It Was Always You

by Sarah K Stephens

  “I’m so, so stupid.” My knees wobble and I slump onto the floor of my kitchen which, as I settle onto it, I note is in desperate need of a sweep. I don’t know whether to laugh or sob, the momentum of life shattering my metaphorical spine, toast crumbs and all.

  And Annie’s right there. “You were just in love.” She shifts my shoulders so I’m facing her, only a hint of somberness peeking through. “Love, schmove.” Roll of the eyes.

  Then, a wicked upturn to her mouth. “You’re no dummy, Dr. Morgan Kalson.”

  I stutter out a half cry-half laugh. For an entire week after I defended my dissertation, and subsequently became a Ph.D., Annie had insisted on calling me Dr. Morgan Kalson. No abbreviations. Dr. Morgan Kalson, would you like to order pizza tonight? Dr. Morgan Kalson, what’s taking so long in the bathroom? Dr. Morgan Kalson, did you borrow my sweater and stretch out the neck hole? At the center of it, Annie was proud of me.

  “Except when I am,” I mutter into her armpit. She has me wrapped in a bear hug by now.

  Justin’s face, looking at me just before he pushed down on the gas. My hand on his. Mom calling. That scratch at the back of my mind. The empty socket of memory after the crash.

  Annie lets out a deep breath through her mouth and rubs her hand over her face. I shift away, the air between us heavy and cold after being so close together. “Justin was a liar.” She won’t look me in the eye as she talks. “He was probably trying to hurt you—and I don’t know why he would want to do that.”

  “Maybe I deserved it. Him. All of this.” I wave my arm in an impotent arc, and accidentally knock my knuckles against the leg of one of my kitchen chairs. Annie’s knees are digging into some stray poppy seeds left on the floor from the new bagel recipe I tried last week.

  Fuck.

  Annie looks at me from the corner of her eye. “What do you mean by that?”

  What do I mean?

  Her voice is suddenly all tension. “Morgan, seriously. . .” but is interrupted by my phone pinging, letting me know another text has arrived. I want to throw it across the room.

  “What about these messages?” I thrust the phone up in the space between us, careful to keep my eyes away from the message that’s appeared on the screen. I don’t want to know what it says.

  I don’t want any of this.

  I look at Annie, and her words—our words—come hurtling straight at me.

  Survive and thrive.

  Survive.

  Love is my failure. The chink in my armor. But after meeting with Jean McBride, I’m certain that what Justin and I had—this thing—wasn’t love. It was something else. Something that I can manage, just like I’ve managed everything else in my life.

  “I think we should call Dana,” Annie says into the silence. She reaches out and gently takes the phone from me and sets it on the kitchen counter, screen down. I let her.

  “I don’t know about that.” I cradle the last syllable, my mind whirring into action in stutters and stops at first, until it spins at 100 rpms. “If we tell her about the text messages, she might think exactly what the police would think—that I’ve got Justin’s phone and am sending them to myself.”

  “But—” Annie tries to break in, and I won’t let her. This idea is picking up speed, hitting its stride. My mind hums, not with static from the past. With the future.

  “I’m serious. We’ve already promised Dana we wouldn’t do our own investigating, and so what are we going to say when she sees the texts asking about visiting Justin’s parents and searching around his supposed advisor’s office? She’d drop my case, and then I’d be stuck with a lawyer that I don’t know and don’t trust.”

  Annie’s not trying to talk anymore. Instead, she’s grabbed a seat at my kitchen table and is watching me intently, her shoulders twisted away as though she’s looking for something to distract me. She’s pulled a bag of gummy bears from somewhere—I vaguely remember a stash of Haribo listlessly flapped open on the counter by the toaster—and snatches a few colorful sugar bombs, shoving them into her mouth.

  She tips the package towards me. I ignore her and keep going.

  “So we can’t tell Dana about the texts, or Jean, or even the fact that Dr. Koftura was Justin’s doctor as well, because all of that information would lead her to break her contract with us.”

  I pause for a moment to catch my breath, stand up only to sit down across from Annie at my IKEA-born table, all sleek ash wood and plastic caps over screw holes. Annie turns herself to face me. She asks, “But why can’t we just say that you knew Justin was a patient of Dr. Koftura’s? We don’t have to tell Dana we learned that from Jean.”

  “Because we need to break into Dr. Koftura’s office, and I don’t want Dana looking over our shoulders.”

  Annie leans forward in her chair, her lanky arms draped over the table. “What do you have in mind?”

  The gummy bears lie forgotten on the table.

  27

  I’m trying to focus my thoughts on sociometric data collection for my Wednesday morning seminar, but nothing wants to settle in my brain. My phone keeps drawing my eyes over to its smooth surfaces, gleaming up from my desk in DeBartolo Hall. Emotional porn, Annie’d called it.

  Total mind fuck, I’d said.

  She and I decided not to reply to any more messages. Not yet, at least.

  Yesterday, after Annie and I had put together a plan for getting into Dr. Koftura’s office, we’d read that last text together—the one neither of us could stand to look at when it first glided into my phone as we sat in my kitchen. It was more specific than the earlier one that came just as we were leaving Jean McBride’s house.

  Text from Justin: Why did you visit my parents today?

  I feel harassed, invaded. The quiet simmer of the heater in my office is infuriating. I turn on some blaring station on Spotify through my computer—Beast Mode it’s called, with some ripped alpha male pumping iron on the playlist cover—but the dubstep and bass drops that shriek out do nothing for my state of mind.

  Having that last message simmering in my phone feels like someone is molding my life into their own special sadist sugar cage. So I slap my folder of lecture notes shut, whip my flash drive from my computer, and shove them both into my teaching satchel. Then I pick up my phone, go to my texts, and type a reply.

  I click send before I can talk myself out of it.

  Justin is dead.

  I glance at my watch and it tells me I’m already late for class.

  I’m about to head out the door when I hear a text ping in. And then another one. I scramble to get my phone out. On the screen is a message from Annie, asking if I’m okay and how work is going. The second message is from Justin’s phone.

  Let me help you.

  I shove my phone into my bag and rush out, hoping to somehow get to my class in negative time.

  When I finally arrive at my podium, which is still covered in the same mess of the semester with a few additional pencils and blank scantron sheets added to the mix, I’m flushed from the rush of running across campus. Annie did my makeup for me again today, muttering the entire time about how ridiculous it is that I’m going back to work already, and I feel the foundation smearing around on my face with my perspiration. I can only imagine what I look like to my students, who are all staring back at me with looks that are a mixture of concern and annoyance.

  I look at my watch. Ten minutes late.

  I shuffle my papers and try to get started, but realize after I start speaking that I haven’t clipped on my microphone.

  I take a drink of water. And set my phone on the podium in front of me.

  What Annie doesn’t know is that I’m happy to be back in the classroom. I need to get out of my apartment, and out of my head, for at least a few hours.

  That’s shot to hell now, though.

  I should have listened to Annie.

  “Good after. . . afternoon.” I clear my throat. “Today we’ll delve into popularity hierarchies in children’s p
eer networks. To begin with, let’s examine how we actually collect data on social networks. In the peer group, we call this sociometry.”

  And I’m off. I’ve given this lecture so many times before that I barely need to look at my notes. For the next twenty minutes, I’m in a different zone, a safe place, where I’m trading ideas with my students and answering their questions with enthusiasm, if not admirable precision.

  I have to tell a student I’ll get back to her on the equation for social impact.

  Dammit.

  But still, a little distraction goes a long way towards reinstating some sanity in my life.

  At least until I pause to take a sip of water from my podium. Foolishly I’ve put my phone there, face up, out of habit I’d like to think, but can’t be certain. There are two new text messages lighting up the screen.

  From Justin’s number: Morgan, let me help you.

  And again from Annie: Are you okay?

  I set my water bottle back down, but I must miss the table or set it on top of some of the stray pencils, because it topples over and a few sparks flash up from the computer tower seated underneath the lectern. My projector screen goes blank, and the room of 150 students sits in an eerie silence.

  “Umm. . .” I scan around for what to do next, as if the faux wood paneling will have an answer beyond a sign reading Turn Projector OFF. Turning to Blank Screen Does NOT Save the Bulb. I consider just lecturing from my notes and the chalkboard, which is hidden behind the projector screen. I think about dialing the help hotline for the classroom, which never, ever helps, except to put me in touch with someone eating a sandwich and lording over microphone batteries like a dragon. Part of me just wants to cancel class and run back home to Annie.

  I must have stood there, lost in my thoughts for far too long, because I hear the distinctive shuffle of book bags on the floor and the creak of moveable desks being swung back into place.

  My students are leaving the room.

  One young woman asks if I’m okay, and I shoo her away gently with an “I think I might have the flu” excuse. I try to place her face, and wonder if she’s the same girl I shared a smile with last week when Justin came to visit. It might as well have been another life, another person who had that memory.

  I start to gather up my things, as though it was my decision to let class out. Even with the cluster bomb that has hit my life, this little humiliation of having my students leave before I dismissed them stings me, and I have to suppress the blush that rises as I watch the last student exit through the doors at the back. Until someone comes through the door and heads straight for me.

  I assume it’s a student who’s forgotten something, but as I’m turning to pick up the stationary phone used to call the tech hotline—because sandwich-eating or not, my podium computer did spark and seemingly catch fire for a few seconds—out of the corner of my eye this newly arrived figure lurches towards me.

  Something roars inside my head.

  Instinctively, I throw my arm back just as the intruder comes up alongside me, and my elbow connects with their shoulder, knocking them off balance. I keep my eyes on the exit, feeling the rush of energy flowing into my arms and legs as my body reacts to the threat. The shadowy figure in my periphery starts to fall over, and the edge of my arm catches their face. I hear a soft, satisfying snap.

  I start to run away from my attacker, who must be the person texting me from my dead boyfriend’s phone, which means they were there at the accident—that they watched Justin and I bleeding, dying, and were still able to rummage around our broken bodies and retrieve that fucking phone like they were picking up a forgotten glove—when I hear a familiar voice coming from the ground.

  “What the hell?!” It’s my colleague, Maria. A needle pricks my blood pressure, and I am floating down. Humiliated. Then horrified. “Morgan, what’s going on?” She rubs her nose which, thankfully, is not bleeding. Her voice comes out with a nasal scratch to it.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I must have said this too loud, because she flinches as I rush down to help her up.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks me, irritation warping her voice more than fear. Along with her nose, which she’s still cupping in both hands. I stare at her because that’s exactly what I would have asked her if I wasn’t trying to make up for the fact that I just basically punched her.

  “I’m teaching,” I say, and then correct myself, my heartbeat still swimming in my ears. “I was teaching. But then I spilled my water and the computer shorted-out. Or something.” I offer that last part with a pathetic flourish of rising inflection in my voice so that it sounds like a question.

  “Well, you’re not supposed to be teaching. David asked me earlier if I could stop by to remind your class that it was canceled, just in case anyone showed up. He wasn’t able to find someone to fill in today, like I did for your Tuesday class. I would have come earlier, but I had a meeting I couldn’t get out of.”

  When I e-mailed David, I’d told him I only needed help for Tuesday. It’s not typical for a Department Head to just assume someone wouldn’t be covering their own classes.

  Maria sees the confused look on my face and stands up, her arms going to her side. Her nose looks normal, just a bit red on one side. No palm print on her cheek or anything, thank God.

  “No one expected you to come in here just a few days after being in a terrible car crash where, you know. . .” She doesn’t want to say it—that Justin died. “I’m so sorry, by the way, Morgan. If there’s anything I can do.” Her eyes crinkle in the corners as she talks. Her mouth folds in a kind, noncommittal way, like you’d look at a dog snarling from a rescue shelter kennel.

  “So, David asked you to come down here and tell my students class was canceled.” I say it as a statement, not a question, but Maria answers it just the same.

  “I think he’s worried about you.” She ruffles her hair to fluff it back into place after her fall, and then narrows her eyes slightly. “Who did you think I was?”

  “I was just in my office. Why didn’t anyone mention it to me then?”

  “I didn’t see you come in this morning,” Maria says. Being two doors down, it’s true that it’s hard to miss each other when we come and go, but I’d kept my door closed, not willing to have any ambushes from eager students or colleagues as I was desperately trying to not lose my mind. My face must betray what I’m thinking, because the next words out of her mouth are, “Are you okay?”

  It’s the only question anyone can ask me lately.

  “I’m sorry about—about hitting you. You just surprised me, that’s all.”

  “Look, why don’t I buy you a coffee and we can sit down for a minute, huh?” Maria starts handing me the lecture notes I’ve scattered across the podium, some of them blooming with damp from the spill earlier.

  I’ll have to call the help desk later, I think. Report that I extinguished a computer.Along with my professional pride.

  My bag packed up, and my coat on, Maria starts to walk with me, but the last thing I want is to be grilled by yet another person about what happened this weekend.

  “I don’t drink coffee,” I say. “But you go ahead. I’ll see you back at the office.” I pass through the emergency exit door, even though it protests with an alarm. I don’t care.

  As I’m leaving, I catch a glimpse of Maria again out of the corner of my eye, her mouth parted with something she doesn’t say and her face twenty shades of concern. The tall, imposing shape she makes in her overcoat sends a shiver up my back. Until the door slams shut behind me.

  28

  I head back over to my office, walking as quickly as I can, just in case Maria tries to catch up with me. I don’t see a single person as I climb the stairs, and the hallway to my office is equally deserted. It’s a relief, and not just because I want to be alone.

  I close the door behind me and try to get my pulse to stop making my earrings vibrate. When I sit down at the tiny table next to my desk, I put my head between my le
gs and breathe in and out deeply. Always focusing on my fucking breath, I think. That’s what Dr. Koftura taught me.

  I stand up suddenly, pushing all the air from my lungs.

  There’s something I need to do here.

  Dr. Koftura stepped into my life when I was seven, when I was hit by a car while playing in the street. Hers was the first face I saw when I regained consciousness in the hospital, waiting to explain what happened to me and that my memory might have gaps in it. That I shouldn’t be scared. That this was normal when someone’s brain was injured. There’d been a social worker there, too, who managed to show up one more time in her blousy top and yoga pants to explain that my mother was in jail for drug dealing and that I wasn’t going home.

  That’s when the labels began. At first they were physical. Church-community-casserole-on-your-doorstep-worthy.

  Traumatic brain injury, TBI for short. Fractured tibia. Malnourishment.

  But then, somewhere between my first foster home and my first handsy “uncle,” other letters started showing up in the mix. PTSD. ODD. ADHD. You name it, some well-intentioned but poorly qualified county employee tried to assign them to me. And Dr. Koftura dismissed each of them in turn with a flick of her elegant wrist and a wry eyebrow raised in my direction.

  Except for one.

  I pull a thick manual off my bookshelf. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, our diagnostic bible, and flip through to the one diagnosis Dr. Koftura let ride.

  Because I want her to be wrong.

  Instability in goals, career, or values. Definitely not me.

  Consistent feelings of hopelessness or misery. Again, not me.

  Impoverished self-image. No.

  Intense and unstable close relationships. Fears of rejection or separation from significant others. Stress-related paranoia. Acting on the spur of the moment without thoughts of later consequences, especially when under emotional distress. Well, then.