Fall Semester (11 page)

Maren’s pause said plenty.

“Uh huh. I thought so,” he said, with audible self-congratulations. “Is this about your young man in Colorado?”

“Ha. No,” Maren assured, rolling her eyes. Although she may not be feeling this way if Ben had wanted to stay together—if he had loved her and welcomed her love—she was not pining over Ben.

“Someone new, then.” Her father wasn’t asking.

“Not really...It’s nothing really.” And that was the truth. “Just a crush, I guess.”

“Ah, well, just be patient. There’s no way he hasn’t noticed you.”

Maren didn’t want to elaborate on the fact that it was more complicated than her father imagined. Impossible, really. And, maybe, it was okay that it was impossible. Maybe accepting that would free her a little from her sadness, from her loneliness.

“I don’t think it’s going to turn into more than a crush. But you are right; that will be alright.”

“Smart girl.” Her father said. She knew he was smiling, and they were quiet for a moment.

“I love you, Dad,” she whispered.

“I love you, Maren,” he replied with strength in his voice.

She paused again, wanting to unburden the rest of her heart, but knowing that there was no hope for it. When she spoke, her voice was just above a squeak, the tears coming again.

“What am I going to do without you, Dad?” she cried.

“Maren, my dear. It’s alright,” he said so peacefully that Maren desperately wanted to believe him. “I want to tell you something that I’ve only shared with your mom, okay?”

“Okay,” she sniffed, calming a little.

“Do you remember when Grandpa Jack died?” he asked. Maren pictured her grandfather and smiled a sad smile.

“Yes, of course.”

“When he died, I couldn’t believe that I’d never talk to him again. Never see him again. At first, it seemed so cruel a finality.”

“Yes, it is!” Her voice wavered with anger and grief.

“But do you want to know something, Maren? I feel closer to him now than I did for the better part of our relationship when he was alive.”

“What do you mean? I thought you and Grandpa Jack had a great relationship,” Maren asked, mystified.

“We did. We did, Maren. What I mean is that he is never far from my thoughts, and when I want to talk to him...Well, I do,” he explained, almost shyly.

“Talk to him? As in out loud?” Maren immediately wondered about the medication her father was on and what side effects it might have.

She heard her father chuckle in his knowing way.

“Yes, as in out loud. At first, I would go to the cemetery and talk to his headstone because I missed him, and I...I don’t know...I guess I felt closer to him there than anywhere else. But then I found myself talking to him on my drive to work about anything and everything when I felt like it. Not every day, mind you, just when I was missing him. And it helped a lot.”

“It did? It was how you coped?” Maren asked.

“Well, it was how I coped, and it was more than that,” he tried to explain. “This is what I mean about feeling closer to him. I mean that I believe that he’s there listening, and when I am quiet enough and open enough, I believe he’s talking to me, too, in his own way. Guiding me. Reassuring me.”

Maren frowned. She had never heard her father talk like this, and she found it slightly alarming. She didn’t know what to say in response.

“Maren, you’re being very quiet,” he prompted after a pause.

“I...I have to admit, Dad, I would not have expected that from you....You never seemed very religious,” she admitted.

“Who said anything about religion? I really believe that this is part of the human experience, but if you want to talk religion, there would be plenty of theology to back up what I’m describing.”

“Such as,” she asked, still skeptical.

“Such as The Apostle’s Creed.”

“What do you mean by that?” Maren found this perplexing. She had spent enough time in church and Catholic school to know the prayer by heart, and his words still baffled her.

“In the lines, ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church,
the communion of Saints
,” he stressed. “The forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting’.”

“The communion of Saints? Doesn’t that just mean that they’re all together? In the afterlife?”

“It means that
we’re
all together. Always. And that we can commune with each other.”

This explanation of an age-old prayer was certainly news to Maren. Not to mention that it made her sensible, even-keeled father—a research librarian at the National Wetlands Research Center seem much more...New Age than she’d ever known him to be.

“I have to tell you, Dad, no one in Catholic school every described it that way,” she said, skepticism clear in her voice.

“It’s not just the Christians, either. The Chinese have long believed that the living have access to communicate with the last three generations of their family, and to be able to receive guidance and support from them.”

“You mean, like in
Mulan?
” She couldn’t help but laugh, and rather than taking offense, he laughed, too.

“Well, maybe, one day you’ll be interested enough to read up on it. I have. And there are some books in my den you are welcome to have if you ever decide you’d like to. But Maren...” He paused for a while to make sure she was really listening.

“Yes, Dad?”

“What I really want you to do is to keep talking to me...even after I’m gone.” His voice was clear and, again, full of strength and warmth. “If there’s any faith, any order, any love in the universe—and I truly believe there is—then I will be able to hear you, and nothing in this world or the next could keep me from attending to you. I promise you that.”

Whether or not she understood his words, or believed or accepted them, Maren took comfort in them, and she knew that she would never deny him what he asked.

“I’ll keep talking to you, Dad,” she said, wiping new tears from her eyes. “I promise. I will.”

“That’s my girl,” he said. He listened to her sniffle until she composed herself again. “Do you feel any better, Merry?”

Maren laughed through her tears at his favorite nickname.

“Yes, actually, Dad, I do.”

“Good, my dear. Good.” For the first time in their conversation, he sounded tired. Maren again told him that she loved him, thanked him, and said goodnight. She had a headache, she supposed, from all of the crying, but she felt cleansed.

Maren went back inside her little house with her little dog and abandoned the poem she had intended for the workshop. Instead, she wrote a new one about the power to talk to three generations of saints.

Chapter 12

Malcolm

M
alcolm stepped out of his office on Friday afternoon and saw through the plate glass windows along the corridor that the clouds were lower, more leaden than they had been that morning. The clusters of students waiting at the bus stop on the other side of Rex Street hunched and huddled against the damp wind. It would be pouring in 10 minutes. This truth seemed to spur the feet of students emptying the classrooms around him. No one wanted to get caught in the weather, but Malcolm knew that the bustle had more to do with the arrival of Louisiana’s version of fall. Cold fall. Warm winter. Whatever you called it, from October to February jackets might be necessary. Sometimes, one even needed a coat.

A crowd of students had formed in the doorway of the south stair landing. He had been avoiding these stairs because of their proximity to the bullpen, and Malcolm had realized weeks before that he was better off not passing by that office and scanning it for one particular graduate student. But a traffic jam of sorts was amassing by the stairs. Surely, someone was on a cell phone. Malcolm felt himself glower and strode toward the log-jam.

“Keep the stairs clear, please! Keep moving!” he bellowed. Malcolm had expected the authoritative boom of his voice to rectify the situation—alarm the cell phone offender or stairway socializer—and move the cue along. A few students in the crowd merely looked back at him, cow-like, and crept a little further forward. Malcolm shouldered his way through them, muttering about cattle.

“Come on, people!” he barked as he stepped into the stairway. A girl in a lavender Kappa Delta sweatshirt and another who could have been her clone were next to the west wall, talking to someone. Students descending the stairs in front of them had to go around, cutting off those from Malcolm’s floor.

“Ladies, move the sorority tribunal somewhere else, please,” he droned. The clone looked at him and then back at the third girl who, Malcolm saw, was leaning against the wall, her head down.
A break-up, no doubt.

“Sir,…I think she’s sick,” the clone said.

Malcolm stepped in front of the girl in the sweatshirt to see Maren Gardner list to the side, her left hand clamped to her forehead and her right feebly reaching for the wall. Malcolm grabbed her elbow before she slumped to the floor.

“Maren? What’s wrong?” She was frowning, but staring at the air between them. Her cheeks blazed with color.

“Maren?” He put a palm to her forehead, which was searing. Then her eyes found his, and she nodded.

“I’m going home,” she said. “I’m on my way home.”

“Does she have meningitis?” The KD girl asked, horrified. The other girl took a step back.

Malcolm remembered the undergraduate who’d died last April. A shiver shot from his shoulders to his heels.

“Let’s get you to the infirmary.” Malcolm tugged Maren to her feet and caught her against him. “Move!” he shouted at the students who’d gathered around to gawk. At his command, they scattered, casting backward glances as he led Maren down the stairs.

“Oh,” she murmured a few paces into their descent. “No,...No, I don’t think.” She was not resisting, moving along easily but much too slowly for Malcolm. She was so light, he could have carried her.

“Come on,” he urged. She winced at the sound.

Careful.
He gentled his voice.

“Come on. We’re almost down.” They crossed the last landing, students passing them on their way up, staring. Miraculously, none of them were graduate students. Malcolm found this fact to be an incomprehensible relief.

He pushed open the doors that led to the parking lot, and a blast of chilled air met his face.

“Oh! It’s cold!” Maren flinched against him. He felt the top of her head graze his chin. His Accord was just a few spaces from the building, but Maren began shivering violently. He fished into his coat pocket for his keys and popped the lock as he walked her to the passenger side.

“It’s so cold.” Her teeth were chattering. Malcolm knew it could not have been below 50 degrees.

“I know.” He helped her into the car, and she leaned her head against the seat, eyes closed and frowning. He touched her forehead again, her cheek. She had gone white now, but her fever still scorched. He slammed the door and jogged to the driver’s side. He got in, fired the ignition, and turned on the heat.

“I don’t think it is…” Maren said again. She turned to her left side, facing him, eyes still closed. Malcolm threw the car into reverse.

“You don’t think it’s what?” He cast a quick glance behind him and jetted out of his parking spot, shifted into first, and gunned the car out of the lot, swerving to avoid a handful of startled co-eds. He turned left on Lewis.

“Meningitis…It can’t be,” she said, weakly. Malcolm shot a glance at her. She was cradling her head in her hands again.

“How do you know?” he barked. She hunkered.

“Stop yelling, please.”

“Sorry.” He tried again. “How can you be sure?”

“Vaccine,” she groaned.

Malcolm stopped at the intersection of Lewis and Girard Park. The infirmary was two blocks to his left.

“When?”

She said nothing, just cradled her forehead. He turned left.

“I don’t know…before college?”

“Does your neck hurt?”

“Everything hurts….I don’t want to go to the infirmary.”

“But you’re sick.” He glanced sidelong to see if she could argue.

“It’s the flu,” she croaked. “Would you take me home?”

Malcolm stopped at Girard and St. Mary.

“They’ll give you medicine at the infirmary.”

“I have Tylenol….
Please.
I just want to go to bed.” This time she was pleading. Was that a whimper or a sob?

“Of course.” His voice was gentler than he’d heard it in years. “On Louisa?”

“Yes. 201 Louisa.”

Malcolm made another left.

“Thank you, Dr. Vashal.”

The rain started then, moving from drip to downpour before he’d even crossed Johnston St. He looked over at her again, but her hair had fallen over her face. Malcolm did not know if he should say something or stay quiet, but he felt leftover panic leave his shoulders and arms. Had he been panicked?

He took a left at St. Landry and a right at St. Thomas. Louisa was a dead end on the southern edge of the Saint Streets, a bit shabbier than the most of the others in the circa-1940 neighborhood. The houses on Louisa stood out with few trees and too many cars. Virtually every house was a rental that needed a paint job. Maren’s house had the distinction of two camellias on the edge of the driveway, covered in buds and promising color in December. The house had no front porch or carport, just a front and side stoop. The rain at the cusp of the cold front came down in swaying sheets, the wind pushing it sideways every other moment. Malcolm pulled as close as he could to the side entrance.

“Do you have your key?”

Maren picked up her head and squinted out the windshield. Then she scanned her empty lap. She looked up at him, heartbreak registering in her eyes.

“My purse is in the bullpen.”

An image leapt to mind of Malcolm driving her to his house, a short five blocks away, taking her inside. He shoved the thought from his mind.

“Is there a spare?” Rain pounded the Accord’s roof, the house a white blur through the windshield.

“Um…” Maren blinked a long blink and nodded. “It’s under that potted plant.”

Now it was Malcolm’s turn to squint out the windshield. He saw nothing.

“What potted plant?”

Maren held her forehead with one hand and pointed with the other.

“It’s on the other side of the steps. I can get to it.” She started to lean toward the door.

“No, no, no!” Malcolm touched her arm. “I’ll get it. Stay right here.” He opened the glove compartment and took out his collapsible umbrella, which looked ridiculously small for the job at hand.

Feeling markedly un-masculine, Malcolm opened the door a crack, wedged the umbrella through the opening as frigid water poured down his sleeve, and opened the canopy. He threw the door wide and leapt out of the car. Around the stoop, Malcolm spotted a coffee-pot sized terra cotta pot with a withered remnant of vegetation. Rain lashed against his pant legs. A downspout about three feet away was gushing water into a pool between him and the pot. He tried his best to step over it, grateful that Maren probably could not see this prancing move from inside the car—even if she was fully conscious.

He bent down and lifted the pot off its base. A muddy key and some kind of posthumous white grub lay beneath. Malcolm grabbed the key and mounted the steps. He wiped it off and managed to unlock the door’s deadbolt.

He opened the door and was met with the black nose of a small dog. A rapid staccato of barking preceded the animal’s charge. Malcolm pulled the door closed.

Jesus Christ!

He sprinted back to the car and opened Maren’s door.

“Could you find it?” she asked languidly.

“Yes, yes!” Malcolm reached for her arm. “Let’s get you inside.” He half-guided, half-lifted her out of the car, trying to keep the protection of the umbrella over her as much as possible.

“I’m so sorry!” she cried, realizing how wet he was, how slowly she moved.

“Not at all,” he muttered, helping her up the steps. Sharp barking greeted them again. “I believe your guard dog is on duty.” Malcolm hung on the top step, uncertain if he should follow her inside, when she pushed the door wide and swayed on her feet.

“Oh, goodness.” Malcolm ducked inside and closed the door.

Springing with glee, the little dog, a rotund black and white rat terrier, licked the air around Maren then spotted Malcolm behind her and began another round of terrorizing barking.

“Hush, Perry!” Maren commanded, clutching her temples after shouting. “Aahh. My head…I’m sorry. He doesn’t like men.”

“Neither do I,” Malcolm murmured. “Where can I find you a towel and some Tylenol?”

“Bathroom…” Maren mumbled as she ambled head-first into the hallway. Malcolm feared that the word meant she would be ill, but instead he watched her stagger to what must have been her bedroom. He took two tentative steps to follow her and watched her crawl onto the bed and collapse. The terrier scampered across the floor behind her and, defying his heft, ascended to the bed to sniff his mistress.

Malcolm stared a moment, not quite believing how he had arrived in the home of this girl, and stepped into the small, aqua-tiled bathroom. The towel and Tylenol were in obvious places. He returned to the kitchen for a glass of water and found a spotless sink free of dishes and glassware lined neatly in the adjacent cabinet.

Thus equipped, he paused in the doorway of her room, unsure if it was understood that he should enter. She lay motionless, wet, and shod on the bed. The cuffs of her jeans were dark with damp, but he could only hope that the brown boots had kept her feet dry.

He sighed and stepped into her room, rounded the foot of her bed. The dog had curled up against her thigh, and he gave a low growl as Malcolm approached.

“I’m not going to hurt her, Perry, I assure you.”

Neither Perry nor Maren had a reply to this, and as Malcolm leaned forward, he could see that her eyes were closed. He set the glass and the two tablets on the night stand. He sighed again. If he roused her, would she wake up screaming at the sight of him? Still, she would wake up later feeling worse if she did not take something now.

Her color was still washed out, and the little frown held its place on her brow to defend against pain. Malcolm had the urge to rub it with his thumb. He pictured sitting on the edge of her bed, stroking her forehead, and speaking in a soft voice.

“Oh, goodness,” he whispered again. He shook his head, stood straight, and surveyed the room. Like the rest of the house, like virtually all rentals, the walls were white, the space small, but the room was tidy. The bed, nightstand, and dresser were wood, dark as coffee, but modest, with brushed nickel on the pulls. A taupe overstuffed chair sat in the corner behind him, and this held the only cast-offs in the room, a lilac robe and a white shift gown.

“Oh, goodness.” He could picture her in the gown. It would breathe around her willow body. The room could have been spinning, the floor could have been rolling, but for a moment he was very much in the room as if in a pool of warm water. Malcolm could feel Maren’s heat, fever and blood, as well as if he touched her. Her breathing was the only sound. They inhaled the same air. And he was here with her. He realized he did not want to leave.

Oh, shit.

He approached the bed and patted her shoulder with jerky pats.

“Maren, here’s some medicine,” he said, trying to keep agitation from his voice.

She turned her face up and looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes. He had been ready for her to register shock at his presence, but she did not seem surprised to see him standing by her bed.

“Here, sit up a bit.” Malcolm helped her up, a hand between her shoulders, as she took the pills from him and chased them with the glass he offered. She let her head fall back to the pillow, and for the briefest moment, it rested sweetly in the palm of his hand. He stepped back,
setting the water glass on the nightstand.

Her eyes were closed again. She lay on her back and looked like she’d be out in an instant, but she began kicking her feet together, one boot heel against the opposite toe, clearly uncomfortable. Perry jumped off the bed, resentful of so much jostling.

Daring from an unknown source prompted Malcolm to grab her right boot.

“May I?” he managed to ask. She opened her eyes again and lifted her leg an inch.

“I’m so embarrassed,” she groaned, weakly.

This confession and the sheer novelty of pulling off her boots gave him to laughter, delightful, albeit stifled laughter.

“Don’t be.”

He set the boots on the ground, and the natural thing occurred to him, to grab the folded throw at the foot of her bed. He spread it over her, tucking it around her, as she closed her eyes again.

Malcolm watched her for a moment. Perry stared up at him, judged that his mistress was safe and settled once more, and jumped back onto the bed to curl up next to her. The dog watched Malcolm as if he expected him to leave now. Malcolm backed to the doorway and leaned against the doorjamb.