Tenure Track

by Victoria Bradley

  The grimy bathroom reeked with a combination of urine, old vomit, and stale beer. The floor was covered with some unknown sticky substance that clung to his shoes when he walked. He still could not quite catch his breath, and may not have wanted to in that environment. It was not the alcohol that was making him sick, however. It was the desperate feeling of being so close to something he wanted and not being able to have it. He stood with his head against the wall, trying to slow his body down long enough to take a full breath, when he heard Gus open the door and shuffle inside.

  “Hey Dude, Mandy wanted me to check on ya. ‘Thought you might need to puke.”

  Lewis assured the Marine that he would be fine. As Gus nodded and entered a stall, Lewis sneaked outside to get some fresh air. Unfortunately, thanks to a city-wide smoking ban, the sidewalks were lined with smokers puffing away, reminding him of the more unpleasant sights, sounds and smells of 20-something nightlife.

  He stood with his back against the brick wall, his face tilted towards the sky. His eyes were closed when Mandy emerged from the club frantically looking for him. When she asked if he was alright, without even thinking, he took her hand and patted it, then held it to his chest without opening his eyes. She could feel his heartbeat beneath his T-shirt. After a moment, he half-opened his eyes and locked them with hers. “Thank you,” he said, intently.

  Before she had a chance to ask what he was thanking her for, the rest of the crew fell out of the club. Mandy quickly withdrew her hand and Lewis stood up straight. The general consensus was that everyone was tired of clubbing and ready to hit an all-night diner for some real food.

  Forty-five minutes later the group was being served a variety of flapjacks at a café two blocks from home. Gus’s cell phone rang just as they were starting to eat. It was Gabe, calling in to report that the band had just made it home, having bummed a ride off of some new friend whose name he could not recall. However, they were locked out, since Gabe had forgotten to take a house key with him. After rejecting Gus’s initial suggestion that they just crash on the front lawn until the rest of the group arrived, the older brother patiently explained to the younger how to crawl in through one of the unlatched windows in the kitchen. “Just watch out for the sink. There might be knives or somethin’ in there,” Gus advised.

  After he hung up, Julie reminded him that they also kept a spare key hidden outside. Gus smiled knowingly, stating that it was more fun making Gabe or one of his buddies try to squish themselves through the tiny kitchen window. Gabe’s call was the highlight of the mealtime conversation, as exhaustion overtook everyone in the group. Slowly eating his pancakes, Lewis felt his brain beginning to turn into a fog of confusion. He was not sure he could put together a coherent sentence if he wanted to.

  Julie drove the silent crew back to the house by 4:30 a.m. Lewis tried to recall the last time he had seen this side of 4:30 a.m. Getting out of the Camry, he stared at his Prius parked in the street, knowing he was neither sober nor awake enough to drive. He figured he would just sleep it off in the car for a few hours before heading home. Gus leaned heavily against Julie as they made their way inside, followed by a slowly staggering Blanca.

  Lewis turned towards his car then back to Mandy, trying to think of a proper way to say goodnight. Without speaking, she grabbed his hand and led him inside. The living room was still dark, a trove of teenaged guests snoring loudly on the floor after having succeeded in their break-in. Blanca collapsed into a large fan chair. As Gus and Julie headed to their room, he softly mumbled that his stump was hurting. “I know, Baby,” she gently whispered as they walked with their arms wrapped tightly around one another.

  Mandy pulled Lewis upstairs by the hand. He did not have the energy to resist or even ask where they were going. Reaching the open bedroom door at the top of the stairs, she finally explained. “You can crash in my room. I’ll bunk with Blanca.”

  He nodded obediently as they entered her room. She turned on a small lamp perched on a nightstand and pointed to the unmade bed with yellow flowered sheets. He looked around the room, but between his bleariness and the darkness could not make out much of the décor. On the nightstand were two framed photographs. One was Mandy, wearing a formal gown, in a professionally made portrait with a couple who must have been her mother and stepfather, both dressed immaculately, with perfectly quaffed hair. Her stepfather was smiling a well-choreographed politician smirk. The silver-haired man looked slightly familiar, but Lewis’s bleary mind could not place the face. Her mother looked like she was trying to smile, but her overall countenance was that of complete seriousness.

  The other photograph was an outdoor snapshot of Mandy with a rather grungy-looking middle-aged man who had a greying ponytail and goatee, dressed like a motorcycle enthusiast. In that one, Mandy was wearing a swimsuit, hugging her daddy and laughing. The two photos offered a perfect window into the contrasting worlds of Mandy’s family.

  Lewis quietly sat down on the edge of the bed, having not spoken a word since they got out of the car. He took off his bowling shirt and hat and laid them on the bed, mumbling, “Whew, it’s hot in here.”

  Mandy offered to turn on the ceiling fan over the bed. She came closer, standing next to him and leaning one leg on the bed as she pulled a chain to start the fan. As she started to stand back up straight, Lewis gently slid his hand around her waist and pulled her slowly in front of him, so that she was standing between his legs as he sat on the bed. He put his hands in hers, intertwining their fingers. Mandy kept her body about a foot away from his, but stared down into his eyes, with her hair hanging down and lightly brushing his face. She placed her hands around his head, running her fingers through the back of his hair, now matted down by his hat and sweat. The fragrance of her perfume combined with perspiration and second-hand cigarette smoke to create a scent that would have intoxicated him had he not already drunk too much.

  After what seemed like an eternity, she leaned down and tenderly kissed him on the forehead, like a mother would a small child, only lingering slightly longer. His head tasted delightfully salty. He stared straight into her eyes, longing for more a intimate embrace. As he started to lean forward, Mandy pulled back and grabbed him in a tight hug, pressing her body against his so that he could feel her heart pounding. He slowly rubbed her back, outlining the exposed curve of the tattoo, gently sliding his hand slightly underneath the fabric in the back of her shirt. Just the feel of her bare skin sent shockwaves throughout his body. After a moment of this caressing, she stood up to face him, but did not pull away completely. Still standing between his legs, she took his left hand and held it in hers, staring at his wedding band.

  Quietly, she whispered, “Lewis. I really like you, but I don’t want you to get in trouble. I don’t do hook-ups and I don’t wanna be your rebound girl. And . . .” She held up his ring finger. “Technically you’re still a married man. That’s bad news. So let’s just hold off on this for now, okay?”

  He nodded in agreement, closing his eyes. She gently kissed his hand, then broke from his embrace and backed towards the door. After she left, Lewis fell back on the bed and repeated her words: “Let’s just hold off on this for now.” For now. Not a rejection, but an expression of hope. Hope that one day, perhaps, that tattooed backside would be his.

  He took off the rest of his clothes and lay spread across the bed, inhaling her scent on the sheets. As he replayed their encounter in his mind, he envisioned how it might have continued had she allowed him to kiss her. Disregarding his surroundings, he slipped his hand between his legs and indulged in the fantasy, drifting into sleep imagining the warm sensation of being inside of her.

  The next morning, he awoke around 8 a.m. with a pounding head and the realization that his nocturnal fantasies had left the sheets a mess. Poking his head out of the room, he saw no one and dashed into the bathroom to clean up and find some aspirin. The house was cold. Looking around, he could see that everyone was still asleep, although Blanca had apparently made it up the sta
irs at some point. He glanced into the room where she lay in her bed, snoring softly next to Mandy. Blanca was still wearing her clothes from the night before, but Mandy had changed into a long sleep shirt. All he could see was her face and shoulders, the rest covered by a thick comforter.

  As he watched the sleeping women, Lewis marveled at the entire quartet of roommates. Through Mandy’s friends, he had gained further insight into her. These were neither geeks, Greeks nor jocks. These were the truly smart kids, those who defied stereotypes: intelligent enough to make excellent grades, but normal enough to spend their evenings dancing at nightclubs and buying alcohol with fake I.D.s; ambitious and goal-driven, but focused on making a difference, not just on making money. He had almost forgotten that such students existed, seeing so many as he did like cattle racing through a pen. Was I ever that idealistic? Despite the clanging in his head, he felt privileged to have entered their world, even for one night.

  After tiptoeing around the house, he found the washing machine in a small room beside the kitchen. He did not want to leave the mess in Mandy’s bed, lest she think he was some kind of pervert. He stripped off the sheets and threw them into the laundry. Unable to find any replacement sheets, he left the mattress bare, save for a note:

  Mandy,

  Thank you for the wonderful evening. I put the sheets in the washer. Enjoy the rest of Spring Break. I look forward to seeing you next week.

  Yours,

  Lewis

  With that, Lewis sneaked past the snoring musicians’ bodies in the living room and left the house, feeling as if his life had been transformed within the past 12 hours. When he got home, he took off his wedding ring and placed it in a matchbox.

  Chapter 17

  Vengeance

  Much to Jane’s consternation, the fall semester ended with no resolution to the Burns scandal. After speaking separately with each party, the mediator recommended a longer cooling off period before the resolution meeting, set for the first week of spring semester.

  On the homefront, the children completed their sentences for lying and Dana’s team recovered from its devastating first loss by annihilating the competition throughout December. Even though she was playing some of her best basketball ever, Dana was also drawing more fouls than usual, attacking the court with an intensity and aggression her parents had not previously witnessed. She also seemed to be spending more time with Coach Gibson, assisting with junior varsity games, maintaining equipment and doing just about any task he assigned.

  Jane was glad that the family already planned to spend much of the winter break in Florida visiting Mark’s mother, otherwise she feared Dana might spend the entire break in the school gym. They were fortunate that this year part of their break overlapped with Hanukkah, thus allowing them to share the holiday with Bubbe. Although Mark had long-since given up regular practice of his faith and even attended church with the rest of the family, he had refused to convert and still observed the major Jewish holidays for his mother’s sake. The children never could relate to solemn Jewish holy days like Yom Kippur, but they enjoyed the family traditions of Hanukkah and Passover. Between eating latkes and playing dreidel, they added more footage to their web documentary.

  The holiday trip seemed to relax everyone in the family, even Dana. Once she resumed classes and basketball, however, her black mood returned. Jane longed for the end of the season, hoping that freedom from the pressures of play would ease her child’s tension.

  Her worries reached a crisis point in mid-January. Jane was meeting with Gary the week before the U.’s spring semester started, to give him an update on the mediation process. As she stood to leave, his telephone rang. He answered it, with a bit of annoyance in his voice. Jane motioned that she would let herself out, but Gary raised his hand to stop her, then took the telephone away from his ear. “It’s Isobel. She’s trying to track you down.”

  As she took the telephone from his hand, he offered a shrug indicating that he had no idea why the secretary would have gone to the trouble of calling her at his office. Isobel normally refused to put forth such effort unless someone’s family member had died. A mixture of dread and curiosity overcame Jane as she answered.

  Isobel announced breathlessly that the St. Luke’s principal was trying to track down either her or Mark, but neither was answering their office or cell phones. “It seems Dennis was assaulted at school,” the alpha dog reported, clearly savoring her knowledge of some possibly scandalous story.

  Jane was taken aback. “Assaulted? How?”

  “He wouldn’t say,” Isobel responded, although she had tried her best to wheedle the information out of the principal. She had been lucky to cajole the word “assault” from him.

  Jane soon hung up and excused herself from Gary’s office, headed first to Floyd Hall, where Mark was teaching a graduate course. Her mind raced through all of the possibilities about what could have happened. The last thing they ever worried about at St. Luke’s was violence. The campus had excellent security and a very strict no-fighting policy, but Isobel did not say that he had been fighting. She said he was “assaulted,” a word implying innocence on his part.

  What could have provoked such an attack? Although Dennis could certainly be a smart aleck, he had never had any serious conflicts with other students as far as Jane knew. Perhaps, she thought, some obnoxious comment had triggered a violent response. But what could be that serious?

  Steering the Cruiser up the long driveway to St. Luke’s, Jane and Mark spotted a city police car outside the main doors. Once inside, they were directed to the principal's office. He met them in the administrative foyer, careful to shut his office door behind him, but not quick enough to prevent Jane from glimpsing two standing police officers talking to two seated people. She recognized one of the seated persons as Dr. Phillip Tighe, a noted heart surgeon whose son Mitchell had “talked trash” to Dennis at the opening basketball game. The principal offered apologies but no explanation as he led them to the nurse’s office, where Dennis was sitting in a chair with glasses off to reveal an oozing cut just below the right eye that was rapidly turning purple, and a badly swollen lip. Dana was also in the room, talking quietly with her brother. They both jumped slightly when they saw their parents.

  “Hey, folks,” Dennis said weakly. “How do ya like my new look?”

  Jane and Mark quickly surrounded him. As Jane began to give him a hug, the nurse cautioned her. “Be careful. I think he may have some bruised ribs. You might want to take him in for X-rays.”

  “Good grief, Dennis, what happened?” Jane questioned.

  “’Dunno. Mitch just went postal on me. ’Guess he was off his meds.”

  The principal interjected. “Apparently from what witnesses have said, Dennis and another student passed in the hallway, then the other student just turned around and started attacking your son. Normally, our policy is to suspend both students involved in a fight, but in this case it does look like an unprovoked assault, and Dennis did nothing to fight back.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t gonna get kicked out, too, just because some nut job went wacko.”

  “You didn’t even try to defend yourself?” Mark spoke up, incredulous. Jane glared at her husband, not appreciating the implication that Dennis should have risked suspension by striking back.

  “Well, it wasn’t like he was armed,” Dennis noted. “I knew he wasn’t gonna kill me. Besides, he’s gotta wimpy punch. Dana could kick his butt. After he got me on the ground and broke my glasses, I tried to block my head and he went after my ribs.” He pulled up his sleeves to exhibit the multiple defensive bruises already beginning to show on the backs of his arms, then removed his eyeglasses from his left front pocket to reveal bent frames and one missing lens. He put the broken glasses on his face and covered the empty frame with one hand. “Hey, this side still works!”

  Jane was getting annoyed by his cavalier attitude. She turned to Dana. “Did you see this happen?”

  “No,” she said, leaping up from the
desk upon which she had been leaning. “I just heard about it and came to check on him.”

  Jane paused. Dana sounded truthful, but there was anxiety in her voice and facial expression, as if she feared getting punished herself. Jane dismissed the notion and turned back to getting the facts of the case. Mark fiddled with his son’s broken glasses, saying very little.

  The principal explained that the attacker would be immediately suspended, with expulsion considered at the next school board meeting. Also, the police had been notified and Dennis had the right to file assault charges if he wished.

  At this, Dennis spoke up. “Oh, I don’t wanna mess with that.”

  Jane was puzzled. “Dennis, this kid needs a wake-up call. If he has violent tendencies, they need to be addressed. Filing charges will be the best way to make sure that happens.”

  “Aw, Mom, maybe he was just havin’ a bad day,” Dennis insisted.

  His attitude was beginning to annoy her. “You call this a bad day?” she asked, pointing to his wounds. She looked sharply at Mark, who still had very little to contribute to the conversation. Jane fumed at her son’s inaction for a few more minutes until one of the uniformed police officers entered the room. He was rather young, but very polite, introducing himself as Patrol Officer Kenney.

  The officer explained that he had already spoken to Dennis once, but now that he had spoken with the suspect, Mitchell Tighe, he needed to go over a few things with Dennis. Jane found it amusing that the officer had no qualms about naming Mitchell, while the principal would only refer to him as “another student,” in a useless but familiar administrative effort to protect the boy’s privacy.