Ordinary World (3 page)

Before I had a chance to sort through it all, Jeff Baxter, the English department chairperson and a good friend of mine, knocked on the door as he opened it. At thirty-eight, Jeff was the youngest tenured professor to ever become chair of our department. He was also one of the first people I had met when I interviewed for the position at NU, and we hit it off instantly. His down-to-earth attitude met my pedagogical sensibility, and we often formed an alliance in faculty or administrative meetings. Outside of school, our shared enjoyment of David Lodge novels,
Family Guy
, and the New England Patriots made us and our spouses frequent dinner guests at each other’s homes. I think he took Sam’s death really hard.

“Mind if I come in?” he asked, already in the room.

I took another deep breath. “Hey, Jeff.”

“Welcome back.”

“Thanks.”

“How you doin’?”

“Just got here, actually.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

I shrugged my shoulders and avoided his dark, boyish brown eyes, then redirected my attention.

“I don’t know. I’m just sort of here, I guess. You know… one day at a time.”

He sat in the swivel chair next to my desk and quickly ran his fingers through his chestnut-colored hair, revealing a few gray bangs. 

“How’d your staff meeting go?”

“Actually, I postponed it to next week.”

“What have you got going on today?”

“My first two classes. And getting back into the swing of things. Catching up.”

“Well, I hope you don’t mind if I check in with you from time to time. There’s a lot going on right now, what with the Chancellor’s Program Assessment Initiative and all that. You’re gonna have quite a load this semester, even under sunny skies.”

“I’m fine, Jeff. Really. The work will be good for me.”

He gave me the Spark Notes version of the department agenda since I’d left, and recommended I read the minutes of the last three months’ meetings.

“You need anything?” he asked.

Man, was
that
a loaded question.

“Not right now,” I answered.

“Have a good class, then.” We often said that in lieu of “Have a nice day,” even if neither of us were teaching.

“Thanks. You too.”

He left the door open as he left. I stood up, walked over to close it, and returned to my desk. A custodian had moved my garbage pail to the other side of the office, next to the entrance. Sitting behind my desk, I picked up each piece of mail, unopened, and flung it toward the pail until it was time for class. With the memos, I haphazardly folded them into airplanes and sailed them across. Altogether, I nailed twenty-three out of thirty-two shots. At one point, someone knocked on the door; I opened it a crack and peeked out, as if I were in an apartment alone at midnight, answering to a stranger. I saw Kay holding a thick stack of paper.

“Here’s your syllabi.” Her eyes darted from the mess on the floor back to me.

I transferred the stack from her arms to mine.

“Thanks, Kay. Seeya,” I said, and closed the door behind her.

The discarded mail remained on the floor.

As class time approached, the seed of anxiety that I awoke with that morning had germinated into full-blown panic. When I entered the cold classroom—the heat was turned off in there too—my chest pounded so loud I could hear it, and my breathing quickened.
I’m having a heart attack
, I thought in an ironically calm manner.
My heart is going to pop out of my chest, just like the alien in the movie, and I’m going to die. My guts are going to spill out and stain my sweater.

The students had already filled the room. The irony of being tenured as well as a writing program director was that you rarely got to teach the course that qualified you to be a WPA in the first place. Thus, I had insisted on assigning myself one first-year composition course per semester to keep my skills and the program fresh.

“Good morning,” I said, forcing a smile that probably looked more like I was constipated (which, in fact, I was). The students were as eerily quiet as the congregation in the church when I finished the crappy eulogy at Sam’s funeral. Not even the heater vents uttered a sound.

“Well, okay,” I said, attempting to break the ice. “I’m Dr. Vanzant; but from the looks on your faces, you seem to know that already. So, let’s just get the elephant out of the room, shall we?”

The students sat and either stared into their notebooks or past me, expressionless.

“My husband was killed by a drunk driver this past October. I’m doing okay. I’m looking forward to this class and to doing some writing with you guys. So, let’s go over the course requirements.”

I ignored the awkward silence and distributed the syllabus, reading the policies from the first two pages and taking up all of fifteen minutes. And yet, those fifteen minutes passed like a kidney stone. Normally, I would do some freewriting exercises with the students on the first day. Instead, I dismissed them. As the class filed out, one student approached me.

“Professor, I hope this doesn’t upset you, but I just wanted to tell you that my sister goes to Edmund and took your husband’s class two years ago. She said he was her favorite teacher and that because of him, she loves writing now. She cried when she heard the news.”

The girl’s voice wavered slightly. A part of me wanted to take her in my arms and console her and assure her that it was going to be okay.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Hayley.”

“What’s your sister’s name?”

“Heather.”

“Hayley, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a really long time. Thank you. And tell your sister that I’m glad she got to know my husband. She’s a lucky girl.”

The tightness of Hayley’s shy, nervous face softened and lightened. “Thank you, Professor. I’m looking forward to this class.”

“So am I.”

When I returned to my office, I closed the door with my back leaning against it, slid to the floor, and burst into tears. Another class awaited me that day, and I didn’t know how or if I was going to pull it off. Maggie was right: Sam was everywhere, and I was a fool to think that there’d be no reminders of him here. I sat in that spot until my second class, eighty minutes later.

Chapter Three

Five weeks into the spring semester

           
S
ITTING AT A SMALL, SQUARE-SHAPED, WOODEN table  next to a window in the library at NU, I gazed outside, soaking in the sunlight yet feeling the wintry draft from the window’s poor ventilation. My laptop’s screensaver had kicked in, patiently waiting for me to return my attention to it. The view from the sixth floor was inspiring, giving away to the panorama of the NU campus with all its trees and benches and grassy knolls and lawns set against the horizon of the New England sky, perfect for Frisbee or football throwers, nappers, and lovers, of course.

Ever since Sam’s funeral, I’d taken to occasionally re-writing the crappy eulogy I’d delivered. About a week after the funeral, at the EdmundCollege memorial service, Sam’s brother Kevin delivered a eulogy that practically led to a standing ovation. I could hear my mother’s voice admonishing me for insisting I do the eulogy myself at the funeral.

Anyone who knows me knows that my love life was a train wreck from day one. When it came to gravitating to the good guys, my compass needle pointed south. When it came to sound judgments, my romantic wires always got crossed. When it came to sex, I consulted several sources throughout my life, some of which were later discredited. But Sam was the one who taught me about love.
I think the reason why Sam was such a great teacher was because he allowed people to see his flaws as well as his virtues—in fact, to him, a flaw was just as much an attribute to writing as a talent. He shared my concept of revision as embracing the possibilities that live within the flaws. His humanity came out on every page that he wrote and shared with his students, and his students loved him for it; he was “real” to them.
Sam had a curiosity for life and took pleasure in simple things. Books. Trees. A cup of coffee. A photograph. He couldn’t carry a tune to save his life, but admired those who could. He was also an incurable collector. I don’t remember how or when it started, but someone gave him a bobble-head doll, and pretty soon word got out that he liked bobble-head dolls. In fact, I don’t think he was particularly fond of them until he started receiving so many of them—then it was just a big joke. And now the bookcase in his study is filled with bobble-head dolls.
This eulogy really blows.
***

            As director of the freshman writing program, I’d always been busy, but Jeff was right—my workload had doubled since returning to school. In addition to catching up on the previous semester’s activities, staying on top of the writing program’s daily goings-on, and teaching my own course load, I needed to design and write a document detailing program assessment guidelines and procedures, implement the procedures, and report on the findings. What’s more, I also supervised the freshman writing faculty, totaling close to thirty instructors; updated program policy statements and information on the department website; charged a committee to research new textbook options for the following year; and attended budget meeting after budget meeting with Jeff, the dean, and other administrators. All this was followed by a two-day writing technology conference in Albany—Sam and I would’ve made an extended weekend of it.

I sat on two university faculty hiring committees, one tenure review committee, and three graduate student thesis committees. My assistant program director had stepped in and handled my responsibilities following my abrupt departure last semester, and I found myself repeatedly thanking her, as well as apologizing every time I delegated yet another task, many more than I would have under normal circumstances. Meanwhile, Jeff had ordered my academic advising students to be redistributed to other department faculty members for the remainder of the academic year.

One of the scholarly articles that I’d submitted for peer review prior to Sam’s death had been returned to me and sat under the mountainous pile on my desk, untouched. And I repeatedly failed to return my editor’s calls regarding my book proposal for a new collection of personal essays. The essays themselves still idled in a first-draft gridlock.

            Work failed to serve as a refuge; instead, it backed me into a corner. What was once a passion was now a burden. Where I once displayed unwavering confidence, I now broke into a cold sweat. I did nothing well anymore, nor did I want to. As the semester dragged on, I found myself putting off appointments, delaying deadlines, and avoiding phone calls. The stack of unanswered emails in my virtual inbox piled just as high as the stack of paper in my actual inbox.

            Most disturbing of all was how little I cared, and not for lack of trying.

Chapter Four

           
F
OLLOWING SAM’S DEATH, I’D DROPPED ABOUT TEN pounds. Many times I entered Shaws supermarket with a cart, but rarely left with anything beyond a can of soup or a box of instant rice. At school, I designated protein snack bars as a new food group.

Cooking had become something of a ritual in Sam’s and my relationship. In the way that John Lennon and Yoko Ono had taken walks in Central Park every day prior to his murder, Sam and I would convene in the kitchen, drinking water in wine glasses, and either one cooked while the other watched (most of the time I was the onlooker, simply because he was the better cook and I enjoyed the view), or we shared the deed—I’d season and spice, he’d slice and dice, then we’d fry or broil or bake and flip a coin to see who cleaned up. Cooking time was communion time, and the kitchen was our holy place. Our friendship blossomed while we silently stirred tomato sauce; our passion enflamed while we melted chocolate for ganache and drizzled it over warm cupcakes; our fights defused while we banged pots or chopped garlic by laying the knife flat on the cloves and pummeling it with our fists.

            Food tastes better when it’s prepared with love. Even charred toast or goppy pizza dough made it past our palates without complaint.