Vladimir(38)

But as I faced them, I felt the words fall away from me. A rush of confusion clouded and coated my thoughts. My eyes crossed. I felt spikes in my chest, like a large burr had lodged behind my breastbone.

I closed my eyes. When Sid was three or four, at her little hippie preschool, they used to teach breathing techniques to help the children calm down. Smell the flowers, Blow out the candle. I still thought about those words whenever I was trying to collect myself. Smell the flowers, Blow out the candle.

When I opened them, David was once again looking at the ground and Florence dropped the arm that held her phone.

“Sorry,” she said. “Childcare.”

I didn’t let myself contemplate the slight. I mentally cut her out of the picture, like a figure in a cartoon that runs through the scenic backdrop, leaving a hole in the shape of their body. I looked up at the balcony of one of the covered walkways, where the students were crossing back and forth to class.

“I’ll think about it,” I said. I turned abruptly and began walking through the middle of the field away from them as quickly as I could. The ground had thawed in the sun and squelched beneath my feet, sucking at my shoes as I stepped. I walked straight toward the English Department and made my way around to the back, where the dumpster was, crouched beside it, like a surreptitious teenager, and lit a cigarette. I slid against the wall and sat down on the pavement, leaning my back against the brick. I envisioned myself as an ancient, mangy addict sitting outside of Penn Station in New York City, a half-hearted sign propped up, hoping to gather as much money with as little effort as possible for fentanyl, bumming cigarettes and McDonald’s fries in the meantime.

Which student had complained about me? Oh, but it didn’t matter. I could picture the cafeteria, outfitted with gas fireplaces so it looked like an upscale ski lodge, and three Formica tables pushed together to create a long banquet, at which were seated ten or so students, mostly female. I could see the different body types and the different foods, most probably incongruous—the thin ones with cream-sauce pastas, the thicker ones with lean proteins and salads. What started out as a question, “Oh my God, guys, do you think it’s weird that his wife still teaches?” grew into more and more of a rallying cry, as together they decided that my presence was offensive, that it made them frightened, that it reminded them of bad people and bad events that had happened to them, or to their cousins.

Picturing them in the cafeteria, I started to view their utensils as little pitchforks that they moved up and down. I understood not only the bonding that comes out of complaining but also the incredible sense of identity that comes with discovering why you think something is wrong. I wanted them to feel that fire, that was what college was for. They were enacting a right of all young people, unearthing what they felt were the systemic wrongs of the world. It was their right to look at us murderously, longing to stand where we stood. It was their right to believe that they could do our jobs better than we could. We, who had experienced enough bitterness in life to expect flaws, faults, and complexities in every situation we encountered. They had grown up with a constant stream of global warming and gun violence burbling on low from their parents’ radios as they were driven to and from soccer or clarinet. Their lives, for the most part (at least the majority of students who attended this liberal and very expensive college), were cloaked in the postmillennial blanket of peace and prosperity, while terrible threats loomed in the shadowy corners of the larger world. They were overpraised and overpressured. There were teenage billionaires, twelve-year-old YouTube stars, and no jobs for them once they graduated. Once Trump became president, the illusion, the one imparted to them comfortably from the driver’s seat of a minivan, the idea that the world would slowly get better, that “the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice,” was upended.

Or something. I shook off my grandiose thoughts. I didn’t know them or understand their world at all. I prized myself on liking them. I defended them at dinner parties. The Kids Are Alright! I liked their action, their strict moral code, their stridency—

“Ma’am.” From my seat on the pavement I saw the wheels of a golf cart and looked up to see a square woman from campus security wearing wraparound sunglasses and a fisherman’s hat.

“You need to put out that cigarette right now, ma’am, this is a no-smoking campus.”

“I know. I’m a professor here.”

“I’m going to have to issue you a ticket, ma’am.”

“I’m a professor here, I teach here. I’m not a student.”

“You should know better, then, ma’am.”

“Stop calling me ma’am, please. This is the first time I’ve done this—I just had some bad news—”

“In the future you can walk beyond the perimeter of the campus, ma’am. It’s right out that way.”

“I know where the perimeter of the campus is, thank you.”

“Can I get your name, ma’am?”

“Why?”

“For the ticket I’m about to write you.”

“May I have your name?”

“My name’s Estelle. My mother died of lung cancer. I have one job on campus, and that’s to issue tickets to illegal smokers. Name.”

Estelle drove off into the sunset, her back emanating triumph. She did it! She nabbed another culprit! It was a good day, baby, I heard her saying to some wiry wife in an A-line skirt as they drank stupid home-brewed beer. I even nabbed a professor! Wasn’t she a piece of work. I showed her!