by G L Rockey
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
Kay unloaded her stuff on and around her desk, sat and said, “What is it you want?”
“I'm looking for Dr. Zannes.”
“What for?”
“I need her signature.”
“For what?”
“I'm going to take her new grad class.”
“Oh, you are, are you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a graduate student?”
“No.”
“You'll have to get a special permission form filled out, get a copy from….”
“Here's the form, all I need is Dr. Zannes' signature.”
Taking the form, “Are you matriculated?”
“No, but I'm baptized.”
Lips down-turned as if sniffing an offensive odor, she studied him for five seconds. “I meant are you intending to go on to grad school?”
“I hadn't thought about it, but I meet all the requirements to take Zannes' new course.”
She eagle eyed him. “Dr. Zannes.”
“Yes, sorry.”
Looking at the form, she said, “This is no good, you haven't followed the directions, Dr. Zannes has to sign it before it goes to all these other honchos.”
“It's okay, I checked.”
“You did, did you?”
“Why are you being so difficult?”
She handed back the form, “Dr. Zannes won't be in for another hour.”
“Just please give it to her, would you please, I have to be at work at 9:00.”
“It's a waste of time.”
“Why?”
“She won't sign it.”
“I'll wait, then.”
“Thought you had to go to work.”
“I'll be late.”
“She may not even come in today.”
“Will you give it to her or not?”
“I might.”
“'Something there is that doesn't like a wall, that sends the frozen- round-swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun, and makes gaps even two can pass abreast.'”
Lower lip drooping, she gawked at him.
“Robert Frost,” Seth said then schmoozed, “I tried to reach Dr. Zannes a zillion times, she never seems to be in, whatever, would you please get her signature for me?”
She rolled the idea around. “Well, I gotta tell you, Z is a stickler for details.”
“Z?”
“Zannes' handle around the department.”
“Pretty please.”
Delighted at the groveling, “Well, okay, I'll get it to her but I can't promise anything … you can check, probably tomorrow, but, like I said, I doubt Z will approve it.”
“I think she will, I'm sure of it.”
Kay slammed a desk drawer.
Leaving, Seth said, “I'll be back to pick it up. Bye and have a good day.”
CHAPTER NINE
Rachelle awoke to the pulsing android voice of her alarm clock: “Monday … August fifth … eight forty-five.”
Her normal wake-up set for 7:00 A.M., her third snooze reprieve had ended. She wondered if the wee hour call from Carl was a dream, hallucination, or real. Stop the music. I can name that tune in three notes, it was real. She nudged T.S., “Time to make the doughnuts.”
He stretched as Rachelle stood beside the bed, fluffed her hair, discarded Carl's dress shirt and, nude, began her fifty-a-day touch-toe calisthenics.
T.S., deadpan, watched her.
On touch-toe number two, Rachelle recalled a dream just before the alarm went off the first time: on the fifty-yard line of Ford Field, cameras flashing, crowd cheering, a nude football player chased her across the fifty-yard line and tackled her. In there somewhere, Denton Ruffin, dressed only in his black striped NFL official's shirt, blew his silver whistle.
On touch-toe ten: How did I ever agree to this about-to-be sophomoric insanity? She answered: The Lions front office, remember, thought it would be a good idea; Carl needed it for his career. Annnd, you never learned to say no to sophomores, easy speaking Joes and cappuccino, remember. Soft touch Z, just like daddy, E.Z. Eric.
At touch twenty she noticed her palms were moist. Unusual for her but with the anticipated Ford Field circus looming, on a down thrust, aside to T.S., “We're lucky not to have hives.”
T.S. jumped to the floor and bee-lined down the spiral stairs. She knew where he was headed—the kitchen and breakfast. Exhaling, she said, “You'll just have to wait.”
Touch thirty through forty-nine, Rachelle tried to force her mind from her upcoming wedding to fall classes, her new course, but it was useless.
“Fifty.” She slipped on a white terrycloth robe, and made her way down the spiral staircase. The metal steps, cool to her bare feet, morning sunlight streamed through the wall of windows facing the Lake. She went to the kitchen where T.S. sat in front of his blue plastic bowls. T.S. Eliot printed on both, one bowl empty, the other contained water.
“Good morning, Mr. Eliot, all finished with your exercises for the day?”
He yawned widely.
“Yawn all you want but you need to lose ten pounds.” She filled a white mug with tap water, put it in the microwave hit high. Two minutes to boil for her customary cup of Swiss Miss Cappuccino.
T.S. meowed loudly.
“I know, I know, we're running behind today.” She opened a can of Fancy Feast tuna/ shrimp and scooped it in his food bowl.
After a protest pause, he ate.
Rachelle put an English muffin in the toaster, retrieved the Lansing State Journal from the front steps, returned and, water boiled, prepared her cappuccino, today English Toffee. Her muffin popped, she plated it, raspberry jammed it, sat at the kitchen table, sipped, ate, and opened the paper. Comic section always first, to give (in her mind anyway) proper perspective to reality, she ended with Garfield. Today he was bored with everything, including a new neighbor's talking parrot.
Customarily, after the comics, she went to the front page to read the “fiction” of the day. But this morning, instead of the front page, she glided her attention over to the daily Horoscopes and read Pisces: Work needs to be coordinated more carefully. You will meet someone rare this day.
“I meet someone rare every day. Pick another.”
She read Aries: Be on our toes, don't forget the details.
“Think I'll take that one.”
Thinking details, she said, “Something football-ish to impress Carl.” She flipped directly to the Sports Section and read the headline: DETROIT LOSES BIG TIME.
“Uh oh.” She scanned to the left and read:
Sport's Talk by Bud West
GET THE HOOK
Last night's so called football game was a laugher. The Lions couldn't beat Madison High. But worse yet was the Lions' new color commentator, Carl Bostich. At one point in his career he might have been a big star at throwing the pig skin, but last night he didn't know a cheerleader from a tight-end or the umpire from the referee. Maybe the Lions could find him a job as equipment manager. Better yet, Gatoraid Boy. Get a job!
“Uh, oh, Mr. Eliot.”
T.S. looked at her stoically.
“Don't look at me like that.”
He went back to his Fancy Feast and Rachelle began mind-crafting a response to the Bud West article for Carl. Then she thought, Maybe it would be better to just not have seen the article. I think yes, good idea, what article? Is it a lie to tell a florist her ugly floral arrangements are beautiful? I think not.
She finished the paper, stashed cup, saucer and utensils in the dishwasher and, T.S. in front of her, ascended the spiral stairs to the bedroom loft. She showered, dressed in her running gear—white shorts, white Adidas shoes, etc., for she planned, after paperwork at her campus office, to take a long heart pumping jog along the Red Cedar.
Her pony tail secured by a thick rubber band, looking more like a teenager than a professor, she skipped down the spiral staircase.
In the kitchen, pois
ed like he had ancient Egyptian relative, T.S., knowing the routine, looked up at her and yawned. She said, “You be good and stay out of Carl's shoes.”
He yawned again.
In the garage, she pressed the garage door opener and, as the door clattered upward, morning sun gleamed off the polished silver of Carl's BMW. She had dropped him off at the Lansing airport Saturday morning for his flight to San Francisco. He had grumbled about small commuter planes, short flight to Detroit, connecting flights, the Lansing boon-dock airport and stubbornly refused to park his BMW in the uncovered Lansing airport lot.
Coaxing her Saab to life, Rachelle backed out of the garage, pressed the remote, the door closed and she headed, fifteen minutes away, to Michigan State University.
Flowing with the traffic, her thoughts scattering, she focused on Com. 501. She remembered the singular item that had triggered her interest in the subject: a reading of William Faulkner's 1949 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Parts of it were part of her:
...this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work—a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before … the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict, with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat … the basest of all things is to be afraid … forget it forever, leave no room for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice … the poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things.
Thus, the kernel of an idea born, the course would, through written communication, investigate (because, she reasoned, science, by its very nature, must ignore these immeasurable subjects) abstract thoughts such as beauty, truth, trust, compassion and sacrifice.
Stopping for a red light, an obnoxious driver almost hitting her rear bumper, her thoughts careened to Detroit, Ford Field, a million people watching on TV, 65,000 raucous fans in the stadium. She tried to dismiss the gremlin jitters, but inkling doubts wandered to an impending disaster. She recalled her triple-threat (mental, emotional, physical) fantasy, the significant males in her life: premature Tom, alcoholic Ed, in-love-with-his-fist Anthony, no-show Allen.
She signed, “Alas, perhaps my knight doesn't exist.” She glanced at herself in the read view mirror, “Z, how do you get yourself in these never-ending amour melodramas?”
The light turned green, she pulled away, sighed. Carl, a release, convenient, someone to go to the faculty Christmas parties with, lacks the first two attributes but, makes up for it in the rack.
“Dr. Zannes!”
Relax, that triple dream is a figment of your imagination anyway.
Then came to mind her uncanny dark-side attraction to Carl: she had realized, since Psychology 101, that she was cursed with low self-esteem, a need to be dominated. Her father had been intensely protective of her, but he exited without paying the bill. She had, since his suicide, straddled life's nothing-hereafter mystery with a reason for her condition: somehow his death, all that ugly loss, must have got twisted into a need to be secure. She knew one thing for sure: deep down she desperately missed her father. She often wondered if there was a hereafter where those who took their life dwelled. The life after death dredging brought to mind a matrimonial schism. Carl wanted her, so they could be married in the Church, to convert to Catholicism. She remembered her father, Catholic, her mother wouldn't covert. The Church refused to marry them. Hello.
That aside, she had major problems with the Church's bureaucracy, ostentatious vestments (she recalled Christ was usually depicted in sandals and a ratty ankle-length robe), ceremony, rules and regulations. Not to mention, over a nude bite of apple, if one slipped up, eternal damnation. And then there was the flood story. Every living thing on an old man's leaky boat? No, she couldn't get from here to there, couldn't accept the Judeo-Christian version of the never-ending drama.
Her cell phone began to ring. ID: Carl. She answered, “Long time no speak.”
Carl: “Where are you?”
She rolled her eyes, “Driving to campus.”
“For what?”
“Going to pick up a pizza.”
Pause. “Not funny.”
“I have a zillion things to do, classes start August 26, rememb—”
“I called the house, you AGAIN forgot to turn on the answering machine, sweets.”
“Oh, rats, I'm sorry, I keep asking T.S. to pick-up but he keeps saying, not my job.”
“Not funny.”
“Oh Carl….”
“Don't forget, I get in at 5:30 this afternoon.”
“United, right.”
“No! Northwest! I told you that.”
“Oh, that's right, sorry.”
“Geez all mighty.”
“Carl….”
“You might want to get there a little early.”
“Right.”
“Got the jitters?”
“About picking you up?”
“Ha, ha, next Saturday.”
“No, do you?”
“I'm the quarterback, babe, playing for keeps, love the fifty yard line, see you at 5:30, bye.”
Tone.
She put the phone on the seat and said, “Wait 'til Mr. Playing-for-keeps reads the Bud West article in the Lansing State Journal.”
She stopped for a red light and her cell phone rang again. She knew who it was, answered, “And….”
Carl: “Hey, babe, I didn't remember if I told you, plane gets in at 5:30.”
She rolled her eyes, “You told me.”
“Where are you now?”
“What?”
“I wondered if you stopped for gas?”
“No, couple miles from campus.”
“Gotta go, see you tonight.”
Putting the phone down, she smiled at Carl's behavior. He cares, that's all.
The light turned green, a horn behind blowing, she waved, waited an extra five seconds, then pulled away.
Driving, thinking of Carl’s phone quirks, she remembered a night at Max & Erma's, Carl said he was going to pin a phone pager on her butt. Laughing that off, he explained, not a loser, never was, never would be, he loved her madly.
Then, there it was again. That uncanny feeling, a hairline crack in the porcelain. A fear that someday that crack might lead to a violent end. But no, that couldn't be, TV news stuff, she wouldn't allow it, she was too intelligent to allow that to happen. In any case, one thing she had resolved, there would be no children. To assure that, meticulous with the management of her body, leery of pills, she relied on cervical caps.
Nearing campus, she gripped the steering wheel with both hands, smiled at a thought: Nothing in reality ever seems to match up with what you dream or think or create in your fantasies. Something like that … on with knowledge.
CHAPTER TEN
Just after 10:00 A.M., Rachelle turned into the empty faculty parking lot next to Bessey Hall and drove to a remote corner where she nudged her Saab into a slot. Her sentiment, often expressed: Why waste time exercising if you park close, takes elevators, etc.
Walking to the Bessey Hall entrance, savoring the smell of fresh-cut grass, she felt something else—a stillness in the air, impending discovery.
She entered the building, made her way up one flight of stairs to the second floor and walked the short distance to her office. At the entrance, she noticed that someone had drawn a smiley face on her bumper sticker and written after the Berlo 'meanings are in people not words' quote: Trouble is, all we gots is words.
She entered the receptionist area.
Opening mail, her assistant, Kay Jackson looked up, “And a good morning to you, Dr. Z.”
“Good morning, Kay.”
“You look chipper this morning, must have heard
about Elisabeth Sweetwater.”
Rachelle raised an eyebrow.
“She resigned, going to Central Michigan, heading the Communication Department.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Memo from Dean Rait.” She held the memo up. “Short and sweet.” Rachelle took it and read.
Kay said, “Going for a jog?”
“Yes, later.” She handed the memo back to Kay. “Who's been writing on my Berlo sticker?”
Kay looked surprised. “I didn't notice….” Her eyes narrowed and she thumped her letter opener to her desk, “I bet I know.”
“Who?”
“Some weird student was in here this morning, met me at the door, looking for permission to take your new course. Undergrad, senior, pushy, needs some elective hours, left a permission form, his advisor signed it. So did … well here.” Kay held out the form. “He has all the signatures but yours … didn't follow instructions.”
Rachelle took the form, scanned it in a glance.
Kay said, “He's a presumptuous asshole.”
Rachelle smiled. “Genius is sometimes disguised as such.”
“Not this guy, he's weird.” Kay circled an index finger at her temple.
“Dressed like a Russian peasant … ratty T-shirt, some kind of army boots, hair like an uncut lawn. Quoting Robert Frost. Please, Dr. Zannes, don't let him in. I don't wanna have to deal with him all year. I can see it now, he'll be in her every time there's a glitch in the cock crows twice.”
“Kay, be nice.” Rachelle entered her office, closed her door, and flipped on the overhead lights.
The office space about the size of a modest motel room, the beige walls exuded library stillness. To the right of the entrance sat a modest wood desk behind which was a blue-fabric-covered chair. Two similar covered straight-back chairs faced the desk. The floor covered with gray commercial grade carpet, closed vertical blinds blocked light coming through a window. A round conference table with four chairs sat next to the window and open shelves on two walls were replete with journals and books of all shapes and sizes. A third wall featured oil paintings by Rachelle's father. One was of a quaint farm house in front of which a maiden feeds a gaggle of white geese. Another was of a sailboat, the stern showing Esther II. Another, a still life of apples and pears. And lastly, the portrait of a radiant beauty, with a small name plate bottom center–Esther Webster Zannes.