5. Daphne
Daphne
My new job as a student research assistant at the School of Public Health starts like any new job—with paperwork. I fill out a bunch of forms for the HR person, who awards me a brand-new ID.
I’m not smiling in the picture, though, because starting over is hard.
All this takes a couple of hours, but finally I'm sent upstairs to find Karim, a graduate research assistant. He’s a slim, friendly man with tan skin and long, dark eyelashes.
“Since I have seniority, you can bring me all your questions," he says, "I've been here for two weeks, at least."
His dark eyes twinkle when he says this, but my answer is still a very stiff “Thanks.” I know he's joking, but I just can't make myself loosen up. I’ll probably never trust any young, ambitious man again.
Besides, Karim is already an MD. He outranks me no matter how friendly he seems. Never again will I forget that these things matter. If I lose track of the rules, I could lose everything.
Karim leads me on a lengthy tour of the office.
He explains their system of moveable workspaces.
“None of the research assistants has his own desk, because we’re all here on different days.
You check out a laptop with your ID, unless you’ve brought your own.
But there's no formal system for claiming a study carrel.
It's first come, first served. And no fair leaving books there overnight to reserve your spot. Only an arsehole would do that."
"It was one time!" calls a voice from the other side of one of the blond wood dividers. “And I apologized!” A head pops up to match her voice, and I find that it belongs to a young Black woman with close-cropped hair and a bright smile. "Hi. I'm Jenn Washington.”
“Daphne Shipley.”
“Oh! You're the transfer? We're all very curious about you.”
Lovely . “Yes. I’m the transfer student.” And thanks for making this awkward . I feel my smile tighten up on my face. They probably think I couldn't hack it at Harkness, and that stings.
"Welcome," she says brightly. "Any relation to the Shipleys who make that cider?"
"That's my brother."
"Really?" she squeaks. "It's so yummy."
“Yeah, that's his thing,” I babble. “He has a degree in organic chemistry. We're science people.” Oh my God. Could I sound any more defensive right how? Get a grip, Shipley .
"Feel free to bring us samples,” she says.
“Yeah, I get that a lot.” I force another smile on my face. And when Karim continues the tour a moment later, I feel nothing but relief.
The last stop is the departmental library.
"It's small, as you can see," Karim waves an arm around the room full of books. "The University has done a great job of digitizing our core research materials, and you’ve got Lexis/Nexis access under your new ID. But hard copies of the best reference books are kept in here. They also keep print copies of all the journal articles produced by professors and research fellows in this building. If I’m lucky, I’ll have something on the shelf eventually.”
“Oh, wow,” I say in the same hushed, fangirl voice.
One wall is full of peer-reviewed research publications.
Karim and I have the same dream, apparently.
I pull a copy of the Journal of American Public Health off the shelf.
Sure enough, there's an article by my new boss and advisor, Vi Drummond, entitled Modeling the Probability of Arsenic in New England Groundwater for Risk Assessment .
“Do these books circulate? I’d love to check a few out,” I ask Karim.
“Sure. Go ahead. That was Dr. Drummond’s first piece about arsenic.”
“I know. But it’s been a while since I read it. What else should I read if I want to understand the core specialties of the people who run this place?”
He blinks. Then he eyes the massive wall of documents. “Well… Don't forget that I'm new here. But I guess I'd read the latest stuff on birthweight versus educational outcomes. And food insecurity as a factor in hospital admissions.”
I spend the next fifteen minutes collecting ten more journals and checking them out under my ID number. “You can stop now,” Karim says. “Before you make the rest of us look like slackers.”
My hand freezes on a volume of Environmental Health Perspectives . “I just need to get up to speed here. It has nothing to do with you.”
“Kidding,” he says a little stiffly. “I was kidding.”
Ten bucks says he wasn’t. But that isn’t my problem. If I do good work, he’ll tolerate me in time. He doesn’t have to like me.
“Oh, there you are.”
We both turn to find Dr. Vi Drummond in the doorway. “Welcome, Daphne. I know it’s almost time for you to leave. But I was hoping we could have a quick chat in my office.”
“Of course.” I turn to Karim. “Thank you very much for the tour. I look forward to working with you.”
He has already regained his smile. “Same here. See you next week, Daphne. We’ll get started properly.”
Clutching my stack of journals, I follow Dr. Drummond into her office. She shuts the door and takes a seat behind her desk. “I’m really pleased that you are able to come into town once a week during the summer. It will be nice for you to settle in before you take on a full course load.”
“Not as pleased as I am,” I say, sitting ramrod straight in the visitor’s chair, my lap full of books. “I feel lucky to have found a place here, and I can’t wait to get started.”
She picks up a paper clip on her desk and rotates it absently.
Dr. Drummond is a white woman in her mid-fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair.
She’s a little more glamorous than you usually see in academia, in her elegant silk blouse and interesting silver earrings.
“Your transcript is impeccable. Very few young women can manage a dual BS/MA program. And your recommendations were all glowing.”
“That’s nice to hear,” I say neutrally. But my heart begins to pound the way it does any time I think about the mess I left behind at Harkness. If the truth got out, those recommendations would not glow. Not even a little.
Someday I’ll make it right , I promise myself for the millionth time. I don’t want to carry this burden forever.
“I have to say, Daphne…” She pauses, as my heart continues to pound.
“It’s unusual for us to see a student who’s performing so well transfer from an advanced program like the one at Harkness to a state school.
Not that we aren’t proud of the work we do here.
But it’s not quite as glitzy or international. I did wonder why.”
Right. I’d known this question was coming.
And I’m prepared. “Maybe I’m not as enamored with glitzy or international as I used to be.
” That’s certainly true. But the embellishments I offer next are not.
“My whole family is here in Vermont. We have a farm, and several businesses. My brother started a family. A lot has happened since I decided at seventeen that I needed to be somewhere else.”
She smiles, which is how I know I’ve been convincing. “There’s a lot to love about Vermont. I’ve tried to keep our focus as local as possible. Some of the enviro-agricultural topics may be familiar to you.”
“Arsenic. Nitrogen runoff. Things like that?”
“Exactly like that,” she says. “And my next grant application concerns air quality. I’ll fill you in more in September.”
“I can’t wait.” I really do live for this stuff. I plan to do excellent work here. Dr. Drummond will not regret taking me on. And this job will make my grad school applications look worthy.
“All right, Daphne. We’ll talk more soon. This summer you and Karim will help Jenn tidy up some data and set up some research queries, okay? And this fall we’ll get on to new research.”
“Great. I’m happy to help,” I say. We stand, and I shake her hand with a firm grip.
This is going to work. It has to.
* * *
Okay, these research journals are really heavy. I lug them awkwardly back to the truck, where Rickie is leaning against the driver’s side door, reading a book.
In German. That’s unexpected.
As usual, I drink in the sight of him. Today he’s wearing another silky T-shirt, tucked into a pair of cut-off army surplus pants.
On his feet are suede ankle boots. They’re not work boots.
They look vintage. And there’s an earring in his left ear.
It’s a very small hoop, which shouldn’t look masculine, but it does anyway.
He closes the book as I approach, and tosses it through the open window, into the vehicle. “Ready to go? Looks like somebody hit the library pretty hard.” He hurries toward me, hands outstretched, as if to help me.
“New department. I have to catch up,” I explain, hoisting the books up a little further in my arms. I don’t want his help. But one traitorous volume slips out of the stack and hits the pavement with a loud smack.
Rickie picks it up without comment. He doesn’t try to wrestle the other journals out of my arms, either. He just goes back to the truck and climbs in, settling both our books on the seat behind him.
Somehow I make it onto the passenger seat without dropping anything else. “How was your class?” It’s a feeble attempt at polite conversation.
“Great. Fine. I like school, and I’m a shitty farmer, so it was like a vacation for me. How was the new job?”
“Good,” I say quickly. “I mean—new jobs are hard. I have a lot of reading to do.” I smooth a hand over the journal on top of the stack, where an article about nursing mothers on food stamps is yelling my name.
“All right. I’ll leave you alone to read,” he says, cranking the engine. “So long as we can stop for ice cream.”
I’d forgotten about that. But I like ice cream as much as the next girl. “Sure. There’s a place just off exit 6B.”
“Coolio. I’ll poke you when we get there.” He turns to give me a sexy grin.
I feel the heat of that smile. It lands in the center of my chest. This is bad bad bad . So I look away. I flip open the cover of the journal and try to focus on the table of contents.