While he was afraid his mother’s condition might further deteriorate, his parents had felt it was more important to get him out of the house. And so he was cast out, armed with promises of regular phone calls and the understanding was that were anything, God forbid, to happen, he would be notified immediately, and could fly home. From the mountain of catalogs, Ethan had picked Berkley, the school with the enormous arts wing, the place where the director of admissions had assured him that he would fit in. He remembered a conversation he had had with his mother about it, as he readied himself to file his late application the previous spring. He would be lonely, he would miss his parents, he would feel the perpetual heavy stone of despair in his stomach.
“There is no logical way you can convince yourself that this will be easy,” his mother had said. “Sometimes you just have to do things without thinking about them.”
While studying several evenings later, Ethan received a phone call at the dorm. There was always the possibility of news about his mother’s health, a prospect that sent a quiver to Ethan’s gut as he padded down the hall’s worn carpet in his moccasin slippers.
“Ethan? It’s Hannah, from the other day at the tearoom.” He faltered for a moment. Hannah, the teacher? He wondered why she was calling him, how she had gotten his number. She must have looked it up in the school directory. Being called like this made him feel naked, exposed. He leaned back against the hardness of the wall, felt the greasiness of the phone’s receiver in his palm.
She continued speaking. “I’m making my blueberry cobbler again, the one you liked. I thought maybe you’d like to come by my place tomorrow and have some.”
“Sure, that would be great,” he said, though he wasn’t certain it would be anything resembling great. He thought of a way out of this awkward invitation, of the prospect of visiting this woman alone at her house. “I could bring Todd.”
There was a pause on the line. His eyes ran along the hallway, quiet at this hour. The corridor master’s doorway was half-open, but no sound came from his study.
“I have a better idea,” she finally said. “Why don’t you come alone?”
He started out for Hannah’s place around six the next evening, just as his classmates were finishing sports and heading for the dining hall. He had followed her directions past the school cemetery and across the golf course. The course surrounded the school property, and was a buffer of green between the main campus and the lake. Ethan had never walked across it before; the freshly cut grass was spongy beneath his sneakers.
After reaching its end, he walked down a short wooded path toward Hannah’s house, white clapboard trimmed with green and black. In front of the house was a little garden; a set of well-worn wicker furniture sat on the porch. Ethan wondered what Hannah had done to be assigned such a nice place. Most of the younger Berkley faculty—and many of the older ones as well—lived in small apartments, not homes that could comfortably house a married couple, not to mention a child or two.
Ethan stepped up to Hannah’s front porch, carefully wiping his feet on the doormat as he knocked several times. She opened the door, a bright bundle of energy and light. He examined her outfit; she was wearing stylish jeans and a white minidress top, making her look like she could be in her late twenties. It was something she could never wear to class, an ensemble that surely wouldn’t meet the scrutiny of the head of the English department.
“Hurray! You came!” she said, pulling him inside and shutting the door. “Come in, come in!”
Ethan looked around the hardwood-floored room as he took his coat off and let Hannah hang it on a hall stand. To the left was a kitchen area with a stove that gave off the aroma of spices and sweet things baking. Toward the back, in front of an entire wall of bookshelves (painted white, but meticulously trimmed in birch bark), was a rough-hewn oak dining table that seated four, a potted cluster of ivy in the middle. On the right was the living room area, outfitted with two giant club chairs, a sofa upholstered in a navy and cream toile, and a leather trunk that served as a coffee table, all arranged around a fireplace. Two doors on either side of the wall of bookcases led to other rooms. Through a doorway in the middle was a staircase to the second floor, presumably leading to Hannah’s bedroom.
“This is it,” she said. “Where all the madness happens. Have you eaten dinner yet?”
Ethan shook his head.
“You must be starving! Do you want me to make you something? Before the cobbler, that is.”
Ethan didn’t want to impose. “What did you have in mind?”
“How about a croque monsieur and a bowl of soup?”
Ethan cocked his head at her, confused.
“It’s a ham sandwich, with melted cheese. You’ll like it.” She paused, smiling at him. “What would you like to drink? I just brewed some iced tea.”
Ethan shrugged. “Sure.”
Hannah brought him a glass of iced tea and fixed him a bowl of vegetable soup from a pot that had been simmering on the stove. She motioned for him to sit on a stool at the island in the center of the kitchen.
“So you like to cook,” Ethan said, after taking a sip of iced tea. Stupid, stupid, he thought.
“It takes my mind off the writing. Off grading papers.” She motioned to several stacks of student essays that were sitting on the table near the wall.
“I hope I’m not keeping you from your work.”
“Not at all,” she said, looking up from the ingredients for his sandwich. “I enjoy the company.”
Ethan’s eyes dropped down to her hands as she created the meal for him, slices of ham and Gruyère cheese on top of two pieces of bread, a dab of Dijon mustard, copious amounts of butter. She worked feverishly, her hands shaking slightly, as if this were the last meal she would ever serve.
To avoid staring, Ethan examined the elaborate iron rack that hung over the island and displayed an assortment of pots, pans, and baskets. He smiled as he realized that woven into the iron were actual tree branches and brambles, making it look like a forest was growing in her kitchen.
Once she was done assembling the sandwich, Hannah methodically placed it on a small metal tray, which she slid into a toaster oven. “Are your mother and father coming for Parents Weekend?” she asked, as she wiped her hands on a dish towel.
The yearly event was a week away. Ethan’s father had been scheduled to give a paper at an engineering conference in Chicago; when Ethan told him that it would conflict with Berkley’s annual weekend for parents to visit, his father offered to cancel, but Ethan refused to let him. His mother would have come, but she was on deadline with an essay for an academic journal, and Ethan didn’t want to get in the way of her work. He had played down the importance of Parents Weekend to them, though he knew that nearly everyone else’s parents would be there.
“No,” he said, taking a spoonful of soup. “My father has to go to a conference.”
Hannah started washing her hands. “What about your mother?”
“She can’t make it,” Ethan said quickly.
“Who are you going to show around the school?” she asked.
Ethan shrugged again. “No