Joe (5 page)

Claire hugged her mother back, but she
looked up at her sister sitting on the couch. It was only a flash, but Nikki
could see the panic in her little sister’s eyes.

Mary continued to hug her daughter.
“Everything we’ve planned for is falling right into place. It’s been a lot of
work, but it’s all so worth it. We’re just so proud.”

Her heart contracted in her chest as another
small weight was placed on her already overburdened shoulders, but Claire began
to giggle. Behind their mother’s back Nikki had been mouthing the words that
Mary was saying, and now she was holding up three fingers, counting the times
their mother used the word “proud” before she left.

Mary finally released her daughter. She
took a step back. “What’s funny?” she asked.

Claire smiled sweetly, the fake smile
that she had given so many times in her life. “Nothing. Just very excited,
Mom.”

“We’re so proud,” Mary repeated.

Nikki stood up from the couch, the thumb
of her right hand tucked behind the other four fingers, which were wiggling at
her side. Claire stifled another giggle, but also felt warm tears building
behind her eyes. She couldn’t cry in front of her mother. She couldn’t let on
how
weak
she really was.

“Well, while this has been a proud and
wonderful moment, Claire has class in a little bit, so you’d better get going.
It was so nice to see you, Mother,” Nikki said, ushering Mary toward the door.
She opened it and Mary stepped out, looking only mildly insulted.

“You quit that smoking around your
sister,” Mary said. “We can’t have you infecting her with lung cancer. She has
a bright future.”

Nikki smiled. “Yes, yes, thank you for
the concern.” She started shutting the door. “I’ll try not to get infected as
well, thank you.” The door clicked into place. Nikki turned toward Claire.
“Now, that e-mail. I’ll write it, you go change into something that will make
me ‘proud’ to be next to you.”

Claire laughed, but inside her stomach
was roiling. “You’re such an asswipe,” she said.

“So they tell me.”

“What are you going to say?” Claire
asked.

“To what? The teacher? Oh, I’ll come up
with something.”

It doesn’t matter anymore
, Claire thought.
I can skip because
it doesn’t matter anymore.

She wasn’t completely resolved yet, but
things just kept piling up, and now, this internship. Come Monday, after one
last day of classes, Claire had decided she would take her own life.

Chapter
Eight

Merion

Professor Gellar,

I will be unable to attend the 2:30
Philosophy class scheduled this afternoon. I have a stomach flu that has left
me bedridden. I will be present on the following Tuesday for the exam,
providing that I am able. Thank you for your understanding.

Claire Hoffken

Merion stared at the words on her
computer screen, and then snapped the laptop closed without properly shutting
it down. If she had a dollar for every time she’d read those words she would be
happily retired by now, but the words only dealt out headaches.

She was just so
tired
of it all,
and ready to be done. As far as she was concerned, she’d paid her dues to
society. She’d spent all her youth, the good days, when her back didn’t hurt
and her hair hadn’t paled, doing her honest work as a citizen. And she was
done. So done.

Now that the end of her working days
were drawing near, her retirement only six weeks away, she found she had less
and less patience for the occurrences of her daily routine. She was sick of the
politics of the workplace, the students’ never-ending, recycling bag of
excuses, the co-workers she never really liked but had learned to tolerate, and
Head Dean Craig Kraucker. She definitely wouldn’t miss him.

And no, it wasn’t all bad. The last
thirty years of her time spent at UMMS had not all been bad. She’d met some
really great people, some really smart people, students and coworkers alike,
which was admittedly better than a career spent with all stupid people. But
amazingly, stupid people managed to infiltrate the sanctity of a university, as
well. Not just stupid, lazy too.

Her plan for retirement was simple: sell
her house, buy a smaller one out in the country, and travel the world. The more
she thought about this plan, the more anxious she became. It may not have all been
bad, but somehow, when you’re six weeks short retirement, it all becomes
intolerable.

She knew what it was, the
monotony
of
it all, that same-shit-different-day kind of thing. It made her feel now like
she wanted to run, to fly away, to be gone and never look back but for
memories. As she sat at the carved oak desk in her office, she thought about
getting up and leaving. She had always chosen the wise path, never acted on
impulse. She didn’t want to be here anymore, so she could just get up and leave.
Take her retirement early, be on a plane to Hawaii…

A knock sounded on her office door.
Merion looked up, startled. After a moment, she said, “Yes, come in.”

The door opened and a male student
stepped in the room. Merion recognized him from one of her Monday/Wednesday
classes. His name was Eric, and he was a decent student. Not particularly
bright, but a hard worker.

“Professor Gellar,” Eric said.

Merion gestured to the seat opposite her
desk. “What can I do for you, Eric?”

Eric sat down on the edge of the chair,
his hands wringing together. “Professor Gellar, I was wondering if I could
reschedule Monday’s exam…I have a really important appointment I have to make
that afternoon. Would that be possible?”

Merion was silent for a moment. Oddly,
she had to stop herself from bursting out into laughter. Same shit, different
day.

Instead, she said, “I don’t usually
allow make-up exams…This appointment, you can’t reschedule it?”

Eric shook his head, serious brown eyes
never leaving hers. “No, ma’am, afraid I can’t. I can’t miss it, either.”

Merion stared at Eric for a moment. It
was obvious by his eyes that he was going to keep his other “appointment”
Monday afternoon whether or not she agreed to reschedule the test. Well, she
was a tired, old professor, but that didn’t make her an asshole.

She stifled what would have been a heavy
sigh. “All right, I’ll set up something with the Testing Center on Tuesday.
Will you be able to take it then?”

Eric’s face lit up. Merion smiled back
unconsciously. Whatever he had going on Monday was important to him, and he
hadn’t missed a class or turned in a late assignment all semester. She’d done
the right thing. Six weeks left.

“I can’t thank you enough, Professor,”
Eric said.

Merion waved her hand in dismissal. “No
problem,” she replied.

Eric left the office, shutting the door
behind him. Merion sat back in her chair and released the formally seized sigh.
Maybe she should just leave now and start retirement early. Jeepers, wouldn’t
that be great?

However, with six weeks left, she could
stick it out. Maybe she would take off tomorrow, which was Friday, and have an
early weekend. But come Monday, she would be right back on campus, finishing up
her job, and dreaming about her future.

Chapter
Nine

Eric

It
was a good day. For the first time in what seemed like forever, things were
looking up for Eric. Professor Gellar had been surprisingly understanding about
his needing off Monday afternoon. Now all he had to do was get the final
approval from his parole officer, and he was good to go.

Eric wrung his hands together tightly,
rubbed his palms on the thighs of his jeans, and went back to wringing. His
P.O., Ryan Jackson, always kept him waiting. Eric failed to believe that
Jackson’s day was so hectic that he couldn’t be punctual to their scheduled
meetings, mainly because Mr. Jackson was too fat to be a truly busy man.

And Eric couldn’t show up late. Oh no,
Eric had better be early. By now he had learned how to play the game with these
people; that is what it was all about.

The secretary, a Latino woman with
large, curled bangs and a slicked-back ponytail, sat behind a glass barrier, so
as to keep her separated from the lesser forms of society, like Eric. She
stopped filing her nails long enough to tell him that Mr. Jackson would see him
now.

Eric stood, wiping his palms on his
jeans once more, and entered the P.O.’s office. Behind a poorly-crafted desk
sat the poorly-crafted parole officer, the man who had been making Eric’s life
hell for the past three and a half years. Ryan Jackson was a prick without the
rose.

Eric took a seat opposite his P.O.,
reminding himself to be as friendly as possible. There was a lot riding on this
visit. He put a smile on his lips.

Mr. Jackson stared at him for a moment.
“How’s it going, Eric?” he asked.

“Very well, sir, and yourself?”

Mr. Jackson laced his stubby fingers
together and rested them at the peak of his mountainous stomach. “Oh, just
keeping an eye on convicts, as always,” he said.

Eric crushed his tongue between his
teeth. This man was gifted at pissing him off. Smiling again, he nodded. “Noble
work, sir,” he replied.

The P.O. blew out a breath. Eric gave
himself a mental pat on the back. Jackson was always testing him, challenging
him to slip up and lose control, but Eric wasn’t as stupid as Jackson thought.
Spend three years in prison and you’ll learn how and when to keep your mouth
shut and take the high road.

Mr. Jackson began sifting through papers
atop his desk. Eric rubbed his palms against his jeans.

“Well, I’ve got the results of your last
test,” Mr. Jackson said. He looked up at Eric and was silent for a moment.
Always testing. When he didn’t continue, Eric smiled and nodded in response.
Finally, Jackson said, “They came back clean.”

This time Eric’s smile was less forced.
“Knew they would, sir.”

Jackson didn’t reply. He stared down at
what Eric assumed was his most recent drug test results, scrutinizing them as
if there had to be some mistake. Eric’s jaw clenched, and he directed his focus
elsewhere, but the small office didn’t offer much for distraction. In fact,
Eric hated the room itself as much as he hated the man who worked in it. The
sparse posters on the off-white walls proclaiming things like,
Friends don’t
let friends drive drunk
and
Three strikes, you’re out!
rubbed Eric
the wrong way. The florescent lights, one of which flickered occasionally, gave
him a headache, and the fat, sweaty aroma permeating the room that belonged to
Mr. Jackson made his stomach hurt. Plus, there was so much riding on this. Eric
couldn’t help but sweat.

“You been getting your community service
hours in?” Jackson pressed.

“Yes, sir,” Eric said. “Thirty hours a
week, every week.”

Jackson shuffled some more papers. The
previous question had been pointless. Eric had turned in all of his hours and
Jackson knew it.
Play the game, Eric. Just play his game.

Finally, the P.O. looked up. “Well, then
I’ll make the arrangements for Monday, as I can’t find any reason not to.”

All of the anxiety seemed to melt out of
Eric, and real happiness filled up his chest. He had waited so long for this
and worked so hard. For the past six-and-a-half years he’d been paying for one
mistake and now things were finally looking up. There had been times when Eric
had been so depressed he felt like running from all of this. The time he had
spent behind bars had been the worst three years of his life. He had been
terrified, lonely and half-mad the whole time. It wasn’t a place where he
belonged, and he had vowed to never end up back there.

But if he was being honest, he hadn’t
made just
one
mistake. He had made a lifetime of them. He’d just finally
been
caught
for one of them. Looking back now, that part of his life,
the pre-prison part, seemed to be a haze. The memories of it all had dream-like
qualities to them, and yet he could still remember the details so precisely.
Especially the night of the accident. The night he got put behind bars and was
held there for the next three years. He remembered that night perfectly.

Things were different now, though. Eric
was a new man. He was older, wiser and determined. He had made decisions very
young that he would be paying for until he was very old, and no more bad
choices were needed. The time he’d lost when he had been locked up could never
be gotten back, and people other than him had suffered for it.

He was so humbled that he’d even
considered the possibility that prison was exactly what he needed to get him to
turn his life around. Maybe the
only
thing that could’ve gotten him to
do so. His path had been all self-destruction. Now, not only had he been
drug-free for six-and-a-half years, he had a job, a nearly-completed college
education, and strong morals. But the race wasn’t over yet. That one night, the
night of the accident, hadn’t been paid for in full. For that one night he’d
paid three years in prison and three on parole, and he still had two years left
to go.

Things were finally looking up, though.

“Thank you,” Eric told the P.O. “Thank
you so much.”

Jackson waved a hand. “See you next week,”
he said.

Eric left the office elated, got in his
car and cranked up the radio. The tune playing was so appropriate, that he
couldn’t help belting the words out along with Jimmy Buffet as he sang about
the coming Monday.

The words couldn’t ring truer, because
come Monday, after his two morning classes at UMMS, Eric would get to see his
daughter for the first time in five and half years, for the first time
ever.

Come Monday, it really would be all
right. As far as he knew it.