Broken Ground (21 page)

“Tobias.” My voice sounds very far away.

“Yes, we missed his class this morning. Sorry. I tried to wake you. I really tried. And then since
you
were sleeping in, I decided why shouldn't I.”

I strain to lift my head from the pillow. Pain stabs my skull. I sink back down again. “Hurts.”

“What hurts? What
happened
to you?”

A sharp knock sounds. Helen looks toward the door. I'm unable to do so.

“Open up.” Miss Voyle, her voice as sharp as her knock. “Open this door now, please.”

Helen shoots me a questioning glance, but when Miss Voyle raises her voice and repeats the command, she goes to the door and opens it. Miss Voyle pushes past her, stopping only when she stands by my bed. To my surprise, she kneels stiffly beside me.

“The dean is expecting you in his office in half an hour, Ruth. It will bode worse for you than it already does if you are late, I can promise you that.” She evaluates my state, her hawklike gaze sweeping my body. “Are you able to dress yourself? From the look on your face, I think not. Helen?”

She oversees while Helen does what she does so well—gets me dressed. “Careful! Oh, be careful!” I beg as she starts to comb my hair. Helen touches the lump on the back of my skull and gasps, compelling Miss Voyle to prod it, too. My vision goes black with the pain, and now Helen is crying. Miss Voyle says something to her. There follows some kind of exchange. Gently, as if the strands of my hair were as fragile as spiderwebs, Helen resumes work with her comb. Then she dabs my face clean with a warm, damp cloth, slips shoes on my feet, and helps me stand.

“We'll get you to the infirmary right after the meeting,” Miss Voyle says quietly. “I promise you, Ruth, we won't let you go untended.”

“I'm coming with you,” Helen says.

Miss Voyle doesn't protest. Holding me upright, they guide me from the room and down the stairs, out of the dorm, and across the quad to the administration building, where they have to plead with me to walk through that door again. Finally inside, we climb the single flight of stairs to the dean's office.

In the waiting room, I find myself swaying from dizziness. “Why are we here?”

“Tobias,” Miss Voyle says.

I lean against Helen.

“Hush, now.” Helen strokes my cheek. “We'll be right here. We won't leave without you.”

Another door opens. I take a few steps, and the door shuts behind me.

The dean's office feels cavernous, with shadows that huddle in corners and only a few lamps lit—one on the desk behind which the dean sits, and a standing lamp that illuminates three men sitting in wingback chairs. My head still throbs, but the fresh air has cleared my vision: I can see one of everything relatively clearly. The shadowy room is made all the more shadowy by walnut-paneled walls, which, even in this light, appear dusty. Oriental rugs strew the floor, and these look dusty, too. Dust filters through the thin line of sunlight that has managed to squeeze between all-but-closed blue velvet curtains. The room smells of dust and moldering books.

The dean sits with the light behind him, so I'm unable to make out his features. But when I enter, he stands, revealing himself to be a tall, wide man. He moves silently on the thick carpet around the desk to shake my hand. His hand is warm and dry; he releases mine quickly, as if it's something he doesn't want to touch. Now I can see his thick blond hair, his long blond sideburns that tip up to join in a mustache. “Good morning, Mrs. Warren,” the dean says. His wide mouth stretches into a smile, but his small eyes are as dull as the flat heads of nails. He gestures to the hard-backed chair before his desk. “Sit. Please.”

Legs trembling, obedient as a well-trained dog, I sink into the chair.

Two of the other three men in the room introduce themselves as administrators of this and that. They are both older than the dean, nearly bald. The other man is Tobias (I will never call him
Professor
again). No introduction needed there. I do everything in my power not to look at him.

I am told by the dean that I have attempted to seduce the chairman of the Education Department, the very man who advocated for my scholarship to this university. I have abused his goodwill, used my womanly wiles to seek further favor.

One of the balding men regards me over tented fingers. “What have you to say for yourself, Mrs. Warren?”

I'm woozy again. I close my eyes. In the dark, I find I can think clearly. For the moment, at least, things have stopped spinning. I open my eyes. “I want a lawyer.”

A long silence and then, to my horror, restrained laughter on the part of the balding men and the dean. Tobias remains silent. I tell myself that my eyes must be playing tricks on me again, but I can't deny that my hearing is perfectly fine.

“What do you think this is, Mrs. Warren? Where do you think you are? A court of law?” Again the dean stands, only this time he turns toward the window. What he sees through the narrow gap in the curtains, I can't imagine, but he stands perfectly still, hands clasped behind his back. “There's no question to be resolved here, no court to appear before. Professor Tobias has made clear what happened. Several other members of his department support his complaint. We've withdrawn your scholarship. If you'd like to pay your own tuition bill, you may reapply for next year. For now, we ask that you take some time away from our institution. You must leave Union University. Not next week, not tomorrow.” He turns to face me again. “Today.”

I stare at the dean, unable to think clearly for my throbbing head.
Pink suit. Feathered hat, crest of white hair
. And then her name comes to me. “Have you spoken with Florence Windberry?”

One of the other men—not Tobias—speaks from the depths of a wingback. “She's had her say. As she always does.”

“Miss Voyle? Other students? My roommate? Will you speak with them?”

“No need, Mrs. Warren. You've made your mistake. Our minds are made up.”

WHEN I EMERGE
from the dean's office, Helen and Miss Voyle guide me out of the building and across the quad to the infirmary. There, the boyish-looking campus doctor confirms it. I have a concussion, a bad one. I need to take particular care.

“At all costs, stay awake today, but don't do anything but rest. Get a good night's sleep tonight, too, but make sure to wake up every few hours or so.” He speaks rapidly and too loudly; I long to curl up on the exam table and put my hands over my ears to muffle his voice. “Take it easy in the days to come, both cognitively and physically. You've suffered head trauma, and you need to recuperate. So don't work too hard. Don't think too much. Don't do any vigorous exercise. For that matter, don't move around any more than is necessary.” The doctor scribbles something down on a piece of paper, then tucks the paper into a folder that bears my name. “And don't be afraid to take aspirin when the pain flares.”

“That's a lot of don'ts,” Helen mutters. She's standing at my side, her hand at my elbow. Her hand alone keeps me upright.

The doctor shrugs. “Her brain got shaken. It needs to settle down. When people maintain their typical to-do lists, that doesn't happen.”

The doctor produces another piece of paper from somewhere and hands it to me. “Don't read it!” he says. “I'll tell you what it says. It asks you to confirm that you understand your diagnosis and its treatment, and you'll take all necessary precautions. Sign your name at the bottom.”

Yet another “don't.” I don't bother to say that it will be impossible to take it easy in the days to come. Impossible not to move when I've been ordered by the administration to do exactly that.

I sign the paper.

Only when we have returned to Garland Hall do I tell Helen and Miss Voyle exactly what happened between Professor Tobias and me, and, as a fitting postscript, what happened in the dean's office. They don't rant and rail. They don't say
I warned you
. Helen wraps her arms around me. Miss Voyle pats my back. They are waiting for me to cry. But I can't. I won't. Crying will make my head hurt worse. I have to get out of here.

“You can go live with my folks,” Helen says. “They'll take you in. They'll take good care of you.”

“No. Thank you, though.”

“Your folks, then?” Helen asks.

I could do that. I could live with my parents again. I could work in the Alba Public Library again. I could forever feel defeated. “No.”

“Where, then?” Helen asks.

In case you ever have need.
He said that, his mother said.

“I have friends here in California. I'll go to them.” I turn to Miss Voyle then. “I'm going to come back here. I'm going to find a way. I'm going to reapply, and if they won't take me back, I'm going to appeal.”

“You can try, Ruth.” But the slump in Miss Voyle's typically ramrod-straight shoulders tells me she thinks it's likely I won't succeed.

It's Helen who packs my things. She's the one who, upon my request, locates Thomas's information in my address book, then goes downstairs to the telephone booth, telephones Thomas and confirms that he will indeed receive me, then telephones the bus station to determine the bus that will take me to where he is, Kirk Camp, just east of Los Angeles. While she's gone, I pull the boy's silver cross from beneath my mattress. Thank God I remembered it, because now I remember the insurance check and the money I have left from my work at the library. I tuck all this into my pocketbook, then take it out again. There's a little tear in the lining of my coat. I fold the money and the check and slip them into the lining. They will be safer in this hiding place—the kind of hiding place an Okie on the road might use, or a migrant worker, the kind of hiding place that helps keep a body safer. The cross, I will wear beside my wedding band. I slip the cross onto the gold chain and secure the necklace's brittle clasp. Suddenly I'm dizzy again. I sit down on my bed and rest my pounding head in my hands.

After only a few minutes, Helen returns. “The earliest bus isn't until seven o'clock tonight. But we should leave soon. It's already four o'clock, and I want to give us plenty of time to eat supper and get you to the station.”

Helen helps me stand. Carrying my luggage and my pocketbook, she walks me out the campus gates, hails a taxicab, and then slips into the backseat beside me. We drive to the bus station. From here, we can see Suicide Bridge. The Colorado Street Bridge, it's actually called. I learned this during the city tour we freshmen took during orientation. It's a majestic, curving structure, its walkway brightly lit by elegant, ornate lamps. And it's a long, long way down to the dry riverbed at the bottom of the Arroyo Seco that the bridge spans. That other young woman, Tobias's other assistant—what must she have endured to take herself there? I think perhaps something worse than myself.

I tug on Helen's arm. “I want to see the canyon one last time. Do we have time to walk out onto the bridge? We don't have to go far.”

Helen was beside me when the freshman class crossed the bridge, only to return again in some kind of orientation ritual. Cars stirred the air as they passed us, lifting the hems of dresses, messing hair. We looked over the parapet, one hundred and fifty feet down, to see the riverbed, sinuous as a snake below. A maze of smaller bridges and roads was down there, too, and a smattering of tin shacks. Our guide told us that rumor had it the place is haunted. During the bridge's construction, a worker fell over the side into the wet concrete that would become his tomb. Ghosts are said to walk the riverbed—“The place is thick with specters,” the guide said—and there are cries and echoes in the night. Come here after dark, and you might see a man with a cane, a woman in a long, flowing robe. You might see them stand on the parapet wall. You might see them jump and vanish.

“Not a chance we're walking out there,” Helen says now. “Not you, or me, or both of us together. Not now. Not ever again.”

She turns me right around and steers me into the bus station. There's a café there. She finds us a table, orders food. I eat some of what's on my plate. Then I stagger to the restroom, crouch over a toilet, and throw up. The doctor said this might happen with a concussion as bad as mine. When I emerge from the stall, Helen is leaning against the sink. She steps aside so I can wash my face and rinse water through the messy ends of my hair. Clean as I can get again, I take the handkerchief Helen offers, dry my face, and force myself to look at her. “I must look like the girl Tobias and the others say I am.”

“Don't even think thoughts like that! They're beneath you, Ruth.” Helen waves the handkerchief, indicating I should keep it. “Now come on. Your bus is leaving soon.”

We're standing before the open bus door when Helen's face contorts, mottling, until a body might think she were homely if a body didn't know better. She's sobbing. I take her face in my hands, draw her close until our foreheads touch.

“We'll find a way to get you back here,” Helen manages to say. “I'll help you.”

Bile rises in my throat again, and I swallow it. “College is the only thing I've ever really wanted, besides Charlie. I won't let them take it from me. If I have to, I'll find another place to study, a better place. I'll go there.”

“I'll join you.” Helen sniffs, swipes at her nose with the back of her hand. “As it is, I'm dropping Tobias's class. I'll never take another from him. And whoever his next assistant is, you can be sure that I'll give her a talking-to. I'll warn her, best as I can. I'll be specific, if you don't mind me mentioning you. I'll protect her. Oh, Ruth! I'm so sorry I didn't protect you.”

“You tried.”

“This time I won't fail.”

The bus is about to leave; Helen and I can say nothing much more now than goodbye. When I sit down in my seat, she's already lost in the crowd.