Page 11 of Earthly Ties

I never thought I’d crave companionship enough to participate in a one-sided conversation, but at this point? I’ll take someone to talk to, even if I can’t talk with her. Someone who I can pretend can hear me, so the hollow ache where my humanity used to be can feel a little less raw.

“Dr. Voigt.” A knock sounds as Gilda walks in, shutting the heavy door behind her with a loud creak and a thud. Her gray hair is wild, but her sensible blouse and navy pantsuit are immaculate.

Esther and I both look up from her laptop. An unscheduled, closed-door meeting is always foreboding when it comes to Gilda Frederick. With the door closed, Esther’s tiny office feels even more cramped. The oak bookshelves seem to close in without an escape route, the claustrophobia worsening in Gilda’s dominating presence.

“Happy Friday, Dr. Frederick,” Esther greets her with a tight smile that I have learned is her fake smile—closed lip, eyes squinting just enough to form smile lines. Nothing like how Dream Esther used to smile at me. Nothing like how Real Esther smiles all the time, in private.

Her genuine smile is unfairly charming, with the slightest bite of her lower lip, because she tries to hide her crooked bottom teeth. Not that she needs to. When she’s home alone and makes herself laugh with her constant monologues, she doesn’t bother to hide her joy. Somehow, her grin is even prettier. No one would ever notice her slightly crooked teeth, but she seems insecure about it.

Any person with eyes should be as dazzled as I am.

“What’s happy about it?” Gilda sighs heavily as she leans on Esther’s desk, nudging aside a stack of books. “I can’t believe Dr. Monae actually ghosted the Philosophy Department.”

A big, ugly guffaw escapes me. When I was alive, at most I would exhale through my nose when something was funny. In death, my laughter rings out, and even a snort escapes me—muffled, of course, since there are no sound waves to create the slight echo that all real sounds have. Even if her word choice wasn’t hilariously on point, Dr. Gilda Frederick used slang. She has to be nearly seventy, but even old dogs can learn new lingo when they teach college students, I suppose.

Esther doesn’t seem as entertained. Instead, worry furrows her brow as she looks up at Gilda. “You haven’t heard from her? Could she be missing? Would anyone file a missing persons report? Or do a welfare check?”

“Stop. You ask so many questions. I can never get a word in.” Gilda waves her hand to cut Esther’s endless questions off.

I doubt Gilda would ever have trouble getting a word in any conversation, but Esther does get on a roll, one question spilling out after the other. She does it in classes, too, until a brave soul finally raises their hand to answer one of them. When they don’t want to participate, her students just let her go on and on with her not-rhetorical questions.

I suspect Gilda intentionally hired two queer women because she wanted women who would hold their own against the old boys club that makes up the rest of the Philosophy Department. As if we’d somehow be more assertive than straight women. Instead, she got a people-pleasing soft butch with a valley girl voice, and a conflict-avoidant recluse who doesn’t contribute a word during meetings.

After squeaking out an apology, Esther closes her mouth.

“Don’t apologize for that. I’ll figure out what the next steps are with all of that legal stuff, so don’t worry about filing any reports.” Gilda scoffs to herself, as if my absence is yet another administrative task she needs to handle. “There was a lot of confusion the first couple weeks about whether classes were in person or online, so two weeks went by before I realized she wasn’t back yet.” Her sigh is heavy, as if Esther hadn’t told her I was missing a month ago. Or was that two months ago? I don’t know when exactly I am. But I no longer care. I’ve given up on counting the days. What’s the point of measuring time? To keep my sanity? Who needs that? “Luckily, all her classes are Tuesday-Thursday this semester, so we only missed four class sessions.”

“You gave me four Tuesday-Thursday classes?!” I shoot Gilda a dirty look. “What the fuck? What did I do to piss you off?”

Gilda wrinkles her nose. “One of these fucking kids snitched to the Dean, instead of coming to me on Tuesday. And if I admit I didn’t notice one of my associate professors hadn’t shown up for classes for two weeks, that’s the end of my career. They’ll force me into retirement.” She waves a hand, as if banishing the very idea. “So if anyone asks, Dr. Monae has taken a last-minute, unexpected sabbatical for an exciting once-in-a-lifetime research opportunity. You’ve volunteered to cover her classes for the semester.”

“You want me to teach Lucy’s classes.” Despite asking a question, Esther’s intonation doesn’t rise at the end for once.

“That’s some bullshit!” I pull myself in front of Gilda, floating through the desk. Thankfully, I miss coming in contact with both Esther and Gilda, but Esther’s laptop screen flickers as I pass through it. “She warns you that I’m dead, and you give her double the workload?”

“You mean Dr. Monae’s classes, but yes.” Gilda waves a hand, as if dismissing Esther’s pesky skepticism. “You’re a smart, capable woman. You’ll be fine.”

Esther stands up, blue eyes wide. “B-but, Lucy has three intro classes and her seminar. I don’t have capacity for more intro classes. And I specialize in Feminist Philosophy—I don’t know anything about Lucy’s field. I’ve never studied death before! And they’re all Tuesday-Thursday classes? I’ll be teaching six days a week!”

Intro courses are their own special hell on Earth. Between the upperclassmen who have never taken a humanities course sleeping in the back to fulfill a GE credit, and the nihilist freshman fanboys who willfully misinterpret Nietzsche and interrupt with “Well, actually…” several times every class, there are few courses less pleasant than a Level-100 purgatory in the Philosophy Department. Students actually interested in philosophy, and not just being devil’s advocates, are few and far between. To assign the two of us to teach three intro courses each was vindictive; to force Esther to teach six is downright cruel.

Gilda stands up as well and smiles tightly at Esther. “Dr. Voigt, I wouldn’t have told the Dean that you were teaching Dr. Monae’s classes if I didn’t think you were perfectly capable of keeping up with your male colleagues.”

“Those male colleagues aren’t getting double the workload!” I shout—actually shout, too. The stack of essays I’m floating in on Esther’s desk flutter, as I gesticulate wildly in her direction. “Bitch, you’re delusional! You should be forced into retirement!”

I haven’t raised my voice this loud since I was a toddler. But Esther doesn’t deserve this bullshit just because I presumably drank myself to death on boxed wine, in a fit of self-pity and loneliness. Other than alcohol poisoning, I don’t know what would have killed me.

Esther sits, stunned into silence, as Gilda continues, “I’m sure her course notes are in her office, and you can brush up over the weekend. Just remember your executive presence, and don’t apologize to the students for missing the first couple of weeks.”

“What the fuck would she have to apologize for?” I scoff. ”You’re the one who fucked up, Gilda!” I pause, a surge of guilt drowning my anger. I float out of the desk to hover by the window. “And I’m the one who died,” I murmur. “Sorry, East.”

Gilda opens the door to leave. “Oh, and one more thing. The Dean cut our travel budget. We can only afford to send two professors to the Diversity in Philosophy conference. The Dean thinks Allan needs sensitivity training, so he’s coming with me.”

“There are so many levels of wrong in your head, Gilda.” Waspish annoyance back, I rub the air around my temples, wishing I could make contact with myself. “Are you seriously replacing Cash with a racist and sexist relic? To attend a diversity conference?” To treat a professional conference as sensitivity training—especially the conference for which Cash and Esther secured the funding over a year ago—I have never hated Gilda more than I do right now. “How many mental hoops did you have to jump through to make that make sense?”

“Could I attend virtually, at least?” Esther asks carefully.

Still floating through her desk, I turn around to glare at her. “Ugh, seriously? You’re just going to take all this?” I probably would have done the same when I was alive, but I’m angry on her behalf. Esther deserves so much better than this!