MY PROFESSOR’S DIRTY SECRET

By the time I notice his wedding ring, I’ve already imagined kissing him.

He’s writing his name on the board, his left hand braced against the desk. The ring catches the light. I look down at my notebook, where I’ve written the date twice, and remind myself how hard I worked to get into this class.

BRAD WOLFE. His first novel is in my bag, its spine held together with clear tape. I read it on the bus between shifts last winter and missed my stop twice. When the email accepting me into his fiction workshop arrived, I called my mother from the walk-in refrigerator at work. It was the only quiet place I could find.

The university website gave me considerably less warning about his face. He turns, setting down the marker. His dark hair curls over his forehead, flattened on one side as though he’s pushed a hand through it. His blue shirt pulls across his shoulders when he folds his arms, the sleeves rolled to his forearms. There’s a faint scar through his left eyebrow. I wonder how he got it, then catch myself inventing reasons to look at him.

Thirty-eight. Married. In charge of my grade. I uncap my pen. I can admire a man and still take notes.

My phone vibrates against my thigh. Can you have the room cleared by Friday morning? My sister’s bringing her stuff at ten.

Yesterday, Friday meant moving into a room across town. Then the woman renting it stopped answering my messages. My name isn’t on my current lease, my roommate’s sister has already hired a van, and the eighty-three dollars in my account won’t cover a deposit anywhere else.

At four, I have an interview with Claire Rowe, who needs an after-school tutor for her daughter. Twenty-five dollars an hour. Three afternoons a week. I’ve calculated what that would leave after bus fares so often I know the number better than my own phone number.

I turn the screen facedown.

“Before we start,” Professor Wolfe says, “who hated the ending?”

A few people laugh. He waits, leaning against the desk, and the room settles. His voice has a roughness I hadn’t expected from the careful sentences in his book.

He means the story he assigned before term. A woman discovers her husband’s affair, packs a suitcase, then puts everything back before he comes home. I read it last night beside a half-packed suitcase of my own.

The girl in the front row says the woman should have left. Someone thinks she still loves him. A boy near the window calls her weak.

I look at the passage I marked. Her bank card is declined at the supermarket. Later, she checks the train fare twice.

My hand goes up. “She can’t afford to leave.”

Wolfe’s eyes find mine. “What tells you that?”

I show him the passages. My voice steadies once I’m talking about the page. I know where the sentences are. I don’t have to wonder what he thinks of me.

“She could call someone,” the boy says.

“She could.” I turn back a page. “But when her sister asks how things are, she says they’re fine.”

“So she has somewhere to go,” Wolfe says. “What stops her asking?”

I’d underlined the train fare. I hadn’t underlined the phone call.

“She’d have to tell her sister,” I say. “And then she couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened.”

He nods toward my copy. “Does that change your reading?”

“A little.” I draw a line between the passages. “But putting the clothes away still isn’t forgiveness. She might just need somewhere to sleep.”

The girl beside me stops clicking her pen. I wish I’d chosen a different way to put it. At twenty, I’m already good at saying I’m fine until people stop asking.

Wolfe turns to the board and writes WHAT WOULD LET HER LEAVE?

“Keep that question beside you when you write your own ending.”

For the next hour, I forget to check my phone. He lets us disagree, but never lets us get away with an answer we can’t defend. When someone changes my mind, I put a star beside the passage. By the time he sets the assignment, I have four pages of notes and three stars.

Then he pushes his hair back, and I miss the deadline.

“Monday,” the girl beside me whispers as we pack up.

“Thanks.”

“Rose Park. Stay a moment, please.”

My pen rolls off the desk. I catch it against my knee and take too long putting it away. Around me, chairs scrape and bags knock against tables. Apparently everyone else understands that a professor might speak to a student without the floor needing to open beneath her.

I approach his desk after the room empties. The door stays open behind me.

“Was it something I said?”

“Something you wrote.” He turns a manuscript toward me. My application story. My name at the top, his handwriting down the margin. I set my bag on a chair, suddenly more nervous about the pages than the man holding them.

The story is about a girl waiting in a laundromat while her mother meets someone across the street. Her mother comes back alone. The girl pretends she’s been watching the dryer instead of the door.

He’s crossed out the last sentence. I know which one without reading it. I cut it three times before submitting the story and put it back each time.

“You don’t agree?” he asks.

“I’m deciding.”

One corner of his mouth lifts. “Good.”

I move closer to read the note beside the crossed-out line. His handwriting is smaller than I expected. I can smell his coffee, and something clean beneath it, and I make myself look at the words. You’ve already shown me.

“Without that sentence, they might think she doesn’t care that her mother left her there.”

“Why are you certain she cares?”

“Because she’s been watching the door the whole time.” I stop. “She just doesn’t want her mother to know.”

He waits while I read the ending again. The girl looks away. Her mother sits beside her. Without my explanation, there’s room to feel how badly they both want the other one to be all right. I take my pen out and cross through the sentence myself.

“You were more certain in class,” he says.

“That wasn’t my story.”

“No. It’s harder when it’s yours.”

He says it as though he still knows how that feels. I look up at him, and for a moment the books on my shelf and the unfinished pages on my laptop seem less far apart.

His gaze drops to my bag.

“That copy’s had a difficult life.”

I push his battered novel farther inside, which only makes the tape crackle. “It’s been dropped in a bath.”

“Did you finish it first?”

“I was trying to.”

He laughs, a brief, unguarded sound. It changes his whole face. I want to do it again, immediately, and have nothing clever left to say.

He straightens the manuscript and slides it across. I reach at the same time. His fingers brush mine, lightly enough that he might not notice, but I leave my hand on the paper after he lets go.

His phone lights up beside my wrist.

The photograph shows a beach. A small boy sits on his shoulders; a girl holds his arm. Beside them, a woman is laughing, and his head is bent toward her. He isn’t looking at the camera. He’s looking at his wife.

I pick up my pages.

Wolfe checks the message, then the clock. “Bring the revision on Monday.”

“I will. Thank you.”

At the door, I glance back. He’s still watching me. For a second neither of us looks away; then he gathers his notes, and I step into the corridor with my manuscript held against my chest.

My phone has two more messages from my roommate and one from my mother. Your room is always here, sweetheart.

I know. That’s what makes it hard to answer. Home is two hours away, and the last bus leaves before my evening classes end. I can picture the clean sheets she’d put on my bed, the relief on her face when I came through the door.

I don’t want to leave before I’ve brought him the revision.

A message arrives from Claire Rowe. Looking forward to meeting you at four, Rose. One thing I forgot to mention: we have a room above the garage available as part of the arrangement, if that would interest you.

I stop beside the noticeboard. A room. With the job.

I open our emails and check the hours again. Three afternoons. An eight-year-old daughter. References required. My former tutoring supervisor has already said I can give out her number.

Before I finish typing my reply, Claire sends the address and a photograph so I’ll recognize the house. White front door, climbing roses, a bicycle left across the path. A man stands on the doorstep, caught turning toward the camera.

I bring the screen closer. The dark hair. The scar. The face I’ve spent the last hour trying to stop looking at.

Another message follows. Brad mentioned you’re in his workshop. Lovely to have a recommendation already. See you at four!

Behind me, a key turns in the classroom lock. Professor Wolfe steps away from the door, his bag over one shoulder.

I look from him to the photograph. Then I delete the unfinished questions in my reply and type, Thank you. I’ll be there.

The room is still there. So is Friday.

At four o’clock, I have to convince his wife she can trust me.