The Professor: A Standalone Novel

by Akeroyd, Serena

  I bowed my head, this time unable to stop the tears. She spoke so easily of death, spoke of it like she was heading out shopping for the afternoon, not leaving us forever.

  I grabbed the blankets I’d just straightened, gripped them tightly in my hands, and tried to calm myself. Scottie was very sensitive, and I knew he’d sense my agitation, knew it would rile him up too, and the last thing anyone in this ward needed was a sobbing baby.

  Her papery hand reached for mine, and she whispered, “Don’t worry for me.”

  “I don’t want you to be alone.”

  Her lips curved. “These past twelve years, I haven’t been. Without you and this little monster, I might have, but you brought light to my life, baby. You’ve been my joy in these final years, and I can’t thank you enough for that.”

  “I don’t deserve your thanks,” I rasped. “I’ve been a nuisance. Depending on you when you’re sick—”

  “You gave me purpose,” she argued, instantly dismissing my words. “You gave me a reason to get up in the morning.” She wagged her finger at me. “Don’t take away from the joy you brought me.”

  I licked my lips, and unable to stop myself, did something I hadn’t done in twelve years.

  Even though I’d wanted to.

  Even though I’d longed to some nights.

  Mrs. Linden had never been affectionate, but I ignored that and reached over to press a kiss to her cheek. When my soft lips caressed her fragile skin, she released a deep sigh.

  “I love you, child,” she said again. “You’ve been like a—” Then she shook her head. “No, you have been a daughter to me. No ‘like’ about it.”

  Throat too full to speak, I whispered, “Love you too.”

  She reached up and patted my cheek. “You go now. I don’t want you out much later. I know how long you have to travel to get here from our building but, please, don’t forget to give the nurses your phone number.”

  “I won’t,” I murmured miserably.

  “Now, put my things in your backpack,” Enid directed, then she laughed at my bag. “The old one caved in?”

  I nodded. “This is one I kept from high school.” It felt like a lifetime ago, but it was scrawled with pen and littered with drawings I’d thought were good back in the day.

  As I stored her few things in there, I watched as she hugged Scottie for what might be the final time, and he began fussing the second I hauled him into my arms.

  My body ached with grief as I took a step away from her. Each one physically pained me. Our eyes caught and held, and her possessions were a heavy weight on my back as I put distance between us.

  I couldn’t tell her goodbye, but I didn’t know what else to say. So instead, I reached up, and with my free hand, blew her a kiss.

  Her smile as she caught it would live with me forever.

  Chapter Four

  When my phone buzzed the next morning, my one morning off a week before a nightmarish three shifts began later on in the day, terror whirled inside me. When I saw the Caller ID was unknown and not the nurses’ station I’d keyed in yesterday, I frowned and ignored it because I was in Mrs. Linden’s apartment, going through her things, and didn’t feel like being hit up for insurance or whatever else a telemarketer wanted to sell.

  I felt like a gravedigger, like the filthy thief Professor Maclean had accused me of being, but I knew, as had Enid, that the second she passed, this place would be locked away from me forever and she wasn’t wrong—I needed the money, and she wanted me to have it.

  Enid wouldn’t have lived in this building if she was a wealthy woman, but when I’d first gone into the apartment, I’d found a letter propped up on her dresser addressed to me.

  Baby girl,

  I’m hoping you get this letter, and that somehow, you remember that you have a key to my door—I’ll never know why you always insisted on knocking, but I hope you remember before it’s too late, because I’m not sure if I’ll make it long enough for me to give you my keys.

  There isn’t much in this place that’s been my home for too many years to count, but what there is, is yours.

  Check under the mattress. There’s around three hundred dollars there for starters. I have a few pieces of jewelry that you might get a few hundred for.

  Please, take whatever you need. You know as well as I do that Janowicz will steal whatever he can.

  I’m writing this as I wait on the ambulance. I could have called for you, but I know you’ll be tired, and I knew, even more so now, that you’d need the rest.

  Know this: you brought joy to my world when I was sinking in gloom. Before you, I was alone. With you? I had a family again.

  Thank you for that.

  I love you and Scottie more than you know. Be strong for us both, go out there and achieve your goals, be who you were born to be.

  When you can, take Scottie away from your mother. She won’t argue. Leave her to her personal hell and make a life for yourselves with my blessing.

  I wish I could see you grow to become the woman you were destined to be.

  With all my love,

  Enid

  Hours later, my eyes were still wet from reading that letter, and though I’d had her blessing twice over, what I was doing still felt so wrong. I was rubbed raw by what the Professor had accused me of, rightfully so, and this just made me feel even worse.

  I gathered the money from under the mattress, hating that she might have scrimped and saved for this very moment—she’d intended on protecting me right from the very beginning.

  As I moved around her small apartment, with its tired furnishings and the scent of her floral perfume still lingering in the air, it was hard to believe she hadn’t passed yet.

  Everything in here was ready to move on. Ready for this place to be empty, for someone new to live within its walls.

  It killed me to think that soon, this apartment wouldn’t be a haven away from my mother. Not just for me, but for Scottie too.

  He’d never remember the woman who’d saved him far too many times to count, and I vowed to raise him with the many edicts Enid had passed my way, the recipe for pot roast she swore by, and the stories she’d told me as a girl—stories that had made me aspire to be an English teacher.

  Gnawing on my bottom lip, I frowned as I peered inside a drawer in her dresser, feeling like a sneak for going through her things, for seeing stuff I’d never have dreamed of looking at if she were here. Finding a scarf that smelled like her, I pulled it out and wrapped it around my throat. It was light and something she’d have worn to church when she’d been able to go—the priest came to visit her here now—and it would forever remind me of her.

  With a sigh, and still feeling like a leech, I methodically moved through her things, finding some books I put in a box I’d brought from the grocery store, keeping a few figurines that I thought I might be able to sell on eBay—and God, didn’t that load me with guilt—until I hit a chest of drawers that was loaded with clothes. They were definitely vintage, but I knew I could wear them.

  There were gypsy-style tops and kaftans that would flow nicely in the summer, a couple of dresses that would fit as well. Considering any money would be going toward Scottie’s daycare, I needed every cent I could and didn’t have any to waste on buying weather appropriate clothes.

  As I burrowed around for some more, I found a box. It was green leather and was slightly padded. When I saw the emblem on the front, my brows rose.

  Rolex.

  Popping open the box, it revealed a piece of paper that, upon further inspection, declared the matching ‘his and her’ watches to be authentic pieces.

  My eyes widened and hope filled me. These had to be worth something, didn’t they? Were they the jewelry Enid had mentioned in her letter? Otherwise, why hadn’t she told me about them? They were buried under a lot of clothes, but surely she hadn’t forgotten about them?

  I wanted to visit her so we could talk about this, but I’d have to be at school in the next two hours. It
was a forty-minute bus ride, so I wouldn’t be late, but still, the urge to ask who’d worn the man’s watch filled me.

  In all the years I’d known her, she’d never mentioned a man.

  Not a husband or a boyfriend.

  Heck, she could have been a lesbian and I wouldn’t have known. And there were no pictures tucked in frames that weren’t of me or Scottie, so they were no clue.

  Feeling selfish for not having asked, for her not being able to share that with me when I was the only person she saw on a day-to-day basis, I shoved it aside because those thoughts would get me nowhere.

  Even as I tucked the authentication certificate back into the box, stroked my finger over the glossy faces of the expensive, vintage watches, I picked it up with great care and tucked it into my bag.

  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them, but leaving them in my bedroom for my mother to find when she was on the hunt for cash to get some booze was not on my agenda.

  I’d have time, hopefully, after class to head to a pawnbroker and pad out my bank account with something that would help me take care of Scottie on the regular.

  It was weird feeling relieved and excited when this good fortune came at the expense of my one source of comfort. The incongruous emotions had me reaching for my phone when it buzzed again and answering without looking at the ID.

  “Hello?” I asked, surprised to hear I sounded as dazed as I felt. The second I answered, I realized it could be the nurses’ station and terror filled me.

  “Why haven’t you been answering my calls?”

  The bark had me jolting in place. Even though I felt joy that it wasn’t news on Mrs. Linden, I literally sat up straighter as tension bombarded me on all levels. “Professor?”

  “Yes,” he hissed. “If you think you can—”

  “I didn’t realize it was you,” I blurted out, annoyed by his anger when I hadn’t done a damn thing wrong.

  This time.

  “The second you put down the phone, input my goddamn name,” he ground out. “Be in my office after class.”

  My heart sank to my stomach. “W-Why?”

  “I think you know why.”

  And with that, he hung up.

  It irked me to instantly obey, but he’d sounded so angry, and even though the Rolexes should ease my situation, I couldn’t afford to lose my jobs or for him to disgrace me by telling my bosses.

  Beyond anything, Lorenzo and Maria had been good to me. I didn’t want them to think I was repaying them by treating them so badly. I’d been in a bind, and that bind wasn’t of my own making.

  Living so close to the poverty line made getting through each day the equivalent of walking across a battlefield. I’d gone to war and I’d been injured—Professor Maclean was intent on rubbing salt into my damn wounds.

  I rushed out the door, locking the place up and leaving the things I’d collected in there except for the watches and the cash, both of which burned a hole in my bag.

  Scottie was with my mom, so, as had always been my intention, I left directly for class and caught my bus just in time.

  Was it stupid crossing Brooklyn with the Rolexes on my person? Yes. But how the hell would I get them to the pawnbrokers if I didn’t take them in?

  Thankfully, I made it to campus without much issue, and as I slunk into Professor Maclean’s classroom for my one and only lecture of the day, I sat in my usual seat—right at the top and at the back. It never worked though. He always looked at me, and today’s class was no different.

  In fact, he stared at me more.

  And with each glance? A startling concoction of terror and nerves danced around my insides like the most delicate of butterflies.

  Would he make me do what I’d done two days ago?

  Touch myself in front of him?

  Or would he ask me to touch him?

  Was it wrong that I almost wished he would? Because then I’d have something to accuse him of. As it was, getting people to believe a sexual assault accusation was nearly impossible. But when adding that a hot professor had asked me to get off on his desk? I knew I’d be laughed at if I even tried to implicate him.

  Mortification ate up any of my lingering nerves before it was quickly replaced with trepidation. I gnawed on my bottom lip throughout most of the class, and was relieved when we hit the final fifteen minutes without him looking my way more than twice.

  Of course, I was stupid for relaxing, and should have known he’d never have been so generous.

  “Ms. Whitehouse, what, in your opinion, are the value of journals and diaries to the writing process?”

  When his eyes were on me, that lip of his curled up in a sneer, everything inside me just shut down in misery.

  I couldn’t think.

  Couldn’t even form words.

  When he cocked a brow, and there were noiseless titters around me at my ongoing silence, I trembled in my seat.

  Was I such a pushover that this man could make the ground beneath me quake just by raising an eyebrow?

  I hated him at that moment.

  He could have turned the question over to someone else, could have let me off, but he didn’t. He held my stare like it was some kind of standoff in a Spaghetti Western, and just when it shifted into beyond awkward territory, I managed to whisper, “Journals can be an autobiographical tool, a self-efficacy or a goal-keeping tool, but also, a means of writing development. It’s a way of expressing oneself through one’s own voice, with, I suppose, the hope that, down the line, it will help convey a character’s personality better.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me, and I imagined he was looking at the people close to me, wondering if they’d prompted me on what to say.

  But I was alone. No one sat before, behind, or to my right, and at my left was the damn wall.

  When he dipped his chin and murmured, “Ms. Whitehouse is correct. Sylvia Plath’s journals are famous as they catalog the battles she had with her mental health, which were also chronicled in her literary works. John Cheever also used his journals to…”

  As he moved on with the class, taking the focus away from me, I still felt as though I was under his spotlight, still burned as hotly as though his attention, and the rest of the class’, was on me.

  With a sigh when he wrapped up the lecture, I waited, as I had Wednesday, for the hall to empty. When it did, I got to my feet and began the descent to the desk where he was closing up his attaché case.

  Today, he wore a pair of jeans that cupped every inch of his lower half like a glove. They were a dark navy and his shirt, in a similar color, was spotted with random bright white dots. The dark navy contrasted well with the dark brown sports coat he wore, and the fabric was strange—coarse, somehow. Inviting touch so as to experience the texture against one’s fingertips.

  When he caught me staring at him, he cocked a brow at me. “It’s rude to stare.”

  My mouth tightened. “I’m sorry,” I replied, not meaning it.

  He sensed it and grunted, then slipped his attaché case under his arm, and muttered, “Follow me.”

  Once again, I followed him out of the brightly lit hall and into the corridor. The dim lights put his back into shadow, but as the light hit from the outside wall, which was lined with windows, I got a delicious glimpse of his ass.

  Not that I should be thinking of his ass.

  The man was repugnant.

  Mean.

  A bully who had set his sights on me.

  But I wasn’t blind. No matter the character, the specimen of maleness was beyond beautiful. He had the kind of looks that belonged in a classic portrait, and I could well imagine one of the greats, Da Vinci or Michelangelo, studying his masculine perfection and capturing it for the idolatry of future generations.

  My thoughts were fanciful, but I was a fanciful person.

  With my feet buried firmly six feet under, I was rational to my core, so beyond grounded it was a joke. But in my secret self, where I could aim high, dream of being anything I wanted, I
wished to be a writer. Wished to be anything other than practical and sensible. It was why—how hideous was this irony? —I’d signed up for Creative Writing.

  When we made it into his office, I stood just inside the closed door, hoping he only wanted to verbally mock me… and how hideous was that?

  Before I could ponder my fate, he took a seat in his chair, and as he rocked back, he stated, “You should wear dresses more often.” Before I could jolt in surprise at the compliment, he patted the desk. “Make yourself come.”

  Disbelief filtered through me.

  What the hell was his game here?

  I stared at him for so long, his nostrils flared with agitation. It reminded me of a bull who’d been pissed off by that floating piece of red fabric a suicidal matador would wave in front of the massive beasts.

  Taking that as indicative of his temper, I whispered, “Why?”

  “This again?” he ground out. “You may have time for negotiations, but I don’t. If you want me to stay silent, hop on the desk and make yourself come like a good little slut.”

  My eyes flared wide. “I’m not a slut.”

  He sneered, “You’re not good and neither are you little.”

  Hurt had me quivering where I stood. “Why do you want me to do this when you hate me so much?”

  “As I told you Wednesday, I don’t hate you.” Those brown eyes of his would have given me frostbite if I’d been standing closer to him. “And I’m doing this because I can make you do anything I want. Now, get on the fucking desk and make yourself come,” he growled, and he punctuated the statement by slamming his hands on the desk. The sound had me jerking in place and I scurried forward, not wanting to agitate him further.

  My meekness irked me, but the sensation of being trapped was too overwhelming for my own good.

  Before I hit his desk, I put on the brakes. Though I knew he was on the brink of growling out another command, he settled back in his chair as I pulled up the skirt of my dress and shimmied out of my panties.

  The white fabric lay like a puddle of innocence on the floor, a state of being I was discarding by attending to his whims. But I shoved the strange thought aside as I clambered onto the desk in front of him, because if I carried on thinking things like that, I’d never get off. And I was on a deadline. I’d start work soon. Cleaning at Crow, followed by two shifts behind the bar, and I wanted to go to the pawnbroker first.