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July 24, 2004
Marks - Chapter 12
By QBlog in
I've been out of town on a family vacation at a remote cabin without Internet access and so I was unable to publish Chapter 12 of Marks on Friday as planned. However, it's here now for your reading pleasure.
Marks is a novel that tells the story of a young married couple, two college roommates and a successful businessman whose lives ultimately intertwine as the result of a business opportunity — and a dream. Quixtar BLOG is publishing Marks as a serial, making a new installment available every Friday. All previous chapters are archived here on the blog so if you missed any just search for "Marks" and you should be caught up in no time.
Disclaimer: This book has not been through a final edit. There may be some misspelled words and grammatical errors. Please understand that as you read through the novel.
» Chapter 12
Richard Bean could picture Leona Smythe sitting behind her desk, fiddling with the gaudy knickknacks that covered ever square inch of the university-issued furniture and twirling her bright red curls around her larger fingers.
“Well, well, well. The long lost economist makes contact from the wild jungles.”
Richard imagined her leaning back and kicking her legs up on the windowsill as she spoke on the phone.
“Hey, Sweetheart,” he said in his playful voice. “Miss me?”
“Don’t go ‘sweethearting’ me, you fickle thing.”
“Fickle?” Richard protested. “Me? Never.”
“Liar. You’ve found a woman on the other side of the world. What else could possibly be keeping you in a tropical paradise instead of getting your rear end back to Kenton? Ohio during the rainy season – who in his right mind would miss that?”
Richard chuckled.
“No woman, unfortunately, and this is hardly a tropical paradise.”
“Damn it Bill, I’m an English professor not a geographer.”
“How are things on campus?”
“Same old same old,” Leona answered. “Tell me about Nigeria. Your postcards make it sound magical.”
“It is glorious,” Richard said with a sigh. “I can’t even put into words what life is like here. It’s more real, more substantive somehow.”
“I am jealous.”
“How did Dr. Remington take the news that I was a delayed?”
Richard had been uneasy since receiving a stilted, confusing letter from the head of the business department. He couldn’t tell if Walter Remington was trying to be funny or was truly mad.
“Oh, you know ‘Buster,’” Leona answered. “Anything that gives him the slightest bit more work is, by definition, evil.”
“What did he say exactly?” Richard was still curious.
“That you should ‘fish or cut bait,’ ‘crap or get off the pot,’ and a few other equally trite clichés.”
“What on earth does that mean?”
“I think he wants you to come back and teach your sections or resign so he can hire another professor.”
“Oh.” Richard wasn’t surprised at his boss’s pragmatic attitude, but Kenton was supposed to be a center for higher learning. The research he was doing in Nigeria, along with the publications that were certain to follow, could only benefit him and the business department. He had hoped for a bit more understanding and support.
“Don’t let him get you down. Buster might pick at you a while and threaten you occasionally, but he won’t fire you.”
“No, but he’s in charge of the teaching assignments. If he hates me, I’ll be teaching Econ 101 to freshman every semester until I retire.”
“Yeah,” Leona agreed. “That sounds like Buster.”
“What should I do, Leona?”
“How should I know?”
“You’re the one who told me to come to Nigeria. I think you hold a little responsibility for the situation.” Richard kept his voice joking so she knew he wasn’t really mad.
There was a long pause.
“I don’t know, Richard,” Leona finally said. “Honestly I don’t. I’ll tell you one thing, though. The notes that you’ve sent me and your phone calls… you were never as passionate about your work here at Kenton as you are about what you’re doing over there.”
“No. That’s true.”
“Just consider that very carefully, my friend. Don’t jeopardize something you love just to come back to the status quo.”
“You’re right,” Richard murmured.
“Now,” Leona began in a much lighter tone. “If you’re aching to come back to Kenton to gaze upon my startling beauty once more, that’s a different story and entirely understandable. Just make sure, when you do leave Abuja, it’s for a good reason like that and not to please Buster Remington.”
“Thanks, Doll. You’re a peach.”
“Yeah. Don’t you forget it. Now tell me all about what you’re doing. That class you’re teaching – how is it working out?”
Richard closed his eyes and leaned back against his headboard.
“It is wonderful, Leona. So much different than at Kenton. These kids are practically burning to learn. Assigned readings are actually read, issues can be discussed. The curriculum is new to me, so I’m having to study quite a bit on my own, but even that feels amazing.”
“You’re making me jealous again.”
Richard thought Leona sounded wistful.
“Don’t be,” he said, reeling her back to her jovial self. “It is impossible to find a good burger here. The best I can get is some dried piece of unknown meat on a half a loaf of bread. I think about DiCarlo’s Café all the time and I nearly quake with rage knowing you can go there for lunch every single day.”
“You deserve the best, Richard. You really do. Remember, DiCarlo’s will probably always be here, just like Kenton. If it ever does close, I’ll freeze you a double hamburger.”
The man sitting across the table from Marco was smiling, but in the aggressive way of a lion approaching a plump wildebeest with a broken leg. His sat in a non-threatening position – one hand on the table beside his untouched can of beer, one on his thin knee – but his entire body seemed taut and ready to strike at any hint of escape or attack.
“I don’t understand,” he said through his belligerent grin. “You said you would have the money by Monday. You promised. Why is it Tuesday and I’m still three hundred dollars short?”
Marco watched as the man leaned forward in anticipation of the excuse. The hand perched on his leg gave a twitch.
“I’ve been in business discussions all weekend.” Marco chose his words carefully. He couldn’t read the face of the man across from him. He didn’t know how worried he should be or how bad the situation was, but it obviously wasn’t good. “Quite honestly, it slipped my mind.”
“Slipped your mind? How could that be?”
“I was in business discussions,” Marco repeated. “My partner and I have some huge plans for this area. Three hundred dollars is small change compared to what we’re getting into and it slipped my mind.”
The man tilted his head and looked past Marco for an instant. Marco wriggled uncomfortably and wished that his back were toward the wall instead of open and vulnerable to any of his debtor’s buddies.
The silence stretched on and Marco knew that this was the time when he was supposed to beg for leniency and a payment extension.
“I am truly sorry,” Marco began in what he hoped was an apologetic but proud voice. “This debt did slip my mind and I forgot to ask my partner to wire me enough to pay you back. It won’t happen again. I’ll have the money for you by tomorrow.”
The smile never faded or grew warmer.
“How can I be sure that you won’t forget again?”
“I won’t. I promise you. I have the funds, I just need to get them here.”
“You have the funds? You didn’t have the funds when you sat in on the game. Yet still you played. How can I trust someone so deceitful that he will bet what he doesn’t even have?”
Marco wriggled in his seat and tried not to look as terrified and frustrated as he felt. He hadn’t taken Dr. Bean’s warnings seriously until he saw two men get swooped on, beaten up and stripped of anything of moderate value not far from the bar where he now sat, looking over at a very unhappy man who often hinted at ties to organized crime.
“My business partner is working on something really big. Super big. We are literally immersed in the paperwork needed to get this project flying and the cash slipped my mind. You know how it is.”
The smile broadened.
“No, I don’t. Tell me how it is.”
A baby. She was going to have a baby.
Teri grinned in the rearview mirror. Her stomach had settled, her mind had stopped racing and she felt the same elation she used to experience after completing an early morning, five mile run.
She was still shocked that over the course of three minutes, her entire life had changed.
After taking the pregnancy test, of course, the knowledge of impending motherhood hung over her head. Teri managed to direct her attention to the endless pile of forms and accomplish short bursts of work, but every few minutes something happened that filled her mind with images of babies and cradles.
During her morning break, she hoped a jolt of caffeine would give her a little more energy. She actually had a hand on the coffee pot when she remembered that she was pregnant. At lunchtime, she reached for her customary diet cola but stopped, uncertain about the safety of artificial sweeteners.
By two o’clock, Teri’s head was throbbing. She couldn’t remember the last time she left work early, but from the moment she saw the two lines on the plastic stick, management’s happiness and the size of her paycheck didn’t seem so important.
She was going to be a mother.
Despite her headache, Teri felt as though she might take off and soar across the highway with the sea gulls.
There was a lot to do, she reminded herself. So many details to work out, tasks to accomplish and decisions to make before she could cradle a tiny baby in her arms – her baby.
She had to find a doctor as soon as possible, get on a good diet and schedule time for plenty of sleep. The townhouse wasn’t large, but she could put a crib in the corner of the bedroom. Maybe she and Tom could find a bigger place before the baby was walking. She pictured a tiny yard, with petunias covering a flowerbed in the front and a toddler bumbling across the dandelions.
Teri wasn’t sure what kind of maternity plan Burkelin Securities had. She would check that out tomorrow and make arrangements with the hospital to pay for whatever the insurance didn’t cover.
And of course, she needed to tell Tom.
He would be excited, she told herself. Ecstatic even. He wanted a family more than anything. Everything they had been doing for the past years was focused on providing for children.
No mater how many times she let the words cycle through her mind, she couldn’t quite believe them. With Tom unemployed and the business not yet paying for itself – let alone any kind of living wage – they found it hard to get through the month without using the credit card to pay a few bills. Tom wouldn’t be able to build their business and care for an infant and they needed Teri’s paycheck.
Tom wasn’t home when Teri pushed open the door to the townhouse. She was relieved. This way she had more time to work out her strategy.
Without pausing, she went straight to the vacuum cleaner and began carving patterns of cleanliness into the plush carpet. The growl from the machine soothed her, but Teri finished the chore before she could find the words to tell Tom her news.
Teri stuffed the vacuum back into its niche and padded into the kitchen She looked over the selection of Desert Oasis frozen dinners and snacks without enthusiasm and picked up the telephone.
Until her father answered, she didn’t care which of her parents picked up on the other line. Hearing Sam Carlisle’s low voice, Teri was inexplicably relieved that it wasn’t her mother. Before she could even say hello, she burst into tears.
“Teri, hon,” Sam soothed. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”
“How did you know it was me?” Teri managed to get out between sobs.
Her father chuckled.
“I’ve been listened to those tears since the day you were born. Tell me now. There’s nothing so bad we can’t work through it.”
Teri managed to regain her control, but she paused. Although the word had flitted through her mind all day, somehow she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘pregnant.’ It felt foreign to her tongue, a word to be said by others and about others, not something to do with her.
“Is it Tom?” Sam prompted. “Did you two fight? Has there been an accident?”
“No, nothing like that.” Teri fought the tears that threatened to return. “I’m going to have a baby, Daddy.”
The restraint broke and her sobs mixed with Sam’s laughter.
“That’s wonderful, Sweetheart. Nothing to cry about.”
“I know, I know.” Teri was anxious. “Don’t tell Mom, please. Don’t tell her that I cried like this.”
“Ok, don’t worry. But your mom understands. She went through this too, you know. She’s outside. Want me to take the phone to her?”
“No,” Teri answered. “Not until I can talk without crying. I don’t want Mom to think that I’m not maternal and that I’m a horrible mother already.”
She nearly choked on the last words. Tears streamed down her face and she prayed that Tom wouldn’t pick that moment to come home.
“She wouldn’t think that,” Sam assured her. “She remembers how it was, just learning that she was going to be a mommy.”
Teri poked through the refrigerator until she found some cranberry juice.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “This baby wasn’t planned.”
Sam’s laugh reverberated in the telephone’s earpiece.
“Wasn’t planned? Honey, if all the babies in the world were planned, the human species would have died out long ago. It never seems like the exact right time to have a kid, but in the end you’ll see that it was the perfect time after all.”
Teri sipped her juice.
“I hope you’re right.”
“Of course I am. Have you told Tom yet?”
Teri hesitated.
“No,” she finally answered. “Not yet.”
“Well, have you been to a doctor?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know you’re even pregnant? A woman’s body isn’t a metronome, you know. Stress and worries can make —”
“I took one of the home tests,” Teri hurried to interrupt. She was close to her father, but she never felt comfortable talking about subjects like periods and sex around him, much less with him.
“Well, those things aren’t a hundred percent accurate,” Sam said, although he didn’t sound convinced. “You should probably wait until a doctor confirms your condition before telling Tom. I’m sure he’ll be delighted after the initial shock, but no use going through that unless you’re sure.”
The vise of tension around Teri’s heart eased immediately. She didn’t have to tell her husband right away, she could prepare him for a few weeks, maybe even a month or two.
“You’re right,” she said with relief. “I’ll wait until I am completely positive. Thank you, Daddy.”
Richard took a long sip of tea and glanced over the papers scattered in front of him. He was in the faculty smoking lounge at the University of Abuja, enjoying the nostalgic aroma of the tobacco habit he gave up fifteen years before.
The University certainly knew how to treat its professors, he reflected. There were no utilitarian steel desks and beat up, secondhand recliners here. Every piece of furniture was crafted from exotic woods. Exquisite curlicues and pictures were carefully carved into the arms and legs, which the small janitorial staff, comprised mainly of students working for their tuition, lovingly polished. A tall, quiet young man — probably another student — in a pressed and immaculate white shirt and dark slacks circulated among the working and chatting professors, refilling a cup of tea at one table, emptying an ashtray at another.
Richard was supposed to be reviewing the current literature regarding his lecture topics for the week. His students here weren’t like his students in Ohio. At Kenton, the best he could hope for was that a student took what he told them at face value, jotted it down and memorized it for the next exam. Here, the class questioned him, challenged him to support his theories, compared what he told them to what they had learned previously and expected reasons for any inconsistencies. They weren’t smart alecks who wanted to show up the teacher, they simply wanted to get their money’s worth and master every single concept.
In a word, they were what the education texts always referred to as engaged.
Richard found it difficult to concentrate. The latest fax from Buster Remington was tucked safely in his briefcase, but remained very solidly on his mind. The man had finally came out and said that if Richard wasn’t back for the summer term, his office at Kenton would be cleaned out, his personal contents tossed in the back dumpster and a younger professor with a better attitude hired to take his place.
The summer term, Richard fumed. Buster didn’t even have the decency to let him finish his project here and come back for the fall. In the summer, the only course the business school offered was Economics for Liberal Arts Majors. It was a joke class, an easy A to catch up all the little rich kids who had partied to heavily during the school year and now had to pay penance by sitting in class three hours a day and dreaming about the beach they would rather be sleeping on. It was the absolute worse class to teach and only assigned to graduate students and the occasional professor who had incurred the department head’s wrath.
He hated himself because he was torn.
Richard loved Abuja. He loved the heat and the aliveness of the city. He loved the weight of importance and respect that covered the university and the alert attention radiating from the students.
At Kenton, each day was gray and blurred. The details fell into each other, until no week, month or years was differentiable from any other. Here, each moment seemed to burst with insight and excitement.
Richard would have liked to pen a response to Buster that told him in delicious detail exactly what he thought about him, his department, Kenton and the general state of education in the United States.
And he despised himself for his reluctance to do so.
There was something that Kenton could give him that the University of Abuja could not: security.
Not just financial security, Richard thought. Also the confidence in what the day would bring. What the rest of his life would bring.
Richard took another sip of coffee and stared without comprehension at the photocopies in their neat piles on the ornate table.
© Copyright 2003-04, Janet Marie Mills - (The Creative Commons Liscense on this site does not apply to this Copyrighted work which is published with the permission of the author)