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Her mom took her hand. “I don’t need you to do that. I’ve been getting by your whole life. I’ll keep getting by.”
Emotion bubbled in Allison’s stomach. “But you’re my mother. I need to take care of you.” Her voice cracked. A single tear slipped down Allison’s cheek.
Her mother swiped away one from her own eyes. “Someday, maybe. But not yet. I promise to tell you when I need you. In the meantime, I can’t be worried about you worrying about me. Got it?” Her mom’s soft voice lacked authority. Not that she’d ever needed it for Allison. The two of them had always been a team. It felt good to be finding their way back to that.
Allison did her best to sound like the mopey teenager she never was. “Fine.”
Smiling, her mother pushed herself from her chair. “Now I’m going to make some tea and pop some cookies in the oven so we can cue upSteel Magnoliasand give ourselves a good cry.”
And cry they did.
By the time Allison lugged her snoozing puppy upstairs, she was hollowed out from sobbing. Two of her wet tissues were still crumpled in her hand, and the cookies and tea she’d choked down had formed a rock in her stomach.
None of it had been for Jed, but the release was cathartic, nonetheless. It cleared her out, culling back some of the numbness to make room for other things. Allison had always teased her mother for this need to treat sadness with more sadness, but maybe there was something to it.
After a quick shower, she lay in bed, waiting for the exhaustion wringing her muscles to reach her brain. In an effort to avoid thinking about Colin, Allison ran through her new ideas for her lecture. Wendy had told her they’d reschedule when Allison returned to campus, but she just wanted it to be over. Until she gave her presentation, Wendy couldn’t make her choice, and the longer it took Wendy to decide between them, the longer Allison remained tied to Colin.
She needed that slate clean.
Kicking off her blankets, Allison ransacked her room for supplies. Her old copy of Malory’sLe Morte d’Arthurwas buried at the back of her closet. In the bottom of her old white desk were leftover supplies from her word wall: a bunch of black Sharpies held together with an old hair elastic and stacks of neon sticky notes. Tucked away in her nightstand she unearthed her barely functioning tablet from high school.
Over the next few hours, Allison fashioned her presentation from academic scraps, like a kindergartener working on an art project. She pulled research from articles on Claymore’s library databases and typed up passages from Malory into the Notes app on the tablet. With the sticky notes, Allison made a low-tech version of PowerPoint slides, complete with stick-figure drawings and scribbly fonts.
The end result was nothing like the polished lecture sitting on her computer back in Providence. There were no fancy backgrounds or elaborate lettering, no high-resolution stock photos. No adorable clip art. No selections from Chaucer underlined and annotated with PowerPoint animations.
In some ways, though, this felt like a more honest representation of Allison’s teaching. It wasn’t shiny or professional. It wasn’t very good. But she was trying. That had to be enough for now.
The sun was starting to crawl its way up from the horizon as she set up her phone to record. She was too tired to cover the bags under her eyes or the splotches of red still bright on her face from crying. She didn’t bother to change out of her “Shut Up, I’m Reading” T-shirt.But for the next hour, Allison filmed herself giving that lecture with her raw, cracking voice, aiming the camera at her makeshift slides as needed and pointing to her dog-eared copy of Malory to demonstrate some close reading.
As the video converted, she clicked open her Claymore email. Inside were a dozen condolences, from her cohort and a few from students. She opened the first one.
Hey, Prof A. It sucks your dad died. I hope you’re okay. I promise not to be a dick next class. Cole
Allison had thought she’d been wrung dry, but new tears dripped into her lap. Her hands were shaking as she uploaded the video to an email and addressed it to Wendy.
Her finger hovered over the send button. It was late (or early, depending on how one looked at it) and Allison was wrecked. Could she be trusted to make big decisions right now? What if sending this was a mistake? What if not waiting cost her the advisee position and the trip? What if Allison’s haste only proved to Wendy that she wasn’t Ph.D. material?
For once, Allison couldn’t bring herself to care. Perfection required more energy than she had left. In some ways, it had been that need to be perfect that had gotten her into this mess in the first place.
She hit send.
Submitting her lecture was a door she could slam shut. With it, her competition with Colin came to an end. It was in Wendy’s hands now.
And with nothing left to fight for, Allison could shut the door on Colin, too.
Chapter 38
Sophie Andrade: I am getting in the car.
Allison Avery: To drive to Boston for your interview.
Sophie Andrade: Nope, headed farther north.
Allison Avery: SOPHIA ROSA ANDRADE. TURN THE CAR AROUND.
Allison Avery: Also stop texting and driving.
Sophie Andrade: I haven’t left yet. I’m sitting in the driveway.
