by Amelia Betts
Chapter Four
Upon waking the next morning, I spent a good ten minutes convincing myself that the events of last night had actually taken place and were not just another elaborate anxiety dream centered around Liam. If they had been part of a dream, I rationalized, things wouldn’t have ended so unceremoniously. Liam would have pointed and laughed at me, or morphed into my ex-boyfriend, or forced himself on me while a crowd of dishwashers watched. But none of the above applied. No, I had walked right up to the edge of something unbelievably exciting and run away like a scared little girl.
Almost an hour had lapsed before I stopped lamenting my nonheroic actions long enough to remember it was my first day working for Julien. Luckily my anxiety had woken me up pre-alarm, and for a split second I imagined myself partaking in my favorite morning activity: dragging into the kitchen, pouring a bowl of cereal (sugary junk on bad days and flavorless, fiber-laden pellets on “good” ones), and traipsing back into my nest of sheets and pillows, mentally suspending the start of the day by another fifteen minutes or so. Then I remembered where I was—Julien’s kitchenless guesthouse—and realized that from now on I would have to dress like a civilized person and go to the main house any time I needed food. Perhaps it would work out as a new diet plan.
A quick shower and primp session helped me shake off just a little of last night’s regret before I made my way through the backyard and entered the Maxwell breakfast scene, not knowing what to expect. Oddly enough, what I found was Cecile in a very good mood, parked by the coffee machine. “Can I get you cappuccino or a latte?” she asked in a strangely magnanimous tone. “This thing does everything.”
Well, if you’re taking orders, I thought, I’ll have some eggs, a couple strips of bacon, and a bowl of Honey Smacks to smother my general feeling of failure.
“A latte sounds great!” I said, accepting her offer with an excited nod. I knew from being one myself, teenage girls felt especially empowered when they were allowed to imbibe and/or prepare the morning coffee, and I was happy to indulge Cecile as my barista.
“Do you take regular milk?”
“Sure.” I tucked my hair behind my ears and took a seat on one of the barstools by the island. As she moved around the kitchen, I continued the inventory of the Maxwells’ well-appointed home that I’d started upon arrival, noticing that even the kitchen tools were fancy, and here and there were artful little flourishes like the turquoise, crackle-glazed vase holding the cooking utensils or a woven pot holder with a bright pink flamingo against a lush green backdrop.
“So, my dad says you’re a Nutrition major,” said Cecile, making the small talk we were both too awkward to manage yesterday.
“I was, yeah. Just graduated.”
“So you probably know a lot about what I should and shouldn’t be eating.” She avoided eye contact as she made the statement, popping a coffee cup under the nozzle of the elaborate silver machine and cranking a dial that sent the apparatus into a quiet fit of noises and spurts. “I haven’t always been fat like this. Do you think I could be allergic to some kind of food without knowing it?”
Oh dear. I could remember my teenaged self having similar thoughts. “Well, first of all, I hate the term fat and I don’t think you are. Second of all, the allergy thing—probably not. The only advice I ever give, based on what I’ve learned, is pretty basic: stick with whole foods, avoid anything processed, high fructose corn syrup, sugar in general, and caffeine.” I said the last one with sarcastic emphasis, prompting Cecile to roll her eyes and stick out her tongue. I laughed knowingly. “Yeah, if only I followed my own advice.”
“Do you eat healthy?” Cecile’s eyes were on me now, eagerly awaiting my response.
Unsure how to answer, I decided to go with a safe, somewhat honest response. “I go in and out of phases.”
Cecile’s head bobbed once in approval as she turned her back to me and continued foaming the milk. Although I felt a slight urge to tell her the truth, admit that I had been addicted to food since I was her age—even younger—in the hopes that I might make her feel less alone, I knew better than to disclose that much to a girl at such an impressionable age. And who knew what kind of eating habits or problems she might have? All I could tell was that she had a negative body image, which was more common than not for teenagers. In the vague, cloudy depths of my memory, I could just barely recall how intense my own warped self-image and food obsessions were during puberty, and the thought made me shudder.
“Good morning, lovely ladies!” Julien bounded into the kitchen seemingly out of nowhere. “Are you prepared to work?” he asked, flashing his winning smile with the boyish gap between his front teeth.
I nodded and smiled back, caught off guard by his total ease and familiarity. It was as if I had always been sitting at his kitchen island at breakfast time, like I was an old family friend.
“You sure you’re up for it? It’s gonna be a big day!” As he addressed me, he playfully sidled up to Cecile at the coffee machine and bumped his hip against hers.
“Dad, stop it.” She sullenly inched away from him, stirring my latte before handing it over.
“Thanks,” I said, despite my desire to hit a pause button and shake this girl’s shoulders, telling her how lucky she was to have a father like Julien, to have a father at all, and how she should relish these moments because he wouldn’t be here forever. And then I remembered that her mother was dead, and I stopped with the petty judgments.
Julien made us eggs and toast, and a half hour later, I was following him out the front door. Everything seemed a little strange, like I was observing what was happening from a distance. The impromptu arrangement we had made less than a week ago—me working for him all summer and living in his backyard, chatting up his daughter at meal times—was catapulting the three of us into this “just add water” level of intimacy I’d never had with anyone. It was one of those odd situations that overtakes your life every once in a while and in one fell swoop changes everything. Before you know it, you are sucked in by a current that drags you out into the unknown. Sometimes you recognize it at the time; in other cases, you wake up weeks or months later, after the waves have washed you back ashore, to process the unusual chain of events that just rocked your world. In this case, I was aware of the strangeness as it was happening when Julien suggested we bike to work and offered me his dead wife’s teal-green beach cruiser to ride.
Julien’s cheerfulness seemed slightly over the top as he handed over the bicycle, as if he was overcompensating for the unbearable sea of grief the bike prompted inside him. Nevertheless, I smiled as I took it from him and hopped on, awkwardly positioning myself on the tan leather seat. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been biking.
Julien raced onto the street without much warning. In a matter of seconds, I broke into a sweat. I wasn’t sturdy, or fast, but I managed to stay a few paces behind him, and after a couple minutes of riding, realized what Julien had said yesterday was true—biking really does clear one’s thoughts. As we coasted along the flat, sleepy streets, I started to feel wistful and carefree, something I hadn’t been in a long time.
Reid’s campus was located in the absolute center of Oceanside, a beach town whose main business was the college. Even though Julien’s house was only a couple of miles from campus, I noticed we were taking a long, circuitous route that wound in and out of several beachside neighborhoods. He seemed to be in no rush to get to the office, but I didn’t mind. Every once in a while, he would glance over his shoulder to make sure I was keeping up, and I would smile in assurance.
When we passed my old apartment complex, I slowed down, craning for a glimpse of Anjuli, the exchange student who was supposed to have moved into my place the day before, but saw no trace of her. Surprisingly, the sight of the old apartment conjured very little emotion, as if I hadn’t lived there for the better part of two years. One of my neighbors, an older lady whom I’d never formally met, caught me staring as she retrieved a newspaper from the bottom o
f the stairs and cocked her head quizzically. That’s when I looked back to the road and realized Julien had already turned a corner. I pedaled fast to catch up to him, losing my breath in the process.
It became clear that we were officially avoiding campus when he cut down to the shoreline. We passed by a patch of mangrove trees that tainted the air with their overwhelming smell of sulfur, and I breathed in heartily. A line from Cane, one of the books Julien had assigned, popped into my head and I desperately wanted to impress him by reciting it, something about the sunshine striking a woman’s “mangrove-gloomed face” like rockets. I made a mental note to mention it later, but first I would have to come up with some reasonable context. In the meantime, I examined Julien from behind, noting how neat and fresh he looked, like just the kind of person who would live in his well-decorated house: He had on muted coral linen pants, rolled up at the ankles; an easy white button-down; and seemingly unworn white canvas sneakers. Meanwhile, I was wearing my favorite frayed jean shorts, a faded purple tank top, and flip-flops. If someone had stopped us for a picture, we would have resembled exactly what we were: the dapper professor with a book deal and his sloppily dressed undergrad intern—aimless, desperate for a future, fleetingly entangled with a sex addict.
* * *
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of spring semester, Gracie had unabashedly studied the face of Dr. Julien Maxwell while he had lectured and I had taken notes for the both of us. She would never shut up about what a “specimen” he was, but until now, I hadn’t bothered to take notice. His face was the perfect balance of round and oval with the large forehead of a thinking man; a medium-sized nose, perfectly centered; and big, sleepy eyes that seemed to have something behind them. His skin was a beautiful, warm brown, and the stubble that covered his upper lip, chin, and cheeks a dark black with flecks of silvery gray to match his close-cropped hair. Definitely not my type—professors, as I saw them, were all surrogate fathers of some sort, no matter how young—but I could see the appeal.
The day we took our bike ride to campus, we didn’t end up on campus at all. Instead, Julien led me to a beachside dive bar called Salty Sal’s, a derelict structure somewhere between roadhouse and shack that I hadn’t stopped to notice in my entire four years of living here. He hadn’t explained where we were going at any point, and I hadn’t bothered to ask. We arrived sometime before noon, after an hour-long journey that left my thighs feeling wobbly and unstable.
“No need to panic. Procrastination is a part of my process,” he announced, putting a hand out for the beach cruiser after chaining his bike to a rusted white railing that ran between the parking lot and the beach.
I followed Julien inside the bar and found the kind of scene one would expect to find at a small-town dive at noon on a weekday: two sloppy, middle-aged men sitting at opposite ends of the bar, drinking the same beer out of cans, and situated between them, a fifty-something bartender who looked like she knew her way around an eighteen-wheeler. Harsh shafts of sunlight snuck in through a couple of high-set, rectangular windows, but the space remained ironically dark and depressing for being practically on the beach. I couldn’t believe Julien actually liked this place, but it was apparent he did. I imagined him spending a lot of time here since his wife’s passing, a likely guess according to the bartender’s somber yet empathetic greeting: a knowing wink and a shot glass filled with tequila.
Julien winked back. “One for my friend, too, please.”
Without looking at me, she poured the shot and, although I scrambled for my driver’s license, served it to me without question. I whispered to Julien that it was the first time in my life I hadn’t been carded.
“Thanks, Arlene.” Julien smiled as he raised his shot glass and nodded for me to do the same.
“Thanks, Arlene,” I repeated, eliciting a snaggletoothed smile from our stoic host.
Clinking glasses, Julien and I downed the shots, grimaced in unison, then picked up the mugs that Arlene had wordlessly placed before us and chased the fiery liquor with cold beer.
“You ever been here?” he asked.
“No. I’m not sure I knew it existed,” I said. I was trying not to make a face, but my throat burned badly from the shot. I glanced around at the framed photographs of caught fish on the walls, the inoperative jukebox collecting dust in the corner, an abandoned checkers game set up on one of the small tables. I was as intrigued by my surroundings as if I had been viewing the Coliseum for the first time and realized the effect Julien had on this commonplace, foul-smelling bar just by walking into it. Much like the smelly mangrove trees had struck me this morning, for the first time, as magical literary references instead of rotten-egg purveyors, Julien’s scholarly presence turned Salty Sal’s into some sweet little place Hemingway might have frequented.
“The truth is, I brought you here because I think a little bonding is in order if we’re going to be working together all summer. That and, like I said, my process involves a necessary amount of procrastination. Don’t tell Cecile.”
I whipped my hand past my lips as if I was zipping them shut. “Of course not!” I said.
“I don’t want to be a bad influence. I’ve got future professors of America to impress here.” He gestured to me before taking another swig of beer.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I demurred.
“Really? You strike me as an academic. Didn’t you say your parents were professors?”
“No, not in the least!” I could feel myself beaming at the mere suggestion. It was entirely off base, but also possibly the most flattering thing I’d ever heard. Suddenly, I wanted to be Julien’s vision of me: the budding professor, hailing from a long line of the same.
He sipped his beer and trained his eyes on me. “So tell me about yourself. Where are you from? What’s your story?” He punctuated his questions with pursed lips and an intense stare, and I couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or ironic. Actually, it was a mystery to me whether or not he possessed a sense of humor at all—I certainly hadn’t detected it in his lectures.
“I’m not that interesting. I’d rather hear about you,” I deflected.
“No, no, no. Tell me. This is part of your job.”
“The hard part, I hope.”
“You don’t like talking about yourself? That’s strange. I find most of my students are particularly fond of that pastime.” He smiled and cocked his head just so, and I decided that yes, he had a sense of humor—albeit a subtle, professorial one. He also had a way with words; everything he said sounded premeditated, direct, precise. It made me self-conscious about my own way of speaking, which was clumsy and stilted in comparison.
“I don’t like talking about myself… to a fault, probably.” I blushed on cue. Simply being honest about that fact made me feel shy—the mark of a true introvert.
“Well, what if I guess where your family is?”
“Eagle Grove, Iowa. And the Philippines. And that’s where my story ends.” I patted the bar in a demonstrative way that accidentally signaled Arlene to get us more shots.
“Brace yourself for another round.” Julien raised his eyebrows as she poured more tequila into our shot glasses. He raised his second shot and waited for me to do the same. “Cheers,” he said, but not until after he had downed the liquor.
“Cheers.” I tried to match Julien’s enthusiasm but balked at the smell of the tequila as it neared my nose. I took a tiny sip and set the shot down.
“You know, this spring was my first semester back since being on leave, and I worry it was too soon. Everybody seemed tuned out, like I was boring them.”
“No way!” I said, even though the truth was Julien’s lectures had had their ups and downs. Some days he had seemed on the verge of tears, and not because he was so moved by the literature. But on others, I could glimpse the kind of teacher he really was—passionate, insightful, engaging. “Your class was the most interesting lit class I’ve ever taken,” I assured him, my hand held up in oath. “I swear.”
>
“Did you know what happened? About the accident?” Angling to face me, he propped his elbow up on the bar and rested his cheek on a tightly balled fist. “Everybody seemed to know.”
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “At first I didn’t know. But Gracie knew about it. She told me. I’m so sorry.” I started to reach for him but stopped myself.
“It’s okay.” He shook his head, as if trying to shake off the unshakeable memory that his wife had been senselessly murdered by a drunk driver. “I needed to get back to work. I needed that structure. What I didn’t need were all the pained looks on people’s faces when they asked me how I was doing, all the reminders that they were there if I needed a shoulder to cry on. I think grieving people are like cats, you know? We don’t want to talk if you show the slightest interest.”
Taking another sip of tequila, I thought of the Toomer quote I’d wanted to recite to Julien earlier but realized it had zero relevance here. What could I say that would make me sound erudite and compassionate all at once? “What was that Toni Morrison quote?” I said. “Something about there being no words for pain…”
Julien looked both happy and sad. “Exactly.”
Two hours and three beers later, he had all but told me his entire life story while I had sat stoically, peppering in a literary reference every once in a while and trying to mask my incredulity at this level of confidence he had bestowed upon me. Again, it was the just-add-water intimacy that had made me feel like some not-so-distant relative at breakfast that morning, come to stay with her uncle and cousin for the summer. He shared the story of how he and his wife, Renay, had first met as teenagers, explaining that she came from a wealthy New Orleans family while he had been raised by a single mother in D.C. who, like mine, had worked late hours in a low-paying job. They had been married at twenty-four and had Cecile even younger. He had gone to Brown on scholarship, then NYU, and had been slightly disappointed when forced to take tenure at Reid instead of somewhere more prestigious, because it was the only school that had offered professorships to both him and his wife. He had described to me his own version of the stages of grief, which went something like denial, inexplicable laughter, explicable rage, depression, anger, depression again, and, finally, a slight upgrade to general melancholy. He had seemed on the verge of tears when he had gripped my wrist for a brief second and insisted that life was too short for anything but absolute truth. Then suddenly, regaining his inhibitions, he had bummed a cigarette from one of the barflies and led me across the parking lot in the direction of a taco stand he’d promised was “hands-down the best.”