Mrs. Fletcher(17)
In any case, she didn’t need another advanced degree, and had no interest in polishing her résumé. Her decision to return to school was purely personal. She wanted to read and think and reconnect with her collegiate self, which had been so much more open and fluid and hopeful than the versions that had succeeded it. And it was nice to have a reason to escape the empty house twice a week without having to convince someone else to join her.
The class she’d signed up for was called “Gender and Society: A Critical Perspective,” a writing-intensive seminar that met on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from seven thirty to nine. She had no special interest in the topic; it was actually her third choice, after “Vegans vs. Carnivores: The Ethics of Sustainable Eating,” and “From Jane Austen to Downton Abbey: The English Country House in Fiction and Film,” both of which were full. But the class itself wasn’t the point. The important thing was that she was here, trying something different, meeting new people, making her world bigger instead of hunkering down, disappearing into her own solitude.
At seven thirty on the dot, a tall, striking woman in a black pencil skirt and stiletto heels breezed through the door, her eyes widening in faux astonishment at the sight of the assembled students, as if this were a surprise party in her honor.
“Well, hello there,” she said, in a throaty, oddly seductive voice. She was slender and athletic-looking, with narrow hips and attention-grabbing breasts bulging against the fabric of her tailored blouse. “I’m Dr. Margo Fairchild, adjunct professor.” She took a moment to let that sink in. “In case you’re unfamiliar with academic terminology, adjunct is another word for very badly paid.”
A handful of students, Eve included, chuckled obligingly as Dr. Fairchild entered the circle and sat down, smoothing her skirt and crossing her enviably muscled legs at the ankles.
“Let’s wait a minute or two for the stragglers,” she said, languidly tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “There are always a few lost souls on opening day.”
It was tough to guess the professor’s age—anywhere between thirty and forty-five, Eve thought—though her face seemed a little older than her body. Even that was open to debate, however, because of the prodigious amount of makeup she wore, a thick, almost theatrical coat of expertly applied cosmetics that seemed more appropriate for a beauty pageant runway than a community college classroom. Eve realized that she’d been expecting someone a little more like her cousin Donna, a no-nonsense scholar who wore her graying hair in a thick braid and had a different North Face pullover for every day of the week.
Her fellow students were an impressively diverse bunch—half college kids, half older people (including a spry lady in her eighties), two black men (one of whom turned out to be Nigerian), one black woman, a Chinese immigrant man with an indecipherable accent, a young woman in a Muslim headscarf, one really cute undergraduate boy with a skateboard, and a butch woman in biker gear, complete with a black leather vest and a motorcycle helmet resting on the floor between her scuffed engineer boots. Eve was surprised to note that twelve of the twenty students were male, including a few middle-aged white guys who didn’t strike her as natural candidates for a class in which students would be required to “write autobiographically and analytically about their own problematic experiences on the gender spectrum, with special emphasis on the social construction of identity, the persistence of sexism in a ‘post-feminist’ culture, and the subversion of heteronormative discourse by LGBTQIA voices.” But this small mystery was cleared up as soon as they got started, when Professor Fairchild asked everyone to introduce themselves and talk about their reasons for enrolling in the class.
“My name’s Russ,” said the first guy to speak. He was wearing a Red Sox cap and a Bruins T-shirt that seemed to have been shrink-wrapped around his beer gut. “I was supposed to be in Briggsy’s class, but that got, uh . . . canceled, and this was the only other writing class in the time slot, so . . .”
“Poor Hal,” said Professor Fairchild, and several heads bobbed in melancholy assent. “He was such a nice person.”
There turned out to be three other transfers from the same class, “The Modern Coliseum: Sports in Contemporary Society,” which was apparently one of the most popular course offerings at ECC. It had been taught by Hal Briggs, a former sportswriter for the Herald, who had just died of a heart attack at a Labor Day barbecue, right in front of his wife, kids, and neighbors. Eve had seen his obituary in the newspaper.
“He was too young,” said Professor Fairchild. “Only forty-nine.”
“Were you there?” asked a bearded guy named Barry, who said he owned a sports bar in Waxford. “At the cookout?”
“No, thank God.” The professor twirled a lock of hair around her index finger, as if she were still in junior high. “Briggsy and I were just colleagues. We used to play in a faculty basketball league on Sunday mornings.” The memory made her smile. “He had the ugliest jump shot I ever saw.”
“Was that a coed league?” asked Dumell, the black guy with the worried expression.
“I’m glad you asked that,” said the professor. “That’s exactly the sort of assumption our class is going to examine throughout the semester. The way our preconceptions about gender condition our responses to the social world. But I think we need to unpack your question.”