Matt & Zoe (12 page)

Jasmine grins. “Thank you!”

Paul says his goodbyes, then Jasmine and Mono take off at a gallop, and I’m left alone with Zoe. Her smile fades a little, her blue eyes following Jasmine.

“I’ve enjoyed this, Matt,” Zoe says. “Thanks for coming over.”

“I meant what I said, Zoe. This strike won’t last long, but I’ll come by pretty much every day to see Jasmine. Okay?”

All kinds of warm feelings wash over me when Zoe smiles. Then they’re dashed when she says, “So seriously, anyway, where did you learn to ride like that? No one just
grows up around horses
and learns those kinds of tricks.”

I shake my head and try to laugh it off. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” I say.

She just arches an eyebrow.

I chuckle. “I practiced. For a long long time. I used to think I might end up in a circus, before I went to college.”

That’s as much as I was willing to say.

Chapter Eight

Thanks for the news (Zoe)

As if Mondays weren’t normally bad enough, this one I start classes on the biggest campus in Massachusetts. I’m already feeling overwhelmed.

The campus is as big as an Army base, with as many people on it. More than thirty thousand students and faculty members. The first problem I run into is just getting parking. I circle the lot next to the Visitors’ Center once, twice, three times, before I finally find a space in the back row a mile away from everything.

It’s okay. I left early, so I’d have time to get to my first class. But even though I’ve been here, I didn’t appreciate the scale of the place. My first class is at Bartlett Hall, which is—somewhere on campus near the library. At least the library, a 24 story building, is visible enough I can use it to orient myself.

I find the building with ten minutes to spare. It’s crowded, with kids everywhere. When I step inside, I feel like I’ve been plunged into a tunnel—it’s dim, with halls lined with dark brick and flickering fluorescent lighting. Fantastic. I push my way through the kids and find my way to class.

My eyes widen when I finally find the class.
Lecture hall.
It’s packed with maybe two hundred students. I’m nearly the last to arrive. The hall filled up from the back, so I easily slip into a desk in the front row.

Written on the whiteboard at the front of the class, in large bold letters, is: English 115 American Experience. I have a stack of textbooks.
Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. The Oxford Book of American Poetry. The Cornel West Reader.
I’m not sure I know who Cornel West is, or was, and I’ve never read much poetry. I did well in high school, but as I sit in this room full of 18 year olds just starting college, I feel inadequately equipped for this. Like I’m in the wrong place.

The rest of the day won’t be any easier. I have calculus and chemistry classes later in the day. Chemistry was my
worst
subject in high school. Who am I kidding? What am I doing here?

I stuff my doubts, arrange my materials and wait.

Finally, the teacher—a PhD candidate in the English department—appears and begins the class. Overall, it isn’t that different from sitting through a training session in the Army—something I’ve done plenty of. The audience is a lot more varied, but when I look around carefully, I can see that even here, there is a uniform. Three quarters of the guys wear too-baggy knee length khaki shorts and either t-shirts or polo shirts. The girls have a variety of different tops, but almost all wear black leggings or too-short denim shorts. It’s weird.

I tug my attention away from my surroundings and begin taking notes. It quickly becomes apparent that there will be little margin for error in this class. Two exams and a final paper will determine the entire grade. Blow one and I could blow the entire class.

That’s fine. I don’t intend to blow anything. I spend the next hour and fifteen minutes taking detailed notes and reviewing the syllabus. There’s going to be a lot of reading in this class, but it’s not more than I can handle. Depending on what job I get. Because I have to get a job. GI Bill benefits will help, but they won’t pay for everything. I’ve got money from Mom and Dad’s life insurance, but it won’t last all the way through college.

I reign in my out of control thoughts. I don’t need to worry about everything in the world right now. Just this class. Just right now.

Finally, class gets out. As I stand, a boy approaches me. A student. Probably eighteen or nineteen. I fling my bag over my shoulder and retreat before he can say anything. I’m not in the mood right now.

My second class—calculus—goes much the same, except that I realize that in the last five years I’ve forgotten all the math I ever knew. I’ll need to get back up to speed. Maybe there’s some online practice I could do, or I’m sure I can get
Calculus for Dummies
or something similar. I can’t be the only clueless person.

After class, I meet Nicole at the campus center for lunch. The dining hall is packed, but students give her a wide berth, a development I find amusing as I follow her through the line. Within two minutes of sitting down with our food, the tables on either side of us are clear, despite the overall crowding.

“Do they always give you this much space?”

Her lips curl up into a fierce grin. “You know how it is.”

I do. It was a similar reaction to the one I got when guys in the Army found out I was military police. Either they became intentionally provocative—as if daring me to interfere—or they made themselves scarce.

“How’s your first day of class?”

I fill her in the first two classes, including my doubts about my ability.

“Don’t be silly,” she responds. “You’re smarter than most of these kids, and you were accepted to better schools than this out of high school. There’s no reason you can’t do well.”

I sigh. “I’ve been away from academics for a long time.”

“Have you given much thought to what you want to do? What you’re going to major in?”

I shake my head. “I’m not sure. I wish I had the kind of certainty about life that you do.”

Nicole shrugs. “I always wanted to be a cop. But that was more Dad than anything.”

“How does it stack up to being an MP?”

She laughs. “About the same. You remember what it was like patrolling barracks sometimes. It’s not so different here, except that these kids have far less accountability. Let me tell you about a call we had last year.”

She smirks, then says, “Okay, so these days they’ve got a fairly good handle on the frat parties. But every once in a while things start to fall apart. So one Friday night last year I get a call—all available units to respond to one of the frat houses just off campus. We get there, and the situation was out of control. It seems they had a low key party going on, but someone spiked the drinks with PMA.”

“Oh, no,” I say. PMA—paramethoxyamphetamine—is a powerful hallucinogen, and has some nasty side effects. We’d had more than one encounter with the stuff as MPs.

Oh, the lovely things you learn in the Military Police.

“Yeah… we get there, and it’s immediate urgent triage. One guy’s standing on the ledge on the second floor yelling that he’s going to jump. We had two passed out, a couple hallucinating, and several of them puking their guts out. So two of the guys start to get out of control, and I’m getting them cuffed, when a student comes running out of the building butt-ass-naked.”

“Christ,” I mutter.

“Yeah. He’s screaming and hallucinating, and get this… someone had sprayed his dick with pepper spray.”

“Ouch,” I say.

She chuckles. “You aren’t kidding. Poor guy was howling in pain, kept yelling that he was being tortured by monsters.”

I sigh. “You know what, Nicole?”

“What’s that?”

“I’m glad I didn’t apply for a job on the force.”

She throws her head back and laughs, then hiccups. “Fair enough. You always did hate dealing with drunks.”

“I’m guessing you get your share of them here.”

She smiles. Then she says, “Oh, so what ended up happening with Jasmine’s teacher? And where is she now?”

I finish chewing my burger, then say, “She’s over at Armstrong Farm. Paul slid her into one of his classes.”

“You said her teacher came by the house?”

I nod. “He seems—very considerate.”

Nicole’s eyes narrow. “Considerate? What the hell is that?”

“I just—I don’t know—”

“Holy crap,” she says. “You’ve got a thing for him. What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on!”

“There is. Zoe, I’ve known you your entire life.
Something
is going on.”

“Nicole, stop—”

Her smile grows. “You’re blushing.”

“Shut
up.
”

“Zoe, seriously—”

“No,
you
listen,” I respond. “Think about it a minute. What if I get involved with this guy and it turns out to be crap? Jasmine needs him. We don’t have any relatives around, you know. It’s just me, and she doesn’t know me worth a damn.”

Nicole sighs. Then she says, “That’s pretty defeatist.”

I shrug. “It is what it is.”

“I think you should have him over for dinner. Tell him to bring a friend, that you want to set me up with someone.” Her words come out sounding like an order.

“You’re crazy.”

“I want to meet this guy. Where is he from?”

“Central Florida. He didn’t get more specific than that. But I’ll tell you this—he’s spent his life around horses. He rides tricks—he’s good enough to be performing.”

“Woah,” she says. “But he’s a teacher.”

“Thanks for the news, Nicole.”

Nicole grins. “You set up dinner.”

I sigh. She’s right. I do need to know more about him. I close my eyes, then say, “Fine. I’ll call him.”

“Excellent. I’ll wait.”

“What? Right now?” I hate that my voice squeaks.

“When is better?” She raises one eyebrow. That’s because she sees right through me.

“Fine,” I mutter. I take out my phone and find Matt’s number, then dial.

It rings. Three time. Four times. Five times. I’m about to disconnect when it goes to voicemail.

“Hey, this is Matt Paladino. Leave a message. Please make sure you leave your number and when is a good time to call back.”

I take a deep breath, then another one, suddenly uncomfortable. The phone beeps.

“Hey, uh… uh… Matt … this is Zoe. Zoe Welch. Listen, um… I’m having a friend over for dinner Friday. This is going to sound weird but… maybe you could come? Bring a friend. Um… call me.”

The whole time I talk, Nicole stares at me, a bemused look on her face. When I disconnect, she says, “Well, that was smooth.”

I almost choke with embarrassed laughter. Then I almost just choke. Did I just ask Matt out to dinner?

The Professor (Zoe)

Jefferson Welch—my dad—was a great big bear of a man. Just a little over 6 feet tall, he had the broad shoulders of a football player. He was a gentle giant—he wore square, plastic framed glasses long before they became retro-stylish. His gray hair—gray for as long as I can remember—was always a little bit too long, a little bit too disorganized. Even on special occasions, when he would wear his tuxedo and mom would wear a dress, his hair was still a chaotic mess.

His beard grew and shrank with the years. When I was in elementary school, the beard had the wild unkempt appearance of an isolated hermit living in the mountains. One of my earliest memories was tugging on his beard. He would let out a great big laugh and tickle me until I screamed. In the last few years, probably from around the time mom got pregnant with Jasmine, he’d taken to keeping it trimmed short and neat. I think it was even though the hair on his head had been gray for years, he felt sensitive about the beard, because it was the last to go.

Those early memories of my father are all short flashes and images. Dad sitting in his office in the back of the house upstairs. He had always planned to build in bookshelves, but never got around to it, so for most of my childhood there were stacks of books against two walls in his office, many of them taller than I was. His desk was an antique, but not a valuable one. I think he and mom bought it at a tag sale when they were still in graduate school, and he just wasn’t concerned with upgrading to anything fancier.

Dad kept his desk turned toward the window which overlooked the pasture behind our house—from his seat while he worked, he could see mom riding. My father never talked much about his work life. He taught English literature at Mount Holyoke and was a highly respected member of the faculty. Eventually he became the department head, and I have to assume he had a lot of academic publications. I’ve never read any of them. I still haven’t been in his office either, and I should go in there soon, if only to make sure there isn’t an old coffee or tea cup on his desk growing mold.

I was seven when dad took me to work with him on “Take Your Daughter to Work Day.” I had to sit through a couple of classes, but boredom wasn’t as big problem as you would expect for a child that age in a college classroom. The girls in the classes instantly adopted me. I still remember one of them—her name was Samantha—let me sit in her lap during class, and drew flowers with me. She made me laugh, and I cried when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to come back every day.

It’s not that I didn’t love Mom. I did. It’s just that she seemed to always fill up whatever space she was in, and not always in a good way. She loved to laugh, to tell funny jokes and stories, and she loved her horses. If I was outside and she saw me, I was automatically drafted into whatever it was she was doing. It’s not that I didn’t love working with the horses, but I also loved other things. I like to sit under the trees and read books, and when I was younger than that to play with my dolls. That was all a little too much for her—so by the time I was nine or 10, I was well-versed with all of the necessary chores around the stables and grounds. I spent Saturday mornings alongside mom while she gave lessons—just as Jasmine ended up doing.

That’s why sometimes my dad’s garage was a refuge. I’d never been allowed in there by myself—Dad was incredibly disorganized, but had eidetic memory. He would set his tools down randomly, and know where he could pick them up the next day, week, or year. If someone else came in and moved a tool, it could mess him up for days. When I think of the garage, I think of stacked automotive manuals, Dad’s secret vice. A wall and workbench laden with tools, many of them mysterious to me when I was younger, but more and more familiar as I grew older. On Saturday afternoons for most of my life, Dad disappeared into the garage where he tinkered with and tweaked the Austin Healey.