
She was snickering, tickled by my surprise. Belva did not strike me as someone who would have fallen for a student. But, t
hen again, I’m sure not many people would have ever believed that I would have been mixed up with one of my students, either.
“That’s the crazy thing about love, isn’t? One minute, you’re minding your own business, blissfully unaware of anything other than your day-to-day, regular life. Then, out of nowhere, someone swoops in and changes your world completely. And, if you’re really lucky, they change it for the better. I just want you to know that you have my blessing.”
That was probably the best news that Belva had given me. I beamed hearing her words, knowing that, even though I had been feeling so guilty about sleeping with Izzy, Belva still thought enough of my character to put her name on the line for me. That meant a lot to me.
I smiled, leaning back onto my bed. I felt like I was floating on a cloud. My heart felt happy, happier than it had been in a very long time. I felt excited about the fact that I would be getting what I had wanted for such a long time – tenure at my alma mater.
But I had to admit that I was even more excited about finding Izzy and sharing the news with her.
“Thanks again, Belva,” I said. “You have no idea how much all of this means to me. It’s like a huge weight has been taken off of my shoulders. I am forever in your debt.” We hung up and I tossed my phone onto the nightstand next to my bed.
I couldn’t wait to talk to Izzy. I felt a little hurt at the fact that she hadn’t tried reaching out to me, but, then again, I really hadn’t tried reaching out to her, especially after her father shut me down. I retreated, licking my wounds, trying to put her out of my head. Even though I didn’t like the way that Izzy’s father had spoken to me, I completely understood his reason for saying what he did and feeling the way that he did. Any good father would have done the same thing. If all she had been to me was a just a piece of meat, meant for my use and disposal, I would have faded into the background, setting my sights on the next conquest.
But there was no way that I could do that. She was in my heart and I didn’t want her to leave that special place.
I knew what I had to do. Since it didn’t look like she was going to be coming back to school any time soon, I was going to have to go to her.
