Not Happening

When he wakes up Dorie’s skinny legs are entangled with his. He knows he can’t move without waking her, and he wants to be out of bed, standing, when he talks. What he will say, meaning how he will say it, is another matter.

He let her in, after all. He’d opened the door to find her there in her sloppy Army jacket and ripped jeans with a small black roller bag, standing in the light rain with no hat or umbrella, just wet and wan looking, like a homeless greyhound.

“Ned,” she said, “Dr. Rennecker.”

He held the door, felt a small gut punch, wondered how she’d found him here in this rental, this bare first-floor one bedroom in a sea of boxy gray apartment buildings.

“Okay,” he said, “come in out of the rain, at least.”

In the living room, standing beside the chair and the floor lamp, the only furniture he’d found in the closest Goodwill, she says, “Philip kicked me out. My boyfriend.”

Now the cold November morning light is filling the room, showing the three cardboard boxes along the wall opposite the bed, two with his clothes and one that had an extra sheet for the rented bed. Rented! Who knew? What is he doing here, anyway, feeling as hollow as this nearly empty place, with this young woman’s head pressed into his neck, this woman he has seen only in his office a couple of times and twice a week in a seminar room, where she always sits with her chin on her knees, her long shiny hair draped around her shoulders, a notebook open but empty, staring at him as the others tap madly on their laptops?

He needs to move. A strand of her hair is pasted to his mouth. He is stuck, guessing the time by the light, maybe seven-thirty, unable to reach for his phone on the floor without disturbing her, and then what? She’s just a kid, she could sleep till noon.

Ned knows his body, knows he has maybe five minutes before he will need to move. He lies there thinking through the conversation. Look, Dorie, you know you can’t stay here, right? He has no idea what’s going to happen with Robin. Well, maybe he does, the way she was standing there, stony, when he got home one week ago, late for the third night in a row. “This is not happening, Ned.” Not a surprise. They have never wanted that kind of marriage. He had not tried to explain that he’d been sitting in his shabby office in the humanities annex, his desk lamp the only light left in the building, fighting with himself or at least trying to erase those images. He did not tell her that he could hardly bear being in their house together when he felt—when he couldn’t be himself with her. When he hadn’t been himself for a couple months, since early in the semester. Okay, admit it, since Dorie’s face would appear randomly on the page in front of him.

“I know I know I know,” he said, dropping his bulging bag in the front hallway. He had not removed one book or paper that day. “I know.”

“So tomorrow,” she said. “You find a place and leave. Tomorrow.”

But he had done nothing. Well, right. Nothing. Or nothing yet. He hoped.

If this were a movie he would take her by the shoulders, he would say This is temporary, a glitch of heart and mind, stay with me, wait it out with me, I’ll be back. But if he couldn’t trust himself, he couldn’t hope for Robin to, either. Although knowing her, she just might.

So he had said nothing. How could he tell her anything when it had nothing to do with her? I don’t want to mess this up, he thought. It didn’t feel right or fair somehow to say it out loud. He would have to fix it himself. He would have to make it go away.

Dorie moves a leg, turns her face toward the light. He rolls toward the edge, reaches for his phone. “Don’t go,” she mumbles, “don’t leave me.” He can see that she’s trying to open her eyes. He grabs his shirt from the floor.

“I’m up, Dorie. I’m going to make coffee.” He’d had the sense to grab the plastic pour-over thing and a couple of mugs when he was throwing stuff in a grocery bag, had stopped at Starbucks for ground Italian even before getting a few groceries.

Now she’s sitting up, holding the sheet against her chest. “Wait, no!”

He stops in the doorway. “This is not happening, Dorie.” What, had he learned that line from Robin? Or after being married five years did they just think in the same language?

“But you said!” She’s wailing, actually wailing, sounding like a child. “You said my hair smelled good.”

She’s still sitting in bed leaning against the wall when he comes back with the coffee. “Look, Dorie, how did you think of coming here? How did you even find me? How could you think it was a good idea?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “What was I going to do? Philip kicked me out, he’s a fucking loser. I don’t know, you always seemed nice.”

He sits on the edge of the bed not touching her.

“That lady in the office told me. She’s cool, I told her I was desperate to turn in a paper.”

He almost smiles. Dorie is one of a very few students who don’t submit papers online. “Did I give you some kind of signal?” He really wants to know. Maybe he wants to know, or maybe he does know.

“You know the way you looked at me. In class. And in your office, the way you just looked up at me and pointed toward that chair. I don’t know, it just told me something. Like it would be okay.” She waits a minute. “You were nice. And you always gave me A’s.”

Well. Her insights were sound, well-reasoned. Not a bad writer, either. He stares into his coffee. He doesn’t want to think about it. He never wanted her to fill the back of his mind, to settle into some small part of his gut.

“And just look.” She waves her hand across the bed. “You let me in, right? You let me sleep with you. And you did say my hair smelled good.”

It’s true, he let her in. And they slept in the same bed. He wanted to, who wouldn’t? It was not an easy night. He stands up, tucking his shirt in, closing the bedroom door behind him.

He leans against the part of the kitchen counter that juts out. He guesses he’ll just see what happens. It could be awkward, but hey, he thinks, you let this happen. The hollow space is now filling with misery. But maybe that’s better, he tells himself. It’s something, at least.

Robin was right, of course, the way she put her hand over his that night a couple weeks ago and said, “Ned, Neddie, you aren’t here. Are you.” It wasn’t a question.

He couldn’t look at her, just stared down at his plate. He should be able to figure this out. He loves her, it’s not that. And yes, he does want to be married. Doesn’t he? He thinks of his brother Jimmy, forty-five years old now, twice divorced and alone, with two kids he hardly ever sees. Is that his future? Is it in his blood? Well, it can’t be. He can’t let it be.

“Are you worried? Is it the tenure thing? Is it the dark night?” She was jiggling his hand back and forth. Talk to me, she was saying.

“Sure, I guess.” He’s not all that worried about the tenure review. His book is ready to go, The Loss of Longing (Notes on 21^st Century American Fiction.) He hates the subtitle, but at least put his foot down on the colon. “Maybe it’s everything,” he says. And nothing?

He hears the bedroom door open, and Dorie sidles in wearing the usual ratty gray sweater. “So I guess it’s weird, huh?” she says.

He looks up, holds the mug against his chest. “Does it have to be?” That’s a real question. It wakes him up. He feels a different kind of jolt, not excitement but a little bit of fear. He’s been stressing out about tenure, and now this? How to ruin your life.

She comes closer and stares at him. “Can I have more coffee?”

He empties his mug into the sink, fills it with water, and puts it in the microwave. “Sorry I don’t have the right stuff here,” he says. He taps coffee into the filter and puts the plastic thing on Dorie’s mug. When he hears the ding, he pours hot water from his mug over the coffee. “I hope you like it black,” he says. “No cream.”

“Okay,” she says, and puts her hands around the mug. “It’s cool. I mean I’m cool if you are. It’s sort of embarrassing.”

If she means it. He can feel some lightening. She still looks like a waif, and he almost wants to give her a little hug. He holds out his hand. “Shake on it?”

Dorie shrugs. “Sure.” She takes his hand like a business woman, formal. “Cool.” She puts her untouched coffee on the counter. “Later,” she says. “Gotta go.”

He’s still leaning on the counter when he hears the front door close behind her. He lifts his bulging courier bag onto the counter but doesn’t open it. He can’t think about the day, his classes. Freshman Comp, Woolf and Joyce, but at least the poetry seminar doesn’t meet. He’ll wing it.

He goes into the bleak bedroom, opens the small closet to get one of three shirts, the least wrinkled Oxford, and glances around to see that Dorie’s roller bag is gone. More than the sound of the door closing, this gives him a wave of relief. He perches on the side of the bed, waiting for the black spots and white background of a wave of panic to subside. How close had he come, and for what? He can see his real life spinning, sucked down a dark drain. Robin, he thinks. God, has he blown it? Maybe.

Three days later Ned leans back in his office chair and drums a pen against his desk, covered with books and papers. He’s already sick of sitting in the damn Goodwill chair with his laptop on his knees trying to get anything done, and he is going to stay here until he has read every paper, the ones piled in front of him and the ones online. He checks his phone. Nothing. It would be cocktail hour at home, standing with Robin in the kitchen with a glass of wine or maybe a Manhattan while they made dinner together.

It’s six-thirty when he finishes the last paper and snaps his laptop shut. He’s hungry, but he makes himself sit there. You can’t just do nothing, this can’t go on, he lectures himself. Just face it, you whining baby. He lets the picture of Dorie and her direct stare, that open and hungry look on her pale face, appear like a photo in his mind. He’s been holding it off. What an idiot. Rationally he gets it, knows it happens. Hell, it has happened to guys he knows. That young and vulnerable look, the eyes that say “Here I am.” He has just read her paper, her Ada Limon paper, and it didn’t even stand out, it was just a decent solid essay.

Was that all it took, that admission to himself? That Dorie was, let’s face it, becoming too real? A possibility? And now that he’s seen her up close, too close—God, it was close. He feels something slide through him.

There’s noise in the hall, doors closing, voices. People are leaving. It’s been dark for hours. Then a quick knock on his own door, which is slightly ajar, and Dorie appears. Not an apparition, but the girl in the gray sweater that must have belonged to her father. Or grandfather.

“Hey,” she says. She puts her backpack on the floor and sits in the chair.

“Hello, Dorie.” So formal. When has he ever used that word?

“So I’m back with Philip,” she blurts.

He waits, leans forward with his chin on his fists.

“Yeah, I know. It turns out he was right, I was the asshole.” She looks straight at him with a twisted little smile. “Just saying.”

“Oh.” He leans back.

“Yeah.” She waves her hand. “Details are beside the point.”

Ned just sits there. Maybe he frowns a little, but maybe that’s because he wants to smile at her. He might even want to pat her on the head. “Okay,” he says.

“Have you read my paper?”

He nods. “Quite nice,” he says. “You’ll get it back tomorrow.”

“Okay then.” She stands up and hoists her backpack to her shoulder. “Go home, Dr. Rennecker.” She disappears, leaving his door half open.

He is tired. Hungry and somehow exhausted, though he’s gotten no exercise whatsoever. He’ll stop for a burger at the pub on the corner of his stupid apartment complex.

Much later, when he thinks he might be able to fall asleep, he is ready to stop driving around. But finds himself turning onto their street, and when he pulls up in front of their house, he sees that Robin has turned on every light. Even the dormer window in his study is glowing. He turns off the engine. Maybe he will go to the door. Maybe he will ring the doorbell. He will say, “Robin?”

© Susan Groff Johnston

Susan Groff Johnston grew up in Ohio, but now lives north of Baltimore. She has a degree from Miami University and has done graduate work at the University of Louisville. Her poems have appeared in Christianity and Literature and The Christian Century. Her fiction has appeared in a number of small literary magazines.

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