A Mangled Affair - Part III
I was disappointed to learn that I’d need a science credit to earn my degree at Boston University, but the lady in the registrar’s office assured me that I’d be in for a big surprise if I enrolled in a specific Geology class. I had no idea what she meant until a week later, when I met my professor.
THIS IS PART 3 of a SIX-PART STORY
Image: Susie Ho
I began to live for my once-a-week class with the handsome professor. Every lecture, I’d sit in the front row, right by where he stood, and at the break we’d have a little nod and hello and perhaps an exchange about whatever book I was reading. I’d soak in the details of his face and hair and clothing, how he looked, how his voice sounded, and live off those impressions for the rest of the week. I had a bona fide crush; being in the presence of Dabney Withers Caldwell was all I could think about.
The rest of my life at that time was busy, but boyfriend-less. I studied, wrote, took care of my daughter, hung out with friends. One of those friends was a young woman named Madeleine Voticky, the younger sister of an old high school acquaintance. She was very attractive, tall, lanky, with soft brown hair and long, thick eyelashes. Like me, she was a single mom -- her little boy was named Lukas and he was about the same age as my daughter, Jofka. She had an ex-husband, too, Jerome Kleinfeld who had moved from New York City to be near his son in Cambridge. Madeleine and I had “rediscovered” one another once we found out we were living in the same city. We enjoyed doing the same things -- tooling around town in search of adventure, shopping for clothes, going to playgrounds and parties, gossiping about people and trying to figure out their stories. We could spend hours in each other's company. And we quickly began to do that, two besties in similar circumstances who never ran out of things to say to one another.
So it’s not surprising that Madeleine and I took to stalking my geology professor. We learned where he lived and drove to the suburbs to stake out his house, which had a respectable brick and ivy exterior, but offered no secrets. Wanting to know exactly what the draw was, Madeleine hired a babysitter and came to class one evening, taking a seat in the back. “Well, I sort of get it,” she told me later. “He has an interesting face and it’s probably kind of fun to flirt with him.”
And flirt we did. I always sat in the same seat in the front row, and he’d swivel away from the board and our eyes would meet and we’d both turn all different shades of scarlet.
One night he gave a lecture drunk. He stood up in front of the class, speech slurred, uttering words that made no sense and writing a bunch of gibberish on the blackboard. One by one, students left the hall. I left fairly soon as well, not wanting to witness more of poor Dabney’s humiliation. But now I knew he had a problem with alcohol, just like I did. And that felt like a definite bond between us.
Image: Walter Randlehoff