CHAPTER 4
KENDRICK
Four months later
Martha’s teeth against the bone she’s chewing on make me cringe. It’s like when you accidentally bite into a chicken wing and come away with a piece of bone between your teeth. The way it grates down your spine and makes you shudder.
Yeah, like that.
She loves her bones, though, and thankfully, she doesn’t chew on them long. Ten or fifteen minutes at most before she’s bored with it and needs something else to entertain her.
We’re sitting in the backyard. My round table sits on a patio beside a small fishpond. While it doesn’t get nasty cold as it does in the north of the continent, the fish stop moving around so much in the colder months. They’re finally beginning to wake up and swim around more.
Martha loves to watch them swim. She’s been excitedly bouncing around the pond when she notices them moving again.
Our trip to Iceland departs in two days. This is the first time I’ve felt truly excited about something in a long time. I love all the work I do with the school. Reaching the goals I set has its own special thrill.
This is different, though. Heading overseas to meet with a school interested in emulating the same kind of queernormative environment that RDU boasts is exciting for so many reasons.
In a world bursting at the seams with people in power wanting to dehumanize individuals because they don’t fit into a mold, places like RDU need to become more prominent.
More accessible. We need to make our voices louder to rise above hate.
I know we can do it. RDU is a shiny beacon that sends highly educated, well-trained, and talented individuals into the world. Their success is a direct reflection of the environment RDU created. It also loudly busts through the stereotypes of what makes a queer person and what they’re capable of.
Queer people can become pilots, military leaders, fashion models, architects, professional athletes, and so much more. Unlike the message of as recently as fifty years ago, there is no guaranteed unhappy ending because someone is queer. That’s the image we’re fighting to change.
Rainbow Dorset is a leader in this area, pissing people off every single year that the most NFL drafts come from our queer school. That alumni are accomplishing great scientific breakthroughs, are brave heroes on the front line, and are winning awards despite the bigotry in all industries.
That’s the message I want to spread throughout the rest of the world. Not just extending through the US. Another Rainbow Dorset University needs to be built on the East Coast of the US, preferably smack in the middle of the Bible Belt, where we can disrupt their hate-filled holy love.
However, that’s a different kind of mission. Right now, I want to go global.
When I first conceptualized CAP, I’d begun doing research to locate colleges and universities that were already queer-friendly.
Not just in name but in practice. I went about identifying administrations that were forward-thinking and progressive.
It was also important to locate universities that didn’t have a strong reliance on government dollars.
The writing on the wall is clear when it comes to certain government administrations all over the world. Ultimatums are abundant. Fall in line or we’ll cut you off, legal or not. One of my first missions when becoming provost was to make government dollars redundant and unnecessary.
I’m proud to say that within eight years, we replaced the need for government subsidies in preparation for a time when a bad egg might try to hang funding over our heads.
That time hasn’t come, and so we continue to use some funding and keep our reserves protected for a rainy day.
RDU is ready to be cut off entirely from the government money pool, and we’ll not sink even a little.
There are many benefits to being a private college.
The ability to cut ties with toxic officials is one of the biggest perks.
We’re ready. One of my tasks in creating our first sister school is working with them to become entirely financially independent, so if a need arises in which they’ll no longer be receiving funding from their governments, they won’t miss a day.
On paper, tóreargleei University had all the hallmarks of being the perfect candidate. It also made sense that they become one of our first trials because Iceland is ranked one of the top countries with LGBTQIA+ progressive rights and protections.
I was further convinced that tóreargleei University was the first place I wanted to partner with after talking with their provost, Magnus Albertson.
You can always tell when a person is saying what they think you want them to say in order to get what they want.
You can smell bullshit a mile away. Magnus’ enthusiasm and eagerness were apparent in every conversation.
After almost a year of planning—getting CAP up and running, finding funding, organizing support—and beginning discussions with a school, it’s here. The inaugural ambassador trip is just a couple of days away.
For perhaps the hundredth time, I’m looking over everything.
We have a budget, of course. As part of the ambassador program, we chose a diverse group of students who would represent as many parts of RDU as possible.
Athletics, trades, mathematics, sciences, arts…
I knew that if I wanted the exact students built for this role, finances couldn’t factor in.
The ability to afford this trip narrowed my pool of applications exponentially.
Thus why the budget was perhaps most important. I needed RDU to fund it. Which meant finding sponsors for the trip. It worked out well enough, I think. Each individual even comes on board with a goodie bag filled with merch donated by our sponsors—and advertises for them as well.
Then there’s the itinerary. It’s filled with school events, meetings, and such, but I’ve also built in free time.
They’re in Iceland after all. I want them to be able to enjoy the foreign country.
Hell, I wanted to enjoy the country. Iceland has been a bucket-list place to visit for as long as I can remember.
Lastly, I read over my chosen ambassadors’ applications for maybe the twentieth time. I want to know them. I’ll be spending a week in their company, and it’s important that I know the young adults I’m taking with me to represent the school.
Martha picks her head up. She stares toward the door and then jumps to her feet, tail wagging like a flag. Mouth open and tongue lolling out, she waits excitedly for Seth.
Sure enough, the patio door slides open. Martha pounces toward him, and I hear her collar jingle as he pets her. I smile, though I don’t turn around.
I’m only half focused on the packet I’m reading about Mercy Warren when Seth approaches the table I’m sitting at.
Seth is my oldest child at twenty-two. He recently graduated from a university in Southern California, close to his mother and siblings.
Upon graduating, he secured a remote job, which allows him to work anywhere in the world.
I’m relieved that he agreed to watch Martha. I also hope that his being here will give us a chance to talk a little. It gives me hope that maybe he’s ready for a relationship with me.
Seth stands over me for a minute before taking a seat in the chair opposite. He looks over the papers I have strewn out before meeting my eyes. “You deal a lot in paper for this technological era.”
“I predate the technological era,” I say. “This feels more comfortable.”
One side of his mouth climbs in amusement. It doesn’t necessarily reach his eyes, but I take it as a win, I suppose. Martha is still close to him, her head in his lap as he scratches behind her ear.
“I’m glad you two get along,” I say, nodding toward Martha.
“No offense, Dad, but she’s a dog. My odds of getting along with her were pretty high.”
“I suppose so.”
Silence settles around us. I’ve tried many times over the years to force conversations in hopes that my kids would talk to me. It doesn’t work. I won’t say I don’t try, but I have learned to allow the silences. If they want to break them, they will.
“This is a cool house,” Seth says.
I glance up at it.
“Not the same one we visited as kids.”
My three children have been out here a total of four times in their lives. The last visit was well over a decade ago.
“It’s not,” I agree. “The house you visited was temporary while this one was being updated. It belongs to the school, and I’ll live here until I retire as provost.”
Seth’s eyebrows rise. “Really?”
“Yes,” I say, nodding. “It’s not entirely uncommon, especially when campuses are very old. It was a different way of running businesses back then.”
“This isn’t meant to be judgmental or prying, but arguably, you’re the highest-paid person in the school. And you get free housing?”
I grin. “I’m not the highest paid person at RDU, though I won’t deny that I make a very nice salary with amazing benefits.
However, I don’t live here for free. I pay utilities and something akin to an HOA.
I have a housing allowance that’s worked into my pay, but that doesn’t fully cover the lease, and I make up the difference. ”
“Huh. That still sounds a lot like you’re getting a great deal.”
“I am,” I say, shrugging. “I’m also not the only one who receives housing allowances. They’re circumstantial.”
“Ah.”
His eyes drop to Martha, and I take that as my cue to look back at my papers.
“But thank you. I agree that the house is pretty cool. Their ability to keep the hundred-and-fifty-year-old structure sound with the elements of the time period while also bringing it into the twenty-first century is impressive.”
Seth nods. “It’s a big house for one person.”
I sigh. Is this a hint at one of Natalia’s favorite accusations—that I’m hiding a second family here? “It is,” I agree. “It’s meant for the provost and their family.”
“For the record, I don’t believe that you live a secret life here,” Seth says. I raise my eyes to his. “I think Mom’s just… angry.”
“I don’t understand how—” I cut my words off and shake my head. This is my child. He doesn’t need to, nor should he, be privy to the woes of his parents’ marriage. Or divorce.
“Understand what?”
“Nothing. Never mind. I forgot I was talking to my child for a second.”
“I’m not a child anymore,” he says. “I haven’t been in a long time.”
“I didn’t say you’re a child, Seth. I said you’re my child.
As such, talking about, venting, raging, confiding in, or even discussing the circumstances around my divorce, even though it includes your mother, is wildly inappropriate.
Regardless of the age of the children, they should not be dragged into it. ”
Seth smirks. “You know Mom hasn’t exactly hidden her anger, huh?”
“Again—inappropriate,” I say, frowning.
He nods, shrugging. “Yeah. Probably. But, just so you know, we know that most of what she’s saying is because she’s upset. Not because she believes it. We don’t believe it.”
“Well… that’s good, I suppose.”
Seth focuses on Martha for a minute, so I arrange my papers back into their folders.
“Dad?” I raise my eyes to meet his. “Why did you stop coming home?”
My hands freeze as I look into his eyes. There aren’t truly words to answer his question because the truth of the matter is, I don’t have a solid answer. I place my palms on the table, feeling the coolness of the glass beneath them.
“I don’t have an answer,” I admit. “I can tell you all kinds of reasons, like I got busy here. I was needed here. I was working on meeting the vision for this school, and it consumed much of my time. I can tell you that the commute was long and took too many hours out of the day. I needed to be close in case someone needed me during all the new projects coming to fruition. In case of an emergency. I can tell you that maybe your mom and I were no longer the couple we’d once been, and maybe I recognized that on a more subconscious level, so I chose to stay here instead of going home.
I didn’t want to feel my marriage deteriorate, so I took myself out of the equation.
I didn’t want you kids to see an unhealthy marriage, which I understand is counterintuitive since you didn’t see a healthy one either.
There are a lot of things I can tell you, Seth, but I don’t have a solid reason.
It was never a conscious choice where I woke up one day and said, ‘I’m no longer going home’ and carrying on with my business. ”
Seth nods absently.
“Not what you wanted to hear.”
“No, but I’m not sure what I wanted to hear.”
“You’re looking for closure with a satisfactory explanation of why I abandoned you kids and your mother.”
Seth’s lips press together for a second. “I don’t think you abandoned us. You used to call all the time.”
“I did,” I agreed.
“Then you stopped.”
“I… did. This is going to sound like I’m turning it around on you, and that’s not my intent, but I stopped calling because it felt increasingly like none of you kids wanted to talk to me.
I didn’t want to force myself into your life if you didn’t want me there, so I called less frequently, while trying to make sure you knew I was there if you wanted to talk, but not forcing my calls on you either. ”
“We weren’t the best kids,” he says.
“You were put into a strange situation,” I counter.
I don’t put it into words, but I have a feeling Natalia didn’t keep her opinions to herself as much as she should have.
After all, they were kids. They may all be adults now, but it hasn’t been long since they’ve all been adults.
Tabby has only recently turned eighteen.
Seth sighs.
A part of me wants to ask about their childhood in regards to how their mother spoke about me, but I don’t.
That’s also putting our kids in the middle of this situation, and while none of them have outright said so, I don’t doubt that Natalia bitches to them about this divorce, me, and our shared past. I won’t add to that.
“Thank you for being here,” I say. “For Martha.”
Seth gives me an amused smirk. “For Martha. Right.”
“For me,” I amend.
“I don’t hate you, Dad. Briar and Tabby don’t either. You know that, right?”
I do now. It’s a weight off my shoulders, but not all of it. I’m still weighed down by the strained relationship with my kids. I want more. I want a presence in their lives. But maybe I’m far too late in asking for one.
“Yeah,” I answer.