Privilege by Thomas H. Carry

Author:Thomas H. Carry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Koehler Books
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

“I do not understand! Why were you there?”

We were in the kitchen. I leaned against the counter with my arms locked low on my torso, carrying an invisible sack. Abbie stood a few feet away, squared off and locked in, an immovable gatekeeper granting me no passage. But there were tremors forming beneath the exterior, and I was delicately stepping around the fault lines. It wasn’t going well; as in so many of our arguments, we were stuck in a perpetual loop, stating the same things over and over again and hoping they’d somehow land differently with each utterance. All the while, images of Stacy intruded on my mind, throwing me off, my own personal Banquo. Did I smell her on me? Smells were actually ingested particles, I’d read somewhere. So, pieces of her were here, in the room, in some fashion, as I argued with Abbie. I half expected her to tap me on the shoulder.

“Again, I was there because I was tagging along with her, keeping an eye on her—I told you.” Stacy’s hanging feet scampering against the bathroom door. “Yes, you’re right. I should have walked her over to the Student Wellness Center, but, you know, that’s hindsight.”

“No, it’s sound thinking, which you evidently didn’t have for whatever reason.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think? You’re wandering around with a student you were hugging in public—that was great to see—and then you were in her apartment because, you say, you were concerned about her. Concerned!” she said, the word stated as evidence of something unseemly. Stacy staring at me with flaring nostrils, itching to wrestle.

“I was. For good reason, it turns out. Abbie, it just happened the way it did. And I can’t help the fact that some idiot took a photo of us.” Stacy, prone, extending her hand to show me the photo from the Beak. “And what does that matter now? I mean, that’s kind of insignificant given everything, don’t you think? She hanged herself and I couldn’t stop it.” Stacy, telling me to wait, just wait.

“Look, I know. I’m not minimizing how totally upsetting and shocking that must have been. It’s tragic that she took her life.” I pull the cord and hear a crunch. “I’m just trying to understand it all. It’s just, of all people, for you to be in the middle of all this—”

“What do you mean, me of all people?”

“Come on, Danny! You’ve barely been making it out of your office to teach class, and all of a sudden, you’re at the center of a suicide and all this other drama. You suddenly find inspiration and it’s to try to play the savior for an unstable student.”

“Do you think I wanted to be in all this drama, as you put it? And why does this have to be the same conversation we’ve been having over and over again about my motivation? Really, that’s got to be a part of all this?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Well, apparently it is, because you make everything about that.

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