With a scraping of forty chairs, her class began to gather their things and exit the room. Almost everyone was staring at their phones or madly thumbing a text. About a half a dozen of them hovered around her desk, still bristling with questions. This was often Marie’s favorite part of teaching. “Miss, what is a corset stay?” asked a girl named Zaynab. A boy standing beside her explained what it was. “That’s horrible!” the girl gasped. Marie nodded and asked, “Which? The corset or the slaughter of whales to make them?” Another boy, Francois, wanted to know what dirge meant. Marie spelled it for him and then told him to look it up. He checked his phone immediately and smiled. “Okay. That makes sense now.” One of the gang of four from the back of the class had surprisingly remained behind. “Miss!” Marie started to correct him—she had repeatedly reminded her students to call her Ms. Russell, Mrs. Russell, or Marie. Just not “Miss,” a holdover from high school and so much less respectful and commanding so much less authority than the “Sir” used to address her male colleagues. But he seemed so enthusiastic about his question, Marie cut herself off. He wore the uniform of his crowd—a backwards baseball cap, sweatpants, and a faded hoodie with some logo Marie didn’t understand. He had a little bit of dark hair over his lip, and a few more patches under his chin. No real beard yet. “Miss—whatddya mean they make perfume from like, whale poop?”
Marie laughed. “Okay, so short answer?” The boy nodded. “It’s called ambergris, and it’s a substance sperm whales make in their bellies to protect themselves from giant squid beaks that they can’t digest, which might puncture their intestinal tract. So, they coat the squid beaks with this substance, and poop them out. Only about one percent of sperm whales do this, so it’s very rare, and highly valued by famous perfume makers—because it fixes scent to human skin. It can be worth thousands of dollars. An ounce.”
The boy opened his mouth dramatically, then remarked “Holy shit!”
Marie laughed. “Exactly.”
Marie glanced out the window of her classroom door and noticed several students and an annoyed-looking teacher waiting. She gathered her papers and made for the exit. As she headed down the bustling between-class halls, most of the hangers-on wished her a good day and disappeared into the crowds. Just one followed her, the one who’d written the brilliant paper. Michaela. “Professor Russell? You wrote on my paper you’d like to speak with me?”
Marie smiled. “Yes. I’d like you to present your paper to the class—you don’t have to read it, but just go over the main points. It’s outstanding.”
Michaela didn’t seem as enthusiastic as Marie had expected. “Am I the only one presenting my paper?” So that was it. Some students loved to be singled out to show off their work. Many more, especially the really smart ones, didn’t like it. They’d probably been teacher’s pet since kindergarten and had paid the price for it socially.
Marie shook her head. “No, there’ll be one or two others. How about two classes from now? Say, next Monday?”
Looking pleased in spite of herself, Michaela agreed. “I’ll do it if you promise to tell more stories about your life as a marine biologist—I’d like to hear the one about the time you got drenched in whale snot. You promised you’d tell it, but you never did.” Students loved personal stories. And Marie had many tales to tell. She agreed to Michaela’s conditions, but added, “Just cut me off when they get too self-indulgent and um…too personal.”
Michaela nodded. “It’s a deal.”
Marie arrived at her office door and waited to see if Michaela would follow her in, but she checked her phone instead, and gasped. “I’m late for anthropology. I’ll fail if I’m late more than twice. Thank you for the great class!” Marie watched as the diminutive young woman hastened down the hall. It was students like Michaela Cruz that made teaching such a privilege. It was a big cliché, but it was true. Marie could stand up in front of a class and discuss what she felt so passionately about to seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds forever—or until they dragged her out of the college feet first. This morning, Marie was feeling like she’d never retire.
Marie dropped her books and papers on her chair and tried to stuff them into what few square inches of surface area remained on her desk. She rolled back in her chair and took a moment to consider the few photos she had on her wall. Very dated ones of her kids’ high school graduation—Ben’s open and sincere smile, Ruby’s more guarded smirk. Another one of her mother, Claire, and her older sister, Madeleine, in poofy peach dresses at her middle sister Louise’s wedding, and one of Marie in a kayak on the Sea of Cortez, paddling very close to a humpback whale. Magnus had taken that picture. The Norwegian love of her life. They had sworn to sail the seven seas together, and they did manage four of them before Magnus opted for number five without Marie. He got on a boat for Madagascar and left her behind. She followed his career obsessively at first, then on and off for years as he rose through the ranks of whale researcher royalty, but she never heard from him again. Sometimes, Marie could still feel the actual physical pain of her separation from Magnus. It took her years to recover from his betrayal, and Marie had kept her emotional distance from all men until she’d met Daniel. They were an unlikely couple. The closest he came to life at sea was a canoe on a Laurentian lake. Daniel had dyslexia and a lifelong resistance to reading. His idea of outdoor adventure was his childhood camp in the Laurentians where the counsellors unpacked your clothes for you. But Daniel had an encyclopedic mind and endless curiosity. He was a charming fast-talker, the opposite of laconic, Viking Magnus. He ran his father’s successful shmata business and was well off. He was sexy and fun and he loved Marie, at least for the first ten years of their marriage.
“Would you like to hear the latest?” Marie’s colleague, Simon, a history teacher two offices down the hall, dropped into her spare chair and sighed deeply. Marie waited for him to launch into his usual litany of complaints about his students’ shocking ignorance, and he didn’t disappoint. “So. I am reviewing the material for their first in-class test, a test, by the way, they would like all the questions to beforehand.” Marie had heard this one many times before. “And then one bright light in the peanut gallery at the back of my class says, ‘Sir?’” At this point Simon was imitating his lazy consonants and teenage slur. “‘Sir, do we have to know who fought who in World War Two for the test?’” Marie smiled her sympathy, but only half-listened as Simon bemoaned their general illiteracy and total absence of any knowledge of history. “I mean, what happens to an ahistorical generation? To a generation of moral relativists? To a generation that is constantly told their opinions are most valuable and precious, regardless of the facts?” Marie watched as he kept talking. She and Simon had had a brief encounter a few years earlier when Marie was about two years divorced. They had had a lovely evening, as long as they talked about nothing but Simon himself. Then, for some inexplicable reason, Marie agreed to go to his place for a nightcap. Within minutes, he had groped at her on the sofa, and kept placing her hand on his erect penis. She told him she wasn’t ready for sex with him. Then he started to cry and apologize. Marie wasn’t sure which was worse.