43. Party Line

            The pert blonde Sorority girl sighed and tried to well up, but I wasn’t buying it. My office was hot and I wanted her gone so I could finish grading and then go home and lay in my hammock.  

            “It’s just that I meant to finish the paper and have it in on time,” she continued in her ne’er-do-well Texas cadence, “but the day before my Mom called and told me I had to come home-back down to Dallas- because my brother was, like, in a car wreck, so I just went down, but he’s fine…” She stopped and looked at me expecting some kind of emotional response.

“Oh good,” I said.

            “Yay, right,” she continued. “But we didn’t find out till late that he had just broken his arm and would be okay. Yay, so then Mom told me to stay the night since she doesn’t like me driving after dark on the highway by myself, so by the time I got back the next day and all I didn’t have time to finish the paper, so I just kinda skipped class.”

            “Jessica, why didn’t you do it that night and turn it in Friday?”

            “Well, I had another test to study for that day, you know, a Biology test, and it was really hard. But I finally did your paper yesterday and I have it here to turn in now.”

 “I said I would not take any late papers after Friday and it’s a week later and now you want to turn it in?”

“Yeah, but Dr. Stiles, I have it here, and it’s really good and all and I’m really sorry. I really enjoyed the books and Shakespeare and all and stuff and learned a lot. I mean if you could take it that would be great.” She held up a red plastic notebook and looked at me earnestly.

I rubbed my bald head. “But if I take yours this late, then I will have to take everyone else’s….” I trailed off. I hated this part of the job: If I took it, I would break my word and my moral code, but if I didn’t I was a jerk that could ruin her GPA and her chance to get into a good graduate school.

My desk phone rang and I grabbed for it, holding a stern finger up to her to wait. “Dr. Stiles,” I barked.

“And a toot-toot-a-lout to you too! This is the indubitable Dr. Branch,” Oliver sang. “You rang?”  

“Hold please,” I said gruffly, rolling my eyes and deciding just to cave. Frowning, I held my hand out to her with a look that said, ‘Give it here.’ 

She smiled broadly and handed me the red plastic notebook. “Thank you so much,” She whispered loudly and twangily.  

I pursed a tight smiled and pointed to the door, for her to leave. 

“Thank you, oh my God, thank you,” she whispered as she left, bowing slightly, arms out, hair windswept.

As my office door shut, I turned back to the phone, “Hey.”

“So what’s up?” Oliver asked.

“Crap with students” I sighed. 

“Ah, little rapscallions that they are. I’m at the Reference Desk. Dead dull here, finals and all. Everyone studying.”

“Hey, I was going to see if you had any desire to go on the Art Walk with me tomorrow night? Should be fun, fun.”

“With you and Thad?” Oliver asked carefully.

“No, just me. Thad’s got other plans.” Oliver had learned his lesson not to participate with Thad around, as Thad was invariably terrible to him, and by terrible I meant rotten, like teenage lunchroom rotten. 

“So I’m plan B?” Oliver scoffed.

“No, no…” I lied.

“Hey wait, hold on,” Oliver said putting the phone down. I heard him talking to a student, “No, that’s a book, and with that call number it will be up on the 3^rd floor….Yes, a book. It’s a square thing made of paper full of knowledge with pages that don’t plug in….Yes, it’ll be up on the third floor like I said.” He came back to the phone and sighed dramatically, “Children.”

“So do you want to go?”

“Sorry, can’t,” he said. “I’ve got coffee with that Swedish girl I met at Borders. Too bad it’s not Swedish twins! Now that would be vo-dee-o-dodo!”

“That’s too bad,” I snickered, not able to imagine anything gayer coming out of his mouth than a Laverne and Shirley sex reference.

“But we should do coffee soon.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, stymied.

“Oh Lord,” he exclaimed. “Looks like I got a whole horde of  exchange students heading right towards me and they look hungry, so I’ll call you back. Ciao.”  

“Bye.”

Cradling the phone I looked down at Jessica’s red plastic notebook and wondered if I was a sucker or a saint. I wanted to go the Art Walk to prove to Thad that if he had other plans, I could have other plan too. But with Oliver busy my options were distinctly limited. I put the receiver to me ear and mentally debated, then just went ahead and called Becky. After a few rings she answered.

I heard her say, “un minuto…” and then “Hello?”

“Hey Beck.”

“Hey. Ola. What’s up?”

We caught-up briefly. She had now had Pablo for just over a month, and they were getting along better every day, especially as her Spanish was improving. He had ceased crying all the time, specifically as they now watched a lot of Dora the Explorer and Telemundo together. Becky had gone back to work part time and Mom was helping out babysitting during the day, so life for them was beginning to stabilize, and Becky seemed happier for it, which was surprising and great.

“Hey,” I began, jumping to the grist of my call. “Would you two like to go on the downtown Art Walk with me tomorrow night?” This was my first time to ask the two of them to do something.

“That’s really nice of you.” Becky said, sounding truly honored. “I bet Pablo would really like that.” And then to him she said, “De! De!” And then back to me, “What time?”

“I don’t know. About seven?” 

“Oh, that’s really past his bedtime. I am trying to keep him on a set schedule, you know. I feed him about six and put him down about seven.”

“That makes sense.”

 “Yeah. But maybe we could all go to the Duck Pond together sometime? He loves the ducks.” And then to him she said, “Patos! Patos!”and then quacked and he quacked back and rattled off something long and complicated in Spanish. She  responded with “Si! Patos agua amor.” And then back to me, “He loves the ducks.”

“Don’t we all?” I sighed. “Okay, look, I’m in my office grading, so I should go…” but then she cut me off.

“You know Father’s Day is coming up, right?”
            “Yeah.”  I said tentatively. “So? Are you baking a cake for Smith?”

“Hell no!” she whispered, then back to her normal tone. “It just seems like…it would just be nice, with Father’s Day…I would just like Pablo to meet Dad sometime, you know?”

I was silent.

“Did you decide to contact him?”

“No.”

I thought about the letter sitting in the back of my file cabinet at home. I had had it for two months and still had not told Thad about it. Having it just made me feel better; like I had a part of Dad, I was part of his secret world.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, sounding uncomfortable. “You just hadn’t mentioned it, and I didn’t know what you decided…” and she trailed off.

“Yup.” I said pivoting my chair to look out the big window at all of the passing students and wondered how many of them knew their real fathers.

“But we should totally go to the Duck Pond and play soon,” she continued, back in her lively tone. “Pablo would love that.” In the back ground I heard him say “Duck Pond” in English and Becky say, “Yes! Si! Duck Pond!” And then back to me, “Look, gotta go. I’ll call this weekend. Bye.”

“Bye.”

I sat there, totally bummed out, regretting even calling Becky: Now I had to go to the stupid Duck Pond with her and that little crying Mexican, and I missed Dad. Great.

To avoid the emotional rut I went back to grading, longing for my office hours to be over. The papers for my Shakespeare Comedies class were both better and far worse than I had ever seen before.

About thirty minutes later my phone rang again, “A toot-toot-a-lout to you too!” Oliver sang.

“What’s up?”

“I just called the Swiss Miss Gretchles about our date tomorrow and she totally cancelled on me.” I could hear him making his terrible little boy pouty face on the other end of the phone and I cringed.

“Yeah, so?”

“So you and I got a date for tomorrow night! Just two dudes out for a night on the town. Too bad you don’t drink anymore. Remember how fun those times were?

“Yeah,” I said, not remembering many, as when I did drink, boy could I drink. “That’s great. So you want me to pick you up about seven?”

“Sure.” He beamed, “It’s just too bad about Gretchles. I mean, she’s so hot, like spicy, Vietnamese buffet three devil heads zesty, oh!”

 “Yeah, gosh.” I made myself not laugh. 

Here’s the thing about Oliver: he lied. He lied a lot. He lied to himself and thus he lied to others. I had no idea if this ‘Gretchels’ was even a real person as I had never met her, nor met anyone who had met her. I had learned that you could believe very little of what Oliver said about women or his sex life, but he was on the up-and-up about most everything else. And I just felt so sorry for him and his deep, deep closeted life, that I just accepted it. So this level of fictitious conversation between us was completely normal for our world.

“Like sassy, jalapenos burns my bottom red, red hot!” and he squealed and did a Charo “Cuchi-cuchi.” 

 “Yeah, okay, I’m grading…”

“And I’m still out at the Reference Desk, so see ya tomorrow night.”

“Bye.”

As I hung up I heard him say to someone, “No, the bathroom is that way. Good God! How you kids even feed yourselves amazes me!”