“So you’re not teaching today?”
“No, they barred me from campus until they decide. Feel like a criminal.” He exhales a long breath. “Look, I’m in Portland. I wondered if I could see you.”
“You’re here?” I scramble out of bed and down the hallway to the bathroom. My stomach twists at the sight of myself in the mirror, the fine lines around my mouth and under my eyes that seemed to appear as soon as I turned thirty.
“Are you still at the same apartment?” he asks.
“No, I moved. Five years ago.”
A beat of silence. “Can you give me some directions?”
I think of the dishes in the kitchen sink caked with food, the overflowing trash can, the lived-in filth. I imagine him stepping into my bedroom and seeing the piles of dirty laundry, the empty bottles lined up alongside the mattress, my perpetual mess.
You need to get over this, he’d say. Vanessa, you’re thirty-two years old.
“What about a coffee shop instead?” I ask.
He sits at a corner table, at first barely recognizable, a heavyset old man cupping his hands around a coffee mug, but as I move toward him, cutting through the line at the counter, weaving through chairs, he sees me and stands. Then he’s unmistakable—the six-foot-four mountain, solid and safe and so familiar my body takes over, throwing my arms around him and grabbing fistfuls of his coat, trying to get as close as it can. Sinking into him feels the same way it did when I was fifteen—that coffee and chalk dust smell, the top of my head barely reaching his shoulder.
When he lets go of me, there are tears in his eyes. Embarrassed, he shoves his glasses up on his forehead and wipes his cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know the last thing you want to deal with is a blubbering old man. The sight of you just . . .” Trailing off, he takes in my face.
“It’s fine,” I say. “You’re fine.” My eyes are teary, too.
We sit across from each other as though we’re ordinary, like people who once knew each other catching up after time apart. He looks alarmingly older, gray all over, and not only his hair, even his skin and eyes. His beard’s gone, the first time I’ve ever seen him without it, replaced with jowls I can’t look at without wanting to gag. They hang like jellyfish, pull his whole face downward. It’s a shocking change. Five years have passed since I saw him last, long enough for age to ravage a face, but I imagine this happening since Taylor’s post, like the myth about people being so overcome with grief they go gray overnight. A sudden thought turns me cold—maybe this could wreck him. It could kill him.
I shake my head to ward off the thought and say, more to myself than to him, “This could all end up ok.”
“It could,” he agrees. “But it won’t.”
“Even if they force you out, would that be so bad? It would be like retiring. You could sell the house and leave Norumbega. What about going back to Montana?”
“I don’t want that,” he says. “My life is here.”
“You could travel, have a real vacation.”
“Vacation,” he scoffs. “Give me a break. No matter what comes of this, my name is ruined, reputation destroyed.”
“It’ll blow over eventually.”
“It won’t.” His eyes flash hard enough to stop me from pointing out that I know what I’m talking about, that I was once driven out of there, too.
“Vanessa . . .” He leans forward on the table. “You said the girl wrote to you a few weeks ago. You’re sure you didn’t respond?”
I give him a long look. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“And I don’t know if you’re still seeing that psychiatrist.” He bites his bottom lip, leaves the question unsaid.
I start to correct him—she’s a therapist, not a psychiatrist—but I know it doesn’t matter; that’s not the point. “She has no idea. I don’t talk to her about you.”
“Ok,” he says. “That’s good. Now also about that old blog of yours, I tried looking it up—”
“It’s gone. I took it down years ago. Why are you grilling me like this?”
“Has anyone other than that girl contacted you?”
“Who else would? The school?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m just making sure—”
“You think they’ll try to get me involved?”
“I have no idea. They’re not telling me anything.”
“But do you think they’ll—”
“Vanessa.” My mouth snaps shut. He hangs his head, takes a breath, and then continues slowly. “I don’t know what they’re going to do. I just want to make sure there aren’t any stray fires that need putting out. And I want to make sure you’re feeling . . .” He searches for the right word. “Steady.”
“Steady,” I echo.
He nods, his eyes fixed on me, asking the question he doesn’t dare speak out loud—if I’m strong enough to handle whatever might come.
“You can trust me,” I say.
He smiles, gratitude softening his face. There’s relief in him now, a looseness to his shoulders, his eyes roaming the coffee shop. “So how are you?” he asks. “How’s your mom holding up?”
I shrug; talking about her with him always feels like a betrayal.
“Are you still seeing that boy?” He means Ira. I shake my head and, unsurprised, Strane nods, pats my hand. “He wasn’t right for you.”
We sit in silence through the clatter of dishes, the hiss and whirr of the espresso machine, my thumping heart. For years, I’ve imagined this—being in front of him again, within reach—but now that I’m here, I just feel outside myself, like I’m watching from a table across the room. It doesn’t seem right that we can speak to each other like normal people, or that he can bear to look at me without falling to his knees.
“Are you hungry?” he asks. “We could get a bite.”
I hesitate, check my phone for the time, and he notices my black suit and gold name tag.
“Ah, working girl,” he says. “Still at that hotel, I take it.”
“I could call in.”
“No, don’t do that.” He sits back in his chair, his mood instantly darkened. I know what’s wrong; I should have jumped at his offer, said yes right away. Hesitating was a mistake, and with him, one mistake is enough to ruin the whole thing.
“I can try to get out early,” I say. “We could go to dinner.”
He waves his hand. “It’s all right.”
“You could spend the night.” At that, he stops, his eyes traveling over my face as he contemplates the idea. I wonder if he’s thinking of me at fifteen, or if he’s thinking of the last time we tried, five years ago, at his house, in his bed with the flannel sheets. We tried to re-create the first time, me in flimsy pajamas, the lights low. It didn’t work. He kept going soft; I was too old. Afterward, I cried in the bathroom, the tap running and my hand clamped over my mouth. When I came out, he was dressed and sitting in the living room. We never spoke of it again, and since then stuck to the phone.