Connie Willis - Time Out

“Yes.”

Brendan James’s mother was married and had two children, Carolyn thought, and what on earth is the matter with you? Brendan James’s mother is a complete flake and always has been, and you love your husband, you love Liz and Wendy, and just because they are a little preoccupied with gymnastics and volleyball and college right now is no reason to act like a college girl with a crush. “I wonder who they’re going to have replace him? Dr. Young?”

“I don’t know. Honestly, you don’t seem very upset that he left,” Sherri said. “Well, maybe you don’t care that the last single man around just departed for another continent, but I do.”

Another continent, Carolyn thought. The university wasn’t far enough. Even Duke University wasn’t far enough. He had to go all the way to Tibet to get away from me.

“There’s always Mr. Paprocki,” Carolyn said, and went down to the music room.

“Dr. Simons was called away suddenly,” Dr. Young told her. He was showing Dr. Lejeune how to use the video camera. “Some kind of emergency,” he said.

Some kind of emergency. “This is an emergency,” Andrew had said, and he hadn’t known the half of it. She had known exactly where he was, standing there in the pitch darkness. She hadn’t been able to see her own hand in front of her face, she hadn’t been able to find the spectrum analyzer even when she crashed into it, but she had known exactly where he was. All she would have had to do was put her hand on the back of his neck and pull him down to her.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Sherri said, holding out a note to Carolyn. “I’ve got bad news. The senior high just called. Liz has the chicken pox.”

Andrew took the Greyhound bus back to the university. Someone had left a McCall’s on the seat beside him. The cover had a picture of Elizabeth Taylor and the headline, “Are You Ready for an Affair? Our Test Can Help You Tell.”

He took the test, answering the questions the way he thought Carolyn would. He remembered her saying her husband was a coach, so he answered yes to “I am lonely a lot of the time.” He also answered yes to the question that said, “I sometimes fantasize about someone I know,” even though he was sure that was wishful thinking.

Under the test it said, “Give yourself one point for every yes. 0-5: You’re not ready. 6-10: Getting there. 11-15: Ready or not, here it comes. 16 and up: DANGER!”

Carolyn got a four.

He stared out the window a while and then took the test himself, rewording the questions so they would apply to him. To eliminate sexual bias, he answered no to every other PMS question and no to the one that said, “I find myself thinking a lot about an old flame.” Stephanie Forrester was not who he thought about while he was staring out the window, and he didn’t see how Carolyn Hendricks could qualify as an old flame when all he had ever done was know where she was in the dark.

He scored a twenty-two. He went back and marked all the PMS questions no. He still got a seventeen.

Dr. Young didn’t seem any more upset about losing Carolyn than he had about losing Andrew. In fact, as he recited number strings to Troy Yoder, he looked positively cheerful. As soon as he was finished, Dr. Lejeune offered to get the next first grader and went up to the office. “Have you found those tests yet?” she asked Sherri.

“No,” Sherri said disgustedly. “I am knee-deep in chicken pox, and he decides the milk money accounts should be double entry. The second I get a chance, I promise I’ll look for them.”

“It’s okay,” Dr. Lejeune said.

“If you’re in a hurry, you might ask Heidi Dreismeier’s mother,” Sherri said. “She probably sneaked copies of the tests home to try on Heidi.”

“Heidi Dreismeier’s mother?” Dr. Lejeune asked. “How many people exactly did Dr. Young test?”

“Well, he started out by screening the staff and volunteers and all the homeroom mothers, but that was just an interview kind of thing. Then he narrowed it down to five or so and gave them the whole battery.”

“Who were those five?”

“Well, Carolyn Hendricks, of course, and Heidi’s mother, and Francine Williams …”

Shannon’s mother?” Dr. Lejeune asked.

Yes, and who else?” She thought a minute. “Oh. Brendan James’s mother. It’s a good thing she didn’t come in first, isn’t it? And Maribeth Greenberg. She taught fourth grade here last year.”

“How old was she?” Dr. Lejeune asked.

“Forty,” Sherri said promptly. “We had a birthday party for her right before she quit.”

“She didn’t happen to run off with anybody, did she?”

“Maribeth?” Sherri said. “Are you kidding? She left to become a nun.”

Liz didn’t look too bad when Carolyn picked her up at the high school, but by the next morning she was covered. “What am I going to do?” she wailed. “My senior picture appointment is next week.”

“I’ll call and change it,” Carolyn said, but the phone rang before she could find the number.

“More bad news,” Sherri said.

“Wendy?” Carolyn said, thinking, please let them get it at the same time.

“No. Monica and Ricky Morales. I can’t get in touch with their mother. She’s in real estate. And your name was on the emergency card.”

“I’ll be right there,” Carolyn said. She checked on Liz, who was sleeping on the living-room couch, and drove to the elementary. On the way over she stopped at the grocery store and stocked up on 7-Up, Popsicles, and calamine lotion. She also bought some Dr. Pepper, which she had decided was the missing ingredient in Allison’s suicides.

When she got to school, Monica and Ricky were sitting in the office looking flushed and bright-eyed. “We’ve had five cases since this morning,” Sherri told her. “Five cases! And Heidi Dreismeier threw up, but I think it’s just her nervous stomach.” She helped Monica into her jacket. “I’ll keep trying their mother. The office said she was showing apartments to some bachelor.”

Carolyn took Monica and Ricky out to the car. Ricky promptly lay down on the backseat and wouldn’t budge. Carolyn had to put the groceries in the trunk so Monica could sit up front beside her. She fastened Monica into the seat belt and started the car.

“Wait, wait!” Sherri yelled, pounding on the window on Monica’s side. Carolyn leaned across and opened the window. “You’ve got another one,” she said breathlessly. “It wasn’t nervous stomach. Heidi’s chest is covered with them. Oh, and I forgot to tell you. Don called. He tried to get you at home. He’s going to be late. Two of his girls have got it, and he and Linda have to work up a beam routine with one of the freshmen.”

Carolyn shut off the car. “Why do I have to take Heidi?” she said. “Her mother doesn’t work.”

“She’s at a three-day seminar on Spending More Time with Your Child.”

Andrew went straight to Dr. Gillis’s office as soon as he got back to the university to tell him he’d resigned. “Yes, yes, Max called and told me all about it,” Dr. Gillis said. “It’s too bad, but if they need you in Tibet, well, then, I guess our project will just have to wait. Now what can we do to expedite your getting back to Tibet?” He called Duke University and the U.S. envoy to China, made arrangements for Bev Frantz to give him a cholera booster, and found a place he could stay on campus until he left.

That last was a bad idea. The dorm room reminded him of the one he had had his junior year at Stanford when he had been in love with Stephanie Forrester. He should have met Carolyn Hendricks his junior year instead of Stephanie. She wouldn’t have been Carolyn Hendricks then. She wouldn’t have been married and had two kids, and he could have fallen in love with her instead of the kind of girl who would ask her old boyfriends to usher at her wedding. The head usher had been an old boyfriend, too. He had told Andrew that, after a half-dozen clockstoppers or so, and they had both decided they needed a few more. He didn’t know how many, but it must have been enough, because the next morning he hadn’t been able to remember a thing, and he was completely over Stephanie.