Stories We Never Told

by Sonja Yoerg

  Miraculously, the faculty meeting adjourns, and Jackie shoots out the door before anyone can buttonhole her. She takes the stairs one flight down to her lab, hoping to complete a few more tasks before heading home for dinner with Miles. She lets herself in and pauses in the doorway of the shared office. Tate and Nasira seem to have just finished a conversation.

  Tate smiles at Jackie. “Hey, Professor. Just getting back to coding.” She spins the swivel chair back in front of the dual monitors and puts on a pair of large headphones. She hits a key and the video session resumes.

  Nasira stands to the side collecting her belongings. “Hi, Jackie.”

  “Hi. Everything all right?”

  “Sure. Tate was going to run through the four-year-study protocol with me on Friday, and I was seeing if we could reschedule.”

  “That’s fine as long as you’re up to speed soon. Study’s filling up, thank goodness.”

  “I know. We’re on for Tuesday. Such great news about the study.”

  Jackie is pleased with Nasira’s enthusiasm for a project she’s only tangentially involved with and decides she owes Nasira a more congenial attitude. Jackie hasn’t been unfriendly to Nasira, only businesslike. “You heading out early for the weekend?”

  “Yes, a quick trip.”

  Jackie remembers Nasira is from the Midwest somewhere—Ohio or Iowa maybe. “To see your family?”

  Nasira zips her bag shut and places both hands on top, hesitating. “No, my parents are overseas. I need to make headway on the NIH grant, so I’m off on a retreat of sorts.” She looks at the ceiling in thought. “A place called Greenfield, maybe?”

  Jackie blinks at Nasira. “You mean Greenbrier.”

  Nasira smiles. “That’s it.” She takes a half step toward Jackie, a signal she wants Jackie to move aside so she can leave.

  Jackie plants herself more firmly, as if Nasira might make a running tackle. “Greenbrier.” Jackie shakes her head, perplexed that her brain is bothering to search for a different conclusion. There is none. Harlan avoids travel, but makes an exception for work weekends at Greenbrier Resort perhaps twice a year. Jackie had been dating him for two years before she received her first invitation.

  Nasira stands patiently in front of Jackie. She doesn’t shuffle her feet or play with her hair. She waits.

  Jackie cannot hold back any longer. “With Professor Crispin?”

  It’s none of her business. She knows that. But if Nasira is flustered or offended by Jackie’s intrusive question, she hides it beautifully. “I don’t see how it matters.”

  “No. No, you wouldn’t.” Jackie is torn between wanting to clear the air, to find out what Nasira knows about her history with Harlan, and wanting to chase Nasira out of the building. Her curiosity wins out, per usual. “Nasira, I honestly didn’t mean to pry. I couldn’t have known you were going to Greenbrier.”

  Nasira purses her lips, the first signal that she is perturbed by Jackie’s line of questioning.

  Jackie is compelled to explain. “Maybe Harlan hasn’t said, but he and I had a relationship. For five years.” Jackie examines Nasira’s expression, judging whether this is news and whether to say more. It’s like conversing with a concrete slab. “Because of our history, I’m overly sensitive, I guess. I shouldn’t be.” She should stop right there—perhaps she’s already said too much—but Nasira’s stonewalling is provocative. Jackie fears she won’t stop talking until Nasira opens up; the confusion and anger she’s been harboring overwhelm her better angels. “It’s been such a shock, starting with you as the surprise dinner guest . . .”

  Nasira’s face reddens slightly as she nods, not in assent, but with resolve. “And you with your husband.” She allows that to sink in for a moment before stepping forward.

  Jackie backs into the hall and turns away so Nasira cannot see her shame and regret. She exhales sharply, gathering herself, and turns back to wish Nasira a good weekend, but she is gone.

  Jackie returns to her office. It’s only five thirty, and she ought to get to work on revising a paper for the Journal of Child Development, but as soon as she opens the document, she knows she’s too unsettled. Instead, she replays the conversation with Nasira and realizes the woman never confirmed she was going away with Harlan. He could have recommended Greenbrier to her, which is more plausible given his history. The more Jackie reflects, the more she sees how ridiculous it was to jump to the conclusion that Harlan would travel with Nasira so soon. Unfortunately, this revelation also makes Jackie look even more like a self-involved, jealous, meddling jackass.

  Excellent work, Dr. Strelitz.

  She packs up her laptop and tidies her desk. There’s no point in beating herself up over her missteps. All she can do is vow to be more gracious, generous, and professional going forward. Right now what she wants most is to go home—to her husband.

  Jackie dumps her bag by the front door and hurries into the kitchen. Miles is at the stove, stirring the contents of a pot. Jackie rises on her toes to give him a kiss.

  “Yum,” she says.

  “Me or the risotto?”

  “Both of you. What’s going in it?” Risotto is Miles’s signature dish. In fact, it’s pretty much his only dish, with infinite variations. Jackie is not complaining.

  “Lots of butter, lots of Parmesan, and roasted shrimp.”

  “I had all the kale in the world for lunch.”

  “This is the antidote.”

  She kisses him again, his cheek this time. “Thank you. Want me to take a turn stirring?”

  “Not a chance.” He twists his wrist to show his bracelet, a medical ID and fitness tracker combo. For his birthday last June, Jackie gave him this sleek platinum upgrade from the standard medical emergency bracelet that warned of his penicillin and sulfa drug allergies. “Vigorous stirring counts as steps.”

  Jackie laughs.

  He tips his head toward an open bottle of red on the opposite counter. “Pour for us?”

  “With great enthusiasm.” She washes her hands, pours the wine, and hands Miles his. “To husbands at home.”

  He smiles, touches her glass, and sips. “If only the money would fly to me—or at least the clients.”

  “If only.”

  Miles is leaving again in the morning for a swing through North Carolina colleges, and Jackie wishes he could stay. Although she hasn’t confessed to Miles that she’s still entangled in the Harlan-Nasira business, he might be worried about just that. Maybe that’s what the risotto is about, shoring up the marriage, reminding her how it feels to be loved and cared for. She tastes the sour pang of guilt at the back of her mouth and considers telling him how sorry she is, reassuring him that she’ll detach herself from Harlan and Nasira and return her focus to their marriage. But bringing it up would only ruin this moment in which they are attuned to each other, and she decides to leave the apologies and promises for later.

  They drink wine while Miles stirs. Jackie slips off her shoes and asks him about the upcoming weekend, about the clients he hopes to meet with and possibly sign. He’s so animated in talking about his work, about his dreams for these talented young men, that she forgets about her postdoc and her ex. The fact that Miles is not an academic is consistently refreshing, and part of what drew her to him from the start. He respects her work and admires her intelligence and ambition, but appreciates the other worlds that exist beyond campus boundaries. After Harlan and his laser focus on her career, Jackie is grateful for Miles’s ability to swing open the windows of her stuffy academic fortress, even for a view of the arena of professional sports. In Jackie’s experience, universities are conservative—not in the political sense, but in their resistance to change—and it’s easy to become insulated. Jackie loves so much about Miles, but perhaps his openness and broad-mindedness most of all. He can talk to anyone and is always the same person when he does.

  After the meal, when the wine is finished, she puts the dishes in the sink and returns to the table. She slides onto his lap and wraps he
r arms around his neck.

  “Fancy a tumble?” It’s an old joke between them, the use of catchphrases from each other’s cultures.

  He kisses her, slow and sweet, then touches her cheek. “Absolutely.” His blue eyes sparkle. “More steps.”

  She smiles as a thread of warmth unravels down her spine. As she takes her husband’s hand and leads him upstairs, she thinks, Men. Women. Sometimes it really is this simple.

  CHAPTER 6

  Jackie startles at the knock on her lab office door and looks up to see Vince Leeds, the departmental IT guy. She’s been so engrossed in her work, she forgot he was installing new video cameras in the research rooms.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you, Jackie.”

  He yanks one sleeve down over his wrist, then the other, self-conscious about his eczema. Jackie can see he’s having a flare-up from the sores on his neck.

  “It’s okay; I’m easily spooked. How’s the work going?”

  “You’re all set. I tested all three. The configuration is virtually identical to your previous models, so you shouldn’t have any trouble operating them, but let me know if you do.”

  Jackie smiles and wonders, not for the first time, if it weren’t for the eczema, whether Vince would have pursued a different career or aimed for a higher rung. She’s seen him at so many departmental lectures, sometimes she has to remind herself he’s not on the faculty. “You’re the best, Vince.” She checks her watch: 5:45. “And sorry to keep you late.”

  “Not a problem. It’s more important to me that your experiments run smoothly.”

  “Have we figured out a way to clone you yet?”

  He blushes and pulls on his sleeves again. “Have a good evening, Jackie.”

  “You too.”

  Jackie listens to him collect his tools and exit the lab and returns to her work. She opens a new sheet in the Excel file and populates the cells with summary data copied from another sheet. She spent the last hour compiling the most recent data from a long-term study. The files are large, and she has to be careful to create backups as she works, leaving a trail of the data-crunching techniques she used. Anyone with a knowledge of behavioral analysis should be able to follow her process, but she’s learned from experience that what seems straightforward when she is immersed in the work can be stupefying later on. She creates a graph, showing how the frequency of a child sharing an emotion with a parent changes over time in two groups: children who were eventually diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and those who were not. Jackie verifies that the confidence intervals are set correctly and saves the file. She is labeling the graph when the door to the hallway clicks open. No one bothers to lock the door unless they are the last to leave. It’s almost 7:00 p.m., but one of the graduate students might have forgotten something.

  “Jackie?”

  Harlan. Jackie pushes her chair back, straightens her shirt, fiddles with her hair. He rarely comes to her lab and never unannounced.

  His footsteps echo on the tile floor, and a moment later he fills the doorway. He’s wearing a leather jacket and carrying his computer bag, obviously on his way out, except her lab is not on his route.

  “Hi, Harlan.” She offers him a tentative smile. “What a surprise.”

  “Sorry if I caught you at a bad time. I had to see Greg one floor up. I should’ve texted first, but I was here by the time I thought of it.”

  “It’s fine.” It’s weird. She gestures to a chair. “Have a seat, and give me just one sec.” She saves her work and moves the laptop to one side.

  “I really did interrupt.”

  “I’m meeting Miles soon, so I was just finishing. What’s up?” A cloud of apprehension floats down on her. Maybe he’s seen her driving by his house and he’s come to tell her off for being nosy. Or maybe Nasira told him about the awkward Greenbrier conversation and he’s going to chastise Jackie for being unprofessional. That conversation was two weeks ago, though, and she’s turned over a new leaf since then, a saner one, so Jackie doubts that accounts for Harlan’s visit.

  He crosses his legs and leans forward. “I haven’t seen you in so long. Thought I’d take a chance you were here and say hello.”

  “Hello.” She smiles awkwardly, not believing him for a moment.

  He returns her smile, gracious as always. “I guess I’ll see you Sunday at the game, anyway. But like I said”—he swirls his hand to indicate the floor above—“I was in the neighborhood. Greg was telling me the funniest story about his neighbor. Apparently he has a parrot who’s been using Alexa to order all sorts of things from Amazon.”

  “I’m sorry. What game? Miles hasn’t mentioned it.”

  Harlan frowns. “That’s odd. He’s known for a while, and I explicitly invited both of you. And Antonio if he’s interested.”

  He invited Miles’s son, too? Must mean Nasira won’t be coming, since he only has four seats. Jackie opens the calendar on her phone to confirm what she already knows. “My Sunday appears to be game-free.”

  “I’m sure I told Miles.” His tone is pointed, as if she is accusing him of lying.

  “Then he must have forgotten to tell me.” At this, Harlan raises an eyebrow. Jackie is dumbfounded; why would he doubt that Miles simply forgot? “You know he’s always on the road. Everyone forgets things.”

  Harlan nods, but his slight smirk indicates he’s humoring her.

  Jackie moves on. “But thanks for including me. You know how much I love football.” She immediately regrets the comment; it’s too intimate. Before they started dating, Jackie didn’t know a first down from a touchdown—and she didn’t care to learn. But Harlan gently brought her up to speed, made it fun for her, for them, and before long Jackie was buying Redskins spirit wear and commenting on the likelihood of a sack. That was the past, however. She’s been to exactly three games during the five years since they broke up. Miles has an open invitation from Harlan and has attended every game he can squeeze in.

  Harlan looks at his feet. “I do know that. Yes.”

  She’s hit a nerve and keeps her voice neutral. “I’ll ask Miles about it.”

  “Yes, do. They’re playing the Cowboys.” He pushes himself to standing. “Oh, one more thing. Some sort of plague is going through my lab. I’ve got two graduate students plus Marvin out sick and five MRIs scheduled in the next couple of days. Mind if I ask Nasira to lend a hand?”

  Jackie stares at him. “Nasira?”

  “Yes. Is it a problem?”

  Nasira’s dissertation research involved using an MRI to study the progression of Parkinson’s disease. In Jackie’s lab Nasira’s goal is to spend a year getting up to speed on autism research and, at the same time, write a grant to fund her own MRI study with infants. Like Harlan’s research on deception, the infant study would examine brain activity using functional MRI. For Jackie, the chance to expand the scope of her lab into neurological imaging was the main attraction of Nasira’s application. Nasira works in Jackie’s lab, but because she has her doctorate, she is more of a collaborator. Jackie doesn’t own her, and Harlan knows it.

  “Like most postdocs, Nasira manages her own time. I’m a little confused as to why you wouldn’t simply ask her yourself.”

  He spreads his hands to indicate the answer is obvious. “I didn’t want to overstep.”

  “I’m sorry?” Jackie is sure she misheard.

  “I didn’t want to overstep.”

  This is laughable, but Jackie isn’t close to laughing—more like she’s in the conversational equivalent of a fun-house mirror. Harlan knows damn well that his relationship with Nasira is no secret to Jackie, so why pretend otherwise? It’s one thing not to address it head-on and quite another to act as though Nasira is a stranger to him. Jackie studies Harlan’s face, his posture. Is he challenging her to say something, to admit to knowing more about his quasi-illicit fling than she ought?

  Jackie glances at her watch, shuts and unplugs her laptop, and stands. It feels better to be on her feet, poised for action, rather th
an sit lamely and swipe at his ludicrous questions. She gives Harlan the most level gaze she can manage. “Please ask Nasira yourself. It’s no problem on my end, of course.”

  “Great. I will.” He gestures at her desk, her flurry of activity. “If you’re leaving, we can walk out together.”

  For fuck’s sake. And then we will part ways, Jackie thinks, me to my husband and, because it’s Friday, you to your new squeeze. How quaint. “I’ve got to close up everything, so you go ahead.”

  He appears disappointed, hurt even. “Are you sure? I don’t mind waiting.” He points at the window. “It’s getting dark already.”

  Jackie bursts out laughing, unable to edit herself any longer. As Harlan knows, she walks on campus by herself at all hours. It’s perfectly safe. His protective gesture is misplaced and odd as hell. But when she sees his eyes darken, a splinter of fear slides into her chest and lodges there. She’s seen that look of his twice before. It’s unnerving as hell, and she quickly sobers, changes the subject, eager for him to leave. “I’ll text you about the game after I talk to Miles.”

  “I’d appreciate that.” He picks up his bag from where it leans against the chair. “Glad I caught you. I wish we saw each other more often.”

  “We should.”

  “Take care, Jackie.”

  He leaves, his long strides echoing down the hall. She hears the door latch click open.

  “I will.” She holds her breath until the door closes and the lab is silent.

  “Take care” isn’t a Harlan phrase, at least not as a pleasant wish, which is why when she replays it in her mind exactly as Harlan spoke it, without his presence making her ears buzz and her brain seize, it sounds more like a warning. Why on earth would he be warning her? Maybe her guilty conscience is affecting her perception. She should be warning him about her, given her crazy stalking.

  Still, she is not misreading everything. She didn’t invent that cold, dark look.