Abigail thought that her relationship with her student would destroy her life. He was older than her by five or six years and already had a graduate degree in chemistry but was back for his MA in rhetorical theory. What a stupid thing to come back for, she thought. In her English 300 class he made quirky, quasi-informed remarks about the readings and was overly apologetic when he went on too long. When he had introduced himself the first day, he stuck out mainly because of how much he loved his son, who reportedly bumped into things too often but was otherwise possibly a violin prodigy.
Abigail’s husband was the DA of a local disability work program. Whenever her in-laws came to visit, his father would ask about the “retarded” people and her husband’s face would tighten like he’d bit into a hunk of lemon. She hated that about her husband. He let people steamroll him. They had been married since they were kids, eighteen. When he spoke to her, he inflected the words sweetly but with a submerged catatonic indifference that made her want to cry. She loved him the way you might love a good microwave or a big picture frame.
There was nothing particularly attractive about the student. He radiated a kind of manic neediness that exaggerated when he got flustered. Where she liked to create space for other students, he had to disfigure it, seemingly in spite of her. He might’ve been thirty-three.
Curiously, the student slipped into a fantasy she had created for when she and her husband would have sex. It was a tired fantasy but one well-neurologically mapped; she had used it so many times that she could actually feel the contours of it in her mind like raised skin. The surprise of the student finding his way into her dreamscape fascinated her. Soon, he was a fantasy regular, stationing himself at the foot of the bed with his hard, mushroom-shaped penis pulsing agitatedly, waiting for his turn. She over-corrected for the effects this was having in the real world by ignoring the student in class, but the annoyingness she had initially ascribed to him was diminishing and she found herself, despite her best efforts, allowing him to talk more.
Three weeks into the semester, she and the student ran into each other at Trader Joe’s. She didn’t know why she was there. Her body had driven the car. Her hands grabbing objects in the store, putting them back down as she chewed on bits and pieces of her convoluted thesis on Shakespeare.
The student shot down the bread aisle without seeing her. Outside of the classroom, she couldn’t remember his name. But she felt it there in the fantasy, right behind his face. They met later in the produce section, where she observed his son holding his mouth open under the misters.
“Oh, hi,” she said. “This must be…Liam?”
“Go ahead, Lee,” he said to his son. “Say hi.” Liam scooted behind his dad’s leg and pushed his face into the back of his dad’s jeans. “Aw. I’m sorry, Abigail. He’s shy. He’s honestly very funny. He’s obsessed with Bioncles right now. I’m surprised he’s not making the one he brought shoot laser beams at you. Seriously. He’s outgoing. This is not a shy child.”
“It’s fine,” she said. There was an awkward silence that lasted a few seconds. She popped a knuckle and it made a sound like a firecracker.
“And you’re, uh,” he said. “A PhD student? Is that right?”
She needed to make up a time constraint but, for some reason, couldn’t. Men had this quizzical effect on her. When she was in undergrad she’d worked at a local insurance agency where, from time to time, a rep from one of their carriers would come in and talk to her for too long. He wasn’t even flirting, just indiscriminately throwing words at her. He’d lingered stubbornly at her desk, drawing out the conversation, making himself at home. He was ugly in the way most salesmen were, not physically per say, but in tonality; his words caked over a layer of a falsified curiosity and over-exerted vocal inflections. Once, he’d given her a little flashlight keychain that she whittled onto her keyring, right in front of him. Why? To appease him? She didn’t know.
The student said something else to her but she couldn’t quite make out what it was. She realized, quietly, that she was having a panic attack. She turned and walked quickly away.
+
She laid with her knees folded under her on the couch and smoked out of a bubbler she’d bought for thirty dollars at the smoke shop last fall. On the news: an image of a massive cargo ship run aground. Several bulldozers bailing out large swaths of mud at the ship’s bow. They looked miniature next to it, like toys you might buy at the Dollar General. She remembered a trip she had taken with her mother once to Savannah where one of these giant cargo ships had glided alongside the port trumpeting the Indiana Jones theme song. How old had she been then? Not even ten, probably.
“Where is it going?” she had asked her mother.
“It’s going out to sea,” her mother had said.
“But where?”
“Europe, maybe. Germany. Japan. Antarctica. I don’t know.”
“Why doesn’t it sink?”
“I don’t know, honey.”
“Why don’t you know?”
Her mother got down on a knee and looked at her squarely. “I’m going to tell you something my family was too scared to tell me. It’s a family mistake, see? One that I’m going to correct right now. You have to shut up, Abigail. Do you understand? It’s easy. Just shut up. Shut up. I love you. Now shut up. Please, please, shut up.”
She popped a cigarette in her mouth and waited for ten seconds. Abigail didn’t say anything.
“Atta girl.”
+
The next morning she went to the YMCA and did laps for an hour, showered, and scrolled through literary Twitter. She added a few thoughts to a note on her phone about her thesis. She made a new friend on Bumble. She tried not to think about the student.
Outside of her office window, an armada of cumulonimbus clouds was approaching. She shifted in place, flexing her toes, which made tiny clicking noises. She pinched an Adderall in half, tucked it neatly under her tongue, and typed out an email to her mother.
Dear Mom,
I keep having this image of Dad as a sea-anemone. Only certain things could pass through him. But then, they were safe from other, more predatory creatures. Technically, the sea-anemone is a predatory being itself, but still very beautiful. All sea creatures are beautiful. Doesn’t that sound like him?
Here’s a few lines from some Shakespeare that I’m reading:
“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”
Please talk to me.
Yours,
Abigail.
+
The student’s name was everywhere, essentially; accessible. But she chose against looking for it. It would be hard. She had an irregular, angular consciousness. Locating the name required time.
All day, and her husband hadn’t texted her. She had a chronic vestibular migraine jutting into the top of her skull, right above the forehead. Sometimes she would touch her husband and they would have sex and the migraine would go away. But she was on her period and he was so scared of all the blood. She considered tricking him. She’d done so before and he’d been so, so scared. She texted him, swallowed a thousand milligrams of Ibuprofen, put her head down, and worked nonstop for four hours.
For the last hour, she worried about what she was going to say to the student when she saw him again in class. She drew a vertical line down the center of her notes and started writing exit excuses that sounded clever. She remembered she didn’t pay the parking meter. She had left her cat inside too long. Her husband was waiting on her. All of her exit excuses, she decided, were ugly.
And what was his name? Mike. Drew. Palmer. Martin. Paul. Paul? She wrote several P-names. Preston, Pauly, Peter, Paxton, Patrick. A robin landed on her office windowsill, looked at her sideways, then darted away. She felt a distant pulse of anxiety springing up from the back of her chest. Her fingertips grew sweaty. She wiped her hands off on her shirt and went outside.
The campus was smoldering with people. She stood by the faculty office building and smoked a cigarette and watched the students wander by. She bought Turkish Royals almost exclusively. They functioned as a treat for working long, uninterrupted stretches of time. It was a stubborn emotional attachment that kept her at it. From a memory of a highschool friend who had treated this particular brand of cigarettes sacredly. They would smoke before important tests, parties, even dates. “For luck,” the friend had said.
She had hated that person.
A girl came and sat down next to her. The two talked for twenty minutes about fall and love and she told the girl she was a senior.
“Really?”
“Haha,” she said.
When the girl left Abigail tried to give her a cigarette but she declined. She sat there for five more minutes scratching her legs and staring at the ground. When she finally looked up there he was again, the student, tripping over a loose brick on a path and heading towards her.
“Goddamnit,” he said, laughing. “I cannot walk straight on this campus.” He organized himself quickly and stood there like an idiot about to give a bad speech.
“I want to say that I am so sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable the other day. I get excited about my child and then I talk too much and I don’t know.” He swept the back of his hand across his forehead and looked at her. “Are you okay?”
As she spoke, she realized she was simultaneously speaking and watching herself speak.
“Do you drink coffee at all?” He must’ve sensed what was happening right then and there.
“I do drink coffee. And I’m free right now,” he said eagerly. “For about an hour and a half. I have to run by the house. Why don’t we…can we take one car? Would that be too much?”
She smiled. “It would be easier that way.”
+
The student was scared of her husband and asked her questions about him too often. Does he have a violent history? Will he send me threatening voicemails?
“He lets his dad say the word ‘retarded,’” she said.
“What,” the student replied. “Is wrong with the word ‘retarded’?”
+
When they fucked he would try and put his entire hand in her mouth but couldn’t. She sensed he was frustrated at this. She’d looked up a video on YouTube of how to stretch your jaw muscles more and practiced the mechanics of it in the bathroom mirror. Her jaw felt more limber after a good week, but the stretching exercise never really created much more space.
“Do you need to go to the doctor?” her husband asked her.
“Do you need to shut up?”
No one said anything for a full minute. “Sorry,” she added.
+
The student texted her too much but she liked it. He would message her Shakespeare quotes, and it felt like a mix between saccharine and desperate, but she let it happen.
She started sending more and more emails to her mother.
Dear Mom,
Do you know what Bumble is? It’s like a dating app except you can also look for friends. I “matched” with a girl and we have been texting and hanging out for a little over a month now. She was born in Russia but moved to the US when she was a baby. Her favorite food is Chicken-Cordon-Bleu. Her favorite movie is Poltergeist. She works for the humane society. She has a dog named Heracles. You worked for the humane society. When I was a child I remember a lot of dogs and cats and birds in the house. Did we own them or sponsor them? Is that what it’s called? Sponsoring?
I’m house-sitting/pet-sitting for this friend this weekend. It’ll be nice to have some time away from the house. Her dog is prescribed Xanax because he has anxiety problems. He gets two pills a day. He has to wear a weighted blanket when there are thunderstorms. He is a German Shepherd. Isn’t it crazy? That a dog so aligned with the word “alpha” is so terrified all the time?
Love,
Abigail
+
Dear Mom,
Last night you and dad were in my dream. It was about a Shakespeare play. You know the one. You were Hippolyta and dad was Theseus. I was Titania. But, you know, because it was a dream, I could flit between characters. Sometimes I was Puck. Sometimes I was Oberon. Sometimes I wasn’t anyone at all. Shakespeare was, of course, there, too. He was Bottom.
I wonder if you’re getting these and reading them but just not responding. Maybe send a blank email? So I know.
Love,
Abigail.
+
Three months passed and the affair was still intact. She was going to the YMCA every Saturday now. She swam laps. She looked at the people working out in the weight room. They all had nice, beautiful bodies. She went into the steam room at the back of the women’s locker room and tried to see how long she could stay in there. A man walked in with just a towel and sat down.
“What are you doing?” she said.
The man didn’t respond. Just stared at her. She stood up and he stood up too, which made her feel like she was going to pass out.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought this was the men’s.” And then he walked out.
She stayed standing for a few minutes, swaying. Another woman walked in and asked if she was okay. The woman touched her on the shoulder.
“Hey,” she said from somewhere far away. “Can you hear me?”
She tried to slap the woman’s hand away but missed. Then she stumbled out of the steam room, where the cold of the air and the cold steel of the lockers and cold breath of the world seemed to feed on her. She could feel it all eating away at her like tiny little vultures.
+
She took a cold shower when she got home. The student texted her. He’d sent a picture of his son with one of those crocheted frog hats that velcroed under the chin. She texted him back the word, “Cute.” Then she took a hot shower.
She liked his son. He wasn’t a violin prodigy but he was very naturally talented. The first time she came over, they watched a show on Cartoon Network called “Over the Garden Wall,” and he’d half sat in her lap. He cooed softly when he was happy and she thought, privately, that he might have autism. The fifth or sixth time she’d come over, the boy had his head in her lap and his feet stuck in his father’s face, his arms and legs twisted mechanically in every direction, but he seemed comfortable. This was really the first time she had ever watched a show on Cartoon Network and, at the end, she cried. It had been, after all, a love story.
+
It turned out that her friend from Bumble really just needed a weekend house sitter. This was fine by her. She liked pretending to live alone. She liked the German Shepherd. She liked drinking all the wine. She often sat in the living room beside the dog, writing her thesis and listening to the TV.
It was close to the end of the semester now and a second cargo ship had run aground. She felt unironically sad about all those consumers cut off from whatever goods they needed or wanted, things they held that pacified and activated their brains. She tried to talk about this with the student but he said he “didn’t like to talk about politics.” She texted him a picture of the dog. The student didn’t text her back for a while and then the dog fell asleep so she called her husband and told him all about the house. She considered telling him she hated him, but she wasn’t sure if that was true. Sometimes she thought about what she would say at his funeral if he died. She would say something very touching but honest and everyone would like her. Maybe her mother would be there.
“I love you,” her husband said.
She pretended she didn’t hear him.
“What if we went up to the college? And surprised my mom.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.
When they hung up she masturbated in the guest room, pictured nothing at all. After, she sent a bunch of emails and texts to her friend about how much she loved the German Shepherd. She suggested that the dog could stay with her during the week. Then she moved back to the couch where she tried to write poetry for the first time in several years. She was very drunk. She wrote a page of prose and realized it was all garbage. She went into the cabinet and took one of the dog’s Xanax. She looked at the poem she had written and thought about her thesis. She balled up the paper and shoved it into her mouth and sat breathing loudly through her nose.
+
Dear Mom,
In Greek mythology, Heracles was less heroic than you may remember. I won’t go into the details, but…did his acts of heroism make up for the more terrible things he did? I find it funny that, although Hera wasn’t his real mother, that the first part of his name is Hera. She hated him. She hated a lot of people. That was Zeus’s fault, no?
If I was Shakespeare, I would’ve written about Heracles and irony and metaphysical states.
—-
Abigail
+
She felt like the student was trying to show her something about himself when they had sex. That he was dependable or could defend her in an emergency. He suggested they have sex in the mirror. She suggested putting a ginger root as far into his asshole as it would go, and he tried to change the subject.
“I’m thinking,” she said to him then. “About telling my husband.”
“Telling him what?”
“I’m sorry I suggested the ginger root thing,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s okay. I was caught off guard.”
“Were you scared?”
What?” he said.
“It wouldn’t hurt,” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”
+
He had stopped texting her for good a few days later. The next time she housesat for her friend, she took more of the dog’s Xanax. Outside, the sky was gun-gray. It made no sense to her that behind that dark curtain of clouds, there was nothing but space. She was, she felt, connected to every single person who was also looking up at this sky. A string of lightning plucked at the Earth some distance away. She went back inside. The dog was shaking on the couch. She went to give it a Xanax but there were no more.
She put on some soothing music and put the dog in its thunder blanket. Then she went to the kitchen to heat up water. The coils under the surface of the stove glowed a phosphorescent red. She thought about putting her hand on it but didn’t. She sat with the dog on the couch and brushed it and waited for the thunder to arrive. The dog began to whimper.
“I’m sorry,” she said, tearfully. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
+
The student pretended like he was just a student now. And she pretended that she wasn’t making everything up. She didn’t say anything to him. Nor did she text him. When the semester ended she tried to forget about him all together. She continued going to the YMCA every Saturday. She fucked her husband routinely. She slept in her office. Time flexed in the air. The moon looked in through the window. Everything turned into a mirror. She shut tight her eyes.
+
It took her another year to finish her thesis. And then another to revise it. On the morning it was due, she drank so much coffee that she could feel the veins in her arms dilate. She smoked a single cigarette; took a single Adderall. For the rest of the day it felt as if her insides were expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting. It was during this same period of time that she finally got an email back from her mother. It read: “I think you have the wrong address.”
+
After grad school she began teaching at a tiny private school placed in the middle of a field in North Carolina. Behind the gymnasium was a section of woods that broke out into a back road where gaudy strings of houses laid shivering in the winter. Someone had carved out a cross-country course half the length of a 5k that bent through these woods. She ran it every morning, before the first rays of light hit the tops of the tree line. She used running to ground her during her divorce. She and her husband had divorced slowly, quietly with a strange inability to reflect with any sense of actual clarity or understanding.
It was as if nothing was happening at all.
+
Years later, her therapist had told her it could be productive to comb back through the emails she had been sending to her “mother.” Especially around the time the student she had been sleeping with stopped communicating with her. But when she looked back all she could find were emails to her friend about the dog.
+++
Jesse Motte lives in Columbia, South Carolina with his wife, two dogs, and cat. This is his first fiction publication.