3
…and they prepared a great feast in honor of their daughter’s christening, to which they invited the wise women…

 

His

 

Soon after the wedding, Fish started classes at the University of Pittsburgh. He had been taking summer classes ever since he had gotten the chance to go back to school. It wasn’t so much that he enjoyed the classes as that he was anxious to squeeze as much learning into as short a time span as possible. He preferred going to school in the summer—there were fewer students, less going on around campus, less distractions. And nights in his apartment were quieter. It was probably the closest that a modern university came to approaching a monastic school. Engrossed in his work, he barely noticed the summer slipping by.

In August, he made a trip back East before fall classes started. He stopped in to see Bear and Blanche and admire their new (old) farmhouse, which they were busy renovating. Rose had already gone off to her first semester at Mercy College, so Blanche informed him.

“Why did she pick Mercy College?” Fish asked as they sat in the mostly stripped-to-the-studs living room on canvas-covered chairs, drinking tea. He was vaguely suspicious that Rose had picked the college merely because of the proximity to his school, but doubted that even Rose would be that silly.  “I’ve never heard of it.”

 “That’s where my parents went to college. They met and married there,” Blanche said.

“Seriously? I didn’t know that.” 

“Yes. My mom was a nursing student, and my dad was majoring in English. He was two years ahead of her. They married during my mom’s sophomore year, and then he got a job working for the local paper and they lived with his parents while she finished her degree. My mom had me her junior year and dropped down to part-time. She finished school right around the time she had Rose, and then they moved to New Jersey.”

“I see,” Fish said. “So Mercy College is sort of the family tradition.”

“Actually, my dad always discouraged me from going there,” Blanche said reflectively, pushing back her dark hair with one hand. “I guess he didn’t think much of the place. But my mom loved it. And our friends the Kovachs have sent almost all their kids there. It’s a very Catholic school, and has become more so since my parents went there. I hear that most of the students there are pretty intense about putting their faith into action.”

“Hmph,” Fish said. As a teenage convert, he had never been around many devout Catholics his own age. After his experience at secular universities, he couldn’t imagine what an intensely Catholic school would be like. He suspected a fishbowl removed from real life.

Blanche added, “That reminds me. Rose has some furniture here that we couldn’t fit into the car when she moved. If it fits in your car, would you consider bringing it up with you? I guess you’ll pass by Mercy College on your way back to Pittsburgh. It’s right off of the turnpike.”

“Sure,” Fish shrugged, “What do you have?”

“Just an old armchair and a small bookcase.”

“Well, we can see if they fit,” Fish said.

Surprisingly, the furniture did fit into Fish’s compact car, so he brought the chair and bookshelf back with him, and stopped off in the small municipality of Meyerstown to drop them off at Mercy College.

Mercy College was a small, squat college tucked away in a rather depressed former steel mill town. It had been built in the 1950s by a most unimaginative set of architects, who apparently considered brick warehouses really neat buildings. The most colorful part of the school was the student body, who were quite an assortment. Fish was rather surprised—and pleased—to see a generous sprinkling of different skin tones and dress styles among the students walking the sidewalks of the campus. He had thought such a backwater place would have more middle-class homogeneity, but he was wrong.

Blanche had called Rose to tell her he would be passing through, so Rose met him outside of her dorm, a drab brick rectangle of a building that was reminiscent of a small high school. She was dressed all in black, with an aqua blue scarf around her neck. With her red hair flaming in the autumn light, it was easy to pick her out among the crowds of other college students. He could see college hadn’t changed her dress style.

And she seemed to be completely at ease. “This is the chair I got from my mom’s mother. It used to be in her living room when I was growing up, and she said I could have it when I got older. I love it. Isn’t it such a nice shade of blue?”

Fish agreed that it was, as he struggled to get it out of the car. He offered to bring the chair inside for her, and she picked up the small bookcase and ushered him in, telling him that the college had strict rules about their single-sex dorms, but that, since it was open dorm hours, he could actually come and see her room.

A far cry from U of Pitt with their co-ed dorms, he thought to himself, balancing the chair on his shoulders as he walked down the narrow hallway. Even without her guidance, Fish could have recognized Rose’s room immediately as it was stamped with her particular brand of taste. There were scarves draped around the window to serve as curtains, a tall shelf of books and knickknacks, colorful quilts on the bunk beds, and a china tea set on a small table in the center of the room.

Fish eased the chair around the tea table into the waiting vacant corner, and Rose set down the bookshelf. “These will really make the room feel like home,” she said. “Thank you so much! Would you care for some tea?”

“Sure,” Fish said, sitting down in the chair he had just carried in and suppressing a smile. He knew by now that Briers had to offer tea to anyone who walked in the door. 

Rose checked to make sure that the door to her room was propped open, explaining that residence hall rules required it. “Sorry I can’t get water to boil on this hot plate,” she said regretfully. “But it’s very warm.”  She poured the water into a rose-painted teapot and added two tea bags. “Do you still take sugar in it?”

“But of course.”

Making a mild face at him, she rummaged in a crate stowed in her closet and pulled out a bag of sugar, and took a clean teaspoon out of a jar of pencils on the bookshelf. “One tablespoon or two?”

“Two, thank you,” he said.

“You still insist on drowning the fine flavor of tea leaves in processed sugar, alas,” she said regretfully, as she added it for him and handed him the cup.

“My one remaining vice,” he said, and changed the subject. “Blanche tells me your parents went here.”

Rose dropped her affected manner as she settled cross-legged on the bed with her own cup. “Yes, Dad’s family is actually from here. Some of his cousins still live in the area. The family farm my parents lived on isn’t far from here.”

“Interesting,” Fish said. Driving through, he had mostly seen run-down farms and small stores. He wondered what Rose and Blanche’s lives would have been like if their family had stayed here. They never would have met my brother and me, for starters, he reflected.

“My grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease and so dad was living with her and taking care of her until she died.”

“And when your mom graduated, they moved away?”

“Yes. My mom’s mom lived in Warwick, and my Dad got a job up there as a reference librarian.”

“And so history was made,” Fish said, stretching. “So what are you doing this semester outside of classes?”

“I tried out for the play,” Rose said, and her eyes lit up. “They’re doing Shakespeare, instead of one of those horrid modern plays. King Lear. AND they’re going to do it in period dress.”

“Amazing,” he said. “That’s rare. Last semester they did a Shakespeare at the University. The Tempest. It was set on a space ship traveling to Mars.”

Rose made a noise of distaste. “Why is it that every time people do Shakespeare they have to dress the actors in black suits or plastic helmets or Mafia outfits? It’s so tiresome. But our director said he wants to set the play during the time it actually was supposed to have happened. Everyone’s going to be in Celtic costume. Before the auditions, I asked him what the costumes would be like—I just had to know. After all, a Celtic princess carries herself very differently than a corporate CEO, doesn’t she?”

“Most likely,” Fish agreed. “How do you think you did?”

“I’m not sure, but it was fun. Some of the other students were very good. There was this other girl there—she’d been in professional theatre before. She was tall and thin and had this sort of highborn air. I thought she would make a wonderful Cordelia—that’s the third princess, the good one who gets killed in the end—but I guess it’s up to the director. I suppose I was more lighthearted with my portrayal—guess that’s to be expected, isn’t it? It being me?”

Fish gave her a wry smile. “You’re not quite the tragic type.”

“Thank God. Yes. Donna—the tall girl—certainly was. She was so serious, and very competitive. She wouldn’t even look at me after I auditioned.  It was a little surprising.”

“Don’t let it bother you. People like that are small-minded.”  Fish drained his cup—the tea had been at perfectly drinkable temperature. “Unfortunately, I’ve got to go soon. I’ve got work at eight tonight.”

“Where do you work?” Rose asked.

“I’m a teaching assistant. I work for Dr. Anschlung—she’s an Austrian, but she teaches English literature. She’s pretty incredible. I teach her undergrad students, I do her secretarial work, and stand in for her if she needs to miss a class. Pretty basic stuff, but it’s good experience.” He looked at his watch. “Thanks for the tea, Rose. Sorry I couldn’t stay longer.”

She rose with him. “I’m glad you could bring the furniture down for me,” she said genuinely.

 “No problem,” he resisted the temptation to ask how she was doing. He didn’t even want to reference their conversation the night of Blanche’s wedding. The sooner she put that behind her, the better. “Let me know if you make the play. I’d like to see some decent Shakespeare.”

“All right,” she said, as they walked down the hall. “I will.”

He got into his car, waved goodbye to her, and drove away, feeling a bit relieved. So Rose was settling in to her new school and finding ways to occupy herself. That was good. It was high time she moved on.

 

Hers

 

“To play or not to play, that is the question,” Rose murmured to herself as she hurried from her dormitory one afternoon a few days later. “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to act in the school production, or to take arms against a sea of papers, and by composing, write them?”

She waved gaily at a few of her new friends passing on the way to class, and reflected again how different it was to be at Mercy College. Attending community college at home in New York had been a lot like attending high school, the only difference being that the classes were harder and she could leave right after class to go home, if she wanted to. Living on the fringes of school social life, she hadn’t bothered to get to know the community college students.

But here at Mercy College, things were very different. She found herself thrust into a community situation unlike anything else she had experienced.

Mercy had a reputation for attracting Catholic students who were engaged in their faith, at least on some level, and this gave an unusual quality to the student body. People were friendly and eager to make friends, and Rose’s natural sociability reasserted itself. After a week, she found herself with over thirty friends in various groups, and never lacking for things to do. There were dances, hikes, hanging out in the student lounge, the chapel, the little café on the edge of campus—and oh yes, there were classes to go to.

And those classes were far more fascinating than anything at her community college. Theology, history, philosophy, bioethics…Kateri had recommended that Rose sign up for the bioethics class with Dr. Cooper to fulfill her science core class. But by the middle of the first class, Rose was having serious doubts. Sure, Dr. Cooper was really interesting, but he wanted each student to do a major research paper on the issue of their choice that was far longer and more involved than anything else Rose had ever written, and it would be one-half of their grade for the class. How could she juggle this class and the semester play?

As she worried over this, she couldn’t help noticing one student who sat in the first row, taking notes with unusual intensity. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with curly brown hair, brown eyes, and from his profile, Rose quickly decided she would like to get a better look at him sometime. She wondered what his name was, and if it was worth staying in this class just so she could find out...

Now facing the quandary of whether to drop bioethics or the play, she hurried to her room after class and called home. “What do you think I should do?” she asked her mom.

“Well, are you sure you have a part in the play?” her mom asked.

“No, but I was called back for a second audition—and I sort of have a good feeling about it,” Rose sighed. “But do you seriously think I can do that—write a major research paper and have a lead role in the play? I would love to do the play, but it seems so—extraneous.”

“But King Lear is a significant literary work, and your major is literature, isn’t it?” Mom pointed out. “If the play were something like Arsenic and Old Lace, I’d encourage you to drop it in favor of your schoolwork. But acting the part of Cordelia will give you an experience of Shakespeare that otherwise you would never have.”

“I guess you’re right,” Rose considered. “But this paper is a monster. Really long, and he wants at least three source interviews.”

Mom laughed. “Writing has always been your strong suit, Rose,” she said. “I know from homeschooling you. You can handle this paper. You have a gift for writing, just like your father had. He wrote for the Meyerstown News when we were up there.”

“Did he?” Rose asked, remembering her red-haired father, whom she had loved so much. “He didn’t happen to write on any bioethical issues, did he? Maybe I could use his writings as source material.”

“Well, he covered the Right to Life March every year—I know that,” her mom said. “That’s how he got labeled as an ultraconservative. The editor of the paper just wasn’t interested in the abortion issue. He used to say it was too passé.”

“I bet that got Dad mad.”

“It sure did. I was glad when he left the paper and went to work in the library.  It was so much less stress.”

“Well, I really don’t want to do abortion as my topic, though,” Rose said. “It’s almost too obvious. Besides, I’m sure some people are already doing it.”

“And you, being Rose, could never do something that other people were doing,” Mother laughed. “Well, let me think. Actually, there was another issue he was involved with, but he never got a chance to publish anything on it.”

“What was that?”

“It was a pretty strange and sad case. A nurse approached him and said that there was some kind of serious abuse going on at the hospital where she worked. She wanted your father to write an article on it using her as an anonymous source. Your dad interviewed her extensively and gathered a lot of information, but he couldn’t substantiate a lot of what she said. And his editor didn’t want to touch the story. I don’t know all the details, but I know your father was extremely upset over it. That’s one of the reasons why he quit, actually. I wish I knew some of the details. Anyway, abuse of hospital patients would probably fall under your topic—you know, cases where patients are neglected, denied proper treatment, and so on.”

“Yes, but it’s rather unpleasant,” Rose agreed, shivering involuntarily. “What happened to the nurse?”

“I’m not sure. She may still be in the area. If she is, she would probably talk to you about it. It’s been years since that happened, though.”

Rose found herself getting interested. “You know, I’d actually like to find out more about the story. Do you have any of Dad’s notes from the interviews or would he have left them in his newspaper’s office?”

Mom ruminated. “Daniel always kept everything he wrote. You know, the notes from the interviews are probably all still in storage in Grandma Brier’s old barn, near the house where we used to live. We weren’t able to bring most of that stuff with us when we moved to Warwick, and I suppose your father forgot about it over time. Someone in the family still uses the farmland, but I don’t think the house has been lived in since Grandma died and we left it. It was in pretty bad shape. You could probably go and poke around in the barn. Your dad kept everything in big file boxes in the hayloft.”

“How could I get there?”

“I’ll give you your cousin Jerry’s number and he could tell you. I’m sure they won’t mind if you go out there to look for the notes. They’d probably be glad to move some of that stuff out of there. Plus, it would be good for you to visit them. Let me get the number.” She found it, read it out to Rose, who scribbled it in her notebook.

“All right!” Rose said. “Thanks, Mom. This really helps me out.”

“I’m glad. Now, if you do get the part in the play, make sure you keep up your studies.”

“I think I’ll be able to,” Rose said. “Love you, Mom.”

 

HIS

 

Fish woke up in a sweat, and started. Had he been screaming? He quickly glanced around the room, but the house was quiet. His apartment was fairly secluded. Most likely, no one had heard him.

Grateful, he put his head back down on the pillow and prayed to go back to sleep. But the re-living of the ordeal had been too real.

I’m just nervous about my classes, he told himself. Extra stress. The beginning of the semester. That’s what brought it all back.

He was teaching his first class for Dr. Anschlung tomorrow. Even though he had prepared thoroughly, he must still be on edge.

There was nothing to do but get out of bed. He pushed back the covers and got up. Rubbing his neck, which had been tense during the nightmare, he went out to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk. It was common, he had heard, for people in his situation to have vivid flashbacks of the torture experience. He wondered if it would be like this all his life, waking up in the night, standing dully in the kitchen, drinking milk, emotionally exhausted.

Freet is still having his revenge on me, he thought grimly, and smiled. The one consolation he had was that he guessed the flashbacks would be much worse if he had actually given in.

After taking another glass of milk, Fish picked up his backpack from the living room and hunted around in it for his rosary. That might put him back to sleep, and keep him from the usual after-effects of remembering. I’ll go rock climbing this weekend, he told himself. Maybe he could get one of his classmates to go with him. I need to start exercising more often, to keep this kind of tension from building up. That’s what I’ll do. Can’t be a graduate assistant if I have to deal with this kind of trauma every night.

Fortified with these resolutions, he returned to his bedroom and tried once more to sleep.

 

The nightmare had its effect in a headache that surfaced when Fish woke up later that day. Or perhaps the headache had caused the nightmare. Annoyed, he took three aspirin and went to teach his first class.

It went surprisingly well, and he was pleased. After class, he studied in the library, then took his work with him to Dr. Anschlung’s office. She had a sheaf of handwritten notes that she wanted transcribed. A short blond woman with a Germanic accent, she was apologetic about her poor handwriting, but Fish didn’t find it difficult to decipher. The next few hours were spent in busy solitude with the computer, until he heard her coming in at the door.

“Ben?”

“Yes, Dr. Anschlung?”

“I heard from some students that your first lecture went off very well. I was just invited to go out to dinner with Jane—Dr. Storck. Why don’t you join us? A bit of a celebration. It would give you a chance to meet some more of our faculty.”

“Thank you. I would like to.”

He ran his fingers through his hair and glanced down at his cotton shirt and dark pants. He hoped it was decent enough for dining out with faculty. But then again, he wasn’t sure where they were going.

Dr. Anschlung drove him to the restaurant, which turned out to be a fairly nice French establishment. There they met up with Dr. Jane Storck of the English faculty. She chatted with him pleasantly about NYU where he had done his undergraduate work.

“Now, Marie, I have to warn you that Dr. Prosser is supposed to join our party tonight.” Dr. Storck glanced at Fish. “I just hope she doesn’t give any offense to your assistant.”

“Oh!” Dr. Anschlung seemed surprised. “Was this a woman’s only night? I didn’t know.”

“Well, Dr. Prosser can get very adamant about not wanting to deal with men on her off time. Very strident feminist. As director of the hospital, you know, she oversees a lot of male doctors…”

Dr. Anschlung glanced at Fish, and raised her Austrian nose just slightly. “Well, I also consider myself a feminist, but I happen to enjoy the company of men. I would hope Dr. Prosser would be a bit more broad-minded.”

“One would hope,” Dr. Storck seemed dubious. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

Two other professors arrived, Drs. Lora Carpenter and Frances Bosworth, Biochemistry and Engineering, respectively. They greeted the other women affably and Fish pleasantly. Then two more women followed.

One was an imposing woman with a broad chest and curly brown hair cropped short, with a boisterous manner. The other was thin and wiry with rumpled blond hair, clearly subservient to her boss. They both wore lab coats under their overcoats.

“Hullo girls!” the big woman said loudly as she came in. “The sisterhood all here?”

“Seems like it,” said Dr. Carpenter cheerfully. “But you can’t be a purist tonight, Pross—we’ve got an enemy spy with us.” She indicated Fish.

“I invited him to come along with me,” said Dr. Anschlung loyally, putting a hand on his shoulder. “This is Benedict Denniston, my new graduate assistant.”

“Benedict?” Dr. Prosser towered over Fish. “At least he’s not named Benedict Arnold, hey?” She seemed gregarious enough, but Fish didn’t like her. “Let’s get some food—I’m starving.”

Fish followed the party to the table, feeling a bit of an outsider, but curious to see what this dinner party would be like.

Dr. Prosser seemed to be the dominant person at the party, and led the conversation inexorably. She didn’t exactly ignore Fish, but she didn’t seem to go out of her way to include him. Fish wondered if she were deliberately treating him the way she fancied some men treated women—talking over them and around them, never to them.

By contrast, Dr. Anschlung seemed determined to include him in the conversation—which he would just as soon listen to as join—and persistently asked for his input. Dr. Prosser sometimes interrupted his comments, but Fish put up with it.

“So have you seen much of the area since you’ve moved here?” Dr. Anschlung asked Fish when the rest of the company was involved discussing the latest politics.

“Not really. I’ve only out to drop off some furniture at Mercy College since I’ve gotten here,” Fish said.

“Is that the college near Meyerstown?” Dr. Anschlung asked.

“Mercy College? Isn’t your facility located near Mercy College?” Dr. Storck turned to Dr. Prosser’s companion, a Dr. Schaffer, who was sitting on her right. Fish had learned that she was a surgeon at the hospital.

Dr. Schaffer rolled her eyes. “Unfortunately, yes,” she said distastefully.

Dr. Prosser had overheard the last remark. “What’s unfortunate?”

“Mercy College.”

“Ohmygawd!” exclaimed Dr. Prosser. “If I had weapons of mass destruction, that’s where I’d use ’em!”

Dr. Anschlung cast a quick sidelong glance at Fish and grimaced.

“Why do you say that?” Dr. Storck asked. Then she seemed to conjecture. “Is that where your protestors are from?”

Dr. Prosser swore. “That’s right. Every single Saturday morning, with their placards and rosaries and hymns!”

“I had no idea,” Dr. Anschlung said. “Whatever are they protesting?”

“It’s the old religion versus science thing again,” sniffed Dr. Prosser. “Who knows? The religious right versus progress. Bigots versus the people.”

“Let me guess,” said Dr. Carpenter. “A mixed crowd of impressionable freshmen, crew cuts and Bibles in hand, with old ladies in mantillas praying the rosary, right? Led by some emaciated priest or senile church lady with a sexual repression?”

The others laughed, but Dr. Prosser shook her head and exchanged wry glances with Dr. Schaffer. “Actually, the ringleader is this half-breed chick in denim with long black braids, a megaphone and an attitude. She’s quite a character.”

Dr. Schaffer sighed. “At least we have interesting protestors.”

“Interesting? Like a study in criminal pathology. A female Unabomber waiting to happen.” Dr. Prosser said.

“What do you mean, she’s a half-breed?” inquired Dr. Bosworth, who didn’t seem comfortable with the term. “Is she a Native American?”

“Looks like one, with tan skin and colored-string-bound-braids,” said Dr. Schaffer.

“No,” said Dr. Prosser to her, a bit triumphantly. “I forgot to tell you, I just got the report. She’s actually Polish and Vietnamese!”

“Really?” Dr. Bosworth seemed visibly relieved. “How unusual.”

“The amount of bad publicity she’s given our hospital is damaging,” Dr. Prosser said. “So I thought it prudent to have her investigated. She’s already been arrested, twice, for trespassing, and she’s made threats about our work and against our personnel. It’s in our interest to watch her.”

“The second time she was arrested, it was because I caught her in our dumpster going through the trash,” Dr. Schaffer informed the rest of the table.

The other women shuddered. “Disgusting.”

“Literally looking for garbage to unearth about us,” Dr. Prosser said. “Fortunately, we don’t have anything incriminating in our dumpsters. She just got a little more smelly for her trouble.”

“Why do people do these things?” Dr. Carpenter wondered. “These are college students, you say? What in the world do they teach them at that school?”

“Religious hysteria,” Dr. Prosser said firmly. “They encourage them. We’ve considered preparing a lawsuit against the school, we really have. I mean, I’m all for academic freedom,” she gazed around the table, including Fish in her gaze. “But this kind of intolerance is too much! Suppose they actually managed to damage our facility? Plant a bomb? Are we going to wait for that to happen?”

There was a reflective silence at the table while Dr. Prosser took another bite of her salad.

“So what is it that you do at your hospital that they find objectionable?” Fish asked calmly, since no one else had asked.

Dr. Prosser looked up at him, chewing on a bread roll. Her blue eyes were cool. “Full reproductive services for women,” she said at last. “You’re not familiar with our facility?”

“I’m new to the area,” Fish said apologetically.

“He’s from New York City,” Dr. Anschlung informed them all. “He did his undergraduate at NYU.”

“I see,” Dr. Prosser took another bite. “Well, we only do what every other free public hospital does in this country. We provide the full range of health care for women. But to some of these weirdoes, that means we’re homicidal money-hungry baby-killers.”

“Surely not!” Fish said. Dr. Prosser looked at him suspiciously, so he tried to look guileless.

“I suppose it all comes down to what you consider human. Clumps of cells? Tissues? These people would have us give our fingernail cuttings a decent burial if they could make laws about it.”

“Maybe that’s why her hair is so long,” Dr. Schaffer said in a low voice to Dr. Prosser, who laughed loudly.

“When’s that food coming?” Dr. Prosser asked. She looked around the table, and returned to her practice of ignoring Fish. After a moment, Dr. Carpenter hesitantly offered an opinion on the latest governmental election. For the rest of the meal, Dr. Prosser pretended he wasn’t there, which was fine with him.

On the ride home, Dr. Anschlung seemed embarrassed. “Quite a faux pas of me, asking you about Mercy College. I certainly hadn’t expected such a firestorm.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. I had no idea. I just mentioned the college because my sister-in-law’s sister goes there.”

“I see,” Dr. Anschlung said. “Well, it certainly doesn’t sound like the sort of place that’s going to look very good on a resume,” she added dubiously.

“I actually have only been there once, and it seemed fairly normal. Just another private school,” Fish assured her. “Nobody chanting rosaries or beating themselves with chains.”

“All the same, it does give religious schools a bad name when they allow their students to become involved with those kinds of protest activities,” Dr. Anschlung said.

“Well, our university has its share of weird protests too, doesn’t it?” Fish asked. “Those environmentalists spray-painting the walls around the goldfish pond?”

“I suppose we do,” she said, sighing. “It all comes under academic freedom, doesn’t it?”