Brought to Book

by Barbara Cornthwaite

  I laughed a little. “Well, that was the plan. It’s a long story.”

  “I like long stories.”

  “Well then.” I cleared my throat. “Once upon a time I was on the tenure track at UCSC. I don’t know if you know how that works.”

  Todd shook his head.

  “You become an assistant professor for six years. I mean, you do everything a full professor does, but your title is ‘assistant professor.’ Unless you are dismissed for gross negligence or an inability to teach during that time, you get tenure and become a full professor. Especially if you’ve published something in the meantime.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The head of the English department objected to my beliefs about feminism, among other things. That is, she was extremely feminist and I’m…not.”

  “You were accused of teaching your own viewpoint? What about academic freedom?”

  “No, they couldn’t accuse me of foisting my ‘backward’ beliefs on the students—although they tried. It was really more of my personal convictions they didn’t like. Convictions that came out in my conversations with colleagues and my affiliations with things like a campus Bible study. It was all painted to look like I was just not needed in the English department there; after all, my published book was on the influence of George Herbert on Anne Bradstreet, which was much too religious an idea for that department to think important. They didn’t have to fire me. You’re automatically let go if you don’t get tenure.”

  “But why didn’t you get a job at another college? As a full professor, I mean.”

  “If you’ve been turned down for tenure at one college, it’s almost impossible to be hired as a full professor at another school. It’s just the way things work. And with the state of most college budgets, they’d rather hire a bunch of adjunct faculty to teach the bulk of the classes—especially lower-division courses. They don’t have to pay medical or dental or retirement for adjuncts, they can drop them at will if they want to, and they don’t have to pay them very much.”

  “So you came here to be an adjunct professor.”

  “Yeah. I’d known Ed and Kim in college and kept in touch with them when Ed came to work at Wilkester. When they had a need for an adjunct, he told me I should come. I actually beat out a couple other people for the job, probably because I’d done work on Bradstreet and they have a manuscript of hers here. But it’s been a good job in a lot of ways. The cost of living is cheaper here than Southern California, so I can live on what I make at the college along with some freelance editing work. And I love my church and I have friends…” I almost started to tell him about my desire to do more with my life, but something held me back.

  “That’s rough,” he said. “Not about the church and your friends, but the whole professorship thing. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  “Well, in a way it was suffering for my faith. I know if I had changed my views I would have gotten tenure. The apostles thought it was a privilege to suffer for their faith, and I’ve tried my best to make that my attitude as well.”

  “You remind me of some men I met in India when I was traveling around and visiting different ministries. These guys lived in an area of militant Hinduism. They had actually been beaten for their faith and their houses were burned down. One man had lost an arm from the beating. What struck me was their gratitude for being counted worthy to suffer. Of course it was illegal for them to be harassed like that, but the authorities did nothing to help them or stop the persecution. But instead of being angry that their rights were violated, they were praising God for strengthening them to endure persecution.”

  “Wow. My suffering is piddly compared to theirs. It must have been a fascinating trip—I’d love to go there. Did you go by yourself?

  There was a pause.

  “No. Uh, no. With my wife.”

  I just stared at him. His wife?

  “My ex-wife.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t think of another thing to say. My heart sank. Literally. I felt it descend from my chest to my stomach. An x-ray would have proved it, I’m sure.

  “I’ve got something to give you,” he said rather abruptly. He was gone and back in less than two minutes, carrying a small stack of books.

  “These were at Frank’s house,” he said. “The house was willed to ‘any living relatives to divide as they wish,’ so it goes to John as the only living relative. He went through the house with us the other day to see if there might be anything that would pertain to the case besides the things we’d already gotten, and he saw these books. He said they rightly belonged to the bookstore, and he didn’t want them in any case, so I’m giving them to you.”

  I took the stack from Todd.

  “Thanks,” I said, glancing at the covers. “They look pretty old—probably valuable.” I stood up. “I’d better get going, if there’s nothing else. I have a book to finish editing, along with—well, other stuff.” I clutched my stack of books and smiled—probably mechanically, but it was all I could manage at the moment.

  “Yeah, that’s all,” said Todd. “Thanks for coming in. ‘Bye, Katrina.”

  He did not offer to walk me to my car.

  I drove home in that stunned state where you later can’t remember anything about the journey. I felt somehow betrayed. Todd had presented himself as Our Kind of Person, and he wasn’t. Not really. If I asked him about his divorce he would probably tell me, “we just grew apart.” Our Kind of Person doesn’t think that way about marriage. For us, marriage is for life, even if you fall out of love with your spouse.

  But there is such a thing as a biblical divorce, said my conscience, and I had to concede that. I didn’t believe that every divorce was sinful. But I knew that if I married a divorced person I would feel cheated out of having a soulmate. Kim’s taunt came back to my mind: “Still waiting for Captain Wentworth, eh? … ‘I have loved none but you...’”

  “Yes, I am,” I said aloud. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting that. I don’t have to marry anyone if they aren’t what I’m looking for.”

  Deirdre’s words broke into my memory: “What if God wants you to marry him?”

  “He doesn’t,” I muttered stubbornly. “He doesn’t! And it doesn’t matter anyway. I doubt he was really interested in me, and now that the case has gone cold I probably won’t be seeing him again. It’s a good thing.”

  I pulled into my parking space, put my head down on the steering wheel, and sobbed.

  Chapter 9

  The rest of that week seemed very flat. I blamed it on all kinds of things, but I knew I was just mourning the loss of a possibility. I had tried not to let myself hope, but I had hoped in spite of myself, and now I had to pay the price for it. I wondered if perhaps the best thing to do was go to Papua New Guinea and leave it all behind me. I was going to have to decide soon. Their school year started in September and I’d have to let them know by June, less than two months away.

  On Friday afternoon I sat in the bookstore and edited the final few chapters of Sheila’s novel. The climax of the book involved a scene between the heroine, the young and beautiful Albina, daughter of the largest landowner in Virginia, and her love interest, the dashing but penniless footman Edward on a neighboring estate. All through my edits of the book I had debated whether I should inform her that such an unequal marriage might just have been within the realm of possibility, but no one around the lovestruck couple would have viewed the match as anything but completely appalling. I had decided against making a note of it; for me to suggest that she change the social status of the hero to make it more period-accurate would be to imply that she re-write most of the novel, as his servanthood was a major part of the plot.

  However, I did feel I must enlighten her that if someone were to knock on the door of a colonial mansion in the middle of the night, it would be a servant who came to answer it and not the daughter of the house wearing her nightgown, even if she had been rummaging in the kitchen for a late-night snack (also very unlikely).
However, I would not at all be surprised if Sheila chose to keep that scene anyway. It was very romantic with the moonlight shining on Albina’s long dark hair, at last let down from its usual elaborate arrangement, and the hero Edward gently touching her face, brushing away the tear that had come when he had announced that he loved her too much to ask her to share the frontier life he was leaving to pursue.

  I was doing my utmost to keep myself from imagining what it would feel like to be the woman who was the object of such tender consideration and caresses, when my phone rang.

  “Hi, Aunt Katrina? It’s Deirdre.”

  “Hey, Deirdre, what’s going on?”

  “I was wondering if you would be free tomorrow to pick me up from my friend’s house. She’s having a birthday party—just a few girls and we’re going to give each other makeovers. My parents can drop me off, but then they have this planning meeting for the foster families’ Fun Day and Josh has to watch Ben and Mia.”

  “Sure, sweetie, I’d love to. What time?”

  “It’s supposed to be finished at seven-thirty. I can text you the address.”

  “No problem. See you tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Katrina! And mom wants to talk to you.”

  I could hear her handing the phone over to Kim.

  “Hi, Katrina. Just wanted to tell you that there’s an informational meeting next Saturday afternoon for potential foster carers, if you want to tell Becky. I don’t remember the time, but I’ll find out and let you know. They’re having the meeting at that big Methodist church on 8th Street.”

  “Oh, great, thanks! I’m sure we’ll be there.”

  I sent a quick text to Becky and then made myself concentrate to finish up editing the last bit of the book. When it was done, I emailed it back to Sheila for her first pass at revising it. I got up to stretch and wandered through the bookstore. It still didn’t feel like mine. I supposed that was because I wasn’t intending to keep it and run it as a bookstore—either I would sell it and all the books, or I would sell most of the books and use it as a ministry bookstore/coffee store. Either way, it would be used for Kingdom purposes.

  I drifted back to where Emily Post’s Etiquette stood on the shelf and pulled it out. I would want to keep this book, no matter what. Suddenly I realized the enormous temptation before me—I now owned thousands of books, and there was a real danger that I would keep far too many of them. Not many more bookshelves would fit in my apartment, and since I didn’t have an office at the college, there would be nowhere to store them except to rent a storage space. And if they were all in storage, what would be the point of keeping them? It was unlikely I would ever need them professionally now, and when I was doing foster care or missionary work I wouldn’t be reading them.

  An unwelcome sense of loss came over me. It wasn’t often I allowed resentment to overtake me, but it was doing so now. I thought of my college friends: most of the girls had married long ago or were successfully following their chosen professions. Why, Lord? I worked hard and I followed you and now all of my training—all those years of study and hard work—are no longer useful. For what I’ll be doing now, I could have just gotten a Bachelor’s Degree in General Studies.

  I pushed Emily back into her place more forcefully than I needed to, stalked back to the desk and packed up my stuff. I knew I was giving way to a bad attitude, but I was unwilling to deal with it right now. I wanted a pity party, and I was going to go home and have one.

  On Saturday evening I went to pick up Deirdre from her friend’s party. She had told me it ended at seven-thirty, but I knew what it was like to be the first to leave a party where your friends are having fun. I thought I’d be just ten minutes late. Not enough to annoy the hosting mom, but also not whisking Deirdre away from the fun too early.

  The house was a few miles outside of Wilkester in a lovely country setting. I rang the doorbell of a beautiful modern house—the sort of house that makes you feel underdressed unless you’re wearing heels and dangle earrings; I was in jeans and a faded UCSC sweatshirt.

  The man who opened the door was nicely dressed, but at least he wasn’t in a suit. I felt a bit better.

  “Hi, I’m here to pick up Deirdre.”

  “Oh, hi, I’m Jason. You must be Katrina. Come in. I’ll get Deirdre.”

  “It’s very quiet,” I said as we walked through the front hall and entered the immense open-plan kitchen-living room. “I expected to see a lot of teenagers with cucumber slices on their eyes.”

  “You missed that part. The other girls left a little while ago.”

  “Oh! Am I late? Deirdre said the party would be done at seven-thirty.”

  “It was actually seven.”

  “Oh, dear, I am sorry! I wish Deirdre had called me and let me know. I could have come earlier.”

  “It was no problem. Tori and Deirdre have been having fun.”

  “Well, I’m glad she hasn’t been in the way. I’m sure you’d like to have the house back to yourselves!”

  “No, really, it’s ok. I’ll go tell Deirdre you’re here.” He left the room and I could hear him climbing stairs. I looked out the sliding glass doors of the living room. The backyard was an amazing garden of flowers and shrubs. There was even a gazebo. I thought that Becky would like to see it—it was exactly the look she was going for in her backyard.

  He came back in. “Deirdre will be a few minutes. I guess they decided to put on some new kind of facial mask and now they have to wash it off.”

  “Oh! That’s fine.” I felt like apologizing again but resisted the impulse. I motioned to the garden outside. “Do you guys like to garden? Your backyard is really amazing.”

  “Thanks. My wife planned the garden but I like to keep it up.” He motioned to a barstool at the kitchen island. “Have a seat. I don’t think the girls will be too long.”

  I sat down and tried to think of something to say.

  “You have a lovely home,” was the first thing that came to mind. “Have you lived here long?”

  “We’ve lived in this house for about ten years. We were in Tacoma before that.”

  “It’s a beautiful area. You must like being out of the city.”

  “Yes. A little inconvenient for running errands but being in the country is worth it.”

  We both sat there a little longer. I wondered where his wife was, but it seemed nosy to ask.

  “So, Deirdre is your niece?” said Jason.

  “Adopted niece. I’ve been close friends with her parents for years, so all their kids call me Aunt Katrina.”

  “That’s nice. Deirdre is a really sweet girl. And an amazing artist.”

  “Oh, you’ve seen her artwork?”

  “Yes, she’s in my Saturday art class. One of my best students, actually.”

  The art teacher! So this was the widowed art teacher she had wanted to set me up with! And she had succeeded in getting me to meet him. That conniving little…

  “Hi, Aunt Katrina!” Deirdre bounced into the room. She gave me a quick hug but avoided my eyes. “Hey, can we stay and help clean up?”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” said Jason. “There’s not that much.”

  “Oh, please?” Tori added her voice. “It’s always more fun to clean if there are more people.”

  “Tori,” said Jason, “You shouldn’t ask people to help you clean up. Don’t feel obliged,” he added, turning to me.

  “Well, I was the one who offered to help,” said Deirdre. “Can we, Aunt Katrina?”

  I was stuck. To refuse to help would look ungracious. And if Jason had any inkling of Deirdre’s intentions, to insist on helping would look scheming. I erred on the side of graciousness.

  “Of course we’ll help. It’s the least we can do after staying so long.”

  The girls cheered and I tried to look normal. I knew I was probably not succeeding.

  “Well, thanks,” said Jason. He didn’t seem all that enthusiastic, and I couldn’t blame him.

  “You hand out the jo
bs,” I said. “We’ll do whatever you say.” I was hoping he wouldn’t put the two girls working together on something—they would probably make their chore take forever. He likely had the same thought because he asked Deirdre to throw away all the trash—used paper plates, napkins, cucumber slices, lemon rinds and whatever other items had gone into their homemade beauty products—and me to sweep the floor. He took on washing the dishes and made Tori dry them. There was very little talking. By the time Deirdre and I finished our jobs, the others were done, too.

  “We need to get going,” I said in a tone that I hoped Deirdre knew meant business.

  She bade an affectionate farewell to her friend, thanked Jason sweetly for hosting the party, and walked cheerily out to the car with me. Tori stood there waving as we drove away.

  I drove only until we were out of sight and then pulled the car over, switched off the engine, and turned to face Deirdre.

  “Young lady, that was a manipulative thing to do.”

  “What?” She said it without much conviction.

  “You know exactly what you did. You purposely gave me the wrong time to pick you up, you made sure that you were not ready to go when I got there, and you insisted on us staying to help clean up.”

  “But—” Deirdre fiddled with her hair. “Are you very mad?”

  “I’m trying not to be.”

  “I was just trying to help.”

  “I feel manipulated,” I said.

  “It’s just that Tori and I thought you and her dad would be perfect for each other.”

  “You and Tori.”

  “Yeah. I was going to get you to come a little late and we would not be ready. That would give you two a chance to talk. And then I’d offer to help clean up and she would second it, and her dad could see how nice you are. And then afterwards she could ask him what he thought of you.”

  “Deirdre!” I was horrified. The poor man was a successful artist and widower. Single women my age must have been throwing themselves at him for the past few years. And now he would think I was one of them, probably having engineered the whole encounter. I knew what he would say when Tori asked him what he thought of me: he wasn’t interested. “She is tolerable, I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me,” might even be his exact words. And while there is a sort of tacit rejection whenever a single man doesn’t like you, once you have been formally presented to him as a possible wife and are declined, the rejection is more obvious. And painful.