by Regina Doman
His
Soon after the wedding, Fish started classes at the University of Pittsburgh. He had been taking summer classes ever since he had gotten the chance to go back to school. It wasn’t so much that he enjoyed the classes as that he was anxious to squeeze as much learning into as short a time span as possible. He preferred going to school in the summer—there were fewer students, less going on around campus, less distractions. And nights in his apartment were quieter. It was probably the closest that a modern university came to approaching a monastic school. Engrossed in his work, he barely noticed the summer slipping by.
In August, he made a trip back East before fall classes started. He stopped in to see Bear and Blanche and admire their new (old) farmhouse, which they were busy renovating. Rose had already gone off to her first semester at Mercy College, so Blanche informed him.
“Why did she pick Mercy College?” Fish asked as they sat in the mostly stripped-to-the-studs living room on canvas-covered chairs, drinking tea. He was vaguely suspicious that Rose had picked the college merely because of the proximity to his school, but doubted that even Rose would be that silly. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“That’s where my parents went to college. They met and married there,” Blanche said.
“Seriously? I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. My mom was a nursing student, and my dad was majoring in English. He was two years ahead of her. They married during my mom’s sophomore year, and then he got a job working for the local paper and they lived with his parents while she finished her degree. My mom had me her junior year and dropped down to part-time. She finished school right around the time she had Rose, and then they moved to New Jersey.”
“I see,” Fish said. “So Mercy College is sort of the family tradition.”
“Actually, my dad always discouraged me from going there,” Blanche said reflectively, pushing back her dark hair with one hand. “I guess he didn’t think much of the place. But my mom loved it. And our friends the Kovachs have sent almost all their kids there. It’s a very Catholic school, and has become more so since my parents went there. I hear that most of the students there are pretty intense about putting their faith into action.”
“Hmph,” Fish said. As a teenage convert, he had never been around many devout Catholics his own age. After his experience at secular universities, he couldn’t imagine what an intensely Catholic school would be like. He suspected a fishbowl removed from real life.
Blanche added, “That reminds me. Rose has some furniture here that we couldn’t fit into the car when she moved. If it fits in your car, would you consider bringing it up with you? I guess you’ll pass by Mercy College on your way back to Pittsburgh. It’s right off of the turnpike.”
“Sure,” Fish shrugged, “What do you have?”
“Just an old armchair and a small bookcase.”
“Well, we can see if they fit,” Fish said.
Surprisingly, the furniture did fit into Fish’s compact car, so he brought the chair and bookshelf back with him, and stopped off in the small municipality of Meyerstown to drop them off at Mercy College.
Mercy College was a small, squat college tucked away in a rather depressed former steel mill town. It had been built in the 1950s by a most unimaginative set of architects, who apparently considered brick warehouses really neat buildings. The most colorful part of the school was the student body, who were quite an assortment. Fish was rather surprised—and pleased—to see a generous sprinkling of different skin tones and dress styles among the students walking the sidewalks of the campus. He had thought such a backwater place would have more middle-class homogeneity, but he was wrong.
Blanche had called Rose to tell her he would be passing through, so Rose met him outside of her dorm, a drab brick rectangle of a building that was reminiscent of a small high school. She was dressed all in black, with an aqua blue scarf around her neck. With her red hair flaming in the autumn light, it was easy to pick her out among the crowds of other college students. He could see college hadn’t changed her dress style.
And she seemed to be completely at ease. “This is the chair I got from my mom’s mother. It used to be in her living room when I was growing up, and she said I could have it when I got older. I love it. Isn’t it such a nice shade of blue?”
Fish agreed that it was, as he struggled to get it out of the car. He offered to bring the chair inside for her, and she picked up the small bookcase and ushered him in, telling him that the college had strict rules about their single-sex dorms, but that, since it was open dorm hours, he could actually come and see her room.
A far cry from U of Pitt with their co-ed dorms, he thought to himself, balancing the chair on his shoulders as he walked down the narrow hallway. Even without her guidance, Fish could have recognized Rose’s room immediately as it was stamped with her particular brand of taste. There were scarves draped around the window to serve as curtains, a tall shelf of books and knickknacks, colorful quilts on the bunk beds, and a china tea set on a small table in the center of the room.
Fish eased the chair around the tea table into the waiting vacant corner, and Rose set down the bookshelf. “These will really make the room feel like home,” she said. “Thank you so much! Would you care for some tea?”
“Sure,” Fish said, sitting down in the chair he had just carried in and suppressing a smile. He knew by now that Briers had to offer tea to anyone who walked in the door.
Rose checked to make sure that the door to her room was propped open, explaining that residence hall rules required it. “Sorry I can’t get water to boil on this hot plate,” she said regretfully. “But it’s very warm.” She poured the water into a rose-painted teapot and added two tea bags. “Do you still take sugar in it?”
“But of course.”
Making a mild face at him, she rummaged in a crate stowed in her closet and pulled out a bag of sugar, and took a clean teaspoon out of a jar of pencils on the bookshelf. “One tablespoon or two?”
“Two, thank you,” he said.
“You still insist on drowning the fine flavor of tea leaves in processed sugar, alas,” she said regretfully, as she added it for him and handed him the cup.
“My one remaining vice,” he said, and changed the subject. “Blanche tells me your parents went here.”
Rose dropped her affected manner as she settled cross-legged on the bed with her own cup. “Yes, Dad’s family is actually from here. Some of his cousins still live in the area. The family farm my parents lived on isn’t far from here.”
“Interesting,” Fish said. Driving through, he had mostly seen run-down farms and small stores. He wondered what Rose and Blanche’s lives would have been like if their family had stayed here. They never would have met my brother and me, for starters, he reflected.
“My grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease and so dad was living with her and taking care of her until she died.”
“And when your mom graduated, they moved away?”
“Yes. My mom’s mom lived in Warwick, and my Dad got a job up there as a reference librarian.”
“And so history was made,” Fish said, stretching. “So what are you doing this semester outside of classes?”
“I tried out for the play,” Rose said, and her eyes lit up. “They’re doing Shakespeare, instead of one of those horrid modern plays. King Lear. AND they’re going to do it in period dress.”
“Amazing,” he said. “That’s rare. Last semester they did a Shakespeare at the University. The Tempest. It was set on a space ship traveling to Mars.”
Rose made a noise of distaste. “Why is it that every time people do Shakespeare they have to dress the actors in black suits or plastic helmets or Mafia outfits? It’s so tiresome. But our director said he wants to set the play during the time it actually was supposed to have happened. Everyone’s going to be in Celtic costume. Before the auditions, I asked him what the costumes would be like—I just had to know. After all, a Celtic princess carries herself v
ery differently than a corporate CEO, doesn’t she?”
“Most likely,” Fish agreed. “How do you think you did?”
“I’m not sure, but it was fun. Some of the other students were very good. There was this other girl there—she’d been in professional theatre before. She was tall and thin and had this sort of highborn air. I thought she would make a wonderful Cordelia—that’s the third princess, the good one who gets killed in the end—but I guess it’s up to the director. I suppose I was more lighthearted with my portrayal—guess that’s to be expected, isn’t it? It being me?”
Fish gave her a wry smile. “You’re not quite the tragic type.”
“Thank God. Yes. Donna—the tall girl—certainly was. She was so serious, and very competitive. She wouldn’t even look at me after I auditioned. It was a little surprising.”
“Don’t let it bother you. People like that are small-minded.” Fish drained his cup—the tea had been at perfectly drinkable temperature. “Unfortunately, I’ve got to go soon. I’ve got work at eight tonight.”
“Where do you work?” Rose asked.
“I’m a teaching assistant. I work for Dr. Anschlung—she’s an Austrian, but she teaches English literature. She’s pretty incredible. I teach her undergrad students, I do her secretarial work, and stand in for her if she needs to miss a class. Pretty basic stuff, but it’s good experience.” He looked at his watch. “Thanks for the tea, Rose. Sorry I couldn’t stay longer.”
She rose with him. “I’m glad you could bring the furniture down for me,” she said genuinely.
“No problem,” he resisted the temptation to ask how she was doing. He didn’t even want to reference their conversation the night of Blanche’s wedding. The sooner she put that behind her, the better. “Let me know if you make the play. I’d like to see some decent Shakespeare.”
“All right,” she said, as they walked down the hall. “I will.”
He got into his car, waved goodbye to her, and drove away, feeling a bit relieved. So Rose was settling in to her new school and finding ways to occupy herself. That was good. It was high time she moved on.
Hers
“To play or not to play, that is the question,” Rose murmured to herself as she hurried from her dormitory one afternoon a few days later. “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to act in the school production, or to take arms against a sea of papers, and by composing, write them?”
She waved gaily at a few of her new friends passing on the way to class, and reflected again how different it was to be at Mercy College. Attending community college at home in New York had been a lot like attending high school, the only difference being that the classes were harder and she could leave right after class to go home, if she wanted to. Living on the fringes of school social life, she hadn’t bothered to get to know the community college students.
But here at Mercy College, things were very different. She found herself thrust into a community situation unlike anything else she had experienced.
Mercy had a reputation for attracting Catholic students who were engaged in their faith, at least on some level, and this gave an unusual quality to the student body. People were friendly and eager to make friends, and Rose’s natural sociability reasserted itself. After a week, she found herself with over thirty friends in various groups, and never lacking for things to do. There were dances, hikes, hanging out in the student lounge, the chapel, the little café on the edge of campus—and oh yes, there were classes to go to.
And those classes were far more fascinating than anything at her community college. Theology, history, philosophy, bioethics…Kateri had recommended that Rose sign up for the bioethics class with Dr. Cooper to fulfill her science core class. But by the middle of the first class, Rose was having serious doubts. Sure, Dr. Cooper was really interesting, but he wanted each student to do a major research paper on the issue of their choice that was far longer and more involved than anything else Rose had ever written, and it would be one-half of their grade for the class. How could she juggle this class and the semester play?
As she worried over this, she couldn’t help noticing one student who sat in the first row, taking notes with unusual intensity. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with curly brown hair, brown eyes, and from his profile, Rose quickly decided she would like to get a better look at him sometime. She wondered what his name was, and if it was worth staying in this class just so she could find out...
Now facing the quandary of whether to drop bioethics or the play, she hurried to her room after class and called home. “What do you think I should do?” she asked her mom.
“Well, are you sure you have a part in the play?” her mom asked.
“No, but I was called back for a second audition—and I sort of have a good feeling about it,” Rose sighed. “But do you seriously think I can do that—write a major research paper and have a lead role in the play? I would love to do the play, but it seems so—extraneous.”
“But King Lear is a significant literary work, and your major is literature, isn’t it?” Mom pointed out. “If the play were something like Arsenic and Old Lace, I’d encourage you to drop it in favor of your schoolwork. But acting the part of Cordelia will give you an experience of Shakespeare that otherwise you would never have.”
“I guess you’re right,” Rose considered. “But this paper is a monster. Really long, and he wants at least three source interviews.”
Mom laughed. “Writing has always been your strong suit, Rose,” she said. “I know from homeschooling you. You can handle this paper. You have a gift for writing, just like your father had. He wrote for the Meyerstown News when we were up there.”
“Did he?” Rose asked, remembering her red-haired father, whom she had loved so much. “He didn’t happen to write on any bioethical issues, did he? Maybe I could use his writings as source material.”
“Well, he covered the Right to Life March every year—I know that,” her mom said. “That’s how he got labeled as an ultraconservative. The editor of the paper just wasn’t interested in the abortion issue. He used to say it was too passé.”
“I bet that got Dad mad.”
“It sure did. I was glad when he left the paper and went to work in the library. It was so much less stress.”
“Well, I really don’t want to do abortion as my topic, though,” Rose said. “It’s almost too obvious. Besides, I’m sure some people are already doing it.”
“And you, being Rose, could never do something that other people were doing,” Mother laughed. “Well, let me think. Actually, there was another issue he was involved with, but he never got a chance to publish anything on it.”
“What was that?”
“It was a pretty strange and sad case. A nurse approached him and said that there was some kind of serious abuse going on at the hospital where she worked. She wanted your father to write an article on it using her as an anonymous source. Your dad interviewed her extensively and gathered a lot of information, but he couldn’t substantiate a lot of what she said. And his editor didn’t want to touch the story. I don’t know all the details, but I know your father was extremely upset over it. That’s one of the reasons why he quit, actually. I wish I knew some of the details. Anyway, abuse of hospital patients would probably fall under your topic—you know, cases where patients are neglected, denied proper treatment, and so on.”
“Yes, but it’s rather unpleasant,” Rose agreed, shivering involuntarily. “What happened to the nurse?”
“I’m not sure. She may still be in the area. If she is, she would probably talk to you about it. It’s been years since that happened, though.”
Rose found herself getting interested. “You know, I’d actually like to find out more about the story. Do you have any of Dad’s notes from the interviews or would he have left them in his newspaper’s office?”
Mom ruminated. “Daniel always kept everything he wrote. You know, the notes from the interviews are probably all still in storage in Grandma Brier’s old
barn, near the house where we used to live. We weren’t able to bring most of that stuff with us when we moved to Warwick, and I suppose your father forgot about it over time. Someone in the family still uses the farmland, but I don’t think the house has been lived in since Grandma died and we left it. It was in pretty bad shape. You could probably go and poke around in the barn. Your dad kept everything in big file boxes in the hayloft.”
“How could I get there?”
“I’ll give you your cousin Jerry’s number and he could tell you. I’m sure they won’t mind if you go out there to look for the notes. They’d probably be glad to move some of that stuff out of there. Plus, it would be good for you to visit them. Let me get the number.” She found it, read it out to Rose, who scribbled it in her notebook.
“All right!” Rose said. “Thanks, Mom. This really helps me out.”
“I’m glad. Now, if you do get the part in the play, make sure you keep up your studies.”
“I think I’ll be able to,” Rose said. “Love you, Mom.”
HIS
Fish woke up in a sweat, and started. Had he been screaming? He quickly glanced around the room, but the house was quiet. His apartment was fairly secluded. Most likely, no one had heard him.
Grateful, he put his head back down on the pillow and prayed to go back to sleep. But the re-living of the ordeal had been too real.
I’m just nervous about my classes, he told himself. Extra stress. The beginning of the semester. That’s what brought it all back.
He was teaching his first class for Dr. Anschlung tomorrow. Even though he had prepared thoroughly, he must still be on edge.
There was nothing to do but get out of bed. He pushed back the covers and got up. Rubbing his neck, which had been tense during the nightmare, he went out to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk. It was common, he had heard, for people in his situation to have vivid flashbacks of the torture experience. He wondered if it would be like this all his life, waking up in the night, standing dully in the kitchen, drinking milk, emotionally exhausted.