And she is. Sorry for how long it took her. Sorry for letting him think what he wanted to think. Sorry for disrupting his plans. But not sorry for making the call. She puts the receiver gently back onto the phone and stares across the treetops to the bay and the city on the hills. And then it all hits her—a sharp slice of fear that cuts through her happiness. What has she done? Thrown away everything that kept her steady and anchored. And unhappy and dull, she reminds herself, but still her anxiety grows. Can she do this? Does she have the courage to grasp and hold what her heart wants?
Daniel. She’ll e-mail Daniel. He saw her as a person with possibilities. He’ll tell her she has a future. Somehow. Somewhere. Daniel.
CHAPTER SIX
D aniel Jablonski gets Isabelle’s e-mail as he’s packing up his campus office. Over the summer the board of trustees ousted John Liggins. The word around campus was that he should have spent as much time fund-raising as he did raising the diversity profile of the school. With Liggins’s departure came Daniel’s notice that the Visiting Scholars’ Program was being terminated. He was out of a job. And, not inconsequentially, a house.
“But where are we going to live?” Stefan’s voice spirals upward into a twirl of anxiety. He has thrown in his lot with his father, and now it looks like they are being tossed out onto the street.
Daniel shrugs. This latest development has come as a complete surprise. Just getting through each day takes all of Daniel’s concentration. Contemplating the future isn’t even on his radar screen.
“You can always go back and live with your mother. All you have to do is get a job.”
“That’s not so easy! Why do you think that’s easy?”
“Millions of people do it every day, Stefan,” Daniel says reasonably, and that only ratchets up his son’s panic.
“And maybe I don’t want to go live with Mom! Maybe that’s like…going back! Maybe I want to live with you!” Stefan spits these words at Daniel as they stand in the kitchen, his angry tone almost managing to eclipse the tender sentiment: It’s you I want.
Daniel is struck once again by evidence of the anger running hard and deep beneath his son’s seemingly benign exterior. Stefan will go weeks barely speaking, hardly interacting, treating Daniel as if he were an annoying impediment, and then suddenly, boom! An explosion of feeling, usually anger. It’s like living in the middle of the siege of Sarajevo.
“You can stay with me,” Daniel says calmly, “wherever I end up.”
“But where?”
“I don’t know right now, Stefan.”
“But you have to! I don’t want to end up in, like, a homeless shelter!”
“Really? My guess is even homeless people don’t want to end up in a homeless shelter.”
“Dad!” is fairly screamed at Daniel.
And then Daniel smiles, a small grin that lets Stefan know he is playing with him just a little, and it defuses the anger instead of escalating it.
“Okay,” Stefan says, “I get it. Calm down.”
“If we’re lucky, I might just be able to find us somewhere to live.”
But first Daniel has to pack up his campus office. He’s been putting it off—that walk to campus—and Maintenance and Housekeeping has been reminding him daily, with less and less civility, of his responsibility to “vacate the premises.”
Because he never put any effort into making his office comfortable or even serviceable, the packing up takes no time. A few books, the handful of acceptable pages of his woeful novel, his computer. It’s as he opens his e-mail that he sees Isabelle’s note, sent the day before.
Daniel,
I’ve done something completely out of character…
A good start, Daniel thinks as he sits down to read the rest. She needs to shake up her life. Maybe she has.
I went to visit my friend Deepti in the Bay Area, and I met a friend of her boyfriend’s and decided to stay here and not go back to Long Island. I’ve known him for a
Daniel. She’ll e-mail Daniel. He saw her as a person with possibilities. He’ll tell her she has a future. Somehow. Somewhere. Daniel.
CHAPTER SIX
D aniel Jablonski gets Isabelle’s e-mail as he’s packing up his campus office. Over the summer the board of trustees ousted John Liggins. The word around campus was that he should have spent as much time fund-raising as he did raising the diversity profile of the school. With Liggins’s departure came Daniel’s notice that the Visiting Scholars’ Program was being terminated. He was out of a job. And, not inconsequentially, a house.
“But where are we going to live?” Stefan’s voice spirals upward into a twirl of anxiety. He has thrown in his lot with his father, and now it looks like they are being tossed out onto the street.
Daniel shrugs. This latest development has come as a complete surprise. Just getting through each day takes all of Daniel’s concentration. Contemplating the future isn’t even on his radar screen.
“You can always go back and live with your mother. All you have to do is get a job.”
“That’s not so easy! Why do you think that’s easy?”
“Millions of people do it every day, Stefan,” Daniel says reasonably, and that only ratchets up his son’s panic.
“And maybe I don’t want to go live with Mom! Maybe that’s like…going back! Maybe I want to live with you!” Stefan spits these words at Daniel as they stand in the kitchen, his angry tone almost managing to eclipse the tender sentiment: It’s you I want.
Daniel is struck once again by evidence of the anger running hard and deep beneath his son’s seemingly benign exterior. Stefan will go weeks barely speaking, hardly interacting, treating Daniel as if he were an annoying impediment, and then suddenly, boom! An explosion of feeling, usually anger. It’s like living in the middle of the siege of Sarajevo.
“You can stay with me,” Daniel says calmly, “wherever I end up.”
“But where?”
“I don’t know right now, Stefan.”
“But you have to! I don’t want to end up in, like, a homeless shelter!”
“Really? My guess is even homeless people don’t want to end up in a homeless shelter.”
“Dad!” is fairly screamed at Daniel.
And then Daniel smiles, a small grin that lets Stefan know he is playing with him just a little, and it defuses the anger instead of escalating it.
“Okay,” Stefan says, “I get it. Calm down.”
“If we’re lucky, I might just be able to find us somewhere to live.”
But first Daniel has to pack up his campus office. He’s been putting it off—that walk to campus—and Maintenance and Housekeeping has been reminding him daily, with less and less civility, of his responsibility to “vacate the premises.”
Because he never put any effort into making his office comfortable or even serviceable, the packing up takes no time. A few books, the handful of acceptable pages of his woeful novel, his computer. It’s as he opens his e-mail that he sees Isabelle’s note, sent the day before.
Daniel,
I’ve done something completely out of character…
A good start, Daniel thinks as he sits down to read the rest. She needs to shake up her life. Maybe she has.
I went to visit my friend Deepti in the Bay Area, and I met a friend of her boyfriend’s and decided to stay here and not go back to Long Island. I’ve known him for a
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