A Skeleton in the Family Page 3

  “Sounds good,” I said, and found a marker to put my name on the grid. “I’m surprised somebody hasn’t moved up to it. Looks like a prime location.”

  “Ah, yes, well . . .” He looked significantly at a brunette with shoulder-length hair sitting in the desk in front of the one I’d just picked. Charles rarely says something negative about another adjunct, so his silence said all I needed to know. The woman—Sara Weiss, according to the desk grid—was not going to be an ideal neighbor.

  I lowered my voice. “What’s the downside?”

  “Oh, she’s a fine scholar, I’m sure, but she can be a tad . . . inquisitive.”

  “I can deal.” I’d had nosy office-mates before.

  “Then let me introduce you.” Charles walked me over and said, “Dr. Weiss, may I introduce Dr. Thackery?”

  “Hi,” she said, looking me over. “What department?”

  “English. And you?”

  “Biology.”

  Not only did Sara have a plum desk location, she even had a hook on which to hang her coat. Her desk wasn’t bad, either.

  “You’ve been here awhile,” I guessed.

  “Six years. How many classes did they give you?”

  “Five.”

  “The usual.”

  Charles said, “Let me trade chairs for you.” He rolled away the lopsided one that had been behind my desk.

  “You hooked up with Charley pretty quick,” Sara said, making it sound distasteful.

  “Charles and I go way back. I think this is the third time we’ve been at the same school. No, the fourth.”

  “Is it true that he’s rich and only teaches for fun?”

  “That’s the rumor.” It wasn’t true, but I’d never bothered to enlighten anybody with the real story.

  “He must be rich,” she said. “Look at how he dresses, how he acts. And his car! He’s taking the bread out of the mouths of people who need it.”

  “He’s an excellent teacher, and he does the work,” I said. “Why shouldn’t he get paid for it? It’s not like any of us get paid all that much anyway.”

  “She speaks the truth!” said a scrawny specimen with hipster glasses who was passing by. “New hire?”

  “Georgia Thackery, English.”

  “Bob Hewitt, Español.”

  “Buenos días.”

  “Not even a little bueno. I’ve got to give an oral test to twenty of the worst linguists I’ve ever encountered. Welcome aboard, and here’s hoping you escape soon.”

  “Bob is having a bad week,” Charles said diplomatically after the other man scurried away. He’d returned with a chair that looked a lot more comfortable than the previous one, and a label on which he’d already written my name in beautiful cursive. I was willing to bet he’d used a fountain pen, too. “I’ll affix this to a mailbox while you settle in. I would very much enjoy catching up with you further, but I have to attend to some test papers. How about lunch on Thursday?”

  “That sounds great.”

  He went out long enough to put the sticker on for me, then proceeded to his desk, nodding amiably at everybody he passed.

  I looked over my new desk. On top were a stack of composition books, a bunch of papers, and three empty Starbucks cups.

  “Excuse me, but do these things belong to anybody?” I said to the room at large.

  Nobody answered, and Sara was looking at her computer screen with exaggerated concentration.

  “Does anybody know who this stuff belongs to?” I said more loudly.

  Still no response.

  “Okay.” I grabbed the comp books and papers and carried them outside to leave next to the mailboxes. The coffee cups I tossed in the nearest trash can.

  Then I looked through the desk drawers. All of the useful supplies were long gone, of course, but I did find that my file drawer was half-filled with stuffed hanging folders. “Does anybody know—?” I started to say.

  Sara said, “Those are mine. I’m short on file room. You don’t mind if I leave them there, do you?”

  “Sorry, but I need the space,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic even though I wasn’t. If Sara had been an adjunct for six years, then she knew darned well it wasn’t acceptable to poach on other people’s desk space. Shared offices get territorial, and I’d long since learned that it was best to lift my leg and lay claim to my territory right off the bat.

  I pulled out the whole bundle, and tried to hand it to her, but she wouldn’t take it.

  “Do we have to do this now?” she snapped. “I’m busy!”

  “No problem. Do you want them on top of your desk or on the floor?”

  She gave me an evil look, flung open her own file drawer, and pulled out her purse, of all things. Once that was gone, there was plenty of room for the files. “Just put them in here!”

  I was tempted to put them in backward, but in the interest of our new friendship, I put them in properly, even straightening a folder that had become misaligned in transit. She was still glaring at me, so I don’t think she appreciated my forbearance.

  I went back to my desk and pulled out my laptop to check e-mail and found that Mrs. Speed had already sent me class times and locations, lesson plans, and student records for the classes I was going to teach. Dr. Parker had wanted me to start that very day, but I’d pointed out that I didn’t know what the classes were working on, so I’d need a couple of days to get up to speed. Since it was Monday, I would start first thing on Wednesday.

  First thing meant eight thirty in the morning—adjuncts get all the early morning classes. I’d be teaching classes at eight thirty, two o’clock, and four o’clock on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and at eight thirty and ten thirty on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So much for sleeping in.

  Fortunately for my class planning, my predecessor hadn’t done anything particularly tricky in her lesson plans—she’d been sticking with the vanilla synopses in the textbook. That would make it easy for me, if not particularly interesting, and I was making notes about upcoming assignments when Sara said, “Thackery . . . Aren’t there some other Thackerys teaching here?”

  “My parents are in the English Department, too, but they’re on sabbatical this year.”

  “Tenured, of course,” she said, which was obvious. Adjuncts don’t get sabbaticals. When we take time off from work, it’s without benefit of pay or the knowledge that our jobs will be waiting for us. “I’m surprised they didn’t pull strings to get you on full-time.”

  It wasn’t really a question, so I didn’t feel the need to answer. The fact was I’d never asked Mom and Phil to pull strings. Some days I wasn’t sure if I was principled or just an idiot.

  “And don’t they have an office you could use so you wouldn’t have to be in here?” Sara pressed.

  “What, and miss the fun of being with you guys?” I said. I probably would end up using Mom and Phil’s adjoining offices at some point, but I knew it was important to maintain ties with my fellow adjuncts. Besides which, I knew Sara just wanted my file drawer back, and I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

  “Why are my comp books out in the hall?” a voice suddenly boomed.

  Sara smirked and pretended to go back to what she’d been doing.

  A man much less dapper than Charles stomped in, carrying the detritus I’d left by the mailboxes. He was around my age, with black hair and dark eyes, and would have been cute if he hadn’t been scowling. Actually, he was pretty cute with the scowl, though I doubted he’d appreciate being told that.

  “Oh, are those yours?” I asked as he made his way to the desk next to mine, which was nearly covered with books and papers. “I asked, but nobody seemed to know.”

  He shot a look at Sara, whose smirk melted. “I was told the space was available,” he said.

  “I was told the same thing, which is why I put my name on
the desk grid and moved in.” I stuck out my hand. “Georgia Thackery, English.”

  He looked at his desk, then put the books onto his chair to offer his hand in return. “Fletcher Wildman, journalism.”

  “Fletcher is only teaching one class,” Sara said. “He’s got a full-time reporting job at the Pennycross Gazette.”

  “First adjunct job?” I asked.

  “How can you tell?”

  “It doesn’t take us long to either learn how to squeeze our stuff in or to find storage space at home. Don’t worry. You’ll pick it up.” I patted one corner of my desk. “You can stack those comp books here for now. I won’t need the space for a couple of days.” Then I raised my voice to make sure Sara heard me as I said, “I’ll be moving my files in right away, of course.” I could forgive Fletcher for making a rookie mistake, but she had no excuse.

  “No, thanks—I’ll manage,” he said, sounding miffed.

  “Suit yourself.” I went back to my work. Fifteen minutes later, I saw that Fletcher was standing with a bunch of folders in one hand and that same stack of composition books in the other. “Um, Georgia?” he said. “If you’re sure you don’t mind . . .”

  “No problem,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  I shouldn’t have enjoyed watching him trying to organize his desk, but I did, and it wasn’t just schadenfreude. I couldn’t help but wonder how he’d accumulated so much stuff in less than a semester, when he was only teaching one class. I probably wouldn’t have that much with my five.

  I checked my watch, decided it was time to skedaddle, and packed up my laptop. “Later, folks,” I said to the room at large. Nobody answered, but then again, we’d hardly had time to bond.

  Fletcher did say, “Georgia, I take it you’ve been an adjunct before.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m a longtime proponent of the adjunct lifestyle.”

  “Do you think we could talk sometime? I could use some pointers.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was just asking for help with work or something more personal, but I was willing to roll with either. “Sure. You can leave me a message in my mailbox, of course, or you can call me.” I glanced at his desk just long enough to see that it was a lost cause, then pulled a pad out of my briefcase to write down my number.

  I noticed that Sara was looking even crankier than before, and I assumed that Fletcher hadn’t asked her for pointers. That put a bit of a spring in my step. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. On the long walk back to my van, all I could think of was that I was most definitely getting to be an old hand at being an adjunct. The way things were going, I was likely to be one forever.

  5

  I wouldn’t always be able to pick Madison up from school—most of the time she’d have to walk or bike—but since it was her first day, I’d promised her a ride home. Besides, I wanted to hear about her day.

  “Hi, Mom,” Madison said, jumping into the van with her backpack far more filled than it had been that morning.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Great! I love this school. It’s only a couple of years old, and most of the tech actually works. Only I guess the chemistry teacher doesn’t like the smart board—supposedly he spilled some chemicals on it by accident, but Samantha says everybody knows he did it on purpose.”

  “Samantha?”

  “You’ll love her. She was the first one who spoke to me at lunch, and she was wearing a Studio Ghibli T-shirt and had a Totoro backpack. She said there are other otaku in school, too, and she’s going to introduce me to them.”

  Fortunately for my relationship with my daughter, I speak a few phrases of manga and anime, enough to recognize a famous Japanese animator, his most beloved character, and the Japanese word for anime and manga fans.

  “Did you meet any teachers, or were they not wearing the right T-shirts?”

  She gave me her best exasperated look, which was quite good, thanks to years of practice. “I like all of the teachers so far, except for the French teacher, so I’m going to see if I can switch to Spanish, which Samantha says is more fun. And yes, my English teacher is the best one.”

  “All English teachers are the best.”

  “Anyway, Ms. Rad—Nobody can pronounce her last name, so they call her Ms. Rad. And she’s really funny and perky, which nobody understands because she specializes in Holocaust literature.”

  “Not The Boy in the Striped Pajamas again!” One of the curses of switching schools was that there were some books Madison had missed completely, while others she’d read multiple times.

  “They did it for summer reading, so I’m in the clear, but we’re doing The Crucible in the spring.”

  “Second time?”

  “Third.”

  “Yow.”

  “It’s okay—I’ll deal. Ms. Rad is so much better than the last two teachers.”

  She chattered on about the people she’d met, joining the drama club, and how the cafeteria was much better than most. And with every bit of excitement, my heart sank. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her to be happy, but it killed me to see her put down roots, knowing they’d be ripped up when I had to change jobs.

  We stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up dinner supplies, and Madison’s cell phone rang just as we got back to the house. Samantha, of course. I let Madison off the hook for unloading duties, so she ran off to her room to talk while I put things away. Then I unpacked a few more boxes while she did her homework, all the while wondering if it was worth the trouble if I was going to have to repack everything in a few months.

  I tried to pull myself out of my funk by fixing sloppy joes, one of Madison’s favorites. It was a pleasure to have a full-size kitchen to ramble around in, rather than the tiny kitchenettes I usually got stuck with as an apartment dweller. Even better, every single eye on the stove actually worked.

  While the sloppy joe mix was simmering, I toasted rolls and tossed a fresh-from-a-bag salad. Then it was time to ring the dinner bell. Which is to say that I texted Madison—since she did homework with her headphones on, yelling wouldn’t have done the job, but she always had her phone within reach.

  A minute later she clomped down the stairs. “Mom, great news!”

  “You finished your homework?”

  “Better!”

  “You finished your homework for the week? The month? The year?”

  “Mom!”

  “Tell me while you set the table.”

  She got silverware out from the drawer. “Samantha says Mangachusetts is this weekend!”

  “That’s fabulous! Or it would be if I knew what you were talking about.”

  “Mangachusetts is a local manga and anime conference, and Samantha wants me to come and meet her there.”

  At first it had amused me that my strawberry blonde, green-eyed daughter was so enamored of Japanese comic books and animation, but I soon found that manga and anime heroines actually resembled Madison as often as not. Though I didn’t share her fondness for the form, we had a mutual respect pact: I didn’t mock Naruto or Goku and she didn’t mock the X-Men.

  “Where is it?” I said. Travel expenses and a weekend at a hotel did not have a place in my current budget.

  “Here in town! At McQuaid!”

  She went on to tell me who the guests were going to be, how many people she’d be able to meet, and what fun it would be, winding up with the fact that the registration fee was terribly reasonable when I took into account that it was two whole days’ worth of entertainment.

  As it turned out, the price really was semi-reasonable, and I was able to give permission without having to check the bottom of my purse for spare change. In fact, Madison’s excitement was so contagious that I decided to attend, too. It’s always been my view that families should geek out together.

  The rest of the evening was taken up with homework for her and unpacking
for me. That meant I never got a chance to visit Sid, but I was sure he’d understand.

  6

  Sid didn’t understand.

  “So what if I waited for hours, hoping you’d find a few spare seconds for me?” Sid said in an aggrieved tone. “There’s no need to worry about me staying up all night.”

  I’d gone upstairs as soon as Madison had biked off to school, and I was just as aggrieved that he didn’t appreciate it. “Number one, you don’t sleep. Number two, you were reading the Harry Potter series again, so you weren’t exactly bored.” The stack of books was teetering right next to his chair, so it hadn’t been hard to figure that out.

  “Coccyx, I meant to put those up!” When I’d been a kid, my mother had told Sid his language was too salty, so he’d come up with his own invective. If a bone’s name just happened to sound dirtier than it was, so much the better.

  “Anyway, you know it’s not going to be easy for me to sneak up here with Madison in the house. If you’d just let me introduce you two—”

  “I’m not ready for that.”

  “But why—?”

  “Tell me about the job! Did Parker put you on the tenure track right away, or does he want you to prove yourself for a while first?”

  As distractions went, it was a good one. I sighed, and said, “Don’t get too used to having me around, bone boy. I’m good for the rest of this semester, and I think next, but after that there’s no telling where I’ll be.”

  “Don’t give up yet! A tenure-track job could open up at any moment.”

  “As much as I would like to see that, and to put a video of the event on YouTube, it wouldn’t make any difference. Once you’re an adjunct, that’s all you ever are.”

  “I don’t believe it! You’re smart, you’re a fabulous teacher, and you are going to get your dream job soon. I just know it.”