“Might let him do the cooking, Classy. He’ll live longer.”
“Now you’re being mean.”
“Sandy wants what you want, someone to take care of him. And that’s going to be your lot in life. Why don’t you just let things be?”
“I could die before he does.”
“But you won’t. You’ll end up taking care of him, changing his diaper, his bedclothes, pushing him around in a wheelchair, trying to make him laugh when he doesn’t remember how. Why can’t you enjoy him now without putting yourself in that trap? Marrying him will pull you under, Classy. It’ll pull you under so far you’ll never get back.”
“You aren’t willing to risk that for Ash, but you were willing to drop everything and take care of Emory.”
“My ex-husband has nothing to do with this conversation. He was dying. I couldn’t throw him out.”
“Sandy loves me, Dart.”
But I didn’t hear her because I still felt a little bit of guilt about Emory. He’d spent a lot of time alone before he spent his last days with me. “You told me, all of you told me, I had a bigger obligation to humanity than caring for a man I’d divorced twenty years earlier.”
“I’m not you, Dart, and Sandy’s not Emory or Ash. He’s not in love with his dead wife.” She tugged her hand out of mine. “Or, for that matter, his ex-wives. I don’t have a fancy job at a university or a title or a contribution to make to society. I work in a bar, and my back aches when I come home from the night shift. Sandy will be there to rub those aches out for as long as his hands work. He’ll be there to bring me hot tea for as long as his legs work. And when his body quits, pray it won’t be soon, then I’ll be there to bring him tea and to massage his back. This is what I can do, Dart. That is my contribution, to love one old man and care for him.”
“The reality won’t be as romantic as the wedding.”
“I know. I’ve been married before.”
Like three times before.
“He’ll take your money and property, and your assets will support his next wife in the style to which she is accustomed.”
“Dart, honey, I don’t have any assets other than my outgoing personality, wicked sense of humor, and a body that won’t quit.”
Remorse jumped up. Who was I to judge what she did? Classy and Sandy might have ten or twenty years ahead of them, and if she wanted to risk all for that time with him, then, as her friend, I should have been happy for her.
“We’re not going to talk about sex again, are we?”
She knew with that wacky question I’d accepted her decision. “Not if you don’t want to, but engaging in safe sex with Ash might help you relax a bit. If the dean won’t oblige you, then find someone else. You’re wound tighter than I’ve ever seen you.”
“I think my brain is dying, Classy.”
“That’s good news.”
Now who was daydreaming? I confide my deepest fear and she says that’s good news. At my sharp glance, she gestured toward the screen and the email displayed there. She’d been reading my email and hadn’t been listening. The relief of that was as quick as a news flash across my phone screen. I read what she’d seen.
“They want you.”
The new email came from The Salzburg Global Seminar. I read the message again, so quickly the words blurred. “To host. Do you know what this means? I’m one of five finalists to host the Salzburg Global Institute Summit on World Poverty next year. This is what we’ve dreamed of, Classy.”
“Do they meet in that castle?” She pointed at the picture of the building made famous by the movie The Sound of Music.
“A restored Schloss.” The same place I was daydreaming about when I almost fell off the ladder. “Beautiful place. Like a fairytale. You’ll love it there. If I’m chosen, we’re all going.”
Her face lit up, which made her young again, then she shook her head. “Sandy won’t want me that far away from him. Mary Beth never leaves the house. Susan has her job. Maybe Lynn can attend.”
My gaze fell to the diamond on her hand because she was twisting it around and around; that tiny rock that meant Sandy had already taken her from me.
“You must go.” Thought leaders from across the world would be there to share ideas and insights into the biggest problem that humanity faced. I couldn’t do this without the Raindrops. “All of you have to attend.”
“Sandy and I are getting married as soon as we can get a license.”
“They let women wear wedding rings in Salzburg.”
“I’ll be moving out tomorrow.” She must have seen pain or fear in my face, or felt the pounding of my heart. “Sandy’s my life now, Dart. You’re strong enough to take on the world, but I’m not. I just want my little corner of it to include Sandy.”
She got up then, patted me on the shoulder, and said as she left me, “Let the Raindrops go, Dart.”
The plant near the computer shivered, then shivered again. Water glistened on top of the dirt. Glancing at the ceiling, I held my tongue against the roof of my mouth. The pressure dissipated my panic as I counted the droplets of water that plopped onto the plant. The mental note to contact the roofers moved to the top of my to-do list. No wonder my mind sputtered every once in a while. No one could stay sane with my responsibilities. The constant drain on my finances and energy made me crazy. Although I didn’t know what it was like to be hungry, I had something in common with those in poverty. There never seemed to be enough money to fix their problems either. Another plink, another quiver.
Maybe Classy was right, maybe I should sell this place and move in with Ash. I stood up and moved to the window. Let us go, Dart. The words wouldn’t leave me alone.
Moonlight glistened on the ocean. More droplets fell. With a sigh, I got up from the computer and retrieved a bucket from the kitchen, set the puddled plant inside, and put both back under the roof leak. Then I sat back down behind the computer’s bright promise and wondered what I was going to do. This was a chance of a lifetime, to host at Salzburg, but my think tank had disintegrated, and now Classy had left and my guess was that others wouldn’t be far behind. Another drop of water, then yet another, pinged against the bottom of the tin pail. If this rain kept up, the plant would drown in the middle of my living room.
I turned back to the computer. I’d always wanted to go back. If they chose me, I’d find a way to drag everyone there, even if they didn’t want to go.
I stood at the podium, ready to tape the first MOOC lecture for the fall semester. I’d postponed this taping several times. Lea hadn’t been pleased, and if she hadn’t done so already, she’d tell Ash and then he wouldn’t be pleased. We had to get this done today.
Online teaching wasn’t for me. I missed the rows of students sitting before me and the energy they generated that kept me invigorated. I missed their puzzled glances, cues that spurred me on, their small frowns that meant I should supply more data, and I appreciated their sighs of impatience when I dithered on about something they didn’t think was important.
Alone with Lea, the camera, and the small desk inside a hot, cramped room that smelled stale, I started to sweat. I was the one person in the room capable of bringing life to the ideas, thoughts, and theory about issues that threatened human existence, which was the topic of this semester’s class. I should have taken the time to relax, but I didn’t.
That’s why the text on my phone grabbed my attention. Ellen. She . . . and like that day on the ladder, the Sentinel yanked me away from the podium, the phone, until my shoulder blades hit the classroom’s corner walls.
Drop the phone. I heard that inside my mind as if the Sentinel had shouted the words.
Emotional demands and fight or flight chemicals distorted reason, and I had to think. I had to. Another fragment of logic harnessed another emotion, and only then did I remember to breathe, deep gulps of air that calmed my response.
Lea grasped my elbow at that moment, when I was most sensitized to my mental confusion. Maybe that’s why I jerked away fr
om her, prepared to run again. Her shocked look—had I thought she was going to hit me?—stirred consternation and guilt.
“Ellen, the Sentinel,” I said, trying to explain how my unconscious had hijacked my body, how I’d ended up hovering in a corner.
“What’s wrong?”
“Pulled me away.”
Go to her!
Again, I resisted the imperious demand, the compulsion to run, but it cost me.
“You were trembling when you backed away from the podium. Maybe you hit your head.” Her hand went to my hair.
I shook off her concern. “Not my head. The Sentinel inside my head. Ellen.”
“There’s no one here but us, Dr. Sommers.”
“He hijacked me.” Again.
“Let me help you to a chair so you can sit down.” She took the cell phone from my hands and brought me back to the podium.
“He hijacked me,” I said again. “Now and this morning.” I’d realized that I couldn’t remember how I got to work this morning, and there were other incidents. My unconscious was out of control. A text? What was the danger in a text?
“Men try that with me all the time.” Lea set the phone down, at the very edge of the desk, so I couldn’t reach it.
“No. Me. Driving this morning.”
“I lose track of time when I drive,” she said and I knew she was humoring me. “But your Sentinel. Who is he?”
I leaned against the desk, my arms and legs quivering from the receding chemical push that had shoved me away.
Lea frowned. “Maybe I should call the campus police and have them send an ambulance.”
The police couldn’t help me. “I don’t remember how I got to work this morning.”
She reached for her phone. I made another effort to explain.
“The Sentinel moved my legs to brake, to accelerate, my hands to turn on the turn signal. I lost track of time.”
“So, you don’t know how you got to work this morning?”
“The Sentinel. Chemical hijacking. That’s what happened to me just now and this morning.”
But a few minutes ago, I hadn’t been in danger. I kept coming up against that bit of data that didn’t fit the pattern. The Sentinel had acted to keep me from harm. That was the evolutionary agreement for how he came to be. But I hadn’t been in danger. Not from a text.
“I think you’ve had a stroke, Dr. Sommers. I’m going to call nine-one-one.”
Ellen needs you.
This time I listened to that still voice. I straightened and tried to pull myself together. “I’m fine. Let me take a break.” I drew a deep breath. “I’m fine. Ellen’s cancer is back.”
“Let me call nine-one-one.”
“A little rest, I’ll be fine.” As soon as I talk to my cousin. “Let’s reschedule.”
“The dean won’t approve.”
“Ash will understand.”
“You’ve already rescheduled twice. People are beginning to talk.”
I’d been holding things up, stalling, even before Ellen’s text had the Sentinel backpedaling my body away from what I didn’t want to know. A colleague believes the neurons in our brains are feral, fighting among themselves in the struggle to stay alive. All that mental warfare, he says, makes us more creative, more intuitive, and more prone to mental illnesses, obsessions, and smaller tics. Lately, I’d been reading his research, trying to find answers to the vague feeling of not being well that troubled me, but I couldn’t get my head around the complexity, or perhaps more accurately, the simplicity of his ideas.
I haven’t considered my mind as a place of fury. But since that day on the ladder, I’ve wondered.
“If you insist, I’ll stay, but I need to go to my cousin.” I moved to the side, hoping Lea wouldn’t notice that movement, and she didn’t. She heard what I said, didn’t see what I did, and bless her, she did as I wanted. Lea put my phone down on the desk and moved back behind the camera.
“Now,” Lea was all brisk efficiency, “if you’re sure you’re okay?”
I nodded that I was. Lea smiled at me from behind the camera. Why small triumphs like posing as the professor seemed significant to someone of her intellect confused me. Then I remembered. Frustrations reduced perplexity to its least common denominator. And Lea was very frustrated with me. Unless I performed well, she would be out of a job. She reminded me of myself when I’d first started out in academe, uncertain of everything and everyone and vulnerable to any misbeliefs.
“Talk to the camera instead of your notes, so students feel as if you are speaking to each of them.”
“That’s not a logical expectation.” Her glare indicated that telling her she wasn’t logical might not have been the most tactful way of saying what she needed to hear. “We have almost thirty thousand students across the globe who have signed up for this class. The students know I’m not talking to them individually, but I will try if you think it will help.” I dropped my gaze from hers, shuffled the papers I’d brought as props, and glanced at the clock. The hands hadn’t moved.
“Stop doing that, Professor.”
I inched my hand closer to my phone as I raised my eyebrows to question what it was I was doing that aggravated her.
“You’re a clock watcher. This is the fifth time in the taping session you’ve done that. Pay attention to me, Dr. Sommers. Don’t let your students down, not now.”
Lea wheeled the camera closer to me, and I took that moment to palm the phone and put it in my pocket.
Straightening my jacket, squaring my shoulders, I looked into the lens. I kept smiling at the camera for the close-up she had framed. Then I noticed my frightened face on the TV monitor at the back of the room. Gruesome image. I didn’t look at all professional and self-assured. Why had I thought I would with the emotional load I carried? My hair, more gray than black, needed combing, my lipstick was gone, and my blue eyes looked scared. Lea said this class had to be taped today because the MOOC’s first lecture would go live next week. Eleven more lectures to do after this one.
The intensity of that odd feeling grew. And of course, the dean had shared what professional and personal consequences would be mine if this experiment failed. An unsettling emotion grew more intense. The camera loomed bigger, larger. I couldn’t fathom why I’d wedged myself into the corner of the classroom, out of sight of the cameras that were trained on my every expression.
I had to talk to Ellen. This made no sense. Why had I moved to protect myself when it was Ellen whose cancer was back? Text messages weren’t harmful, and the Sentinel knew that as well as I did.
Something is wrong.
Of all my cousins, I felt closest to Ellen. She understood who I could be when others never saw my potential. I felt as obligated to live up to her expectations as I had my father’s. But I’d let a plant drown in my living room a week ago while I sat in dry comfort behind the computer. Logic supporting an irrational decision does not make that decision right.
And, this time, the Sentinel had nothing to do with my conscious decision.
“Professor Sommers?” Lea’s anxious voice trailed after me as I quit the room before she could get out from behind the camera. I found myself in the hall glancing both ways, uncertain and unsure of myself. My hand curled around the phone, my determination sweeping everything aside. I’d make Ellen talk to me.
“I was pretty sure all those rumors I heard about you being crazy were false.” I was halfway down the hall and moving fast, but that accusation made me stop and look back. Lea stood in the doorway, a tall Amazon with golden hair, green eyes, folded arms, and a resigned expression.
I wasn’t crazy, although I did have to admit that not many professors carried a brown teddy bear around. But they didn’t have the pressures I had.
“You’re beginning to worry me.”
I was beginning to worry myself. Too many people pulling at me. They all wanted something. But Ellen needed me now.
“I’ll be back,” I said, and I started for the stairs before Lea
could hold me hostage to her demands.
Unlocking my office door, I slipped inside and closed it with a snick of the lock. The quiet dampened my fears. The blue sky outside my window had a few clouds competing with the sunshine.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket, keyed up her text even as I pressed her contact button, went to the window to stare outside, and listened as the phone rang and rang.
Finally, I hung up and reread the text.
Lung cancer back. Have refused treatment. Don’t call.
Forget that.
I dialed again. My call went to her voice mail.
She was there, with her phone in hand. I knew it. She always had her phone with her, a link to everyone important in her life. Just as I did.
Should I call Bill? No, I didn’t want to talk to her husband. Ellen was who I wanted to talk to. So, what to do since she wouldn’t answer the phone?
Going to her house wouldn’t work. I could camp on her porch for months and she’d find a way to avoid going out the front door. Ellen was nothing if not resourceful. She could stop me from every action, I realized, but thinking . . . and texting.
How’s Bill taking the news?
Nothing. More clouds now outside my office window and a few birds in the sky. Seagulls? Despite living on the coast, I didn’t know the species of birds that well other than the usual suspects: seagulls, pelicans, and those little brown ones that pecked, darted, pecked. There was one on my beach that had lost a leg. The loss didn’t hamper him any.
If he leaves you, don’t let him take my mother’s rocking chair that she gave to you.
The phone remained dark and silent. Beguilement wasn’t working. I’d have to try harder to break her resolve. Clearly, she didn’t care if Bill left or not, and that wasn’t good, wasn’t good at all.
She was doing her master’s work on Nietzsche’s beliefs, such as they were. I’d tried to tell her he was passé in light of the current brain research, but she’d argued with vigor that he wasn’t, that his insights still had relevance.
Bring the Rain Page 6