Chapter 12 Reece
TWELVE
REECE
He sees me. He looks at me for one second and his face goes still.
It does not move. It just registers. Everything happens behind the eyes and the rest of him stays still.
I’m getting better at reading the thing.
I have had a week to read the thing. It’s not no-reaction.
It’s the controlled version of a very specific reaction.
It’s the look of someone who has just registered the situation and is choosing what to do with it.
He chooses to come in. He comes in. He walks the length of the room.
There is one open seat. There is one open seat in the room, and it’s across the table from me, on the far side.
We are around a seminar table that seats fourteen and the seat across from me is the seat he is going to take.
I watch him register this. I watch him decide.
I watch him come around the table, the long way, not going past the back of my chair.
He sits down across from me. He puts his coffee on the table. He does not look at me.
He sets the coffee. He gets out his notebook. He gets out his pen. He puts both at exactly ninety degrees to the edge of the table. He does not look up.
“Okay,” says Dr. Kalmann, at the head of the table. “Welcome back. We have some new faces.”
She gestures vaguely toward the people on my side of the table. There are four of us: me, a girl named Min I have seen in another class, a guy named Jonas, and a person whose name I don’t know but who waves a small wave when she gestures.
“Why don’t we go around,” she says.
I freeze. I freeze because I have not thought about this.
I have thought about how to be in the room with him.
I have not thought about how to be in the room with him at the moment of saying my name out loud.
He’ll hear my name. He has heard it on the sidewalk and he has heard it in the pharmacy aisle, but he has not heard me say it about myself in the third person, in front of strangers, as the name I am called.
The first person goes. Maddy. Second-year Americanist. The second person goes.
Jonas. First-year. Modernist. Somebody on the other side of the table, who I cannot see well, says her name.
Griffin is next. Griffin says his name. Griffin says his name and he says his project: early-twentieth-century something, archives, I do not catch the rest, my ears are roaring with too much blood in my head.
He says one short sentence about himself.
He stops. His turn ends. He’s looking at the table.
Min is next. Min talks for a long time about her project.
Min has a complicated project. Min is going to be good for the seminar in the way that some students are good for seminars and some are not.
I’m not registering Min’s project. I’m registering that there are three people between Min and me.
I have to say my name in front of him. He’s going to hear me say it.
The girl with the wave goes. The guy whose name I have already lost goes. The person to my right goes. It’s my turn.
“Reed,” I say.
I say it flat. I say my project: photography, twentieth century, the kind of thing that is plausible and that I know enough about to defend if someone asks.
I say one short sentence about myself. I do not look at Griffin.
I look at Griffin. I look at him because I cannot not.
His face has not moved. He’s looking at his hand on the table.
The hand is making a fist that he is making relax and then making a fist again.
I can see it from across the table. Dr. Kalmann is saying welcome, Reed, and there’s one more person and then the going-around is done.
The one more person goes. The going-around is done.
Dr. Kalmann starts talking about the readings.
I do not hear what Dr. Kalmann says. I sit at the table for two hours.
I take notes, on autopilot. I write down what people say.
I do not say anything. Once Dr. Kalmann calls on me and I answer.
I do not remember what I said. Apparently it was an okay thing to say because she nods and moves on.
Griffin says one thing during the seminar.
He says it about an article we read. He says it directly to Dr. Kalmann.
He does not say it to the room. The room hears it because the room is quiet enough to hear it. I hear it. I do not look up.
The seminar ends at six-fifty-eight. There’s a small chaos of the seminar ending.
Chairs scraping. People gathering bags. Maddy asking someone about an article.
I’m putting my notebook in my bag. I look up.
Griffin is looking at me. He’s looking at me across the table.
I look back. The room is emptying. Dr. Kalmann is talking to the person to her left.
Min is putting on her coat and saying something to Jonas.
They are all going to leave the room. Griffin and I are going to be in the room.
It’s going to be the two of us at a seminar table and I’m going to have to say something.
Except I do not get to say anything because Griffin says it first.
“Every Tuesday,” he says. “And Thursday.”
“Yeah.”
“For the rest of the semester.”
“Yeah.”
He looks at me for another second. He picks up his bag.
He picks up his coffee, which he has not drunk.
He walks out of the room. He does not look back.
I sit there for a minute. I sit there until everyone else has left and the room is empty and Dr. Kalmann has clicked off the lights at the front and gone to her office.
Then I get up. I leave. I walk home in the dark.
I do not call Mendez. I sit on the couch.
The toothpaste is still in the bag on the couch where I left it last week.
I have not put it in the bathroom. I have been brushing my teeth with the old tube which has been almost empty for a week.
I get up. I take the toothpaste out of the bag.
I put it in the bathroom. I throw out the old tube.
I come back and sit on the couch and look at the bag, which is now empty.
I think that’s eight days I waited to put a toothpaste in a bathroom, and this is what I am doing now.
This is the kind of person I am now. The person who waits eight days to put a toothpaste away because if I put the toothpaste away then the day at the pharmacy is over, and I do not want the day at the pharmacy to be over.
Every Tuesday. And Thursday. For the rest of the semester.
He said it like it was a sentence he had been carrying for an hour and he wanted me to know he had been carrying it.
He said it flat. He said it with no question in it.
I get up and I get a glass of water and I sit back down on the couch.
I think about what he meant by saying it like that.
I do not have a clean answer. I think about it for a long time.