Testing Kate

by Whitney Gaskell

  The tears were now streaming down my cheeks, and I angrily wiped them away with the back of my hand. I glared down at the receptionist, whose lips were now pursing with irritation. It was lucky for me that this was a university and not a corporation, where a squad of efficient ex-military security guards with crew cuts and beefy biceps would be marching in right about now to restrain me.

  “It’s okay, Ruth,” a calm voice said. I looked up to see a petite woman, elegantly dressed in a professional navy blue suit, standing in the doorway. Her dark hair was cut short in a pixie, and the freckles on her face made her seem younger than she probably was. Despite the conservative cut of her suit, she had on tan leather pumps with very high heels and pointy toes. “Please, come back into my office.”

  I grabbed my knapsack and managed to abstain from shooting Ruth a triumphant smile as I skirted around her desk. No sense in rubbing it in.

  “Close the door and have a seat,” she said.

  I closed the door and made my way to one of the visitors’ chairs, which was upholstered in cobalt blue fabric. I glanced around the office. It was standard institutional stuff—a desk and credenza similar to the reception furniture, a metal lateral file, a bookshelf on the wall opposite the desk. But Sullivan had added some personal touches, including an oriental rug, watercolor paintings on the wall, and family photos on the shelves featuring her, a smiling man with thinning red hair who I took to be her husband, and a beaming coltish girl with a wide smile and curly pigtails.

  “I’m Teresa Sullivan. And you are…,” she said. She arched her eyebrows.

  “Kate. Kate Bennett,” I said. “I’m a One-L.”

  “And what can I help you with, Kate?” she asked.

  I didn’t know if she hadn’t noticed my tear-streaked cheeks or if she was just too polite to comment on them. I drew in a shaky breath. “I need to transfer out of my Crim class,” I said. “My professor hates me.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I have Professor Hoffman. He called on me the first day of class and I wasn’t prepared—I had some problems with my moving van on the way down here, and I missed orientation, so I didn’t know about the reading assignment—and he ridiculed me in front of the entire class. And then he did the same thing last Friday, although I was prepared then, I just got…nervous, I guess. So then I tried to apologize to him about it before class today, and he was awful,” I said, the words falling out of me in a great rush.

  The assistant dean nodded. “Hoffman can be tough. But sometimes new law students who aren’t used to the Socratic method of guided questioning feel that their professors are being antagonistic, when in reality it’s just a teaching tool, a way to help you develop necessary critical-thinking skills.”

  “No, it’s not that. He mocked me and told me I lacked the discipline to be a student here,” I said, shaking my head emphatically. “Trust me, Hoffman hates me. You have to move me into another class.”

  “I can’t do that. First years aren’t allowed to change sections, barring some sort of extraordinary situation.”

  “I would think having a professor who despises me, who has a…a…personal vendetta against me, would qualify as an extraordinary situation.”

  Teresa Sullivan folded her hands on her desk. “The first year of law school is always difficult. I remember it all too well—the stress, the workload, the competition. Sometimes the cumulative effect of all of that pressure can make some problems seem unmanageable,” she said.

  “He’s going to fail me,” I said, remembering Hoffman’s ominous claim that the student who stood up to him in class always ended up with the lowest grade. It had sounded like a threat.

  “No, he can’t. Not purposely, anyway. All of the testing at Tulane is anonymous.”

  “Okay, so he’s just going to make my life a living hell for the rest of the semester.”

  “I’ll tell you what. Give it a few more weeks. And after that, if you still feel uncomfortable in his class or feel that you’re being singled out, I’ll talk about your concerns with you again at that time,” Sullivan said.

  “I can tell you right now he’s going to continue to target me. Can’t I switch into another section now, when it’s still early enough in the semester that I can get caught up on the reading assignments?” I asked.

  “No. I’m sorry, Kate, but please try to understand our position. If we switched every first year who was unhappy, it would be complete chaos. Everyone would want to move around. We have to limit schedule changes to only the most extreme situations,” Sullivan said. Suddenly she smiled at me. “I promise you, Hoffman’s not as bad as you think. In a few weeks you’ll get used to his teaching style, and you’ll stop feeling so shy when you’re called on in class. You’ll look back on this and laugh.”

  “If you say so,” I said. I felt hollow, as if the anxiety had left behind a sickly, sour emptiness.

  “It will get better. It just takes time. After a while you’ll get so used to talking in class, you won’t even remember why it made you so nervous to be called on in the beginning. It’s not as though you’re graded on your answers…so try to embrace it as a learning tool, as a way to gain a deeper understanding of the course material. Okay?”

  I’ll have to take her word on that, I thought darkly. But I nodded, and stood.

  “Thanks for your time,” I said.

  “Anytime. My door is always open,” she said.

  Chapter Eight

  After the waitress took our order, I surreptitiously checked the time.

  “That’s the fourth time you’ve looked at your watch since we sat down,” Nick complained.

  “I just don’t want to be late for my first day of work,” I said.

  I was supposed to meet Armstrong at an address on Magazine Street, a few miles uptown from my apartment. Over our heavenly dinner at Jacques-Imo’s, Armstrong had told me his plan to write a book about D-Day. It was part of the reason he’d decided to return to New Orleans after his retirement from the University of Virginia. There was an enormous D-Day museum downtown, and the curator had agreed to grant Armstrong liberal access to the collection. World War II history had always fascinated me—I’d done my undergraduate thesis on the workforce of women who manned the factories during the war—and the idea that I was going to be instrumental in researching a book on the subject was thrilling.

  Armstrong hadn’t said what we were going to do that afternoon, but I was so keyed up, I couldn’t settle down to study. So when Nick had swung by to see if I wanted to grab some lunch, I readily agreed. Although now that we’d gotten to the restaurant—a grimy little hole-in-the-wall with sticky Formica-topped tables, hard-faced waitresses with tattoos covering their arms, and Southern rock playing over the radio—I wasn’t so sure I’d made the right decision. I didn’t really have the time to deal with a bout of food poisoning. I decided to play it safe and ordered a BLT. Nick, braver than me, ordered something called the Mudbug Platter.

  “You’re nuts to be doing this. No one can hold down a job, even a part-time one, during their One-L year,” Nick said.

  “I heard that one of the Two-Ls is a stripper,” I said.

  This piqued Nick’s interest. “Oh, yeah? Which one?”

  I shrugged. “No idea. And it might just be an urban legend of the law school variety.”

  “I bet it’s that redheaded girl. The one who always wears really short skirts. She was giving me the eye at the last Bar Review,” Nick said dreamily.

  I snorted. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know a nice way of putting this, but you’re sort of a slut,” I said. It was true. Nick hooked up nearly every weekend, always with a different woman he met out at a bar or party.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Nick said, shaking his head. “I’m a man. Men can’t be sluts. I’m just following my biological predisposition.”

  “Which is?”

  “To spread my seed, thus propagating my genetic
line,” Nick said.

  I opened my mouth, trying to think of something to say to this, and then thought better of it. I closed my mouth, pressing my lips together with disapproval, and shook my head.

  “What?” Nick asked.

  “I knew a guy in college like you. He scammed on every girl he saw and hooked up constantly. And do you want to know what he told me?”

  “He enjoyed every minute of it?”

  “He said that one morning, after he’d had yet another meaningless one-night stand with yet another anonymous girl, he was in her bathroom, planning his escape, and he caught sight of himself in the mirror. And in that moment he was so filled with self-loathing, he actually spit at his own reflection,” I said.

  “So he not only snuck out on the chick, he also messed up her bathroom? Can you imagine having to clean someone else’s spit off your bathroom mirror?”

  “That’s so not the point of the story,” I said.

  “There was a point?”

  “Yes! It’s that sleeping around may not be making you as happy as you think it is,” I said.

  “God, you really don’t know men at all, do you?” Nick said.

  The waitress slapped our plates down on the table. My BLT looked nonthreatening, but the platter in front of Nick held what looked like forty miniature lobsters, complete with eyes, antennae, and claws, boiled to a revolting shade of reddish-brown and served with a mountain of curly French fries.

  “What are those things?”

  “Mudbugs. Also known as crawfish,” Nick said.

  “How do you eat them?” I asked.

  “Like so,” Nick said. He picked up one of the crustaceans, twisted off its head, and sucked out the contents of its body. It was possibly the most revolting thing I’d ever seen in my life.

  “Ça c’est bon,” Nick pronounced in a surprisingly good Cajun accent.

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” I said, pushing my sandwich aside as Nick picked up and beheaded another crawfish.

  “Do you want to try one?” he asked.

  “Um, no.”

  “Your loss,” Nick said happily. “Hey, have you done the Contracts reading assignment yet? Is it bad?”

  “Brutal.”

  “Great,” Nick sighed. “Tell me again why I decided to go to law school?”

  “Actually, I don’t know. You never told me,” I said. I picked up my sandwich and nibbled at an edge. As long as I didn’t focus on Nick’s slurping—which was hard to do—I thought I might be able to choke it down.

  “To Kill a Mockingbird. I wanted to be Atticus Finch,” Nick said.

  “Really?”

  Nick shrugged. “No. But it sounds good, doesn’t it? Atticus Finch was the ultimate good guy. He was smart and socially conscious and an ace marksman.”

  “So if it wasn’t Atticus, how did you end up here?”

  “Paternal pressure. My dad talked me into it.”

  “Oh, right. He’s a lawyer, isn’t he?”

  Nick nodded. He tossed the carcass of a crawfish into a plastic basket the waitress had thoughtfully provided. “He’s a tax and estate lawyer in D.C. He wants me to join his firm when I get out of school.”

  “At least you have a guaranteed job lined up,” I said.

  “In tax? I don’t think so. But I have a few years to break it to him,” Nick said.

  “Will he be upset?”

  “Definitely. Good old Dad. He likes getting his way.”

  “What kind of law are you going to practice?” I asked.

  I had no idea what sort of practice I was going to end up in. Litigation? Transactional? The district attorney’s office? Probably whatever I could get a job in, I thought darkly. First I had to pass Hoffman’s Criminal Law class.

  “I’m going into supermodel law,” Nick announced.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, like that even exists.”

  “Models need legal representation too, don’t they? And I’m just the guy for the job. Seriously, I have it all planned out. And then I’ll write a best-selling autobiography called Supermodel Lawyer, and it will be made into a movie starring Will Smith.”

  “Will Smith?” I asked dubiously.

  “Why not? I know what you’re thinking—I’m white and he’s black, so he’s not the obvious choice. But that’s what artistic license is for.”

  “No, I’m just shocked that you think someone as talented, good-looking, and funny as Will Smith would be the actor chosen to play you in the movie of your life,” I said, and then shrieked when Nick picked up a crawfish and thrust it at me, pretending to let it nibble my hand. “Ugh, get that thing away from me.”

  Nick just laughed and popped the mudbug’s head off.

  “Where do you want me to drop you?” Nick asked. He was threading his way through the slow-moving traffic on Magazine Street in his Mini.

  I looked down at the piece of paper Armstrong had given me. “He just gave me the address,” I said. “I assume it’s a museum or historical house or something.”

  “I don’t see anything like that around here,” Nick said. “Just stores.”

  Both sides of the street were lined with shops, most advertising that they sold “genuine” antiques. Some were housed in converted cottages, others in newer construction, but all were cute and busy. Shoppers bustled around from store to store, spilling out onto the sidewalks with arms full of shopping bags.

  “Wait! There he is,” I said, pointing to a spot on the sidewalk where Armstrong was standing. He was wearing a seersucker suit today over a pressed white oxford shirt, looking every bit the Southern gentleman.

  “That’s Armstrong McKenna? He’s shorter than he looks on television,” Nick said. He pulled over to the curb. “Here you go. Service with a smile.”

  “Thanks for lunch,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, it was great. First you called me a male slut, then you disparaged my food. That Graham is a lucky guy, all right,” Nick said. He poked me in the side to show he was just kidding.

  “Wish me luck,” I said, surprised at how nervous I actually felt.

  “Good luck,” Nick said. “Although I’m sure you won’t need it. You’ll do great.”

  “Was that a beau?” Armstrong asked, after Nick drove off.

  “Who, Nick? No, just a friend.”

  “What a pity,” Armstrong said, turning. We started to walk down the sidewalk, passing through throngs of tourists and shoppers all out taking advantage of the beautiful fall weather. “He had a nice smile. Very sexy.”

  “He’s a goofball. But you may be right about his smile. A lot of women seem to fall for it.”

  “But not you?”

  I shook my head. “No. I have a boyfriend.”

  “Ah, that’s right. But he doesn’t live here, correct? What did you say again? He’s an archaeologist in Utah?”

  “Close,” I said, with a laugh. “He’s an astronomy professor in Arizona.”

  Armstrong shuddered. “Bad idea. You should never get involved with an academic. They’re all insufferable.”

  “You’re an academic,” I pointed out.

  “I was an academic. That’s how I know. Trust me. Trade him in for the young man with the sexy smile,” Armstrong said. He took a sharp left and started down the walkway of a one-story white shotgun house with black shutters. A white sign hung by the door, with the words BIG EASY ANTIQUES and a fleur-de-lis painted on it in black.

  “So is there a museum around here or something?” I asked, looking around. “I thought you said you wanted to do some research today.”

  “I do,” Armstrong said. “Tables.”

  “Tables?” I repeated.

  “Obviously, I need to redecorate. I can’t live in a whorehouse forever. So I thought I’d start with a new dining-room table,” he said. As though this made all the sense in the world.

  “And you wanted me here because…,” I said, my voice trailing off in a question.

  “I need a second opinion,” Armstrong said.

&nbs
p; “We’re going shopping?” I asked, crestfallen that we weren’t going to start researching Armstrong’s book.

  “That we are, darlin’. That we are.”

  Chapter Nine

  When I was in the sixth grade, my father gave my mother a Betamax videocassette recorder for Christmas.

  The gift did not go over well.

  My mom looked at the VCR, sitting on a pile of discarded green wrapping paper dotted with tiny red poinsettias, the same way she might have if he’d gotten her a vacuum cleaner or a mop. Her face tightened with anger, her cheeks reddening and her mouth pursing up. Not only was it wholly impersonal, it was really meant for family use, and thus, to a woman who had been coveting a gold necklace from Tiffany’s, the VCR was a truly shitty present.

  I have a very clear memory of that Christmas. My mom carefully avoided speaking to, or even looking at, my father for the rest of the day. She and her younger sister, my aunt Caroline, had a whispered conference in the kitchen, but I couldn’t hear what was said, even when I pressed a glass to the wall (a technique I’d learned about in a Nancy Drew novel), not with my baby cousin Jenna running around like a shrieking monkey. But it was pretty clear: My mom was pissed. And dinner was even worse.

  “What is this we’re eating again? Osso buco? Oh, how…innovative,” Grandmother Bennett had said. She poked at the osso buco with her fork.

  Jenna squawked when she upended her milk right into the green-bean casserole. Caroline, who was pregnant, excused herself to throw up in the toilet.

  “More wine, anyone?” my father asked, looking grim.

  Later that night, when my father started to unpack the VCR so that we could watch the Clint Eastwood movie he’d rented, my mother stopped him.

  “That,” she said firmly, “is going back tomorrow. Leave it in the damned box.”

  My dad ordered her the necklace the next day, along with a matching pair of earrings.

  But the VCR stayed. And when we went to the video-rental store to pick out movies each weekend, I had to fish behind the bulky VHS tapes for the compact Betamax ones that played in our VCR.