Professed

by Nicola Rendell

  I wipe the salt water and frozen sweat from my face with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “Dad. I think you were right about me and Yale.”

  He doesn’t answer, but his left eyebrow quivers a little. Then he takes the radio in his hand and guides us into the harbor.

  We ride that way for a while, until he mutes the radio. He takes off his woolen cap and scratches his massive head, now much more salt than pepper. “If it’s the money, I figure I’ve got five hundred to spare.”

  “It’s not the money.” My lips start trembling. “I’m just…” I look off towards the dark waters to the east before turning to face him again. “I just can’t anymore.”

  But his face softens. The wrinkles around his eyes ease up, and it’s like he finally understands something he hadn’t seen before. “Your mom used to cry like that,” he says.

  “It happens all the time now,” I say, trying to bite back the stupid tears. “It makes me crazy.”

  He laughs, kind of marveling at me. “Yeah, it was just like this. When she’d get happy or sad or overwhelmed or even if there was a good haul.” He shakes his head. “Seems to me you’re growing into her.”

  My eyes sting almost unbearably, still so swollen and red from yesterday and irritated from a day on the boat. When the tears do spill out, it’s not really a relief, just almost a sizzling, searing pain. He puts a big wet arm around me, and for a minute we become a single squeaky yellow raincoat. He’s never, ever, shown affection like this. “I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on you,” he says at last. “I didn’t understand. I don’t understand. But I see her in you now.”

  I drop my body against him. The weight of the world seems to slide off me a little.

  “I’ll tell you something she always used to tell me,” he says, squeezing me close again with one massive arm. “Never confuse running around with sinking.”

  I pull away to look up at him.

  “You might be beached,” he says, reaching for the radio, “But you’re not sunk.”

  We don’t have turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, of course. Instead, we have lobster rolls, hot on Wonder Bread buns with plenty of mayonnaise. We have instant mashed potatoes, and Lucy raves over them in a way so genuine, it occurs to me she’s probably never had potatoes from a box before.

  “The texture!” she says, “So creamy!”

  My dad smiles at his plate. “Where are you from again, Lucy?”

  “Greenwich,” she says, slapping a big pat of butter on the pile of fluffy white mush.

  And dad smiles at his plate a little bit wider.

  We eat clustered around the little dining table, under a too-bright kitchen light above. The weather warnings hum from the kitchen radio. Rain lashes the windows, and I clear the plates.

  I’ll have to face him some time, so after I serve up pound cake and ice cream, and Lucy begins asking my dad 1,001 questions about ground-dwelling crustaceans, I get up the courage to turn on my phone.

  45

  Naomi. Please.

  Please answer me.

  Please.

  I’m so fucking sorry.

  Weds 3:42pm

  You must have left college. I don’t see a light on in your room.

  Weds 5:34pm

  I hope you’re safe. The blizzard is awful.

  I miss you.

  Weds 6:01pm

  I get why you don’t want to talk to me. But I need to talk to you. I am stuck here, alone, thinking of you on a loop in my head. I asked you to leave because I thought it was best.

  It’s not best.

  It’s worse.

  Please answer.

  Weds 7:01pm

  I have eaten an entire pack of Oreos in one sitting. I am a broken man.

  Remember when I drank whiskey from your belly button? I need to do that again. I need your skin again.

  Weds 9:56pm

  Naomi. Come on. Please. Beautiful, please.

  I love you. I’m going to bed soon. I am keeping my phone on.

  Weds 11:58pm

  Alright, so either you’re not answering me because you hate me or because you aren’t turning on your phone, which means you also hate me or are trying to forget me. I can’t forget you. I could sit here and fight it but there’s no reason. Me loving you. An accepted universal truth.

  Thurs 1:13am

  See what I did there? Groveling through philosophy? Eh?

  No?

  Please?

  Thurs 1:19am

  I've decided I hate this app. Seriously. What if you aren’t even getting these messages, what if they’re just getting scooped up into some secret server and some hacker is laughing while I talk about my broken heart?

  Also, Happy Thanksgiving.

  I miss you.

  A shitload.

  Thurs 7:20am

  I broke down and called you just now. Your phone is off. I feel both good and bad about that.

  Thurs 8:26am

  I’m sure you’re with your family. But I wish you could just come home.

  Thurs 9:30am

  They brought in the National Guard to shovel. Can you believe it? I hope it’s okay in Maine. I checked and it seems fine. I hope you’re safe.

  I found the Sharpies just now.

  I have never been happier than I am when I’m with you.

  Thurs 1:57pm

  I hope you are having something good for dinner tonight. I am going to have a sad turkey sandwich with no lettuce. I am out of Oreos. I don’t even know if you like Oreos. I want to know that. I want to know everything.

  Thurs 3:30pm

  No whiskey tonight. I’m already too sad.

  Thurs 5:01pm

  I want you to know I ducking love you

  I ducking hate autocorrect.

  ducking.

  I ducking miss you.

  I ducking love you.

  Thurs 7:46pm

  https://docs.goo.gle.578sejvs

  Open that. I need to write you a real letter.

  Fri 8:55am

  For a while, I just sit there staring at the cursor on the Google Doc with my laptop in my lap in bed. Just spill it, Beck. Just close your eyes and spill it. You love her. You want her to know everything. So tell her.

  Dear Naomi –

  This is marginally better than writing to you in tiny sentences. I’d rather you read me in paragraphs than sentences, because sentences aren’t enough, let alone texts. I’m shit at texting. I’ve never really done it with anybody but you. That’s not because I’m an old man but because I just don’t have anybody else to text. I don’t really talk to anybody but you. I do try, but I don’t know how. With you, I know how. With you, things make sense. With you, I know what to say. Or you make me feel like I do, anyway.

  I need to tell you just exactly how I feel, because no matter how hard I love you, you’ll never know it unless I tell you. If love is real, which it is, I have to talk about it. About how it makes me feel like I’m two feet off the ground all the time and how I even see your face when I sleep. I’m sitting here reading the book you gave me and thinking how funny and true it is. C.S. Lewis, he’s a little like you. He believes the shit out of everything until it lets him down. He lives big and bold and fully. I used to think that must be an awful way to live, but now I see it’s the only way to live at all.

  Let me tell you about not believing in anything. It’s safe and sturdy, it’s something to lean on. It’s the atheist’s salve, it’s the opposite of God; it’s just as comforting. When you believe in nothing, nothing can be unknown. Nothing can hurt you then. You’ve already seen the dark, and it can’t get any darker than that. When I was little, everybody in my family left or died. I ended up in a group home for a while in high school. I learned to fight. I acted like you saw me the other day. God, how I fucking regret that. I learned to be angry and defend myself. I lost my way there too. I’m a slow reader, I bet you don’t know that. Painfully slow. And dyslexic. Nobody knows that but you and me. I didn’t even apply to college. The lady who ran the gro
up home, she filled out an application for me to go to Clark County Community College. I got in. Then I kept on working and working at stuff nobody cared about but me. That was easy. Until you came along. Because now it’s you I care about. I care what you think. You. Always you.

  It’s also easy not relying on anybody. It’s easy to have one mug and one plate, which was how I used to live. It’s easy to live off of Oreos and ramen and read books that make life seem meaningless. That’s confirmation bias. When you feel like life is meaningless, and you read about meaninglessness, it makes more and more sense. It did make sense. It made a shitload of sense.

  Until you.

  You’ve made me believe in love. You made me need. You’ve made me see how things can be and are. You’ve made me understand why every decent song in the entire motherfucking world is about heartbreak. You’ve opened up the gates to feelings I've never let myself have because I was too scared to have them.

  I threw you out of my house the other day because I felt you should stay away from me, because I don’t know what happens when I love you like I want to forever. I don’t know what happens when I tell you I know I've loved you for four months but I want to put a ring on your finger. I mean that. I want to hold you so close that we’re breathing each other’s air. I want you to forget that there are other men, because they’ll never love you the way I do. I want to love you all the way into a Portishead, song, apparently, and I’m not even fucking ashamed of it.

  I am willing to do anything to get you back. Please come home.

  Ever-loving and heartbroken,

  Ben

  I sit in the wingbacked chair, staring at the screen. Everything hurts to think about, especially right now. My heroine with her fire extinguisher. But she’s gone. In the pit of my stomach, I’ve got a feeling that’s done. That I’ll never be with her like I need to be again.

  At first, this Google Doc seemed so brilliant, like maybe she’d log on and see me typing, maybe even add a sentence of her own, but she hasn’t. And writing it has shown me what matters and what I have to do to make it work. If that’s even an option.

  But I’ve got to try.

  So I tie my shoes and zip up my sweater and look at the document one last time.

  Suddenly, a little flag pops up in the corner.

  “N” viewing.

  Holy shit. The flag is pink. It’s her, she’s reading it.

  I grip my temples. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but what I see is her cursor moving down the document, line by line, blinking and taunting me. She’s on the other end of this thing.

  “Please answer. Please,” I say. “Please. Just say something.”

  She types nothing in return, she says nothing back. And within a moment, the little flag with her initial disappears.

  Everything inside me sinks. No reply.

  Which leaves me with only one thing to do. I close the doc and open up a blank letter in Word. The words are hard to write, because in the process of falling in love with her, I’ve come to really like being here a lot. I love teaching these kids. I even love being the Master of Durham, weird as that is. But I love her more than I love any of it. So it’s straightforward, just a few lines. I print it out and head out the door for Osgood’s rooms.

  With my resignation in my hand. I’ve made my choice, if she’ll have me. If not, it’s back to the desert, all alone.

  When he answers, he’s in his robe and slippers. “Beck.”

  I’m not angry anymore. I put the paper in his hand, folded up into thirds.

  “What’s this?”

  “I’m resigning.”

  He looks surprised. He unfolds page, and I watch his eyes skim down the lines.

  “So I’m out of your hair,” I say. I don’t even smirk. What a ridiculous joke that would be at a time like this.

  He does touch his bald head though, like it was a jab.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “You’d do this for her?” he asks.

  Would I do this for her? I’d do anything for her. I’d take this place apart stone by stone if that’s what it took. “I don’t think you’ve ever been in love like this.”

  I realize, of course, he’s alone on Thanksgiving too. I hear a television in the background, so that was a totally asshole thing for me to say. It hits me how deeply lonely he must be too. “I hadn’t either. I didn’t know it existed.”

  Osgood puts the paper in the pocket of his robe. He looks like he’s at a loss for what to say. I don’t mind. I've got nothing to say either. I’m ruined. I put my hands into my pockets. “But you have to promise me you won’t let her transfer. You have to stop that happening.”

  He rubs his beard. “If she wants to leave, that’s her decision.”

  “Osgood. I'll personally go to Burma and find your moth and squish it if you let her leave this university. I don’t fucking care if I have to pay her tuition. Do not…” I say, getting a little angry now, “…let her leave.”

  He stares at the floor. He thumbs the paper in his pocket. “Alright. I’ll do everything I can to keep her here. I can promise that.”

  “Good,” I say. I turn to go, but then I stop. “I’m sorry to let you down. I was never a fit for this place anyway.”

  I can feel myself getting overwhelmed with everything. Another totally unfamiliar feeling, another part of myself I never knew until she came along. “I need you to understand something. She’s the thing I've always been looking for. She’s the thing I dreamed about and never understood. I never knew what love was until I found her.”

  Osgood is watching me close.

  “She’s the rarest thing in the world, Dean.” I feel my nose sting. “She’s the thing I always needed.”

  And then he closes his door in my face.

  That’s that, I think, trotting down his stairs and out into the snow, back to my house. If she’ll have me or not, at least I won’t be her professor anymore. But I know she’ll be angry, so it’s not until well past midnight that I add to the document one last thing:

  PS: I have handed in my resignation. You’re safe to come back.

  I lie down in bed. I feel responsible, I feel mature. I also feel sick, sad, and defeated.

  46

  I see the PS first thing when I wake up. I try texting him on Signal, but it comes back with not delivered.

  No, no, no, I think, pressing my face into the old worn pillowcase.

  So I try to write him on the Google Doc. But he just sent me the link, didn’t add me as an editor. There’s no way I could reply even if I wanted to.

  He cannot resign. He absolutely cannot.

  I can’t call, because I’ve never had his number. It was always blocked. I’d never needed it, and for a minute I think about emailing, but that’s just not going to cut it. All this, it has to be done face to face.

  Shaking Lucy awake, I drag her out of bed. It’s like waking up a tiny sweaty kitten. “Why are we moving? What is happening?” she says. “Why does it smell like fish everywhere.”

  “Get a move on, matey,” I tell her, and throw her sweatshirt across the room.

  My dad is surprised to see us packing, and I make profuse apologies. “I have to get back to campus. There’s a catastrophe in progress. Are you going to be okay without us?” He smiles. “We rounded out my quota yesterday. So it’s all okay.”

  I wrap him in a big hug. “Thank goodness.”

  “Thanks for your help,” he tells me, and tries to hand me a few twenties.

  I push them back into his hand. “Hang on to it. I don’t need it yet.”

  When the truth is, I just know he can’t spare it at all.

  This time, I’m driving. My phone is dead, which is probably for the best. At least that way I’m not distracted. The winter morning is clear and harshly bright, so shimmery and white that it makes my pupils throb, even behind my sunglasses. Next to me, Lucy is on the lookout for cops because I am quite literally putting patches on the road.

  “Shit, Thelma! We n
eed to go away more often,” Lucy squeals. “This is awesome!”

  I accelerate to 90 miles an hour on 295. “Keep your eye out. Three more points and I lose my license.”

  “You’re such a badass!”

  “This cannot happen,” I say, putting my foot down even harder. “He cannot resign.”

  “I think it’s gallant,” Lucy says, opening up a pack of crackers, “But I get what you mean.”

  I don’t think it’s gallant. I think it’s utterly stupid, absolutely ridiculous. He needs to be there. He belongs there. I’m not letting him leave because of me. I’m the one that doesn’t belong.

  After about a half-hour of high-speed burning through the frosty morning, Lucy finally says, “Now, can we talk about money a second?”

  “Way to get me when I’m down.” We blow past a road sign that I can’t even read we’re moving so fast.

  “How much does your dad make?”

  “Is that how they start conversations in Greenwich?”

  “All the time!” she giggles. “No, but seriously. How much? Thirty, twenty? Ten? I’m not judging.” I shrug, because honestly, I couldn’t say. “He makes what the sea lets him make, really. Sometimes he earns a lot, sometimes nothing at all. You saw how it is. He hardly has anything. We’ve never had much, but now,” I say, “it’s really bad. Worse than ever.”

  Lucy begins unbraiding her hair and nods thoughtfully.

  “Why?” I ask her. We zip past a tractor-trailer going 85, which is way, way too slow for right now.

  “Well, I think you might not be taking advantage of Yale like you should be.”

  I don’t know what that means. It sounds suspiciously like some kind of white-collar crime scheme. Lucy’s dad may or may not have done some time for such a thing. “I’m not going to game my way through,” I say. “Tuition is expensive. That’s just the way it is.”

  In my periphery, I see her rabbit-shift her nose. “The year you came to Yale, did he make more money than he does now?”