11
HARRIET
I must have looked like a mess as I ran home in the cold night.
It was a bad date. A guy who'd been an asshole. I'd had those dates before. Every woman did, and had to learn to shield herself from them. To not let them poison her soul.
But this felt different.
Tears streamed down my face as I reached my apartment and closed the door, locking the deadbolt and chain for some subconscious feeling of protection. I leaned against the door and caught my breath, alone in the darkness.
And then, safe in the cocoon of my home, I let myself cry.
Not just the stray tears from the immediate afterwards, but a deeper cry. The kind that shakes your entire body and threatens to knock you to your knees. I cried for getting my hopes up about this boy, who'd turned out to be nothing like what I expected. I cried for the embarrassment of the restaurant, wondering how many people saw me run off like a child. I cried for allowing myself to have a one-night stand in the first place, which was completely out of character for an introvert like me.
And then I was crying for my thesis. My precious, wonderful thesis which had been like a child in my womb, ready to be nurtured and raised and then birthed to the world. It was only a thesis topic, just the glimmer of an idea that I hadn't even begun any work on, but loss felt monumental to me.
I cried, and sniveled, and gasped, and wiped snot away from my disgusting nose.
Eventually I reached that point where I couldn't weep anymore. I'd gotten it all out and then some; the tank was empty, I'd been running on fumes, and now there was nothing left. Just the hollow ache in my chest and the smeared mascara on my face.
I filled the remaining emptiness with reheated pasta leftovers and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, while rewatching Planet Earth on Netflix.
Only then did I feel a little bit more like myself. Still aching with the pain of regret, but normal enough to start processing things.
And then I got angry.
Fuck this guy! It was one thing to have a one-night stand with a girl, but it could have ended that morning in his apartment. I might have never seen him again if he hadn't texted me when he was at the airport. I re-read those text messages, and they only made me angrier. Why had he led me along if he didn't really want to see me again?
If he'd been blunt with me, I wouldn't have spent all week daydreaming about his return. I would have been over him by now. And then I would have been able to turn my attention and energy toward what really mattered in my life.
I spent an hour comprising a long text message, pacing back and forth in my apartment while I struggled to find the words. I wrote, and deleted, and edited, and re-wrote, until finally I had a manifesto to my frustration ready to send, a masterpiece of feminine anger. While deliberating about whether or not to send it, I changed Roland's name in my contact list to something mean. Then I put down my phone, went to take a long hot bath to relax, and returned to it with fresh eyes.
Deciding that it was still perfect, I hit send.
It flew away at the speed of light. I fantasized about Roland's response when he received it; in his apartment, or at the bar, or with some other slut who didn't know what he really was. I imagined it dealing a physical blow to his psyche, an emotional punch to his asshole brain.
And then I paced my apartment while I waited for the response.
It took an hour before I got the "Message Delivered" notification underneath the text that proved he'd read it. Immediately the three dots appeared to indicate that he was typing a response. I sat down on the couch and stared at the screen, transfixed by the pixels, waiting to see what he had to say for himself.
ASSHOLE ROLAND: I'm sorry
I blinked. That was it? That was all he had to say? I poured all of my anger into a beautiful treatise, and he responded with eight friggin characters?
It should have been the conclusion I needed. Confirmation that he was nothing more than a cocky jerk, too self-involved to even tell a girl he wasn't interested. But instead it only made me mad.
Because life was never simple. Of course it would take time for my pain to fade.
I just wished it didn't have to take so long.
*
"Fuck him."
Jon had been nice enough to offer to escort me to my meeting with my Department Head, and I eagerly took him up on it. The MIT campus was dead on a Sunday morning, and it felt good not to be alone. If I were by myself, this probably would have felt like walking to the electric chair. And dressed the way I was, with black slacks and a blouse underneath my coat, I felt like I was going to a funeral.
"No," I said with a halfhearted smile, "the idea is to not do that."
"Girl, you know what I mean." He held my phone ahead of him as he re-read my text message, and Roland's reply. "There's nothing wrong with a random hookup. But flirting with you by text message, and agreeing to meet you for drinks? That boy led you on."
"Yep."
He held the phone back to me, pinching it between two fingers like a disgusting tissue. "You're lucky I wasn't there. I'd have called him and given that boy a piece of my mind."
"I bet you would have."
"I don't care how fine he is. Nobody's pretty enough to act like that."
I smiled to myself. Having Jon with me definitely improved my mood. At least for now.
"And honey," he turned to me while we walked, "I'm so sorry."
"For what?"
"We shouldn't have taken you there. That place was not your scene. None of this would have happened..."
"Oh come on," I protested. "I'm a grown woman. I can take care of myself. One mistake isn't the end of the world." I sighed. "Unlike my thesis topic, which is the end of my world.."
I still didn't have a backup topic prepared, and I was terrified the Department Head would ask for one on the spot. I still wasn't sure what I would do in the meeting. Maybe get on my knees and beg to keep my thesis topic.
"Don't think about it," Jon said, but then snorted. "Okay. That was really stupid advice."
"Yeah, it was."
"I still don't understand why she would want you to change your thesis. I mean, I'm just a lowly computer engineer, but bee hives and elephants seem like a great combination."
I laughed at his surface understanding of my topic. "Yeah, I don't know either."
"You know what?" he said, a sparkle of cattiness in his eyes. "I bet the topic is so great she wants to steal it for herself. Selfish hussy..."
That was so unlikely it might as well have been impossible, but I said, "Yeah, maybe so."
"You ought to defend yourself in there. Stride right into her office like Beyonce and demand that you keep your thesis. You're Harriet Reckmeyer, damnit, the smartest animal conservationist I know!"
"I bet I'm the only one you know."
"That's beside the point! She can't treat you like this. It's probably illegal. You should sue her. Destruction of character! Theft of intellectual property!"
But as much as I enjoyed hearing Jon's enthusiastic defense of me, the Department Head obviously could treat me like that. It was the entire purpose of submitting thesis topics for approval before doing the work.
And it was time to face that harsh reality.
We reached the Earth Sciences building, with its wide facade of marble columns and the round dome on top. We trudged up the stone stairs and into the lobby, our footsteps echoing on the tile in such an enormous room, with the dome at least a hundred feet above.
I knew the way to the Department Head's office, not because I'd ever been there before but because I'd looked up the building map online and memorized it prior to this meeting. It gave me a tiny feeling of preparedness. One of the few things I could control about what was going to happen.
We reached the door with Dr. Allen on the nameplate. Jon turned me around, looked me up and down, and then embraced me.
"I'll be right out here waiting," he said, then sat on a bench in the hall.
The door led into a secretary's office which was empty, and then curved to the left into the larger office. I went to that doorway and stuck my head in. One woman sat hunched over her huge desk, focused on something she was reading.
Dr. Allen was a middle-aged woman with gaunt features, a thin face with popping cheekbones and her grey hair pulled back in a utilitarian bun. She had sharp eyes behind a strong nose, and she reminded me of Jane Goodall, although dressed more formally in a pants suit.
I stood in the doorway for several seconds, then knocked gently. "Mrs. Allen?"
"You're early," she said without looking up. She waved me forward. "Go ahead and take a seat, and I'll be with you in a moment."
I entered the office on meek feet, overwhelmed by the dark wood bookshelves flanking her desk. I sat down in the chair across the desk and put my hands in my lap.
She still never looked up at me. Her entire focus was on whatever she was reading.
The tension grew as I waited. Even though she paid me no mind, the uncomfortableness of the situation paralyzed me. Of course I was 15 minutes early; I should have waited outside until the exact time. I hadn't been thinking. I'd just barged on in here. What were you thinking, Harriet?
It was stupid, I knew deep down. Dr. Allen probably didn't care that I was early, and didn't think about it beyond the single sentence she'd said to me. But I was a worrier, an over-analyzer, and so I sat there and spent the next five minutes thinking about all the things I should have done.
Finally, she picked up her stack of papers and stapled them together, dropping them onto another pile with a sigh. Her hawkish eyes swung toward me.
"Mrs... Reckmeyer?" she asked, squinting as she dredged her memory.
"That's right. Harriet Reckmeyer." I rose enough to lean forward and shake her hand.
"Right, right," she said, shifting from reading-mode to social-mode like a pants-suited robot. "How are you doing today?"
"I'm fine." I didn't have the energy for small talk.
"Sorry for bringing you in on a Sunday," she said. "I only got back into town last night, and I told my secretary to schedule something ASAP." A wry smile crossed her face. "I didn't think she'd take that so literally."
I grabbed onto the line of thought like a drowning woman reaching for a life preserver. "We can meet tomorrow if that's better for you..."
But Dr. Allen quickly shook her head. "No, no, now's perfect. I wanted to talk about your thesis."
Here it was. The moment I'd been dreading all week, building up in my head like my academic apocalypse. Rip the band-aid off quickly, I told her with my pained smile. Get it over with.
"Yes?"
"Utilizing bee hive cultivation for elephant migratory containment is... creative," she said. I could practically feel the disapproval in her voice. Any confidence I'd managed to muster up that morning fell away like a runaway elevator.
"I'm sorry," I said in a rush. "I know it's not what you expected. I've been trying to think of a replacement all week, but nothing has come to mind, and I really don't even know where to begin..."
Dr. Allen gave me a strange look. "Replacement topic?"
"Yes..."
She shook her head. "I must admit, I was skeptical as to the efficacy of this topic when I first read of it. Yet I took it to one of my acquaintances at Harvard, do you know Dr. Bernard Cardiff? Well, I showed Bernard and he was absolutely enthralled with it. Loved the idea. Wished he'd thought of it himself. He's pushing 70, and I don't think I've ever seen so much enthusiasm in his voice."
"I'm familiar with Bernard Cardiff's work," I said in a daze. His work with the Save The Elephants project is one of the reasons I got into animal conservation in the first place! I swelled with pride at the idea of him even reading my proposal, let alone being impressed by it! But I had no idea what this had to do with me. Why call me in for an in-person meeting just to tell me a colleague liked my thesis? Unless he wanted to take it for himself...
My pride disappeared, and all the negative thoughts rushed back in. She was going to ask that I change my thesis so Bernard Cardiff could take my idea and give it to some Harvard grad students.
I thought about Jon out in the hall, and his insistence that I fight for my idea. But I didn't have that in me. It wasn't who I was. I was going to nod, and tell Dr. Allen that it was fine that they take my topic, and then walk out of the office like the tiny mouse girl that I was.
"Well," she said, "I took a look at your other coursework this semester. I'm good friends with the two professors of your other classes, and spoke to them about this. They've offered to let you finish their classes early, or delay your papers until the summer. Tell me. Have you ever been to Africa?"
"I was in Kenya three years ago," I said, then shook my head. "Delay? I don't understand..."
Dr. Allen closed her eyes and smiled. "I'm sorry. I'm still jet-lagged, and skipped all the important parts. Bernard is leading a research team to Mozambique to study elephant migrations and containment strategies. They have a big list of their own ideas, but Bernard would be honored if you joined them. Our own Earth Sciences department will provide you with a research grant, of course, along with a stipend for living expenses..."
I think my brain short-circuited then. I just sort of stared at Dr. Allen, replaying her words in my head. I think my jaw moved, but no words came out.
"It's a lot to process," she smiled knowingly. "If you need to take the day to consider going..."
"Of course I'll go!" I blurted. "Working with Bernard Cardiff would be the experience of a lifetime!"
"Let me assure you, he's not as exciting as you think," she laughed. "He collects stamps, and it's all he talks about. But yes, being invited on his research expedition is quite an honor."
I blinked rapidly. My mouth was dry. "I thought you were going to make me change my thesis topic!"
"Why on earth would I do that?" She waved it off. "As I was saying, your other two professors will allow you to submit your final papers early, if you're able to get them done in the next few days. I know that's overwhelming, so if you need to send them late, after you return from Africa, that's fine too."
"The next few days," I repeated. "When does the research team leave?"
"Next Sunday, exactly a week from today," she said with a smile. "Congratulations, Miss Reckmeyer. You're going to Africa."
I waited until Jon and I were outside the Earth Sciences building before I started screaming with excitement.