My Last Innocent Year(14)
Professor Connelly was looking right at me. “How was that?” he asked. Before I could answer, he licked his thumb and used it to turn over a paper in front of him. “Now, as for the syllabus, we’ll start with Matthiessen…”
When class was over, I picked up my things and headed for the door. “Do you think Professor Maxwell is pregnant again?” I heard Ramona ask Kara Jiang, whose eyes I couldn’t see well enough beneath her thick bangs to gauge a response. Professor Connelly was sliding papers into his briefcase; his long legs were stretched out under the table, crossed at the ankles. He looked up as I passed, his gaze moving slowly from my eyes to my chin, down the length of my body, coming to rest at the tips of my boots. I felt blood rush to places I’d forgotten about: my pinky toe, earlobes, the backs of my knees. Then he flicked his eyes to mine again and released me. Andy stopped to talk to him, reached out a hand. “Pleasure to meet you,” I heard him say as I ducked into the hallway and placed a hand on my cheek. My skin felt hot and alive, as if the membrane that protected me from the world had thinned just a little.
Andy caught up with me outside.
“Isabel! Wait.” His army-green jacket hung open over his T-shirt, and he was wearing the hat I’d made him. “I’m sorry,” he said, trotting over. “Really, I am. Look. I’m wearing your hat.” He touched his head, then held up a peace sign.
“Fine.”
He tapped a pack of cigarettes against his hand and offered me one.
“So, who is that guy?” I asked.
Andy lit my cigarette with his scuffed silver Zippo. “The professor? That’s R. H. Connelly.”
“Yeah, I know. But who is he?”
“God, okay! Don’t get mad! He’s a poet. Wrote a couple of books back in the eighties. Domain-changing stuff. Sold, too. There might have been a novel, not very good.” He reached under the hat and scratched his head. “I think he was on the cover of Time magazine or something. Then he totally disappeared. I always wondered what happened to him.”
“He’s covering school board meetings in White River Junction.”
“I know! What the hell. Seriously, his stuff was good.” He took a long drag. “How does a guy like that end up working at some small-town paper?”
“Writers have to make a living. Isn’t that what he said?”
Andy shrugged. “Anyway, turns out he’s good friends with Joanna and Tom. Not sure how I missed that. Oh, and he’s married to Roxanne Stevenson.”
“Huh.” Roxanne Stevenson was a professor in the history department. British historian. I’d never taken a class with her, but my mother and I used to see her on TV in documentaries about the royal family. I’d just seen her on a 20/20 I watched over break, one of the zillion retrospectives about the life of Princess Di.
“I saw Zev Neman last night at Agora,” Andy said, and the sudden shift in topic made me dizzy. “I swear I didn’t say anything, but he brought you up.”
“Andy, I don’t want to talk about this.”
“No one in his dorm will talk to him. Everyone heard what you and Debra did and he’s, like, a pariah now. I felt kinda bad for the guy, actually.”
“Andy—”
“He said he’s really confused about what happened and just wants to talk. Honestly Isabel, I think he might be obsessed with you.”
“Goodbye, Andy,” I said, flicking my cigarette into the snow and turning on my heel. The wind picked up, and I tightened my coat around my waist. I could hear Andy calling after me, but I didn’t turn back.
5
WHEN I was young and my mother was well, she used to host dinner parties in our apartment. She’d set a long table diagonally across our living room, cover it with a thick ivory tablecloth, drape pieces of fabric over the furniture, and dim the lights so the shabby paint job wasn’t as noticeable. She’d set the table with our “fine” china—I don’t know how fine it was, but something other than the plates we used every day—chunky crystal goblets and cloth napkins, everything a bit mismatched because pieces had broken over the years, or maybe we’d never had a matching set to begin with. I don’t remember what she cooked or who came or what they talked about. All I remember is the way my mother could transform our home into something beautiful, at least for one night. Come morning, the spell would be broken.
Most businesses like Rosen’s were family businesses, but my mother made it clear that the store belonged to Abe and she wanted nothing to do with it. My parents’ marriage had always been a mystery to me, but this part wasn’t. Later, I would realize the toll this took on Abe, and on me, when I stepped in to help the way a wife might have, but back then, it made sense. My mother was an artist, and her art always came first.
When I came home from school, I would often find her standing by the easel, still in her bathrobe, hair unwashed, breakfast dishes on the table, having worried over the same corner of canvas all day. When I was little, she would set up a small easel for me next to hers, and I would try to see the world the way she did, in colors and shapes and touches of light. But no matter how hard I tried, I never could. Later, when I started writing, I hid my work from her, certain that what I created wasn’t art, at least not the way she defined it. It was neither tortuous nor difficult. It didn’t bring me pain.