Watch Me

by Jody Gehrman

  “I’ll remember that.” I yank open the door and practically dive into the hall, anxious to escape her knowing gaze.

  * * *

  After my meeting with Frances, I feel so defeated the only cure is a dark chocolate, cream cheese–stuffed cupcake. Logically, I know I can’t fill the crater inside me with carbs, but fuck it, I owe it to myself to try. I consider texting Zoe to see if she’ll meet me at Miette’s, but a quick glance at the clock tells me she won’t be able to join. It’s naptime. In the old days—well, last year—Zoe and I would drop everything for an emergency cupcake. I’m the interloper now, the one who has to schedule in advance.

  As I push my way into the steamy warmth of the bakery, a potpourri of chocolate, vanilla, and coffee wraps around me like a hug. It’s cold out today, frosty and clear. The small café buzzes with students and legal types taking a break from the nearby courthouse. I order at the counter and nab a table near the window. After a few minutes, a girl with blue hair brings me my fix. The latte is creamy, and the cupcake’s ebony black. Its sunken center holds a deep swirl of cream cheese. I study it, breathing in the aroma, feeling something like happiness for the first time all day.

  When footsteps stop near my table, I tear my gaze away from my beloved cupcake. Maybe some telepathic miracle has delivered Zoe. No such luck. Instead, I find myself gazing at one of the sickliest women I’ve ever seen in my life. She’s tall, with lank, gray hair that’s been haphazardly dyed. She’s so thin I can see the ridges of her cheekbones; tendons stand out like cables in her neck. She hovers over my table, watching me. There’s something at once magnetic and repulsive about her.

  “Um, hi,” I say cautiously.

  It’s all the invitation she needs. She drops into the chair across from me and stabs her bony elbows into the tabletop. It wobbles under her awkward, jerky movements. My latte spills milky foam into the saucer. She doesn’t seem to notice.

  “I seen you with my baby.” She’s the sort of woman who looks unnatural without a cigarette. Her teeth are a mottled gray-brown, almost tortoiseshell.

  I’m so hypnotized by her ugliness it takes me longer than normal to register what she’s said.

  “I think you might have me mixed up with someone else.”

  “You’re his teacher.” She says it in a flat voice that somehow conveys just how unworthy I am of this moniker. “His name’s Waya.”

  “I have hundreds of students, but I don’t recall anyone named—”

  “You wouldn’t know him as Waya,” she says, impatient. “Waya means ‘wolf’—you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t.” I can feel people peering at us, wondering. The blue-haired girl behind the counter looks uneasy, like she’s worried she might have to interfere. I glance at my cupcake, still untouched. I’ve no desire to eat it with her here. I sip my latte instead, mopping the bottom of the glass with a napkin.

  “He’s Cherokee. Like me. But he won’t tell you that. He goes by Sam. Stupid name.” Her mouth turns down in a bitter frown.

  “Are you talking about Sam Grist?” It’s almost impossible to believe. Sam’s in perfect shape. Could he really come from this broken-down shell of a woman?

  She just nods, though it’s obvious the name pains her.

  “Right, okay, Sam is my student.” I smile, but it feels stiff, fake. I abandon it immediately. “He’s very talented. One of the best writers I’ve ever worked with.”

  For a split second, I see another woman entirely. It’s like that optical illusion—the one that shows both an old crone and a young woman, depending on your perspective. The beautiful girl she must have been swims to the surface, visible for half a heartbeat. Her dark, cavernous eyes shine with pride, and a fragile smile transforms her features. Then it’s gone, and she’s a wraith again.

  She leans forward as if sharing a secret. Stale cigarette smoke wafts from her. I glance down at my cupcake once more. I’m worried spittle will fly from her decaying mouth. Then I feel ashamed. I’m a bleeding-heart liberal, an artist. Here’s a broken woman I should want to help, and all I can think about is protecting my fucking cupcake?

  “He’s into something. I know he is,” she whispers.

  I shouldn’t encourage her—university policy says we’re not supposed to discuss our students with their parents—but a dark, insidious curiosity has me riveted. “What do you mean?”

  “First there was Eva. Now…” She looks past me, her face so haunted I almost glance over my shoulder to see what she’s looking at. I know whatever she sees, though, won’t be visible.

  “Sorry, I don’t know anything about Eva.”

  She looks frightened, as if I’ve accused her of something. “I’m not going to say. But right now, he’s like he was with Eva, maybe worse.”

  I finally manage a thin layer of professional distance. I shrug apologetically. “I’m not supposed to discuss students with their parents.”

  “He’s into something.” She ignores my effort to end the conversation. Her hands fly to her temples, and she winces. “I get headaches when he’s like this. Black pain.”

  “I’m sorry.” It sounds ineffectual—two flaccid, meaningless words. I do feel sorry for her, my bleeding heart throbbing to life at last. More than anything, though, I’m horrified that Sam has such a broken, damaged mother. What was it like, growing up with this woman? Maybe he got funneled into foster care. I don’t know much about hard drugs, but I don’t think you turn into this overnight. Either way, Sam’s dim view of the universe makes more sense now.

  “You’re his teacher. Watch out for him.” She pins me with imploring eyes.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  She looks unconvinced. Her face convulses in pain, her scabby, gnarled hands clawing at her hair. Without another word, she stands and stumbles out the door.

  I look at my cupcake. My appetite’s vanished.

  SAM

  The Tuesday after Thanksgiving, you look tired. There’s a pale, papery quality to your skin, a new sadness in your eyes. I’m in the bell tower. It’s easy to get up here—simple trapdoor at the back of the cathedral, rusty ladder, nothing locked. Typical campus security. I watch you with binoculars as you stride across the quad. You’re trying to walk with purpose, letting the cold infuse you with briskness, but I can see the leaden quality to your limbs, the sluggish drag in your step.

  I spent the endless weekend walking around Blackwood, refusing to feel sorry for myself. You went somewhere. I don’t know where, because you changed the password on your fucking email, Kate, and following you around the airport was too risky. Also, I didn’t have money for parking. Everything I stole from Raul is long gone. Vivienne hasn’t tried to contact me since that day in the library. Guess I can be grateful for that. Maybe I’ll hit the jackpot, and she’ll amass enough drugs to OD.

  The holidays are always a slap in the face.

  I don’t long for “normal” parents, siblings, a cast of zany aunts and uncles. My loner status suits me. It’s my natural state—for now. There’s a reason just about every successful children’s story starts by killing off the parents. Our favorite heroes are all orphans—Oliver Twist, Harry Potter, James with his giant peach. I know my story starts this way for a reason.

  All I long for is you.

  By next Thanksgiving, you and I will be in New York. We’ll live in our loft in the Meatpacking District. Our bed will be enormous. We’ll host boozy parties that will make Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball look like a church social. When we finally stumble to bed at 5 A.M., we’ll laugh so loud our neighbors will throw things at the walls. When I undress you, I’ll pop the buttons on your shirt in my haste; you’ll throw your head back and laugh even louder.

  On Thanksgiving, we’ll eat takeout Chinese and drink dirty martinis. We’ll go to an off-off Broadway production of a new play written by a Polish lesbian. We’ll walk the streets of the city, taking in every detail with our writers’ eyes—the Greek family arguing outside Grand Central, the homeless man w
ith a piratical eye patch, the prostitute in electric blue spandex haggling over prices with her frail john. Our eyes will store it all like cameras; later, when we’re lounging in our enormous bed, we’ll fold these details into our novels, mix them in like spices. In yours they’ll taste sweet, tangy; in mine they’ll turn bitter as coffee beans. A hundred years from now, doctoral students will study our texts side by side, noting the parallels, digging them out like Easter eggs and marveling at the evidence of our bound psyches.

  Today, though, it’s Tuesday, the last Tuesday in November. The sky hangs low and ominous. Fat rain clouds creep over campus like an army of bloated ghosts. You look tired, and I feel cold. A chill radiates from my bones. We’re so far away from our life in New York. The joy that awaits us there is a phantom looming on the horizon. It’s not real to you yet; you can’t even see it. Because of that, any pleasure I take in it feels small and cheap.

  I watch you cross campus, your hands shoved deep into the pockets of your kelly green coat. I love your clothes. Everything you wear has a whiff of the past. You don’t don stupid retro costumes like the chick with the pierced face in our workshop. You’re not into costumes, just quality. Everything you wear is cut with the tailored attention of a bygone era. You radiate 1940s, handcrafted quality. In an age of disposable shit, you shine like a pearl amid gaudy, glass beads.

  You stop to talk to that disgusting little desiccated poet. What’s her name? I pry it from my memory. Larkin. I bet her pussy smells like cat piss and fermented cheese. I bet her poems smell like she pulled them from her fetid cunt. You look more tired than ever as you listen to whatever she’s telling you. Your mouth forms a pretty little bow as you purse your lips and endure her words. When you reply, your breath steams the air, delicate as lace.

  Then it hits me with such force, I almost drop my binoculars.

  You won’t be mine until you’re free of this place.

  New York won’t be real for you until you let go of this cramped little life. A bird in a cage doesn’t long for a sky it’s never seen. I need to show you what you’re missing. Why this never occurred to me before now, I have no idea.

  The plan forms itself with effortless clarity. It’s like one of those plots that comes to me in a dream, a novel played out in minutes, perfect and whole.

  I have vision. My knowledge of our future runs bone-deep. I can see where we’re headed. You can’t, and that’s okay. I don’t blame you. There’s nothing sinister about your ignorance. You just don’t understand.

  Once you’re free of this mess—the redheaded goblin, your narrow, stuffy job—you’ll see it, I know you will. New York will beckon. I’ll be there, showing you the way, giving your hand a squeeze when you get scared. I’ll lead you to our sunny loft apartment, our spacious bed, our fresh new life.

  This is just one more test, like Maxine and Raul. I’ll prove myself, Kate. I’ll be the knight that deals the deathblow you’re too timid or naïve to deal yourself.

  Leave it to me. Leave everything to me.

  * * *

  I find her in a large corner office. Dust motes float in the gray sunlight. She is dwarfed by the large cherrywood desk, but then, she’d be dwarfed by just about anything. That’s what happens when you’re a dwarf. The smell is just what I’d imagine—cheese, mildew, ass, decay. Her book-lined shelves give off a musty, antebellum aroma.

  “Professor Larkin?” I step inside, not giving her the chance to turn me away.

  She looks up, startled. “Young man, you should learn to knock.”

  “The door was ajar,” I lie.

  She frowns, takes off her glasses, and scans me from head to toe. “Can I help you?”

  “There’s something we need to discuss.” I pierce her with my baleful stare. “You’re the chair of the English department, right?”

  “I am.”

  “So I should come to you with concerns?”

  She eyes me. “What sort of concerns?”

  “About Professor Youngblood.” I hesitate, every muscle in my body communicating distress. I read somewhere that 93 percent of communication is nonverbal. All my life, I’ve worked hard to convey meaning with my hands, my face. I don’t feel things the way most people do, but I’ve learned how to embody the full range of human emotions.

  The silence fills the room.

  “You’re the one I saw in her office that day.” A light’s dawning in her orc-ish little face.

  “That’s right.” I take a seat. Her visitor’s chair is small and hard. It wobbles. She enjoys making her guests uncomfortable. It also sits a couple inches lower than hers. As if anyone’s going to feel inferior to this decaying orifice on legs. Fucking amateur.

  She leans forward, her bony elbows resting on the desk. She’s trying to seem objective, neutral. It’s easy to see the greedy gleam in her eye, though—a sparkle of schadenfreude. She can’t wait to get her grubby little hands on information with the power to destroy you. I bet she’s waited for this moment ever since you glided into her office for an interview.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sam Grist.”

  “Go on then, Sam Grist. What are these ‘concerns’?”

  God, I despise her. The way she pronounces “concerns,” her voice dripping with skepticism. The way her small, puckered mouth turns up at the corners, like she finds me amusing. How can you stand to kiss this goblin’s mephitic ass, Kate?

  I loathe the idea of giving her the ammunition she craves. For a second, I waver. Then I remind myself: I’m doing this for you. Making this gnome happy is just a necessary evil. You must be cut free from the brambles of Blackwood College. Only then will you see our future.

  Only then will you be mine.

  With great precision, I school my face into a look of anguish. “I don’t want to get her in trouble.”

  She inches forward. “You just tell me what’s going on, let me decide what to do about it.”

  “I’m struggling in her class.” I look at the ceiling, make my lip quiver. “She offered to help.”

  “No law against that,” she says.

  “When I went to her office for our appointment, she locked the door.” I avoid her eyes, then meet her gaze with effort. “She tried to kiss me. Said I could get a better grade if I only…”

  “If you only…?” she prompts, so rapt it’s obscene.

  “If I’d, you know, have sex with her,” I whisper.

  She blinks at me. “That’s a very serious accusation, Sam.”

  “Like I said, I don’t want to get her in trouble,” I say in a rush. “But I don’t want this to happen to other students, you know? My uncle’s a lawyer. One of the best in the state. I don’t want to involve him, but I also don’t think she should be allowed to manipulate young people who are just trying to get an education.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I think you should know what’s going on in your own department,” I add, my voice full of reproach.

  “There will be no need to involve lawyers,” she says.

  “Good. It’s not something I want all my friends knowing.”

  “Naturally.” She stands. “If it comes to it—and it won’t—but if it did, you’d be prepared to tell your story, say, to the Board of Trustees?”

  I recoil. “Why would I—?”

  “Like I said, it won’t come to that. The point is, I need to know you’re serious about these allegations. I can’t act on hearsay.”

  I look her dead in the eye. “I swear. That’s what happened.”

  “There’s no doubt in your—?”

  “Why would I lie about this?” I let my voice break, tears in my eyes.

  She nods, her face full of resolve.

  Your career here at Blackwood is over, Kate.

  I know you won’t understand, not yet. It’s my job to pave the way to our future. Everything, even this, I do for you.

  KATE

  I have to pee. Desperately. As I look around at the faces of my tenure team, I can think
of nothing else. This is the most important meeting of my academic career, and it’s all I can do not to wet my pants.

  Finn Hobbs, with his ridiculous waxed mustache and his ever-present fedora, eyes me with distaste. Beside him, Eileen Cooper, the spitting image of Judi Dench, flips impatiently through her phone, scowling furiously. Next to her, Lilly Smith, the tiny child genius who specializes in seventeenth-century French poets, perches lightly on the edge of her seat, looking like she might take flight. One of her eyes is a slightly different color from the other, giving her an unnerving, lopsided intensity. Frances Larkin shuffles papers at the head of the table. We’re in a windowless room in the humanities building; the walls feel as if they might squeeze tight at any moment like a trash compactor.

  My bladder aches for release.

  Asking for a bathroom break when our meeting’s barely begun is unthinkable. I’d have to trek across the building and up two flights, making them wait. Not an option.

  I cross my legs, willing myself to be a grown-up for once.

  Frances clears her throat. Lilly, who is easily startled, flinches.

  “As you know, this committee has been charged with determining your readiness for tenure.” Frances takes off her reading glasses and tucks them into the pocket of her blouse. “It has not been an easy decision. The Board of Trustees will receive our report, and our recommendation will go into effect immediately upon their approval.”

  I nod, squeezing my thighs together tightly.

  Frances glances around at the other committee members. She takes me in with an expression I can’t read. Her face is as hard and grooved as a peach pit, her eyes blank. “Let me end the suspense and tell you now: the committee has decided not to recommend granting you tenure.”

  My mouth goes dry. I try to speak, but nothing comes out.

  “There are many factors in a decision like this, naturally,” she continues, shuffling the sheaf of papers before her. “I assure you every aspect of our recommendation is documented here.”

  I stare at the other committee members, still too bewildered to speak. This can’t be happening. Everything they asked me to do, I did. The endless syllabus revisions, the massive stacks of paperwork documenting my pedagogy. I served on every committee, went to every department gathering. How can they look me in the eye and tell me I don’t deserve this?