~* * *~
Seth unfolded his too-long legs out of one of the horrid little wooden half-desks in the lecture hall. He dropped his notebook into his backpack and watched Dr. Sullivan erase the board. He enjoyed her class, and in it he was able to put away all his concerns. Libby Sullivan was a sharp professor – she used a strong mix of humor and challenging questions to keep one’s attention through the whole three-hour period. She was one of the best teachers he’d had. Of course, he had to admit, the fact that she was a stunner to look at did no harm. Physically, she was just his type, he thought, with her short, curly auburn hair, and sweet face, with a curvy build designed to invade his dreams. Oddly enough, she was also everything his bleach blonde ex wasn’t – smart and reserved, and oh-so-temptingly untouchable. His former wife, Jami, he had to admit, had been far too easy for him and was anything but untouchable. Libby, on the other hand, was one of those women who’d be hard won, but so much more worth it.
Running a chagrined finger over one dark eyebrow, Seth smiled slightly to himself and cleared his throat. Definitely no way to think about a prof, he chastised himself. Even if she was delectable. Clearly, he needed to get out more, or at least get himself a few pinups that were more appropriate objects of his disused hormones than his university professor.
Still, watching her lean over the podium to grab her books, her full breasts compressing against the wood... Some man out there got to have her, he thought, and what a lucky bastard that guy was.
There was no way she’d want a busted up ex-cop who’d barely made it through high school, so he was better off putting all that straight out of his mind. But, while his mind was willing to ignore, other parts of him were not so co-operative. It was tenth grade Spanish all over again, and he was the sixteen-year-old Seth Webster mooning over Ms. Greer in her sexy swishy skirt. He had to admit, teacher fantasies were something a man may never grow out of, and they were even more appealing when the prof wasn’t fifteen years older than you.
Smiling silently, he finally remembered he would be expected home for dinner, and reluctantly made for the door. Whatever else was wrong in Seth’s life, at least school was something that was going right for him this time around, and he planned on keeping it that way. And hitting on the prof wasn’t the key to the success he envisioned.
~* * *~
The night before her students wrote tests or exams, Libby tried to stay close to her computer, as late as she could. Students had a bad habit of reading new material at the last minute for the first time and panicking when they didn’t understand what anything meant. Many of her colleagues would say that was the student’s fault, and the prof owed them nothing, but Libby, while never directly handing her students the answer, felt the least she could do was to offer them some kind words to help calm them down enough to sleep. Perhaps she remembered being an undergrad better than some of her fellow professors.
Her undergraduate years weren’t exactly pleasant ones. She was very happy to be on her own, but, instead of the free partying many young college kids got to enjoy, her freedom involved two jobs and a lot of hard work to maintain her funding. She remembered those late nights, often still in her greasy cafeteria uniform, trying to frantically finish an assignment for early the next morning. She was sure some of that stress likely shortened her lifespan a bit. If she could save some students the panic by remembering many of them worked much more than twenty hours a week in order to afford to be there, she was willing to meet them halfway.
After picking Charlie up from school and listening to him chatter about his science fair project while she made dinner, she got him to slow down his enthusiasm enough to eat and shower, and then tucked him in. It took two chapters of Charlotte’s Web to get him to sleep, but eventually he drifted off. Smoothing back his unruly hair and kissing his sweet little nose, she tiptoed out of the room, smiling. It was wonderful to hear him so happy with school, and to be able to spend so much of her evenings with him.
Her own mother had always gotten home fairly late every day, and had been too tired to do anything but flip on the television after a long grueling day of providing homecare for the sick and elderly. Libby didn’t blame her mother for that; her work had fed and housed them in between “stepfathers.” But she recalled those evenings in which she’d longed to blab about her projects, but had kept it all to herself, for she understood from a young age that exuberance was seldom appreciated by her worn out mother. Nor could she voice complaints when yet another boyfriend had necessitated another unexpected move. Low pay had contributed a great deal towards the instability of her youth, but it was nothing compared to her mother’s crippling certainty that she couldn’t exist without a man in her life. The memories made Libby grateful for her job, the gifts of time and security it afforded her, and, most of all, for her independence. Her mother’s example had taught her never to follow in her footsteps.
Libby had certainly made good on her youthful ambitions. Five years ago, she’d earned her PhD, a feat no one in her program had thought possible of an unwed mother. Before that, she’d been a rising star, but once she started to show, she knew most had expected her failure. Yet, she’d proven them wrong. From there, she’d published her dissertation, took a handful of prestigious opportunities for research funding, and completed the framework of what was to be her second book on “women’s fiction,” due out this winter. Now, after just three years as assistant professor here at the small liberal arts university of her dreams, found in idyllic Apollonia, Ohio, she’d applied for tenure two years ahead of schedule and was under serious consideration.
At least her colleague and friend Debbie, who sat on the tenure committee, had assured her the committee was sorely tempted by her juicy resume filled with publications and weighty conferences, and by her pedigreed education - Columbia, NYU, a postdoctoral year at Princeton. She sure had come a long way from the University of Maine where she slaved through her undergraduate years. Libby Sullivan knew she was becoming a scholar of some clout in her field so she hoped the department would award her a lifetime contract, despite the fact that she would be the youngest fully tenured female prof at the university, at just under thirty-five. Being a young female might be a liability or an asset, she thought, not being able to decide – but being a young, female single-parent had certainly not been. While the committee officially would make their decisions on professional grounds, she had little doubt that more personal factors could sway the minds of the voting members in private.
Tenure would mean the first permanent place she’d ever known, by way of job security until retirement, as well as the freedom to work and teach with a minimum of university administration interference. She liked Apollonia, and so did her son Charlie, who was just five months shy of his eighth birthday, as he never tired of reminding her. Science-obsessed and relatively quiet (for a seven year old), Charlie was happy with the three acres just outside the township upon which they lived, where he could watch ants and net minnows to his heart’s delight. Libby’s mother nagged that Charlie spent too much of his time in solitude away from children his own age, but Libby wasn’t concerned; she herself had been a solitary child, and she respected his desire for individual pursuits. For Libby, it had been tucking herself away in her room with her stories, and for Charlie it was standing knee deep in a mud hole observing skimmer bugs – she recognized both hobbies as valid expressions of individuality, where her mother could only see abnormality. Libby smiled wanly; her mother had never understood her own daughter, even from her earliest youth, so why trust her doom and gloom about Charlie? Though he was her grandson, he was also a boy she only heard over the phone, aside from a handful of short visits back to Sutherland, Maine. Libby never had a strong urge to return to the nest whence she fled at eighteen, and had since returned only just frequently enough to prevent her mother from enacting a fully dramatic emotional scene, which resulted in visits approximately once every two years.
Getting tenure would be the best thing for both herself
and Charlie, Libby was sure. Having moved around several times with a mother who followed the latest love of her life with more gusto than she expended on raising her daughter, Libby was yearning to put down some roots and set about feathering their safe, stable nest. Providing for her son, including giving him the knowledge he would end the school year in the same class he started in, was her only priority – above, and to the exclusion of, the quest for a man in her life.
Love affairs only caused trouble. The temporary pleasure often came with permanent consequences, she knew. She’d dabbled in that drama once before, and there was nothing there that could sway her again. Her energy was much better spent pursuing her career, since that was the route to a satisfying, focused life.
But, alongside motherhood, her position also came with a significant double shift, and after Charlie fell asleep she quickly tidied the living room and cleaned off the table before settling down to work on her classes and monitor her email in her home office.
The office was much like her life – tidy, happy and filled with Charlie’s small touches. The macaroni-encrusted pencil holder on her desk had been his most recent Mother’s Day creation; a picture of him grinning at her, missing teeth and all, dominated one corner of the desk. It looked like exactly what it was – a mother’s small adult refuge in a child’s house, in which the light of her life was a welcome presence.
Switching on her PC and waiting for her email to open, Libby unpacked her briefcase and quickly marked the short quizzes she’d given in her second-year class, and sipped at the mint tea she had prepared. It was hard to believe it was already late October, as it felt like the first week of classes was just the week before. But the sound of an early angry wind at the side of her modest, two-story house reminded her that Halloween was coming soon, and, not long thereafter, another northern-Ohio winter.
Libby hitched up her sweater and hugged her mug closer as she pulled her slippered feet up on the chair and began to scan her messages. Asbestos removal… planned maintenance shut down on the library search engines… the usual memos. A small smile curved her mouth as she noticed an email from “S. Webster.”
One of her favorite students, Seth Webster was also a tasty treat on the eyes that she’d have to be blind not to enjoy – she wasn’t dead, simply celibate. But, aside from his physical charms, he was also a joy to have in class. His grades were solid, and he’d saved her more than once by raising his hand to answer a question when his classmates seemed immune to the stretching silence. She had once unrealistically believed that good professors didn’t have favorites, but she now realized it was unavoidable as long as classes were taught by humans instead of machines. Besides, since teaching assistants and computers did all the marking in the large classes like her second year lit course, she wasn’t even directly responsible for his grade. So there was no harm in her acknowledging that he, like so many mature students (the term the university euphemistically used to describe older people who returned to school) that she’d known, made the class a better place. There was something about adults making the considered decision to return to their education that seemed to make them care a bit more about it all, and that was a relief in the sea of young bon vivants the classes were usually populated with.
Clicking open Seth’s email, she read his question, which was something about an optional reading mentioned in class that he couldn’t remember the author of. At the end, she snickered at his closing, “This is the last thing I’m going to do to prepare, I promise. Getting too old for all-nighters.”
She answered his question, and then paused and typed, “You’d better get your sleep, grandpa – got a full day of chasing kids off your lawn tomorrow.”
Hitting send, she hoped she’d read his casual tone correctly. From their brief after-class interactions over the past two months, he struck her as a good-humored guy. She was gratified when she got his response: “Hey, don’t make fun. You too will be creaky some day.”
She smiled, and sent off a brief reply that she was sure he’d do fine, and she wished him luck, effectively putting an end to the conversation.
She was curious when she got yet another reply back from him, sassing, “So, I guess that means you won’t take pity on my age and infirmity and give me all the answers?”
Laughing now, she shook her head at his informal tone and surprised herself by rather enjoying his banter.
“I will share the secret to acing every test,” she typed. “The best way to cheat is to hide the answers in your head.”
She wished him goodnight, and this time he replied with a simple, “Har-dee-har-har. Night, Dr. Sullivan,” and she let it go.
Since she wasn’t remotely interested in romance, she allowed herself to enjoy occasional exchanges with Seth. He was very different from the absent minded men and brash young boys she usually encountered at the university, and she found him refreshing. Besides, he was, after all, an extremely handsome man, and she was sure she’d caught more than a hint of male interest from him. Though she was no fan of romantic love, everything female in her glowed at the thought of still being attractive enough for casual flirting.
Maybe she could even consider it keeping in touch with her research. Harmless experimentation, since there was no chance someone with her acumen into attraction would allow her to fall prey to it.
Romance as mutually exclusive to stability, as a modern fraud, was her stock and trade. Without sentimentality, she explored romance as part of the current malaise that discouraged people from being happy, satisfied, and mature individuals. The pursuit of passion turned them away from marriages based on partnership in family and child rearing to those of random heart or loin flutterings that were destined to fade, and which may or may not leave behind a companionship the couple could fall back on. The belief in romance, in her experience, only led to dissatisfaction, and her work explored the ways in which romantic film, theatre and literature brainwashed people (particularly women) into thinking that bonds built on dependability, loyalty, shared goals, and other recently devalued character traits were worth less than those built on pheromones, lust, chemistry, physical beauty, illusions of youth, and other such aspects of the emotion that many called “love.”
Tracing the increasing social acceptance of people valuing personal desires over responsibility, mapping how relationship disintegration increased with the commercialization and disposability of society in general, Libby’s work had created quite a stir in academic circles used to believing the modern way was the best way. In effect, she was telling people “to thine own self be true” wasn’t always best if it stemmed from fancy instead of sense.
And she should know. Not only had her own mother been a perpetual victim of this romantic fool’s errand, but she herself had fallen. But only once. She stiffened her spine. And that was all the folly she would ever allow herself.
No, she didn’t believe in romance as people used the term...but she’d be a fool to deny the existence of chemistry altogether.
And Seth Webster was a charming man, indeed.
She was glad she understood that a little flirting was all she would ever indulge in. Sighing, she turned to the far more anxious batch of inquires in her inbox, still feeling lightened by the brief conversation.
~* * *~
“Perhaps the most misinterpreted line ever written in English, ‘There never was a tale of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo’ is an expression of poetic irony,” Seth read to himself, taking the evening off after writing his last midterm. “This irony has been missed by every schoolgirl, and many a scholar, ever since Shakespeare was deemed appropriate for study.
“As Ira Greenswitch so ably and correctly identified in his recent commentary on the so-called tragedy, Shakespeare’s take on Romeo and Juliet’s untimely demise was a vast deal less sympathetic than that of modern readers. It is an error in our romance-directed brains that we willfully neglect the idiocy of the teen lovers’ catastrophic decision to commit suicide rather than tame their
hormones. Having been trained by Hollywood to cheer for the lovers to the point of sacrificing all other social and familial concerns, we seldom remember at the end of the tale that Romeo was ready to live and die for a different girl, Rosalind, mere acts before. We fail to ask ourselves if he would have recouped from the loss of Juliet, as well, had he allowed himself the logical thought to do so.
“It does a disservice to Shakespeare’s cunning perception that English classes across the globe now teach this play as an actual “tragedy” when the text, if read with one’s tongue in one’s cheek, is more of a testament to the insanity of unrestrained lust. Rather than a holy writ of the romantic canon, the reader is further ahead to see it as a cautionary tale against embracing the foolishness of ‘two against the world’.”
“Holy cow,” Seth whispered, thinking that this professor of his – Liberty Sullivan, author of Blinded by Love: How Popular Culture has Created and Sold Romance – had some serious iron girdles in her closet if this is how she saw Romeo and Juliet. “Hey, Kelse?”
“Yeah, Dad?” his daughter asked from the coffee table where she was working on her trigonometry homework. Her sandy-colored hair was up in a sloppy bun, giving her a studious air he knew she’d rather die than expose outside their homey den.
“What do you think about Romeo and Juliet?”
“It’s okay, I guess,” she said with a shrug. “Easier to understand than King Lear, but not as cool as Macbeth. Why?”
“This book,” he explained, flashing the cover to her, “says that Romeo and Juliet were hormone-driven teenage idiots who would’ve been better off just waiting for their attraction to wear off than killing themselves.”
“Well,” Kelsey said, leaning back against the sofa where her father sat and twisting a fallen lock of messy hair in thought, “you can’t really argue against that. I mean, suicide is pretty extreme just for love or anything else. They were really young, so it’s sad they decided to die instead of figuring out a better option. They could’ve at least waited a bit to see if they really loved each other, or whatever – or waited for their parents to die off. Yeah, it was a bit stupid of them to off themselves just because someone told them they couldn’t have what they wanted. Kind of like a temper tantrum, really – only involving poison. Kind of pathetic, really.”
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