Six Years

I stayed there behind the chapel until I figured everyone was gone. Then I came back around. The minister with the cleanly shaven head was outside on the steps. So was Natalie’s sister, Julie. She put a hand on my arm. “Are you okay?”

“I’m super,” I said to her.

The minister smiled at me. “A lovely day for a wedding, don’t you think?”

I blinked into the sunlight. “I guess it is,” I said, and then I walked away.

I would do as Natalie asked. I would leave her alone. I would think about her every day, but I’d never call or reach out or even look her up online. I would keep my promise.

For six years.

Chapter 2

SIX YEARS LATER

The biggest change in my life, though I couldn’t know it at the time, would arrive sometime between 3:29 P.M. and 3:30 P.M.

My freshman class on the politics of moral reasoning had just ended. I was heading out of Bard Hall. The day was campus-ready. The sun shone brightly on this crisp Massachusetts afternoon. There was an Ultimate Frisbee game on the quad. Students lay strewn all over the place, as though scattered by some giant hand. Music blasted. It was as if the dream campus brochure had come to life.

I love days like this, but then again, who doesn’t?

“Professor Fisher?”

I turned to the voice. Seven students were sitting in a semicircle in the grass. The girl who spoke was in the middle.

“Would you like to join us?” she asked.

I waved them off with a smile. “Thanks, but I have office hours.”

I kept walking. I wouldn’t have stayed anyway, though I would have loved to sit with them on such a glorious day—who wouldn’t? There were fine lines between teacher and student, and, sorry, uncharitable as this might sound, I didn’t want to be that teacher, if you know what I mean, the teacher who hangs out a little too much with the student body and attends the occasional frat party and maybe offers up a beer at the football game tailgate. A professor should be supportive and approachable, but a professor should be neither buddy nor parent.

When I got to Clark House, Mrs. Dinsmore greeted me with a familiar scowl. Mrs. Dinsmore, a classic battle-axe, had been the political science department receptionist here since, I believe, the Hoover administration. She was at least two hundred years old but was only as impatient and nasty as someone half that age.

“Good afternoon, sexy,” I said to her. “Any messages?”

“On your desk,” Mrs. Dinsmore said. Even her voice scowled. “And there’s the usual line of coeds outside your door.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Looks like a Rockettes audition back there.”

“Got it.”

“Your predecessor was never this accessible.”

“Oh, come now, Mrs. Dinsmore. I visited him here all the time when I was a student.”

“Yeah, but at least your shorts were an appropriate length.”

“And that disappointed you a little, didn’t it?”

Mrs. Dinsmore did her best not to smile at me. “Just get out of my face, will you?”

“Just admit it.”

“You want a kick in the pants? Get out of here.”

I blew her a kiss and took the back entrance so as to avoid the line of students who signed up for Friday office hours. I have two hours of “unscheduled” office time every Friday from 3:00 to 5:00 P.M. It was open time, nine minutes per student, no schedule, no early sign-up. You just show up—first come, first served. We keep strictly on the clock. You have nine minutes. No more, no less, and then one minute to leave and let the next student settle in and have their turn. If you need more time or if I’m your thesis adviser or what have you, Mrs. Dinsmore will schedule you for a longer appointment.

At exactly 3:00 P.M., I let in the first student. She wanted to discuss theories on Locke and Rousseau, two political scientists better known now by their Lost TV show reincarnations than their philosophical theories. The second student had no real reason to be here other than to—and I am being blunt here—suck up. Sometimes I wanted to hold up a hand and say, “Bake me some cookies instead,” but I get it. The third student was into grade groveling; that is, she thought that her B+ paper should have been an A-, when in fact it probably should have been a B.

This was how it was. Some came to my office to learn, some came to impress, some came to grovel, some came to chat—that was all okay. I don’t make judgments based on these visits. That would be wrong. I treat every student who walks through those doors the same because we are here to teach, if not political science, maybe a little something about critical thinking or even—gasp!—life. If students came to us fully formed and without insecurities, what would be the point?

“It stays a B plus,” I said when she finished her pitch. “But I bet you’ll be able to get the grade up with the next essay.”

The buzzer on the clock sounded. Yes, as I said, I keep the times in here strict. It was now exactly 3:29. That was how, when I looked back at all that would happen, I knew exactly when it all first began—between 3:29 P.M. and 3:30 P.M.