I had a lot to tell him, starting with the noose and ending up with an invitation to dinner.
I dialed his cell. Amazingly enough, he picked up on the first ring.
“Kristin, hold on, I’m just walking out of a patient’s room.”
I held on. He was probably still on rounds.
“Okay, I can talk. I was expecting to hear from you. Are you okay?” Tom sounded very concerned, and I was a little taken aback.
“Sure, yes, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, there are photos that are all over the hospital of that incident on quad this morning, and you’re in many of them. I assume you were working with Alice on that? Must have been difficult, that’s all I meant.” His measured voice was warm, but careful. We’d had some struggles over his desire to protect me.
I realized I had been too prickly about his concern. Concern was warranted. Being prickly was a bad move, I said to myself. I took a calming breath.
“Thanks. I didn’t realize you’d seen the photos, that’s all. Yes, it was very difficult.” I thought for a moment. I knew Tom kept confidences well, and I needed to work on trust with him. I went on.
“I was most upset about how awful it seemed to be for Alice, and you know how she is, she kept it all inside, and just did the job. But I was furious about how the whole fiasco played out.” I paused again.
“I still am. And we just had a ghastly faculty meeting about it.” Then I realized there were voices in the background, probably a resident trying to get Tom’s attention. I tried not to resent it, but I should get off the phone.
“Listen, Tom, I’ll tell you about that later, but I’ll email you an invitation to dinner Saturday night with my new colleague, Dr. Abubakar and his family.”
“A dinner? Sure, should be . . . oh, and just hold on, Kristin.” I could hear the buzz of conversation around him.
He came back on the phone.
“Sure. Send me that. And can I bring Kelly if she wants to come?”
Kelly was Tom’s fifteen-year-old daughter. He had been divorced, but his ex-wife had died the previous year, and now he had custody of a smoldering tower of teenage girl, who alternately hated me and wanted to be me.
“Well, yes, I guess, if she wants to,” I replied slightly less than enthusiastically.
“Great. Good. Let’s talk tonight.” And Tom hung up.
I looked at the silent cell phone in my hand. Paris seemed a very long time ago.
The cell phone displayed the time. It was only 9:30 a.m. I wondered what the rest of this ghastly day would bring.
Chapter 3
Dark chocolate may not be proof of the existence of a benevolent God, but it’s a definite indicator.
—Susan Thistlethwaite
Monday evening
I walked home in the early evening eddy of the rest of the university community, all of us streaming down the sidewalks away from work or study.
To my surprise, nothing ghastly had happened during the afternoon. Not as far as I knew, anyway. I had managed to remain at my desk undisturbed, working on clearing my incessant email and even starting to revise my plan for class the next day. Aduba never came back to the office.
I had called Alice at about 3 p.m., just to check in and see if there had been any progress in discovering who had hung the noose and the leaflets.
“Nope,” she said in response to my query, her voice clipped. “Nothing.” She’d paused. “Well, nothing but the yak, yak, yak about those photos and that piece of shit flyer. So God damn stupid. Makes me want to spit.”
That was a lot of swear words in a row for Alice. The fact that she still sounded so raw made me keep my own views to myself. I thought the whole thing hadn’t been stupid at all. It had been very smart and effective precisely because everybody was yammering about it. Just keep quiet about that, I told myself.
“Yeah, well, keep me posted, will you?” I’d asked instead.
“Sure. Okay. And if you get any bright ideas, call me.” Alice hung up.
So at 5 p.m. I’d closed my computer and headed home. We had martial arts class tonight after dinner.
✳ ✳ ✳
The boys had raced upstairs to get into their Tae Kwon Do uniforms and Giles, Carol, and I were finishing up the dishes.
“I wanted to run something by you both,” I said as I dried a big platter.
Carol turned her calm brown eyes on me, assessing. I was trying to sound casual and pretty much failing. Giles continued to face the sink, rinsing the dishes and stacking them for Carol to put in the dishwasher. But he hunched his thin shoulders a little.
I labored along.
“Well, I know we’ve agreed that we’ll talk about weekend plans in advance, but, you see, today was so crazy awful that I just went ahead and invited Dr. Abubakar and his wife and child for dinner Saturday night. And, well, some others. You know my colleague Adelaide, and Tom and Kelly, and then, well, the five of us if you can make it. I’d like you both to join us for the whole meal, so Giles I thought I’d get a caterer so you won’t get stuck in the kitchen, you know?”
I ground to a halt.
Carol silently stacked the rest of the dishes in the dishwasher while Giles dried his hands and turned. But he looked more at Carol than me.
“I cannot attend. I have an engagement and must be out most of the afternoon and evening.” Then he glanced over at me. “I hope it is a good occasion,” he said quietly, and he left the kitchen, his flip flops making a rapid staccato beat on the hard tile floor.
“I don’t think I can make it either, Kristin, but I’ll let you know,” Carol said in her quiet way, but she sounded a little strained. Then she bent and hit the start button on the dishwasher. It was so old that the clanking, gushing noise it made would drown out any further conversation.
I hit pause on the elderly machine. It gurgled to a halt.
“Carol, is something wrong, I mean something besides my rushing ahead with a weekend invitation before we’d all discussed it?”
She turned and wiped down the counter again. It was already clean and dry. She didn’t turn.
“No, I don’t think that’s it. But as I said, I’ll let you know.” She hung up the towel she’d been using to dry an already dry counter and also left the kitchen.
I hit the start button and pondered while the machine labored into the wash cycle again. What was up with Giles and Carol?
Well, it had been a terrible day, I thought. There are bound to be emotional reactions for a while. But was that too simplistic? Was
