Chapter 20
Chris
As soon as I opened the door to my apartment, I knew something was wrong. It was the same old apartment. Clean yet stuffy from being shut down for a few days. Cozy enough because of the exposed brick and wide-plank floors.
Just quiet. Too quiet.
A large antique Agra rug and rich jewel tones balanced the clean, mid-century lines of the furniture. I was informed of this by previous girlfriends who’d been shocked not to find a bachelor pad dominated by a video gaming system. Mom had done it all. I neither knew nor cared about home furnishings. Considering I spent most of my waking hours in a dental office or a stainless-steel lab, I was just happy to come home to a place where the color palette wasn't white and silver, and the lighting wasn't emitted from thousand-watt LEDs.
Without Daphne, the apartment seemed just as cold and sterile.
I dropped the skull box on the kitchen island. I’d bring it to the lab in a few days. There was no rush. The students would document their findings once they returned from break. I’d make sure Daphne would be assigned to this case. It was nice to be able to see a project through to completion, especially your first.
Anubis was unsurprisingly vocal in her greeting, serpentining through my feet and scenting my ankles with near-constant trills and moans.
“Okay, okay. I missed you too.” I reassured her with long, firm strokes, the way she loved to be pet. Her bowl was empty. “It’s not time for dinner yet. And I think we can forget about that salmon in the fridge. You might like stinky rotten fish, but I’m not going to stink up my apartment by unwrapping it.”
Last week, Nubi and I had decorated the little Christmas tree in the window. I stared at it now but was uncompelled to turn it on. I was uncompelled to do anything but wallow.
Instead, I did something I rarely did. I reclined on the couch with my feet up, poured myself a Laga 16, and melted in front of the TV, settling on a replay of Friday’s terrible Mississippi State/UTEP bowl game.
I wanted to avoid anything that hinted at Christmas. This fog of self-pity and loathing was decidedly not a holiday tradition I was keen to repeat. With any luck, I’d avoid the next two Christmases altogether. Maybe I’d travel. Somewhere in the Caribbean where it wouldn’t remind me of Daphne and her holiday traditions.
Except I couldn’t imagine going anywhere without Daphne, so never mind.
Work. That’s what I’d do. Once Nourishing Nashville re-opened, I’d throw myself in. I’d wash dishes. I’d prep. I’d sous. Whatever needed to be done, I’d do it.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. My heart jumped.
Her. It was her.
FaceTime from Unknown. I sat up.
“Daphne?”
“Frohe Weinachten!” Mom said.
“Who’s Daphne?” Dad said in unison.
“Merry Christmas, Mom. Dad,” I said, breathing to slow my racing heart. “It’s late there, isn’t it?”
“We had to talk to you on Christmas! Oh, Christopher, we met the most wonderful family who invited us to their home to celebrate Christmas. It was lovely. You would have had a wonderful time.”
I laughed. “How much have you had to drink, Mom?” We both knew being invited to a stranger’s house for a holiday celebration would never be my idea of a good time. Daphne, however... she’d leave with plans to see them again next year.
“A lot of glühwein! And it was better than at the markets.”
“Who’s Daphne?” Dad shouted from off screen.
“We’re going to go back to Reiner and Heike’s for New Year’s Eve. Heike’s going to teach me how to make lewwerkneedl, which tasted a lot like grandma’s meatloaf—remember the one with the liver?—except Heike’s was delicious!”
“—K?stlich!” Dad shouted from the back.
“K?stlich!” Mom reiterated. “That’s German for delicious. And she served the most k?stlich cherry sauce with her apple pie—oh, Brian, remind me to ask her for that recipe, too. Reiner and Dad hit it off talking politics. Reiner’s a representative in the Bundestag—that’s like our House of Representatives. They have a very lovely home,” she repeated.
“That’s nice, Mom. I’m glad you had a good time.”
“We’re coming to visit next summer. I’ve simply got to see her garden in bloom. The pictures looked gorgeous. You should come with us, honey.”
“Has he told you who Daphne is?”
“No. And hush, Brian. Let Christopher talk.”
“It’s okay, Mom.”
“Is she a new girlfriend, dear? Daphne’s a lovely name. Oh! Why don’t you bring her—when we visit this summer? It’ll be perfect! What a lovely way to get to know your new friend! Although, I’m sure I’ll get to know her before then, anyway. I’m getting ahead of myself.”
“Okay, Mom. I’m sure you’re tired. Glad you had fun with your new friends.”
“Wait. One more thing, before we let you go. Are you ready Brian? O— Ready? One, two, three. O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, wie treu sind deine Bl?tter. ”
My parents continued to serenade me in German with “O Christmas Tree,” which they must have learned over the past two days.
I smiled into the camera, but inside I was dying, thinking about Daphne.
It was her favorite carol. The Peanuts one, not the Nat King Cole one , she’d said. I’d played it for her on Christmas Eve Eve. Then I’d fucked her on the piano bench.
Once I’d hung up with my parents, I refilled my scotch and sat at the piano, immediately playing the Vince Guaraldi song.
It was easy and melancholy, and exactly suited the mood of the room—the mood I was giving it.
I was riffing on the chorus when someone pounded on the door.
“It’s open,” I shouted.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Gita unloading bags on my kitchen island, giving me a snarky head bob when she noticed me notice her. “I heard the piano.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the counter.
“Sorry. I’ll close the lid.” I got up, but she stopped me.
“No, no. I like it.” She wobbled her head.
I sat and tinkered with another that matched my mood. Not really a tune, even. I didn’t know what it was yet, or if it was going to be anything. Chords. Arpeggios. D minor.
“That’s how I knew you were home.” She opened her containers of food. Gita’s family had moved into the apartment next door a little over four years ago and I’d ordered them fried chicken from the downstairs restaurant in welcome, not realizing they were Hindi and didn’t eat meat. They appreciated my gesture anyway, and invited me in to share their potato and cauliflower curry. Harish was a pathology resident and we’d quickly bonded over atypical cells in the few spare moments he wasn’t in the hospital. Gita and I had a shared a sense of social justice and a love of her cooking.
“Priti said you were staying in Nashville for Christmas.”
“We were supposed to be home yesterday. There were some... complications.”
“We?”
My fingers stilled over the keyboard. Shit. Gita was a bloodhound. She didn’t do vagary and she didn’t do small talk. As a tax lawyer who worked exclusively with nonprofits, she believed in focused presence and attunement with community. At that first dinner, she'd asked me how I was giving back to the world that had given me such privilege.
She liked my answer, and I liked that she cut through the bullshit. I hired her firm to take over my charitable giving, and she was so good at making my money go where it was most effective, my parents had her manage their whole Nourishing Nashville network.
Now, though? No way. I wasn’t ready for that Ginsu knife of hers that cut through bullshit like it was a tin can. Daphne was a hope, a whisper of a hope. Thinking that whisper threatened to turn it into a dreaded finality: a brick wall of separation.
I gave Gita no response, except to resume playing.
“Come eat with us. Priti’s been watching Christmas movies on cable for the past month and begged us to get her a tree. We did.” She shrugged. “It’s not good to be alone on the holidays, Christopher. You need people around you. Good food. Laughter.” She gestured to the containers. “I made this just in case. Hoping I wouldn’t hear you playing sad music through the walls.”
“Is it sad?”
Gita narrowed her eyes and brought over a tray of something that looked like hush puppies. “Muthia. Your favorite.”
I shook my head. “I’m not eating at the B?sendorfer.”
“Priti said she heard a girl’s voice when you called. Was that her?”
“No. I mean, yes, but… it’s not going to happen.”
She nodded impatiently, not letting me change the subject. “I’d like to call her something besides her. What’s her name?”
“Daphne.”
Gita held the container closer. “One bite won’t get crumbs in your precious piano. Don’t wait or it’ll get soggy. It just came out of the fryer. You need food to heal a broken heart.”
I popped an entire crispy, aromatic garam cake into my mouth and wiped my hands on my pants before returning them to the keys. “’S’good,” I said around a mouthful of spice and steam.
She knew my kitchen as well as I did, opening the cabinets and getting down a bowl and a fork. When she opened the other containers, the spices fragranced the air. Ginger and cardamom and too many others I couldn’t place. “Kala turkey. I made it special for you. You eat turkey on Christmas?”
“My family usually does. Thanks, Gita. This means a lot.”
“This doesn’t mean you get off without telling me the story. You know how it is: I feed you. You tell me what it’s like to be a young person in the dating scene.”
“I’m older than you.”
“Biologically, yes. But I have a career and two and a half children. Once you have kids, you start aging in dog years. Now spill before I eat all your muthia.” She pinched off a bite of something else fried and delicious looking. “What the hell are you playing, anyway?”
A Slavic-sounding left-hand stride. A dark right-hand melody in a minor with a heavy emphasis on trichords.
“Oh, uh... I think it might be... ‘Jingle Bells.’”
“That’s not ‘Jingle Bells.’ I know that one. ‘Jingle Bells’ is Oh, what fun . You’re playing Shit, my life is over .”
“We can’t be together. Daphne’s a grad student. That’s the story. Nothing else matters until she graduates.”
“Do you teach her?”
“No. Maybe. A few one-off seminars. She might be assigned to my supervision for her field hours, but that’s only if there’s a backlog with caseloads.”
“ If. ” She raised her eyebrows. “ If doesn’t sound like a good enough reason to keep you apart.”
“It’s good enough for the university.”
“The university is unreasonable.”
I shrugged.
“What is she doing this Christmas? You can’t at least spend the holidays together?”
“She’s with her dad.”
“She doesn’t have a big family either?”
“No.”
She took a deep breath and wobbled her head again in disapproval. “There’s nothing I can say, then.”
“Really?” Gita was very insistent with her opinions. Usually steamrolling over my own until I agreed. If she thought my actions were asinine—like she clearly did now—there was no stopping her.
“If you don’t have the balls to go out on a limb for her, you don’t deserve her.”
“I’ll lose my job.”
“So? Mr. Rich Man. Form a company and enter the private sector. Or live off your savings and take a break. You could use one. You’ve been working three jobs for ten years.”
“I’ll lose my credibility. I don’t know how it might affect previous cases I’ve testified for or against.”
“How young is she?” Her face was controlled, braced to hear the worst.
“Twenty-four.”
“Psh, I’d already married Harish, immigrated to this country, and was pregnant with my second child at twenty-four. And I was in law school. That’s plenty old to know your own mind.”
“I agree. It’s only the student thing. I’d be marrying her tomorrow if I could write my own ethical code. But I can’t. I have to abide by the rules I agreed to follow.”
“Ethics schmethics.” The gleam in her eye was fierce, but her sing-song British-Indian accent was too melodic to take seriously when she pulled out her Americanisms. “You won’t be able to wait if she's already making you play music this sad. You’re already old, Christopher.”
“I can wait. I will.”
“You can’t and you won’t. You’ll do something stupid and reckless because you’ll get so desperate to be with her.”
“That’s what she said.”
“I like this Daphne already.”
“Only because she agrees with you.”
“Of course. Why else would I like someone? Listen, Christopher. You’re a rich white man.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Rich white men have ways of making problems disappear.”
I lowered the fallboard and swiveled around to face her. “Do you know how hard I’ve worked to avoid my rich white man privilege? How long I’ve been trying to make up for it? My whole life, Gita. I’m not going to lean into it now.”
“Yes, I do know; I’m your lawyer. You pay me to help you make up for your privilege. But—assuming Daphne feels the same way about you… does she?” I nodded. “Your situation is hardly unethical. She’s not in your department. At a different university, this wouldn’t be an issue. Someone else grades her exams.”
Maybe she was right and my situation was just not-wrong-enough to make me a total ass. “I’m not going to sneak around.”
“I’m not telling you to sneak. What are the options here?”
“It’s her or my job. Or we wait two years, but now three out of the four people who know us don’t think we’ll wait. So… it’s her or my job.” Putting it in black and white like that made me see there was no option.
“Jobs don’t keep you warm at night, jobs make you play this Christmas bullshit that sounds like a horror movie.”
I laughed. My tune was indeed growing darker and darker the longer we talked.
I stood and popped another piece of muthia into my mouth.
“You busy, Gita?”
“Harish has an eighteen-hour shift. Deep is with his friends, and Priti’s monopolized the TV with bad Christmas movies. As long as I can stay off my swollen feet, I’m not busy.”
“Want to help me draft my letter of resignation?”
“Let’s go.”
My goal was to slip the letter into Jeanette’s mailbox like the bomb I knew it was, and run away as fast as possible.
I hadn’t expected her office light to be on and her door ajar when I passed her room. I hadn’t expected her to be packing up the decades of books and decor and all the academic shit that often built up like barnacles in professors’ offices. She was retiring, but this looked like she was running off in the middle of the night.
Once again, my timing was great.
Unless it was Decca, whoever would be taking her spot would be even less amenable to my predicament. I wouldn’t have the shared history with them that I had with Jeanette.
All the more reason for me to leave.
I knocked on her door. She looked up from wrapping up a cat skeleton that had been on the same shelf since I was in grad school.
“You too, huh? Come on in.”
I stepped through. “This is how you’re spending your Christmas?”
“How else should I spend it? I’ve spent decades building this career. This place. I’m leaving the only family I have at the end of spring semester.”
I wanted to say something to contradict her, but it would only be empty words. “Work life balance has never been our strong suit in this program, has it?”
She looked at me pointedly. “That needs to change.”
“Okay.” But I wouldn’t be here to change it.
“Have a seat. Wait. Let me clear off the chair.” She gathered a stack of papers and journals and made another pile on the floor. “Drink?”
It wasn’t Lagavulin, but I accepted a plastic cup of bourbon and we toasted each other a Merry Christmas. It scratched and clawed its way down my throat, but it reminded me of the wine Daphne and I had drunk from the paper motel cups, and I quickly finished my cup.
Jeanette followed suit and refilled our cups. “What’s your story? You have family. What are you doing here on Christmas?”
“Logging in some remains Decca found a few days ago.”
“Why didn’t Decca take them to her lab?”
“She had to make cheese straws.” I smiled.
Jeanette shook her head. “God love her. She found balance.”
“Also..." I blew out a long slow breath and handed her a thick white envelope from my jacket pocket.
“What’s this?”
“My resignation.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” She said, not quite under her breath.
“I’m trying to balance my scale. I’ve worked hard. Now I need a life.”
She looked at the envelope like it offended her. “I’m not taking that.”
“You will when you hear the next part.” I swallowed and looked her dead in the eye.
Her breathing slowed as she braced against news she could probably imagine.
“This is a courtesy. Advance warning.” I nodded to the envelope. “I violated a regulation.”
“ What regulation? ” Her voice was cold with rage.
I smiled bitterly. “You know which one.”
“No.”
“Sexual misconduct.”
“No.” She sighed and closed her eyes, shutting me out like she didn’t want to even see my face anymore. “Not you. Why did it have to be you?” She leaned back in her chair, clasping her hands across her belly. “Don’t tell me that. I don’t want to fucking hear about your indiscretion. Who was she? He?”
“I won’t tell you the student’s name.”
“At least tell me they’re over 18.”
“Yes.”
She was quiet for a long time, her blue eyes boring into my skull. “Consensual?”
“Of course, but that doesn’t matter.”
“Grad student?”
“Yes.”
She let out a long, slow breath. “I know you. I know you’d never coerce anyone. Don’t come at me with this. I don’t give a shit.”
“The dean will.”
“For fuck’s sake, don’t go to the dean. Look, I don’t know the circumstances, but you’ve always kept your dick in your pants before. You’re quiet. You’re wholesome. You’re the person least capable of being flippant about this.” She threw a hand up in resignation. “I don’t know what’s going on. I know you’d only do something like this if you were serious. But don’t do this to me. I need you.”
“For?”
She looked around her office. “This.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re connected. Don’t tell me connected people don’t have ways of making allegations go away.”
“I won’t do that to her. It’s not an allegation; I’m admitting it. She’s not a problem to make go away.”
“You can’t stay away from her until she’s finished?”
“No.” God, it felt good admitting that. I’d been pinning it all on Daphne. She wouldn’t be able to stay away. She would find ways to sneak. But the truth was, I was the one who, like Jeanette said, couldn’t keep it in my pants.
“I’ve never had connections. I don’t know exactly—”
She leaned forward, placing her elbows on the desk. I could smell her whisky breath from several feet away. She must have done a number on that bottle before I’d gotten here. “Think carefully about my next question. Are you trying to sabotage yourself… or do you want a solution? I can’t help you if it's sabotage.”
“There is no help.” She raised her eyebrow, waiting. "No, I'm not trying to sabotage myself."
She smiled. “Christopher Carter, only son of Marcia Galvin Carter, L&C Railroad fortune heiress. Surely someone like you knows solutions always exist for those with enough money.”
It was the same thing Gita had said. But wealthy or not, I was new to the world of corruption and na?ve enough not to know how these things worked.
“How do you know about my family?”
“Everyone who fundraises in Tennessee knows your parents.”
“I always thought I flew under the radar.”
“Not under enough.” Jeanette slapped a copy of the Vanderbilt Alumnus magazine on her desk. On the cover was an old white man in a bow tie and blue blazer (of course), a promise about football championships (in my dreams), and an interview with Marcia and Brian Carter, about Nourishing Nashville and their other philanthropic endeavors.
“They went on and on about how proud they were of their son.”
“What’s this have to do with me?”
“Money.”
“I already give.”
“ Their money. Foundation money. I want the building to scream Made possible by an endowment from the Marcia and Brian Carter Philanthropic Foundation when you walk into the marble lobby, like you’re turning on a PBS show.
“Why?”
“We’re expanding. We need more land. Bigger facilities. More faculty.”
“And that’s why you’re stepping down?”
“Smart man.”
“I’ll help Dr. Crowley with—”
“I want you as director.”
“Fuck.” I blew out a breath. I thought this might be coming. There was no way I was going to throw my best friend under the bus and rob her of her dream job. “No. This job is hers.”
“I love Decca. You know I love Decca. She’s brilliant in the field. The best of the best. But she lacks the leadership we need right now.”
“You’ve all but promised it to her.”
“I never have. I swear to God, Chris. I’ve never promised because it’s not mine to promise.”
“Just like it’s not yours to promise me now.”
“I’m not promising. I’m begging.”
“Maybe not verbally, but you promised when you took Decca under your wing from the start. Keeping her there for years. Mentoring her. Training her to be you when the time came.”
“The circumstances are different. This time the department doesn’t need another me .”
“No. You’ll get my money. I’ll ask my parents, but I can’t promise anything. They went to Vandy, and they have pet projects they enjoy funding a lot more than rival universities. Especially when half of that money will probably end up going to the football team anyway. You want money? I’ll pledge money. However much you want. I’ll fundraise from the sidelines. But don’t use my relationship with Daphne to blackmail me into robbing Decca of her dream job. The last thing this university needs is another white man as the head of anything.”
“I don’t want a white man either. But I want you, Dr. Carter, despite your race and gender.”
I shook my head.
“She won’t want this," Jeanette said.
“What do you mean?”
“Decca likes fieldwork. She just got married. She wants to stay with her husband and live her happy little life. She doesn’t want a flashy job schmoozing with corporate sponsors. Can you even imagine her in business suits?”
Jeanette was right. Decca had flat out told me, several times, she didn’t want this anymore. If the program was growing, bigger, better, brighter, it didn’t need another hard-working academic. It needed someone like me. Someone who knew both forensics and capital. And honestly, I could see myself here. But not without Daphne.
“So let me get this straight: not only do you not want to fire me, but you also want to promote me to administration. After violating the code of conduct.”
“The code only says you’ll be sanctioned. Not terminated. As part of your sanctions, I’m urging you to take on more responsibility.”
I stared at her.
“What about Daphne?”
“McKinnon? That’s the student, I’m guessing.”
I nodded. There was no point in keeping it quiet from Jeanette.
“Figures. Decca’s protégé. You’re together? Committed?”
“Yes.” Even after four days of knowing her.
“How committed?” She chewed her lip.
“If it’s her or the job, it’s her.”
“Okay. I’ll work around it while I’m here. It’s not ideal. For either of you. It'll be worse if you’re seen together as soon as she graduates—with you as her program director the whole time... it’s a bad look, Chris.”
“No shit.”
“Your testimony could be called into question.”
“I’m well aware.” I gritted my teeth.
“How did this even happen? Asking as a friend. Not as a boss.”
“I had no idea she was a student.”
“Shit.”
“You can say that again. I’ve spent the past two days hating myself.”
“Why two?”
I wracked my brain trying to remember all the events of the last two days. The wreath-making and the cilantro jelly—jelly she’d left in my car—the spider bite, and the 0.03% chance that it would affect her the way it had. “The infuriating woman makes friends wherever she goes, so it takes forever to leave anywhere.”
Jeanette was almost smiling when I told her about the lap dance burgers. Of course that was the part she’d wanted me to elaborate on. “It sounds like a whirlwind few days.”
“Insane.”
“It also sounds like you found your balance.”
“I have.”
“Welp,” she hoisted herself out of the chair. “I got to get this place cleaned up enough to pack it all up by May, so if you’ll excuse me..."
“Of course. And thanks for supporting me on this.”
“I’m not supporting you. This is incredibly unethical and I don’t support any of it. But I’m old enough and I’ve seen enough shit. I know you well enough. Sometimes love is inconvenient. And you’re not beholden to the pearl clutchers.”
“I appreciate it just the same.” I turned to leave, even more confused than when I walked in.
“Dr. Carter…” she called. I turned back. “There’s nothing in the handbook that prohibits a faculty member’s spouse from attending school.” A slow smile spread across her face.
“Good to know.” I smiled back at her. “Merry Christmas, Jeanette.”