Daykeeper, page 10
“Tanya, I promise you I will do everything in my power to help you get back your scholarship.” I place my hand on hers, and she allows me to touch her for the first time in nearly five weeks. I have missed the feel of her skin beneath my fingertips. “Can we talk about us?”
She swallows hard and looks away. “I don’t hate you for what happened,” she starts. “I’m just disappointed in both of us. We took all of this way too far.”
“Maybe, but can you think of anything we would have done differently? I can’t.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She pauses, and I can see the water building in her eyes. “I was pregnant! Don’t you get it? There was a life inside of me that neither one of us planned. What would have happened if I hadn’t miscarried? Huh? I would have just been that student that you fucked around with and knocked up. I have plans for my life. I can’t believe I was so fucking reckless.
“You know, you asked me was I trying to get even with my dad by having sex with you. I told you no, but I’m starting to wonder what the hell I was thinking to even put myself in the exact same situation my dad was in with Carrie.
“Nothing good could come of this, so we need to just cut our losses. Hey, we had fun. It was cool. But we almost lost our handle on this. Now all I want to do is get my scholarship back and keep my head down and finish my degree. So if you want to do something to help me at this point, help me get my scholarship back, OK? That’s all I want from you at this point.”
Her words sting, like a blade scraping at my skin, raw and sensitive. “I know that you’re hurt. I understand that. I’m hurting, too, but don’t think for one second that what we have isn’t real. It is very real. We are not just two people having a fling. I really care about you. Can you really stand right there and say that you don’t love me?”
She starts to open her mouth, but closes it.
“See?” I continue. “When two people love each other, they work through the difficult situations together. That’s what I want for us.”
“Ed, what’s love got to do with it?”
“Everything, Tanya. Everything. Your love saved me.”
“From what?”
“From myself,” I say, lowering my head. “When my wife passed away, I did not care if something happened to me. I had nothing to live for. You gave me a purpose and showed me that my heart could still hold love. Don’t dismiss what we have. You have to give us a chance.”
She stands up. “Do you even hear what you’re saying? I didn’t save your life, and you don’t owe me anything. I had a miscarriage, so now we’re back to square one. Let’s just make a clean split, cut our losses.”
“I don’t want to do that,” I say, rising to my feet.
Tanya kisses me gently on the lips. I can’t resist and respond by kissing her deeply. She allows me to, and I sense that we might be backing away from the ledge of our relationship.
“Ed,” she says, her lips peeling slowly away from my own, “at this point, it really doesn’t matter what you want.”
She places her hand against my chest, just above my heart, and then turns around and walks out of my life.
Chapter Thirty
An hour before the presidential scholarship committee meeting is to start I receive a phone call.
“Dr. Nelson?”
“This is he.”
“This is Cordell Murphy. You got a minute?”
“Sure,” I say, confused as to why he is calling me at all.
“I see that there is one scholarship we won’t be renewing today.”
“Well, we’ll discuss all of that at the meeting.”
“It’s really a matter of simple mathematics,” he says. “If you don’t have the grade point average, you don’t have the scholarship. Being that you’re new to the committee, that might not be so obvious.”
God! He’s an even bigger ass off the page than he is on it. Still, curiosity keeps me holding my tongue.
“We’re meeting in an hour, so to what do I owe this call?” I finally say.
“I’ll just cut to the chase. In my capacity as a man of God, I sometimes have to tend to members of my congregation who are sick and shut-in.”
“Good for you.”
“But not for you, Dr. Nelson.”
“What do you mean?”
He pauses for dramatic effect and proceeds to insert the knife slowly and twist it repeatedly. “Well, I was at the hospital a few weeks ago coming out of the chapel when I distinctly saw you ushering a student into the emergency room. The two of you seemed pretty familiar. I didn’t realize it was Oreetha Hendrix until I saw the two of you embracing later on. Being that she was crying and you were in a fairly dismal mood yourself, a person doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that the two of you had gotten some bad news of an intimate nature.”
My heart is beating outside of my chest, but I steady my voice. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that it is very inappropriate for a professor to be romantically involved with a student. Man, that girl isn’t even twenty-one yet! What could you have possibly been thinking?”
“It’s not what you think,” I say, but I can hardly convince myself.
“You are in a position of power and you have used your power to influence a student to engage in illicit behavior with you. Under Title IX that is clearly defined as sexual misconduct. That’s far from acceptable for a professor up for tenure next year,” he says, his voice bouncing from the joy of his nailing me.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“Oreetha is a good girl, and you, of all people, just lost your wife. I could say it’s because of those two things and the flat out disregard for the school policy, which clearly discourages this kind of thing, but if I were to be one hundred percent honest with you, the reason I’m telling you all of this is because I just don’t like you.”
“You’re mad about my paper. I get it. I didn’t write it to expressly offend you. I was just recording my research. It wasn’t anything personal.”
“It was blasphemous, and God is using me to right a wrong here. If you had God in your life, you wouldn’t have gotten involved with a student.”
Not a single drop of magnanimousness, this fucking prick. “This is not about me,” I finally say. “This is about Oreetha and her scholarship and two-hundredths of a point. You know she deserves the benefit of the doubt here.”
“Well, Dr. Nelson, 2.98 and 3.0 aren’t the same number, are they? If we went around adjusting grade point averages for one person, then we’d have to do it for everyone else, too.”
“Do you want me to beg? Is that it?” I ask facetiously.
“That’s not necessary. I just want you to resign.”
“Are you serious?”
“Do you hear me laughing?” he says.
“And then you’ll convince the committee to give Oreetha her scholarship back?”
“That sounds doable.”
I remember the look on Tanya’s face when she came out of the emergency room, which contrasts so harshly with the look in her eyes when we first made love. I know I will do whatever it takes to make her happy again, and I answer Cordell Murphy reflexively, “I’ll resign then.”
“Well, make that effective today, and there won’t be a need for you at the meeting. You’ve done enough damage as it is.”
When I get off the phone, I am fuming that he destroyed so much of my world in a very short period of time. Although I don’t attend church, I know when I meet someone filled with Christian compassion. Cordell Murphy doesn’t possess a drop of it anywhere in his pathetic body. The only thing that makes any of this tolerable is that Tanya will get her scholarship back, not that she is even speaking to me.
Maybe it is time that I move on to something else, somewhere else. I never thought a fresh start would be something that I’d ever need. I only wish that I had decided it for myself rather than have someone I despise decide it for me.
Chapter Thirty-One
I type my letter of resignation, but decide there is no hurry in submitting it. We are going into the Christmas break, which will give me at least two more weeks before I am forced to act. Still, I pack up the few belongings on my desk and head home, careful not to be seen by anyone in the department.
When I get home, I stand in the middle of my den and look around. I have memories of both Charlotte and Tanya in this space now. If these walls could talk, they would tell of love and pain, sadness and joy. This is still my home, and I debate whether or not I could leave it and move somewhere else.
I realize that what I did with Tanya was not acceptable to many people, and I accept my role in that. I’m not someone entirely innocent and can’t even pretend to be without some fault in this. But I did what I did for love, and that should make a difference. I loved her and she loved me, and that was real to me. Fuck anyone who can’t understand that.
I will never be a saint, but I can be a true friend and a true lover, and to me, that has its own value.
My cell phone rings two days later. This time it’s Tanya, and I am guessing she’s calling to thank me for helping her get back her scholarship.
“Ed?”
“Yeah?”
“I thought you said you were going to do all that you could to help me get my scholarship back,” she says, her voice breaking.
“I did. It’s all been taking care of.”
“Then why did I get a letter from the committee today saying that my scholarship has been canceled?”
I tell Tanya that I will call her back and then proceed to call the switchboard at Ellison-Wright and have them transfer me to the office of that slimy son of a bitch Cordell Murphy.
“Cordell, what’s the deal?” I ask, when he picks up.
“Dr. Nelson, I presume.”
“Stop being smug, you asshole. You promised me you would get Oreetha her scholarship back.”
“Testy, aren’t we? I never said that. I just said that I didn’t see why we shouldn’t be able to get it back. Apparently, the other committee members thought differently.”
“Motherfucker, I should kick your black ass!” I yell, before I realize that threatening him will only compound my problems.
“Don’t let the suit and tie fool you,” he responds. “I’m from Detroit. The only time I ever got my ass spanked was when the doctor delivered me, and, truth be told, I’m still looking for that dude now.”
Is this really what this situation has devolved to? I ask myself. We may as well be slugging it out in the middle of the street.
“I’m sorry for coming at you like that.” I take a deep breath. “I just thought we had an understanding.”
“The only understanding we have is that you won’t be back next semester,” he says.
I smile when I realize that he has no clue I didn’t tender my resignation yet. “You’re right. You win.”
“God wins,” he says matter-of-factly.
When I hang up the phone, I call the Ellison-Wright switchboard again. Cordell Murphy might not realize it, but he’s incentivized the hell out of me, and I have no intention of going down without a fight.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Hello?”
“Hello, Albert?” I respond. “This is Ed Nelson from African-American Studies.”
“Hi, Ed. I’m really sorry to hear about your wife and all. Very sad news.”
“Yeah,” I offer.
“I don’t know if you know this,” he says, “but my wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer a year ago. It was really rough on us, and I can’t even begin to wonder what you and your wife must have gone through.”
Albert Donaldson and I are not really friends, but I am still relieved at his words. It’s not often that you actually end up talking to someone who actually understands what it is like to be the spouse of a person suffering from cancer.
“I appreciate your concern,” I finally say. “How is your wife doing?”
“She’s in remission now, so we are praying that things remain that way.”
“I’ll be sure to keep her in my thoughts.”
“That’s mighty nice of you, Ed,” he says. “So what can I do for you?”
I take a deep breath and plow forward. “I’m actually calling on behalf of one your students, actually one of my unofficial advisees, Oreetha Hendrix.”
“Oh, yeah. Miss Hendrix. She started out really strong during the first half of the semester, and then things kind of fell apart for her after homecoming. I had heard a lot of great things about her from other faculty in the department, so I was surprised when she came up short in my class. Guess all that sorority stuff can be a bit distracting,” Albert says.
“That’s actually what I wanted to talk with you about. She has been confiding in me throughout the semester, and while I’m not at liberty to say what she has been going through, I can vouch for the fact that she had an emergency to come up that she was ill-equipped to handle emotionally.”
“Frankly, I’m surprised that she didn’t get an official excuse from the Dean of Women. Our policy is to deal directly with that office and let them vet the students’ excuses. That way we don’t get into a situation where students start lying to get over on the professors,” he says.
“I understand completely. I’ve had similar issues with students myself. But this situation is a bit different, a bit more delicate. I’m sure she would have gone to the Dean of Women if she had been thinking more clearly. Hey, I’m not trying to make excuses for her, but I wanted you to have a greater understanding of what her situation has been.”
Albert sighs heavily. “So you want me to change her grade to an ‘Incomplete.’ Is that it?”
“I just want you give her the benefit of the doubt. She’s a good student, one of the best I’ve ever dealt with here at Ellison-Wright. She’s here on one of the presidential scholarships, and the grade she received from your class brought her GPA down by two-hundredths of a point from keeping her scholarship.”
“Two-hundredths of a point? Are you trying to tell me the scholarship committee couldn’t work with her over that sliver of points?” he says, mildly incredulous.
I take this as a good sign.
“I’m on the committee,” I respond. “I am in favor of it, but other members of the committee are far more skeptical.”
“Just curious, but who else is on the committee?”
“Cordell Murphy,” I start.
“Oh please!”
Now I am completely intrigued.
“He is quite the character,” I say, nudging Albert to say more.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to talk ill of other professors, but I’m guessing you know that he’s a jackass or else we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
I laugh. “You could say that.”
“He’s always so much holier than thou,” Albert continues. “Talking down to people and that fool is married to his own cousin, or at least that’s what I hear.”
My jaw drops. This is something I wouldn’t normally entertain, but now I am in a street fight with a guy who wants to not only destroy me, but take down Tanya, too. No information is too sacred to not be used as ammunition at this point.
“His cousin? What like a third cousin or something?”
“More like a first cousin.”
“Naw, I can’t believe that. Is that even legal?” I ask.
“Hell, I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think Georgia has a law against cousins getting together. After all, this is the deep South.”
I laugh, still floored by the comment and the casual way in which he has tossed it out there.
“Well,” I continue, “he’s the hold up, which is why I’m calling you now. I know this is a big favor to ask of you, and I know you have a ton of things already on your plate, but is there any way she could make up some of her work next semester and get an ‘Incomplete’? I would consider this a personal favor. She’s a good student who is just getting over a very difficult time in her life.”
“I see,” he responds. “If you don’t mind me asking, what happened to her?”
His question should not surprise me, given the way he gossips about other professors, but it does. I feel like he’s on the verge of giving me what I called for, so I know I will have to tell him something.
“Things of a feminine nature,” I say, cautiously. “But it’s benign,” I add.
The word “benign” is a loaded word, I know, but I need to both silence his curiosity and still appeal to his sense of understanding. I am not above playing on his emotions at this point. Although this conversation is going well, I cannot lie to myself and say he is actually a friend of mine, no matter how he is acting at the moment.
“I see,” he responds, his voice somber. He pauses for several seconds before continuing, “I’ll process the paperwork for the grade change. Let her know that she will have to make everything up at the beginning of the spring semester.”
“Sure. No problem. And thank you,” I say.
“Hey, no problem, Ed,” he responds. “I might need to call on a favor from you one day.”
I hesitate to think what that might be, but I agree.
“Take care, and give my best to your wife,” I offer.
“You take care, too.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Although it pains me to call Cordell Murphy back, I do. I tell him that Albert Donaldson is issuing an “Incomplete” for Tanya and that I am officially notifying the committee that her GPA is now in good standing. None of this pleases Cordell, but, frankly, I couldn’t give a flying fuck. I then tell him that there is a rumor going around about his wife being his first cousin. I realize this is incredibly petty on my part, and I am only using this bit of information out of spite. Still, when I say this to him, the conversation tenses up incredibly.
“Where did you hear that?” he asks.
It is at this point that I know it is true.
