“Wow—that’s amazing,” he’d replied, too surprised to react otherwise. The truth is, he can’t remember the last time he actually worked on his dissertation. Lately he’s been spending large chunks of time at the library taking long naps and working toward the world record for fastest completion of the New York Times crossword puzzle. Typically, he comes home, tosses his briefcase on the couch, cracks a beer and listens to Gwen talk about the students in her freshman English seminar. “I mean, you’d think these guys had never heard of Shakespeare,” she complained one night. “Do you know one told me he thought Shakespeare was overrated because all he wrote was clichés?” Jason had groaned sympathetically. Gwen, a teacher’s assistant, is working toward her master’s at the same small New England college where Jason is an adjunct professor and earning his PhD.
She also happens to be five years younger, which on most days seems like no big deal, but on other days feels like light-years, as if she won’t ever catch up to Jason’s slightly jaded worldview. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing: Gwen’s ebullient overtures have often provided a welcome counterpoint to his more dour moods at dinner parties. But sometimes he wonders if they’re compatible for each other in the long run. More specifically, he worries that she might be too good for him. Gwen is head-turning gorgeous, tall and blonde and smarter than any other woman he’s ever dated. What she’s doing with him is a bit of a mystery, but if he probes too deeply, there’s a chance she’ll recognize her mistake. So for the moment, he focuses on enjoying their time together.
“Nah, I’m fine,” he says in response to her question and twirls the ice in his scotch. “Just recalibrating to vacation time, you know?” He has yet to tell her that this vacation may be more permanent than she knows, that he may not go back to finish his PhD or teach next year.
A few Fridays ago, while he stood lecturing about the Bolshevik Revolution, his students had stared back at him with what he interpreted as disinterest and, quite possibly, disgust. And that’s when it hit him: these kids didn’t give a shit about the Bolsheviks. They could barely remember what someone had texted them a few hours ago, let alone an event from one hundred years ago.
So, he’d lost it, in front of twenty-one kids, breaking the cardinal rule of teaching: never let your students see you sweat.
“You know what? If you guys don’t give a damn about what I’m teaching you, why should I?” he’d demanded, rousing a few of them from their stupor. No brave hands went up, however. “I can’t force you guys to be interested.” His eyes darted around the room, daring someone to challenge him, to restore his faith, but not one kid met his gaze long enough to return it. His books and lecture notes went sailing into his briefcase. “We’re done here,” he said, “until someone can prove to me that you’re actually interested in learning.” Well, that got their attention. A boy in the back row who’d yet to say a word the entire semester raised his hand. “Yeah?” Jason practically shouted.
“So does that mean, like, we automatically pass, or do we have to take the class again next semester?”
And he’d thought I’ll be damned. They really don’t care. He grabbed his briefcase and spun around. “Enjoy the rest of your semester. Finals are in two weeks,” he said. “You dudes have my email if you want to be in touch.”
That was nearly four weeks ago. Now finals are over, grades have been passed in and while he has heard some murmurings on campus, he assumes none of his students dared to rat him out to the administration. Because they don’t care enough; for them, canceling class was probably a godsend. And even though Jason thinks he might have handled the situation better that day, it was a tipping point: he’d been growing weary of teaching entitled, unengaged students. Now the thought of doing it for the rest of his life makes him want to rip his fingernails out. Before he tells Gwen, though, he needs to figure out what’s next. Because he’s pretty sure he wants to call it quits on academia altogether. The teaching, the dissertation. The whole kit and caboodle.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that’s all it is,” Gwen says and leans over to kiss him lightly on the mouth. Her lips, sticky, taste like strawberry daiquiri. “For a minute there, I thought I was going to have to find someone else to have wild sex with this weekend.”
“Ha. Fat chance,” he says and grins. They’ve already dropped their bags off in their room overlooking the harbor. It’s on the tenth floor, and there’s a giant king-size bed that Jason can’t wait to roll around in tonight, and maybe, if he’s lucky, later this afternoon.
“But first,” she says, raising her glass, “I’d like to propose a toast. To the birthday boy!”
“I’ll drink to that.” He clinks her glass, and the Johnnie Walker goes down smooth and smoky.
“And cheers to our first vacation away without having to worry about the dog,” she adds. Jason sets his glass down. He’s not ready to toast the dog’s departure quite yet.
About three months ago, they’d adopted Muddy, a chocolate Lab, whose temperament had turned out to be a cross somewhere between the Terminator and Rocky. Muddy devoured everything: grass, leaves, rocks, pens, Kleenex. A brand-new set of AirPods, reading glasses, the fireplace brick. A cashmere wrap that he’d bought Gwen for Christmas. No matter what bitter-apple spray they coated their belongings with, nothing prevented the dog from chewing it to shreds.
After a few weeks Gwen was on her last nerve. When she walked Muddy, it looked as if she were water-skiing across the grass, the dog yanking her along. They tried everything, going so far as to throw a few hundred bucks at a trainer for a weeklong, so-called in-residence program. But even the trainer seemed baffled, surprised by what he described as the dog’s strong will. He went on to explain that some breeders overbred their dogs with poor results and suspected that such was the case with Muddy, a well-meaning canine who was slightly off in the head, thanks to crappy genetics.
Which only made Jason feel more sorry for it.
“I hate to say it,” Gwen pauses, then smiles as if it doesn’t pain her that much, “but it’s kind of nice not to have to think about the dog. Those were some of the most stressful months of my life.”
Jason’s lips curl into a half smile. “Admit it. You’re not really sorry, though.”
She shrugs and fiddles with her rings. There’s a silver one on her middle finger, two on her thumb, and, on her pinkie, another slim ring with a star and a moon. “Does that make me a horrible person?”
“Probably,” he teases. If it were up to him, he would have kept the dog, but then again, he was fine leaving it outside while it barked for four or five hours, which Gwen said bordered on animal abuse. The fact that he still thinks of Muddy as an it and not a he probably says a lot about how Jason treated the dog in the first place. Still, he’d felt like a jerk giving it away, as if Muddy had failed some kind of IQ test.