What Grows in Your Garden

by Carolyn P Schriber

  Sarah sagged in her chair, her eyes closed as if to deny the reality of what she was hearing. “I knew she had a spot of trouble with the police over the holidays. That won’t help her case now. But why would she . . .?”

  “Who knows why Cassie does anything!” Jean shut her calendar organizer with a crash and stood up. “She acts out like a kindergartner, and the whole department ends up in an uproar. I’ve lost all patience. Ah, the joys of being a teaching assistant, eh, Ellie? It looks like you and I have two classes to cover while our chivalrous professors rescue the damsel in distress.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  New Directions

  February 16, 2009

  Julia, Denise, and Sarah were still sitting at the conference table when Kevin Chalmers arrived in a huff. They greeted him with a chorus of questions which he brushed off with a shake of his head. He pushed through his office door, dumped his backpack onto the desk where it promptly slid off spilling a stack of papers, and slammed the door. The women stared after him.

  “What now?”

  “Obviously something’s happened. He wasn’t in that vile a mood when he left here.”

  “And where’s Brokowski?”

  Unable to sit still any longer, Sarah began washing coffee cups and straightening the kitchenette. Julia wandered aimlessly up and down the hallway. None of them knew what might happen next, but, like bystanders watching a train wreck, they could not turn away. After several minutes, Kevin reappeared in his office doorway. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I don’t often lose my temper, but this has been an extraordinary morning.”

  “Can you tell us what’s been going on?”

  “Start with a three-ring circus, add fireworks, and open the lion’s cage. That’ll give you a clue.”

  “You were at the courthouse?”

  “Well, first we went to the jail, but we were too late, so we followed the paddy wagon to the courthouse. Somebody had tipped the press, and the reporters were already jostling over the best ambush point.

  “One pushy fellow stuck a microphone in Brokowski’s face and said, ‘We’ve heard there’s a stalker around, and the university is somehow involved. Do you have a comment?’

  “Brokowski pushed the microphone away with one hand and tried to hide his face with the other as we made our way inside. And there we found Lieutenant Cohen in deep conversation with Jim Grollinger—and I use the term conversation only because I can’t come up with a better description. The lieutenant was about to crawl down Grollinger’s throat and tear his tonsils out with his bare hands. And poor Jim was standing there looking as if someone had hit him over the head and he just hadn’t gotten around to falling down yet.

  “Finally, the bailiff declared the court in session, Judge Mary Kilgore motioned for everyone to be seated, and called the case. Cassie was first on the docket. The bailiff read out the charges—or started to—when Grollinger stood up and asked to approach the bench. We couldn’t hear his voice, but the judge shouted at him. ‘You let the case get this far, and now you want to drop all charges? Why?’

  “Again, we couldn’t hear what he said. The judge then called David to approach and asked him what it would do to his case if the plaintiff dropped the charges of loitering, stalking, and posing a threat to private citizens. Well, David said, he thought it would make it impossible to argue a charge of resisting arrest when no crime had been committed. As for the assault on a policeman, the only weapon had been bits of paper when the accused tore up her citation and threw it at him. Sound familiar?”

  Julia rolled her eyes as she remembered Cassie attacking Brokowski the same way.

  “Anyway, that left only the charge of breaking a bond, and David said there was already a motion in another courtroom to quash that indictment. Therefore, the entire case would have to be dismissed.

  “The judge shook her head as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘All this fuss, a woman spends an entire night in a holding cell, and now you’re saying we should forget it? My time is valuable, gentlemen, and I do not appreciate having it wasted. But since we’re all here, we’re going to pursue the matter a little further.’

  “With that, she ordered David to take the witness stand and be sworn in. ‘I want to know about this other arrest. What did Mrs. McGehee do to have a bond set upon her head?’

  “So, David launched into this story about how on the night before Christmas, the McGehees came into town with food in the bed of their pickup truck. Their intention was to feed the poor so that no one would go to bed hungry that night. They set up shop right outside a family restaurant, and the owner objected to a free dinner being made available while he was trying to make an honest living. The restauranteur called the cops and demanded that they charge the couple with failure to have a license to serve meals. That’s when our Cassie lost her famous temper again and set off a near riot. Several people ended up in the holding tank, but in night court they were all released on a bond of one dollar apiece. By then, even the restaurant owner had realized the he did not want to mar Christmas Eve—or anger his good Christian customers, I suppose—by bringing charges against a Christian minister and his wife for distributing loaves and fishes, so to speak.

  “Judge Kilgore said she understood the problem, but she could not absolve a prisoner who faced a pending charge and had broken her bond by creating a further public disruption. She asked for Cassie’s husband to come forward—intending to release Cassie into his charge. But he was not there, and David had to point out that Mr. McGehee was also charged and freed under bond and could therefore not be trusted to oversee his wife’s bail status.

  “And then came the coup de grače. Our own fearless leader stood up, announced that he was Cassie’s graduate advisor and thus stood ‘in loco parentis’ over her. Never mind that she’s a married woman and over the age of twenty-one. He declared himself willing to take responsibility for her good behavior, and the judge accepted his offer.”

  “So, what happens now?”

  “Well, Cassie’s free. Brokowski claimed her as his ward, put her in his car, and they are on their way to her farm. His intention is, as I understand it, to get her home, pick up the husband and bring him back to get their truck out of the impound lot, and then be back here in time to teach his two o’clock class. And me? I threw my backpack across the office.”

  Sarah tried to be the peacemaker. “At least the crisis is over, and Cassie is free.”

  “There’s still no telling what the papers will make of the story,” Kevin grumbled. “And the incident has revealed some bigger problems around here. I, for one, want to see an overhaul of the way we accept new students in the graduate program. Anyone who hears her talk in class would know that Cassie has no preparation for earning a master's degree. I don’t understand how she even made it as far as she did as an undergraduate.”

  “Changes come slowly.”

  “Too slowly! But I need to get a move on before the brilliant scholars in my next class call time on me and disappear into the bowels of the student center.”

  As he stepped out the door leading to the elevator, the door at the other end of the hall opened to admit Brokowski.

  “Whew! That was a close call. I don’t want to see the two of them together until tempers cool.” Julia nodded and then cringed as she heard the department secretary call to Brokowski’s back, “Sir, the dean wants to talk to you—in person—as soon as you get back. Ae you officially here?”

  There was no answer.

  Sarah left the office as early as she could. Normally she enjoyed the peaceful quiet that took over the halls at the end of the day, but today, the silence was ominous. She had barely let herself into the apartment when the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey there! Taking an early afternoon off? Or is something wrong? I called your office and no one answered.”

  “Oh, David. It’s been such a horrid day, I couldn’t stand listening to the gossip another minute.”

  “The p
lace still buzzing about this morning’s adventures, is it?”

  “Don’t make light of it. Everyone’s upset—both those who know what was going on and those who are only hearing the rumors. It’s ugly—and worrisome.”

  “People need an official explanation, I suppose.”

  “Yes, but in this case, no one is stepping up to provide one. Kevin Chalmers is furious at the department chair’s foibles, Brokowski is in hiding from the dean who wants answers, our tenure-track faculty are keeping their heads down so as not to get caught in the fallout, and me? I’m seeking comfort from a ten-pound ball of black fur.”

  “Can I help? Seriously, Sarah, I’d like to talk you through some of this. There are details you don’t know, but I’m reluctant to discuss them over the phone. May I come over?”

  “Now?”

  “I’m free now, if it’s all right.”

  “Yes, please.”

  Within minutes, the doorbell rang, and David thrust a small bag into her hands. “I figured it was too early for burgers, so I brought ice cream. I even have spoons. It’s English toffee with a caramel swirl—no nuts.”

  “I’ll get the bowls.”

  “Don’t need them. It’s only a single pint.” He opened the carton and handed her a spoon. You get the first bite. After that, may the fastest spoon win.”

  “You do know how to make a girl smile. Now, to slow you down so I get my fair share, start talking. What don’t I know about the Cassie situation?”

  “Oh, you probably know more about Cassie than you ever wanted to know. I’m talking about Doctor Brokowski’s background. His is quite a sad story, and I don’t know how many of your faculty colleagues know it.”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “His family tragedy. Have you been in his office? Seen the pictures on his desk?”

  “The ones of a young woman and a small child? Yes, I’ve seen them. So?”

  “Those are pictures of his wife and four-year-old daughter, taken nearly twenty years ago, shortly before they were killed by a drunk driver.”

  Sarah gasped. “How awful!”

  “They had been to the grocery and were returning home on a bright and beautiful spring afternoon. At the intersection of Main Street and Fifth Avenue, right at the viaduct, an old jalopy came barreling through a red light and t-boned the Brokowski car on the driver’s side. Mrs. Brokowski and the child in her car seat directly behind her mother were both killed instantly. So were the two passengers in the jalopy. Only the driver survived. He was an eighteen-year-old kid, days away from high school graduation and showing a blood alcohol level of over 2.0.”

  David hesitated, and for that moment his eyes took on a faraway stare.

  “I knew him. Derrick Fowler and I had grown up together. He lived just down the street, and I had always admired him because he was two years older than I was. He was my idol—always getting to do things that were still out of my reach. He kissed a girl first, tried to grow a mustache, drank his first beer, learned to drive, bought an old car and fixed it up. When I hung out with him, I got to do those things, too. He made me feel older, and I suppose he enjoyed having a little sidekick who adored him.

  “He wasn’t a bad kid—just reckless, convinced of his own immortality as we all were at that age, and hurting because he had just learned that his parents were getting a divorce. His passengers that afternoon were two of his senior class buddies. They had cut school because Derrick had found the keys to his father’s liquor cabinet and had invited them to share a drink to celebrate their upcoming graduation. He told me what they were planning, but I decided not to join them. It was only by the grace of God and baseball practice that I was not with them.”

  “Oh, David. How you must have hurt!”

  “I still hurt. It was a painful time for the whole town, as you can imagine. The police charged Derrick with four counts of vehicular homicide and refused to grant him bail for fear his parents might try to help him avoid a nasty trial by leaving the country. My father was the prosecuting attorney on the case. I had just received my learner's permit, and Dad saw this as a chance to teach me an object lesson about the responsibility of driving. He made sure I heard every grizzly detail of the crash and every heart-rending detail of the trial.”

  “So that’s why Brokowski recognized your name at the reception.”

  “Yes, although I’m not sure he ever knew at the time that there was a Cohen son who was a friend of the drunk driver. Anyway, Derrick was convicted on all four counts, sentenced to four terms of life in prison, and, as far as I know, is still incarcerated.”

  “You haven’t tried to . . .”

  “No.”

  “But what has all that to do with Cassie’s arrest?”

  “Take a close look at that picture the next time you’re in the office. The wife bears an uncanny resemblance to Cassie. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the two of them were distant cousins. I know Mrs. Brokowski was from around here. At the funeral, her relatives came pouring out of the surrounding mountain towns. Then, too, the little girl was four years old, which would make her exactly Cassie’s age now.”

  “So when Brokowski looks at Cassie, he’s thinking of his wife and daughter?”

  “I don’t know if he is always aware of the resemblance, but in court today, when he claimed to stand ‘in loco parentis’ over Cassie, the connection was clear.”

  “Dreadful. And so much for the petty gossipers who have speculated that he’s a dirty old man with a crush on his student.”

  “Is that what the students are saying?”

  “It’s what some of the faculty are thinking, too. Kevin Chalmers was furious with Brokowski this morning because he had stepped in to defend her.” Sarah sighed. “I’m glad you told me, but I can’t say it has made me feel any better.”

  The next morning, notices appeared on every history department door: a departmental meeting would convene that same afternoon at 4:00. Sarah spend the day feeling distracted and worried, wondering what changes lay ahead and dreading the possibility of hidden anger spilling over into this meeting.

  At 4:00, Brokowski closed the doors to the departmental lounge and faced a restless gathering of teaching assistants and faculty. “I’ve called this meeting to make sure everyone is fully aware of the difficult schedule we have ahead. But before we get to a listing of dates, I have two pronouncements to make concerning the events of the past weekend. Neither of them will be open for discussion.”

  Nervous glances suggested that some would not like what they were about to hear.

  “First, at the request of Dean Wilkerson and with my total agreement, we are establishing a new procedure for accepting or rejecting candidates for our graduate program. Starting today, each member of the department will review every application. We will provide a checklist against which we will rate all prospective students in terms of their potential ability to handle graduate work. Gwen is working on the form right now, and you will have copies in your hands by the end of the week. Successful applicants will need to receive favorable ratings from at least three out of five faculty votes.

  “Now, in regard to yesterday’s developments. For the record, there will be no names involved. The plaintiff who brought charges against one of our students changed his mind and refused to press the matter. All parties agreed that Princeton Avenue is a public thoroughfare with public parking allowed on both sides of the street. There are no legal limits as to how long a vehicle can remain parked or how long a driver or passenger may occupy it. Therefore, no crime occurred, and any arrest or detention was a mistake on the part of the police. The student involved, however, did exhibit behaviors that were socially unacceptable. Therefore, when the judge released her, she imposed a requirement that Cassie attend anger management classes—a process she began this morning. She will return to her classwork here next week without penalty for classes missed.

  “I have reminded her, however, that she is still on academic probation. And with that in mind, I ha
ve asked her to avoid all occasions for socializing on campus. If she is not in class or studying in the library, she is to go home. If you see her breaking that agreement, I expect you to notify me at once. Her application for readmission to a second year of graduate study will occur at the end of this semester, and we will conduct it on the basis of our new procedure. Her eventual return to the program will depend on her ability to bring her grade-point average up to acceptable levels.

  “Now, as to what lies ahead. We are less than three weeks away from our traditional Spring Break, but you need to recognize that Mardi Gras occurs next week, on February 24. We will have some intrepid students who will try to extend the coming weekend so they can spend Monday and Tuesday in New Orleans. Others will settle for local excesses. We would, of course, prefer that they delay their celebrations until March 6. Compliance will be easier for our Jewish students, who can celebrate their own version of Mardi Gras with Purim on March 9. I am counting on each one of you to emphasize the need for everyone to be in class until 5:00 PM on March 6 and back again by 8:00 AM on Monday, March 16.

  “After three more weeks of classes we have another break for Easter and Passover. On that occasion, break starts at 5:00 PM on Wednesday, April 8 and ends at 8:00 AM on Monday, April 13. Oh, and I needn’t remind some of you that you need to be on your highest alert on April 1. Our students have a history of highjacks getting out of hand. I do not want to see another instance of a Napoleon impostor riding a horse through the halls, or French patriots building barricades at the top of our stairway and trying to start a revolution.