We Are Not Ourselves(75)

“It sounds like we need a plumber. And a roofer.”

“And a general contractor,” Gloria said. “And an electrician. And a willing husband.”

“I can live without a few outlets for a while. I don’t know if I can live without this house.”

? ? ?

They stopped for gas on the way home. When she went in to pay, she bought a couple of scratch-off tickets, something she’d thought she’d never do, and scarfed a pair of Twinkies while she rubbed a quarter on the tickets. She didn’t win, and she bought five more. Then she got two more with the free tickets she’d won, and those were losers too. She bought five to take home with her and another package of Twinkies to split with Connell and headed out to the car, where the boy sat oblivious of the turmoil she was in.

She drove with an anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach, fidgeting with the button for the electric window. When they pulled in, she saw one of her good sheets strewn like a makeshift tarp over whatever tools Ed had left in the driveway. Cinderblocks held the sheet down at the corners, and the garage door was closed. The stark whiteness of the sheet put a chill in her.

Ed was sitting at his desk. The vestibule abutted his office, a glass-paneled door between them. He had a pleasant habit of wheeling around in his chair whenever he heard her come home, but he didn’t turn this time. “We’re home,” she said. When he didn’t respond, she went over and stood behind him. He was calculating his semester grades. His desk was cluttered with tests and lab reports; little piles of them abounded. He jotted notes on a legal pad as he did his calculations. She’d never seen him do his grades with such elaborate exactitude. He had written the last name of each student, along with the roman numerals from the test sections, in a long row. She watched him meticulously check each number against those he’d written on the exams. It was double work, and moreover it was the kind of task he usually dispatched in his head.

When she placed a hand on his shoulder, he almost leaped out of his seat. He didn’t turn around to her.

“What’s the matter with you?” he exclaimed.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Don’t bother me when I’m doing my grades.”

“Since when?”

“I want to get these right. It’s a big class, and I’ve graded a lot of assignments in the last few days, so I feel a little fuzzy, as you can imagine. I don’t want to make any mistakes in my calculations. When I look at this stuff long enough, I feel like I’m seeing double.”

“What’s up with the sheet?”

He took off his glasses, the way he sometimes did when he was going to give thoughtful consideration to a question, but then he just dropped his shoulders.

“Sheet?”

“Outside,” she said. “The bed sheet.”

“I wanted to leave things there.”

“Why did you use a good sheet?”

“Good sheet?”

“There were other sheets you could have used.”

He slammed his pencil down. “What’s the difference?”

“You used one of the sheets I put on the bed. There are about ten old sets in that linen closet that you could have used.”

He spun around in his chair. She backed away from him instinctively. His face was red and his mouth contorted. “I took the first sheet I could find!” He was on his feet now. “I didn’t have time to work out which sheet was which. I just grabbed a sheet!” He had begun to shout. “I took the first sheet!” He had his hand in front of his face, as if to strike her or bite it. “People walk by the house all day long, peeking back there. I needed to cover everything up!”

She had intended to let it go, but now she had to ask. “Why did you leave it out in the first place?”

“I didn’t want to have to set it up again,” he said. “Is that okay with you? God damn it! God damn it!”

She was quiet. She wondered whether Connell could hear.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure on me to get these grades right. Dealing with these kids has upset me. This younger generation has no respect. It’s disgraceful.”

“What do you mean? What’s happened?”

“What’s happened,” Ed said, “is that with everything going on lately, I’ve been distracted.”

She wanted to know what he meant, because it seemed at times as if nothing was going on, hence the big pile of ungraded papers, but she held back.

“In my distraction, I’ve made a few calculation errors. And they’ve raised a stink about it. That’s all. These kids today feel entitled to everything instantly. You say you’ll review the grade, and they say they can’t wait until the next class. They go berserk! I like to take my time with things, give them an honest going-over. That’s impossible with a crowd of people at your desk. Especially when they speak in such a fresh and disrespectful way.”

So much of what he was saying was odd. He was one of the most popular professors in the department, a status made all the more remarkable by the fact that he was no pushover in the grading arena. They wanted to work for him, to impress him. His belief in them made them want to believe in themselves. It also made her want to kill him sometimes, because she didn’t believe they deserved it.