Fall Semester (12 page)

She had not asked him to leave. She had not dismissed him at all. Malcolm knew that this could have been—certainly was—due to her near-delirious state, but it made it easier for him to simply stand there. And although she had felt timid about him removing her boots, she had not resisted. She had let him help her from the moment he saw her in the stairwell. She had accepted his help.

Malcolm did not have to remind himself that he never would have accepted help had he been the one to fall ill on campus. The thought itself was distasteful. He would have run himself off the road, taking a pedestrian or two with him, before letting someone else…see him this way.

And yet he found himself standing in Maren Gardner’s house, grateful that he could see her this way. She was sick and vulnerable, true, but he recognized now that each time he’d seen her, she was no more guarded than she was at this moment. It amazed him. It frightened him.

Malcolm turned toward the kitchen, knowing that he should leave, that the only reasonable thing to do would be to leave. Against the kitchen wall was a small, white dinette with two wooden chairs. He stared at it for a moment.

What the hell am I doing?

He grabbed one of the chairs and returned to the hallway. He wanted, he desperately wanted to bring the chair into her room and just sit, but this he would not allow himself to do. He planted the chair in the hallway and, heart pounding like a beast, sat down. He tried to calm himself. He sucked in a deep, quiet breath. Perry’s ears perked up, and the dog eyed him suspiciously. Malcolm emptied his lungs. The dog settled his head on his front paws and moaned almost inaudibly.

Malcolm’s head reeled. He thought of a Ferris wheel, or a medieval water wheel half submerged under water. He pictured riding such a wheel. Exhilaration, intoxication, sunlight. Suffocation, panic, murky cold. It was as though two of him rode the wheel at once, and the one under the water was screaming at the bastard above to head for shore.

I don’t need this.

But he made no move to go, to even stand. He looked at the girl in the bed, and the thought of returning to his car and driving home seemed airless, crushing.

You can’t possibly think…

But some part of him told that voice to clam up. As though he were leafing through a reference book, Malcolm consciously tried to draw to mind every encounter he’d had with Maren Gardner and explore it carefully. He remembered their first meeting, her abrupt introduction at the beginning-of-term mixer. Had it been abrupt? Or had she just been exceedingly warm to talk to a joyless prick like himself? He remembered her telling him about her father and, what was it? Pancreatic cancer? Malcolm felt heat rise to his face. Had he said even one civil word? One word of comfort?

He remembered that she had included him at Bisbano’s, surely despite the general mood of her peers. She had poured him a glass of beer before filling her own. She had asked him if he was happy.

He recalled passing her on the stairs with Helene Coulter and the altercation later with Jess Dalton at the bookstore. She had been protecting her friend from him.

And I’d wondered if she was a lesbian.

Malcolm knew that even his ungenerous thoughts at the time had been something else. He had been curious about her, ever-aware of her, noticing her nervousness before the reading she’d given.

Then the conference had been upon them. His urge to attack Dalton had been more than chivalrous. It had been primal. It had been territorial. Something inside of him had already claimed her. There had been no choice, no deliberation. The thing was done. He had to admit that it had been that way for weeks.

And now he was sitting alone in her house, and all he wanted to do was to stay. She lay in bed as still as the moon, and Malcolm found himself smiling because she was safe. Because he
had
been panicked when the sorority girl had uttered the horrible word, “meningitis.” Because he would have carried her inside if it would have kept her dry and warm. Because he had, by whatever happy accident, been allowed to be here.

He knew he was a fool. That conviction would not rest, but at the moment, it did not override the fact that he felt grateful. He knew that he should go home, but he also understood that he would never have another chance to just look at her. Without pretense. Without masking. And if she awoke and asked him why he was still here, and he had no doubt that she would, he would say that he wanted to be sure that she was all right. It would not be a complete lie. Then she would send him away, and he would face whatever self-derision that would come it its own time.

Malcolm had adjusted to the idea of giving himself permission to stay. He had even begun to imagine a pot of chicken soup. A pot of chicken soup would take hours to make, and Maren would need it. Perhaps she would wake up and accept the fact that he was there to take care of her for the duration.

His fantasy evaporated with the sound of a car pulling up in the driveway. Malcolm bolted up from his chair. Perry jumped off the bed and ran to the kitchen door, prancing excitedly. For the first time, Malcolm registered the second bedroom in the small house. A roommate.

He held his breath as whoever it was dashed up the steps to get in out of the rain. Suddenly, his decision to stay seemed unreasonably foolish. What would they say about him in the English Department?

“Maaahreeen?” The accent took him by surprise. The girl lowered her umbrella as she stepped inside to reveal a tall figure. She was bright blond with a plump face that was rosy and freckled. She smiled at Malcolm, looking only a little puzzled. “Oh! Hallo. Where is Maarheen?”

Malcolm blinked and found his voice.

“I…I.. brought Maren home. She is not feeling well.” He pointed to the bedroom behind him.

“Oh, she is seeck,” The girl glanced over his shoulder to spy Maren. What was the accent? Scandinavian, surely. Swedish? “Aw, I am Tuva, her roommate.”

Tuva extended her hand, and Malcolm awkwardly shook it.

“I…am Dr. Vashal…”

“Oh, she has called a doctor, she is so seeck?” Tuva’s blond eyebrows rose with concern. Malcolm floundered.

“No,…I..am..Malcolm Vashal. I teach at the university,” he struggled to explain. “I… gave her a ride home when she became ill….And…I didn’t want to leave her alone.”

“Oooh! I see,” Tula smiled again. “Well, now, I am here, and I will see that she is okay. Okay?”

Malcolm could feel the heat on his face.

“Uh…yes,…good.” He turned once more to look at Maren. She was still sound asleep, but she looked even lovelier to him now that he could no longer stay. He swept up the chair that he’d left in the hallway and broke his gaze from her. He deposited the chair and headed for the door where he stopped.

“Please tell her that….” He did not know what to say, but he wanted something, some word that would bridge him to her. “…that I hope she feels better.”

“Of course, of course,...” Tuva said as though it meant nothing, as though she had already forgotten him. “Good day to you!” She sang as he stepped back into the rain.

He walked back to his car stunned and numb. It felt like he had been ripped from sleep to be suddenly out in the cold, out of her sight. He shut himself into the car and just sat.

The rain tapped on the roof. It was just a drizzle now. The windows had gone foggy with the arrival of the cold front.

“Get a grip on yourself.” Malcolm started the car and made his way home.

It only took him a minute, perhaps, to reach his house. He seemed to have to drag himself out of the car and inside. He stood in his kitchen and surveyed his home. The house, his life was like a pair of muddy pants, unpleasant to reassume once shed. Did that mean that Maren was like nakedness?

The thought hit him like a bolt of electricity. Maren, this thing that had to do with her,
was
like nakedness. In every possible way. He was stripped and exposed. But it was bare, too. Clean. New.

Knowing he was mad, Malcolm peeled off his clothes in the middle of his kitchen. It was absurd. He laughed at himself, but the oppressive weight of his house, of the life he called his seemed to back off a step.

It was mid-afternoon. The light was soft outside, and the house was dark. He strode through the rooms, closing the front blinds. If any of his neighbors were home to witness his freakish behavior,... He laughed again at the thought. He stood in his living room, daylight from the slits in the blinds hitting his body. Ricardo, curious at this odd turn, trotted to Malcolm’s feet and sniffed. He rubbed his face against Malcolm’s bare calf.

“Yes, I’ve officially lost it,
mi querido.
” Malcolm leaned his head against the window sill. “I’m naked in my living room, talking to a cat.”

He padded into the hallway and to his bedroom. Malcolm stared at himself in the full-length mirror of the armoire. He allowed himself to admit that it wasn’t an awful sight. He hadn’t gone paunchy and feminine in his thirties. His shoulders were still good, and his stomach was flat. His chest and arms attested to time spent in the gym, and the running had again toned his calves and buttocks.

If he wasn’t the bastard that he was, would…someone so young even give him a passing glance?

Young AND beautiful,
he reminded himself. He shook his head viciously. Was he really checking himself out? Looking at himself through her eyes?

Fucking ridiculous.

He opened his closet, found his robe and threw it on. He would pour himself a drink. Or four.

But he only finished the first when he thought about Sr. Alejandro’s hopeless joy in “
Ellos son los hijos de la Virgen”.
Malcolm went to his desk and found the poem on page 43. He reached for his notebook, but it was in his briefcase, which he’d left in the backseat of the car. Because of Maren. And he was naked now under a robe. Because of Maren. He picked up a pen and began scribbling on the blotter instead.

They Are Her Children

It is romantic to picture a basket,

Like the one Moses rode to the bathing Thermuthis.

But baskets bring money when sold,

They take work to make.

Babies take everything when they are born,

And it seems like nothing to make them.

So they arrive not in baskets

But newspaper.

There is one sister who scowls each time.

“These girls leave them like trash!”

But we know it is not so.

They are Her children.

Between the pages there is a baby,

A girl almost always

Sticky and cold with birth waters.

A cord that needs to be tied and cut.

I heat a bath in a copper kettle.

I cradle her in these brown hands.

Her skin is wrinkled to be unfolded in promise.

Mine is creased like work that is done.

I am the nothing, and she is the everything.

God whispers this in my ear as I wash her.

I am the nothing that makes a space for the everything.

Hail Mary!

For my hands are full of grace!

On Monday morning, Malcolm made himself wait until after his first class and a deliberately slow cup of coffee before passing by the bullpen. It had taken every measure of self-control and self-condemnation to keep himself from dropping by her house over the weekend under the auspices of checking on her. He had driven by once and seen the roommate’s car in the drive. A part of him was grateful that her presence stopped him from surely making a fool of himself. But one undeniable benefit of his folly came to him. In his near mad efforts to put Maren from his mind, he had translated five of Sister Alejandro’s poems over the weekend. And they were respectable translations.

Malcolm hovered in the doorway of the bullpen, angled to the left as he tried to size-up Maren’s desk, the second cubicle on the right. No purse. No books. No Maren.

“Looking for someone, Dr. Vashal?” Helene slipped past him and set a stack of blue books on the right desk closest to the entrance.

“I’m… making sure the grad students are observing their posted office hours,” Malcolm idiotically scanned the schedule on the door. Maren’s hours were MWF noon – 2 p.m. It was only 10:30. He could feel his resolve weakening, evaporating.

If she was not here, surely someone should see to her, he convinced himself. And if he couldn’t keep himself away from her, wouldn’t friendship be the most acceptable alternative to making an ass of himself?

Chapter 13

Maren

A
t 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Maren dragged herself out of the shower. Her only goal was to dry off and get dressed before climbing back into bed. The downpour from the showerhead had almost left her prostrate on the tub floor, but she knew that if Tuva had not forced her to go to the infirmary the day before for the prescription of Tamiflu, she would have gone another day without washing. Maren cringed at the thought.

Tuva had done her best with the patient, who adamantly refused to call on family for help. Maren wouldn’t dream of risking contagion to anyone who would be near her father. Tuva brought her what she asked for, which was mostly Tylenol and water, and the faithful roommate managed to get her to swallow a little ramen noodle soup, orange juice, and sliced pear each day.

Of course, Monday meant that Tuva had classes and work, and as Maren shrugged herself into a gray sweatshirt and black yoga pants, her lilac robe and fuzzy socks, she could not remember what time she had last taken the acetaminophen. She wrapped her hair in the turban of her towel and climbed back into bed, distantly wishing that she had the strength to change her sheets, but grateful for the enveloping warmth because her chills had returned.

Despite her misery, she knew the Tamiflu must be working because she was thinking more clearly. The weekend had been a strange blur of pain, coughing, and delirium. She knew that Dr. Vashal had brought her home—she could remember the welcoming smell of leather and lemongrass, warm and masculine, as he had ushered her to his car and again when he had helped her inside the house—but she was not sure how long he had stayed.

She had slept forever, it seemed, and he was there, giving her pills to swallow. Then later, much later, he helped her remove her boots, despite her mortification and worry that her feet might smell. He seemed to be nearby for days, just outside of her bedroom.

Why are you so far away?
She had asked him. He would not answer her.

Come closer.
She reached out and took his hand. He sat on the edge of her bed and smiled at her.

You’re beautiful. I see inside you.
She’d confided.

Then Tuva had laughed and placed a damp cloth on her forehead, which was freezing, and she’d turned away from it, searching the foot of her bed and the doorway for him, wondering where he had gone.

Maren could have sworn that he was there later, during the night or nights that followed, but in the clarity of antiviral pharmaceuticals, she knew that her dreams had given him to her. She just did not know how much of what she recalled was real.

The fact that he had brought her home, materialized by her side in the stairwell just when she needed help, seemed almost the stuff of dreams, especially given his recent scarcity and distance. As Maren dozed again, she vowed that she would thank him for his kindness and perhaps find a way to ask him to clarify how long he had remained by her sickbed.

Someone was knocking down a wall, and Perry was frightened. A wrecking ball crashed through her bedroom, and Perry leapt out of the great hole, ready to mount a counterattack. Maren jumped through the hole after him and found herself awake in bed, looking at the ceiling. Perry was barking furiously as someone knocked on the door.

“Coming!” She tried to call, but her voice was muffled with congestion, and she ended up submitting to a fit of coughing. Maren struggled to her feet, wrapped her robe around herself, adjusted the towel still on her head, and checked her alarm clock: 5:15 p.m. She crossed the kitchen, expecting Helene to be at the door, and wondering why Perry would not shut up.

“Hush, Perry!” She fussed as she undid the deadbolt and opened the door to Dr. Malcolm Vashal, who wore a look of extreme apprehension.

“Oh!” she honked as Perry snarled and aimed to charge him. Maren held him back with her left foot and hissed at him. “Perry! Bed!”

The rat terrier’s posture deflated at the command, and he turned obediently and trotted to the bedroom, but he made sure to note his disapproval with a low growl.

Maren turned back to the professor, unsure of which detail was more humiliating, Perry’s terrorist attack or her current appearance in loungewear, robe, and terry-cloth turban. Her head began to pound again.

“Dr. Vashal,...I’m so sorry...,” she gestured vaguely to the bedroom and Perry and then to her state of attire.

“Nonsense, Perry is an excellent sentry.” He gave her a half smile and a nod as he brushed a stray chestnut lock out of his eyes. “And you clearly have him well trained.”

Maren leaned against the door, not quite believing that he stood on her stoop, and she wondered idly if she were dreaming again. Dr. Vashal seemed to swallow and shift the weight on his feet before raising up a bulging white paper bag.

“May I... come in...?” he asked, hesitantly.

Whether she was dreaming or not, Maren would never be rude to him. She stepped back from the door the let him in.

“Of course...Please come i—” She had to smother her coughing in the crook of her arm as he entered and closed the door. “But I don’t want to get you sick.”

He shook his head dismissively, but he looked at her with concern.

“I had a flu shot earlier this month. I wish you had, too. Have you seen a doctor?” He set his paper bag on the counter, and before she could answer, he brought a hand to her forehead.

“You still have a fever!” He sounded alarmed and, Maren thought, guilty. “I should have checked on you sooner.”

It was her turn to protest.

“No, certainly not. I went to the infirmary yesterday. The Tamiflu is already helping, but I think I’m overdue for some Tylenol.”

“Ah! Just a moment,” he said, seeming to remember something as he dug through the pockets of his jacket and produced a bottle of Advil. “I didn’t see any here on Friday, and it’ll last longer than the Tylenol.”

He handed her the sealed bottle, and she knew that she could not hide the stunned look on her face as she took it from him.

“Thank you...Please, excuse me for a moment...Have a seat...anywhere,” she stammered as she took off for her bedroom and shut the door behind her. Perry stood up on the foot of her bed and wagged expectantly. Maren sat next to him and stroked him absentmindedly. She felt as though she had sandbags tied to her head, but even without her fever, she would have had trouble processing Dr. Vashal’s sudden appearance in her home. Was he here out of a sense of duty? Some Samaritan’s tie of responsibility? Had he been worried about her?

Maren opened the bottle of medicine and chased down two of the gel caps with a sip of water from the Camelbak bottle on her bedside table. She grabbed a handful of tissues and tried to blow her nose as quietly as possible, which was not very quiet, but she was not about to return to him all snotty and repulsive. She unwound the towel from her head, and damp hair fell around her. Maren found a comb on her dresser and raked out the tangles that had formed while she napped.

She checked herself in the mirror of her dresser and decided that she had never looked worse. Pale skin. Red nose. Watery eyes.

Get over it. He’s not here for a date.

She opened the door to her bedroom and immediately shut herself in the bathroom. She washed her hands in the sink, which was freezing, and she took a swig of Scope. She thanked God that she had brushed her teeth before she showered, but she couldn’t be sure how fresh her breath was since she couldn’t smell anything.

Maren stuffed clean tissues into the pockets of her robe before she emerged, now shivering, from the bathroom. The effort of making herself presentable had worn her out, and she just wanted to curl up on the couch and study her visitor.

Dr. Vashal had seated himself at the dinette, but he stood when she entered, and he immediately frowned.

“Your hair is still wet,” he reproached. “That won’t do.”

“It’s alright,” she brushed off his concern. “Shall we sit in the living room?”

“It is
not
alright,” he upbraided, his frown deepening. “You have a fever and a cough, and it’s drafty in here. You’ll catch pneumonia like that.”

At his scolding tone, the last of her energy drained out of her, and Maren sunk into a kitchen chair, laying her forehead in her hands and her elbows on the table.

Why is he so angry?

“Dr. Vashal,...I just don’t have it in me to dry my hair right now.
Please.
I need to sit down.”

Maren was sure that she, in fact, needed to lie down. She couldn’t even bring herself to look up at him, so it was the appearance of his black Steve Madden Oxfords entering her field of vision that told her he approached. She felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Let me help you,” he said softly, all scolding gone. “Come.”

He took her arm and gently guided her until she was on her feet again, and he plucked up her chair in his other hand and led them into the bathroom. Even though this was the strangest thing to ever happen in her life, Maren was too bemused to resist. She allowed him to seat her in front of the sink, and, without a word, he took down her hair dryer from the caddy above the toilet and turned it on. Maren noticed that he tested its heat and force against his own hand before aiming it at her.

Warm air caressed her, and when he grabbed the hairbrush from the same caddy and began carefully pulling it through her hair, Maren thought her bones had gone liquid. She resumed her slumped posture, elbows on the sink and head in hands, and she closed her eyes.

Oh my God.

He was deliberate and gentle, catching her hair in the brush at the roots and following it down to the ends. The fine hairs on her neck stood on end, and goose bumps erupted down her arms. Maren’s scalp tingled every time the bristles of the brush stroked against it. She drowned in a sea of sensation.

A moan escaped her throat before she could catch herself.

She couldn’t help it—she could only hope that he had not heard her over the hair dryer. Maren could not remember feeling so carefully and intimately attended. It was heavenly.

What is this?

When every strand of hair on her head was dry, he turned off the dryer and set it down. He ran his fingers tentatively through her hair to the nape of her neck.

“That’s better,” he said, softly.

“Thank you,” she murmured, still cradling her head in her hands. Abashed, she wasn’t sure that she could look at him and conceal her awe.

“Come. Let’s get you settled.” He helped her to her feet again. “Am I correct in assuming that you have not had your dinner?”

She felt herself grin at his formality.

“That is correct.”

“Good, then the half-gallon of chicken and sausage gumbo from Don’s will not go to waste,” he said, leading her through the kitchen into the living room.

“Half-gallon?” She gaped at him, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Instead he busied himself with fluffing the cushions on her couch.

“Yes, just let me heat it up for you, and I’ll be on my way.” He reached for her arm to guide her to the couch, but she would not yield. If he thought he was leaving now, he was dead wrong.

“I won’t have any unless you stay and join me,” she insisted, willing him to meet her eyes. When he first looked at her, she saw doubt, but then his eyes softened, and he nodded.

“Fair enough.”