The Misconception (9 page)

“Hard contacts are the only kind that work with my eyes. Why?”

“Because I see half of it.”

“Half of it?” Marietta’s stomach did some more tumbling maneuvers that had nothing to do with morning sickness.

“The other half’s on my shoe. I can’t believe this. I just crunched my idol’s contact lens. I’m super sorry, Dr. Dalrymple. I’ll do anything to make up for it. Please let me.”

Marietta tried to focus on the girl, but her nearsighted eye couldn’t synchronize with the eye with corrected vision. She saw two mouths, both of them frowning in misery. She had a vivid picture of the girl lobbying to get her elected as president of NOW.

“That won’t be necessary, Vicky. Mistakes happen. Don’t worry about it.” Marietta went to the sink, popped out her other contact and reached into her purse for the pair of eyeglasses she always kept there. She tossed two tissues, a pillbox and three packages of crackers onto the counter before she remembered switching from her large brown purse to her small black one that morning.

Accessorize, Tracy was always telling her. Never, ever carry a brown purse when your dress was predominantly black. Foolishly, Marietta had listened to her, even though her black purse didn’t have nearly enough room for all her things. Come to think of it, Tracy was the one who’d persuaded Marietta to get the contacts. And look what had happened.

She was a professor known for her vision who couldn’t see a foot in front of her face unless someone stuck one there.

“Can I help you with anything?” Vicky asked, her voice contrite.

“Oh, no. You’ve done quite enough already.” Somehow Marietta was able to smile, just like she’d manage to get through the class that should be starting right about now. If she held her notes close enough to her eyes, she’d be able to read them. It didn’t really matter if she couldn’t see her students.

“It was such an honor to meet you, Dr. Dalrymple,” Vicky called after her as she exited the restroom. Marietta spun to acknowledge her with a wave, turned back around and promptly collided with the door frame. Dazed, as well as nauseous and near-blind, she headed into the hall.

“Marietta, do you have a moment?”

The hall was blurry, like the reception on a cheap television that wasn’t hooked up to cable, but she could identify the man who’d asked the question.

None of her other colleagues had quite the same shape as Professor Robert Cormicle, who sort of resembled a fuzzy lamp post. His body was tall and lean, which, unfortunately, made his rather large head look out of proportion. If Marietta hadn’t been so versed in biology, she might have believed his head needed to be large to house his brain, which was enormously impressive.

“Robert! I’m so glad I ran into you. I need you to do me a really big favor. I’m late for class or I’d do it myself. Could you call my sister Tracy and ask her to bring me my brown purse?” Before he could respond, Marietta rattled off Tracy’s cell number.

“Of course I will, but—”

“Do you need me to repeat that?”

“No, of course not. I have an excellent memory. That’s not what I was going to say.”

“What were you going to say?”

“I just. . . I wanted to. . . I thought you and I might. . .” Robert, who could spout chemical equations as easily as elementary students reciting the alphabet, couldn’t complete a sentence. Marietta wished she could see his face to get a clue to what he was thinking, but all she saw was a blur.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” she told the blur, “but could you please say whatever it is you want to say. I’m already late as it is.”

“Will you go out with me?” Robert’s words came out in a rush, surprising Marietta with their intensity. She’d known Robert for six months, ever since he’d joined the biology department, and didn’t have a clue that he considered her as anything other than a colleague. “To dinner, I mean. Or a movie. Or, well, anywhere.”

“Robert, I—” Marietta began.

“I know you’re off to class, Marietta. Don’t say anything now. Just think about it. Please?”

She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she didn’t need to think about it. She wasn’t in the market for a man. If she were, he’d be six feet four and so sexy he made her heart threaten to beat down the walls of her chest cavity. While Marietta tried to reject that ridiculous thought, Robert walked away so quickly she didn’t have a chance to say anything at all.

Resigning herself to turning him down later, Marietta squinted and walked the rest of the way to class mostly by memory. It felt as though somebody had opened the doors and let in fog.

Reaching the podium in front of the class in the giant lecture hall seemed like a miraculous feat. She shuffled her notes until she had them in a vague order and then peered at the class. From what she could make out, the lecture hall was remarkably full.

She wondered if more people were here today because of the article that had appeared in the
Washington Post
Style section, airing her unorthodox views on love, sex and man-free motherhood. She’d impulsively said her lectures were open to the public.

A flash of red crossed her eyes, and she realized it was Vicky Valenzuela. The contact-crunching feminist took a seat in the front row beside a string of females. The rest of the foxes, no doubt.

Marietta adjusted the microphone and cleared her throat. “I take it advance word must’ve gone out that today’s lecture is about sex.”

Standing in front of a crowd always gave Marietta a case of the jitters, which she could quickly dispel by getting the students on her side. Laughter filled the room. The FOCs, who apparently hadn’t been versed in classroom decorum, clapped.

“Notice that I said sex, not love,” Marietta continued. “Sex is absolutely essential for our survival as a species. Love isn’t. But I’ll get to that later in the lecture.”

Now that her jitters had subsided and she had the attention of her students, Marietta launched into a well-researched lecture that included traditionally accepted dogma about mating behavior. Whenever she said anything that could be vaguely construed as pro-female, the FOCs, who she’d come to regard as her own personal cheering section, applauded.

“As you can see, men and women choose their sexual partners because of deep-seated evolutionary tendencies that began to develop in hunter-gatherer societies,” she said well into her talk.

“Men subconsciously seek out women who have youth and good health, positive signs of fertility. They’re looking for a vessel in which to spread their seed, because this response is deeply ingrained within them.

“Women subconsciously want men who transmit signals of strength and power. In the societies of old, when food was scarce and predators plentiful, it was extremely important for females to have males who would help provide for them.”

She took a breath, because she was about to get into the part of the lecture that had at its heart, no heart.

“Love simply didn’t play into it. It doesn’t play into it. In short, love doesn’t matter.”

One of the FOCs whistled her approval as the others clapped, and murmurs spread through the classroom like wind chimes carried on a breeze.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

A male voice from the back of the lecture hall exploded into Marietta’s consciousness. She was so surprised to be interrupted that she could barely believe it had happened.

“Excuse me?” she said into the microphone.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” he repeated.

A heckler. Here she was, at the front of a college biology class giving a lecture, and she had a heckler. Never, in all her years of teaching, had it happened before.

“I heard you the first time, but this is a college class,” Marietta said firmly. “We’ll have a question-and-answer period at the end. But my lecture itself is not open to debate.”

“It should be. You presented an opinion as fact.”

The voice was angry, ridiculously so, as though something in her lecture had touched him on a personal level. It was also familiar. It sounded, in fact, just like her sperm supplier’s voice. Marietta squinted to get a look at the speaker, but he was sitting at the back of the class, too far away to see. Besides, it couldn’t be Jax. He didn’t know where she was or even who she was.

“You’re wrong. I’ve formed educated convictions based on facts. There’s a difference.”

“But you’re talking as though love doesn’t exist!”

Marietta stomach rumbled. The baby, she thought, responding to its sperm supplier’s voice. Which was ridiculous. But for somebody who wasn’t Jax and couldn’t possibly be Jax, he sure sounded like Jax.

“On the contrary, I’m not saying love doesn’t exist,” Marietta said. “A mother loves her child, certainly, and siblings can develop love for each other. I’d even venture to say that some couples eventually come to love one another. But that blush of attraction between males and females has nothing to do with love and everything to do with sex. There are numerous examples I can site that back me up on this fact.

“The male praying mantis, for example, has such a strong urge to mate that he risks cannibalization every time he does. At any time during copulation, the female may twist around and tear off his head. I assure you she’s not doing this out of love.”

“Oh, come on.” This was one student, it seemed, who wouldn’t be placated. “You’re comparing humans to insects. You’re talking about instincts and completely ruling out the power of emotions.”

“Some humans let their perfectly good instincts be overruled by messy emotions better left out of the equation,” Marietta said, getting into the debate despite herself. “Sex, which leads to the survival of our race, is what matters in the long run. Not this thing we call romantic love.”

Her heckler laughed. He actually laughed.

“That reminds me of a joke,” he said, and Marietta told herself not to panic. Just because her heckler was telling a joke didn’t mean he was Jax. Especially if the joke was funny. Please, God, let his joke be funny.

“What’s the best way to a scientist’s heart?” He paused before answering. “By sawing open her breast plate.”

Nobody laughed. There must have been two hundred people in the room, and not one of them even tittered.

Marietta swooned.

The combination of her morning sickness and her growing suspicion of who was in her classroom was too much. She clasped the edge of the dais and willed herself not to faint. A woman ran up on stage, and when she got close enough Marietta saw it was Vicky Valenzuela.

“Pull yourself together, Dr. Dalrymple,” Vicky whispered urgently. “The future of feminism on campus is at stake.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We must not show weakness in the face of male oppression. You have a right to be heard, and you must stand fast against masculine opposition so you can be a leader in the feminist movement.”

Marietta knew it was useless to try to tell her, once again, that she was a biologist. Vicky was right about one thing, though. The end of the hour was near, and she needed to pull herself together long enough to dismiss the class.

Besides, she could be jumping to conclusions. The world was full of the humor-impaired. Television sitcoms proved that much.

“Thank you for that humorless joke,” she said into the microphone, pleased that her voice sounded strong. “I’m sure the class, however, will back me up when I ask that you refrain from entertaining us in the future.”

Vicky returned to her seat. The rest of the FOCs, bless their loyal little feminist hearts, applauded.

“In closing, I’d like to leave you all with this thought. Remember, this is a conclusion I’ve reached from all my years of study. You are free to reach your own conclusions.

“Our mothers have always told us not to use four-letter words, especially in regard to sex. Count the letters while I spell the following word: L-O-V-E.

“Love: It’s the ultimate four-letter word for sex.”

Before the heckler could interject his unwanted opinion, Marietta gathered her papers and moved away from the dais. She was grateful that the FOCs in the first row had once again burst into applause, drowning out the other classroom noises.

She walked gingerly toward the short flight of stairs that led to the floor, but unfortunately three steps had blurred into one. She thought briefly of asking somebody to help her negotiate them, but rejected the idea.

Most of what Vicky Valenzuela said was off base, but she wasn’t entirely wrong. Marietta couldn’t afford to show weakness, not when she was entrusted to educate and command the respect of hundreds of students.

She stepped forward, missed the first step completely and pitched down the stairs straight into the arms of a mountain of a man who caught her as easily as if she were a rag doll.

His clean scent overwhelmed her, but it was intoxicating instead of nausea-inducing. Even before she looked up into his grim, handsome face, she knew who she would see.

Still, she couldn’t stop her eyes from climbing upward and confirming the impossible. She almost wished she were far-sighted instead of nearsighted so she could still pretend that her baby’s sperm supplier wasn’t pressed up against the stomach that held the child.